Carolyn said in a confident voice, "Brenner is one of us. He is just as willing to die for our cause as—"
A searchlight swept across the lake and its light, refracted downward from the waves, caught Farradyne's eye. He left them in the salon and raced up the stairs to the control room. Through the astrodome, distorted by the water, Farradyne could see the headlamps of the big truck. The searchbeam crossed the water again and flashed ever so briefly on the slender rod of the antenna. The truck paused in its course, the beam swept the woody shore and stopped; then the truck turned and rumbled off through the trees.
The radio music died again. "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are about to bring you a very unusual program. John Bundy, our special events newscaster, has joined the forces scouring the Lake Superior region for Charles Farradyne. Inasmuch as an early arrest is expected, and possibly a running gun battle, John Bundy will now take the air with an on-the-spot account. Mr. Bundy:
"Hello; this is John Bundy. Our convoy of trucks, men, guns, radar, and radio control resembles a war convoy. We have everything from trench knives to one-fifty-five rifles aboard as we scour the Northwoods for the criminal who has been so successful up to this time. We arrived at a point along Lake Superior which must be close to the point of Farradyne's operations, according to the information given us by the arrested truck driver. Sand and mud from Miss Hannon's shoes correspond to the district.
"Flying above us now are eight squadron bombers carrying heavy depth-charges, since Farradyne is believed to be hiding his spacecraft in the waters of Lake Superior. A submarine from the Great Lakes Geodetic Survey has been hastily equipped with some ranging sonar from the War Museum at Chicago and is seeking Farradyne's submerged spacecraft. It—"
There came a distant crash in the radio and seconds afterwards the Lancaster resounded with the thunder of an underwater explosion.
"One of the depth-charge patterns has been dropped," explained Bundy excitedly. "Perhaps this is—no, it is not. Sorry. The submarine has covered the explosion area and reported only an underwater mountain peak instead of a hidden spacecraft. Nothing will be left unsearched—"
A thin, pure, ping, of a pitch, so high it was at the upper limit of Farradyne's hearing, came and lasted for less than a tenth of a second. It came again in about twenty seconds, and repeated itself in twenty seconds, and again and again and again. The interval dropped; the volume of the ping increased noticeably until the singing tinkle, something like tapping a silver table knife on a fine glass goblet, was coming fast.
Ping! Ping! Ping!