"Fatal Error" - читать интересную книгу автора (Стоун Г. Х.)
2Invasion of the Data Snatchers
“What is this, Jupe? Some kind of blackmail?” Bob demanded. “Who’s after us?”
“Somebody who’s gonna be sorry!” Pete growled. “Go slow, Rambo.” Jupiter exchanged disks again to check whether the next one was infected. It was, and he sighed with frustration. “I’m just starting to get a handle on the problem. This all started when a guy from my computer club — Devon Colin — called me a couple of hours ago. He suddenly couldn’t get two of his disks to work.”
“Just like us,” Bob said.
Jupiter nodded. “I went over there. He had a sector editor, so I checked his rings. And right at the zero sector, like on our disk, I found… ”
“The CHAO$ message?” Bob said.
“Yeah.”
“Then the threat’s not aimed at us!”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Jupe agreed. “It was stupid, anyway,” Pete said.
“No way could we cough up five mil!”
“I’d have trouble coughing up ten bucks,” Bob admitted. “Can’t wait for payday!” Not that his part-time job at Rock-Plus paid very much besides free admission to clubs and rock concerts. But Bob needed every cent he could get for his social life. With his blond, blue-eyed good looks and magnetic smile, he attracted girls the way rock stars did fans.
“Since both of Devon’s disks were infected,” Jupiter continued, “we figured it had to be a virus. That freaked me out because of a virus case I remembered from a few years ago. It started with a college student who said he designed a virus to prove a national computer network had security problems. But he made a mistake in its design, and the virus went berserk. It crashed six thousand computers and caused almost a hundred million dollars in damage!”
Pete whistled. “Big bucks!”
“You know it.” Jupe nodded. “So I started worrying about where Devon’s virus had spread. One of his disks was completely erased. It probably had the virus longest and infected the rest of his disks. But if that was right, then everyone in our computer club could have it too.”
“You shared the disk?” Bob asked.
“Yeah,” Jupe said miserably. “It was a game disk, and we all made copies of it. So Devon got on the phone to warn everyone, and I split to check our PC.”
“But where did Devon catch the virus in the first place?” Pete wondered.
Just then there was a tap on the trailer’s door, and a girl’s voice shouted, “Pete! Oh, Pete!”
“Yow!” Pete leaped out of his chair and dashed for the bathroom at the back of the trailer, where he could change. “It’s Kelly. Cover for me!”
“Chicken!” Jupe called after him. He and Bob had long ago decided that Kelly had big Pete wrapped around her little finger.
“You owe us for this one, guy,” Bob called.
“Bob, is that you?” a second girl shouted from outside. “We’re ready for tennis!”
Bob opened the door. He beamed his dazzling smile at the two girls. “Ladies,” he said with a sweep of his hand. “Please come in.”
Swinging their tennis rackets, Kelly Madigan and Elizabeth Zapata trooped through the door. They wore pastel tank tops and little white skirts. Both had tied back their long brown hair with ribbons.
Elizabeth grinned up at Bob. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”
He grinned right back. “Me too.”
“So, where’s Pete?”
Kelly looked around.
“He’s not ready,” Bob told her.
“What!” Kelly’s green eyes flashed.
“But he’s really stressed about it,” Bob assured her. “He’d rather be here with you than anywhere else. Right, Jupe?”
“Huh?” In his mind Jupe saw nasty strings of code gobbling beautiful data. He was separating infected disks from healthy ones by checking for the CHAO$ message at each disk’s zero sector.
“Well… ” Kelly said, amused.
“You know how valuable Pete is in an emergency,” Bob went on, “and that’s what we have — a computer emergency.”
“Pete knows about computers?” Kelly said. “Gee, I didn’t think he knew anything about them. I’m impressed!”
“Hey, Kell.” Pete emerged from the bathroom in a clean white U2 T-shirt and shorts. He ran his fingers through his tousled reddish-brown hair and grinned at her. “Forgive me?”
She slid her arm through his. “Maybe this time!”
“Let’s go,” Elizabeth said, and headed for the door with Bob right behind her.
“Just a second.” Jupiter lifted his head. “I’ve got a body count.”
Bob stopped, his hand on the knob. “What’s the bad news?”
“Two completely erased,” Jupe said somberly, “and partial erasures on three others. The invasion could’ve been a lot worse.”
“What’s he talking about?” Elizabeth asked Bob.
“A lot of work we’re gonna have to do. What’d we lose, Jupe?”
“The game disk and the disk with our most recent case histories. Plus some chunks here and there of the junkyard’s inventory. No point in replacing the game, but the rest… ”
“What about the backup disks?” Bob asked hopefully. “I remember you making them.”
“At least once a week.” Jupe pushed away from the console. “But my count includes the backups. It looks to me like everything we worked on in the last week’s been infected.” He opened his desk drawer and took out a fat stack of business cards. He rolled off the rubber band and fished through them.
Bob snapped his fingers. “There goes vacation!”
“There’s one other person I need to contact,” Jupe said, waving a folded paper from the stack. “Norton Rome. He’s a programmer. He was our club’s guest speaker last week. He gave Devon the game disk because that’s what his talk was about — programming a game. His system’s got to be infected too.”
“Call him. Spread the good news.” Bob handed the phone to Jupe.
“I know where he works, but today’s Sunday.” Jupe dialed. “Hope he’s at home.” As the phone rang Jupe opened a jar of chunky peanut butter, stuck in his finger, pulled out a huge gob, and began eating it off. It was his latest crash diet — peanut butter and bananas.
“Peanut butter’s full of calories, Jupe,” warned Kelly. “Bananas, too. Very bad for the figure.”
“They’re high in protein and potassium,” Jupe informed her as he listened to his call ring. “Very healthy.”
“High in carbs and fat,” said Kelly. “Very stupid. Try salads.”
Jupe hung up the phone. “No answer. I guess we’ll just have to go over there.” Jupe licked his finger.
“No, Jupe,” Kelly corrected him with a shake of her head. “We’re playing tennis. You’ll have to go solo.” Her nose wrinkled as she screwed the lid back on the peanut butter jar.
Jupe peeled a banana, then opened the telephone directory. “Can’t. Uncle Titus needs the truck, so I need a lift. Besides, this looks like a case for The Three Investigators.”
“That’s you guys, isn’t it?” Elizabeth said. “I’ve heard of you but, really, what can you do? I mean, you’re teenagers.”
“You’d be surprised at the cases we’ve solved,” Bob assured her. They’d been detecting successfully for several years.
“Yeah, and the gorillas we’ve sent to jail!” Pete spun enthusiastically in a karate yoko-keage side snap kick. He and Bob had learned karate, while Jupe had specialized in judo.
“I’ve got Rome’s address.” Jupiter closed the telephone book and tossed his banana peel toward an overflowing wastebasket. He missed.
“Look at it this way,” Jupe told the girls. “If a virus got into a bank’s computer system, people could lose their life savings. Or if it got into a hospital’s computer system, it could kill patients by messing up the orders for medication. We need to stay on top of this. Maybe Rome can tell us if somebody else used his game disk, and we can track the virus back to the guy responsible.”
“But what about us?” Kelly asked forlornly.
“Bob, I was really looking forward to our date,” Elizabeth said with a sweet smile.
“Sorry, girls, but duty calls,” said Jupiter firmly. “Pete and Bob can’t ignore a line like YOU AND YOUR DATA WILL BE ERASED. That blackmail message means big trouble for somebody!
“Besides,” Jupe added airily, “this won’t take long. We’ll be back in plenty of time for your game.”