ak the monotony.

It was the following day when they reached the missile search area. Tom
surfaced the _Sea Hound_ and reversed blade pitch, then gunned the rotor
turbines for an aerial reconnaissance flight, while the jetmarine and the
other seacopter stood by in the water.

"Brand my guppies, it's some ocean, eh, boss?" Chow remarked in an awed
voice.

"Big enough, all right," Tom agreed with a grin. "And plenty of water to
search in."

"No sign of the Navy," Zimby said.

Tom nodded. "They pulled out on schedule."

"What about them Brungarian sidewinders?" put in Chow.

"That's the question!" Tom swooped down to rejoin the other two craft.
"We'll keep an eye out for enemy blips while we do our prospecting."

Rather than lose time trying to contact Bud, Tom decided to let him find
the _Sea Hound_. Accordingly, he switched off the antidetection system
and ordered all ships to submerge. Arv's seacopter and Mel's jetmarine
were to maintain close formation and stand guard while Tom's craft did
the actual searching.

Now the missile hunt began. Tom had plotted a concentric search pattern,
focused on the probable position worked out by the task-force computers.
After checking his fix on the automatic navigator, Tom switched on the
Damonscope and steered the _Sea Hound_ on a gradually circling course.

The Damonscope was mounted in a blister on the hull, its camera lens
pointing toward the ocean floor. The automatic developing film would
record any trace of fluorescence, and a red light would signal this
result to the pilot's cabin.

Minutes went by as the _Sea Hound_ nosed slowly along through the
gray-green gloom, its sister craft flanking it a hundred yards on either
side. They were moving only a fathom or so above the bottom.

"A blip at eleven o'clock!" the sonarman called out suddenly. Tom's
pulse quickened. "Moving straight toward us," the sonarman added.

Tom surrendered the controls to Zimby long enough to dart over and study
the sonarscope. "I've a hunch it's Bud," he told the others.

His guess proved correct when the unmistakable outline of a jetmarine
loomed into view. Tom flicked on the search beam for a moment, and Bud
could be seen waving through the cabin window. Then the yellow glare
went off, and Bud's jetmarine glided away to take up a scouting position
ahead of the _Sea Hound_.

An hour went by, then another. Suddenly a flash of light stabbed through
the murk from dead ahead.

"It's a