20 A Lost World

Chapter 20 A LOST WORLD When he woke up on the morning of July 16, Coke felt sore all over, but a little better in his head. There's something about getting a good night's sleep that helps to put yesterday behind you. The McDonald family got back on the road. Route 180 headed east and merged with I-20. From there, it was a straight shot south on I-35 all the way to Waco, Texas. It doesn't sound like much, but it was a long drive, over two hours. Most drives in Texas are long drives. It takes about twelve hours to cross the state. That's with no rest stops. About 740 miles. Do you know how long it takes to drive the highway across the middle of New Jersey? Forty-five minutes. About forty miles. Don't believe me?

7月16日早晨，当可乐醒来时，他感到全身酸痛，但他的头脑好了一点。 晚上睡个好觉能让你忘掉昨天。 麦当劳一家又重新上路了。 180号公路向东，与20号州际公路汇合。 从那里，沿着I-35号公路一直向南，一直到德克萨斯州的韦科。 听起来不算什么，但车程很长，两个多小时。 在德州开车大多是长途行驶。 穿过这个州大约需要12个小时。 这是没有休息站的。 大约740英里。你知道开车穿过新泽西中部的高速公路需要多长时间吗？ 四十五分钟。大约40英里。 不相信我？

Look it up. Of course, the speed limit in some parts of Texas is over eighty miles per hour. And forget about driving the speed limit. If you drive the speed limit in Texas, the other cars will be all over your back bumper like cheese on macaroni. Dr. McDonald liked driving fast, and now he had a car that liked it just as much as he did. Pep pulled out her notepad to work on the latest cipher. She felt a renewed urgency now. Somebody was out to get them. Her brother's skills were effective, but they weren't enough. She would have to use her wits to survive. Solving the cipher could be the key. While their parents were flipping around the radio stations in the front seat, Pep took the letters QBUXPOXKDBO and did just about everything she could do to crack the code. She looked at the letters backward. Upside-down. Sideways. QBUXPOXKDBO

查一下。当然，德克萨斯州某些地区的限速是每小时80英里以上。 别再想着超速驾驶了。 如果你在德克萨斯州超速行驶，其他的车会像奶酪在通心粉上一样挤在你的后保险杠上。 麦克唐纳博士喜欢开快车，现在他有了一辆和他一样喜欢开快车的车。 佩普拿出她的记事本，开始研究最新的密码。 她现在感到一种新的紧迫感。 有人想要干掉他们。 她哥哥的技巧很有效，但还不够。 她必须运用她的智慧才能生存。 破解密码可能就是关键。 当他们的父母在前座翻看电台时，佩普拿着QBUXPOXKDBO这两个字母，尽她所能破解密码。 她倒着看那些字母。 翻了个底朝天。横盘整理。QBUXPOXKDBO

"Oh man!" Coke said as he looked over her shoulder. "That looks impossible." "You're intimidated by the Q and the Xs," Pep told him. "It doesn't matter what the letters are. They just represent other letters. Let's break it down. Eleven letters. This is probably two words, maybe three." "So?" "The only letters that appear twice are the two Xs and two Bs, see?" she continued. "So they very possibly represent E and A." "Why do you say that?" Coke asked. "Because E and A are two of the most commonly used letters," Pep replied. She studied the cipher for a long time, occasionally furrowing her brow or wrinkling up her nose as she worked on it silently. "I can almost see the wheels turning in your head," Coke said as he watched her. Pep stopped for a moment. "That gives me an idea!" she said as she turned to a clean page in her notepad and drew

