As an obvious smile took over his face, she knew she was on her way. "Hi, aren't you John Lexicon?"

"Yes, in fact I am. Have we met before?"

"No, but I did attend the keynote presentation you made to the Technology Transfer Forum last November." Nancy had done a little homework.

"Well meeting you is the best thing to come out of that appearance, Miss..."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Nancy McGill. I'm the Systems Management Director at MicroLabs."

"I see. MicroLabs is a very prestigious employer. Are you getting what you need there?"

"Not everything that I need. That's why I wanted to talk to you tonight."

"Lexicon Industries does have a very aggressive fringe benefits program for targeted technology managers. Perhaps we should discuss these opportunities."

"Do you have to be an employee to participate?"

From Roger's position he watched in stunned silence as Nancy moved in on John Lexicon and began making the fast paced, bad girl small talk. It was the first time he had noticed Lexicon in the crowd. All of sudden Roger realized he wasn't just out on a Boy Scout recognizance ride for Spike. There was a play in action and he had been mentally sleeping for the last two hours. It was just too relaxing in the private sector he told himself. Too easy to let yourself go offguard.

Roger moved himself to a better position out of the middle of the room. What a fool place to be standing. He got closer to Nancy and Lexicon. He heard Nancy going on about work projects at MicroLabs and noticed Lexicon stealing glances of her shape when she gave him the opportunities. She had him going all right. That's not exactly surprising. What kind of play could she make though? What good was this going to do her?

As Nancy and Roger were jockeying for position at the country club, Spike was beginning his infiltration of Lexicon Industries' systems. He had the basic road map from his brief previous visit. Still no Ranger 6 on-line. He would have to look for clues elsewhere. The database systems, the file servers, the e-mail files and archives, and the dreaded voice mail systems were all targets. The voice mail was going to be a pain for two reasons: First, it was only serially connected to the phone switch so no direct network access would be possible, and; second, it was all sound files that required playback to read. He would not be able to scan for key words like "Ranger" or "drone." It would take a long time to find anything in the voice mail. He'd save it for last and hope he wouldn't need it.

Lexicon's database systems were primarily financial, and administration-oriented. Unlikely as a normal storage location for anything else unless the CEO wanted to hide something. Spike started there. He quickly slid through security layers and began scanning database tables. Using the systems' indexes he made short work of database files and found nothing. On each machine he also had to inspect operating system and user file locations. It was a long shot that didn't pay off, but he couldn't afford to miss anything tonight.



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