Читать книгу Miss Pickerell Goes Undersea - Ellen MacGregor - Страница 5
ОглавлениеCovington's Hobby
The photographer opened his eyes very wide.
"Good gracious!" he said. "How did you know, Miss Pickerell!"
"Know what?"
"Cliffside Bay is where my son is," said the photographer. "The Navy uses part of Cliffside Bay. Cliffside Bay is where Covington is stationed."
"Is it very far away?" Miss Pickerell asked.
"What worries me about Covington," the photographer said, "is his hobby."
Miss Pickerell sighed with annoyance, but she said, "You shouldn't worry about that. It's good for people to have hobbies. Don't you have a hobby? You just said you took swimming lessons. Isn't swimming your hobby?"
"It isn't exactly a hobby," said the photographer. "It's part of my training. I'm training myself to be able to take pictures under the ocean. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to give up my training on account of Covington's hobby."
"I don't understand," said Miss Pickerell.
"It's this way," said the photographer. "Naturally, Covington can't have his trained animals with him in the Navy. Naturally, he wants to keep them till he gets home again. So I'm taking care of them, and I'm very glad to do it. The only thing is that Covington keeps finding new animals that he wants to train when he gets out of the Navy. And every time he does, he buys the animal and sends it home. You wouldn't believe it, Miss Pickerell, if I told you how many animals I have to take care of! And more keep coming all the time. It's a tremendous responsibility. It worries me so much I can hardly concentrate."
"I should think it would!" Miss Pickerell said. "Someone should speak to your son."
"And not only that," said the photographer. "It isn't only the responsibility. It's the uncertainty. Covington very seldom lets me know ahead of time when he's sending an animal."
"That's unreasonable," Miss Pickerell said. "He ought to let you know ahead of time."
"Sometimes he can't," said the photographer.
Miss Pickerell said, "He could send you an air-mail special-delivery letter as soon as he buys an animal. Then you would know that the animal was coming."
"Sometimes," said the photographer, "Covington doesn't have time. Sometimes—"
"Oh, of course!" Miss Pickerell said. "For a minute I forgot your son is in the Navy. You mean he might start to write you a letter, but by the time he had finished it, his ship might have gone out into the middle of the ocean?"
"It might have gone," the photographer said. "But not necessarily out into the ocean."
"Why, that's ridiculous!" Miss Pickerell said. "Where else could it go? Unless—Oh!" She put her hand to her mouth. "You mean—?"
The photographer nodded his head.
"Yes," he said. "Covington is on a submarine. Covington is a sonarman on an atomic-powered submarine."
"I guess you mean he's a radarman, don't you?" Miss Pickerell said. "Radar detects things when they can't be seen."
"Covington tells me," said the photographer, "that radar doesn't work under water. He says they have to use sound waves because sound waves can travel through water. That's what sonar stands for. It means sound navigation and ranging. What sonar does, Covington says, is to send out little pings of sound through the water, and whenever the pings strike anything, they are reflected back."
"Like an echo?" Miss Pickerell asked.
"I guess so," the photographer said. "Anyway, Covington says that's how submarines can detect obstructions in the water. The farther away anything is, the longer it takes for the pings to bounce back. And if the pings keep bouncing back faster and faster, it means that the obstruction is getting closer and closer."
Miss Pickerell thought of something. She asked, "What if the obstruction was a sunken ship on the bottom of the ocean?"
"Sonar could detect that, too," the photographer said. "Covington says a good sonarman can even tell what sort of an obstruction has been detected, just by the way the pings sound when they bounce back."
"You know something?" Miss Pickerell said. "I've just had an idea. How long would it take me to get to Cliffside Bay?"
