The getaway special by Jerry Oltion Read Free Book Online Page B

reading simply 'Hoax.' These are very dangerous virus programs that can apparently cause irreparable hardware damage to your computer if you even open them, so the only safe course of action is to delete them unopened, even if it appears that they were sent by someone you know." Judy looked over at Allen, whose mouth was open wide enough to stick his foot into. "Impossible, is it?" she asked.
    "It—I—how could they do that so fast ?"
    "Like I said earlier, they've probably had contingency plans for something like this ready to go for years. A real virus they can rename to mimic your email and send out from thousands of sites all at once; it would overrun the entire net within minutes."
    "It wouldn't be a virus," Carl said happily. "It's an email worm. Reads the address book on the target computer and sends out more copies of itself to everyone listed there." She glared at him. "Virus, worm, whatever; the important thing is that somebody's managed to do an end-run around Allen's email."
    "Yes, they have, haven't they? They've given us a second chance."
    "Second chance, my ass! This is a power grab, pure and simple. Whoever did this is trying to keep it all to themselves. You don't really think they're going to tuck the plans away and never use them, do you?"
    Carl shook his head. "Of course not. There'll be controlled experimentation, cautious exploration, and—"
    "By whom? The CIA? Carl, do you really want them to be the ones who lead humanity into space?"
    That took a little of the wind out of his sails, but not enough. "It's a moot point," he said. "They've won."
    "No they haven't," Allen growled. He tapped at his keyboard, the radio beacon beeped again, and Earth shrank to a third its former size.
    "Where did you take us?" Judy asked. "Geosynchronous orbit." The communication satellite, like practically everything the shuttle carried into orbit, looked like a cylindrical tank with solar panels and antennas attached to it. Judy had seen dozens of them in her time as a pilot, but never from her current vantage point: just behind one in orbit 36,000 kilometers from Earth. In normal operation the shuttle never got that high; the satellites were released in low orbit and had to use their own engines to climb into position.
    It had taken Discovery another two jumps to reach it, but that was just to fine-tune their orbit. The extra velocity they had picked up during their fall toward the Moon had been almost exactly what they needed.
    Now Allen was outside in a spacesuit, tethered to the end of the shuttle's manipulator arm while he plugged his computer into the satellite's diagnostic port. Judy, watching through the payload bay windows, could see him tapping the keys with a screwdriver off his tool belt because his gloved fingers were too thick to type with.
    "How's it going?" she asked over the intercom.
    "Just about got it," he replied. "I've got all five hundred channels ready to accept my input when I give the command, so now all I need to do is hook up the video stream." The black-and-white screen beside the back windows was showing an old rerun of Space Rangers at the moment. Normally it was used to watch the manipulator arm at work, but they could patch any signal they wanted to it. Allen had strung an antenna out in front of the satellite so they could monitor its broadcast, and Judy had tuned through the microwave channels until she had found an unscrambled show. "I can't believe it," she said. "You can just plug in your computer and take over an entire communications satellite?"
    He laughed. "Well, it helps if you've got the control program already loaded."
    "And where did you get that?"
    "Friends in high places."
    Carl, who'd been glowering from the copilot's chair all the while, laughed derisively. "Another nut case from INSANE, no doubt. I hope he hangs alongside you when the Feds catch up with him." Allen didn't bother to reply. Neither did Judy. She was just as tired of shutting him up as she was of listening