"Masked," Adrian said.
"Then unmask the portion we need."
"I can't."
"Who can?"
Adrian called Eleanor.
Within an hour, Isaac had a normalized reserve profile stripped of mission-sensitive quantities.
He placed it beside the Nexora proposal.
"They moved the problem."
"Where?"
"Propellant."
Reducing the valve's correction activity degraded regulation efficiency. The vehicle would compensate during later maneuver events by drawing more from the reserve.
The initial vibration improved.
The mission lifetime collapsed elsewhere.
Adrian ran the estimate.
"Nine to eleven days," he said.
"That's what I get."
"Their package says twenty-five days to implementation and test."
"Then it arrives after it stops mattering."
Eleanor stood behind them reading the results.
"Do they know?"
Isaac looked at the optimization assumptions.
"Somebody does. They constrained the model to actuator stability. They didn't optimize against reserve consumption."
"Could be an honest scope boundary."
"Could be."
Eleanor looked at him, perhaps expecting anger.
He offered none.
"Don't assign motive where a spreadsheet is enough," he said. "Prove the engineering first."
That sentence became important two days later, when Cameron Ashford appeared in Harlow without notice.
He arrived in a rental sedan just before ten in the morning.
Isaac saw him through the open garage door and recognized the shape of his walk before the face. Six years changed people unevenly. Cameron's hair had silvered at the temples. He carried less weight than before and more caution.
The confidence remained.
"Good morning, Isaac."
Isaac kept writing on the pad in front of him.
"Cameron."
"I was nearby."
Isaac looked up.
"No, you weren't."
Cameron allowed a brief smile.
"Fair."
Adrian, working at the monitors, glanced between them.
Cameron surveyed the garage.
The gesture lasted only seconds, but Isaac saw it. The old calculation. The attempt to reconcile current surroundings with remembered credentials.
"You've built quite an operation."
"My father did."
"Of course."
Cameron stepped closer to the workbench.
"I thought it might help to talk directly before this situation becomes more complicated than necessary."
"Which situation?"
"OBSIDIAN-7."
"You're not supposed to know I'm working on it unless Eleanor told you."
Cameron's eyes flickered.
"My consulting role gives me visibility into technical remediation activities."
"Then talk to NASA."
"I'm talking to you because there are issues of context that don't translate well through formal channels."