What followed in the weeks after they returned to the Moon Base was nothing short of a mind-numbing grind for most of the staff. Iteration after iteration was tested, with the weapon repeatedly powered up and checked for surges as it cycled through the activation sequence.
Time after time it failed, and each change that improved one frequency would introduce issues in another.
There were suggestions to make them all independent circuit boards, but that would be massively oversized, and when it was actually tried, it increased the interference, as the leaking energy would precharge circuits on the other boards and cause them to introduce new interference patterns.
In short, the fix for what seemed to be a minor issue ended up being a larger design problem than actually designing a new weapons system prototype in the first place.
