There were times when Brenda Redmond wished she didn’t have the morning drive-time air shift at Shepardsport Pirate Radio. It was a news-heavy shift, which meant getting to hear all about everything that was going on in the world — which these days meant everything going wrong in the world.
And the news report Autumn Belfontaine had been delivering right at the end of Brenda’s shift was particularly worrisome. If a worker in the Indian Space Agency’s pre-flight quarantine facility could pass the diablovirus to their astronauts and infect the entire Japanese LEO space station and lunar ferry, how safe were America’s facilities? Especially considering that it wasn’t just NASA any more, with McHenery Aerospace and several other private companies launching crewed spacecraft from commercial spaceports. They were supposed to follow the same pre-flight quarantine procedures as NASA astronauts — but there’d been issues of corner-cutting on other safety procedures, so who was to say they weren’t getting lax there too.
All it would take is one person.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if Drew had been down at Coopersville, but he was stationed at Slayton Field. Grissom City was not only the largest and oldest lunar settlement, but also the busiest spaceport city. Which meant Drew would be right on the front lines in terms of his risk of exposure.
But she couldn’t let her worries about him leak into her communications to him. She knew the risks — it came with being a military spouse. And it wasn’t fair to the other pilot-astronauts’ wives for her to worry too obviously when they had their own burdens.
Better to focus on the things she had some level of control over. Her work, her training and gym time, her teaching responsibility. And taking care of the kids, of course.
Her phone chimed: incoming text message. She pulled it out, halfway hoping it was Drew.
No, it was Kitty Margrave. Call me. We need to talk.