Page 102 (1/2)
“It nal is hitting your ear That’s why the effect goes away so quickly when the sound stops”
“How can it affect everyone on the ship?” Juan asked
“Because the infrasound is so intense that it causes the ship’s hull itself to act as a resonator, possibly even an amplifier, as would be the case with a submarine, whose entire hull could be hit by the disruptor when it’s underwater”
“Do you have a countermeasure?”
Murph did the head tilt again “Maybe If we can cause our own hull to vibrate at the same frequencies, it could cancel out the waveforms”
“But it would have to be so loud,” Julia said
“And the only thing on the ship that can create a sound that loud is our sonar dome,” Murph said “We’d have to modify it to focus it directly on the hull”
“Which etting why Murph had not been as gung ho about the solution
Murph shook his head “It’s a trade-off But it’s probably better than all of us going crazy The good news is, we don’t have to go into port I can make the modifications while we’re under way”
“Can we use it as a weapon ourselves?”
“It ht disrupt other sonars in the vicinity,” Murph said
“But I don’t think it would cause the kind of effects that we’ve experienced,” Julia added
Juan thought about his options “And if Tate uses his weapon on us while we have this countermeasure in place, what happens to us?”
“I’itation, but no full-blown psychotic breaks That’s the theory But there’s no way to know until we actually experience it”
Juan noted how many ifs, hopes, and maybes there were in the assessments, but he trusted their abilities Besides, there was no other choice