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came up empty. “I must have left it in my desk. I don’t take it with me into the classroom.” He nodded. “Yeah. That’s what happened. Because I came right from the room.” He shrugged. “No problem.” They were behind a tractor-trailer. Dave watched for his chance, pulled out, and passed. “Shel, you really have no idea what happened?”
    “I was working at the house. Then I was out where you found me.”
    “And that’s all?”
    “Yes.”
    “What’ve you got there?” Dave was looking at the Q-pod.
    Shel shrugged. “Don’t know. Something my father had.”
    Dave shook his head. “You need to see a doctor, Shel.”
    “I guess.”
    On the long ride home, the conversation concentrated on brain tumors and amnesia and various neuroses, of which neither of them knew anything, but it didn’t slow Dave’s theorizing. After all, what else could it be? Shel squirmed the entire trip. “But even if I’ve got a tumor or something,” he said, “how did I get way the hell out here? Walk?”
    They had just connected with the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Har risburg, when he realized he didn’t have his keys. He’d have to break into the house.
     
     
     
    IT was dark when they stopped at a roadside diner. While they ate, Shel figured it out. The Q-pod induced some sort of mental disruption. That would explain why his father wanted them destroyed. It was a weapon! Though that still didn’t explain how he’d gotten to the Allegheny National Forest.
    Dave shook his head. It still didn’t make sense. “I think it has to do with the pressure you’ve been under. It’s your father’s disappearance, Shel. It’s been eating at you. It can’t be a coincidence that this happens just after you lose him.”
    “How did I get out there?”
    “Maybe you caught a bus. Rode a taxi, for that matter.”
    Finally, desperate to change the subject, Shel asked about Helen Suchenko.
    “She’s pretty nice, isn’t she?” Dave said.
    “Yeah. She looks like a heartbreaker.”
    “She’s a doctor.”
    “Really? Ummm—” He hesitated. “You introduced her as an old friend. How good an old friend, exactly?”
    Dave smiled. “No problem,” he said, with a touch of jauntiness. “Nothing serious between us.”
    Shel thought he detected a reluctance in the answer. “You sure?”
    “Absolutely.”
     
     
    HE delivered Shel to his front door shortly before eleven. The outside lights came on as they pulled into the driveway. First thing they did was check the garage. The Toyota was there, just as Les had said.
    Shel sighed. “Now we get to break in.” He looked helplessly at the house. “I keep an extra key at the office, but I have no way of getting in there, either.”
    “Why don’t you stay at my place tonight?”
    “That doesn’t really work.” He thought he saw movement in one of the windows. A face drawing back. “Wait. What’s that?”
    “What’s what?”
    But it was gone now. “I thought I saw somebody inside.”
    “Are you serious?”
    “Right there. In the dining room.”
    Dave went over and looked in. “Don’t see anything.”
    “Neither do I, now.”
    “There’s a light on in there.” The den.
    “I had that one on last night.”
    “Shel, maybe we should call the police.”
    “I feel as if I’m in a rerun. But no. It was probably my imagination.”
    “So why don’t you spend the night at my place?”
    “Dave, I’d still have to come back here to change for work. I couldn’t go in like this. Well, I could, but it’s more trouble than it would be worth. No, it’s okay. I’m getting good at break-ins.” He was tired. Scared. Literally terrified about the possibilities of a brain tumor. Maybe he was coming apart.
    Dave was still looking through the window. “I don’t think you should take any chances. Call nine-one-one.”
    “I don’t want to bring the police here on a false alarm.”
    “Best to play it safe, Shel.”
    “I don’t even have a key. They’d think I’m a mental