His brows drew together. In the diffuse light that filtered down between the trees from a cloud-filled sky it should have been easy to pick out the glow of multiple indicators on the outside of the beacon box. That it was dark and devoid of light didn’t necessarily mean the device wasn’t working—but it was not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.
It meant making one more plunge into the water that filled the aft section. Nothing darted from the water to assault him, and he held his breath religiously to avoid ingesting any of the untreated fluid. Emerging with toolbox in hand, he returned to the opening and cracked the beacon’s seal.
Passing the tester over the device produced nothing: not so much as a chirp from the auditory indicator or a squiggle on the small screen. It should have lit up with half a dozen different readouts. Instead, it was as flat and dull as a politician in the absence of media. Of course, the crash landing could have damaged the tester as well, but like most tools, it was almost too simple and straightforward to hurt. And it was too much to expect that both the supposedly invulnerable emergency beacon as well as the much smaller tester had suffered similar critical damage during touchdown. A smashup serious enough to cause them both to fail would have done much worse to his far more fragile human frame, sofoam cocoon notwithstanding.
Pondering the unreasonable unlikeliness of it all, he happened to glance at the right side of the beacon. It should have looked exactly the same as the left side, the top, the front, and the back. But it did not. Even in the poor light he could make out the thin but distinct line running the length of the box, about midway up the side. Frowning, he traded the tester for another tool and traced the latter along the line. The beacon popped open: something it should not do outside an authorized inspection-and-repair facility. Wary of the rain, he used his body to shield the box as best he could as he leaned over and in for a closer look.