`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 conversations 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.

`Well, the key is …'

`You're going to spew when you find out, Gand,' Electron interrupted.

`Yes … go on,' Gandalf said. `I am listening.'

`You won't believe it. <spew spew spew> The key is … Dartmouth.'

`WHAT???? WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' Gandalf exclaimed.

`No!!! IT's NOT TRUE! Bollox! You are KIDDING?'

The British hacker was thumping himself on the head. The name of the frigging university! What a stupid password!

Phoenix gave an on-line chuckle. `Hehe. Yeah. So hard to guess. We could have had Deszip for all these months …'

`Jesus. I hope it's still on that JANET system,' Gandalf said. Now that he actually had the password, finding the file became even more urgent.

`Pray. Pray. Pray,' Phoenix said. `Yeah, you should have seen the licence text on Deszip—it was by NASA.'

`You've seen it? You saw Deszip's source code?'

`No,' Phoenix answered. `When I went back to the BEAR machine to check if Deszip was still there, the program was gone. But the licence agreement and other stuff was there. Should have read the licence … truly amazing. It basically went on and on about how the people who wrote it didn't want people like us to get a hold of it. Hehe.'

Electron was growing impatient. `Yeah. So, Gand, when you gonna go check that JANET system?'

`Now. Fingers crossed, m8! See ya l8r …' Then he was gone.

The waiting was driving Electron nuts. He kept thinking about Deszip, about how he could have had it months and months ago. That program was such a prize. He was salivating at the thought of getting it after all this time pursuing it around the globe, chasing its trail from system to system, never quite getting close enough to grab it.

When Gandalf showed up again, Pad, Phoenix and Electron were all over him in an instant.

`WE FUCKING GOT IT GUYS!!!!!' Gandalf exclaimed.

`Good job m8!' Pad said.

`YES!' Electron added. `Have you decrypted it yet?'

`Not yet. Crypt isn't on that machine. We can either copy Crypt onto that machine or copy the file onto another computer which already has Crypt on it,' Gandalf said.

`Let's move it. Quick … quick … this damn thing has a habit of disappearing,' Electron said.

`Yeah, this is the last copy … the only one I got.'

`OK. Think … think … where can we copy it to?' Electron said.

`Texas!' Gandalf wanted to copy it to a computer at the University of

Texas at Austin, home of the LOD hacker Erik Bloodaxe.

Irrepressible, Gandalf came on like a steam roller if he liked you—and cut you down in a flash if he didn't. His rough-and-tumble working-class humour particularly appealed to Electron. Gandalf seemed able to zero in on the things which worried you most—something so deep or serious it was often unsaid. Then he would blurt it out in such crass, blunt terms you couldn't help laughing. It was his way of being in your face in the friendliest possible manner.

`Yeah! Blame everything on Erik!' Phoenix joked. `No, seriously. That place is crawling with security now, all after Erik. They are into everything.'

Phoenix had heard all about the security purge at the university from Erik. The Australian called Erik all the time, mostly by charging the calls to stolen AT&T cards. Erik hadn't been raided by the Secret Service yet, but he had been tipped off and was expecting a visit any day.

`It probably won't decrypt anyway,' Electron said.

`Oh, phuck off!' Gandalf shot back. `Come on! I need a site NOW!'

`Thinking …' Phoenix said. `Gotta be some place with room—how big is it?'

`It's 900 k compressed—probably 3 meg when we uncompress it. Come on, hurry up! How about a university?'

`Princeton, Yale could do either of those.' Electron suggested. `What about MIT—you hacked an account there recently, Gand?'

`No.'

All four hackers racked their minds for a safe haven. The world was their oyster, as British and Australian hackers held a real-time conversation in Germany about whether to hide their treasure in Austin, Texas; Princeton, New Jersey; Boston, Massachusetts; or New Haven, Connecticut.

`We only need somewhere to stash it for a little while, until we can download it,' Gandalf said. `Got to be some machine where we've got root. And it's got to have anon FTP.'

Anon FTP, or anonymous file transfer protocol, on a host machine would allow Gandalf to shoot the file from his JANET machine across the Internet into the host. Most importantly, Gandalf could do so without an account on the target machine. He could simply login as `anonymous', a method of access which had more limitations than simply logging in with a normal account. He would, however, still be able to upload the file.

`OK. OK, I have an idea,' Phoenix said. `Lemme go check it out.'

Phoenix dropped out of Altos and connected to the University of Texas. The physical location of a site didn't matter. His head was spinning and it was the only place he could think of. But he didn't try to connect to Happy, the machine he often used which Erik had told him about. He headed to one of the other university computers, called Walt.

The network was overloaded. Phoenix was left dangling, waiting to connect for minutes on end. The lines were congested. He logged back into Altos and told Pad and Electron. Gandalf was nowhere to be seen.

`Damn,' Electron said. Then, `OK, I might have an idea.'

`No, wait!' Phoenix cut in. `I just thought of a site! And I have root too! But it's on NASA …'

`Oh that's OK. I'm sure they won't mind a bit. <grin>'