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traveler who has traveled not only through space, but also through time! What about you, Nilly?”
    “Even more professional!” Nilly said. He pointed to a used plastic grocery bag, which he’d set down on the workbench next to a set of test tubes containing something ice blue,
which was bubbling and smoking. “An almost fresh pair of underwear, nail polish remover, Monopoly in case it rains, and a bottle of malaria pills from my grandfather,” Nilly said
proudly.

    “Malaria pills?” Doctor Proctor asked. “There aren’t any malaria mosquitoes in London, Nilly.”
    “Ah, so they finally exterminated the London Malaria Mosquito? Well, good, because truth be told, I wasn’t sure about the expiration date on those pills. It says 3/12/25, but I
wasn’t sure if that was 2025. I think it might be 1925.”
    “What are you going to do with the nail polish remover?” Lisa asked. “You don’t wear nail polish.”
    “Exactly,” Nilly said. “So if I should happen to get some on me, I’d like to get it off as soon as possible.”
    “What about a toothbrush and more than one change of underwear?” Lisa said.
    “My toothbrush is in my back pocket. I’ll borrow toothpaste from you. And a professional traveler never wastes underwear. Besides, I’m an optimist.”
    “What do you mean?” Lisa asked.
    “I figure we’ll solve the case before I need to change my underwear more than once.”
    “Well, a good attitude is a good thing to take on a trip too,” Doctor Proctor said. “What do you guys think I ought to bring along besides the usual necessities? Do you
remember the language nose clips I invented so we could speak French? I’ve invented something even better now. It’s a multilingual pill that makes it so we can speak and understand
English for fourteen days. And they taste like raspberries!”
    “Nilly definitely needs one of those,” Lisa said. They were in the same English as a Foreign Language class in school.
    “Hallo, jeg kan engelsk!” Nilly replied indignantly, in Norwegian. Then he corrected himself, saying, “I mean, I can English!” in some kind of Norwenglish.
    Nilly stared at Lisa stiffly for a few seconds before he ultimately gave the tip of his freckled, upturned nose a slight, uncomfortable tug. “Okay, fine.
One
tiny little
multilingual pill for me, then. Do you have any other new inventions, Doctor Proctor?”
    “I have this wood-chopping shoe, which I made in your size, Nilly!” Doctor Proctor said.
    “Yippee!” Nilly said, snatching the tiny shoe.
    “I was planning to give it to you as a homecoming present, along with this,” said Doctor Proctor, holding out an equally tiny mitten.
    “What’s that?” Nilly asked.
    “What does it look like? Obviously, it’s an aiming mitten for right-handed people,” Doctor Proctor said.
    “Oh, right, of course,” Nilly said, and put it on.
    “What’s an . . . aiming mitten?” Lisa asked.
    “Don’t you even know that?” Nilly said, boxing at the air in front of him with the mitten.
    “No,” Lisa said. “What is it?”
    “It’s . . . a really nice mitten that keeps your right hand warm if your left hand isn’t cold. And you can wear it for air-boxing to keep from getting a draft on your fingers,
which would cause arthritis, so you’d have to hold the silverware with your left hand or your toes when you were eating in the old folks’ home,” Nilly explained.
    “Well,” Doctor Proctor said, smiling faintly. “First and foremost it’s a mitten that you can throw these three darts with.” He held up three small darts: one
yellow, one orange, and one black. “And within a radius of ten meters, they’ll hit within a millimeter of where you’re aiming.”
    “Well, yeah, that too, of course,” Nilly said, and kept air-boxing to make sure no one had any doubt the mitten was also particularly well suited to that. “Do you have anything
else new?”
    “Hmm,” Doctor Proctor said, looking around. “In