Tag: Spruance Del Curtin

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Narrative

An Unpleasant Summons

Spruance Del Curtin had just finished breakfast and was intending to head over to Science to do some preparations before his teaching responsibility. As he headed down the escalator from the dining commons, his phone chimed incoming text.

Surprised, he reached for his phone, then realized the last thing he wanted was to be engrossed in reading when he reached the bottom of the escalator and needed to step off smoothly. Surely it was something that could wait the minute or so to make sure he didn’t fall. While it was true one didn’t fall nearly as hard here on the Moon as on Earth, falling onto a running escalator could still be a very dangerous thing.

Safely on a stationary surface again, Sprue pulled out his phone. To his astonishment, the message was from Colonel Hearne down in Flight Ops. My office, ASAP. I need to talk to you.

Sprue’s guts went cold. Why was the head of Flight Ops contacting him? Not to mention the choice of words, which suggested a bawling-out, not a conversation.

Which meant there was no telling how long he might be tied up. Better to give Training a heads-up, let them know he might be late.

He hadn’t even gotten to the inter-sector airlock before the response came: we have it under control.

Not exactly the most reassuring response right now. It suggested Colonel Hearne had gone to Deena ahead of time to arrange things.

By the time Sprue got to Innsmouth Sector and Flight Ops, he was sick with dread. At least Colonel Hearne wasn’t busy, and wasn’t the sort of person who kept people waiting as a power play.

The older man was brusque and direct. “Sit down.”

As soon as Sprue was seated, Colonel Hearne launched straight into business, without any small talk or other preliminaries. “Since you don’t seem to understand a polite request to stop nosing into matters that we have very good reasons not to want publicly discussed, Captain Waite asked me to make some things plain to you. Number one: we have a very good reason to keep specific numbers relating to the pandemic quiet. This is not just to thwart your curiosity for the pleasure of exercising authority. Right now, we are looking at the very real possibility that the diablovirus will keep spreading until it runs out of susceptible individuals. To put it in very plain terms, we’re talking about losing thirty to forty percent of the global population on Earth. Depending upon exactly what parts of the population those losses are concentrated in, that’s dangerously close to the level at which it becomes difficult to maintain a technological civilization. At the moment we have hope that there will be enough to rebuild.

“However, if these sorts of figures get out in the general population, or worse, a distorted version of them gets out, we have the very real possibility of a panic. Frightened people do irrational things, and that could very well include destroying the very things they will need to sustain and rebuild technological civilization on Earth. Or worse, lead to a panic in one or more lunar settlements, if enough of the population comes to believe that Earth is effectively lost.”

He paused, letting those words sink in. “Have you even considered that your determined efforts to gain access to this sort of information might have such consequences?”

Sprue swallowed hard against the lump forming in his throat. He’d never considered that this sort of information could be dangerous. “No, sir.”

“And that brings us to Number Two. We thought that by bringing you into a privileged position and allowing you to work with some of the data, you would come to an understanding of the significance of what you were working with. Since this clearly is not the case, we are going to have to take a second look at the responsibilities with which you are entrusted, and evaluate where we may need to reduce or remove them.

“In particular, your work as a DJ with Shepardsport Pirate Radio puts you in a position that enables you to present information to the general public. As a result, we have decided to remove you from your air shift until we see clear indications that you understand the importance of these restrictions. In the meantime, Payton Shaw will be covering your air shifts. Therefore, you will be taking over some of his responsibilities to compensate. Do you understand?”

Sprue’s guts clenched, making him feel nauseous. But there was no satisfactory answer except a meek and subdued, “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Then the third and final point should come as no surprise. Because we need to be confident that you are truly taking responsibility, and not just giving us surface obedience to game the system, you will be working under very close supervision during this period. Yes, it will involve some adjustments, but given the current situation, we cannot take any further chances on you until we are confident that you understand the importance of this situation.”

This is gonna suck, hard.

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Narrative

Getting Pinged

All day long, Spruance Del Curtin kept thinking about what Dr. Doorne had said. Sprue was not entirely unfamiliar with growth curves, since they’d gone over them in stats, and they’d been touched upon in a biology class he’d taken a while back.

What he really wanted to know was the nature of the growth that was being measured. Especially with the wild rumors going around about the situation in Schirrasburg, Sprue wondered if Dr. Doorne had been discussing statistics on the spread of the diablovirus.

