Metafire

Angela smiled and said, "You planned that, George."

"Nobody's hurt," said Jane.

Scooter, Erisa, and Jack were also watching out of their large window. Erisa got the notice directly from Ferguson that the bomb had exploded as safely as an atmospheric explosion could. He also gave orders to destroy Metafire immediately. But, instead, Erisa asked for a video conference. This time Ferguson would not be listening.

Erisa asked that as many Metafire people as possible be in the conference. Eight people showed up. Erisa began, "Scooter tells me we have less than thirty minutes left before we part company. We can't trust to come aboard, but if you split off a capsule, we can take it. I know you don't have another bomb. It's a way, Jane, for you to come if you want to."

"No, Erisa. I can't come. We still don't know who the real criminal among us is. George denies it convincingly, Erisa. We do know that it's not Dr. O'Leary and the people back there. There are four or five of us here that could be the murderer. But we will have to live with that. We are in this together."

"There's another possibility, too, Erisa." Sporkin had to speak up. "The bombs received their signals over Internet. It's possible there is a hacker! It's possible there is somebody else, not here, that figured out the codes. I'm not saying that this happened. I am saying that the mail your person in New York City decrypted was encrypted using techniques that were thought to be unassailable. It's possible the real criminal is still down on Earth and will find a way to hack his way into existing nuclear defense systems."