The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone Read Online Free PDF Page A

he meant, and he said, ‘when things are missing, you look for them!’ You’re all pretty brainy, so the first step for us is, what letters are missing?”
    Lily had apparently already figured it out and told them with a grin. “ A , B , E , L , N , R , S , T ,and U !”
    “Good,” Dr. Kaplan said. He wrote them on Darrell’s pad.
     
    A B E L N R S T U
     
    “Nine letters. The cipher begins as a fairly simple Caesar code, a substitution code originated a couple of thousand years ago by Julius Caesar for his private letters. Heinrich was a student of ciphers, and he modified this in his own way.
    “So, the letters not on the map form a secret word or phrase. You unscramble the missing letters to find the words, then put them at the beginning of the alphabet to make the full twenty-six letters again.”
    “Nine letters could spell a lot of words,” said Darrell.
    Dr. Kaplan nodded. “But they should somehow be familiar to the person for whom the code is intended . . .” He paused, stroking his chin. “My diary. I kept a journal then, a student notebook, where I wrote down lecture notes and random things. It’s in my office. Hold on.” He left the room at a trot.
    “We can start,” said Becca. “ A , B , E , L , N , R , S , T ,and U. Let’s think.”
    The dining room went quiet, except for Darrell’s pencil scratching and occasional humming and Lily’s fingers tapping on the tablet’s screen. Becca frowned and looked off across the room.
    Wade tried to think, but the image of Uncle Henry inking the maps in gold was mesmerizing. Was it by candlelight, their student faces glowing? Was his apartment as hushed as their dining room was right now? Why did he do it in the first place?
    His father returned, leafing through a small black notebook. “Maybe the answer is somewhere in here . . .”
    “I get the words rest , nut , and eat ,” Darrell said finally.
    “Of course you do,” said Lily. “I see ears .”
    “I get lean burst ,” said Becca with a smile. “Do I get a prize for using all the letters?”
    Wade resisted jumping up and shouting, “Yes, you do!”
    But the more he studied the letters, the more they began to shift places like the panels in one of those number slide puzzles. This was how his mind often solved math problems. His father said he was a natural at numbers. And now, apparently, at letters, too.
    Common combinations . . . S . . . T . . . slid forward and back . . . vowels moved and moved again. Fixing his eyes on the letters, Wade went through them again, again, then click. Solved. Or sort of solved. Hecleared his throat. “Well . . .”
    Four faces looked at him.
    “One thing the letters spell is blue star with an extra n ,” he said. “I don’t know what the n stands for, but a blue star is a real thing. If a star appears blue, it means it’s approaching Earth.”
    Dr. Kaplan stared at the letters on the pad, nodding. Then he turned to the last page in his notebook and smiled. “Oh, boy. Close. Very close. But look.”
    As they watched him, he slowly rewrote blue star n as blau stern .
    “ Blau stern ?” said Becca. “That’s blue star in German.”
    “Exactly,” Dr. Kaplan said, showing them the words in his notebook. “ Blau Stern was the name of the café in Berlin where we met after classes—”
    “I knew it!” said Darrell. “Your spy hangout!”

Chapter Six
    R oald blew out a fast breath. “Hardly, Darrell. But we’ve done it. Good work. What we do now is take the secret phrase and add it to the beginning of the incomplete alphabet to make a full twenty-six letters.”
    They rewrote the alphabet.
     
    B L A U S T E R N C D F G H I J K M O P Q V W X Y Z
     
    “Now we arrange the normal ABC alphabet under it?” asked Lily.
    “Not quite,” Dr. Kaplan said. “Instead of a second alphabet, Heinrich added an extra step. We need a number key. We have to know how many letters we count from the coded letter to find the proper letter for the