Except there was no good way to find out. He couldn’t ask because that would be admitting that he’d listened in on a conversation in which he had no part. And since he’d so little, and that quite vague, he had nothing to go on for making discreet inquiries around the settlement.

Face it, you’re out of options. Sprue didn’t like that conclusion. He was a Shep, and part of that geneset’s intense competitiveness was a ferocious determination.

But with nothing to go on, there was no real place to start. Unless he got a lucky break and happened upon something that pointed him in the right direction, he was out of the running.

Which meant he needed to get his mind on something more productive. He had more than enough work to do, between Dr. Doorne pushing him to do some of the most difficult statistical analysis with real data, as opposed to the standard teaching datasets the other students were getting, and his teaching responsibility becoming steadily heavier as his senior teacher pushed more and more onto him.

He was just starting on his latest lesson plan for that when his phone chimed incoming text. He pulled it up, discovered it was from Drew. Found anything yet?

Sprue considered how to answer that one. If it had been Ken Redmond asking, there would’ve been no question of admitting that he’d been listening in on Dr. Doorne’s telephone conversation. But Drew was a fellow Shep, and he’d take a more relaxed view of such things, especially when it might benefit him.

I’ve heard a few things around Science, but so far I haven’t been able to get any hard facts to back them with. But if you want some speculation, I’m thinking they’re looking at Schirrasburg as a test case in the limits of contagion in a closed population.

He paused for a moment before actually hitting the send button. It was just evasive enough about his sources that even if someone in authority were to go through his SMS logs, they wouldn’t be able to say that he’d been eavesdropping.

Drew must’ve needed to think about it too, because it was several minutes before he responded. Long enough for Sprue to decide it was time to dig back in on his work.

He was just getting back into that mindset when the text chime pulled him back out of his thoughts. Which indicates that they had something going around there, although not definite proof that it was the diablovirus.

But if it were just an ordinary bug, why would they be so hush-hush about it that we’ve got rumors all over the place? All they’d have to say is someone’s picked up a case of the flu and it’s spreading, so they’re taking some extra precautions to make sure it doesn’t spread in the middle of a crisis. Then everybody could stop worrying.

Once again Drew took a long time to reply, which left Sprue wondering if that last observation hadn’t been a wise move. Finally the writing message icon showed up, and then the text appeared. You underestimate the bureaucratic mind.

The whole knowledge is power thing?

More than just that. You never want to let information get out that makes you look bad if you can avoid it. That’s why so much embarrassing information gets classified as secret, even when there’s no national security reason.

And why people keep covering things up, never mind that it’s usually the coverup that gets them in trouble, not the actual thing they were covering up.

Exactly. Which is why I’m thinking that it was a diablovirus outbreak, and it was seriously bad.

I’d believe it. But I sure don’t know how to go about confirming it.

Keep thinking about it, but whatever you do, be careful about it.

Sprue promised he would, which seemed to satisfy Drew. Now to get some serious work done on that lesson plan. Maybe he’d get some ideas while his mind was off the problem.

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Narrative

Hints

Spruance Del Curtin had not intended to spy on Dr. Doorne’s communications. In fact, he was planning to just slip in and get some extra work done, and maybe get ahead of the game for a change.

But this batch of data was more boring than usual, and the longer he worked at it, the more his mind began to wander. Nearby voices became more interesting than the rows and columns on the screen in front of him.

Something about sigmoid functions and limits to growth. Dr. Doorne had talked about sigmoid functions in class a couple of sessions ago, and had used several examples, including one from biology, of a new species colonizing a new habitat its population and initially showing an exponential growth curve before hitting the limits of the environment and leveling off to a stable population.

Except that didn’t sound like what she was talking about now. For that matter, it didn’t exactly sound like she was talking to one of her students. No, that sounded more like she was talking to someone closer to her own level.

Even as he wondered just what she was talking about, he realized he was listening in on a conversation in which he had no part. A major breach of courtesy, although as long as he wasn’t obvious about it, calling attention to it would be an equally grave matter.

Which meant that if he wanted to find out what she was talking about, he would have to be extremely discreet about it. Which was not easy when he had only caught part of her conversation, and didn’t have a whole lot of context to work with.

