Blink and You Die. Lauren Child

Чтение книги онлайн.

      RUBY WAS JUST TRYING to figure out where Hitch might have got to when she spotted a note on the table in the waiting area.

       Meet me in Froghorn’s coding room – he will be expecting you.

      She was surprised that he had arranged for them to meet there, and it was odd that Froghorn had agreed to it – with the exception of Blacker, Froghorn generally made it clear that no one was welcome in his coding room. Seeing him so soon after she had stepped back into Spectrum was an unpalatable idea, but then she remembered Clancy’s words – ‘talk to Froghorn, I bet you anything he’ll tell you whatever you wanna know, just to make you feel small.’ It was true, Froghorn couldn’t resist bragging about all the secrets he knew, and let’s face it, she thought, he loves nothing better than to drone on about the late great Bradley Baker.

      All I gotta do is get him talking, that’s not so difficult.

      Knowledge was her only weapon, the only superpower she really had. And if she was going to find out the truth about how Spectrum’s most revered agent met his end then Froghorn was her only option.

      The door to his coding room was unlocked, so she was puzzled when she discovered it empty of people. Miles Froghorn was usually very careful about security. Ruby took the opportunity to have a snoop around and she found a lot of interesting things.

      There were numerous files stacked neatly on tables, and code books marked with post-its and bookmarks, and notes carefully written in ink. There were several books on data transmission, particularly error-correcting codes that allowed computers to know whether there were mistakes in information they received. It was a subject that fascinated Ruby.

      She flipped open a book.

       Parity bits are one of the simplest systems for ensuring error-free transmission of binary data. Note though that as they indicate only whether the information contains an even or odd number of 1s or 0s, they are vulnerable to bits in the chain being swapped rather than lost, which is something they cannot …

      She stopped reading when she heard footsteps coming down the corridor. She moved away from the table and listened, but whoever it was walked right on by. She continued to peruse Froghorn’s papers. There was a whole hand-written list of what must be ideas for locking devices: swipe card, iris lock, thumbprint, keypad, image lock, bolt key, 5 key, pressure key, voice key.

      It rather looked like he had been working on some sort of multi-coded security system, because there was a diagram which was basically three squares arranged like an upside-down L, with letters and numbers marked at particular intervals, and to the side of each of the blocks: E1 E2 E3. In the middle of the third square he had written FC1 FC2 FC3. Next to these were six small pieces of coloured paper; each one was labelled with one of the sets of letters on the diagram, E1, E2, E3 etc., and on each paper was written a word or words, some crossed out, some replaced. E1, for example, said: MUSCA. E2: SWAT; E3: TRANSMISSION, F1: THE SPECTRUM. FC2 said: ROTOR MACHINE and then this was crossed out and had been replaced with CHROMATIC. FC3 was just a?