"James P. Hogan - Giants 3 - Giant's Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

Regards
Vic

Not a word of it meant anything to him. He knew Hunt well enough to be reasonably sure
that something serious was behind the message, and all he could think of was that Hunt was trying
to tell him something highly confidential. But why would Hunt go to this kind of trouble when UNSA
possessed a perfectly adequate system of security codes? Surely it wasn't possible that somebody
could be eavesdropping on the UNSA net, somebody equipped with enough computer power to render its
protective measures unreliable. On the other hand, Shannon reflected soberly, the Germans had
thought exactly that in World War II, and the British, with their "Turing Engine" at Bletchley,
had been able to read the complete radio traffic between Hitler and his generals, frequently even
before the intended recipients. Certainly this message would mean nothing to any third party even
though it had come through in plain English, which made it appear all the more innocuous. The
problem was that it didn't mean anything to Shannon, either.

Shannon was still brooding about the message early the next morning when he sat down for
breakfast in the senior officers' dining quarters. He liked to eat early, before the captain, the
first navigation officer, and the others who were usually on early shift appeared. It gave him
time to collect his thoughts for the day and keep up with events elsewhere by browsing through the
Interplanetary Journal-a daily newspaper beamed out from 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: jouiNAL 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



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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 further on, "clues."
Their significance was obvious now. What about the rest of it? He had never mentioned any book to