"The Atlantis Prophecy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greanias Thomas)

155.1.6
142.8.1
48.7.5
111.2.8
54.3.4

Ah, finally something familiar.

From the looks of them, Conrad guessed the numbers were in "book code." Each string of three numbers represented a word. The first number was the page of the book. The second was the line on that page. The third was the actual word on that line. So the five sets of numbers meant there were five words, which together formed a phrase or message. That message would be key to unlocking the meaning of the star coordinates.

The problem with book codes was that they were impossible to break-unless you had the book on which they were based, usually a specific book and edition possessed by both the sender and the recipient.

This has to be the book, Conrad thought as he picked up The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It was the only book his father ever gave him, and his father had taught him the cipher when Conrad was into codes as a Boy Scout at age ten, the same age as Tom Sawyer in the book.

Conrad sat back in the sofa and cracked open the front cover of the novel. It was an unauthorized, non-illustrated edition published in Toronto by Belford Brothers Publishers in July 1876, months before the authorized American edition came out. Conrad remembered how, like Tom Sawyer, he wanted to be a pirate as a child. And this edition was the "pirate" version that a furious Mark Twain claimed was stolen from the typesetters.

He glanced at the string of numbers he had copied down and flipped through the pages of the book. The first of the five strings-155.1.6-directed Conrad to page 155, line 1, word 6.

Conrad flipped to page 155 and deciphered the first number: