She turned to confront him with out-thrust jaw and hands planted firmly on hips. "Listen, Limey—I've got a right to an opinion, okay? So, that's what I think it is. That's my opinion."

"Okay, okay." Gray held up his hands. "Let's not start the War of Independence all over again. I'll note it in the lab file: 'Lyn thinks it's a—'"

"Holy Christ!" Hunt cut him off in midsentence. He was staring wide-eyed at the tank. "Do you know, she could be right! She could just be bloody right!"

Gray turned back to face the side of the tank. "How come?"

"Well, look at it. Those larger groups could be something like months, and the labeled sets that keep repeating inside them could be weeks made up of days. After all, days and years have to be natural units in any calendar system. See what I mean?"

Gray looked dubious. "I'm not so sure," he said slowly. "It's nothing like our year, is it? I mean, there's a hell of a lot more than three hundred sixty-five numbers in that lot, and a lot more than twelve months, or whatever they are—aren't there?"

"I know. Interesting?"

"Hey. I'm still here," said a small voice behind them. They moved apart and half turned to let her in on the proceedings,

"Sorry," Hunt said. "Getting carried away." He shook his head and regarded her with an expression of disbelief.

"What on Earth made you say a calendar?"

She shrugged and pouted her lips. "Don't know, really. The book over there looks like a diary. Every diary I ever saw had calendars in it. So, it had to be a calendar."

Hunt sighed. "So much for scientific method. Anyway, let's run a shot of it. I'd like to do some sums on it later." He looked back at Lyn. "No—on second thought, you run it. This is your discovery."

She frowned at him suspiciously. "What d'you want me to do?"

"Sit down there at the master console. That's right. Now activate the control keyboard . . . Press the red button—that one."

"What do I do now?"

"Type this: FC comma DACCO seven slash PCH dot P sixty-seven slash HCU dot one. That means 'functional control mode, data access program subsystem number seven selected, access data file reference "Project Charlie, Book one," page sixty-seven, optical format, output on hard copy unit, one copy.'"

"It does? Really? Great!"

She keyed in the commands as Hunt repeated them more slowly. At once a hum started up in the hard copier, which stood next to the scanner. A few seconds later a sheet of glossy paper flopped into the tray attached to the copier's side. Gray walked over to collect it.

"Perfect," he announced.

"This makes me a scope expert, too," Lyn informed them brightly.

Hunt studied the sheet briefly, nodded, and slipped it into a folder lying on top of the console.

"Doing some homework?" she asked.