Both Tom and Bud gave whoops of glee at this news.
“Dad, you’ve helped overcome one of the big problems in our search for the lost missilel” Tom exclaimed.
CHAPTER XV
MOUNTAIN HIKE
“AFTER adequate doses of your space vitamin, Dad, a skin diver could tackle almost any undersea job in my hydrolung!” Tom exclaimed. “He wouldn’t be subjected to any antiosmosis troubles with his body tissues.”
His father nodded. “For the first time, man might become a truly marine creature!”
“Wow! Think of it!” Bud gasped excitedly. “With Tom’s hydrolung and a knife to hunt his own food, he could practically live in the sea!”
“That’s no farfetched dream, Bud.” Tom’s steel-blue eyes flashed at the thought of new fields of scientific conquest. “This discovery of Dad’s and Doc Simpson’s opens up some really amazing possibilities.”
Most important at the moment, the vitamin would be a great boon in carrying out search and digging operations for the Jupiter prober. With 140
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fresh enthusiasm, Tom returned to his laboratory to work on the new sonar gear. In his own mind, he had already named it a “quality analyzer sonar,” since that exactly described the way it would function.
“Hmm, let’s see,” Tom mused as he settled down at his workbench, pencil in hand. “Besides a regular sonarscope, I’ll need at least three units for the gear.”
First, he would need an oscillator to produce the complex pulse. Next, of course, an oscilloscope to check the pulse as it was beamed out. Last-but highly important-a correlation calculator.