Metafire

Ferguson got the video over the Internet. He looked at it on his computer screen. "Thank you Dr. O'Leary. Let's hope this works."

After an hour of study, his team, now including Jill, relayed it to Metafire One, Metafire Two, and the Shuttle Discovery. John added a text message that indicated he would be in touch by voice.

Jill received word from the National Security Agency that they had made some progress on Ken Miller's disk. They had collected email from some of his associates from California and Texas. They believed these same email messages still resided, encrypted, on Miller's hard disk. They were using the known messages to attempt to crack the encryptions. Jill had also collected a sizeable store of Metafire encrypted email, pending the results of the National Security Agency effort.

Ferguson and the Major decided to contact Metafire Two first. The reasoning was that Metafire One had shown the greatest bravado. Consequently, they could be harder to deal with.

"This is John with the FBI. Can you hear me?"

"Yes, John. This is Frank. I am in charge of Metafire Two. What can I do for you?"