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"We've picked up nothing on sonar!" "Check again," Tom ordered. The sonarman bent to his scope and Hank listened intently over the hydrophones. Neither could detect any sign of another craft. "Probably the same one that fired on us the last time," Tom said grimly. "We'd better clear out before they take another pot shot at us."
"One's for breathing adjustment, one's for the density unit, one is my ion-drive 'throttle, and this last is for the sonar pulse which will duplicate the porpoise sound." The suit worked perfectly in a tank test. Chow was amazed as he listened to Tom gliding about, via an underwater microphone. "If that don't beat all!" he declared. "Can't tell the difference 'twixt you an' Smiley!"
I'll join you later but first," Tom added mysteriously, "I have another job to attend to." Bud's curiosity was instantly aroused. "Don't tell me you have a new trick up your nautical sleeve to fox the Brungarians?" Tom grinned. "That's the general idea. I hope to give hydrolung divers the same protection that your jetmarine has." "You mean make them invisible to sonar?"
After a hasty meal, he resumed his layout job at the drawing board and by midnight had finished designing his quality analyzer sonar. Whipping off his eyeshade, Tom went into the apartment next door and stretched out to snatch a few hours' sleep. But as usual when in the midst of an exciting new project, he was too keyed up to rest for long.
Soon after lunch, Tom, Bud, and Arv took off for Fearing Island. When they arrived at the base, the plastic coating with its myriad tiny "mikes" and "speakers" was speedily applied to a jetmarine under Arv's supervision. Tom, meanwhile, wired the control unit and also installed the analyzer sonar in the Sea Hound. "Want to be 'It' for another underwater game of hide-and-seek?"
"Your system blinded our sonar okay, skipper," Hank commented, "but this proves she could still be spotted by enemy listening devices." Tom refused to be discouraged. He ordered Hank to return to base and wait for Bud. Meanwhile, the young inventor applied himself to the problem of how to mask the sub's noise. "How about it, pal?" Bud asked, when he reported aboard the seacopter a while later.
Tom gave Ames a full report on his own apparatus for rendering a submarine invisible to underwater detection. Ames grinned at the news. The grin grew even wider as he heard of the successful test of the quality analyzer sonar. "Bud Barclay's on his way to the South Atlantic right now with a fully equipped jetmarine," Tom ended.
Hank called out from his post at the Sea Hound's controls. "Not a ping, Hank. The system seems to be working out even better than I'd hoped." Tom felt a glow of satisfaction. He explained, however, that the jetmarine's transparent nose pane which had to be left unprotected for the pilot's visibility offered one vulnerable spot to sonar detection.
"We can't. We can only try to figure out what happened, based on what information we have. For instance, there must have been a sonar unit near where we swam at St. Thomas. It's the only thing that could have got the shadow so excited. But what difference does it really make? We know most of the story, and we can guess the rest." "Steve may be able to fill in some pieces later," Rick observed.
Tom asked Bud with a grin. "Sure, but don't tag me with a torpedo!" Minutes later, the jetmarine slipped off into the depths with Bud and two other crewmen aboard. Tom and Arv followed in the seacopter. The quality analyzer sonar worked even better than Tom had hoped.
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