a prairie moose?" Scotty demanded.
"A field mouse with horns."
Scotty groaned. "All right, scientist. Let's get serious and see if you can answer this one. We have an archeologist, a naturalist, and a cyberneticist coming. I think I know what the first two are, but what in the name of a blue baboon is a cyberneticist?"
Rick put the camera view finder into place and began to adjust it. "A specialist in cybernetics," he said.
Scotty waved his arms. "Now I know!" he exclaimed triumphantly. "Any idiot knows what cybernetics is. Or what they are. Ten cents apiece at any hardware counter. No family should be without a handy-dandy cybernetic!"
Rick chuckled. "All right. Cybernetics is a combined study of machines and the human nervous system. It's trying to figure out how machines and humans are related. I don't know much about it myself, but I do know this: the big electronic calculators that do problems in a few hours that it would take humans hundreds of years to finish were the result of cybernetics."
"The big brains!" Scotty looked awed. "I've read about them. And to think we're going to have that kind of expert here!"
"With his wife and two kids," Rick added. "I wonder how Huggins will like a crowd of kids trampling through his garden!"
Scotty laughed outright. "Here we go again! Listen, Rick, start making sense. How can twins less than a year old trample anyone's garden?"
Rick didn't try to answer. He finished the adjustment on the camera and put it back on the shelf, then started to work replacing the lenses in an old pair of sunglasses with the special ones he had ordered. After a moment, he asked, "Scotty, how would you like it if an expedition left Spindrift and we weren't with it?"
Scotty stared. "My sainted aunt! Is that's what's been bothering you?"
Rick admitted it. He knew where he stood with the old gang, Hartson Brant, Hobart Zircon, Julius Weiss, and John Gordon. He was far from sure of how the new staff members would look on him and Scotty. He had learned that some scientists had little patience with people who were unfamiliar with their special fields, and he and Scotty were pretty ignorant about the new sciences that would be represented. That was his only reason for objecting when his father had decided to enlarge the staff.
"I can see it now," he said. "The Foundation will be planning an expedition, maybe to be headed by this new naturalist, and we'll be on the outside looking in. And why? Because Dr. Howard Shannon prefers not to be bothered by a couple of kids who wouldn't know one bug from another."
"You're crossing bridges before you come to 'em," Scotty pointed out. "For all you know, all three of these new scientists might be perfectly swell gents, like Zircon, Weiss, and Gordon. Why borrow trouble in advance?"
"I suppose you're right," Rick had to agree. "But I still can't help thinking about it."
"Think all you like," Scotty said generously. "Me, I'm going to put my little gray brain cells to work on Chahda's cable. Aren't you all fired up with curiosity?"
Rick started to say he was, but no reply was necessary because just then he heard the sound of the motorboat engine for which his ears had been attuned. He put down the sunglasses and ran for the door. Scotty had heard the engine, too, and was halfway down the hall.
It had to be Barby, Rick was sure. The other motorboat – the island had two – was tied up at the pier, and they weren't expecting any visitors. The builders had their own boat, a powered barge, anchored off Pirate's Field.
The boys ran out on the front porch and around the house, then down the long flight of stairs that led to the cove where the motorboat landing was located.
It was Barby, sure enough, and she had the cable! She waved it wildly, then gunned the boat around neatly so that it slid into the dock. Scotty grabbed the bow line and made fast while Rick jumped for the stern line and slipped it around a cleat on the landing.
Barby cut the engine and jumped to the dock, a slim, pretty girl, her face flushed with excitement. "It's from Chahda," she said breathlessly, "and it's in code!"
"We know," Scotty said. "Here, let's take a look at it."
Barby handed it to him. He scanned it wordlessly, then handed it to Rick. "Son, we'll be doing right well if we make any sense out of that!"
"He wouldn't send us anything in a code we couldn't read," Rick objected. "Let's see it. It can't be too hard."
But in the next moment he changed his mind. His lips pursed in a low whistle. This was the cable:
Rick Brant
Spindrift Island
New Jersey, U.S.A.
L. Chahda
CHAPTER II
The Cipher Message
Barby, Rick, and Scotty were in the library when Hartson Brant walked in. They were reduced to the point of staring at each other helplessly because of the magnitude of the task that confronted them.
The famous scientist, who looked like an older version of his son, greeted them with a smile. "What is this, a meeting of the Silent Three? I can't ever remember finding you all together when one of you wasn't talking."
Rick handed him the cable. "What do you make of that, Dad?"
Hartson Brant scanned it quickly. "From Chahda, in Singapore, and in cipher. Am I supposed to gather that you don't have the key to the cipher?"
"That's right," Scotty said. He held up a heavy volume called Cryptography for the Student. It was the only book on the subject in the scientist's library. "We've been going through this, trying to find some kind of clue. Honest, it's impossible."
"There are so many codes and ciphers," Barby added. "Dozens. And it says some of them can only be broken by days of work, by experts."
"There's not an expert in the house, either," Rick concluded. "I didn't think, when Bill called us up about it, that Chahda would use a code we couldn't figure out, but I didn't expect a page like that."
Hartson Brant read through the cable again. "How do you know you can't figure it out? Perhaps a little reasoning will clear the air. Chahda must have put a key in the message somewhere. How about this 'L' in front of his name?"
"That's right," Barby said excitedly. "That must mean something, because his name is Chahda Sundararaman. There isn't an L in it anywhere."
The scientist handed the cable back to Rick. "I'm about as curious as I can get," he said, "but I refuse to think any more about it until you hand me the clear version. I agree that Chahda wouldn't send a code you couldn't solve, so my advice is put the code book away. You won't need it, I'm sure. This isn't any code you'll find in there."
He started out of the room, then paused at the door, his eyes twinkling. "Will you have dinner at the table with us, or shall I ask mother to break out some emergency rations so you can stay on the job?"
"We'll eat with the family," Scotty replied. "We can keep on thinking while we eat, can't we?"
Rick watched his father wink at Barby, then walk toward the kitchen. "Dad's right," he announced. "He must be. So let's put the book back and start figuring this out. The answer probably is easy as pie once we find the key."
"How about starting with that odd letter?" Scotty asked. "That has to mean something."
"L is the twelfth letter in the alphabet," Barby offered. "Does that mean anything?"
Rick shook his head. "Not to me. But let's start from there, anyway. Maybe the twelfth group of numbers has a clue."
He counted rapidly across the number groups. "That group is 4399693. Now what?"
Scotty suggested, "Substitute letters for the numbers. That would make it DCIIFIC. That doesn't mean anything."
"Maybe you counted the wrong way," Barby said thoughtfully. "Count down the columns instead of across."
Rick did so. "That's