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Tessa and Chrissie stayed back by the open lab door, peering out at the dark hallway

Sam sat down at one of the o appeared in the center of the screen

With no telephones, no iven to the school for student training, without the additional intention of tying the kids to New Wave during soo blinked off, and a menu appeared on the screen Because they were hard-disk rao as soon as the system was powered up The menu offered him five choices:

A TRAINING 1

B TRAINING 2

C WORD PROCESSING

D ACCOUNTING

E OTHER

He hesitated, not because he couldn’t decide what letter to push but because he was suddenly afraid of using the h it had seemed to him that they had elected to an within the for sure that it had not been the other way around

Maybe the computers had somehow reached out and seized them That seemed impossible Besides, thanks to Harry’s observations, they knew that people in Moonlight Cove were being converted by an injection, not by soh coers He was hesitant nevertheless Finally he pressed E and got a list of school subjects:

A ALL LANGUAGES

B MATH

C ALL SCIENCES

D HISTORY

E ENGLISH

F OTHER

He pressed F A third ot a menu on which the final selection was NEW WAVE When he keyed in that choice, words began to march across the screen

HELLO, STUDENT

YOU ARE NOW IN CONTACT

WITH THE SUPERCOMPUTER

AT NEW WAVE MICRO TECHNOLOGY

MY NAME IS SUN

I AM HERE TO SERVE YOU

The school machines ired directly to New Wave Modems were unnecessary

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE MENUS?

OR WILL YOU SPECIFY INTEREST?

Considering the wealth of menus in the police departht in the patrol car, he figured he could sit here all evening just looking at menu after menu after submenu before he found what he wanted He typed in: MOONLIGHT COVE POLICE DEPARTMENT

THIS FILE RESTRICTED

PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PROCEED WITHOUT

THE ASSISTANCE OF YOUR TEACHER

He supposed that the teachers had individual code nu on whether or not they were converted, would allow them to access otherwise restricted data The only way to hit on one of their codes was to begin trying randoits, but since he didn’t even kno many numbers were in a code, there were millions if not billions of possibilities He could sit there until his hair turned white and his teeth fell out, and not luck into a good nuht he had used Officer Reese Dorn’s personal computer-access code, and he wondered whether it worked only on a designated police-department VDT or whether any co He typed in 262699

The screen cleared Then: HELLO, OFFICER DORN

Again he requested the police-departiven to him

CHOOSE ONE

A DISPATCHER

B CENTRAL FILES

C BULLETIN BOARD

D OUTSYSTEM MODEM

He pressed D

He was shown a list of coh the police-department’s modem

His hands were suddenly da, if only because nothing had been easy thus far, not frolanced at Tessa "Everything okay?"

She squinted at the dark hallway, then blinked at him "Seems to be Any luck?"

"Yeah … ain and said softly, "Please …"

He scanned the long roster of possible outsystem links He found FBI KEY, which was the name of the latest and most sophisticated of the Bureau’s coe, -retrieval, and -transton, which had been installed only within the past year Supposedly no one but approved agents at the ho with their own special codes, were able to use FBI KEY

Sotrouble, Sam selected FBI KEY The menu disappeared The screen remained blank for a moment Then, on the display, which proved to be a full-color old The word KEY appeared below it

Next, a series of questions was flashed on the screen--WHAT IS YOUR BUREAU ID NUMBER? NAME? DATE OF BIRTH?

DATE OF BUREAU INDUCTION? MOTHER’S MAIDEN NAME ?--and when he answered those, he was rewarded with access

"Bingo!" he said, daring to be optimistic

Tessa said, "What’s happened?"

"I’m in the Bureau’s main system in DC"

"You’re a hacker," Chrissie said

"I’m a fumbler But I’m in"

"Nohat?" Tessa asked

"I’ll ask for the current operator in a s to every damned office in the country, s?"

From the extensive FBI KEY menu, Sam called up item G -- IMMEDIATE INTEROFFICE TRANSMISSION He intended to send a e to every Bureau field office in the country, not just to San Francisco, which was the closest and the one from which he hoped to obtain help There was one chance in a ht operator in San Francisco would overlook thereams of other trans on to it If that happened, if someone was asleep at the wheel at this most inopportune of , because every office in the country would be asking HQ foran explanation of why they had been fed an alert about a situation outside their regions

He did not understand half of as happening in this town He could not have explained, in the shorthand of a Bureau bulletin, even as much as he did understand But he quickly crafted a summary which he believed was as accurate as it had to be--and which he hoped would get the

ACTION ALERT

MOONLIGHT COVE, CALIFORNIA

SCORES DEAD CONDITION DETERIORATING

HUNDREDS MORE COULD DIE WITHIN HOURS

NEW WAVE MICROTECHNOLOGY ENGAGED IN

ILLICIT EXPERIMENTS ON HUMAN SUBJECTS,

WITHOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE CONSPIRACY OF

WIDEST SCOPE

THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE CONTAMINATED

REPEAT, ENTIRE POPULATION OF TOWN