Meanwhile, the young inventor was busy with his own experiments. By
means of a microphone placed in the tank, he made exact recordings of
Smiley's "talk." Using Mel Flagler as a subject, Tom also tape-recorded
the sound of a skin diver propelled through the water by ion drive.
The next step was to compare the sound pattern of the tapes. Tom
filtered out the difference in the two sounds with the correlation
calculator unit of one of his quality analyzer sonars.
"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 hear!"
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.
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