Killer

Admiral Hope’s hand slammed on to the top of his desk with a report like a pistol. “For the love of God, man, get to the point.” Three weeks earlier, Hope’s doctor had told him that if he didn’t stop smoking immediately, he would die. The admiral had smoked nothing since, and it was reducing his normally threadbare temper to tatters.

Commander Harper hesitated, staring at the admiral’s fat, belligerent form. “You will be aware, sir, that dolphins are mammals, that is that they have a constant temperature generated by body heat and not governed by the temperature of their surroundings; they have been, and to a microscopic extent still are, covered with fur; and they give birth to, and suckle their young. They were once land-dwelling animals, and their frame is that of a land-dweller re-adapted to marine life. And, of course, they breathe air.” The commander’s light blue eyes met the admiral’s red ones. The pause never really became a silence.

“Even so,” Harper went on hurriedly, “they are able to empty their lungs of more than eighty per cent of their air in less than a second, and refill them again almost as quickly; when they dive, the oxygen supply to all parts of the body except the heart and brain is cut off, a fact which allows lengths of dive to vary from fifteen minutes in the smaller species, to an hour and fifteen minutes in the larger. Their muscles are able to store their own supplies of oxygen, which means that no matter how deep they dive, or how fast they surface, they never get the bends.”

“When in hell’s name are you going to come to the point?” asked Admiral Hope.

Commander Harper cleared his throat and proceeded. “Sonar. The sonar of the dolphin family is incredibly advanced. In an element where clear sight is denied it, the dolphin literally sees with its ears. Not only can it detect objects by this method, but also, by moving its head slightly from side to side thus using both ears, it can judge size and distance precisely as we do with our eyes. At rest, a dolphin will emit a series of low clicks every fifteen seconds or so. These reflect back off objects and are picked up by the dolphin’s jaw and ears. If it gets an interesting reading, it raises the pitch of the noises until a precise and uncluttered picture of the object appears, together with precise measurements of its size and distance.”

Admiral Hope looked at him with narrowed eyes.

Harper wondered if he should be using slides to keep the admiral’s interest. He cleared his throat again. “Intelligence. With the possible exception of Man, the family Delphinidae is the most intelligent species on earth. In consequence they are easy to train. Also, they enjoy play for its own sake, and the element of fun can be introduced into training so that they literally enjoy what they are being trained to do. Furthermore, there seems to be a degree of reasoning ability. The dolphin clearly has the ability to improvise outside the set parameters of its training; to remember orders and extend them outside the training scenarios; in short, to think for itself.”

There was silence as the admiral digested this.

“A clear example of this in the case of the common dolphin, in its natural environment, is the number of thoroughly documented cases of dolphins saving drowning men by supporting them in the water. Now this is how the dolphin has learned to help other dolphins in its family group, and when it helps the swimmer, it is simply applying this knowledge outside normal parameters. There is very little likelihood that they confuse the swimmer with another dolphin. No, they are being literally thoughtful.”

Admiral Hope drummed his fingers. “I understood I was here to evaluate the killer whale. Not to hear about the philanthropic activities of dolphins.”

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.