Close Encounters (Nancy Drew (All New) Girl Detective Book 21) by Carolyn Keene Page A

mouse again. “This is a list of networks within range of the gizmo that lets me connect wirelessly to the Internet—it’s called a router,” she explained. I noticed each network had a name, ranging from arbitrary numbers and characters, to nicknames to real names. Some of the names were followed by the icon of a padlock; others weren’t.
    “Some are labeled ‘unsecured,’” I noticed.
    George nodded. “Right. Newbie users don’t realize that leaving their networks open means that anyone in the neighborhood can use their service, and with even minimal know-how someone can hack into their machine—even into their e-mail.”
    “That can’t be legal,” I objected.
    George shrugged. “It depends. There are some people who leave their networks open on purpose, just to encourage free traffic on the Net. But hacking definitely breaks the law. I wouldn’t hack into someone’s system unless it was absolutely necessary. However, I did write a program that lets me ‘sniff’ around other people’s computers—I’ve used it to help you solve cases before.”
    “I don’t want to know the details,” I protested,getting a distinctly uncomfortable feeling that any kind of hacking by anyone other than the government was breaking the law.
    “You wouldn’t understand them anyway. But just by hitting this key sequence I can get there.”
    “It’s my phone number!”
    George grinned. “Clever, isn’t it?” She punched in her password.
    “Hey, could I get on there for a minute?” I asked.
    “Sure,” George said, handing me the computer. I went online to check out Nathan Blackman. The search engine quickly led me to his fairly sophisticated website.
    “Who would have guessed?” George remarked as she looked over my shoulder at the screen. “He’s a real science fiction writer.”
    “Published by some pretty decent houses, too,” I noted. He had a few good reviews, but there wasn’t much personal information on him. I scanned the list of his titles. “All his books are about UFOs, George. And aliens.” I scrolled down further. “Here’s one called The Roswell Hoax .”
    George looked thoughtful. “To write that,” she said, “he’d have to investigate the how-to of hoaxes.” She tapped the screen with her finger. “But look: This guy prefers to write on an old 1940s Underwood typewriter rather than a computer. It suredoesn’t sound like he has the ability to fake the sightings, Nancy.”
    “He could always be in cahoots with someone else who had the technical know-how to fake sightings.”
    “But who?” George asked.
    “Someone else who would benefit from the publicity,” I answered.
    George chuckled as she shut down her computer. “That’s only about half the business owners in this town.” She frowned. “But seriously, if Blackman faked the sightings, how exactly did he do it? And who would have had the know-how to help?”
    “I’ve been thinking about that.” I took my notebook out of my purse. I turned to the page where I’d copied down the info about UFOs that I’d googled the night before. “Apparently all you need is a helium balloon, a fishing rod, and a small flashlight. You turn the light on, put it inside the balloon, and inflate it with helium. Tie it with a long fishing line—”
    “Sure, the plastic filament kind—that wouldn’t be visible,” George added.
    “Right. I guess that’s attached to a fishing rod, so you can move it around. You hold it out the window of a car and move quite fast on a back road, and voila —glowing, floating spheres.”
    “Wow, that’s pretty low-tech,” George commented.“Low-tech enough for Nathan to pull it off on his own.”
    I went back to my notebook. “If you want it to crash, you can shoot it down with a BB gun. The whole idea can work on a bigger scale too, with a weather balloon—though you’d need more than one person to move an object that size.”
    “What would be really cool is if you used one of those