“Course, it might not mean a damn thing. Just struck me as a couple of funny coincidences, that’s all. The same guy working on both skimmers on the same nights port surveillance goes on the fritz.” He eyed her earnestly. “What do you think, Administrator? Am I wasting your time?”
She sucked in her breath. “No, Clif, I don’t think you’re wasting my time. I don’t think you’re wasting my time at all. One thing I don’t understand is, why bring this to me? Why not report it to Port Security?”
He looked away, clearly ill at ease. “Well, it’s like, I don’t know the guys who work security all that well. And I’m thinking, what if one of them is working with this guy I seen, to help cover what he’s doing? Maybe the security guy is taking down the surveillance system while his buddy is doing whatever it is he was doing to those two missing skimmers? What if they’re working something together?”
That could certainly explain, she realized, why the Port Security crew had not been able to come up with any useful information to pass along to her office. “Would,” she asked her guest with studied deliberation, “you be able to recognize the individual you saw working on both of the missing skimmers if you saw him again?”
“Oh, hell, I don’t need to look at a holo of him. I know the guy. He’s in and out of the port all the time, checking out and working on his own skimmer, always making sure it’s operational and ready to go. Seen him working late lots of other times. I’m told he’s a bioprospector also.”