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By Root 735 0

their MIT talents looking for 'space junk, little green men, and communists'. But they knew that, almost uniquely in the Western world, they were able to put their dreams into practice. When the alternative was working for NASA with a bunch of jumped-up college dropouts, collecting bits of rock from the moon, this was the real thing.

But the long hours often took their toll. Several of their colleagues had burnt out during the early years of UNIT's existence, unable to face another night staring at a blank screen, waiting for a blip that might be the start of an invasion of Earth by hostile aliens. It was Decker who had been among the first to track the trajectory of the Nestene mother ship the previous summer, and Arthurs who had spotted the massive Julsaen fleet's attempted landing in Argentina.

'John read some of his poetry,' said Decker, swinging around in his chair. 'New stuff. It was wild. We all held lighters up when they did "Something". Man, you should have been there.'

'There'll be another time,' said Arthurs abruptly as he took a bottle of cola from the freeze box behind him. He hurriedly changed the subject. 'Who do you think's going to win the Republican primaries?'

Decker shook his head. 'Difficult to say. Nixon should be dead in the water by now, but he keeps coming back. I've got a funny feeling about Rockefeller.'

'What about Reagan?' asked Arthurs.

'Mad Ronnie? You crack me up sometimes,' said Decker.

'He might be OK for all those uptight geeks in California, but no country in its right mind would elect an actor.'

'None of them will take Kennedy,' noted Arthurs with a grin.

'Yeah, right.'

A silence settled over the pair while Arthurs finished his drink. Men he turned to Decker. 'You ever think about the future, Bob?' 'How'd you mean?'

'You know, what the world's going to be like in, say, twenty 'ears? If we don't get wiped out by aliens before then!'

Pecker grunted noncommittally. 'The world's a ball of confusion right now, baby. Things can only get better.'

'Sure, said Arthurs, with the excited zeal of a man who has undergone a Damascus-Road-like conversion. 'See, a few weeks ago I was talking to one of the installation guys when he was fixng the mainframe crash. He told me about the latest developments. Man, it's so exciting. I can see a time when computers will be as important a household item as a television is now. Computers are the future.'

But Decker wasn't listening, he was looking intently at his secondary terminal. 'Come and have a look at this'

'What?' asked Arthurs, propelling himself across the floor on a swivel chair.

'I was just having a random trawl through the subsystems and I hit this. It's in the New Mexico UNIT personnel log.'

'So?' Arthurs raised his eyebrows.

'It's got a restricted access code. Nothing in the personnel logs should be "eyes only", except maybe that guy in England who's got highest clearance. Certainly not some grunt in the desert'

'Maybe it's a glitch,' said Arthurs, picking up his phone and calling their supervisor at the field office on the next level of the building.

In the minutes before the man arrived, Arthurs and Decker started to crack the access code. When the supervisor finally appeared, he was shown the file. He said he'd never seen a code like it, and immediately contacted UNIT's New York HQ, who revealed that the prefix was unknown to the Head of Personnel.

He was as perplexed by its existence as the men in Oregon. After sanctioning Decker and Arthurs to continue attempting to access the file, the supervisor left them to it.

It took them almost four hours before they got through the seven levels of security and found the final password to be badgeman'. Decker gave a short cry of delight as the screen went blank, then filled with a standard UNIT

disclaimer and the words 'Top Secret - Eyes Only'.

'Yes!' he shouted, bringing Arthurs scurrying back from a trip to the lavatory.

'What's up?'

'We're in,' said Decker with a broad grin.

Arthurs looked over his shoulder at the message. 'Right,'

he

said quickly. 'I'll get Stark down to