When Miss Khan entered her classroom at eight o’clock the next morning, she instantly knew someone else had been there before her.
For a start, there was a homework assignment on her desk that clearly hadn’t been there when she left the building the previous evening. It was a dozen pages thick, neatly presented in a blue plastic folder. The title page read: “The Nature of Velocity” by Matilda Palmer.
Miss Khan flipped through it, finding a series of well-prepared diagrams, results, and conclusions, annotated with sections of ticker tape. She set it down again, flummoxed. She knew Tilly had potential, but this was most unlike her.
Then Miss Khan noticed that the door to her lab annex was ajar. She slowly pushed it open and walked inside. Her white lab coat was on its hanger. Her plastic safety goggles and soldering iron were carefully set out on the lab bench just as she had left them. However, the main feature of the lab was missing: a series of clamps and wires lay on the table, but the modified asthma inhaler was gone.
Miss Khan swallowed, feeling her throat go dry with apprehension. If Tilly had run off again, what on earth would she be doing that could require the use of pepper spray foam? And if Tilly did have cause to use it, would it even perform properly and with adequate range? It was still a work in progress. In the future, enhancements would have to be made. Perhaps other devices would need to be designed, with a wider range of capabilities. That’s what her father would have wanted. “Make the tool to fit the job,” he always said.
Against her better judgment, Miss Khan felt her brain come alive with possibilities . . .