VICTOR THE VECTOR

Hidden Away

Hidden away in a dark cold box, the little vector got very frightened. Someone came in the night and packed him in a big metal box. He felt like he was being carried somewhere. Then he heard a loud roaring noise which seemed to last forever. Where could he possibly be going? He began to doubt if these humans were very friendly after all. "The old porpoise was right", he thought, "I should never have looked into the Eye of the Iron Fish." He wondered if he would ever find his mother. He became very, very sad. Then the roaring stopped and he felt once again that he was being moved. He hoped that he would soon be released from that dark cold box! At the navy base in Iceland, where Victor had been put for safe keeping by the submarine scientists, everyone was in an uproar. The vector was missing and nobody seemed to know what had happened with him. Admiral Seaford called an emergency meeting with the scientists.

Everyone was present except for doctor Bob Slithers! A big groan arose when they realized what must have happened. Professor Hoptapus was especially disappointed. He wanted to study the little vector's movements. Admiral Seaford called for order. "As you all know, we stored the vector here and now it's gone. Do not despair. It is in safe hands." A look of confusion appeared on everyone's face. "We have taken it to a special laboratory in Juneau, Alaska, under the strictest security. Doctor Slithers - you notice he is not here - was seen acting suspiciously in the area where the vector was being kept. I had him followed and a guard overheard him on the telephone. Our beloved Slithers was planning to steal the vector!" A gasp went through the room. "So we had the vector immediately taken away. I have gotten word from our Juneau office and it is safe." "Sigh...." went the group.

"We replaced the box the vector was in with a dummy box. Slithers took it and tried to leave the country. We arrested him and have him in custody. So, Professor hoptapus, we will take you to Juneau so you can conduct your studies." The Admiral completed his briefing and the group said good bye to a very happy Professor Hoptapus. In Juneau, Victor was still held in his cold box. He started crying and his tears melted some of the ice around him. He could move a little, but everything froze as soon as he stopped crying. After a while he was being carried to a special laboratory. The ice he was frozen in, was taken out of the box and placed in a small bowl. The room was so bright it hurt his eyes. Oh it was so nice for him to see light again! His little arrow jiggled with pleasure. Pretty soon, the ice began to melt and he was finally free.

The Laboratory

The water settled down and Victor began to shrink. The laboratory assistant was watching him and yelled that the vector was disappearing! Professor Hoptapus, who had flown over to do his experiments, was just in time. "Quick! Put the bowl on a turntable and turn it on.The vector needs to keep on moving." The vector started going in circles, but he did not mind. He was finally free of the ice and out in the light! Victor had a good view of the laboratory. There were large tanks of water everywhere. Some were big and round; others long and straight. Some humans were pouring colored water in some tanks and metal objects in other tanks. In all the tanks, the water was moving. In one long tank, Victor saw waves. The Professor was doing a simple experiment. He put Victor in a large round tank. In this tank he could change the speed of the water. All day he spent observing how the vector changed in size as the water changed in speed.

Victor liked the movement. At the end of the day, the Professor took Victor out of the tank. Victor shuddered at the thought of going back into that horrible box! But no. He was taken to a special room that had a tank full of animals. The water inside the tank circulated constantly. Once in the tank, the lights were turned down low and the door was locked.Victor stared at the animals. He had never seen anything like them.

"Hey buddy, watcha starin' at?" one of the creatures asked. "Err...Ummm..I..I guess at all of you," stuttered Victor. "Ain't you never seen nutting like us before, pal? You're an ocean current. You been everywhere!" "Well...Uh..nooo....." stammered Victor. "Oh, Ray. It's 'Haven't you ever seen anything like us before?' Can't you talk right. Don't you see that he's a very young vector!?" came a voice from across the tank. Something was moving very slowly towards Victor. "Aw shucks, Stella. I'm sorry, little buddy. Watcha name?" Victor stared at them both with big eyes. "My name is Victor, Victor the Vector." "Yes, dearie, we know you are a vector. We can see that!" replied Stella. Victor asked them who they were. "We are starfish" they both said at once.

"I'm Ray." "And I'm Stella." "I'm from the New York Bight and Stella is from the Gulf of Mexico", said Ray "Have you never seen starfish before, dearie." "No", said Victor, "I've only seen a jellyfish and some herring." "Did ya meet Jill the Jelly?" asked Ray. "Yes, do you know her?" "Yeah, she's pretty wild." answered Ray. He shuddered at the thought of her tentacles she uses to capture prey. Just then the door opened and someone walked in. "Shush!" said Stella. She peered towards the door. "Oh, it's Jo Ellen; She's OK. She takes care of us." "Hi, everybody!" Jo Ellen said cheerfully as she approached the tank. "Oh, what have we here? A new member of the family." She looked at Victor and gently stroked him. "I heard you were coming, so I cleaned up the tank and started the water circulating just for you." "Well...Well thank you." said Victor. "Have you met everyone here?"asked Jo Ellen. "Only Ray and Stella. They were about to tell me about themselves." "OK, I'll go about with my work so you can get to know each other."

