“Here she comes, skipper!” Bud yelled.  He had rushed to the sonarscope with the other members of the crew.

Tom’s maneuver had carried them a good hundred yards off the missile’s course.  Now he yanked a lever, pulling the cadmium rods still farther from the atomic pile, in order to increase power and jet-blast their sub still farther out of range.

But suddenly the men at the scope blanched.  “The missile’s turning too!” Hank cried.  “It’s homing in on us!”

Unlike most Swift craft used on scientific expeditions, the cargo sub’s hull had not been coated with Tomasite.  This would have insulated it from all magnetic effects or any form of pulse detection.  Tom had chosen the Swiftsure partly for this very reason, so that the Brungarian rebels could easily pick up its trail after leaving Fearing.

How ironic if his choice should prove fatal!  As the thought flashed through Tom’s brain, the missile came streaking into view through the sub’s transparent nose.

By this time, Tom had flipped up the Swiftsure’s diving planes.  The craft plummeted deeper into the ocean depths.

“Brand my whale blubber, she’s turnin’ again!” Chow gulped.  The missile’s arc, as it veered around to follow, painted a streak of light on the sonarscope.

Anxious moments raced by while Tom steered their craft in a deadly game of tag with the sub-killer.  Gradually the missile appeared to be losing momentum.

“It’s slowing down, all right!” Arv called out.

In a few minutes the missile had lost so much way that Tom was easily able to outdistance it.  The crew crowded to the scope, heaving sighs of relief.  The missile, its velocity spent, sank harmlessly toward the bottom.

“Boy, what a close call!” Bud gasped weakly.  “You played that thing like a toreador sidestepping a bull, Tom!  Nice going!”

The others echoed Bud’s sentiments, with fervent handshakes and backslaps for Tom’s skillful evasive action.

“Jest the same,” said Chow, “I’d sure like to make Narko an’ them Brungarian hoss thieves dance a Texas jig with a little hot lead sprayed around their boot heels!  Sneakin’ bushwhackers!  It’s jest like I told Hank about his airplane scheme—­they’d try to gun us down, like as not, soon as they got their hands on Exman!”

“I guess you had them figured right, Chow,” Tom agreed wryly.  “Well, at least we’ve lost their sub!”

The Brungarian raider was no longer visible even as a faint blip on their radarscope.  Evidently Narko had thought the jetmarine a sure victim and headed back to his own base.

Nevertheless, Tom steered a wary zigzag course back to Fearing.  When they arrived at the island, he immediately telephoned Bernt Ahlgren and Wes Norris in Washington to report the hijacking of the space brain.  Both men praised the young inventor for his daring scheme to outwit the ruthless Brungarian rebel clique.