Skyhook by John J. Nance

here.”
    She was moving toward him, carefully negotiating the spaces between the desks and workstations until she was standing next to him. There was a sudden burst of light as she triggered a large flashlight beam directed upward at her face, like a camper in a tent telling ghost stories.
    “Go ho-o-ome, Doc-tor Cole!” she said, adopting a comically spooky voice.
    “Okay, Lindsey,” he chuckled.
    “Here thar be software beasties!” She snapped the light off, chuckling as well, her normal voice returning. “And circuit breakers for the ceiling lights.”
    “You did that?”
    She nodded, and he could see her smiling in the dim light. “Yep.
    If I can’t get you out of here one way, I’ll do it another. Go home and get some sleep.”
    “Scared the heck out of me, Lindsey. I was just running a system test.”
    “Well, if I have your word that you’ll get out of here in the next ten minutes, I’ll give you your one-hundred-ten-volt alternating current back to play with.”
    “Spoken like a true electrical engineer.”
    “I love it when you talk dirty,” she said, moving back toward the door. “Seriously, Ben.”
    “Okay. Promise.”
    “Good. We’ve got two days and a new T-handle. Good night.”
    “Good night, Lindsey,” he said, thankful she hadn’t asked for a progress report.
    The lights came back on and Ben moved to the test computer screen to reset the program, remembering the absence of snapping noises.
    Wait a minute, he thought. They never disconnected. The program has paused with the problem clearly apparent.
    His excitement was mounting by the moment. If he could freeze the program with specific knowledge of which line of code had caused the program to freeze and be unresponsive, and copy it precisely that way, he could zero in on the problem within an hour or two.
    He stood back from the table, his heart beating faster as he considered the options. He knew Lindsey was serious. Undoubtedly she would check back with security inside an hour to make sure he’d processed out.
    But he couldn’t leave the search until morning. A thousand things could happen to the uncounted electrons zapping around the interior of the computer’s silicon memory. The key to the solution was in his hands, and he had to act now.
    Ben pulled out a notepad and scribbled down the computer commands that would copy precisely what he needed from the stopped prototype program. He double-checked it to make sure there was nothing apparent that might crash the program or garble the files, then triggered the process.
    The sound of hard drives whirring to life reached his ears as he monitored the information on the screen. The download continued for two very long minutes before the final confirmation blinked onscreen. Ben transferred the downloaded files to a CD and sat down at his computer desk in deep thought. It would be professional suicide to leave the building with the CD or any computer-storage medium. But Ben had always known about an uncovered hole in the system. He’d monitored it carefully to prevent anyone else from finding or using it, but there was a way to get the master hard drive to send anything to one particular serial port on one solitary computer in the lab. He pulled out his cell phone now and looked at it, trying to recall whether its “system” might be actively intercepted by counterintelligence security apparatus.
    No, he concluded. Highly unlikely.
    He pulled out a cable from his briefcase and connected it first to the serial port of the computer, then to the bottom of his cell phone, dialing the special number to his home desktop computer. He entered the appropriate commands until he had a clear channel to a restricted area of his hard drive’s memory, and triggered the transfer. He sat in rising apprehension as the computer began the process of sending the top secret program digitally over his cell phone to his personal machine at home.
    “Dr. Cole?” a male voice asked without warning.
    A cold