The Second Ship (31 page)

Chapter 68

The knock on the door of the McFarland house came just as they had all seated themselves for Sunday dinner, Heather’s father at one end of the table, Mr. Smythe at the other, with the other family members congregated around the feast in hungry anticipation.

“Damn. It’s probably one of those magazine sales people,” said Heather’s dad, rising.

“Now be nice,” her mother called after him.

As he opened the door, Heather’s heart leaped into her throat.

“Jack. Janet. We were just sitting down to dinner. Don’t just stand out there, come on in and join us.”

“Thank you, but we wouldn’t want to impose. We just stopped by to check on Heather.”

Heather’s mother moved across the room toward them with a look that brooked no opposition.

“Nonsense. I won’t hear of it. You two are adopted members of our family as surely as if you lived next door. Besides, I’m not going to have room in my refrigerator for all the leftovers if you don’t help us. Here now. Jack, you grab that chair, and Gil, you get another and we’ll just make room.”

Mr. Smythe shook Jack’s hand. “You might as well get used to the drop in anytime routine that we’ve abused over the years. If Anna really minded, she would have run us off a long time ago. You may have noticed that shyness isn’t one of her faults.”

Janet laughed, leading the way toward the others, who had risen to welcome the new arrivals. “How can we refuse? To tell the truth, we were just headed out to eat, but I would much rather have some good home cooking.”

Jack’s eyes locked Heather’s in an analytical gaze that made her feel as though he were wearing x-ray specs, hardly the most pleasant of thoughts.

“It’s great to see that you’ve recovered from your ordeal,” Jack said.

“Thanks to you. If you hadn’t come along when you did, I doubt I would be here.”

“Do you remember much of it? Sorry. I shouldn't ask.”

“No, it’s all right. Especially since the answer is no. I don’t remember much of anything. Just getting hauled out the window, banging my head, and waking up in the hospital.”

“I noticed the police outside. I’m glad to see they assigned a watch, even though I doubt the Rag Man will return.”

Heather’s mother put her hand to her mouth. “The whole thing has me so nervous that I don’t think I could stay here if it weren’t for the police.”

Heather’s father put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Anna. I’m having the best alarm system they make installed tomorrow. No one is going to be getting past that. And if someone does try to get in, I’ll let Mr. Smith and Wesson talk him out of it.”

Janet moved over to put an arm around Heather’s shoulders. “Jack, I think we’ve had quite enough of this conversation tonight. If nobody objects, I propose that we divert our attention to the wonderful meal cooling on the table.”

Jack nodded. “Sorry. You’re right, babe. I didn’t mean to upset everyone.”

Heather’s mother managed to recover her smile. “Apology accepted. Now if everyone will sit down, I’ll get the biscuits out of the oven before they burn.”

As good as the meal was, Heather’s appetite had departed. While she was grateful to Jack for having saved her life, she found herself wondering what else had brought him here this Sunday evening. It was stupid, really. Jack would naturally want to check in on a person whose life he had saved the night before.

A quick glance at Jennifer revealed she was also having a difficult time eating everything on her plate. Even Mark appeared distracted, but that was most likely because Janet sat beside him, asking about the upcoming basketball tournament.

Heather half expected a couple of buttons on Mark’s shirt to come flying across the table as his chest expanded. The smirk on Jack’s face indicated that he had also noticed the effect his wife was having on Mark.

As the evening wore on, all signs of the earlier tension in the room evaporated. By the time Jack and Janet said their good-byes, Heather almost regretted seeing them go, and both sets of parents certainly did. They were such a charming couple, you just wanted them around. Something about that scared Heather worse than anything else she knew about them.

Shortly after the departure of the Johnsons, the Smythes also made their way back to their own house. Heather followed Mark and Jennifer out onto the driveway. Catching Mark’s eye, she leaned in close.

“You better get that bug detector working, quick.”

“Fret not. I’m on it.”

As Heather watched them disappear through their doorway, a single thought blocked out all others.

It was definitely time to give Jack and Janet something new to think about.

Chapter 69

2:30 a.m.

Donald Stephenson moved through the near darkness of the cavernous room with his head bowed in thought. One of the advantages of not needing sleep was that it gave him more time for thought, and deep thought was something at which he excelled.

