Adams smiled thinly. "Somehow I think Ash may have spent the afternoon thinking up a dirty deal for our Mr. Benton."
Anderson had fished the pipe out of his pocket, was loading it from his pouch. Clark was fumbling for a cigarette.
Adams looked at Shulcross. "You have something, Mr. Shulcross."
The language expert nodded. "But it's not too exciting. We opened Sutton's case and we found a manuscript. We photostated it and replaced it exactly as it was. But so far it hasn't done us any good. We can't read a word of it."
"Codes," said Blackburn.
Shulcross shook his head. "If it were code our robots would have cracked it. In an hour or two. But it's not a code. It's language. And until you get a key a language can't be cracked."
"You've checked, of course."
Shulcross smiled glumly. "Back to the old Earth languages…back to Babylon and Crete. We cross-checked every lingo in the galaxy. None of them came close."
"Language," said Blackburn. "A new language. That means Sutton found something."
"Sutton would," said Adams. "He's the best agent that I have."