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I had only the sword my father gave me and a mighty longing to use it. Arv Law rested an end of his pike-pole and stood looking anxiously for "red devils" among the stumps of the farther clearing. An old flint-lock, on the shoulder of a man beside him, had a barrel half as long as the pole. David Church was equipped with axe and gun, that stood at rest on either side of him.
"H-h-help!" Tom gasped. There was no need for the cry. Hank and his crew, on the seacopter's forward deck, had already grasped the situation. Strong arms reached out and hauled the two boys aboard. Both of them were shivering and writhing in pain, only half conscious. "They have the bends!" Arv Hanson cried in alarm. "Signal the Sky Queen to drop a sling!" The boys' masks were ripped off.
Hank Sterling squeezed the young inventor's arm. "You know Bud's high spirits, skipper," he said. "He may have taken off on some crazy lark." "Sure! A whale hunt, maybe!" Arv Hanson wisecracked, trying to lighten the gloom. Tom forced a grin, but he remained heavy-hearted as they neared the base.
They and their two shipmates flew back to the mainland with Tom and Arv for a celebration dinner in town. The next morning found the young inventor hard at work in his private laboratory. He was tapping his head with his slide rule and frowning at a blackboard scrawled with equations when Bud dropped in for a visit. "What now, inventor boy?" his copilot asked.
Tom said to himself. "I'd better start with a skin-diving suit made of that molded plastic Arv is turning out." After having some of the Tomasite sheathing, with its embedding transducers, sent over from the plastics department, Tom cut out a suit from a pattern and welded the seams electronically. He had just finished wiring the control unit when Chow wheeled in a lunch cart.
Here Tom had used his spectromarine selector to restore the ancient buildings. Tom, Hank, and Arv went back to the airfield and soon took off in the diving seacopter. Landing on the water, they submerged and began the undersea detection test. Tom manned the sonarscope personally, eager to conduct as careful a search as possible. "Getting any blips, skipper?"
Arv Hanson would captain one seacopter, Mel Flagler the jetmarine, while Zimby Cox, Chow, and four crewmen would accompany Tom in the Sea Hound. Because of their sonar-blinding systems, Tom realized there was a chance of the ships losing contact with one another especially if their analyzer sonars developed trouble.
He also contacted the nearest Coast Guard station and put through a long-distance call to Navy Headquarters in Washington to request help in searching for the jetmarine. Finally he and Arv headed back to the submarine docks in the jeep. A flurry of activity followed as Tom detailed ships for the search and rounded up crews. He was interrupted by a phone call in the loading shed.
As Bud nodded, Tom went on, "So we simply step up the volume till the sub's own noise gets drowned out or 'wasted' in all the racket." This could be done, he concluded, with fairly simple amplifying equipment. Bud, Hank, and Arv were jubilant at the idea. "Nice going," Bud said. "How soon can we give it a try?" "Soon as I can rig up the amplifier," Tom promised.
We'll take off as soon as I can get back to the base!" With a hasty good-by to his father, and farewells to his mother, Sandy, and Phyl by phone, Tom dashed out of the building. He sped to Arv Hanson's workshop, and the new hydrolung suits were loaded onto a small pickup truck and taken to the airfield. While flying back to Fearing Island in a helijet, Tom received a radio flash from his father.
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