Metafire

George, though, knew of a problem, "We may not find any more boxes, or any bugs, but they may have programmed the electronics. We have no way to determine if the software has changed. They could be listening to us right now through the speaker system. Can we turn off all communications from these capsules?"

"Yes, that is easy." Andrei moved himself out into the hallway and toward the small electronics center on the capsule. A moment later, George heard, "Done. I will be in the tug."

George and Sporkin followed to the tug console. Andrei looked up and said, "We have one problem. We do require a level of communications necessary for navigation. We have to navigate using Russian navigational beacons. It requires a two way interchange of data. It will take awhile to insure that the interchanges contain only what is required. In fact, we may not be able to tell from here if the signals are pure."

Sporkin then said, "We have code that decodes your navigational messaging. It's part of an American capsule's emergency software. Let me see if I can compile it and get an interpretation string out. I will need one of you. My sense of Russian protocols isn't good enough."

Andrei said, "You need Platon."