In the meantime, he’d better get his mind back on the work that he was supposed to be doing. The last thing he needed right now was for her to walk in and find him clearly not paying attention to his work.

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Narrative

Reporting One’s Findings

Cindy Margrave was still fighting off weariness as she arrived at the station offices. She knew she shouldn’t have stayed up so late, but she’d been trying to finish a project for her teaching responsibility and she did not want to disappoint the senior instructor by arriving at class with it still incomplete.

At least the people from Food and Nutrition had come by with fresh coffee for the coffee urn. Ken Redmond always said that the Engineering department ran on coffee, and insisted that the coffee urns scattered around his domain be refilled on a regular basis, to the point of having IT rig sensors on each of them to detect when they were getting low.

Cindy retrieved her mug and poured herself a generous cup. Not quite up to the rim, since she needed to leave room for sugar and creamer, but she needed plenty this morning. As she mixed in the sugar and creamer, she thought about just when she’d started drinking coffee on a regular basis.

Back home on Earth, coffee was most definitely a grown-up thing, and even junior hi and high school kids were discouraged from having it. In fact, there’d been a bit of a to-do about the vending machines at the high school including a coffee machine, to the point it had been moved to the teachers’ lounge. As if it were any less healthy for you than the caffeinated pop that was right next to it.

On the other hand, back on Earth kids her age were still very definitely children, and not just in the sense of being legally minors. None of them were shouldering the sorts of responsibility she and other kids her age did on a daily basis, not just as teaching assistants, but also in jobs that helped keep essential parts of the settlement running. Sure, some of them worked at fast food places or big-box retailers, but they did it because they wanted the spending money or to save for college.

Coffee in hand, Cindy returned to the front office and settled in at the receptionist’s desk. Someone else had already turned on the boombox which set on top of the big filing cabinet. It was still Breakfast with the Beatles, although Brenda was playing some of their post-breakup solo work right now.

The programming director had left a few things for the morning receptionist to take care of, mostly verifying some files. Get them knocked out quickly and she might be able to get a little studying in if Autumn didn’t have anything for her to do.

She was just finishing the last item when the door opened and in walked Spruance Del Curtin, looking very satisfied with himself. What was he up to now?

Cindy gave him a narrow-eyed look. “You’re sure here early.”

“Wanted to get to you when I have a little time to talk. One of the guys I used to work with in Engineering had some ideas about what might’ve riled up Colonel Hearne so badly.”

Cindy’s annoyance weakened. However, she wasn’t sure she wanted to let it show right now. “Oh? What does he think?”

“Apparently there was some serious back-room dealing to get Admiral Bradbury the top Pacific Fleet post back in ’09. Either someone had something on President Flannigan, or he owed someone a favor and they decided to call in their marker. It’s not exactly something that’s going to get into the official sources, but you know how scuttlebutt goes.”

“Don’t we all.” The words didn’t come out quite as cool as Cindy had wanted, but at least she came close enough to hitting the right note.

“Yeah. I’ve lost track of how many PSA’s they’ve had us run about not spreading rumors or unconfirmed information.” Those big buggy Shepard eyes did a truly theatrical eye-roll. “Anyhow, there’s a tradition that military officers aren’t supposed to criticize the Commander-in-Chief in the public forum. Tactical criticism through channels, yes, but not open condemnation. That’s why Captain Waite’s always used the ‘keep your oath’ exhortation in all his messages against the abuses of the Flannigan Administration.”

“I was thinking there was something like that going on. Thanks for taking so much time to dig into it, even if you did run into a dead end.”

“Hey, we’re family, and family’s gotta stick together. Especially in times like these.” Sprue held up his fist.

Cindy gave him a fist-bump. Then he was off to whatever he was supposed to be taking care of.

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Narrative

Reminiscences of A Less than Pleasant Time

Spruance Del Curtin had waited until he was almost finished with supper before texting Zack. The last thing Sprue needed right now was to look desperate for the information.

He’d been a little disappointed to be directed to one of the less desirable residential module lounges, but he had a good idea why Zack would pick this barren place. Given that they were going to be talking about sensitive subjects, they didn’t need a whole bunch of other people hanging around to listen in on what they were saying.

So here he was, waiting in an empty room, trying not to be too obvious about watching the module airlock, just in case someone were to emerge from their apartment and wonder why he was hanging out there. In any case, he had things he was really supposed to be doing, like going over the lesson plans for the class he was supposed to be teaching tomorrow.

