"Appleton, Victor - Tom Swift Jr 07 - And His Diving Seacopter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Appleton Victor)

their helmets.
Tom was thinking fast. He looked at the depth gauge. Four hundred and fifty
feet. The gauge was now creeping hesitantly and the water stood at the boys'
waists.
Tom made his decision. He would abandon ship! Signaling to Bud, he
switched on the hydraulic system and watched the hatch intently. It began to
open! The boys waded to a position beneath it, ready to float through the
opening.
Suddenly there was a flash! All the machinery stopped abruptly, plunging the
compartment into darkness. The hatch had opened only two notches, not wide
enough for the boys to escape!
Fear clutching them, Tom and Bud wondered if the controls had frozen,
making it impossible for them to raise the hatch by hand. Were they trapped?
The boys would not know this until the cabin was filled with water, making the
pressure inside and out the same. As the water reached the ceiling, they began
to shove the hatch with all the strength they could muster at a four-hundred-foot
depth. The cover yielded! Tom and Bud floated through!
It was only a matter of minutes before their
14 DIVING SEACOPTER
automatically pressurized suits brought them to the surface. The men in the
Sky Queen saw them and quickly hauled the boys aboard.
ESCAPE FROM THE DEEP
15
"Man alive, am I glad to see you two!" exclaimed Slim Davis, after the divers'
suits had been removed.
"We nearly ended up as a couple of canned sardines!" Bud admitted ruefully,
as Tom gave a quick account of their mishap. "I certainly hated to abandon the
seacopter cabin," he added. "And I can't understand why it leaked."
"We were fearful that might happen," said Slim. "An emergency radio call
came from Art Wiltessa at the plant. It seems that orders got fouled up and the
high-pressure sealer was omitted from one of the seams on Compartment B."
"So that's why we sprang a leak!" said Tom,
16 DIVING SEACOPTER
glad to know that there was nothing wrong with the basic design of his
seacopter.
Under his direction, the lost compartment fortunately was salvaged and
brought back to Swift Enterprises. Tom, directing repairs on it the next day,
asked Bud to check with Harlan Ames as to developments in finding the person
who had taken the space dictionary.
"No leads on him yet," the security officer reported in disappointment. "But
we're working on it."
The telephone rang. Tom was calling Bud. "Are you game for another
pressure-test dive?" Tom asked. "I want to try out Compartment A."
"Any time, skipper."
"Then hop over to my lab. By the way, I have a couple of visitors here who
want to ride with us in the Sky Queen."
Bud hurried to Tom's private laboratory in one of the larger buildings. Sitting
on the edge of an experimental table were two attractive girls.
One was Tom's sister, Sandra Swift-a blond, blue-eyed, seventeen-year-old
with a gay smile. Sandy, a flying enthusiast, was Bud Barclay's favorite date.