As with any similar device, the beacon’s internal components were solid: drawn, painted, flashed, or strobed in place. None of which explained the hole in the middle of the lower right quarter. The fissure had not been made with a drawer, painter, flasher, or strober. Something large and heavy had been used to smash a hole in the surface of the unit. Even in this day and age there were uses for low-tech. The hole might have been made with something as simple as an old-fashioned hammer. It might have been made by a rock. The means was unimportant.
Circuitry had been shattered. To fix it would require the resources of a fully equipped shop and a skilled flasher. He had neither. The dimensions as well as the nature of the destruction led to an unavoidable conclusion.
Someone had entered, opened, and deliberately damaged the beacon. Considered thoughtfully, this implied that whoever had done so had presumed that the beacon might soon be put to use and that the perpetrator preferred it not be available at such time to perform its designated functions.
Eyes widening, he removed a portable work light from the toolbox and stuck it to his forehead. Further examination revealed everything he now suspected and far more than he wanted to know.
The skimmer’s power monitor had been adjusted to show a full charge when in reality he had departed Taulau on less than a tenth of that. Guidance systems had also been tampered with. In fact, once he got deeper into the craft’s instrumentation he had a hard time finding something that had not been tampered with. It implied more than casual destruction. In as professional and methodical a way possible, someone had gone to considerable trouble to ensure that no matter how skilled its pilot, this particular skimmer would never be able to return its passenger to his point of origin.