4 The First Cipher

Chapter 4 THE FIRST CIPHER It had been a long day. A ridiculously long day. It seemed like ages ago when Coke and Pep were being chased through The House on the Rock by Mrs. Higgins, their evil health teacher. They had clotheslined her with a piece of twine stretched across a walkway in the dark. Then they were grabbed by those two bowler dude maniacs dressed in suits of armor, who dragged them to Dr. Warsaw. He would have killed them for sure if they hadn't snatched away his portable electronic torture device and pushed him out of the hole in the bottom of The Infinity Room. And now, this Archie Clone lunatic had nearly deep-fried them in a pool filled with boiling oil. Some birthday. The next scheduled stop was Chicago, just

第四章第一个密码这是漫长的一天。 漫长得可笑的一天。可口可乐和佩普在岩石上的房子里被他们邪恶的健康老师希金斯太太追赶，这似乎是很久以前的事了。 他们在黑暗中用一根麻绳把她晾在过道上。 然后他们被那两个穿着盔甲的保龄球狂人抓住了，他们把他们拖到了。 华沙。要不是他们抢走了他的便携式电子刑具，把他从无限屋底部的洞里推出来，他肯定会杀了他们。 而现在，这个克隆阿奇疯子几乎把他们在一个装满滚烫油的池子里炸了。 一些生日礼物。下一站是芝加哥，只是

twenty miles away. But it's hard to find a place to park an RV overnight in such a big city. So Dr. McDonald decided to splurge and have the family spend the night at a motel in Des Plaines. He pulled into Best Western Des Plaines Inn, just down the road on Lee Street. It would be nice to sleep in a regular bed for a change. Instead of jamming the whole family into one room, they got two—one for the kids and one for the grown-ups. Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/). Click Get Directions. In the A box, type Des Plaines IL. In the B box, type Chicago IL. Click Get Directions. The twins didn't ask for cake or ice cream or some sweet treat to top off their birthday. All they wanted to do was go to sleep, and try to forget what had happened over the last twenty-four hours. They

二十英里外。但是在这样一个大城市里很难找到一个地方停放一辆房车过夜。 所以麦克唐纳医生决定挥霍一下，让这家人在德斯普兰斯的一家汽车旅馆过夜。 他把车开进了最好的西部德斯普兰斯酒店，就在这条路的尽头，李街。 换换口味，睡一张普通的床就好了。 他们没有把全家人挤在一个房间里，而是改成了两个房间——一个给孩子，一个给大人。 进入谷歌Maps （http://maps.google.com/）。 点击“获取路线”。在A框里，输入Des Plaines IL。 在B框中，输入芝加哥。 点击“获取路线”。这对双胞胎没有要求蛋糕、冰淇淋或一些甜食来结束他们的生日。 他们只想睡觉，试着忘记过去二十四小时里发生的事情。 他们

were exhausted. Before Coke took off his pants, he checked the pockets and found the tickets that Archie Clone had given him for the french fry exhibit. He turned one of them over and saw this written on the back: HATED DAY HAPPY Coke puzzled over the three words for a minute, and then handed the ticket to his sister. "What do you think this means?" he asked. Pep looked the tickets over. "It doesn't make any sense," she said. "Do you think it's just random words?" "It may be meaningless," Pep replied, "or it may be a cipher." "Oh no. Not another one," Coke groaned. Pep loved ciphers. While Coke's brain excelled at accumulating and storing huge quantities of information, Pep was good at organizing and analyzing it. She loved word games, number games, and trying to untangle secret messages and codes. She was fascinated by anything to do with spies and

都筋疲力尽了。在寇克脱下裤子之前，他检查了口袋，找到了阿奇·克隆给他的炸薯条展览门票。 他把其中一张票翻过来，看到背面写着：“讨厌的一天，快乐的可乐”，对这三个字困惑了一分钟，然后把票递给了他的妹妹。 “你认为这是什么意思？”他问。 佩普把票看了一遍。 “这没有任何意义，”她说。 “你认为这只是一些随意的词吗？”“它可能毫无意义，”佩普回答，“也可能是一个密码。” “哦,不。不要再喝了，”可口可乐呻吟道。 佩普喜欢密码。可口可乐的大脑擅长积累和存储海量信息，而佩普则擅长组织和分析这些信息。 她喜欢文字游戏、数字游戏，以及试图解开秘密信息和密码。 她对任何与间谍有关的事都着迷

spying. During their drive from California, every few days Dr. Warsaw had sent them a coded message, which Pep was always able to decipher. That's how they knew to go to The Infinity Room at The House on the Rock. Some of the messages were harder to decipher than others. But Dr. Warsaw was dead. Or at least they assumed he was dead. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was alive and HATED DAY HAPPY was another secret message from him. Or maybe he had created the message before he died. Or maybe somebody else had taken over the Genius Files operation and was sending them ciphers now. Who knew? Pep pulled out her notebook, lay down on the bed, and wrote out the letters. She stared at them. The cipher seemed pretty straightforward. It didn't look like a particularly difficult code to crack. She turned the letters backward—YPPAH YAD DETAH. Nope, that was meaningless. She wrote down every other letter, and then every third letter. She held a mirror up to the words. She transposed

从事间谍活动。在他们从加利福尼亚开车来的路上，每隔几天。 华沙给他们发了一条密码信息，佩普总能破译。 这就是为什么他们知道要去岩石上的房子的无限房间。 其中一些信息比其他的更难破译。 但是华沙医生已经死了。或者至少他们以为他死了。 也许他不是。也许他还活着，讨厌白天快乐是他的另一个秘密信息。 也可能是他在死前创造了这个信息。 也可能是另一个人接管了“天才文件”项目，现在正在给他们发送密码。 谁知道呢?佩普拿出她的笔记本，躺在床上，写下了那些信。 她盯着他们。密码看起来很简单。 这看起来并不是一个特别难破解的密码。 她把字母倒过来——yppah YAD DETAH。 不，那毫无意义。 她每隔一个字母写一次，然后每隔三个字母写一次。 她举着一面镜子对着上面的字。 她转置

the letters, and then tried jumbling them around randomly. Nothing worked. Everything she did to the cipher made it look less like real words than it had at the start. She was feeling sleepy, like her brain was working at half speed. And then, just before her eyes were about to close for the night, she figured it out. "I got it," she whispered to Coke. "It's a simple anagram." Then she wrote something in her notebook and handed it to her brother. HAPPY DEATH DAY

这些字母，然后试着把它们随机地混在一起。 毫无效果。她对密码所做的每一件事都使它看起来不像真正的单词了。 她感到困倦，好像她的大脑在半速运转。 然后，就在她即将闭上眼睛睡觉的时候，她想通了。 “我明白了，”她低声对科克说。 “这是一个简单的字谜。”然后她在笔记本上写了些东西，把它递给了她的哥哥。 忌日快乐