He’d no more than begun to engage with the material when the inner hatch of the airlock slid open and out stepped Zack. “Hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”

“No problem at all.” Sprue closed his laptop and stuffed it back in his bag. “Just wanted to make good use of the time, considering how everyone’s always on us not to waste our time.”

“Yup.” Zack glanced around the chamber. “Let’s go back to my apartment. Roomie’s on the night shift, so he won’t be back until both of us are going to need to be in bed.”

They retreated down one of the branching corridors to a room not that much different from any other bachelor(ette) apartment around this place. When Shepardsport was originally founded, nobody had ever imagined it would be used as a place of exile for the unwelcome astronaut clones, so these apartments were supposed to be single-occupancy. With the sudden increase in population from the Expulsions, unmarried personnel had been required to double up “for the duration.”

The necessary retrofits had been minimalist at best. Add attachment points for rigging a second bed, then slip in a second set of furniture. It made the already cozy single-occupancy apartments downright crowded, but given the difficulties inherent in creating more residential-rated pressurized volume, the necessary expansion to alleviate the crowding would take time.

At least Zack did have two sling-back chairs that needed only be pulled out of their cubbyhole and unfolded, so they could sit and talk. A few pleasantries about each other’s jobs and studies, and then they got down to the nitty-gritty.

“So you’re looking for some information about how the Sharp Wars started.”

“Right. A friend of mine’s taking Constitution class right now, and a few days ago her teacher got into some of the philosophical stuff behind the Constitution, and was talking about various wars and crises, except he was kind of tiptoeing around the Sharp Wars.”

“Colonel Hearne’s teaching Constitution right now, if I remember correctly. He’s Air Force, and the stuff that really sparked everything involved the Navy. But Hearne’s been an astronaut since before the Energy Wars–“

Realizing this was wandering off into the weeds, Sprue interjected, “I don’t think it’s about interservice rivalries. From what she said, I think it’s something about not saying anything too critical of the Commander-in-Chief.”

“Ah, that.” Zack moistened his lips. “I was still young enough at the time that most of my information was coming from news media. But I’ve heard that Flannigan did not want Bradbury in charge of the Pacific Fleet, and there was some suspicion that he was trying to sabotage the man. Apparently the two of them had history that went back to the Energy Wars, maybe beyond. I do know that Flannigan was in the Marines, and he was injured at Second Nile.”

“Yeah, everybody knows that.”

“But what he tries to keep quiet is that it wasn’t a legitimate combat injury. He broke his leg falling down a ladder on the Ticondaroga, and rumor has it he was drunk on illegal hooch at the time.”

Sprue sucked in a sharp whistle. He knew that Conrad Bradbury had been commanding officer of the USS Nimitz during a good bit of the Energy Wars, including the Second Battle of the Nile. But even the captain of an admiral’s flagship had authority over only his own vessel, and even the air wing embarked had its own commanding officer.

But the flag captain was often quite close to the admiral — he wouldn’t stay flag captain long if they didn’t get along — so it would be possible that he’d accompanied the admiral for some kind of inspection on the Ticondaroga and had uncovered evidence of the truth about then-lieutenant Flannigan’s injury.

Except there was one big problem. “But if Flannigan was so adamantly against Bradbury, why did he put the assignment through? I thought the President had the final say as Commander-in-Chief.”

“In theory, but in practice there’s a lot of political consideration. From some things I’ve heard, Flannigan needed some legislation pushed through, and some Senator was an old wartime buddy of Bradbury’s and wanted him to get the Pacific Fleet command as his final post before retirement. There’s also the story that it was some kind of horse-trading within the Department of Defense, and Flannigan had to acquiesce to Bradbury’s assignment to get something he wanted more. In any case, he wasn’t overly happy about it, and wasn’t going to do any more than he had to on Bradbury’s behalf.”

“Which was stupid, especially considering that command would include forces that would be involved in any new Korean conflict. And with the Kim wackjobs getting wackier with every generation, that place was already a real powderkeg.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Flannigan’s got a vindictive streak as wide as his back, so it was just almost believable that he would’ve set things up so that Sandoval could get into a secure area, in spite of being known to have severe PTSD, and then make sure he just happened to be shot instead of captured alive after everything went off. All we know is that there were a lot of things going on in Pearl Harbor during the memorial service and transfer of command, and we’ll probably never learn the whole story.”

