Patrick poked my backpack with a finger. “Of the questions we still haven’t asked, we still need to find out what the rest of the gadgets do.”

I sighed. “I’ll add it to the list.”

“Great,” Patrick looked at his watch. “Except I have to head home. You know how Dad gets about Sunday dinner. Want a ride, Nat?”

“I guess. Or I could get Sheldon to—?”

Patrick and I exclaimed, “No!” at the same time.

As my friends headed for the door, I sank heavily into my favorite chair. Hefting my backpack, I extracted the gadgets one at a time, laying them out on the workbench. I pulled up the list of questions I’d made on my phone during idle moments and examined them.

I was lost in thought when Sheldon spoke. “Jack?”

Startled out of my ruminations, I picked up the communicator. “Uh, hi Sheldon, what’s up?”

“I’m still visible. And Nat and Patrick have left. I deduce that you may be done for the day.”

I rubbed my forehead for a moment. “Damn. You’re right. Thanks for being on the ball. You can go invisible now.” I looked over my shoulder just as the Halo vanished. “And Sheldon?”

“Yes, Jack?”

“What do these gadgets do? The ones we found on Alaric?”

“I can see them in front of you. The belt has the cloaking mechanism. It’s tuned for a Gen physique, so I don’t know how well it would work for you.”

“What, like kill me?”

“No, nothing dangerous. But it might make just your skin invisible. Or everything except your veins and arteries. Either would be likely to get you noticed.”

I laughed out loud. “Not wrong. And these?”

“You’ve already figured out the communicator and the key fob. The weapon that you have been referring to as a ‘ray gun’ you should certainly not play with. The others are a scanner, which your Star Trek-obsessed mind would refer to as a tricorder, although that’s only approximately right; an emergency medical-treatment device, which you should definitely not play with, as it is designed for Gen physiology; and a Lorann detector.”

“A Lorann detector? Really?”

“It’s actually a cloaking-field detector, but when Alaric had me produce it, the only cloaking fields on Earth were likely to be Lorannic in origin. It’s designed to detect cloaking fields such as that generated by the belt or the Halo when invisible. A portable unit of that size will have a very limited range—ten to twenty feet, depending on the amount of intervening matter.”

“What does it do if it detects one?”

“It vibrates. Even Alaric could figure out that flashing lights and a siren might be counterproductive.”

I snorted. “Makes sense.” I collected the gadgets into my backpack and placed it in a hidden cupboard that I had built into my workbench in my rebellious teenager phase.

“May I ask a question?” Sheldon said.

“Sure, Sheldon. Shoot.”