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came and shouted a lot of bad language at them. There was an awful
     row—he was chucked out on the next boat.”
    “What sort of man is the Prof?” asked Johnny.
    “Oh, he’s fine—except on Sunday afternoons.”
    “What happens then?”
    “Every Sunday morning his old lady calls and tries to talk him into coming home. He
     won’t go, says he hates Moscow—it’s too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.
     So they have terrific fights, but every few months they compromise and meet at somewhere
     like Yalta.”
    Johnny thought this over. He was anxious to learn all that he could about Professor
     Kazan, in the hope of improving his chances of staying on the island. Mick’s description
     sounded a little alarming; still, as Sunday had just passed, the Professor should
     be in a good temper for several days.
    “Can he
really
talk dolphin language?” asked Johnny. “I didn’t think anyone could imitate those
     weird noises.”
    “He can’t speak more than a few words, but he can translate tape recordings, with
     the help of computers. And then he can make new tapes and talk back to them. It’s
     a complicated business, but it works.”
    Johnny was impressed, and his curiosity was aroused. He had always liked to know how
     things worked, and he couldn’t imagine how one would even begin to learn dolphin language.
    “Well,” said Mick, when he put the question to him, “have you ever stopped to think
     how
you
learned to speak?”
    “By listening to my mother, I suppose,” Johnny answered, a little sadly; he could
     just remember her.
    “Of course. So what the Prof did was to take a mother dolphin with a new baby, and
     put them into a pool by themselves. Then he listened to the conversation as the baby
     grew up; that way, he learned dolphin, just as the baby did.”
    “It sounds almost too easy,” said Johnny.
    “Oh, it took years, and he’s still learning. But now he has a vocabulary of thousands
     of words, and he’s even started to write dolphin history.”
    “History?”
    “Well, you can call it that. Because they don’t have books, they’ve developed wonderful
     memories. They can tell us about things that happened in the sea ages ago—at least,
     that’s what the Prof says. And it makes sense; before men invented writing, they had
     to carry everything in their own heads. The dolphins have done the same.”
    Johnny pondered these surprising facts until they had reached the administrative block
     and completed the circuit of the island. At the sight of all these buildings, housing
     so many busy workers and complicated machines, he was struck by a more down-to-earth
     thought.
    “Who pays for all this?” he asked. “It must cost a fortune to run.”
    “Not much, compared to the money that goes into space,” Mick answered. “The Prof started
     fifteen years ago with about six helpers. When he began getting results, the big science
     foundations gave him all the support he needed. So now we have to tidy the place up
     every six months for a lot of fossils who call themselves an inspection committee.
     I’ve heard the Prof say it was much more fun in the old days.”
    That might be true, thought Johnny. But it looked as if it was still a lot of fun
     now—and he intended to share it.

Chapter 7
    The hydrofoil launch
Flying Fish
came scudding out of the west at fifty knots, making the crossing from the Australian
     mainland in two hours. When she was near the Dolphin Island reef, she retracted her
     huge water skis, settled down like a conventional boat, and finished her journey at
     a sedate ten knots.
    Johnny knew that she was in sight when the whole population of the island started
     to migrate down to the jetty. He followed out of curiosity, and stood watching on
     the beach as the white-painted launch came cautiously down the channel blasted through
     the coral.
    Professor Kazan, wearing a spotlessly white tropical suit and a wide-brimmed hat,
     was the first ashore. He