“But it’s probably nasty, and it’s likely that some version of it has been going around on the military grapevine ever since. So Colonel Hearne probably knows a lot more than he can say in any sort of official capacity, even if it’s just instructor for Constitution class.”

Zack leaned forward, spoke in a low voice. “If you want to take the risk, I’ve got a friend down in IT who could probably get you some interesting files off the darknet.”

Sprue had heard about the darknet, the system of servers that couldn’t be found by ordinary searches, but could be located by a person with a specialized browser and some specialized know-how. “I don’t think my friend wants to go that deep. Especially since she’s a minor and I don’t think her guardian would approve.”

Make that definite, considering her foster mother is head of Safety and Security, and was an FBI officer for years before that.

“OK. I hope what I could get you was helpful. Let me know if your friend still has any questions.”

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Narrative

The Time We Lose to Meetings

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.”

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Narrative

Maybe Some Answers

Spruance Del Curtin had almost given up on helping Cindy Margrave with her question about the beginning of the Flannigan Administration and how it led to the Sharp Wars. It would’ve been easier if he could’ve gone directly to some of the people he knew would have the answers, but he didn’t have the right connections to just walk up and ask.

And then he was heading out of the station offices after his air shift and a familiar voice called his name. He turned to find Zach, one of the guys he’d been teamed with off and on when he was still working in Engineering.

“I hear you’ve been asking around for someone who was old enough to have clear memories of the start of the Sharp Wars.”

“Yeah, I was trying to help a colleague who’s been really curious about why her teacher is sort of avoiding that subject. We’re both thinking it has something to do with military personnel not speaking badly of the Commander-in-Chief, but especially with so much of the stuff you can find online being suspect, I wanted to hear what someone who had actual memories of the time had to say.”

“In that case, I’m not sure how much help I’d be. I mean, I was still in middle school then. A very precocious middle school kid who was already following the news and becoming aware of national and world events, which a couple of my teachers seemed to find threatening for some reason, but still seeing it through a kid’s-eye-view.”

Sprue kept his pose non-chalant. “No problem. But even those recollections may give us something to go on.”

Zach cast a significant glance at the clock. “Right now I’m a little tight on time. But text me this evening and we can work out some time to reminisce.”

Not what he’d hoped for, but it was still better than nothing at all.

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Narrative

Slow and Steady

One good thing about having worked in Engineering was plenty of connections with the older clones, the ones who remembered the early days of the Flannigan Administration. Although some of them had been born from artificial uterine environments and raised in the creches, a fair number of them had been raised in regular families and as a result would have a wide variety of experiences of those days.

However, now that he was no longer working in Engineering, he had a lot less contact with those guys. That made it a lot harder to make contact with them. He couldn’t very well walk up to them and ask them what they remembered about the early Flannigan Administration and the beginning of the Sharp Wars, and there just weren’t the opportunities to have a conversation start up naturally that could be steered in the appropriate direction.

Still, difficult was not the same as impossible. He did still have enough in common with those guys that he could find ways to get together with them and strike up a conversation. It just took a lot more work.

Which was why he really didn’t want to have to see Cindy Margrave right now. He really didn’t want to admit that he’d made little or no progress on finding out what she wanted to know.

Which made him very relieved when he arrived at the station offices and found no one at the receptionist’s desk. Sometimes Cindy did stay a little late, especially if she needed to wind something up.

But he had to come early if he wanted to talk with Autumn Belfontaine about the possibility of doing work with the news department and still be a DJ. Once his air shift started, he didn’t want to get involved in a conversation that could take him away from the DJ booth too long.

Except when he got to the newsroom, Autumn was nowhere in sight. One of the younger reporters looked up from a computer and said she’d been called down to IT for something.

Nothing to do but thank the kid for the information and find something to busy himself until time for his air shift. He certainly had some studying to do.

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Narrative

A Rather Awkward Position

After all his efforts, Spruance Del Curtin was still at square one on Drew Reinholt’s request. Whatever was going on down there at Schirrasburg, it was buttoned up so tight that no information was getting out at all.

That or people knew but just didn’t want to talk about it. Or had been forbidden to talk about it.