Everyone knew that he worked long hours and slept very little, but only he knew how little he slept: never. And judging by the incompetence of the team of scientists that worked for him on the project, it was a very good thing he did not need any rest. Complete morons, the lot of them.

It really irked the deputy director to have to disrupt the truly challenging work that lay before him to have to deal with trivial things, like the formulation of the nanite suspension fluid. But no amount of pressure could drive Dr. Frederick’s team to an adequate solution.

So tonight, in a matter of four hours, Dr. Stephenson had interrupted his own work, made his way to Dr. Frederick's section of the lab, and devised his own working formulation. Then, having left a disparaging note with the description of the production process, Dr. Stephenson made his way back to the Rho Ship. Idiots.

As he moved up the ramp and through the inner passageways of the ship, Dr. Stephenson glanced up at the arrays of sensors and video monitors that had been installed throughout. Nothing happened on this ship that was not recorded, scrutinized, and analyzed to the nth degree. Not just by himself, but by the assortment of government watchdogs for the program, some of which were under his direct influence while others were not.

Because of this detailed monitoring, Dr. Stephenson had added a few after-hours enhancements to the system’s inner workings. A sequence of post-processing algorithms ran the data constantly, usually just passing the input signals, unmodified, to the recording and analysis systems.

But anything that involved Dr. Stephenson’s passage into or out of his private third of the Rho Ship did not show up. During these times, the video, audio, and other assorted systems showed him moving about other areas of the ship, working on typical, mundane tasks.

The same was true for those rare instances, such as with Dr. Nancy Anatole, when he had taken someone else back with him. The systems within the inner portion of the ship alerted him whenever an unexpected visitor approached, allowing him plenty of time to make his exit and greet them.

Tonight his long, lanky stride carried Dr. Stephenson rapidly to the wall that blocked access to the ship’s rear third. He stopped, his hands tracing out the complex fractal pattern required to gain entrance. The door whisked open, snapping shut again behind him, leaving him immersed in a light as colorless as shadow on asphalt.

The apparatus that drew him through the narrow rows of equipment and cables occupied the very center of the large room. It was by far the largest single mechanism on the Rho Ship. To develop an understanding of what it did and how it had once worked had taken him thirteen years.

But the onboard power systems had been so badly damaged by the subspace weapon that brought the ship down that they would never again be capable of powering the device. And even if it worked, it simply was not large enough for his needs. Still, it had provided the blueprint.

Running his hands lovingly across its brutish lines, Dr. Stephenson smiled, his face contorting like a Mardi Gras mask.

This coming project was going to take time, but that was something the deputy director had in abundance. In the meantime, global acceptance of cold fusion was going swimmingly.

Very soon now, he would undertake the government release of the second alien technology. It would sweep the planet like wildfire, as the people of nation after nation demanded to be the next to get it. After a long procession of petty dictators’ misguided attempts, Stephenson had finally set mankind’s train in motion. Next stop…Utopia.

Chapter 70

The last two weeks had passed so quickly it seemed to Heather they were gone in the blink of an eye. Of course, the buzz around school was all about basketball and how the Hilltoppers had breezed through the district tournament. Now it was on to the state basketball tournament at The Pit in Albuquerque, the traditional home court of the University of New Mexico Lobos.

But what had made the time truly fly was the progress Mark, Heather, and Jennifer made on the cold fusion power supply that would drive their subspace transmitter. The initial tests had gone so well that they had grown cocky, something that had nearly gotten them all killed last Saturday morning.

Deciding that they were ready for a full up test, the three teens had brought the power supply online. Jennifer had been at the controls while Heather monitored measured power output versus that predicted by the mathematical model. All had gone well until a diode on the primary control circuit board burned out, sending a massive power spike through the system. Only Jennifer’s quick reflexes in switching to the backup controller had prevented the power from reaching dangerous, perhaps even deadly, levels.

Although Heather thought the scare probably took two years off her expected life span, the test demonstrated that their backup system worked. It also convinced them they needed more automated fail-safe circuitry.

While Jennifer worked on that, Mark finished building a sophisticated bug detector. A sweep of their houses revealed three bugs in each house, not counting the phone lines, which they just assumed were being monitored. Tiny transmitters were hidden in each kitchen, office, and master bedroom.

