Dolphin Island - Arthur C. Clarke [29]
He was doing all this for fun, and because diving was a skill worth acquiring for its own sake. Not until Professor Kazan called for him one afternoon did he learn how quickly his hobby would be of use.
The Professor looked tired but cheerful, as if he had been working night and day on some project that was going well. "Johnny," he said, "I've a job for you, which I'm sure you'll enjoy. Take a look at this."
The piece of apparatus he pushed across his desk was something like a very small adding machine, with twenty-five buttons arranged in five rows of five each. It was only about three inches square, with a curved, sponge-rubber base, and was fitted with straps and buckles. Obviously, it was intended to be worn on the forearm, like an overgrown wrist watch.
Some studs were blank, but most of them carried a single word engraved in large, clear letters. As he ran his eye across the face of the little keyboard, Johnny began to understand the purpose of the device.
The words he read were: NO, YES, UP, DOWN, FRIEND, RIGHT, LEFT, FAST, SLOW, STOP, GO, FOLLOW, COME, DANGER! and HELP! They were arranged logically over the face of the keyboard: thus UP and DOWN were at top and bottom respectively; LEFT and RIGHT actually on the left and right. Opposing words like NO
and YES or STOP and GO were as far apart as possible so that the wrong stud could not be pressed by mistake. The studs marked DANGER! and HELP! were covered by guards that had to be slipped aside before they could be operated.
"There's a lot of neat solid-state electronics inside that," explained the Professor, "and a battery good for fifty hours' operation. When you press one of those buttons, you won't hear anything except a faint buzz. A dolphin, however, will hear the word which is printed on the button, but in its own language—at least, we hope it will. What happens then is what we want to find out.
"If you're wondering about the blank studs, we've kept them until we decide what other words we need. Now, I want you to take this gadget—we'll call it a Mark I Communicator—and practice swimming and diving with it until it seems part of you.
Get to know which stud is which, until you can find the one you want with your eyes shut. Then come back here, and we'll move on to the next experiment."
Johnny was so excited that he sat up most of the night pressing buttons and memorizing the layout of the keyboard. When he presented himself to the Professor immediately after breakfast, the scientist looked pleased but not surprised.
"Get your flippers and face mask," he said, "and meet me at the pool."
"Can I bring Mick?" asked Johnny.
"Of course, as long as he keeps quiet and doesn't make a nuisance of himself."
Mick was intrigued by the communicator, but not too happy that it had been entrusted to Johnny.
"I don't see why he's given it to you to try out," he said.
"That's obvious," Johnny answered very smugly. "Dolphins like me."
"Then they're not as intelligent as the Professor thinks," retorted Mick. Normally, this would have started a quarrel, though not a fight, for the simple reason that Mick was almost twice as heavy as Johnny and more than twice as strong.
By a coincidence that was not particularly odd, Professor Kazan and Dr. Keith were discussing the same problem as they walked down to the pool, heavily laden with equipment.
"Sputnik's behavior toward Johnny," said the Professor, "is right in line with the cases in the history books. When a wild dolphin makes friends with a human being, it's almost always with a child."
"And Johnny's exceptionally small for his age," added Dr. Keith. "I suppose they feel happier with children than with adults because grownups are big and