Г. Х. Стоун: Fatal Error

“The sector editor lets us look at the data on the disk’s rings,” Jupe said. “There are a lot of rings — three hundred sixty concentric ones on each disk.”

“Like the rings around a CD?”

“Right. And each ring is divided into sectors.” Suddenly rows and rows of random numbers and letters flooded across the screen. “That’s what we’re looking at now — the sectors.”

“I don’t get it,” said Pete. “Am I supposed to be able to read this stuff?”

“Yeah.” Jupe groaned as the minutes passed. “We should be able to see my files, regular English words, but there’s no data left. It’s nothing but garbage! Junk the virus made up. All the data’s gone here, too!”

Just then Bob let out an excited yell. “I’ve got it!” He waved a sheaf of papers. “I thought I printed out a rough draft a couple of days ago, and I did. All I have to do is make my final changes and retype it!”

Bob grinned widely and plopped down beside Pete. “Now I can get back on the vacation track!”

“Yeah, well, get depressed again real fast,” Jupe told him. “We still don’t know what else is missing. That first disk was just a game, so it’s no big deal. But we’ve still got to see whether we’ve lost the junkyard inventory… our Three Investigators data bank… all our case histories… ”

“No-o-o-o!” Pete groaned. “That’s months of work!” Bob complained. “Especially the yard inventory,” moaned Jupe. He’d prepared the inventory for his Aunt Mathilda and Uncle Titus, who owned the salvage yard. It had taken forever to sort through every pile of junk in the place and list each item.

They all looked in disgust at the garbage on the screen. And then their eyes widened as real words suddenly appeared. They were planted at sector zero, on the disk’s innermost ring:

“Somebody wants us to pay five million dollars?” Pete said, his voice rising with disbelief.

“Or we’ll be erased? ” Bob cried.

“Guys,” Jupiter said grimly, “we’re into some big trouble!”

“What is this, Jupe? Some kind of blackmail?” Bob demanded. “Who’s after us?”

“Somebody who’s gonna be sorry!” Pete growled. “Go slow, Rambo.” Jupiter exchanged disks again to check whether the next one was infected. It was, and he sighed with frustration. “I’m just starting to get a handle on the problem. This all started when a guy from my computer club — Devon Colin — called me a couple of hours ago. He suddenly couldn’t get two of his disks to work.”

“Just like us,” Bob said.

Jupiter nodded. “I went over there. He had a sector editor, so I checked his rings. And right at the zero sector, like on our disk, I found… ”

“The CHAO$ message?” Bob said.

“Yeah.”

“Then the threat’s not aimed at us!”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Jupe agreed. “It was stupid, anyway,” Pete said.

“No way could we cough up five mil!”

“I’d have trouble coughing up ten bucks,” Bob admitted. “Can’t wait for payday!” Not that his part-time job at Rock-Plus paid very much besides free admission to clubs and rock concerts. But Bob needed every cent he could get for his social life. With his blond, blue-eyed good looks and magnetic smile, he attracted girls the way rock stars did fans.

“Since both of Devon’s disks were infected,” Jupiter continued, “we figured it had to be a virus. That freaked me out because of a virus case I remembered from a few years ago. It started with a college student who said he designed a virus to prove a national computer network had security problems. But he made a mistake in its design, and the virus went berserk. It crashed six thousand computers and caused almost a hundred million dollars in damage!”

Pete whistled. “Big bucks!”

“You know it.” Jupe nodded. “So I started worrying about where Devon’s virus had spread. One of his disks was completely erased. It probably had the virus longest and infected the rest of his disks. But if that was right, then everyone in our computer club could have it too.”

“You shared the disk?” Bob asked.

“Yeah,” Jupe said miserably. “It was a game disk, and we all made copies of it. So Devon got on the phone to warn everyone, and I split to check our PC.”

“But where did Devon catch the virus in the first place?” Pete wondered.

Just then there was a tap on the trailer’s door, and a girl’s voice shouted, “Pete! Oh, Pete!”

“Yow!” Pete leaped out of his chair and dashed for the bathroom at the back of the trailer, where he could change. “It’s Kelly. Cover for me!”

“Chicken!” Jupe called after him. He and Bob had long ago decided that Kelly had big Pete wrapped around her little finger.

“You owe us for this one, guy,” Bob called.

“Bob, is that you?” a second girl shouted from outside. “We’re ready for tennis!”

Bob opened the door. He beamed his dazzling smile at the two girls. “Ladies,” he said with a sweep of his hand. “Please come in.”

Swinging their tennis rackets, Kelly Madigan and Elizabeth Zapata trooped through the door. They wore pastel tank tops and little white skirts. Both had tied back their long brown hair with ribbons.

Elizabeth grinned up at Bob. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”

He grinned right back. “Me too.”

“So, where’s Pete?”

Kelly looked around.

“He’s not ready,” Bob told her.

“What!” Kelly’s green eyes flashed.

“But he’s really stressed about it,” Bob assured her. “He’d rather be here with you than anywhere else. Right, Jupe?”

“Huh?” In his mind Jupe saw nasty strings of code gobbling beautiful data. He was separating infected disks from healthy ones by checking for the CHAO$ message at each disk’s zero sector.

“Well… ” Kelly said, amused.

“You know how valuable Pete is in an emergency,” Bob went on, “and that’s what we have — a computer emergency.”

“Pete knows about computers?” Kelly said. “Gee, I didn’t think he knew anything about them. I’m impressed!”

“Hey, Kell.” Pete emerged from the bathroom in a clean white U2 T-shirt and shorts. He ran his fingers through his tousled reddish-brown hair and grinned at her. “Forgive me?”

She slid her arm through his. “Maybe this time!”

“Let’s go,” Elizabeth said, and headed for the door with Bob right behind her.

“Just a second.” Jupiter lifted his head. “I’ve got a body count.”

Bob stopped, his hand on the knob. “What’s the bad news?”

“Two completely erased,” Jupe said somberly, “and partial erasures on three others. The invasion could’ve been a lot worse.”

“What’s he talking about?” Elizabeth asked Bob.

“A lot of work we’re gonna have to do. What’d we lose, Jupe?”

“The game disk and the disk with our most recent case histories. Plus some chunks here and there of the junkyard’s inventory. No point in replacing the game, but the rest… ”

“What about the backup disks?” Bob asked hopefully. “I remember you making them.”

“At least once a week.” Jupe pushed away from the console. “But my count includes the backups. It looks to me like everything we worked on in the last week’s been infected.” He opened his desk drawer and took out a fat stack of business cards. He rolled off the rubber band and fished through them.

Bob snapped his fingers. “There goes vacation!”