Spruance Del Curtin didn’t like getting caught by surprise. And he certainly didn’t expect to get caught by surprise by his boss.
On reflection, he knew he’d made a mistake when he’d assumed that Dr. Doorne was talking with someone else in the Astronomy department, but the other person just wasn’t speaking loudly enough for him to hear. So he’d assumed that, as long as he could hear her talking, he didn’t have to worry about her popping in on him.
And then she came walking in, still talking on the phone. And no, things did not sound good.
Sprue realized he was looking up from his computer and very deliberately returned his gaze to the monitor. One of the the most important bits of lunar courtesy was maintaining the pretense that one was not hearing conversations that one was not a part of. Even if he could hear, even if he was listening, he mustn’t be obvious about it. And he was not to acknowledge what he’d heard in any way.
Yes, there were gossips — it was something that could never be completely eradicated from the human psyche — but they tended to be on the margins, not in the center of cliques like back on Earth. And the more successful ones tended to be more discrete about what information they passed around, and how they claimed to have come by it.
From the sound of what he had overheard, Dr. Doorne was talking to her husband. Tanner was a pilot, although Air Force rather than Navy like Sprue’s ur-brother. He was currently based over in Schirrasburg, although before the outbreak he’d flown in to Shepardsport pretty regularly to visit his family here.
From the sound of her halfalogue, something had gone bad over there. An accident? Some kind of a breach, but it could be a pressure breach or a security breach.
Realizing Dr. Doorne was looking his way, Sprue determinedly readdressed himself to his work. However, he resolved to do a little research of his own once he was on his own time again. He’d picked up a few tricks for getting information feeds from the other settlements, above and beyond what was publicly available.
In the meantime, he needed to look like a good and diligent worker. Give Dr. Doorne nothing to complain about, nothing to make her think he might be up to something.