Chapter Twelve
I spend the evening working at the plain desk, a stack of empty paper beside me where I can try out various ciphers. The Caeser cipher is a basic substitution of alphabet letters, really only child’s play. One displacement makes B mean A and C mean B. Two displacements, three. There are twenty-five distinct ciphers, assuming both sets of alphabets go in the proper order.
If the letters are jumbled, there are over 400 trillion permutations to try. And that doesn’t even get into homophonic substitutions. Or the infinite number of other forms of codes.
The only thing I know for sure is that we’re in big trouble.
It’s like trying to crack a modern-day bank safe with a hammer and a pick. It’s technically possible but only if you have eternity. That’s how Dr. Stanhope has taug
