Drake stamped his furry slippers in the air. “A dodo, Abraham! What I wouldn’t do to get my hands on a good dodo specimen!”
The admiral knew this was unlikely – dodos became extinct centuries ago, and their feathers and flesh had long since turned to dust in the tropical forests of Mauritius. The few bones that palaeontologists had found weren’t enough to work on. The huge birds had disappeared from the earth without leaving a trace, and they were gone forever.
It was a shame indeed.
Chapter 7
DEATH IN THE OCEAN
Back in the laboratory, Max and Sabatina were arguing.
Sabatina had again swung her seat towards the spot in the Southern Pacific where the strange waves had occurred the day before. Now, another curious sight met her eyes: a dark-red spot was slowly spreading over the Pacific Ocean. According to the datascriber, it indicated a dense overgrowth of algae floating on the surface of the sea.
“This is bad, Max.” Sabatina said. “A bloom of algae of this proportion means death to other marine animals. The algae will use up all available oxygen in the water, and other animals and plants will suffocate and die. There are already reports of thousands of fish floating dead in the water.”
“It is the effects of yesterday’s waves, I be telling you.” Max replied in a gloomy voice.
“But it’s incredible! How is it possible that sound waves can cause algae to overgrow, and moreover, to grow at this rapid rate?”
“It be possible, I tells you!” Max said defensively. “And they was no ordinary sound waves. I be making you a printout of a paper by that great Uranus Drake,” he continued. “Ten years ago at a marine biology conference in Barcelona, he be reading a paper on the effects of acoustic waves on the growths of algae. No one has been mentions it till now, but the ideas be there!”
A printer next to the Environator started buzzing and spat out a long reel of paper. Sabatina whizzed her seat over and studied the printout with interest.
“No, Max. I can’t believe this!” she exclaimed after a couple of minutes. “The reason this work was ignored is that it is scientifically impossible. I’m surprised that Uranus even presented this nonsense. And look: he issued a statement a few weeks after the conference, saying that it was just an April Fool’s joke. Really, Max,” the professor prodded, “I can’t believe you’d actually be taken in by this rubbish!”
Max sulked. “You be the fool, Professor S. There be nothing scientifically wrong with the hypothesis of that paper. I checked it myself. It cans be done.”
“Max, Uranus proposes that specific frequencies of acoustic waves can stimulate living organisms either to grow or multiply at a very fast rate, or signal them to die instantly. He called these waves ‘biobooms’. But I simply can’t believe this would work.”
“The evidences be there,” Max mumbled, “rights before your eye!”
Max was right, of course: the data of the previous day’s disturbance and the slowly spreading bloom of algae over the image of the South Pacific was the proof.
Sabatina felt a chill ran down her spine. “Are you telling me, Max, that this was done on purpose? Or could it have been a freak natural occurrence?”
“Not freak, Professor. But freaky. This be dones on purposes. By a freak.”
“And you’re freaking me out, Max! As soon as this is over, I’ll be fixing your speech programmes so that you speak English! Meanwhile, give me some data on the extent of the damage.”
“If the algae continues to grow at this rate, we will has total destruction of the Pacific Ocean’s marine life in forty-eight hours, of the Atlantic Ocean in seventy-two hours and of the Indian Ocean shortly after that.”
“You mean, Max, that all life in the world’s oceans could be dead within a few days?”
Max didn’t need to answer.
Overcome by anxiety, Sabatina pulled her spiky hair even further away from her head. “And life on land will soon follow,” she said. “Marine life is a source of protein for billions of humans, and it’s indispensable to the atmosphere and the climate. This may be the end of life on Earth as we know it.”
It was a horrific possibility: what looked like a spill of dark-red paint on one side of the holographic planet was potentially as significant as whatever it was that had brought extinction to the dinosaurs.
“Max, can this be reversed?” Sabatina asked.
“There be several ways to kills algae, none biologically safe or particularly quick. I will gets working on the problem.”
“Good.”
Sabatina knew that she had to be patient. She had great faith in Max’s ability to analyse data and to come up with solutions that promised the best probability of success.
“What I would like to know is: what, or who, is responsible for this? Can you start looking into that as well? Meanwhile, I’d like to discuss this with my husband. Perhaps someone working with Uranus on this ‘biobooms’ project secretly took it further.”
She suddenly realised what a shock this would be to their old friend.
“Oh, Uranus would be so upset!”
Chapter 8
AT THE ARCHIVES
Anna often found school dull. She’d tried to persuade her parents to keep her at home, and let Max and Ton teach her. And as far as living on an island went, she argued, swimming and fishing were all the skills she needed to survive.
On his days off, Ton liked to hang around the little harbours of the neighbouring islands, and he’d learnt both the local methods of fishing and the best spots. Every couple of days he swopped his suit for a wetsuit and waded into the bay to inspect the basket trap he’d exchanged for a tin of coconut fudge from a friend. Basket traps were a kind way of catching fish because they only trapped the large and tasty ones – other reef creatures that swam in to inspect the trap could be released without being harmed.
And Max had taught Anna more about science than any of the teachers at school. He could conjure up holographic images of almost everything, which made him the most exciting teacher in the world. He often projected Einstein’s lion-haired image while lecturing her on quantum physics, and he whizzed planets past her head as he taught her the laws of perpetual motion. Nevertheless, her parents had insisted that she go to school like any ordinary child.
“You must learn to socialise with children of your own age,” her mother had said, and her father had agreed that interaction with the island community was important to understanding the complicated relationships between humans and nature.
“You
