From the Ocean from teh Stars (24 page)

The text was dignified and avoided sensationalism; the painting was
sensational enough and needed no embellishment. The Space Depart
ment, he read, urgently needed young men as wardens and food produc
tion experts for the exploitation of the seas of Venus. The work, it was added, was probably the most exciting and rewarding to be found anywhere in the solar system; pay was good and the quaUfications were not
as high as those needed for space pilot or astrogator. After the short list of
physical and educational requirements, the advertisement ended with the
words which the Venus Commission had been plugging for the last six
months, and which Franklin had grown heartily tired of seeing:
help to

BUILD A SECOND EARTH.

"Meanwhile," said the ex-director, "our problem is to keep the first
one going, when the bright youngsters who might be joining us are run
ning away to Venus. And between you and me, I shouldn't be surprised
if the Space Department has been after some of our men."

"They wouldn't do a thing like that!"

"Wouldn't they now? Anyway, there's a transfer application in from
First Warden McRae; if you can't talk him out of it, try to find what made him want to leave."

Life was certainly going to be difficult, Franklin thought. Joe McRae
was an old friend; could he impose on that friendship now that he was
Joe's boss?

"Another of your little problems is going to be keeping the scientists
under control. Lundquist is worse than Roberts ever was; he's got about six crazy schemes going, and at least Roberts only had one brainstorm at
a time. He spends half his time over on Heron Island. It might be a good
idea to fly over and have a look at him. That was something I never had
a chance to get around to."

Franklin was still listening politely as his predecessor continued, with
obvious relish, to point out the many disadvantages of his new post. Most
of them he already knew, and his mind was now far away. He was think
ing how pleasant it would be to begin his directorate with an official visit
to Heron Island, which he had not seen for nearly five years, and which
had so many memories of his first days in the bureau.

Dr. Lundquist was flattered by the new director's visit, being inno
cent enough to hope that it might lead to increased support for his activi
ties. He would not have been so enthusiastic had he guessed that the
opposite was more likely to be the case. No one could have been more sympathetic than Franklin to scientific research, but now that he had to
approve the bills himself he found that his point of view was subtly al-

tered. Whatever Lundquist was doing would have to be of direct value to the bureau. Otherwise it was out—unless the Department of Scientific
Research could be talked into taking it over.

Lundquist was a small, intense little man whose rapid and somewhat
jerky movements reminded Franklin of a sparrow. He was an enthusiast
of a type seldom met these days, and he combined a sound scientific back
ground with an unfettered imagination. How unfettered, Franklin was
soon to discover.

Yet at first sight it seemed that most of the work going on at the lab
was of a fairly routine nature. Franklin spent a dull half-hour while two
young scientists explained the methods they were developing to keep
whales free of the many parasites that plagued them, and then escaped
by the skin of his teeth from a lecture on cetacean obstetrics. He listened with more interest to the latest work on artificial insemination, having in
the past helped with some of the early—and often hilariously unsuccessful—experiments along this line. He sniffed cautiously at some synthetic
ambergris, and agreed that it seemed just like the real thing. And he lis
tened to the recorded heartbeat of a whale before and after the cardiac operation that had saved its life, and pretended that he could hear the
difference.

Everything here was perfectly in order, and just as he had expected.
Then Lundquist steered him out of the lab and down to the big pool,
saying as he did so: "I think you'll find this more interesting. It's only in
the experimental stage, of course, but it has possibilities."

The scientist looked at his watch and muttered to himself, "Two min
utes to go; she's usually in sight by now." He glanced out beyond the reef,
then said with satisfaction, "Ah—there she is!"

A long black mound was moving in toward the island, and a moment later Franklin saw the typical stubby spout of vapor which identified the
humpback whale. Almost at once he saw a second, much smaller spout,
and realized that he was watching a female and her calf. Without hesita
tion, both animals came in through the narrow channel that had been
blasted through the coral years ago so that small boats could come up to the lab. They turned left into a large tidal pool that had not been here on
Franklin's last visit, and remained there waiting patiently like well-trained dogs.

Two lab technicians, wearing oilskins, were trundling something that
looked like a fire extinguisher to the edge of the pool. Lundquist and
Franklin hurried to join them, and it was soon obvious why the oilskins
were necessary on this bright and cloudless day. Every time the whales

spouted there was a miniature rainstorm, and Franklin was glad to bor
row protection from the descending and nauseous spray.

Even a warden seldom saw a live whale at such close quarters, and
under such ideal conditions. The mother was about fifty feet long, and,
hke all humpbacks, very massively built. She was no beauty, Franklin
decided, and the large, irregular warts along the leading edges of her
flippers did nothing to add to her appearance. The little calf was about twenty feet in length, and did not appear to be too happy in its confined
quarters, for it was anxiously circling its stolid mother.

One of the scientists gave a curious, high-pitched shout, and at once
the whale rolled over on her side, bringing half of her pleated belly out
of the water. She did not seem to mind when a large rubber cup was
placed over the now-exposed teat; indeed, she was obviously co-operat
ing, for the meter on the collecting tank was recording an astonishing
rate of flow.

"You know, of course," explained Lundquist, "that the cows eject
their milk under pressure, so that the calves can feed when the teats are
submerged without getting water in their mouths. But when the calves
are
very
young, the mother rolls over hke this so that the baby can feed
above water. It makes things a lot simpler for us."

