One of the things Ursula Doorne really liked about her peculiar status was how it got her out of a lot of the administrative foofaw that plagued academic departments. With her background in electrical engineering, she was far too valuable dealing with equipment that needed repaired to have her serving on this or that committee, sitting through meetings, filling out documents, and the like.
Except there were always some meetings that one simply couldn’t duck out of, no matter how valuable one was in other areas. Like today, when the head of Science had ordered her to deliver a report on the peculiar behavior of the Sun.
Which meant that she had to pull together all the figures on almost no notice, when she still had very incomplete data. But from the sound of Dr. Iwe’s request, someone higher up wanted to see answers.
Which raised the question of just who was doing the asking. From everything she’d heard, including what Tanner had told her, she was under the impression that NASA was operating on a skeleton crew, just enough to keep essential operations going.
But any anomalies in the behavior of the Sun are essential information, she reminded herself as she completed the last slide for her A/V presentation. Of course NASA is going to want to know about it.
The door to her office opened. Surprised, she looked up at Spruance Del Curtin. “You’re early today.”
“Thought I’d get an early start on the latest data sets.”
“Right now I don’t have any ready.” She explained about the sudden call to make a presentation at the Science Division committee meeting.
Yes, Sprue actually did look disappointed. Could that cocky young smartass actually be discovering actual pride in work that essential but not showy?
Maybe she ought to bring him under her wing a little more, mentor some of that talent that was so often hidden under that I’m-too-cool-for-this exterior. “However, you can help me with the presentation, and get to see a little more of how science gets done.”