        He turned away from the water and saw a large section of writing on the beach.  He studied it briefly, counting fourteen characters in the first row, with some having more sketched underneath them.  The only conclusion he could draw from the display was that the aliens were quite versatile—this seemed to be yet another method of communication.  Could it be that they were all short words, arranged to be read vertically?  He thought maybe Japanese or Chinese was written that way.  No character seemed to be repeated, though, and each character in a following row appeared to be a permutation of the character in the first row.  