added, glancing at a screen. “That’s number sixty-seven tied up.”
He rose from his chair and moved across to stand beside Hunt’s
console to get a better view of the image in the tank. He looked at
it for a while without speaking.
“Columns of numbers,” he observed needlessly at last. “Looks like
some kind of table.”
“Looks like it. . .” Hunt’s voice sounded far away.
“Mmm. . . rows and columns. . . thick lines and thin lines Could be
anything-mileage chart, wire gauges, some sort of
timetable. Who knows?”
Hunt made no reply but continued to blow occasional clouds of smoke
at the glass, cocking his head first to one side and then to the
other.
“None of the numbers there are very large,” he commented after a
while. “Never more than two positions in any place. That gives us
what in a duodecimal system? One hundred and fortythree at the
most.” Then as an afterthought, “I wonder what the biggest is.”
“I’ve got a table of Lunarian-decimal equivalents somewhere. Any
good?”
“No, don’t bother for now. It’s too near lunch. Maybe we could have
a look at it over a beer tonight at the Ocean.”
‘I can pick out their one and two,” Gray said. “And three and Hey!
What do you know-look at the right-hand columns of
those big boxes. Those numbers are in ascending order!”
“You’re right. And look-the same pattern repeats over and over in
every one. It’s some kind of cyclic array.” Hunt thought for a
moment, his face creased in a frown of concentration. “Something
else, too-see those alphabetic groups down the sides? The same
groups reappear at intervals all across the page . . .” He broke
off again and rubbed his chin.
Gray waited perhaps ten seconds. “Any ideas?”
“Dunno. . . Sets of numbers starting at one and increasing by one
every time. Cyclic. . . an alphabetic label tagged on to each
repeating group. The whole pattern repeating again inside bigger
groups, and the bigger groups repeat again. Suggests some sort of
order. Sequence. . .”
His mumblings were interrupted as the door opened behind them. Lyn
Garland walked in.
“Hi, you guys. What’s showing today?” She moved over to stand
between them and peered into the tank. “Say, tables! How about
that? Where’d they come from, the books?”
“Hello, lovely,” Gray said with a grin. “Yep.” He nodded in the
direction of the scanner.
“Hi,” Hunt answered, at last tearing his eyes away from the image.
“What can we do for you?”
She didn’t reply at once, but continued staring into the tank.
“What are they? Any ideas?”
“Don’t know yet. We were just talking about it when you came in.”
She marched across the lab and bent over to peer into the top of
the scanner. The smooth, tanned curve of her leg and the proud
thrust of her behind under her thin skirt drew an exchange of
approving glances from the two English scientists. She came back
and studied the image once more.
“Looks like a calendar, if you ask me,” she told them. Her voice
left no room for dissent.
Gray laughed. “Calendar, eh? You sound pretty sure of it. What’s
this-a demonstration of infaffible feminine intuition or
something?” He was goading playfully.
She turned to confront him with out-thrust jaw and hands
planted firmly on hips. “Listen, Limey-I’ve got a right to an
opinion, okay? So, that’s what I think it is. That’s my opinion.”
“Okay, okay.” Gray held up his hands. “Let’s not start the War of
Independence all over again. I’ll note it in the lab file: ‘Lyn
thinks it’s a-‘”
“Holy Christ!” Hunt cut him off in midsentence. He was staring
wide-eyed at the tank. “Do you know, she could be right! She could
just be bloody right!”
Gray turned back to face the side of the tank. “How come?”
“Well, look at it. Those larger groups could be something like
months, and the labeled sets that keep repeating inside them could
be weeks made up of days. After all, days and years have to be
natural units in any calendar system. See what I mean?”
Gray looked dubious. “I’m not so sure,” he said slowly. “It’s