From the Ocean from teh Stars (4 page)

"That's the trouble with hypnotic training," agreed Don. "They can
pump the information into you until it comes out of your ears, but you're
never quite sure how much you really know. And they can't teach you
manual skills, or train you to have the right reactions in emergencies.
There's only one way of learning anything properly—and that's by actu
ally doing the job."

He paused, momentarily distracted by a shapely silhouette parading
on the other side of the translucent wall. Franklin noticed the direction of
his gaze, and his features relaxed into a slight smile. For the first time
the tension lifted, and Don began to feel that there was some hope of
establishing contact with the enigma who was now his responsibility.

With a beery forefinger, Don started to trace maps on the plastic table
top.

"This is the setup," he began. "Our main training center for shallow-
water operations is here in the Capricorn Group, about four hundred
miles north of Brisbane and forty miles out from the coast. The South
Pacific fence starts here, and runs on east to New Caledonia and Fiji.
When the whales migrate north from the polar feeding grounds to have
their calves in the tropics, they're compelled to pass through the gaps
we've left here. The most important of these gates, from our point of
view, is the one right here off the Queensland coast, at the southern en
trance to the Great Barrier Reef. The reef provides a kind of natural
channel, averaging about fifty miles wide, almost up to the equator. Once
we've herded the whales into it, we can keep them pretty well under
control. It didn't take much doing; many of them used to come this way
long before we appeared on the scene. By now the rest have been so well
conditioned that even if we switched off the fence it would probably make
no difference to their migratory pattern."

"By the way," interjected Franklin, "is the fence purely electrical?"

"Oh no. Electric fields control fish pretty well but don't work satis
factorily on mammals like whales. The fence is largely ultrasonic—a cur
tain of sound from a chain of generators half a mile below the surface.
We can get fine control at the gates by broadcasting specific orders; you
can set a whole herd stampeding in any direction you wish by playing
back a recording of a whale in distress. But it's not very often we have to
do anything drastic like that; as I said, nowadays they're too well trained."

"I can appreciate that," said Franklin. "In fact, I heard somewhere
that the fence was more for keeping other animals out than for keeping
the whales in."

"That's partly true, though we'd still need some kind of control for

rounding up our herds at census or slaughtering. Even so, the fence isn't perfect. There are weak spots where generator fields overlap, and some
times we have to switch off sections to allow normal fish migration. Then,
the really big sharks, or the killer whales, can get through and play hell. The killers are our worst problem; they attack the whales when they are
feeding in the Antarctic, and often the herds suffer ten per cent losses. No
one will be happy until the killers are wiped out, but no one can think of an economical way of doing it. We can't patrol the entire ice pack with
subs, though when I've seen what a killer can do to a whale I've often
wished we could."

There was real feeling—almost passion—in Burley's voice, and
Franklin looked at the warden with surprise. The "whaleboys," as they
had been inevitably christened by a nostalgically minded public in search
of heroes, were not supposed to be much inclined either to thought or emotions. Though Franklin knew perfectly well that the tough, uncomplicated characters who stalked tight lipped through the pages of con
temporary submarine sagas had very little connection with reality, it was
hard to escape from the popular cliches. Don Burley, it was true, was far
from tight lipped, but in most other respects he seemed to fit the standard
specification very well.

Franklin wondered how he was going to get on with his new mentor
—indeed, with his new job. He still felt no enthusiasm for it; whether
that would come, only time would show. It was obviously full of interest
ing and even fascinating problems and possibilities, and if it would oc
cupy his mind and give him scope for his talents, that was as much as he
could hope for. The long nightmare of the last year had destroyed, with
so much else, his zest for life—the capacity he had once possessed for
throwing himself heart and soul into some project.

It was difficult to believe that he could ever recapture the enthusiasm
that had once taken him so far along paths he could never tread again.
As he glanced at Don, who was still talking with the fluent lucidity of a man who knows and loves his job, Franklin felt a sudden and disturbing
sense of guilt. Was it fair to Burley to take him away from his work and
to turn him, whether he knew it or not, into a cross between a nursemaid
and kindergarten teacher? Had Franklin realized that very similar
thoughts had already crossed Burley's mind, his sympathy would have
been quenched at once.

"Time we caught the shuttle to the airport," said Don, looking at his
watch and hastily draining his beer. "The morning flight leaves in thirty
minutes. I hope all your stuff's already been sent on."

"The hotel said they'd take care of it."

"Well, we can check at the airport. Let's go."

Half an hour later Franklin had a chance to relax again. It was typical
of Burley, he soon discovered, to take things easily until the last possible
moment and then to explode in a burst of activity. This burst carried
them from the quiet bar to the even more efficiently silenced plane. As
they took their seats, there was a brief incident that was to puzzle Don a
good deal in the weeks that lay ahead.

"You take the window seat," he said. "I've flown this way dozens of
times."

He took Franklin's refusal as ordinary politeness, and started to insist. Not until Franklin had turned down the offer several times, with increas
ing determination and even signs of annoyance, did Burley realize that his
companion's behavior had nothing to do with common courtesy. It
seemed incredible, but Don could have sworn that the other was scared
stiff. What sort of man, he wondered blankly, would be terrified of taking a window seat in an ordinary aircraft? All his gloomy premonitions about his new assignment, which had been partly dispelled during their earlier conversation, came crowding back with renewed vigor.

