        Looking at the two messages—both of which he assumed were the same, and were probably something along the lines of can you read this—it was curious to see how the first message had been much shorter, and used fewer letters.  The words—if that is what they were—seemed to be shorter, but there were marks between the characters.  Dale had no doubt a linguist would find this fascinating, but his skills went more towards reading adventure novels and machine drawings.  This might as well be Greek—for all he knew, this might be Greek.