Silence is—Deadly

Radio is an absolute necessity in modern organization—and particularly in modern naval organization. If you could silence all radio—silence of that sort would be deadly!
The hurried rat-a-tat of knuckles hammered on the cabin door. Commander Bob Curtis roused himself from his doze, got up from his chair, stretched himself to his full, lanky height and yawned. That would be Nelson, his navigating officer. Nelson always knocked that way—like a man in an external state of jitters over nothing at all.
Curtis didn't hurry. It pleased him to let Nelson wait. He moved slowly to the door, paused there, and flung a backward glance at the man in the cabin with him—Zukor Androka, the elderly Czech scientist, a guest of the United States navy, here aboard the cruiser Comerford .
The wizened face of the older man was molded in intent lines of concentration, as his bushy gray head bent over his drawing board. Curtis got a glimpse of the design on which he was working, and his lips relaxed in a faint smile.
Androka had arrived on board the Comerford the day before she sailed from Norfolk. With him came a boatload of scientific apparatus and equipment, including a number of things that looked like oxygen tanks, which were now stored in the forward hold. Androka had watched over his treasures with the jealous care of a mother hen, and spent hours daily in the room in the superstructure that had been assigned as his laboratory.
Sometimes, Curtis thought old Androka was a bit wacky—a scientist whose mind had been turned by the horror that had come to his country under the domination of the Nazi gestapo . At other times, the man seemed a genius. Perhaps that was the answer—a mad genius!
Curtis opened the door and looked out. Rain whipped against his face like a stinging wet lash. Overhead, the sky was a storm-racked mass of clouds, broken in one spot by a tiny patch of starlit blue.
His eyes rested inquiringly on the face of the man who stood before him. It was Nelson, his shaggy blond brows drawn scowlingly down over his pale eyes; his thin face a mass of tense lines; his big hands fumbling at the neck of his slicker. Rain was coursing down his white cheeks, streaking them with glistening furrows.