“哦!”科克说着，从她的肩膀上看过去。 “这看起来不可能。”“你被Q和x吓倒了，”佩普告诉他。 “字母是什么并不重要。 它们只是代表其他字母。 让我们来分析一下。11个字母。 这可能是两个词，也可能是三个词。” “所以?”“唯一出现两次的字母是两个x和两个b，看到了吗？”她继续说道。 “所以它们很可能代表E和a。” “你为什么这么说？”可口可乐问道。 “因为E和A是两个最常用的字母，”佩普回答。 她研究了很长时间的密码，偶尔皱着眉头或皱着鼻子，默默地研究着。 “我几乎能看到你脑袋里的轮子在转动，”科克看着她说。 佩普停了一会儿。“这给了我一个灵感！”她一边说一边翻到记事本上空白的一页开始画画

a circle. "This could be a shift cipher." "Shift cipher?" her brother asked. "What does that mean?" Pep didn't bother answering. Instead, she wrote the letters of the alphabet around the circle, going clockwise. "You shift all the letters of the alphabet by a fixed amount," Pep explained. "Back in Roman times, that's what Julius Caesar did to keep his messages secret." "How can you possibly know that?" Coke

一个圆。“这可能是一个移位密码。” “移位密码？”她哥哥问。 “这是什么意思？”佩普没有回答。 相反，她沿着顺时针的方向，绕着圆圈写字母表中的字母。 “你把字母表中的所有字母移动一个固定的量，”佩普解释说。 “在罗马时代，尤利乌斯·凯撒就是这样保密的。” “你怎么可能知道呢？”可口可乐

asked his sister. "I know some stuff, and you know some stuff," Pep replied. "Look. Let's say the two Bs are actually Es. That would mean that all the letters have been shifted counterclockwise by two. And if that's true, the two Xs are As." Pep wrote the cipher out again, with the new letters. QEUAPOAKDEO "That doesn't help much," Coke remarked. "No," Pep said, "but it might if we shift all the letters counterclockwise by two." With that logic, the Q became a T, the U became an X, and the P became an S. Pep wrote them down. "Texas!" Coke said. "QBUXP is Texas!" "And OXKDBO is Pep said as she tackled the rest of the letters one at a time, "RA- N-G-E-R! Texas Ranger! That's a baseball team, right?" "It's also a law enforcement agency," Coke told her. "They investigate crime and stuff. But

他妹妹问。“我知道一些，你也知道一些，”佩普回答。 “看。假设这两个b实际上是Es。 这就意味着所有的字母都逆时针移动了两个。 如果这是真的，那两个x就是a。” 佩普又用新的字母把密码写了一遍。 “那没有多大帮助，”科克说。 “不，”佩普说，“但如果我们把所有的字母逆时针移动两个，就会有可能。” 按照这个逻辑，Q变成了T， U变成了X， P变成了S。 佩普把它们写了下来。“德州!”可口可乐表示。 “QBUXP是德克萨斯州！”佩普一边说着OXKDBO，一边把剩下的字母一个一个地拼起来，“RA- N-G-E-R!”德州骑警!那是一支棒球队，对吧？”“这也是一个执法机构，”科克告诉她。 “他们调查犯罪之类的。 但

what does that have to do with the other clues we got—the piece of the Blarney Stone, or Hub City, or anything?" "Beats me," Pep admitted glumly. "Can't help you there." Dutifully, she wrote out the clues they had so far: 1. I WILL MEET YOU IN LLANO ESTACADO 2. A PIECE OF THE BLARNEY STONE 3. HUB CITY 4. TEXAS RANGER The Ferrari approached the outskirts of Waco. The city is on the Brazos River and was first settled by the Huaco Indians. You would not call it a small town. The population is over 124,000. "Did you know that Dr Pepper was invented in Waco in 1885?" Mrs. McDonald reported from the front seat. "Oh no," Coke grumbled. "Please don't tell

这和我们得到的其他线索有什么关系——巧言石的碎片，或者枢纽城，或者任何东西？”“我不知道，”佩普闷闷不乐地承认。 “我帮不了你。”她尽职尽责地写下了他们目前掌握的线索：1。 我们在大庄园2号见。 一块巧言之石。 枢纽城市4。这辆法拉利驶近韦科郊区。 这座城市位于布拉索斯河畔，最初是华科印第安人定居的。 你不会把它叫做小镇。 人口超过12.4万。 “你知道胡椒博士是1885年在韦科发明的吗？”麦克唐纳夫人从前座向我报告。 “哦，不，”可口可乐抱怨道。“请不要说