Yet that, Don knew, was the least of his satisfactions. Even if what he was doing had been of no practical value, he would still have wished to do it. Nothing else that life could offer matched the contentment and the calm sense of power that filled him when he set out on a mission such as this. Power? Yes, that was the right word. But it was not a power that would ever be abused; he felt too great a kinship with all the creatures who shared the seas with him—even those it was his duty to destroy.
To all appearances, Don was completely relaxed, yet had any one of the many dials and lights filling his field of view called for attention he would have been instantly alert. His mind was already back on the Rorqual, and he found it increasingly hard to keep his thoughts away from his overdue breakfast. In order to make the time pass more swiftly, he started mentally composing his report. Quite a few people, he knew, were going to be surprised by it. The engineers who maintained the invisible fences of sound and electricity which now divided the mighty Pacific into manageable portions would have to start looking for the break; the marine biologists who were so confident that sharks never attacked whales would have to think up excuses. Both enterprises, Don was quite sure, would be successfully carried out, and then everything would be under control again, until the sea contrived its next crisis.
But the crisis to which Don was now unwittingly returning was a man-made one, organized without any malice toward him at the highest official levels. It had begun with a suggestion in the Space Department, duly referred up to the World Secretariat. It had risen still higher until it reached the World Assembly itself, where it had come to the approving ears of the senators directly interested. Thus converted from a suggestion to an order, it had filtered down through the Secretariat to the World Food Organization, thence to the Marine Division, and finally to the Bureau of Whales. The whole process had taken the incredibly short time of four weeks.
Don, of course, knew nothing of this. As far as he was concerned, the complicated workings of global bureaucracy resolved themselves into the greeting his skipper gave him when he walked into the Rorqual’s mess for his belated breakfast.
“Morning, Don. Headquarters wants you to run over to Brisbane—they’ve got some job for you. Hope it doesn’t take too long; you know how shorthanded we are.”
“What kind of a job?” asked Don suspiciously. He remembered an unfortunate occasion when he had acted as a guide to a permanent undersecretary who had seemed to be a bit of a fool, and whom he had treated accordingly. It had later turned out that the P.U.—as might have been guessed from his position—was a very shrewd character indeed and knew exactly what Don was doing.
“They didn’t tell me,” said the skipper. “I’m not quite sure they know themselves. Give my love to Queensland, and keep away from the casinos on the Gold Coast.”
“Much choice I have, on my pay,” snorted Don. “Last time I went to Surfer’s Paradise, I was lucky to get away with my shirt.”
“But you brought back a couple of thousand on your first visit.”
“Beginner’s luck—it never happened again. I’ve lost it all since then, so I’ll stop while I still break even. No more gambling for me.”
“Is that a bet? Would you put five bucks on it?”
“Sure.”
“Then pay over—you’ve already lost by accepting.”
A spoonful of processed plankton hovered momentarily in mid-air while Don sought for a way out of the trap.
“Just try and get me to pay,” he retorted. “You’ve got no witnesses, and I’m no gentleman.” He hastily swallowed the last of his coffee, then pushed aside his chair and rose to go.
“Better start packing, I suppose. So long, Skipper—see you later.”
The captain of the Rorqual watched his first warden sweep out of the room like a small hurricane. For a moment the sound of Don’s passage echoed back along the ship’s corridors; then comparative silence descended again. The skipper started to head back to the bridge. “Look out Brisbane,” he muttered to himself; then he began to rearrange the watches and to compose a masterly memorandum to HQ asking how he was expected to run a ship when thirty percent of her crew were permanently absent on leave or special duty. By the time he reached the bridge, the only thing that had stopped him from resigning was the fact that, try as he might, he couldn’t think of a better job.
Two
THOUGH HE HAD been kept waiting only a few minutes, Walter Franklin was already prowling impatiently around the reception room. Swiftly he examined and dismissed the deep-sea photographs hanging on the walls; then he sat for a moment on the edge of the table, leafing through the pile of magazines, reviews, and reports which always accumulated in such places. The popular magazines he had already seen—for the last few weeks he had had little else to do but read—and few of the others looked interesting. Somebody, he supposed, had to go through these lavishly electro printed food-production reports as part of their job; he wondered how they avoided being hypnotized by the endless columns of statistics. Neptune, the house organ of the Marine Division, seemed a little more promising, but as most of the personalities discussed in its columns were unknown to him he soon became bored with it. Even its fairly lowbrow articles were largely over his head, assuming a knowledge of technical terms he did not possess.
The receptionist was watching him—certainly noticing his impatience, perhaps analyzing the nervousness and insecurity that lay behind it. With a distinct effort, Franklin forced himself to sit down and to concentrate on yesterday’s issue of the Brisbane Courier. He had almost become interested in an editorial requiem on Australian cricket, inspired by the recent Test results, when the young lady who guarded the director’s office smiled sweetly at him and said: “Would you please go in now, Mr. Franklin?”
He had expected to find the director alone, or perhaps accompanied by a secretary. The husky young man sitting in the other visitor’s chair seemed out of place in this orderly office, and was staring at him with more curiosity than friendliness. Franklin stiffened at once; they had been discussing him, he knew, and automatically he went on the defensive.
Director Gary, who knew almost as much about human beings as he did about marine mammals, sensed the strain immediately and did his best to dispel it.
“Ah, there you are, Franklin,” he said with slightly excessive heartiness. “I hope you’ve been enjoying your stay here. Have my people been taking care of you?”
Franklin was spared the trouble of answering this question, for the director gave him no time to reply.
“I want you to meet Don Burley,” he continued. “Don’s First Warden on the Rorqual, and one of the best we’ve got. He’s been assigned to look after you. Don, meet Walter Franklin.”
They shook hands warily, weighing each other. Then Don’s face broke into a reluctant smile. It was the smile of a man who had been given a job he didn’t care for but who had decided to make the best of it.
“Pleased to meet you, Franklin,” he said. “Welcome to the Mermaid Patrol.”
Franklin tried to smile at the hoary joke, but his effort was not very successful. He knew that he should be friendly, and that these people were doing their best to help him. Yet the knowledge was that of the mind, not the heart; he could not relax and let himself meet them halfway. The fear of being pitied and the nagging suspicion that they had been talking about him behind his back, despite all the assurances he had been given, paralyzed his will for friendliness.
Don Burley sensed nothing of this. He only knew that the director’s office was not the right place to get acquainted with a new colleague, and before Franklin was fully aware of what had happened he was out of the building, buffeting his way through the shirt-sleeved crowds in George Street, and being steered into a minute bar opposite the new post office.
The noise of the city subsided, though through the tinted glass walls Franklin could see the shadowy shapes of the pedestrians moving to and fro. It was pleasantly cool here after the torrid streets; whether or not Brisbane should be air-conditioned—and if so, who should have the resulting multimillion-dollar contract—was still being argued by the local politicians, and meanwhile the citizens sweltered every summer.
Don Burley waited until Franklin had drunk his first beer and called for replacements. There was a mystery about his new pupil, and as soon as possible he intended to solve it. Someone very high up in the division—perhaps even in the World Secretariat itself—must have organized this. A first warden was not called away from his duties to wet-nurse someone who was obviously too old to go through the normal training channels. At a guess he would say that Franklin was the wrong side of thirty; he had never heard of anyone that age getting this sort of special treatment before.