I've read Brin's first 'Uplift' trilogy, but years ago. I remember thinking they were pretty all right, but haven't gotten around to the second trilogy. This short story set in that world, didn't really do it for me. It had a bit too much jammed into not enough pages, and the action and philosophy didn't quite mesh. Rather a lot of time is spent in setting up a reasonably interesting sci-fi scenario - and then it's sort of dropped: "Wait! Something new has come along! Now we are going to be faced with a philosophical dilemma having to do with the nature of reality and free will!" The terms in which the dilemma is discussed also seemed somewhat out of character for the individuals involved, as they'd been presented up until then. I also just didn't find his sentient dolphins to be very compelling characters. ( )

Great Dreamers! Tkett stared in awe and surprise at the object before them. It was unlike any starship he had ever seen before. Sleek metallic sides seemed to go on and on forever as the titanic machine trudged onward across the sea floor, churning up mud with thousands of shimmering, crystalline legs!
As if sensing their arrival, a mammoth hatch began irising open -- in benign welcome, he hoped.
No resurrected starship. Tkett began to suspect he had come upon something entirely different.

This novella takes place in the Uplift universe and follows on from the story in "Starship Rising". The Streaker has been on the run for so long that some of its mainly dolphin crew have suffered nervous breakdowns and regressed to a pre-sapient state and have been dropped off on the planet Jijo, along with a doctor and a few other healthy dolphins to look after them. The supposedly unoccupied planet is actually home to refugees from six galactic races who secretly live there in harmony with each other, but although the captain's idea was that the dolphins could set up a colony on Jijo, the doctor is worried that even it her patients do recover, it may not be possible for any of them to remain sentient in the long term, away from their human mentors and the technology of earth. The eccentric dolphin archeaologist Tkett is keen on finding an abandoned spaceship that can be adapted for use in salvaging the alien artefacts that the planet's previous inhabitants, an advanced race called the Buyur, dumped in an oceanic trench before leaving, but the sounds of machinery working deep under the sea, unknown to the planet's land-dwelling inhabitants, lead the dolphins to an unexpected discovery and a momentous choice. ( )