“Those torpedo blasts must have knocked out our tracking gear, too!” he told Hank.
The seacopter surfaced again and the trouble was quickly traced to the RSG
detectors mounted on the bow. Tom groaned as he examined them inside the cabin. The driftometers in five of the units had been badly damaged, and the electronic circuitry in three of them would need extensive repair. Tom estimated that it would take several hours to rebuild the detectors.
Grimly he set to work. At last the RSG’s were remounted and the Sea Hound plunged back below the surface to pick up the freighter’s trail.
As Tom expected, the tracker showed that the Rockwell had sunk only a couple of hundred feet and then veered off horizontally. Plutonium traces betrayed the presence of the submarine which had taken her in tow. The course away from the scene of the sinking lay in a roughly southeasterly direction.
Evidently the same method was to be used as with the Centurion, The hulk was being towed underwater to some place where its cargo could be looted.
168 AQUATOMIC TRACKER
“Where do you suppose they’re heading?” Hank asked.
Tom frowned as he studied a chart. “Some guyot probably, if they’ve found one handy. Otherwise, I don’t know-there’s nothing else out there but the Bermuda Islands. They sure can’t tow that job across the whole ocean!”
Tom gunned the Sea Hound to top speed. It was midmorning when the sonarscope indicated a land mass ahead. The seacopter surfaced briefly to scout with its periscope. Ahead lay a tiny island -apparently deserted-small in extent but high-ridged. Submerging again, Tom followed the trail in closer.
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