by E. C. Tubb
"I think so." Again Dumarest concentrated. "Yes, that's it. A number game of some kind."
"Or a mnemonic!" She reached for paper and a style. "A key learned in order to remember something of greater complexity. Now let me see." She scribbled, frowned, scribbled again. "Take the first line. Numbers can be spoken many ways so 324067 could be a sum total of an identifying number or even a code."
"A cypher?"
"Maybe, but I doubt it. That would add an undesired complexity." She scribbled again, gnawing at her bottom lip. "Three lots of six digits-what do they look like in a column? A row?" A moment then she shook her head. "It could mean anything but it has to be basically simple for it to be remembered. It must apply to something-but what?"
"The words?" Dumarest looked at the marks she had made. "What about the words?"
"Most probably they are a unifying doggeral. The figures must be the important factor. The figures?" Her voice dropped as she mumbled, "Three, two, four, zero, six, seven--Earl!"
"You've got it?"
"Drop the zeros and what do you have?" She shook her head at his expression. "Sorry, you're not a navigator, I am. Drop the zeros and you've three lots of five units. Navigational data, Earl! We don't use double figures because of possible confusion. So if I, as a navigator, say 'thirty-two, twenty', I'm really saying 'three, two, two.' Understand?"
She ignored his nod, burning with the excitement of discovery, eager to demonstrate facts he already knew.
"Think of the galaxy as a sphere," she urged. "A huge onion if you like. Cut it open and imagine it to be in layers. Nine of them numbered from the middle out. Each layer is divided into nine others and so on. Do you follow me?"
"Concentric circles," he said. "Eighty-one of them in nine separate zones."
"You've got it. Now take the first line; 3,2,4,6,7-we forget the zero. That's the third band out from the center, the second band from the inner edge of the third, the fourth from the inner edge of that and so on. That gives the first set of coordinates. The second lies on the plane which is divided like the rest. But how to tell which one?"
"The words," said Dumarest. He forced himself to be calm. "They must hold the clue."
Her lips moved as she read the doggeral. "That's the way to get to Heaven." We've found that. The next?" Her frown deepened. "Are you following me?" She looked at Dumarest then back at the paper. "Are you-" Her tone changed. "RU! Radial Unit! RU following me! Me? Meridian! The radial unit following the meridian. That means RU 1. And the rest? Up or down? North or south of the galactic equator? Which, damn it? Up or-" She broke off, one hand slapping the table to signal success. "Up, Earl. It has to be up. The words hold the answer. Up good people live and thrive. So that's it. We have the circumpolar location, the radial unit-, and angular position. All held in the mnemonic jingle." Her voice rose a little. "And remember where you got it from. Earl-these are the coordinates of Earth!"
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