FRD1,FRD6. GA.
Go ahead, Townsville.
The message was not unusually long, maybe fifteen five character blocks, but after Steve sent the usual, FRD1, FRD6. AK, Townsville came right back: FRD6, FRD1. FRD1 SB. FRD1 SB.
Townsville was standing by, waiting for an answer to their message.
Steve made a cutting motion across his throat. It would take him a couple of minutes, at least, to decode the message. Ian Bruce needed a break.
And a bath. I can smell him from here.
"Bloody hell!" Ian Bruce said.
"See if you can find Lieutenant Howard, will you?"
"Right you are." Both Lieutenant Howard and Sub-Lieutenant Reeves came into the hut before Steve finished decoding the message.
"What the hell is this?" he asked, giving the decoded message to Howard.
USE AS SIMPLE SUBSTITUTION X JULIETS NAME X ROMEOS NAME X WHAT SHE THOUGHT HE HAD WHEN
THEY MET X NAME OF TEST X RESULT OF TEST X
18xl9xO9x37xll
15x23xO8xO9xll
OlxO2xO3xO4xO5
06xO7x23x3lxO5
"They've gone sodding bonkers," Sub-Lieutenant Reeves said, and then added an unpleasant afterthought. "You don't think this could be from our Nipponese churns, do you?" Steve shook his head. "No," he said. "I recognized his hand."
"I know what simple substitution is," Joe Howard said, and so should you. But who the hell is Romeo?"
"It would have to be our lad, here," Reeves said. "Neither you nor I are romantically involved at the moment."
"Lay off him," Howard said.
"No offense, Steve, my lad."
"Go fuck yourself," Steve said. "What does that `what she thought he had when they met' mean?"
"I think I know," Howard said.
He dropped to the dirt floor. They had two pads of message paper left.
He picked up one of them. Holding it on his knees, he wrote:
BarbaraJosephSyphilisWassermanNegative
"My girl's name is Barbara," he said. "Mine is Joseph. I was taking my pre-commissioning physical in San Diego, and the doctor thought I was lying when I told him I'd never had VD.
He sent me to the VD ward for a Wasserman."
"I have the oddest feeling that he actually believes he knows what he's doing," Lieutenant Reeves said.
"Barbara was the nurse on duty," Joe added.
Very carefully, he wrote numbers under the letters. When he finished, it looked like this:
BarbaraJosephSyphilisWassermanNegative
12345678901234567890123456789012345678
Then he recopied the numbers so there was space beneath them, and made the translation.
18x19x09x37x11
I l o v e
15x23xO8xO9xll
y a j o e
OlxO2xO3xO4xO5
b a r b a
06xO7x23x3lxO5
r a a n a
"Does that say anything?" Reeves asked.
"Yeah," Joe Howard whispered.
He wrote out two five-character blocks of numbers and handed them to Steve.
"You up?"
"No."
"I'll pump the goddamned bicycle. You get on the air and send that."
"What the hell does it say?" Reeves asked.