The children were sound asleep and Brenda was supposed to be getting ready for bed. However, enough troubling thoughts were running through her head that she could tell that trying to go to sleep would be futile. Spruance Del Curtin was right — something was going on, no matter how hard people in authority were trying to keep it quiet.
How long had she been sitting her looking at her phone, trying to decide whether to text her husband or not? Things would’ve been so much easier if Drew could just get transferred over here from Slayton Field.
Except she’d never wanted to pressure him about it just in case it were to have a negative effect upon his career. Although her father had gone into the reserves and started working for NASA before she was born, she’d grown up with a fair understanding of what it meant to be an officer’s wife.
Including the way her actions could reflect upon him. She had to assume that all communications would be monitored — some early astronauts had gotten into awkward situations when their conversations were captured by microphones aboard their spacecraft and subsequently listened to by mission controllers on Earth.
And if someone in authority had a vested interest in keeping something quiet, it could be very dangerous to ask too many questions. Or at least to ask them too openly.
Which meant it might not be wise to use text messaging right now. Although it wasn’t as realtime as voice telecom — until you tapped the send button, you could still revise or erase a text — the back-and-forth nature of texting made it easy to write too quickly and not consider your words.
Maybe she’d be better off sending him an e-mail. She could consider her words carefully, maybe even save it as draft and come back tomorrow morning to re-read it with fresh eyes.
And make it look like something insignificant, that was the ticket. Just another crazy stunt Sprue was pulling, as if they were going to just laugh it off. That way, if Drew really didn’t know anything of significance, he wouldn’t end up curious enough to ask her awkward questions.