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There was a little silence. “That is so, sir.” Harper tried to collect his thoughts. “We are all aware, I think, sir, of the military uses to which dolphins have been put in Vietnam . . . indeed, the common dolphin has proved most effective in groups. But the killer works at maximum efficiency alone, and we believe it to be an anti-personnel weapon of far more formidable force . . . to begin with, since it works alone this means that a more complex schedule of training can be instituted. A killer can be taught, for instance, to attack all but a certain colour of diving-suit. Furthermore, the killer is, in nature, such a formidable creature that there is no need for any armaments – bayonets, gas guns and such. Thus the killer needs no maintenance, no reloading. In short, once it has been trained and released, a single killer is capable of doing the job done in Vietnam by whole schools of dolphins more efficiently, with less fuss and with very much less cost.”

Harper glanced at Admiral Hope, then quickly pressed on.

“At our Facility here, we have one male killer whale obtained by the Navy as a calf seven years ago in Antarctica. As part of our experiments we fed it a carefully selected diet, and have given it a body weight in excess of seven tons, with an overall body length of thirty-nine feet eight and one-half inches. This is ten feet in excess of the norm, but no larger than some killers observed in the wild. This killer we have trained fully in anti-personnel work. It is instantly aware of any invasion of the anchorage which it guards. It is able to pinpoint any invader, and shadow him, keeping out of sight. If immediate action is called for, it will decide upon the type of action and upon its own role in this action. The ultimate trigger to anti-personnel action is the simple reaching out of an arm towards the hull of one of the ships, as though to place a mine.”

Harper stood up. He found he was sweating slightly. It had been touch and go, whether this admiral would stay with him. But a certain basic minimum of information had to be got over – even if it had meant boring the pants off his listener.

“And now, sir, if you’d like to follow me, we’ll go down to the anchorage.”

They went through the main hall of the Administration Building to the back of the lower floor. A gleaming sentry checked their passes, pressed a button, and escorted them into a steel-lined lift. He stood at attention between them and the doors.

“I’d like to show you the dolphins we have here, first, admiral. We keep them in pens at one side of the anchorage. They are all in there now, except the killer, which is outside somewhere.”

“Outside?”

“In the anchorage, but free to go where he wants. He becomes moody if kept penned up for too long, and if we’re not careful he becomes uncooperative.”

“Dangerous?”

“Not actively so, sir, no. But we are dealing with an animal here that is as big as three elephants standing nose-to-taiclass="underline" he doesn’t have to do much to let you know he’s not happy.”

“I see.”

“And furthermore, sir, he has been carefully trained by a system of rewards to derive the maximum enjoyment out of patrolling this anchorage, occasionally killing an invader. We use dummies for this. Radio-controlled. Very expensive.”

Outside, the sun was strong, but it didn’t really warm the Admiral. He saw the dolphins, but his mind was totally preoccupied with what the commander had said about the killer. After what seemed like an interminable time, Harper said, “If you will follow me now, Admiral, we’ll go up to the monitoring room and see the killer go through his paces.”

“Couldn’t we see it from here?”

“Not very clearly, sir. If you want a closer look, we can come down again later.”

Hope had to be content with that. With one long look over the water which saw none of the perfectly painted ships, he followed the commander into yet another lift. Above everything else he wanted a cigarette.

There were six monitor screens linked to more than twenty cameras above and below the anchorage. Harper took over an intercom, and sat near the controls.

“Can you pick it up?” asked Hope. Harper had to think for a minute before he realised the admiral meant could he pick up the killer on the monitor.

“Doubt it, sir. He’s very good at hiding. If you’ll just watch Monitor One . . .”

He spoke into the intercom. Monitor One showed a concrete slipway shelving steeply into the water. A man in a white coat walked on to the slipway and waved towards the camera. “Just testing, sir,” said Harper, and into the intercom, “All right, we see you. Call him in now, please.”

The man in the white coat took a long pipe from a sailor behind him, half in picture, knelt, and blew down it into the water. Immediately there was a flurry of movement on Monitor Six, repeated formlessly, at second intervals on the others, until there was a still dark shape in the water by the scientist on One.

“He was watching us back,” observed Harper. “He knows which monitors are on, because the cameras have red lights.” Into the intercom he said, “Bring him up.”

The scientist moved. A great black head broke water without even a ripple beside him. The head alone was twice as broad as the man. The size of the killer was masked by the water. The huge mouth came open.

“He has a bite-width of three feet seven and a quarter inches,” said Harper, as the scientist put his hand into the killer’s mouth and rubbed the pink shovel of its tongue. “Clearance between jaws three feet one inch. Fifty-six interlocking teeth between six and eight inches long.”

A voice, drowned in static, came over the intercom.

“Very good,” said the commander, “begin One.”

The scientist moved. The head was gone.

“Monitor Six, sir.” The picture on Six changed to show a raft moored behind one of the ships, glinting white on the blue sea. On the raft was a black box of about nine cubic feet.

Even as the admiral adjusted to the picture, the killer’s head rose out of the water, so abruptly that he jumped. Harper pretended not to notice. “He’s thirty-nine feet long and weighs seven tons. His fin is six feet high. His flippers six feet each. Tip to tip over his back he measures nearly eighteen feet. His flukes . . . One again, sir . . .” The whale lifted the box on to the slipway. The scientist caressed the huge tongue again, and fed the killer a slab of bright red meat.

The intercom hissed. “Right,” said the commander. “Go Two. The flukes measure a little in excess of twelve feet. The flukes are his tail, sir.” The scientist gestured again. The whale vanished.

“On Five, sir.” Monitor Five abruptly showed a cannister deep on the ocean bed. “He can swim at a top speed of twenty-five point eight knots, that’s nearly thirty miles an hour, but he prefers to cruise around eighteen knots.” The killer’s black hulk loomed over the distant cannister, paused, lifted, and was gone. Seconds later it was back on Monitor One, lifting the cannister on to the slipway, the scientist going through the reward ritual.

The intercom crackled. “What? Right. Go on AP One. Monitor Four, sir.” Four showed the hull of a boat from under the water. “As an added precaution we have taught him to home in on small engines and investigate, sir.” The hulk of the whale appeared, dwarfing the boat. A body splashed down under the boat. The whale stopped, and watched. The body began to sink. It did not move. The whale nudged it. It still did not move. The whale left it, and followed the boat. Three bodies hit the water, and began to swim.

“They are dummies?”

“Almost exclusively, sir.”

“Where do you get them?”

“We . . . developed them.”

“I see.”

The whale abruptly vanished. Moments later a bell began to ring, and a red light to flash. “He’s given the alarm,” said the commander.

The whale was back on Monitor Four, but the dummies were still circling the boat. The intercom crackled. “Right. Come in now.”