Margaret St. Clair - The Dolphins of Altair

We got to Benthis Canyon about five. This was good; it meant I would have time for an exploratory dive before I went down with the bomb.

We sea people are good divers. We can go down almost as far as a Split can in a diving suit, and of course we can descend and come up considerably more quickly. The sun was low, but I thought I should be able to see as much as was necessary. Our vision is excellent—I have heard a Split who dissected a number of us say that the dolphin eye was “an anatomical marvel”—and we have other quasi-visual senses besides.

I dived. There is no use in my trying to describe what a dolphin sees when it dives. The sea people know what it is like already, and Splits are not yet ready to understand. But when I came up to the surface again, a few minutes later, I was puzzled by what I had seen and sensed. The light was poor, it was true, and I had been almost at my maximum depth. But there was something odd about the bottom. It was other than I had remembered it, though I couldn’t be sure what the difference was. Still, the currents seemed unchanged. If I dropped the mine where I had planned to, it should drift downward with the current to the right spot.

“All OK?” Sven asked. He seemed aware of my puzzlement.

“I think so. I think it’s all right to drop the bomb.”

“Good.” He got the heavy little object out of his windbreaker and stripped the plastic covering from it. “See the knob on the side? Pull it out as far as it will go, about six inches. You won’t have any trouble pulling it while the mine is in your mouth?”

“I don’t think so. But, Sven, the sea people must start swimming north with you and Moonlight before I go down. You must be at least a mile away when I pull the knob. There is no use in having the rest of you run any extra risk.”

“All right.” He gave me the bomb.

Ivry and Djuna began swimming away northward with their passengers. I saw Madelaine looking at me anxiously, her hands pressed to her breast. I went under again.

I was a little nervous, I do not mind admitting it. Sven was familiar with high explosives, but I had never carried such a thing in my mouth before. I kept wondering what I would do if the knob stuck when it was only a little way out. My descent was necessarily rather slow, and I had time to have a good many unpleasant ideas. Then I was at the point where I would have to release the activated mine.

I bent my head forward and found the knob on the mine with my fingers. Yes, that was it. Now. I gave a good hard pull.

The thing in my mouth had begun to tick. The knob seemed to be pulled out about six inches—anyhow, it wouldn’t go any farther. I let it fall.

Again I had the sense of something different about the bottom. Too late now to worry about it. I began to swim toward the surface in a long upward slant.

There was no sign from the depths behind me. I reached the surface, breathed deeply and gratefully, and looked about for the others.

There was still a little red in the west. I had no difficulty at all in finding the Splits and the dolphins against the smooth, reflecting surface of the sea.

They were moving northward at a fair speed. I exerted myself, and was soon almost up with them. I would have nuzzled Djuna’s side in a moment, when Madelaine, turning toward me, cried loudly and imperatively, “Swim! As fast as you can! All of you! Quick! Swim! Swim!”

It never entered any of our heads to question or disobey her. Djuna and Ivry shot through the water, and I, though my acceleration is poor, kept up with them. If we ever slowed down, Madelaine screamed at us to swim faster. Her voice was harsh with fear.

There came a confused roar from behind. “Hurry, hurry!” Madelaine cried. None of us looked back.

A pulsation in the water struck our bodies. It was not strong enough to be dangerous, and I wondered why Madelaine was so frightened. I may have slowed down a little, for Moonlight cried anxiously, “Hurry! We’re not safe yet!”

The water around us was full of small particles. We were almost at our limit of endurance; we would have to slacken speed soon. Madelaine must have known this, for she said encouragingly, “Only a little farther… All right. You can go slower now.”

It wasn’t any too soon. For a while we were all silent, except for the noises of our breathing. The sunset glow had left the sky, and the moon had not come up. Then Sven said, “What was the danger, Maddy? Why did they have to swim so fast?”

“Because—Amtor, when you dived in the canyon, did you notice anything unusual about the bottom?”

“Yes.” I was still out of breath. “Thought so. Not sure.”

“Could what you noticed have been a number of big metal drums?”

“Yes.”

“Metal drums? What was in them?” Sven asked.

“Radioactive wastes from nuclear reactors,” Madelaine answered. “I expect the canyon seemed a safe place to dispose of them.”

Sven drew in his breath. Madelaine went on, “Just before I called to the dolphins to swim as fast as they could, I saw a—a picture of the mine exploding against a big metal drum. I didn’t know what it was. It frightened me. Then the drum broke, and I saw a fountain of deadliness shooting up from it. I knew then what it was. That was when I cried out.

“We’re safe now, I think. Only the fringe of it brushed us.”

We were swimming quite slowly now. We sea people have great endurance—we can keep pace with a ship for days—but we were carrying passengers, and we had had to draw on our reserves of energy in a way that was unusual even for an emergency. Also, we were beginning to get hungry, and of course we couldn’t hunt fish while we were carrying Sven and Moonlight.

Sven said, “I suppose the magnet in the mine attracted it to the drum. But if the force of the mine was expended against the drum, will there be an earthquake? We hadn’t calculated on the explosion happening that way.”

“I don’t know. Amtor might.”

“Makes no difference,” I answered. “Lateral force is the same. There will be a quake.”

“When?” the young man asked.

“I don’t know. Before we get back to the Rock.”

“Will we know when it happens?” Madelaine asked.

“I don’t think you will,” Djuna replied. “We’ll stay well out at sea. We Will. The water feels different to us.”

Sven said, “Are you hungry, Madelaine? There’s lots more corned beef.”

“Why—yes, I guess I am. Perhaps the dolphins would like some of it, too.”

Sven broke a piece of meat from the slices he was carrying. He reached over and held it to Djuna’s nose. She sniffed at it.

“We can’t eat it,” she said. “It is too salty for us to handle. But you Splits might as well eat.”

“All right.” Sven and the girl ate the meat and washed it down with water from the canteen.

Madelaine bent over Ivry’s back and dabbled her fingers in the sea water to clean them. “I’m getting sleepy,” she said, straightening up. “Ivry, when do you sea people sleep?”

“While we are going through the water,” he answered her. “I slept a little just now. That is how we can swim such distances.”

“You mustn’t go to sleep, Moonlight,” I said. “Talk to Sven. We can listen. Talking will help both of you to stay awake.”

“All right,” Sven said. “When you were washing your hands just now, Maddy, I noticed you were feeling your feet. Are they cold?”

“Cold!” She laughed. “They’re so cold they don’t seem to be my feet any more. They might belong to somebody else. They’re swollen, too, and I ache all over from sitting in one position for so long. And yet I’m happy. I’m always happy when I’m with the people of the sea. Do you know what I mean, Sven?”