UNDERGROUND

Electron felt like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on him. 'Dead? Dead how?' he asked.

'Dead like someone changed the password. Not sure why. I'll have to re-hack the system to get to the file.'

'Fuck, this Deszip is frustrating,' Electron wrote.

'This is getting ridiculous,' Phoenix added.

'I don't even know if the copy is still in there,' Gandalf replied. 'I hid it, but who knows? Been a few months. Admins might have deleted it.'

'You want some help hacking the system again, Gand?' Phoenix asked.

'Nah, It'll be easy. It's a Sequent. Just have to hang around until the ops go home.'

If an op was logged on and saw Gandalf hunting around, he or she might kick Gandalf off and investigate the file which so interested the hacker. Then they would lose Deszip all over again.

'I hope we get it,' Pad chipped in. 'Would be gr8!'

'Gr8 indeed. Feen, you've got the key to the encryption?' Gandalf asked.

'Yeah.'

'How many characters is it?' It was Gandalf's subtle way of asking for the key itself.

Phoenix wasn't sure what to do. He wanted to give the British hackers the key, but he was torn. He needed Pad and Gandalf's help to get the copy of Deszip, if it was still around. But he knew Electron was watching the conversation, and Electron was always so paranoid. He disliked giving out any information, let alone giving it over Altos, where the conversa- tions were possibly logged by security people.

'Should I give him the key?' Phoenix whispered to Electron.

Gandalf was waiting. To fend him off, Phoenix said, 'It's 9 chars.' Chars was short for characters. On Altos the rule was to abbreviate where ever possible.

'What is the first char?'

'Yeah. Tell him,' Electron whispered to Phoenix.