The Two Worlds by James P. Hogan Read Free Book Online Page A

Earth by UNSA to its various ships and installations all over the solar system. The other reason he liked to be early was that it gave him an opportunity to tackle the Journal's crossword puzzle. He'd been an incurable addict for as long as he could remember, and rationalized his addiction by claiming that an early-morning puzzle sharpened the mental faculties in preparation for the demands of the day ahead. He wasn't really sure if that were true, and didn't care all that much either, but it was as good an excuse as any. There was nothing sensational in the news that morning, but he skimmed dutifully through the various items and arrived gratefully at the crossword page just as the steward was refilling his coffee cup. He folded the paper once, then again, and rested it against the edge of the table to scan through the clues casually while he felt inside his jacket for a pen. The heading at the top read: JOURNAL CROSSWORD PUZZLE NUMBER 786.

    Shannon stiffened, his hand still inside his jacket, as the number caught his eye. " How they got 786 is still a puzzle " replayed itself instantly in his mind. Every word of Hunt's mysterious message had become firmly engraved by that time. " 786 " and " puzzle " . . . both appearing in the same sentence. It couldn't be a coincidence, surely. And then he remembered that Hunt had been a keen crossword solver too in his rare moments of free time; he had introduced Shannon to the particularly cryptic puzzles contained in the London Times , and the two of them had spent many a good hour solving them over drinks at the bar. Suppressing the urge to leap from his chair with a shout of Eureka! he pushed the pen back into his pocket and felt behind it for the copy of the message tucked inside his wallet. He drew out the sheet of paper, unfolded it, and smoothed it flat on the table between the Journal and his coffee cup. He read it once again, and the words took on a whole new light of meaning.

    Right there in the first line it said " cross words, " and a little farther on, " clues. " Their significance was obvious now. What about the rest of it? He had never mentioned any book to Hunt, so that part had to be just padding. Presumably the numbers that followed meant something, though. Shannon frowned and stared hard at them: 5, 24, 10, 11, and 20. . . . The sequence didn't immediately jump out and hit him for any reason. He had already tried combining them in various ways and gotten nowhere, but when he read through the message again in its new context, two of the phrases that he had barely noticed before did jump out and hit him: ". . . came across  . . ." associated with 5, 24, and 10, and immediately after: ". . . get down  . . ." associated with 11 and 20, had obvious connotations to do with crosswords: they referred to the across and down sets of clues. So presumably whatever Hunt was trying to say would be found in the answers to clues 5, 24, and 10 across, and 11 and 20 down. That had to be it.

    With rising excitement he transferred his attention to the Journal. At that moment the captain and the first navigation officer appeared in the doorway across the room, talking jovially and laughing about something. Shannon rose from his seat and picked up the Journal in one movement. Before they were three paces into the room he had passed them, walking briskly in the opposite direction and tossing back just a curt "Good morning, gentlemen," over his shoulder. They exchanged puzzled looks, turned to survey the doorway through which the Mission Director had already vanished, looked at each other again and shrugged, and sat down at an empty table.

    Back in the privacy of his stateroom, Shannon sat down at his desk and unfolded the paper once more. The clue to 5 across read, "Find the meaning of a poem to Digital Equipment Corporation (6)." The company name was well known among UNSA and scientific people; DEC computers were used for everything from preprocessing the datastreams that