After the initial sweep, Mark had become concerned there might also be hidden burst transmitters, which stored data but only sent out quick transmissions at infrequent intervals. Only after he had conducted an extended test did he relax, convinced he had found every bug.

Heather’s personal life was improving too. With the Rag Man gone, her mood lifted, restoring a joy that she had not realized was missing. Also, Raul was rapidly becoming a very good friend, not in the same way that Mark and Jennifer were almost family, but a good friend nonetheless. He didn’t press his attentions on her. He was just there when she needed someone to talk to, providing a respite from the drama surrounding her and the twins.

In a wonderful departure from what you would normally expect from a boy his age, Raul listened to her with an easiness that showed he didn’t feel he had to prove himself to her. And that allowed him to actually hear what she was saying. Even his strongly held religious beliefs built no wall between them. In fact, when Heather had asked to attend one of Raul’s Bible study sessions, he had laughed but demurred, telling her that he just wouldn’t feel right pushing his beliefs on her. It gave Heather a warm feeling inside to be around someone who had such a perfect understanding of who he was.

But this was a new Saturday, and there was no time for more than fleeting thoughts of school, basketball tournaments, or even Raul. Heather had barely gotten to sleep last night. After all, today was the day.

Heather had even begged off on the family shopping trip to Santa Fe, saying the science project demanded her full attention today. Although her mother had looked skeptical, her dad had understood. A science project was a science project. Heather had not even had to lie, except by omission.

Today was the day when she, Jennifer, and Mark would become the first humans to tap into the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet as it was more commonly known, via an undetectable subspace signal. Actually, that wasn’t quite right. The subspace signal could be detected, but only if you had a correctly tuned subspace receiver, something that was pretty unlikely.

Heather was so excited she could barely contain herself. If all went according to plan, they could generate a remote digital signal on any line in the world, assuming they could attain the exact four-dimensional coordinates for that line. And that went for fiber-optic lines as readily as wired networks.

That concept was truly magical: In an optical fiber line, light carried the information instead of an electrical signal, as in a wire line. But in the subspace to normal space interface, there was no difference in the way either signal was generated. It was delicious. The NSA was about to get quite a shock.

It was no great surprise for Heather to discover that Mark and Jennifer were already gathered around the computerized control system for their subspace transmitter by the time she entered the Smythe garage. Her two friends huddled under the tall halogen lamp that provided indirect illumination to the work area.

Heather slid into the folding chair beside Jennifer, a spot she had come to think of as the copilot’s seat. As Jennifer’s fingers danced across the keyboard of the laptop, gradually bringing the cold fusion tank online, Heather monitored the output indicators. So long as everything stayed within projected norms, she just had to help with the tuning of the subspace wave steering.

Mark was on call with his language skills. Since seeing Jack deal with the Rag Man, Mark had become fascinated with spy agencies. He had read everything he could find on the subject and had also determined to understand the technical side of remotely tapping into the SIPRNet.

“So we’re going to tap into one of the lines directly inside the Puzzle Palace?” Mark asked.

“That’s the plan,” said Heather. “We have the coordinates for the building on Ft. Meade, but picking a line is going to take us a while.”

“From what I read, all of the SIPRNet lines will be shielded in TEMPEST-rated facilities.”

Jennifer raised her head. “What is TEMPEST?”

Mark turned back toward his sister. “It’s a code word used to describe the way secure systems have to be shielded so that the electromagnetic signals they give off can’t be monitored remotely.”

“Yes,” said Heather. “Even typing on a keyboard produces little electronic signals that leak out into the surrounding space. They are weak, but if someone has the right equipment, they can pick up the signal and find out exactly what you were typing. The same thing applies for all electronic equipment.”

Mark nodded. “So, TEMPEST-rated facilities have special requirements, like being wrapped with metal or wire mesh that blocks those electromagnetic signals from escaping.”

“But that won’t cause us any problem,” said Heather. “Every signal has a tiny leakage into subspace, and no TEMPEST countermeasures will stop that. We’ll be able to pick up the signals from any network once we narrow in on a specific line and pick up the data flowing across it. We only need a tunable subspace receiver for that.

“But putting a signal back on the remote line is what requires all this power and the subspace transmitter. And since we’re the only ones with a subspace receiver-transmitter, we’re the only ones that can do this.”

