CHAPTER XVIII
SMILEY THE SEA COW
Mel turned in the nick of time. The monster shark was bearing down onhim like an undersea express train. Overcoming a moment of panic, Melgunned his ion drive to dodge the attack.
As Tom watched in agonized suspense, he saw the shark's jaws open andshut in a lightning snap at Mel's outstretched arm. Its razor-sharpteeth missed their target by inches!
Mel's gasp of relief was audible over Tom's earphones. "Let's get out ofhere!" he cried, arrowing away from the man-killer.
Suddenly Tom realized the full extent of their peril. A long, sweepingcoral reef, which extended above water, lay between them and the _SeaHound_. Unless they could round the reef in time, the shark had themtrapped!
"Quick! This way!" Tom exclaimed.
The shark was moving at blinding speed. As if sensing the boys' plan ofescape, it launched itself in a wide curving sweep to cut them off.
"We can't make it!" Tom gasped. "We'll have to fight!"
Both swimmers were armed with skin diver's knives as a precaution. Thetwo maneuvered to meet the killer's onslaught.
This time its broad nightmarish head was aiming straight at Tom. Hejetted off to the right, but the monster veered instantly. Its lashingtail gave Mel a stunning blow.
As the shark's jaws gaped for a bite, Tom zoomed underneath theman-eater and slashed its belly with his knife.
The shark, maddened, thrashed the water in a frenzy. Tom moved likelightning to dodge a deadly blow from its bony tail. Again and againthey felt the horrifying brush of the killer's fins or armor-tough hide.By this time, Mel had revived. Repeatedly the two boys dived to jab andslash at the shark's soft underbelly.
Both were nearly exhausted when the monster at last went limp andfloated slowly up toward the surface. Pale with shock and fright, Tomand Mel jetted back to the _Sea Hound_.
Zimby Cox was startled by their faces when they clambered aboard andripped off their masks. "What happened to you two?"
Tom told him. "Good night!" Zimby cried out.
After resting, Tom and Mel dived in again. This time luck was withthem. In less than twenty minutes they sighted a small porpoise.
"Think we can lure it back toward the _Sea Hound_?" Mel queried.
"We'll try," Tom replied.
The creature with the bottle-shaped snout was as friendly and playful asmost of its fellow dolphins. Too playful, Tom concluded, after vainlytrying to tease it into chasing them. Instead of following, it would"tag" Tom or Mel quickly, then swim away, evidently expecting to bechased in turn!
"I give up!" Mel snorted in disgust.
Tom grinned and bobbed to the surface. He waved his hand several timesin a prearranged signal. Zimby at last spotted him and brought the _SeaHound_ to the scene.
Raising his mask, Tom called, "Let's have the net!"
Zimby lowered a nylon net and some pieces of fish to the two swimmers asthey came alongside. With the food as bait they tried to lure theporpoise to the seacopter. But just as they thought they had it, themonster would scoot off.
"It's just laughing at us!" Mel fumed.
At last, after winning its confidence with several bits of fish, theboys succeeded in snaring the porpoise. Tom clambered onto the _SeaHound_'s deck and helped Zimby haul their catch aboard. "Quacking"reproachfully, it was lowered through the hatch and placed in the tank,which was then pumped full of salt water.
As soon as the _Sea Hound_ arrived at Fearing, Tom phoned Chow Winklerat Enterprises and asked him to fly out to the base.
"Pardner, how'd you like to ride herd on this critter and gentle it downfor me?" Tom asked, when he showed Chow the porpoise.
It had been transferred to a huge, glass-paneled tank which had been setup just outside Tom's Fearing Island laboratory during his flight to theFlorida Keys.
"Reckon I kin try makin' friends with it," Chow declared.
The porpoise stared morosely at Chow. The kindly old Texan's heart wastouched by the odd creature. To his delight, it soon responded to hisfriendly overtures and quickly recovered its good nature. By the nextmorning the porpoise was playing catch with Chow, or else swimming overto have its back scratched. The cook named it Smiley.
"She's kind of a sea cow," he told Tom, "and you got to talk to mySmiley like any cow!" Tom grinned and refrained from explaining to Chowthat a real "sea cow" was a walrus.
Meanwhile, the young inventor was busy with his own experiments. Bymeans of a microphone placed in the tank, he made exact recordings ofSmiley's "talk." Using Mel Flagler as a subject, Tom also tape-recordedthe sound of a skin diver propelled through the water by ion drive.