The obedient whale, without any instructions that Franklin could detect, had now circled round in her pen and was rolling over on the other
side, so that her second teat could be milked. He looked at the meter; it
now registered just under fifty gallons, and was still rising. The calf was obviously getting worried, or perhaps it had become excited by the milk
that had accidentally spilled into the water. It made several attempts to
bunt its mechanical rival out of the way, and had to be discouraged by a
few sharp smacks.

Franklin was impressed, but not surprised. He knew that this was
not the first time that whales had been milked, though he did not know
that it could now be done with such neatness and dispatch. But where was
it leading? Knowing Dr. Lundquist, he could guess.

"Now," said the scientist, obviously hoping that the demonstration
had made its desired impact, "we can get at least five hundred pounds of
milk a day from a cow without interfering with the calf's growth. And if
we start breeding for milk as the farmers have done on land, we should
be able to get a ton a day without any trouble. You think that's a lot? I
regard it as quite a modest target. After all, prize cattle have given over a
hundred pounds of milk a day—and a whale weighs a good deal more
than twenty times as much as a cow!"

Franklin did his best to interrupt the statistics.

"That's all very well," he said. "I don't doubt your figures. And
equally I don't doubt that you can process the milk to remove that oily
taste—yes, I've tried it, thanks. But how the devil are you going to round
up all the cows in a herd—especially a herd that migrates ten thousand
miles a year?"

"Oh, we've worked all that out. It's partly a matter of training, and
we've learned a lot getting Susan here to obey our underwater recordings. Have you ever been to a dairy farm and watched how the cows walk into
the autolactor at milking time and walk out again—without a human
being coming within miles of the place? And believe me, whales are a
lot smarter and more easily trained than cows! I've sketched out the
rough designs for a milk tanker that can deal with four whales at once,
and could follow the herd as it migrates. In any case, now that we can control the plankton yield we can stop migration if we want to, and keep the whales in the tropics without them getting hungry. The whole thing's
quite practical, I assure you."

Despite himself, Franklin was fascinated by the idea. It had been
suggested, in some form or other, for many years, but Dr. Lundquist
seemed to have been the first to do anything about it.

The mother whale and her still somewhat indignant calf had now set
out to sea, and were soon spouting and diving noisily beyond the edge of
the reef. As Franklin watched them go, he wondered if in a few years'
time he would see hundreds of the great beasts lined up obediently as
they swam to the mobile milking plants, each delivering a ton of what
was known to be one of the richest foods on earth. But it might remain only a dream; there would be countless practical problems to be faced,
and what had been achieved on the laboratory scale with a single animal
might prove out of the question in the sea.

"What I'd like you to do," he said to Lundquist, "is to let me have a
report showing what an—er—whale dairy would require in terms of equipment and personnel. Try to give costs wherever you can. And then
estimate how much milk it could deliver, and what the processing plants would pay for that. Then we'll have something definite to work on. At the
moment it's an interesting experiment, but no one can say if it has any
practical application."

Lundquist seemed slightly disappointed at Franklin's lack of enthu
siasm, but rapidly warmed up again as they walked away from the pool. If Franklin had thought that a little project like setting up a whale dairy
had exhausted Lundquist's powers of extrapolation, he was going to learn
better.

"The next proposal I want to talk about," began the scientist, "is still

entirely in the planning stage. I know that one of our most serious problems is staff shortage, and I've been trying to think of ways in which we
can improve efficiency by releasing men from routine jobs."

"Surely that process has gone about as far as it can, short of making
everything completely automatic? Anyway, it's less than a year since the
last team of efficiency experts went over us." (And, added Franklin to
himself, the bureau isn't quite back to normal yet.)

"My approach to the problem," explained Lundquist, "is a little un
conventional, and as an ex-warden yourself I think you'll be particularly
interested in it. As you know, it normally takes two or even three subs to round up a large school of whales; if a single sub tries it, they'll scatter in all directions. Now this has often seemed to me a shocking waste of man
power and equipment, since all the thinking could be done by a single warden. He only needs his partners to make the right noises in the right
places—something a machine could do just as well."

"If you're thinking of automatic slave subs," said Franklin, "it's been
tried—and it didn't work. A warden can't handle two ships at once, let
alone three."

"I know all about
that
experiment," answered Lundquist. "It could have been a success if they'd tackled it properly. But my idea is much
more revolutionary. Tell me—does the name 'sheep dog' mean anything
to you?"

Franklin wrinkled his brow. "I think so," he replied. "Weren't they
dogs that the old-time shepherds used to protect their flocks, a few hun
dred years ago?"

"It happened until less than a hundred years ago. And 'protect' is an understatement with a vengeance. I've been looking at film records of sheep dogs in action, and no one who hadn't seen them would believe
some of the things they could do. Those dogs were so intelligent and so well-trained that they could make a flock of sheep do anything the shep
herd wanted, merely at a word of command from him. They could split
a flock into sections, single out one solitary sheep from its fellows, or keep
a flock motionless in one spot as long as their master ordered.

"Do you see what I am driving at? We've been training dogs for
centuries, so such a performance doesn't seem miraculous to us. What I am suggesting is that we repeat the pattern in the sea. We know that a
good many marine mammals—seals and porpoises, for instance—are at
least as intelligent as dogs, but except in circuses and places like Marine-
land there's been no attempt to train them. You've seen the tricks our
porpoises here can do, and you know how affectionate and friendly they
are. When you've watched these old films of sheep-dog trials, you'll agree