Being Chief of Security for a major lunar settlement did have its perks, Betty Margrave had to admit. For one thing, it gave her access to databases not available to ordinary citizens. Databases that might help her track down Kitty’s friend Amy.
However, the further Betty searched, the more concerned she became. Ordinarily she should’ve had the girl’s location pinpointed within a few searches, especially since Kitty had given her the phone number.
Just how bad were things getting down there? Houston was a major port city, with ships coming and going every day. Maybe not the level of traffic as they’d experienced during the Energy Wars, when they’d been shipping POL’s to the troops in the Middle East, but the port of Houston still handled a lot of traffic — which meant people coming and going, a perfect situation for the spread of a dangerous new virus.
Which is what makes Slayton Field so high risk too. Betty pushed the thought out of her mind. She knew her opposite numbers in Grissom City were keeping a close eye on the situation — just yesterday she’d been teleconferencing with Greg Shipton and Cather Hargreaves on just that subject, going over quarantine procedures for a spaceport that had to be kept operating to support the myriad scientific and mining outposts scattered across the lunar surface.
Still, that little thread of worry crept along the back of her mind. Carl was to fly over there tomorrow, to deliver biologicals and pick up some minerals. According to the flight plan, he and his pilot would stay in the lander the entire time they were there, and interact with ground crew only by radio. He was probably safer there than in takeoff or landing.
In the meantime, she had a girl to track down. The last Kitty knew, Amy had gone with the parents of a friend while her own parents were both taken to the hospital. However, her cellphone metadata wasn’t showing her as being at that location.
In fact, for the last fifteen hours there was no metadata at all for her. Could the logging systems be that badly behind? Or could her phone have been confiscated and turned off for some transgression, real or imaginary?
Which left Betty with the problem of how to find out, when she was uncertain whether her authority up here would translate into anything meaningful down there.