Michael Crichton - State Of Fear

"Tell you what," she said. "I'll just show you the way."

This time he did not object.

Kenner sat in the computer room with the bearded station chief, MacGregor, and Sanjong Thapa. Everybody was looking grim.

"We found him," Kenner said, pointing to a computer monitor. "Recognize your friend?"

Evans looked at the screen. "Yeah," he said. "That's the bastard."

On the screen was a photo of the man Evans knew as Bolden. But the ID form onscreen gave his name as David R. Kane. Twenty-six years old. Born Minneapolis. BA, Notre Dame; MA, University of Michigan. Current Status: PhD candidate in oceanography, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Research Project: Dynamics of Ross Shelf Flow as measured by GPS sensors. Thesis Advisor/Project Supervisor: James Brewster, University of Michigan.

"His name's Kane," the Weddell chief said. "He's been here for a week, along with Brewster."

"Where is he now?" Evans said darkly.

"No idea. He didn't come back to the Station today. Neither did Brewster. We think they may have gone to McMurdo and hopped the morning transport out. We have a call in to McMurdo to do a vehicle count, but they haven't gotten back to us yet."

"You're sure he's not still here?" Evans said.

"Quite sure. You need an ID tag to open the exterior doors here, so we always know who's where. Neither Kane nor Brewster opened any doors in the last twelve hours. They aren't here."

"So you think they may be on the plane?"

"McMurdo Tower wasn't sure. They're pretty casual about the daily transportif somebody wants to go, they just hop on and leave. It's a C-130, so there's always plenty of room. You see, a lot of the research grants don't permit you to leave during the period of your research, but people have birthdays and family events back on the mainland. So they just go, and come back. It's unrecorded."

"If I recall," Kenner said, "Brewster came here with two graduate students. Where's the other one?"

"Interesting. He left from McMurdo yesterday, the day you arrived."

"So they all got out," Kenner said. "Got to give them credit: They're smart." He looked at his watch. "Now let's see what, if anything, they left behind."

The name on the door said "Dave Kane, U. Mich." Evans pushed it open, and saw a small room, an unmade bed, a small desk with a messy stack of papers, and four cans of Diet Coke. There was a suitcase lying open in the corner.

"Let's get started," Kenner said. "I'll take the bed and the suitcase. You check the desk."

Evans began to go through the papers on the desk. They all seemed to be reprints of research articles. Some were stampe u mich geo lib followed by a number.

"Window dressing," Kenner said, when he was shown the papers. "He brought those papers with him. Anything else? Anything personal?"

Evans didn't see anything of interest. Some of the papers were highlighted in yellow marker. There was a stack of 3-by-5 notecards, with some notes written on them, but they seemed to be genuine, and related to the stack of papers.

"You don't suppose this guy is really a graduate student?"

"Could be, though I doubt it. Eco-terrorists aren't usually well educated."

There were pictures of glacier flows, and satellite images of various sorts. Evans shuffled through them quickly. Then he paused at one:

What caught his eye was the caption. "Listen," he said, "on that list of four locations, wasn't one of them called Scorpion'?"

"Yes amp;"

"It's right here, in Antarctica," Evans said. "Look at this."

Kenner started to say, "But it can't be" and abruptly broke off. "This is extremely interesting, Peter. Well done. It was in that stack? Good. Anything else?"

Despite himself, Evans felt pleased by Kenner's approval. He searched quickly. A moment later he said, "Yes. There's another one."

"It's the same basic pattern of rock outcrops in the snow," Evans said, excitedly. "And, I don't know about these faint lines amp;roads? Rocks covered in snow?"

"Yes," Kenner said. "I think that's almost certainly correct."

"And if they're aerial photographs, there must be a way to trace them. Do you think these numbers are references of some kind?"

"There's no question." Kenner pulled out a small pocket magnifying glass, and scanned the image, peering closely. "Yes, Peter. Very well done."

Evans beamed.

From the doorway, MacGregor said, "You found something? Can I help?"

"I don't think so," Kenner said. "We'll deal with this ourselves."

Evans said, "But maybe he will recognize"

"No," Kenner said. "We'll get the ID off the NASA image files. Let's continue."

They searched in silence for several minutes more. Kenner took out a pocketknife and began cutting the lining of the suitcase lying open in the corner of Brewster's office. "Ah." He straightened. In his fingers, he held two curved arcs of pale rubber.

"What are those?" Evans said. "Silicon?"

"Or something very similar. A kind of soft plastic, at any rate." Kenner seemed very pleased.

"What're they for?" Evans said.

"I have no idea," Kenner said. He resumed his search of the suitcase. Privately, Evans wondered why Kenner was so pleased. Probably he was not saying what he knew in front of MacGregor. But what could two bits of rubber mean, anyway? What could they be used for?

Evans went through the documents on the desk a second time, but found nothing more. He lifted the desk lamp and looked under the base. He crouched down and looked under the desk, in case something was taped there. He found nothing.

Kenner closed the suitcase. "As I thought, nothing more. We were very lucky to find what we did." He turned to MacGregor. "Where's Sanjong?"

"In the server room, doing what you requestedcutting Brewster and his team out of the system."

The "server room" was hardly larger than a closet. There were twin racks of processors running floor to ceiling, and the usual mesh ceiling for cabling. There was a master terminal in the room, on a small steel table. Sanjong was crowded in there with a Weddell technician at his side, looking frustrated.

Kenner and Evans stood outside, in the hallway. Evans was pleased that he felt steady enough to stand. His strength was coming back quickly.

"It hasn't been easy," Sanjong said to Kenner. "The procedure here is to give each Weddell researcher private storage space and also direct radio and Internet connections. And these three guys knew how to take advantage of it. Apparently the third man with Brewster was the computer guy. Within a day of his arrival, he got into the system as root, and installed back doors and trojans all over the place. We're not sure how many. We're trying to get them out."

"He also added a few dummy user accounts," the technician said.

"Like about twenty," Sanjong said. "But I'm not worried about those. They're probably just thatdummies. If this guy was smartand he washe'd have given himself access to the system through an existing user, so he'd go undetected. We're looking now for any users who have added a new secondary password in the last week. But this system doesn't have a lot of maintenance utilities. It's slow going.

"What about the trojans?" Kenner said. "How are they timed?" In computer slang, a trojan was an innocent-looking program installed in the system. It was designed to wake up at a later time and carry out some action. It derived its name from the way the Greeks won the Trojan warby making a huge horse and presenting it to the Trojans as a gift. Once the horse was within the walls of Troy, the Greek soliders who had been hiding inside it came out and attacked the city.

The classic trojan was one installed by a disgruntled employee. It erased all the hard drives in a business three months after the employee was fired. But there were many variations.