Stella began, "We are starfish. We have a spiny skin and an internal skeleton. The sand dollars and sea urchins are cousins of ours. The humans call us 'Echinoderms' which means 'spiny skin'." "Yeah, and we got five arms and a mouth on the bottom", Ray added. Victor looked at them both. Ray had five arms, but Stella only four. "What happened to your other arm, Stella?" "When I was captured, a human had got hold of one of my arms and it broke off. They didn't throw me back, because they wanted to watch it grow back. We can do that you know. See? It's starting to grow now." "Starfish have radial symmetry", Jo Ellen added. "This means that they can be divided into five equal parts." "We also have water canals around our center and sticking out of our arms." Stella said.

"Yeah. This helps us to locomote and respirate." said Ray.
"What he means, Victor, is that we have tube feet connected to our canals to help us move and breathe oxygen from the water."
"We can also flip over. Watch! Hey Jo! Come here. Flip me over so the little vector here can see my mouth and watch me flip back right again!" Ray bellowed.
Victor looked on in awe. The starfish stretched out two of his arms and pushed himself over with the others. "What a funny looking mouth he has", thought Victor. "How would he know which way is forward?"
"What do you eat?"
"Oh we like just about anything: scallops, snails, clams, crabs..." Stella and Ray responded.
Victor was not sure what these things were, but he figured they must be other animals. He sure was glad they didn't mention vectors!

As the days moved on, Jo Ellen came to know and like the little vector. She found out he was captured and that he was in search of his mother. Every day, Professor Hoptapus did experiments with the vector. Most of them were fun and Victor enjoyed the different tanks of water. The Professor was really nice and handled the vector very carefully. He wrote up his results and put the data into the computer.
Victor enjoyed being with the other animals in the tank. They seemed happy enough: fresh salt water, plenty of food and no worries about other animals trying to eat them. He really liked Carrie the Conch. He met her the second day he was in the storage tank. He saw what looked like a beautiful house - shaped like a cone. Pretty soon it started to move along. He saw a head poke out and things sticking out. The thing noticed him.

"Hi. You're new here aren't you? My name is Carrie the Conch. Your name is Victor isn't it?" Victor was stunned. "That's right. That's a beautiful thing you have on you." "Ooooh..That's my house. You like it? It's called a conch shell. I live inside it and carry it with me.That's why my name is Carrie the Conch." "What kind of animal are you?" "I'm a sea snail. I have a very large foot (she wiggled her foot for him to see) and live in this spiraled shell." Jo Ellen heard Carrie and came over. "We call them mollusks. They are soft animals with a shell around them. Carrie belongs to a group that lives in a cone-shaped shell. Each spiral section is called a whorl. Their body fills up these whorls. The oldest whorl is at the top and the newest is where the head and foot are. The shells can coil to the right or left, but most turn to the right. They take oxygen from the water with their gill."

"Wow, Jo Ellen, you sure know a lot about the animals." Victor said.
"I have to. The animals are here so that we humans can learn more about them and how they live in the oceans." "Then why am I here?" the little vector asked.
"Because..... you represent the movement of the oceans. The oceans, the air and everything that happens between them control our climate. The scientists here are trying to understand how it all works.
"How do you know all this? You are not a scientist."
"No, but you learn a lot working here. And I watch a lot of documentaries on television." Jo Ellen answered.
"What's television?" they asked.
Jo Ellen giggled. "Now how would they ever know what a television is?" she thought. "I'll try to explain. You've seen the computer in the lab?"
They shook their heads up and down. The starfish waved with their arms.
"Well, a television is a box with a picture - kind of like the computer - that tells stories and news that humans watch. It's a way to tell lots of people about the world. Got it?"
Again they all shook their heads and arms.

The Escape

The days quickly turned into weeks. Victor and Carrie became good friends, but Victor still wanted to go back to the ocean and look for his mom. Jo Ellen could see that he was sad. She felt sorry for the little guy and began making a plan. She would go to the laboratory late one night, scoop him up in a little bottle and bring him to the sea. The only problem was: How was she going to do this without getting caught? The laboratory was heavily secured. As fate would have it, the opportunity presented itself. Professor Hoptapus decided to run a weekend experiment and leave Victor in one of the tanks. Jo Ellen came to work, but could not find the vector.

She started to panick, but the animals calmed her down and told her where he was. No one was around. She took the private door into the lab and looked in all the tanks until she found Victor. Victor looked up and wanted to say something, but she went "Shush!" She scooped him up in a bottle and unplugged the tank to make it look like an accident. She then brought him to the storage tank to say good bye to his friends. "Good bye and good luck, Victor" cooed Stella. Her arm was almost fully grown again. "Bye, little buddy. I'll be seeing ya!" said Ray. And Carrie, with a tear in her eye whispered, "So long Victor. I hope that some day you will float by me again." Victor cried and asked for one last float around the tank with his friends. Afterwards, Jo Ellen hurried out of the building and took the ferry from Juneau to Seattle, Washington. During the ferry ride she very carefully slipped out to the deck, opened the bottle and dropped Victor into the dark blue sea.

ON TO EPISODE 5