She opened a credentials wallet.
The seal showed a blue globe crossed by an orbital arc.
NASA.
Below the photograph:
ELEANOR VOSS
DIRECTOR OF SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
OFFICE OF LAUNCH AND ORBITAL PROGRAMS
Isaac looked at it but did not take it.
Eleanor noticed.
Most people reached for official credentials instinctively.
Isaac did not.
“Mr. Merritt,” she said, closing the wallet, “I need about ten minutes of your time.”
Isaac looked toward the SUVs.
“You brought three vehicles for ten minutes.”
“I brought people who are also engineers.”
“They afraid of garages?”
“They’re waiting because I asked them to.”
Isaac wiped his hands again.
“What agency did you say?”
“I didn’t.”
He looked at the badge she had already shown him.
Eleanor held his gaze.
“NASA is sufficient for the first conversation.”
Isaac almost smiled.
Almost.
Instead, he leaned against Raymond’s front fender.
“I signed a nondisclosure agreement six years ago. If this involves Nexora Aerospace, whatever you drove here to ask is probably covered.”
“The agreement covers proprietary commercial information.”
“That’s what their lawyers said.”
“It does not supersede federal authority in a national security emergency.”
Isaac’s expression changed very slightly.
Eleanor placed the manila folder on the hood.
“I’m not here to reopen your employment dispute.”
“I don’t have one.”
“You were terminated.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
She rested one hand on the folder.
“I’m here because of a satellite called OBSIDIAN-7.”
Isaac did not react.
Eleanor continued.
“And because I found a technical report you wrote on March 14, 2017.”
His eyes moved toward the folder.
That was the first reaction she had been waiting for.
“You shouldn’t have that,” he said.
“It’s in a restricted federal archive.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
“Why?”
“Because Nexora rejected it.”
“They archived it anyway.”
Isaac looked toward the open garage.
Then toward the road.
Dale and his mechanics were pretending not to watch.
Eleanor lowered her voice.
“OBSIDIAN-7 is showing a propulsion pressure anomaly at ninety-three-minute intervals.”
Isaac’s face became completely still.
“You should leave that folder there.”
“Mr. Merritt—”
“Leave it.”
He turned away.
Eleanor did not follow.
Isaac walked to the back corner of the garage where an old drip coffee maker sat beside a metal cabinet.
He poured half a mug.
His hand was steady.
He stared at the black surface.
Six years.
He had managed six years without hearing the words Prometheus Drive spoken aloud.
Six years without seeing Nexora’s logo.
Six years without asking whether the system had ever flown.
Six years telling himself he had left all of it in Houston.
Now a NASA director was standing beside Raymond Ellis’s broken F-150 with a classified folder containing data from a satellite whose failure Isaac had predicted before anyone in Harlow knew he had once designed anything more sophisticated than an engine bracket.
He drank the coffee.
It tasted burned.
He turned around.
Eleanor was still standing beside the truck exactly where he had left her.
No impatience.
No phone.
No glance at her watch.
Isaac walked back.
He opened the folder.
The first sheet was a telemetry summary.
Pressure values.
Temperature values.
Orbital position.
Valve response timing.
He read the first column.
Then the second.
His eyes accelerated.
Not because he was skimming.
Because recognition made some numbers unnecessary.
He turned the page.
Third page.
Fourth.
His breathing changed.
Eleanor noticed.
Isaac sat on the metal stool near the workbench without appearing to realize he had done it.
The stool had one missing rubber foot and rocked slightly when his weight shifted.
The pressure deviation was small.
A less experienced engineer might have dismissed it as instrumentation drift.