Dolphin Island by Arthur C. Clarke

Author:Arthur C. Clarke
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780140319200
Publisher: Puffin Books
Published: 1986-09-24T10:00:00+00:00

They followed him all the way back, sometimes brushing affectionately against him. As far as Susie and Sputnik were concerned, he knew that he need never press the FRIEND

button again.

When he climbed out of the pool, Professor Kazan embraced him like a long-lost son; even Dr. Keith, to Johnny's embarrassment, tried to clutch him with bony arms, and he had to side-step smartly to avoid him. As soon as they had left the silence zone, the two scientists started chattering like excited schoolboys.

"It's too good to be true," said Dr. Keith. "Why, they were one jump ahead of us most of the time!"

"I noticed that," answered the Professor. "I'm not sure whether they're better thinkers than we are, but they're certainly faster ones."

"Can I use that gadget next time, Professor?" asked Mick plaintively.

"Yes," said Professor Kazan at once. "Now we know that they'll co-operate with Johnny, we want to see if they'll do so with other people. I picture trained diver-dolphin teams that can open up new frontiers in the sea for research, salvage—oh, a thousand jobs." He suddenly stopped, in the full flight of his enthusiasm. "I've just remembered two words that should have gone into the communicator; we must put them there at once."

"What are they?" asked Dr. Keith,

"PLEASE and THANK YOU," answered the Professor.

Chapter 13

For more than a hundred years, Dolphin Island had been haunted by a legend. Johnny would have heard of it soon enough, but, as it happened, he made the discovery by himself.

He had been taking a short cut through the forest, which covered three-quarters of the island, and, as usual, it turned out to be not short at all. Almost as soon as he left the path, he lost his direction in the densely packed pandanus and pisonia trees, and was floundering up to his knees in the sandy soil that the muttonbirds had riddled with their burrows.

It was a strange feeling, being "lost" only a few hundred feet from the crowded settlement and all his friends. He could easily imagine that he was in the heart of some vast jungle, a thousand miles from civilization. There was all the loneliness and mystery of the untamed wild, with none of its danger, for if he pushed on in any direction, he would be out of the tiny forest in five minutes. True, he wouldn't come out in the place he had intended, but that hardly mattered on so small an island.

Suddenly he became aware of something odd about the patch of jungle into which he had blundered. The trees were smaller and farther apart than elsewhere, and as he looked around him, Johnny slowly realized that this had once been a clearing in the forest. It must have been abandoned a long, long time ago, for it had become almost completely overgrown. In a few more years, all trace of it would be lost.

Who could have lived here, he wondered, years before radio and aircraft had brought the Great Barrier Reef into contact

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