Deep Storm

22

Forty miles off the coast of Greenland, the Storm King oil platform hovered stoically between squall-dark skies and the angry sea. A passing vessel-or, more likely, a reconnaissance satellite, its orbit re-tasked by a curious foreign government-would notice nothing unusual. A few riggers moved slowly around the platform's superstructure, appearing to work the derricks or inspect equipment. But by and large, Storm King seemed as quiet as the surrounding sea was restless. It looked as if the giant platform was asleep.

But within its steel skin, Storm King was a hive of activity. The LF2-M Deeply Submersible Resupply Unit-the Tub-had just returned from its daily journey to the Facility, two miles below. And now almost three dozen people were in the Recovery Chamber, waiting, as a giant winch hoisted the unmanned supply module up through an oversized hatch in the lowest level of the oil platform. Gingerly, the ungainly vessel was plucked from the ocean, then swiveled away from the hatch and lowered into a receiving bay. Under the watchful eye of a marine, two supply officers unsealed the hatch in the Tub's nose, revealing an access bulkhead. Opening this in turn, the officers began unloading the Tub, removing everything that had been stowed inside at the Facility. A remarkable diversity of objects emerged: large black waste containers, bound for the incinerator; carefully sealed confidential packets; medical samples in biohazard boxes, heading for testing too exotic to be performed in the Facility itself. One by one, the items were passed out to the waiting crew, who in turn began to disperse throughout the oil platform. Within fifteen minutes, the Recovery Chamber was empty except for the marine, the winch operator, and the two supply officers, who closed the access bulkhead and sealed the Tub's forward hatch, readying it for the next day's journey.

One of the waiting crew, a Science Services courier, had come away from the Recovery Chamber with a half dozen sealed envelopes under his arm. The courier was a relatively recent arrival on the platform. He wore tortoiseshell glasses and limped slightly as he walked, almost as if one leg was a little shorter than the other. He gave his name as Wallace.

Returning to the science facilities set up on the rig's Production Level, Wallace moved briskly from lab to lab despite his limp, delivering the first five envelopes to their intended recipients. But he did not immediately deliver the last. Instead, he retreated to his tiny office, which was tucked away in a far corner.

Wallace carefully closed and locked the door behind him. Then he opened the envelope and let the contents-a single CD-drop into his lap. Turning to his computer, he eased the disc into the drive. A quick examination of the contents revealed a single file, labeled "108952.jpg"-an image, probably a photograph. He clicked on the file icon and the computer obediently displayed it on the screen: sure enough, a ghostly black-and-white image that was clearly an X-ray.

But Wallace was not interested in the image-only in something it contained.

Although his credentials had been excellent and the checks on his background impeccable, Wallace was nevertheless a new arrival on the Deep Storm project, and thus held a low security rating. This meant, among other things, that his computer was only a dumb terminal, slaved to the rig's mainframe, without a hard disk of its own and crippled from running executable CD files. As a result it could run only approved software; no rogue programs could be installed on the machine.

At least, that was the theory.

Wallace pulled the keyboard to him, opened the primitive text editor that came pre-installed with the operating system, and typed in a short program:

Wallace examined the program, running through its steps in his head and making sure the logic was sound. He gave a grunt of satisfaction, then glanced once again at the X-ray image.

Each screen pixel of the image occupied a single byte in the jpeg file on the disc. His short but powerful program would strip out the two least significant bits from each byte, convert them from numbers to their ASCII equivalent, then display the resulting letters on the screen.

Quickly, he compiled and ran the program. A new window opened on his monitor, but it did not contain the X-ray image this time. Instead, a text message appeared.

REQUEST DELAY ON MAKING 2ND BREACH ATTEMPT PENDING NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN CLASSIFIED SECTION

He read, then reread the message, lips pursed.

With computers, it was possible to hide secret messages almost anywhere: in the background hiss of recorded music or the grainy texture of a digital photograph. Wallace was using the ancient spy technique of steganography-hiding secret information where it wouldn't be noticed instead of encrypting it-and bringing it into the digital age.

He cleared the screen, erased the program, and placed the disc back in the envelope. The entire process had taken less than five minutes.

Back in the science labs sixty seconds later, a radiologist looked up as an envelope was quietly slipped onto his desk.

"Oh, yes, I've been waiting for this X-ray," the radiologist said. "Thank you, Wallace."

Wallace simply smiled in reply.