The communications were encrypted, but even the encryption could be a tipoff to an enemy who might be listening in.

Zip had begged him to send just a quick, encrypted message that Z25 was to expect three visitors who had Vly's seal of approval-no more.

On top of that, the message was encrypted and designed to travel on the microwaves similar to those in the background of space.

It was encrypted so we couldn't read it, but we didn't have to know what the message was to know where it went.

On Ceres, Sim Sala Bim received the encrypted message on tight beam, and felt immense sadness come over him as he read it.

He then encrypted it and transmitted the result on a tight beam communicator to coordinates in space which he kept only in his head.

"Encrypted message from Captain Marks-Owens, sir," came an artificial, mellow voice through the high-level communication system.

Then he speeded it up so that the complete message lasted 0.027 seconds, encrypted it, inserted the disk into his personal computer, and transmitted it.