urned the pages and counted feverishly. The sixth group gave "am,"
the seventh "in."

The eighth group gave the message an ominous tone.

_Come both. Bad troubles. Am in danger._

The scientists and Mrs. Brant were looking over Rick's shoulder now,
too.

The ninth group stopped them for a moment because the pair of figures
standing for the word was 14. If the figure 1 was a null, the word was
"the." But there were more than 14 words in the line, and the 14th was
"my."

Rick looked at the faces around him. "I think it's 'my' because he must
have had a reason for using nulls. If I were making up the code, I'd use
them because sometimes there are enough words in a line so you need two
figures and sometimes not. But you always have to put down two figures
so the groups will be even."

"Good thinking," Rick's father complimented him. "Go ahead on that
basis. But hurry up. The suspense is awful."

There was a chorus of agreements.

The next word was "boss."

"He was working, then," Scotty guessed. "That must be it, if he has a
boss."

Rick hurried to the next group. It produced "Carl." Page 439, the 96th
line, gave "Bradley." Then the boss's name was Carl Bradley.

Hartson Brant gave a muffled exclamation. Scotty turned quickly. "Do you
know that name, Dad?"

"Yes. But let's get the rest of the message. Quickly, Rick."

The words appeared in rapid succession, with a pause now and then to
solve a new difficulty. Once, the lines across the columns were not even
and a ruler had to be laid across to find the word. Again, a null
appeared as the first number in the page group. Chahda had used it
because the page was 51 and he needed a third figure to round out the
group. That was easy to spot because the group read 951 and the book had
only 912 pages.

In the last series of groups Rick came across another double word like
"tarubles." This time, "be" and "ware" combined to make "beware." Then,
the very last word stopped them for a moment. It was "umbra."

"What's that?" Scotty asked.

"The shadow cast by the moon during an eclipse of the sun," Julius Weiss
answered. "Or part of it, rather. There are two shadows. The umbra and
the penumbra."

Barby ran for a dictionary and leafed through the pages quickly. "I have
it," she said. "Listen. It's from the Latin for 'shadow,' and it means
'a shade or shadow.'"

"Shadow it is," Rick said, and wrote it down. Then, slowly, he read the
full message to the serious grou