As I was starting up the stairs, Mom called back, “I just saw the delivery truck go by. Was that you? I thought you were already home.”

I stopped dead, then turned around. I found her sitting in the TV room. “What? Why?”

“I thought I heard the barn door slam closed a while back. Maybe it was Patrick?”

“Hmm, don’t think so. I’ll check it out.” I raced upstairs and dug through the upholstery of the La-Z-Boy. With a rush of relief, I felt one of the gadgets and wrapped my hand around it. Nope, wrong one. A little more groping produced the communicator.

I pressed the mike button and said, “Sheldon?”

“Here, Jack.”

“Has someone been in the barn besides us?”

“In fact, yes. I was going to tell you, but you seem to have preempted me.”

“Are they still there? Did they do anything? Was it a Lorann?”

“No, yes, no. I floated up to the top of the barn as soon as the individual entered. He poked around for a while but did no damage and took nothing. Correction. He took some pictures with his phone. I deduce it wasn’t a Lorann because of the level of technology and because of the lack of any cohesive goal. This was amateur hour.”

“He didn’t plant any bugs or anything?”

“By which you mean electronic surveillance? No. Human tech-level devices would be ridiculously easy for me to detect. I did note one interesting detail. He had on a baseball cap that appeared to be lined with a metal mesh, presumably intended as a sort of Faraday cage.”

I stared into space, momentarily frozen with astonishment. “He was wearing a tinfoil hat? Seriously? Where would he have gotten that?”

“Amazon, of course. You humans have no idea what is available on that site.”

“Okay, Sheldon. On the plus side, he doesn’t appear to have done any damage. On the minus, any attention is bad. Can you give me any more info? Maybe a mug shot?”

“Sorry, Jack, I have nothing more. He was wearing a ball cap and a hoodie, so I don’t have a clear face shot, but I might be able to stitch something together from multiple stills. Let me work on it.”

“Okay. On a different subject, although now it’s just gotten much more relevant, do you have enough of whatever you use for printing to give each of us a remote and a communicator? And a cloaking detector? And maybe a disruptor?”

“Cheep cheep cheep. Mouths always open. I have some of those items, and I can print what I don’t have. In addition, I will have to configure the detectors. You can have them tonight.”

“Can you set them up so only we can use our devices?”

“Yes, they can be set up with biometrics. Although I might have to make a couple of attempts to get the human biometrics right.”