Free Dolphin Island by Arthur C. Clarke Page B

Professor Kazan, “but go ahead.”
    “We get a substantial percentage of our food from the sea—about a hundred million
     tons of fish per annum. Dolphins are our direct competitors: what they eat is lost
     to us. You say there’s a war between the killer whales and the dolphins, but there’s
     also a war between dolphins and fishermen, who get their nets broken and their catches
     stolen. In
this
war, the killer whales are our allies. If they didn’t keep the dolphin population
     under control, there might be no fish for us.”
    Oddly enough, this did not seem to discourage the Professor. Indeed, he sounded positively
     pleased.
    “Thank you, Mordecai—you’ve given me an idea. You know, of course, that dolphins have
     sometimes helped men to round up schools of fish, sharing the catch afterward? It
     used to happen with the aborigines here in Queensland, two hundred years ago.”
    “Yes, I know about that. Do you want to bring the custom up to date?”
    “Among other ideas. Thank you very much, gentlemen; I’m extremely grateful to you.
     As soon as I’ve carried out a few experiments, I’ll send a memorandum to the whole
     Committee and we’ll have a full-scale meeting.”
    “You might give us a few clues, after waking us up at this time in the morning.”
    “Not yet, if you don’t mind—until I know which ideas are utterly insane and which
     ones are merely crazy. Give me a couple of weeks, and meanwhile, you might inquire
     if anyone has a killer whale that I can borrow. Preferably one that won’t eat more
     than a thousand pounds of food a day.”

Chapter 11
    Johnny’s first trip across the reef at night was an experience he remembered all his
     life. The tide was out, there was no Moon, and the stars were brilliant in a cloudless
     sky when he and Mick set off from the beach, equipped with waterproof flashlights,
     spears, face masks, gloves, and sacks, which they hoped to fill with crayfish. Many
     of the reef’s inhabitants left their hiding places only after dark, and Mick was particularly
     anxious to find some rare and beautiful shells which never appeared in the daytime.
     He made a good deal of money selling these to mainland collectors—quite illegally,
     as the island fauna was supposed to be protected under the Queensland Fisheries Act.
    They crunched across the exposed coral, with their flashlights throwing pools of lights
     ahead of them—pools that seemed very tiny in the enormous darkness of the reef. The
     night was so black that by the time they had gone a hundred yards there was no sign
     of the island; luckily, a red warning beacon on one of the radio masts served as a
     landmark. Without this to give them their bearings, they would have been hopelessly
     lost. Even the stars were not a safe guide, for they swung across much of the sky
     in the time it took to reach the edge of the reef and to return.
    In any event, Johnny had to concentrate so hard on picking a way across the brittle,
     shadowy coral world, that he had little time to look at the stars. But when he did
     glance up, he was struck by something so strange that for a moment he could only stare
     at it in amazement.
    Reaching up from the western horizon, almost to a point overhead, was an enormous
     pyramid of light. It was faint but perfectly distinct; one might have mistaken it
     for the glow of a far-off city. Yet there were no cities for a hundred miles in that
     direction—only empty sea.
    “What on earth is
that
?” asked Johnny at last. Mick, who had gone on ahead while he was staring at the sky,
     did not realize for a moment what was puzzling him.
    “Oh,” he said, “you can see it almost every clear night when there’s no Moon. It’s
     something out in space, I think. Can’t you see it from your country?”
    “I’ve never noticed it, but we don’t have nights as clear as this.”
    So the two boys stood gazing, flashlights extinguished for the moment, at a heavenly
     wonder that few men have