The city and the sunburned coast dropped below as the lifting jets
carried them effortlessly up into the sky. Franklin was reading the paper
with a fierce concentration that did not deceive Burley for a moment. He
decided to wait for a while, and apply some more tests later in the flight.

The Glasshouse Mountains—those strangely shaped fangs jutting
from the eroded plain—swept swiftly beneath. Then came the little
coastal towns, through which the wealth of the immense farm lands of the
interior had once passed to the world in the days before agriculture went
to sea. And then—only minutes, it seemed, after take-off—the first is
lands of the Great Barrier Reef appeared like deeper shadows in the blue horizon mists.

The sun was shining almost straight into his eyes, but Don's memory could fill in the details which were lost in the glare from the burning wa
ters. He could see the low, green islands surrounded by their narrow
borders of sand and their immensely greater fringes of barely submerged
coral. Against each island's private reef the waves of the Pacific would
be marching forever, so that for a thousand miles into the north snowy
crescents of foam would break the surface of the sea.

A century ago—fifty years, even—scarcely a dozen of these hundreds
of islands had been inhabited. Now, with the aid of universal air trans
port, together with cheap power and water-purification plants, both the
state and the private citizen had invaded the ancient solitude of the reef.
A few fortunate individuals, by means that had never been perfectly

clear, had managed to acquire some of the smaller islands as their personal property. The entertainment and vacation industry had taken over others, and had not always improved on Nature's handiwork. But the greatest landowner in the reef was undoubtedly the World Food Organization, with its complicated hierarchy of fisheries, marine farms, and research departments, the full extent of which, it was widely believed, no merely human brain could ever comprehend.

"We're nearly there," said Burley. "That's Lady Musgrave Island we've just passed—main generators for the western end of the fence. Capricorn Group under us now—Masthead, One Tree, North-West, Wilson—and Heron in the middle, with all those buildings on it. The big tower is Administration—the aquarium's by that pool—and look, you can see a couple of subs tied up at that long jetty leading out to the edge of the reef."

As he spoke, Don watched Franklin out of the corner of his eye. The other had leaned toward the window as if following his companion's running commentary, yet Burley could swear that he was not looking at the panorama of reefs and islands spread out below. His face was tense and strained; there was an indrawn, hooded expression in his eyes as if he was forcing himself to see nothing.

With a mingling of pity and contempt, Don understood the symptoms if not their cause. Franklin was terrified of heights; so much, then, for the theory that he was a spaceman. Then what was he? Whatever the answer, he hardly seemed the sort of person with whom one would wish to share the cramped quarters of a two-man training sub. . . .

The plane's shock absorbers touched down on the rectangle of scorched and flattened coral that was the Heron Island landing platform. As he stepped out into the sunlight, blinking in the sudden glare, Franklin seemed to make an abrupt recovery. Don had seen seasick passengers undergo equally swift transformations on their return to dry land. If Franklin is no better as a sailor than an airman, he thought, this crazy assignment won't last more than a couple of days and I'll be able to get back to work. Not that Don was in a great rush to return immediately; Heron Island was a pleasant place where you could enjoy yourself if you knew how to deal with the red tape that always entangled headquarters establishments.

A light truck whisked them and their belongings along a road beneath an avenue of Pisonia trees whose heavily leafed branches blocked all direct sunlight. The road was less than a quarter of a mile long, but it spanned the little island from the jetties and maintenance plants on the west to the administration buildings on the east. The two halves of the

island were partly insulated from each other by a narrow belt of jungle
which had been carefully preserved in its virgin state and which, Don
remembered sentimentally, was full of interesting tracks and secluded
clearings.
\

Administration was expecting Mr. Franklin, and had\made all the
necessary arrangements for him. He had been placed in a kind of priv
ileged limbo, one stage below the permanent staff like Burley, but several
stages above the ordinary trainees under instruction. Surprisingly, he had
a room of his own—something that even senior members of the bureap
could not always expect when they visited the island. This was a great relief to Don, who had been afraid he might have to share quarters with
his mysterious charge. Quite apart from any other factors, that would
have interfered badly with certain romantic plans of his own.

He saw Franklin to his small but attractive room on the second floor
of the training wing, looking out across the miles of coral which stretched
eastward all the way to the horizon. In the courtyard below, a group of
trainees, relaxing between classes, was chatting with a second warden
instructor whom Don recognized from earlier visits but could not name.
It was a pleasant feeling, he mused, going back to school when you
already knew all the answers.

"You should be comfortable here," he said to Franklin, who was busy
unpacking his baggage. "Quite a view, isn't it?"

Such poetic ecstasies were normally foreign to Don's nature, but he
could not resist the temptation of seeing how Franklin would react to the
leagues of coral-dappled ocean that lay before him. Rather to his disap
pointment, the reaction was quite conventional; presumably Franklin
was not worried by a mere thirty feet of height. He looked out of the
window, taking his time and obviously admiring the vista of blues and greens which led the eye out into the endless waters of the Pacific.

Serve you right, Don told himself—it's not fair to tease the poor devil.
Whatever he's got, it can't be fun to live with.

"I'll leave you to get settled in," said Don, backing out through the
door. "Lunch will be coming up in half an hour over at the mess—that
building we passed on the way in. See you there."

Franklin nodded absently as he sorted through his belongings and
piled shirts and underclothes on the bed. He wanted to be left alone while
he adjusted himself to the new life which, with no particular enthusiasm,
he had now accepted as his own.

Burley had been gone for less than ten minutes when there was a
knock on the door and a quiet voice said, "Can I come in?"