twice, racing through the big water. Father told her that his family chased fast-swimming fish that were so numerous their schools were wider across than all the dolphins of the family put together. The family hunted those fish.
Not like here, where the water was so little that the fish were few, hardly enough to keep the hunger away. So few that they had no place to run to, no place to hide. Even when they formed a school it was small and easy to slice through.
She glided unhappily through the stupid fish. This water may be safe, she thought, but it’s not much fun.
Maybe I can get Father to jump with me! She swam close to his sleek, powerful body and asked him. Mother immediately said no, but Father—
“That’s enough,” said Corvus.
Deirdre blinked and looked up at Andy. He was lifting the optronic circlet off her head, the expression on his face quite serious, almost grim.
“What…?” Deirdre felt confused. This isn’t Father, a voice in her mind said.
“You were under for five full minutes,” Andy said somberly. He looked worried, almost.
Deirdre sat up straighter and took a deep breath. I’m sitting on Andy’s case. I’m aboard the torch ship. We’re heading for Jupiter.
“Are you okay?” Andy asked.
“I think so,” said Deirdre. Then she smiled, remembering. “Yes, I’m fine.”
“You made contact.” It wasn’t a question.
“I was the dolphin!” Deirdre said, suddenly aware of what had happened. “It was … I … it was like I was the dolphin, swimming in the tank!”
“Great!” he said. Pointing to the laptop, open on the floor beside the case she was sitting on, Andy said, “I was monitoring your vital signs on the screen. You made the transition without a hitch.”
“It was strange,” she said. “It was like … I wasn’t me anymore. I was the dolphin. The little one.”
“Baby.”
Nodding, Deirdre said, “It’s a shame to keep them in that little tank, Andy.”
“Little? It’s the biggest we could build for them.”
“But it’s little for them. They’re used to swimming in the ocean, not a tank.”
“They’ve never been in the ocean, Dee. These dolphins were raised in cetacean laboratories on Earth. Baby was born in La Jolla, California. Her mother was taken from the Pacific when she was younger than Baby is now. They were transferred here to this ship a week before we left Earth orbit.”
“But Baby remembers the ocean,” Deirdre insisted. “The adults have told her about being in water where they could go day after day and never see the same bottom twice.”
Corvus ran a hand through his thick mop of hair. “Really? Baby remembers things she’s never experienced for herself?”
“Yes, she does.”
For a moment Corvus was silent. Then he said softly, “Dee, if Baby can remember things that she’s never seen, that means that she was told those things by the older dolphins. Like stories we pass down from one generation to the next.”
Deirdre said, “I suppose it does.”
Corvus licked his lips. “That means they’re intelligent, Dee! The ability to pass information from one generation to another is one of the key indicators of intelligence!”
MAIN LOUNGE
They had missed lunch. By the time Deirdre and Andy got to the main lounge, the doors to the dining area were closed, not to be opened again until the cocktail hour.
“I’m starving,” Deirdre complained. “I haven’t even had breakfast.”
Pointing to the row of automated dispensers off to one side of the lounge’s empty bar, Corvus suggested, “We can get a sandwich or something, I guess.”
The dispensers’ offerings were limited, but Deirdre was so hungry that she took a salad, a sandwich, and a square dark object that was purported to be a fudge brownie. Plus a large cola. Corvus settled for a salad and a cup of lukewarm tea.
“I’m a vegetarian,” he explained when Deirdre looked questioningly at his meager tray.
The lounge was almost empty at this hour of the mid-afternoon. They found a table by the bulkhead, beneath a wide screen displaying a view of Saturn, with its gleaming broad rings.
As soon as they put their trays on the table and sat down, Corvus said urgently, “You’ve got to help me with this.”
“With what?” Deirdre asked.
“The dolphins!” he fairly yelped. “You made contact with Baby so easily. You’re a natural. You got more out of her in five minutes than I’ve gotten in two days. A lot more.”
“Beginner’s luck,” Deirdre murmured.
“No, you’re a natural. Wow! If we can show evidence that they’re intelligent … wow! What a breakthrough that’ll be!”
“I suppose it would be significant.”
“Significant! It’s monumental. Here we’ve been searching for intelligent extraterrestrial life for the past hundred and fifty years and there’s an intelligent species right on Earth with us!” His grin was ear-to-ear.
“Is what we’ve done today enough to prove it?” she asked.
Wagging his head, Andy replied, “Nope. Not by itself. All we’ve got is your unsupported word about what Baby was thinking. That’s not enough.”
“Why not?”
He smiled gently at her. “I think it was Carl Sagan who said, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ ”
“Not just my word?”
“Nobody’s accusing you of lying, Dee. But the scientific community will need more solid evidence than your unsupported word.”
“So what—”
Her phone buzzed. Deirdre’s first instinct was to turn it off, but then she realized that the most likely person to be calling her was Dr. Pohan.
“Excuse me, Andy,” she muttered as she pulled out the phone and flipped it open.
It was indeed Dr. Pohan. And he was smiling broadly beneath his florid mustache. Without preamble he said, “I have good news, Ms. Ambrose. Please come to my office in the infirmary as quickly as you can.”
Dierdre clicked the phone shut and got to her feet. Half her salad and all of her sandwich and dessert still remained on the table.
“I have to go, Andy.”
“Who was that?” he asked, looking up at her.
“I’ll tell you later,” Deirdre said as she picked up her tray and headed for the disposal chute. She managed to gulp down two bites of the limp sandwich before she dumped what was left and hurried toward the infirmary.
Dr. Pohan was still smiling benignly when she sat down in front of his little desk.
“Good news, you said?” Deirdre asked.
“Indeed! Indeed.” Dr. Pohan’s head bobbed up and down.
“You can synthesize the vaccine?”
“It appears so,” the doctor said cheerily. “We need a donation of blood of a type that is compatible with
