Richard remembered those meetings fondly now, but he had not always felt that way. During one early demonstration, an investor had demanded a public launch before the validation team had finished reviewing a fault condition. Ethan had declined to sign, and the resulting argument had lasted almost three hours. When the team finally isolated the fault, Richard had found Ethan alone in the workshop, too exhausted to look pleased that he had been right.
"You could have made this easier for yourself," Richard had told him. Ethan had been tightening the cap on a marker that had run out of ink during the meeting. "I don't want to make it easy for myself if that makes it dangerous for somebody else," he answered. Richard carried the sentence with him for years, even when he began to make compromises that sat badly beside it.
The three original partners signed a founding agreement on a rainy evening in a borrowed law office. Its pages divided financial rights, technical responsibilities, and the authority to certify designs derived from the first architecture. Ethan had never cared much about the ownership section, but he insisted on an independent validation requirement for safety-critical work. A narrow clause preserved the original architect's ability to refuse an attestation if the evidence did not support it, and the investors agreed because the company had not yet learned to resent inconvenient honesty.
The business grew faster than any of them had predicted. A small federal research award led to larger contracts, and a larger contract brought attention from manufacturers that had previously ignored the company. Laboratories multiplied, the administrative staff moved to more respectable offices, and reporters arrived with questions about the future of aviation. Richard became the public face of Northstar, while Ethan worked through nights that gradually became too numerous to count.
When his wife died, the company tried to keep him close through money and new titles. Richard offered a senior executive position with considerable freedom, believing that work might give Ethan somewhere to put his grief. Instead, Ethan surrendered his seat on the board, transferred most of his financial interest under an agreement negotiated for his daughter's security, and withdrew from executive leadership. He retained his status as an original technical partner and the limited certification protection, although both were placed in records restricted to the chairman's office and corporate counsel.
For a while, Ethan could not enter a laboratory without feeling guilty that he had chosen it instead of home. Three years after the funeral, he asked Richard whether Northstar could use an experienced technician who wanted a normal shift and no public responsibility. Richard had offered him something far more prestigious, then stopped when he saw that Ethan would refuse it. He approved the ordinary application, agreed not to advertise their earlier partnership, and told only a small legal group which records must remain protected.