Certainly Autumn Belfontaine’s remarks to him hinted at that. She was almost certainly able to get pretty much any information she wanted that wasn’t outright classified. However, she also was not the boss at Shepardsport Pirate Radio — he still remembered her remark when they were first setting it up, that freedom of the press belonged to those who owned the press.

On the other hand, she’d just made that offer to take him into the news crew. He was still ambivalent about the idea, mostly because he really didn’t want to give up being a DJ. But he was starting to wonder if he ought to talk to her about the possibility of doing some of the back-office work of the news department while keeping his air shift.

Even as he was considering that, his phone chimed incoming text. He found a new text from Cindy Margrave.

How much do you remember the beginning of the Sharp Wars? The Arizona Memorial Incident and all that stuff.

Some, but I was still in grade school, and they kept a pretty close watch on our media access at the NASA clone creches. So we got a very filtered version, what the grown-ups thought we were ready to handle.

And you didn’t try to get around it?

Yep, Cindy knew his rep for viewing those situations as technical challenges. Trying’s one thing. Having the skills is another. So’s having the necessary access to computers and the Internet.

The three dots icon flickered for an unusually long time. Probably Cindy was needing to think about her reply.

Finally it popped up on his screen: That would be a difficulty. Did the older kids have those restrictions too?

Some of them. I think the guys who were in high school had unrestricted TV and Internet access, but they lived in the other dorm across the courtyard from us, and we didn’t have a lot of contact.

Sprue paused, considering how far he wanted to carry it, then decided to take his chances. I’m sure they’re up here, but most of them had left the creche years before the Expulsions. I mean, they started using artificial uterine environments right after the Lanakhidzist Revolution, when we first got the technology from the Soviet labs. You’re talking about more than thirty years since the creches first opened, so those guys would’ve been tracked down and Expelled individually, just like the ones who were gestated the old-fashioned way and grew up in regular families.

He felt oddly naked, talking so frankly about those matters to a young woman who wasn’t even the child of a clone, just a member of Colonel Dalton’s household.

Cindy’s response came more quickly this time. Thanks anyway. I was hoping maybe you could connect me to someone who was old enough to remember, but isn’t too busy to talk to it. Some stuff came up in Constitution class today, and I wanted to find out more on my own.

Maybe you ought to talk to Autumn about that. She was already working as a reporter for the college radio station during the 2012 election, and barely escaped a riot at the Minnesota statehouse.

Thanks. I’ll see if she has the time and wants to talk about it.

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Narrative

Connecting

Payton Shaw was just finishing his latest report to Colonel Hearne when a familiar voice called his name. Payton looked up to see Spruance Del Curtin leaning over the back of the sofa. “What brings you here?”

“I need a little help.” Sprue gave a quick look around, lowered his voice. “You’ve heard about the guy over at Schirrasburg who’s supposed to have caught the diablovirus?”

“Mostly because the whole settlement’s closed down and Colonel Hearne had to completely redo our flight roster to isolate the pilots who’d been there right before the guy turned up sick. Sure, we’re following strict quarantine procedures and pilots are no longer allowed to go inside the settlements they’re visiting, but there’s still a certain limited amount of contact.”

Sprue’s lips quirked up a little, not a full-out Smilin’ Al grin, but definitely mark him down as pleased with the situation. “So here’s the problem. There are a bunch of rumors going around now. Some of them say the guy’s recovered and may never have had the diablovirus in the first place. The rest are claiming he died but NASA’s covering it up to prevent panic, since nobody’s sure where he got it from.”

“That’s pretty heavy stuff, Sprue.” Payton considered just how deep he wanted to get into this mess. especially since he had no idea where Sprue had gotten his information. For all Payton knew, he’d gone and poked his nose into some place he shouldn’t again. “And you know the big boss really doesn’t want people passing rumors.”

“I know what Captain Waite’s said. We had a talk about it a while back.” Sprue sounded a little exasperated. “Anyway, I’m not passing rumors. I’m trying to find out whether there’s any substance to them. After all, isn’t the whole point of Shepardsport Pirate Radio trying to get the truth out so that people aren’t stuck having to sift through masses of contradictory rumors?”

“You really have a talent at putting me in a rough place, Sprue. I’m not going to promise anything, but I’ll see what I can find out.”