Dolphin Island

As they swam back to the edge of the reef, Johnny glanced down once more into the blue depths, with their coral boulders, their overhanging terraces, and the ponderous shapes swimming slowly among them. It was a world as alien as another planet, even though it was here on his own Earth. And it was a world that, because it was so utterly strange, filled him with curiosity and with fear.

There was only one way of dealing with both these emotions. Sooner or later, he would have to follow Mick down that blue, mysterious slope.

Chapter 9

“You’re right, Professor,” said Dr. Keith, “though I’m darned if I know how you could tell. There’s no large school of dolphins within the range of our hydrophones.”

“Then we’ll go after them in the Flying Fish.”

“But where shall we look? They may be anywhere inside ten thousand square miles.”

“That’s what the Survey Satellites are for,” Professor Kazan answered. “Call Woomera Control and ask them to photograph an area of fifty miles radius around the island. Get them to do it as soon after dawn as possible. There must be a satellite going overhead sometime tomorrow morning.”

“But why after dawn?” asked Keith. “Oh, I see—the long shadows will make them easy to spot.”

“Of course. It will be quite a job searching such a huge area, and if we take too long over it, they’ll be somewhere else.”

Johnny heard about the project soon after breakfast, when he was called in to help with the reconnaissance. It seemed that Professor Kazan had bitten off a little more than he could chew, for the island’s picture-receiver had delivered twenty-five separate photographs, each covering an area of twenty miles on a side, and each showing an enormous amount of detail. They had been taken about an hour after dawn from a low-altitude meteorological satellite five hundred miles up, and since there were no clouds to obscure the view, they were of excellent quality. The powerful telescopic cameras had brought the Earth to within only five miles.

Johnny had been given the least important, but most interesting, photo in the mosaic to examine. This was the central one, showing the island itself. It was fascinating to go over it with a magnifying glass and to see the buildings and paths and boats leap up to meet the eye. Even individual people could be detected as small black spots.

For the first time, Johnny realized the full enormous extent of the reef around Dolphin Island. It stretched for miles away to the east, so that the island itself appeared merely like the point in a punctuation mark. Although the tide was in, every detail of the reef could be seen through the shallow water that covered it. Johnny almost forgot the job he was supposed to be doing as he explored the pools and submarine valleys and the hundreds of little canyons that had been worn by water draining off the reef shelf at low tide.

The searchers were in luck; the school was spotted sixty miles to the southeast of the island, almost on the extreme edge of the photo-mosaic. It was quite unmistakable: there were scores of dark bodies shooting along the surface, some of them frozen by the camera as they leaped clear of the sea. And one could tell from the widening Vee’s of their wakes that they were heading west.

Professor Kazan looked at the photograph with satisfaction. “They’re getting closer,” he said. “If they’ve kept to that course, we can meet them in an hour. Is the Flying Fish ready?”

“She’s still refueling, but she can leave in thirty minutes.”

The Professor glanced at his watch; he seemed as excited as a small boy who had been promised a treat.

“Good,” he said briskly. “Everyone at the jetty in twenty minutes.”

Johnny was there in five. It was the first time he had ever been aboard a boat (the Santa Anna, of course, hardly counted, for he had seen so little), and he was determined not to miss anything. He had already been ordered down from the cruiser’s crow’s-nest, thirty feet above the deck, when the Professor came aboard—smoking a huge cigar, wearing an eye-searing Hawaiian shirt, and carrying camera, binoculars, and brief case. “Let’s go!” he said. The Flying Fish went.

She stopped again at the edge of the reef, when she had emerged from the channel cut through the coral.

“What’re we waiting for?” Johnny asked Mick as they leaned over the handrails and looked at the receding island.

“I’m not sure,” Mick answered, “but I can guess—ah, here they come! The Professor probably called them through the underwater speakers, though they usually turn up anyway.”