Spruance Del Curtin looked up at the big analog clock on the wall of the DJ booth. He still had half an hour left before he could sign off and head down to Innsmouth Sector. He was really tempted to play Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher,” just to hear the line about the clock being slow.
On second thought, he did not need to draw attention to the fact that he was clock-watching right now, and especially not with that song. He hadn’t forgotten the time he’d ended up with one of the pilot-astronauts after his hide over an on-air wisecrack about his teacher before playing it. And I didn’t even know Sid was sweet on her until Ken Redmond hauled my ass down to his office and bawled me out.
And it seemed like Ken would never quite let him back off the naughty list. If anything, this new assignment that had him doing liaison work between Engineering and IT seemed to make it worse, since now he had two bosses he needed to watch his step around.
That was when he noticed a commotion outside. Yes, it was Ken, coming down the corridor at a fair clip, and from the look of things, something was very wrong.
And then the door was opening and Ken was stuffing a piece of paper in his hand. Actual paper, not a text message.
As soon as Sprue saw the NOAA headers on the message, he had to take a deep breath and recover his composure. No wonder Ken had torn it right off the printer and run it over here. Up here on the Moon, solar storms were one of the biggest dangers, right there with explosive decompression and hypercapnia.
Just a few days ago the Sun had “tossed a hairball,” pilot slang for a Coronal Mass Ejection. At least that one had been on a part of the Sun away from the Earth-Moon system, so it shot harmlessly into deep space. Which was a good thing, considering it was an X-class, close to the Carrington Event in power.
Thankfully the latest one was much weaker. However, it was aimed almost directly at them, and would soon be bathing Farside in dangerous hard X-rays and charged particles. Which meant that they had to get the warning out now to all the outlying habitats to suspend all EVA’s and re-route all travelers to shelter.
Now the big question would be whether everyone here in Shepardsport would need to retreat to the solar storm shelters under the settlement’s water reservoirs. Not only would it disrupt all work in progress except essential life-support activities, it would also mean the pilots and spaceport personnel who were avoiding contact with the rest of the settlement’s population could not maintain their quarantine.
What would that mean for everyone?
Maybe we’ll be lucky and the energy levels will be low enough that we won’t have to take shelter. But even as that thought came to him, Sprue knew he was whistling in the dark.