Reunion on Neverend by John E. Stith

Author:John E. Stith [Stith, John E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Neverend Books
Published: 2008-06-08T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Unchaperoned

Lan turned to Carrie. "Has your computer made any more progress?"

She sat back and took the computer from her pocket. A moment later she said, "Some, but I don't know that it's enough. It's decoded a phrase from that section up there—" she pointed "—near the symbols for atoms. It says 'combined'—or 'together'—and 'divided' or 'apart.'"

"That certainly helps," Tessa said.

Lan moved to the section Carrie had indicated. Just above the row of atom symbols was unintelligible text. "Maybe it does help. Think back to when our friends opened the door. What did they do?"

Onta suddenly hummed.

Lan spun toward Onta and squatted in front of her. "Exactly. Sorry I was a little slow."

Tessa said, "You're talking about that the tones that little gadget of theirs produced, right?"

Lan said, "Right. It sounded like four tones to me, but I guess it's possible they used three or five."

Carrie said, "And the drawing shows four atoms, a dividing line, and what may be a number."

Lan looked back up at the wall. "Maybe 'dividing line' is the key. If the people who left this installation behind wanted the gate to be open to people who had at least a minimum of knowledge, they could have left the atom symbols to represent numbers that only people with that kind of knowledge could convert to numbers."

"What kind of numbers?" Parke asked.

"I don't know. If it was just as simple as the number of protons or neutrons in the nucleus, then their picture could give that away."

"So," Tessa said, "if they meant a frequency associated with a particular atom—like an absorption frequency—that would be something we'd have to know about."

"Exactly."

Carrie frowned. "But if we need to convert that to some audible frequency, say by stripping zeros off the end, our units won't necessarily agree with theirs."

"They said 'divided.' Maybe we divide a frequency associated with each of those atoms on the left by whatever number that is on the right. Whatever time units they used wouldn't matter, because we'd take the frequency numbers in our own units, and after we do the division, they're still in our own units."

Tessa said suddenly, "And the 'combined' would mean the tones are played together, like Wilby did when he opened the door."

"Exactly. This may not be precisely the right method, but it fits what we see so far, and it fits what we saw them do. And we know they were able to figure it out."

Carrie said, "Unless that gizmo they had was left behind by the people who built this."

Lan shook his head. "It's possible, but I doubt it. The people who built this must have been pretty smart. And they left these clues for how to get in. It seems unlikely that they would have forgotten and just left a key on the doormat."

Tessa looked at the sealed airlock door. "So, all we have to do is have the computer generate the right four tones?"

Lan nodded. "Maybe. As soon as we have a guess as to the four numbers to pick.

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