“Uh-huh. So you got the difference betwixt Smiley’s talk an’ the noise Mel made,” muttered Chow as he watched the jagged lines of light flashing on the pulse-check oscilloscope. “Now what’re you fixin’ to do with it?”
“This will be fed into the diver’s sonar along with his own noise output,” Tom said, “to make him sound like a porpoise.”
Chow howled. “That I’ve got to hearl”
The young inventor worked feverishly throughout the day and into the next, perfecting his new “porpoise sonar.” Using microelectronic components, 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 into the plastic, with no loose wires or tubes showing.
Monday morning he was ready to try the outfit. The sonarscope with its tiny viewing screen was strapped to his left forearm. Another small unit was fastened to the inside of his wrist, with four plungers in finger-tip reach.
SMILEY THE SEA COW 171
“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 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”
As Tom emerged from the tank, the portly cook rolled up his own pantlegs and waddled up the metal ladder to the tank brim. He summoned the porpoise with a whistle and straddled its back.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118