Deep Storm

"Come in," Spartan said.

The door opened and a naval officer stepped inside. He saluted Spartan, handed him a white envelope, saluted a second time, then turned and left the room.

Spartan held up the envelope, letting it dangle from his thumb and index finger. Then-almost teasingly-he extended his arm toward Crane.

Crane took the envelope gingerly.

"Open it," Spartan said.

After a moment's hesitation, Crane tore away one edge of the envelope and upended it into his hand. A plastic wafer-like a credit card, only thicker-fell out. One side was clear, and he could see a forest of microchips embedded within. He turned it over to find his own face staring up-as he had looked minutes before, blinded by the lights. There was a bar code beneath this photograph and the words RESTRICTED ACCESS printed in red beside them. A brass clip was fastened to one end.

"That, along with retinal and finger-matrix scans, will allow you past the Barrier," Spartan said. "Keep it safe, Doctor, and on your person at all times. There are very severe penalties for losing such a card or letting it fall into the wrong hands."

"I'm not sure I understand," Crane said.

"I'm authorizing you access to the classified section of the Facility. Over the advice of Commander Korolis, I might add."

Crane stared at the ID card as relief flooded over him. Oh, God, he thought. Oh, my God. This place is making me paranoid.

"I see," he said, still a little stupid from surprise. Then: "Thank you."

"Why?" Spartan asked. "What did you think was happening?"

And Crane could have sworn that-just for an instant-a bemused smile flitted across the admiral's features before they dissolved once again into impassivity.

22

Forty miles off the coast of Greenland, the Storm King oil platform hovered stoically between squall-dark skies and the angry sea. A passing vessel-or, more likely, a reco

But within its steel skin, Storm King was a hive of activity. The LF2-M Deeply Submersible Resupply Unit-the Tub-had just returned from its daily journey to the Facility, two miles below. And now almost three dozen people were in the Recovery Chamber, waiting, as a giant winch hoisted the unma

One of the waiting crew, a Science Services courier, had come away from the Recovery Chamber with a half dozen sealed envelopes under his arm. The courier was a relatively recent arrival on the platform. He wore tortoiseshell glasses and limped slightly as he walked, almost as if one leg was a little shorter than the other. He gave his name as Wallace.

Returning to the science facilities set up on the rig's Production Level, Wallace moved briskly from lab to lab despite his limp, delivering the first five envelopes to their intended recipients. But he did not immediately deliver the last. Instead, he retreated to his tiny office, which was tucked away in a far corner.

Wallace carefully closed and locked the door behind him. Then he opened the envelope and let the contents-a single CD-drop into his lap. Turning to his computer, he eased the disc into the drive. A quick examination of the contents revealed a single file, labeled "108952.jpg"-an image, probably a photograph. He clicked on the file icon and the computer obediently displayed it on the screen: sure enough, a ghostly black-and-white image that was clearly an X-ray.

But Wallace was not interested in the image-only in something it contained.

Although his credentials had been excellent and the checks on his background impeccable, Wallace was nevertheless a new arrival on the Deep Storm project, and thus held a low security rating. This meant, among other things, that his computer was only a dumb terminal, slaved to the rig's mainframe, without a hard disk of its own and crippled from ru

At least, that was the theory.

Wallace pulled the keyboard to him, opened the primitive text editor that came pre-installed with the operating system, and typed in a short program:

Wallace examined the program, ru

Each screen pixel of the image occupied a single byte in the jpeg file on the disc. His short but powerful program would strip out the two least significant bits from each byte, convert them from numbers to their ASCII equivalent, then display the resulting letters on the screen.

Quickly, he compiled and ran the program. A new window opened on his monitor, but it did not contain the X-ray image this time. Instead, a text message appeared.

REQUEST DELAY ON MAKING 2ND BREACH ATTEMPT PENDING NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN CLASSIFIED SECTION

He read, then reread the message, lips pursed.

With computers, it was possible to hide secret messages almost anywhere: in the background hiss of recorded music or the grainy texture of a digital photograph. Wallace was using the ancient spy technique of steganography-hiding secret information where it wouldn't be noticed instead of encrypting it-and bringing it into the digital age.

He cleared the screen, erased the program, and placed the disc back in the envelope. The entire process had taken less than five minutes.

Back in the science labs sixty seconds later, a radiologist looked up as an envelope was quietly slipped onto his desk.

"Oh, yes, I've been waiting for this X-ray," the radiologist said. "Thank you, Wallace."

Wallace simply smiled in reply.