Jennifer glanced at her readings. “Power levels at seventy-seven percent. Now eighty.”

Heather leaned in closer. “Okay. Nice and steady.”

“Eighty-five.”

“Keep it coming.”

“Ninety-three.”

“Okay now, ease off a bit. Steady up at around ninety-eight and let it stabilize.”

“Got it. Coming up on ninety-six now. All right. Ninety-seven. Backing down a bit more on the stimulation. There it is, ninety-eight and holding steady.”

Heather stared at the displays for several seconds before she was satisfied. “Ever so slowly now, nudge it up that last two percent.”

For almost two minutes Jennifer worked the keyboard, making incremental adjustments to the reaction controlling signal strength. On the side of the tank, the banks of colored LED lights twinkled as data cascaded through the various registers in the central processing unit. As Jennifer watched that, Heather focused on the computer monitor. Perfect.

The sound from the cold fusion apparatus was surprisingly loud. This occurred because the reaction produced heat, and that heat produced steam, which in turn they siphoned off to drive a steam-powered electric generator. The generator itself only produced a whirring sound, but the steam whistled out with a sound reminiscent of a teakettle.

“You know, that is really getting to be annoying,” said Mark.

“I agree,” said Jennifer. “We’re going to have to come up with a better design for the steam recycler or we’ll go deaf.”

“We just have to put up with it a little while,” said Heather. “Just long enough for us to find a SIPRNet line and put the message on it.”

They didn’t actually need the electricity the project generated, just the gamma ray flux. But since the purpose of the science project was to provide a household energy source driven by cold fusion, they had to have that part of it. Besides, there had to be a means of dumping the excess heat that cold fusion generated, and the state transition of liquid water to steam was a good way of doing that.

Heather read off the latitude and longitude of the Puzzle Palace, allowing a few extra seconds for Jennifer to synchronize the system with Greenwich Mean Time via a remote time server.

Despite having an accurate coordinate for the building, their difficulty was going to lie in the massive amount of electronic systems inside. When they tuned their subspace receiver to that spot, the close proximity of computer systems and network cabling would make it hard to find a particular one, at least the first time.

On the plus side, it didn’t really matter which subnet they accessed within the Puzzle Palace, so long as it was a SIPRNet. Since almost everything in the building was classified, that was not going to be hard to find.

“Got one.” The excitement in Jennifer’s voice crackled like static on a New Mexico AM radio station.

“How’s the signal strength?” Mark asked.

“Beautiful. And the power grid is stable too. Give me just a second to confirm the subnet's SIPRNet status.”

Jennifer’s fingers danced across the keyboard as a stream of data scrolled through a window on the monitor and lit the LED panel like a Christmas tree at the North Pole.

Jennifer leaned back, beaming. “That’s it. We’re in.”

Heather took a deep breath. Oh, Jesus. They had really done it.

“Okay, putting a test sync pattern on the network.” Jennifer typed a quick command. “I’ve got confirmation. The pattern has been successfully uplinked to the SIPRNet.”

Mark let out a low whooping sound. “All right. Now uplink the message and then let’s power down.”

“There’s really no rush,” said Heather. “We absolutely cannot be traced. To them it will look like the signal just appeared inside their own network, and if they trace it back to its origin, they will find out it originated on a fiber inside their own building.”

“Christ, this is great.”

Heather frowned. “Still, I guess it would be wise not to spend too long surfing their network, at least for the moment. It might be a little hard to explain what we’re up to if your parents come back home unexpectedly.”

“Are you kidding? I’ve got that story down. Our little science project here is cutting their electric bill.”

Jennifer shook her head. “Better safe than sorry, though. I’m ready to send.”

Heather leaned in closer. “Go for it.”

Originally, they had put together a wordy message to the NSA. But after lengthy discussions, they had agreed less was more. With that in mind, they had settled on a very short message, encrypted with the same breakable encryption code as the earlier message their virus had delivered. That should get someone's attention.

“Well, here goes nothing.”

Amidst the cascading display of colors from the LED panel and the whistling rush of their steam-powered generator, Jennifer’s slender fingers flew across the keys like a concert pianist performing the works of Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninov. As Heather watched her friend at work, gooseflesh rose along her arms. Those dancing fingers were about to unleash a firestorm the like of which the NSA had never seen.