The Shepardsport dining commons was crowded this evening. And it didn’t look like just a matter of people who had their lunches sent to their desks showing up now.
Lou Corlin looked over at the pilots’ table, crowded to capacity. He hadn’t seen it that full since Shepardsport was handling flights displaced by the cyber-attack on Slayton Field. Usually Shepardsport got mainly cargo landers, since Farside wasn’t exactly a tourist destination.
A lot of the local pilots preferred to sit with their families at one or another of the small round tables. Bill Hearne almost always sat with his family, and Sid Abernathy often joined his wife at one of the scientists’ tables.
Still, the sheer level of crowding made Lou uneasy, and not just because of the increased difficulty in finding a seat. Usually one of his clone-brothers would have a free seat at his table, but from the looks of things, he was going to have a hunt on his hands.
And then someone shouted his name. He turned to discover that no, it was not a fellow Chaffee, but a Shep.
What does Spruance Del Curtin want with me now?
Although Lou really didn’t want to sit with Sprue, giving him the cut in such a public setting would be rude in the extreme. And while Sheps could be incredibly competitive with one another, having one of their number dissed by a clone of a member of the third astronaut selection group might just be enough to get them to circle the wagons. And becoming a target of the mischief of Sheps would not be a pleasant experience.
Lou slid into the available seat. “What is it, Sprue?”
“What have you heard about the Glorianna?”
“Only what was on the announcement this afternoon.” Lou studied the Shep, wishing he could look through those buggy blue eyes to the mind behind them and see just what he was up to. Is he trying to lead me into speculating about what’s going on? “It does sound disturbing.”
“Disturbing is a mild way to put it.” Sprue didn’t even bother to hide the annoyance in his voice. Make it definite he wanted to gossip-monger, never mind how many times senior leadership had warned against passing rumors or speculating on partial information. “I was hoping you might know something, especially since you do your operational responsibility down in IT. I’m sure you get to see a lot of data going by.”
How to get this conversation into a parking orbit without blatantly shutting Sprue down? “Of course I do, but most of it’s pretty technical stuff. And anything from Medlab is covered by patient privacy law, so I’m not even cleared to see the metadata. I’m not even supposed to talk about how many cron jobs they’re putting through, because in theory that could allow someone to know what questions are worth asking.”
Sprue nodded, but the annoyance furrow remained between his eyebrows. “And you probably can’t tell me if any department’s been showing unusual levels of web traffic either. But you know as well as I do that all those public service announcements about sanitation didn’t come out of nowhere. I’m thinking that whatever bug got loose on that cruise ship, someone around here has known about it for the past several days.”
“That’s quite possible.” Lou considered how many times he’d had to run one of the several pre-recorded announcements over the past three air shifts. “But speculating on it isn’t helpful, and it could get both of us into some serious hot water with the higher-ups.” He cast a significant glance at the people who were beginning to look their way.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Sprue didn’t sound happy about having to make that admission, but he’d gotten in trouble more than once for things that gotten him taken off his air shifts as punishment. “But I think all of us ought to keep our eyes and ears open for anything significant.”
Lou didn’t like agreeing; it felt too much like promising something he shouldn’t. But at least it allowed him to move the conversation onto a more neutral subject.
Even so, he found that he was still thinking about the subject by the time dinner was over and he headed back to quarters to study for that upcoming test in DiffEq.