The next step was to compare the sound pattern of the tapes. Tomfiltered out the difference in the two sounds with the correlationcalculator unit of one of his quality analyzer sonars.
"Uh-huh. So you got the difference betwixt Smiley's talk an' the noiseMel made," muttered Chow as he watched the jagged lines of lightflashing on the pulse-check oscilloscope. "Now what're you fixin' to dowith it?"
"This will be fed into the diver's sonar along with his own noiseoutput," Tom said, "to make him sound like a porpoise."
Chow howled. "That I've got to hear!"
The young inventor worked feverishly throughout the day and into thenext, perfecting his new "porpoise sonar." Using microelectroniccomponents, he was able to reduce all the units to amazingly small size.
Next, Tom began tailoring himself a completely new skin-diving suit.Mask, ion-drive jet, and the various hydrolung units were molded intothe plastic, with no loose wires or tubes showing.
Monday morning he was ready to try the outfit. The sonarscope with itstiny viewing screen was strapped to his left forearm. Another small unitwas fastened to the inside of his wrist, with four plungers infinger-tip reach.
"What in tarnation's that?" Chow asked.
"Simplified controls," Tom explained. "One's for breathing adjustment,one's for the density unit, one is my ion-drive 'throttle,' and thislast is for the sonar pulse--which will duplicate the porpoise sound."
The suit worked perfectly in a tank test. Chow was amazed as he listenedto Tom gliding about, via an underwater microphone.
"If that don't beat all!" he declared. "Can't tell the difference 'twixtyou an' Smiley!"
As Tom emerged from the tank, the portly cook rolled up his own pantlegsand waddled up the metal ladder to the tank brim. He summoned theporpoise with a whistle and straddled its back.
"What in the name of aquanautics do you think _you're_ doing?" Tomgasped.
"I'll show you a real broncobustin' act in the water," Chow bragged.
Smiley glided off gently at first, Chow fanning the air with his hat andyipping like a rodeo star. He did, in fact, cling to his slippery perchwith considerable skill.
But suddenly Smiley began bobbing and humping like an eel. Chow's facefroze in alarm. A moment later the porpoise dived and the cook let out ayell of terror, "He-e-elp!"
Roaring with laughter, Tom dived in and rescued him. "Guess he ain'tquite broke yet, pardner!"
"Reckon not."
Now that Tom had all his technical problems solved, he plunged eagerlyinto the job of fitting out his expedition to the South Atlantic tosearch for the lost Jupiter missile.
Besides the _Sea Hound_ and the other diving seacopter which had alreadybeen rigged with antisonar and antidetection equipment, Tom ordered alarge cargo jetmarine to be similarly equipped.
Then he drew up a list of supplies and underwater search gear neededfor the missile hunt. Tom phoned orders to a dozen differentdepartments. Food, space-plant pills, extra clothing, tools, including amidget atomic earth blaster, grappling hooks--nothing was overlooked.
"I'd better take along a Damonscope too," Tom reflected. "Judging bythose Navy reports, ordinary Geiger counters haven't revealed anything."
Tom's Damonscope, one of his early inventions, was a photographic devicewhich worked on fluorescent principles. It was amazingly sensitive toany form o
f radioactivity--and the missile, of course, would be "hot"from exposure to cosmic rays.
Meanwhile, Tom had ordered his new hydrolung suit, with its four-plungercontrol unit and porpoise sonar, to be flown back to Enterprises. ArvHanson had promised to make up several duplicates with a team oftechnicians working on all-night shifts.
Late the next afternoon Tom returned to the mainland to confer with hisfather. Mr. Swift reviewed the expedition plans with approval.
"Suppose we call Admiral Walter now and set a time for the Navy to moveout of the missile area, so you can take over," his father said.
Tom agreed, and his father placed the long-distance call to Washington.Moments later, Admiral Walter came on the line. Mr. Swift talked to himbriefly, then turned the phone over to Tom, who described hispreparations for the missile hunt. A time schedule of operations andcommunications was quickly laid out.
The admiral was amazed to learn that Bud Barclay was already patrollingthe area. "Our ships haven't seen or heard him!" the officer exclaimed.Suddenly Admiral Walter broke off. "Hold it, please, Tom! A code call isjust coming in!"
His voice was grave as he returned to the Swifts' line. "That messagewas from your friend, Bud Barclay," Admiral Walter reported. "It looksas if our enemy has found the missile!"
"Oh, no!" Tom groaned.
Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung Page 18
