"Gordon R. Dickson - Dolphin's Way" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"Don't ask me how he got from kitchen utensils to that. That's not much
information for you, is it?"
"It's more than I had a minute ago," she smiled back. "Did you know
Corwin Brayt before he came here?"
"No." Mal shook his head. "I don't know many people outside the
biological and zoological fields."
"I imagine you know him pretty well now, though, after the six months he's
been in charge."
"Well –" Mal hesitated, "I wouldn't say I know him well, at all. You see,
he's up here in the office all day long and I'm down with Pollux and Castor –
the two wild dolphins we've got coming to the station, now. Corwin and I
don't see each other much."
"On this small island?"
"I suppose it seems funny – but we're both pretty busy."
"I guess you would be," she smiled again. "Will you take me to him?"
"Him?" Mal awoke suddenly to the fact they were still standing on the
terrace. "Oh, yes – it's Corwin you came to see."
"Not just Corwin," she said. "I came to see the whole place."
"Well, I'll take you in to the office. Come along."
He led her across the terrace and in through the front door into the
air-conditioned coolness of the interior. Corwin Brayt ran the air conditioning
constantly, as if his own somewhat icy personality demanded the dry,
distant coldness of a mountain atmosphere. Mal led Jane Wilson down a
short corridor and through another door into a large wide-windowed office.
A tall, slim, broad-shouldered man with black hair and a brown, coldly
handsome face looked up from a large desk, and got to his feet on seeing
Jane.
"Corwin," said Mal. "This is Miss Jane Wilson from Background Monthly
."
"Yes," said Corwin expressionlessly to Jane, coming around the desk to
them. "I got a wire yesterday you were coming." He did not wait for Jane to
offer her hand, but offered his own. Their fingers met.
"I've got to be getting down to Castor and Pollux," said Mal, turning away.
"I'll see you later then," Jane said, looking over at him.
 "Why, yes. Maybe –" he said. He went out. As he closed the door of
Brayt's office behind him, he paused for a moment in the dim, cool hallway,
and shut his eyes. Don't be a fool, he told himself, a girl like that can do a
lot better than someone like you. And probably has already.
He opened his eyes and went back down to the pool behind the station
and the nonhuman world of the dolphins.
When he got there, he found that Castor and Pollux were back. Their
pool was an open one, with egress to the open blue waters of the
Caribbean. In the first days of the research at Dolphin's Way, the dolphins
had been confined in a closed pool like any captured wild animal. It was
only later on, when the work at the station had come up against what Knight
had called "the environmental barrier," that the notion was conceived of
opening the pool to the sea, so that the dolphins they had been working
with could leave or stay, as they wished.
They had left – but they had come back. Eventually, they had left for
good. But strangely, wild dolphins had come from time to time to take their