"Sounds reasonable," Scotty agreed. "Keep plugging."
So far, the probable words were: Come both bad.
Page 276 in the fourth group turned out to be a table of atomic weights. Line 86 was the element tantalum. If the first figure of the last pair was assumed to be a null, the word was the symbol for tantalum: "Ta."
Rick stared at it. "Something's wrong. This doesn't make sense."
Barby asked impatiently, "How do we know?"
Rick yielded and moved to the next group. It gave the word "rubles." "That's Russian money," he said.
The trio looked at it in bewilderment, then Scotty suddenly let out a yell of laughter. "I've got it! Can't you see? 'Ta' and 'rubles' go together! 'Tarubles.' Troubles!"
Then they were all howling with joy. Leave it to Chahda to dream up something like that, Rick thought. So far, the message made sense. Come both, bad troubles.
He turned the pages and counted feverishly. The sixth group gave "am," the seventh "in."
The eighth group gave the message an ominous tone.