Phoenix was in a dilemma. If the connection had crashed by accident,
he wanted to stay put and wait for the network to come back up again.
The FTP hole in Spaf's machine was an incredible piece of luck.
Chances were that someone would find
evidence of his break-in after he left and plug it. On the
other hand, he didn't want the people at Purdue tracing his
connections.
He waited a few more minutes, trying to hedge his bets. Feeling nervy
as the extended silence emanating from Spaf's machine wore on, Phoenix
decided to jump. With the lost treasures of Aladdin's cave fading in
his mind's eye like a mirage, Phoenix killed his connection.
Electron and Phoenix talked on the phone, moodily contemplating their
losses. It was a blow, but Electron reminded himself that getting
Deszip was never going to be easy. At least they had the passphrase to
unlock the encrypted Deszip taken from Dartmouth.
Soon, however, they discovered a problem. There had to be one,
Electron thought. They couldn't just have something go off without a
hitch for a change. That would be too easy. The problem this time was
that when they went searching for their copy from Dartmouth, which had
been stored several months before, it had vanished.
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