. . That’s ours, all right 1”
Tom dashed out of the shed and scanned the sea to the southward. Sure enough, a jetmarine had surfaced and was speeding toward the sub docks.
Minutes later, Tom was shaking hands warmly with Zimby Cox and Mack Avery.
“Is Bud okay?” was Zimby’s first question.
“Right! I just heard from him,” Tom replied. “He and Mel captured those enemy frogmen and a copter’s on the way to pick them up. What happened to you fellows?”
Zimby confirmed Bud’s guess that they had taken off in pursuit of the enemy craft.
“We figured Bud and Mel could make out on their own,” Zimby explained.
“And we thought the sub’s course or actions might tip us off to its nationality.
Also, if it tried any sabotage or mine-planting, we could radio the Navy.”
Instead, Cox went on, the mysterious craft had proceeded to a point about ten miles offshore where it rendezvoused with another submarine.
134 THE ELECTRONIC HYDROLUNG
“And get this, skipper 1” Mack Avery put in. “The other sub was undetectable! We were close enough to get a peek at it, but we couldn’t ping it on the sonarscope.”
“That figures,” Tom said grimly. “Those frogmen were apparently Brungarians.”
Zimby Cox related that a man had transferred from the undetectable submarine to the one they had been following. The first sub had then headed out to sea, as if to cross the ocean back to its home base. The other had departed on a course toward the South Atlantic.
“Probably back to the lost missile area. At least that’s the way we figured it,”