eyes noted something. He passed the image to Foreman, tapping a small red dot with his finger. “There’s someone on the plain. Right in the middle of all the activity.”
**************
Just thirty feet away in her cabin, Doctor Martsen was unaware of Ahana’s dire pronouncement and calculations for the end of the known world.
Doctor Renee Martsen had worked with dolphins for over twenty years, ever since her time as a grad student at the University of Hawaii. She found in them the acceptance she had never realized among humans. The fact that her research into dolphin linguistics for the past fifteen years had been funded by the US Navy she viewed as a necessary evil.
She sat in her cabin playing the recording that had been forwarded from the Connecticut over and over. Foreman had given it to her with the vague instruction of ‘make something of this’ and then hurried back to his control center and his muonic monitors. Since arriving at the Devil’s Sea, Martsen had noted how there was much more focus on machines than mammals.
Martsen had loaded the sound into her laptop, then played it. She had no doubt that they were dolphin voices, but there were other noises in the backdrop. She had sophisticated software loaded into her hard drive as her primary focus of research was trying to decipher how dolphins communicated. There were many who said there was no logic or sense to the sounds that dolphins made, but Martsen was convinced otherwise.
Her primary argument had been simple—she could send, and receive, messages to and from Rachel, a bottle-nosed dolphin she had been working with for over seven years. However, recent events had caused her some doubt. Dane had claimed to have a telepathic connection with Rachel, which meant that perhaps the sounds did indeed mean nothing and Rachel was simply picking up and sending messages in a form that couldn’t be recorded, but could be felt.
The computer beeped, the latest program having finished running. It had separated the different tracks, which took quite a while since she had determined there were over sixty different sound emitters on the tape. She hit the enter key and the first one began playing— definitely a dolphin.
She shifted that track to her ‘translator’, no longer certain that her miniscule dolphin vocabulary was actually that. She moved on to the second track and continued the process until she hit the ninth track. At first she had no idea what the noise was, then her blood froze as she realized what she was listening to.
A human throat producing a scream of unimaginable agony.
She was so shocked by the scream that she simply sat there for several minutes. Then she regrouped and checked the computer. The first dolphin track had played through. The result was disappointing. Just a few potential words among hundreds.
Then it occurred to her—whether she was right or wrong about there being a dolphin language, there was no doubt that Rachel could communicate. She grabbed the recording and her translator. She left her cabin, heading for the deck.
She climbed down a ladder to the small docking bay on the side of the FLIP and dropped the waterproof mike and speaker into the water. She hit the button on her controller to send the message that summoned Rachel. In less than thirty seconds she saw the dolphin’s dorsal fin cutting through the water, heading toward the ship.
“Good girl,” Martsen whispered as Rachel’s bottlenose poked above the surface of the water, the dark eyes regarding her.
Martsen hit the start button and the dolphin tracks began playing. Within seconds, Rachel began to show agitation, her powerful tail propelling her up, out of the water. She arched back, slamming into the surface, showering Martsen with water.
Martsen had to pull the headphones off as Rachel shot a powerful series of clicks from her blowhole, radiated through her forehead into the water. Martsen’s fingers shook as she accessed the database and a series
**************
Just thirty feet away in her cabin, Doctor Martsen was unaware of Ahana’s dire pronouncement and calculations for the end of the known world.
Doctor Renee Martsen had worked with dolphins for over twenty years, ever since her time as a grad student at the University of Hawaii. She found in them the acceptance she had never realized among humans. The fact that her research into dolphin linguistics for the past fifteen years had been funded by the US Navy she viewed as a necessary evil.
She sat in her cabin playing the recording that had been forwarded from the Connecticut over and over. Foreman had given it to her with the vague instruction of ‘make something of this’ and then hurried back to his control center and his muonic monitors. Since arriving at the Devil’s Sea, Martsen had noted how there was much more focus on machines than mammals.
Martsen had loaded the sound into her laptop, then played it. She had no doubt that they were dolphin voices, but there were other noises in the backdrop. She had sophisticated software loaded into her hard drive as her primary focus of research was trying to decipher how dolphins communicated. There were many who said there was no logic or sense to the sounds that dolphins made, but Martsen was convinced otherwise.
Her primary argument had been simple—she could send, and receive, messages to and from Rachel, a bottle-nosed dolphin she had been working with for over seven years. However, recent events had caused her some doubt. Dane had claimed to have a telepathic connection with Rachel, which meant that perhaps the sounds did indeed mean nothing and Rachel was simply picking up and sending messages in a form that couldn’t be recorded, but could be felt.
The computer beeped, the latest program having finished running. It had separated the different tracks, which took quite a while since she had determined there were over sixty different sound emitters on the tape. She hit the enter key and the first one began playing— definitely a dolphin.
She shifted that track to her ‘translator’, no longer certain that her miniscule dolphin vocabulary was actually that. She moved on to the second track and continued the process until she hit the ninth track. At first she had no idea what the noise was, then her blood froze as she realized what she was listening to.
A human throat producing a scream of unimaginable agony.
She was so shocked by the scream that she simply sat there for several minutes. Then she regrouped and checked the computer. The first dolphin track had played through. The result was disappointing. Just a few potential words among hundreds.
Then it occurred to her—whether she was right or wrong about there being a dolphin language, there was no doubt that Rachel could communicate. She grabbed the recording and her translator. She left her cabin, heading for the deck.
She climbed down a ladder to the small docking bay on the side of the FLIP and dropped the waterproof mike and speaker into the water. She hit the button on her controller to send the message that summoned Rachel. In less than thirty seconds she saw the dolphin’s dorsal fin cutting through the water, heading toward the ship.
“Good girl,” Martsen whispered as Rachel’s bottlenose poked above the surface of the water, the dark eyes regarding her.
Martsen hit the start button and the dolphin tracks began playing. Within seconds, Rachel began to show agitation, her powerful tail propelling her up, out of the water. She arched back, slamming into the surface, showering Martsen with water.
Martsen had to pull the headphones off as Rachel shot a powerful series of clicks from her blowhole, radiated through her forehead into the water. Martsen’s fingers shook as she accessed the database and a series
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