At this hour, the offices of Shepardsport Pirate Radio were quiet, and that was exactly the way Spruance Del Curtin liked it. He could have his pick of computers to use, and no one would ask him any awkward questions. Even if Spencer Dawes were to come out of the DJ booth for one or another reason, he was a clone of Alan Shepard’s Lunar Module Pilot, so lineage obligation would keep him from making an aggravation of himself.
Sprue briefly glanced at the receptionist’s desk, but decided against using it. If he did raise any red flags, it could rebound on Cindy Margrave, and she was family. Only she and the afternoon receptionist used that computer, so they would be far more likely to get called in for questioning, if not a disciplinary hearing.
He briefly glanced at the offices of the program director and sales director, but decided against using either of their computers. Although both of them did have assistants, neither of those assistants regularly did work on the computer.
On the other hand, the newsroom had several computers that were used by pretty much everyone on the news team. Heck, some of the DJ’s used those computers, especially if they were looking for filler between sets, or before a group of ads. So many people used those computers that no one would ever be able to trace a particular search to any given individual.
Sprue started to turn on the newsroom lights, then decided it was too likely to attract attention to himself. All he’d need would be Ken Redmond coming down here to check on something and wondering why lights were on in the newsroom. There was enough light from the hallway that he could find his way through, and computer screens were backlit.
According to NASA Data At Rest rules, all computers were supposed to wake to lock screens that required passwords to pass. In theory, each person who used a computer like these was supposed to have a separate password, so that all use could be tracked. Given how many people used them, Autumn had her own password, but all the reporters shared a single password — which was helpfully written on a sticky note adhered to the frame of the monitor.
Not that it wasn’t difficult to remember — the initials of Big Al’s famous first words on the lunar surface and the date. Sprue grinned as he typed it in, imagining what his ur-brother would think to know.
From there, it was just a matter of doing the necessary searches. He’d intended to just use the browser and do a search: Google, Yandex, maybe the Japanese or Israeli sites, although he didn’t know all that much Japanese or Hebrew. But as he looked for the browser icon, he realized one of the advantages of using a newsroom computer: he had access to all the news services, including NASA’s internal ones. From there, it was just a matter of getting on the appropriate one and seeing what he could find out about the situation at Schirrasburg.
He’d expected to find news on some kind of accident, maybe in a lab, or someone doing an EVA. Even after all these years, Schirrasburg was still very much a scientific research station, more like one of the Antarctic bases than Grissom City or Coopersville. Sprue had heard Drew Reinholt tell plenty of tales of his time there, right after he’d been exiled to the Moon for his role in the Angry Astronaut Affair.
Instead, Sprue found a report marked as being for medical personnel only, but for immediate dissemination to all medical facilities off Earth. When he tried to open it, a security notice came up requesting authentication, and warning that all attempts would be logged.
Maybe he’d better not try to guess what passwords Dr. Thuc used, especially since it would be unlikely in the extreme that she would use this computer when she had plenty in Medlab. Especially if it dealt with sensitive patient data, NASA would take any data breaches, successful or attempted, very seriously.
Would there be any way he could get into Medlab and take a whack at one of the computers up there? Sprue tried to think of anyone who worked in Medlab, even as support staff, that he might have enough of a connection to that he could convince them to take a peek.
Even if he couldn’t see the actual document, its very existence was significant. Something had happened over there at Schirrasburg, something significant enough that NASA would be alarmed enough to want their medical personnel everywhere to know about it.
No wonder Dr. Doorne was so upset. Even if Tanner was safe at the moment, that place was small enough that he might well have had some connection with whoever was affected.
And if it was the diablovirus, it meant that the diablovirus was now on the Moon — which raised the question of the mechanism of transmission.