Leonard paced nervously in the cramped confines of the tent. Raj was actually praying in Hindi, something he hadn't done since he was a small child. Tears streaked his face as he murmured the familiar phrases. Howard was at the short wave radio, twisting the dials while cursing the "crazy bastard" under his breath.

"What was he thinking?" Howard finally cried hysterically. "Is he gonna kill himself just so we'll feel guilty for the rest of our lives?"

"He wouldn't do that—kill himself, I mean. But if he could find a way to make us suffer for the can opener for the rest of our lives, I'm sure he would," Leonard muttered darkly.

"Dude, he would have every right to come back and haunt us forever if he dies out there," Raj cried, interrupting his prayers. "I told you that can opener trick was going too far. You know nothing means more to Sheldon than his research, and you just screwed up the opportunity of a lifetime for him."

"Oh, come on," Leonard whined. "I'm sure he'll get plenty of other grants, and he still has two weeks worth of... of original data. Besides, Howard was gonna shoot him with a crossbow," he cried, whirling around to point an accusatory finger at the engineer.

Howard gave up on the radio and leapt to his feet. "Just because I talked about it didn't mean I was actually gonna do it! Sure, we all laughed behind Sheldon's back when he mistook electrical interference for proof of string theory... at least for a little while. But we strung him along for almost two months. Raj and I were gonna tell him like a million times." He hung his head. "He can't survive out in those sub-zero temperatures for much longer. If he dies out there, we'll have killed him. His death will be on our hands. And then what the hell are we going to tell President Seibert or the NSA?" He sank down into a camp chair and stared wild-eyed at Leonard. "What the frak are we going to tell Penny?"

Leonard looked like he was going to be sick, but he managed to reply, "If it comes to that, we'll just say he went for a walk and got lost. Nobody's going to say anything about data tampering, right? Right?"

Howard and Raj just looked away, both of them either refusing or unable to look him in the eye after what he'd said. Minutes ticked by in an agonized silence, broken only by the squeals and bursts of static from Howard's radio. Finally, Raj got up and walked over to Howard. "Turn it off," he said in a low voice.

"What? But I—"

"It's no use! He didn't take any damn walkie-talkie with him!" Raj yelled suddenly. "He's been gone for over an hour. We were told we could last fifteen minutes, max, outside without full protective gear. There's no way he could..." Raj choked up and sank to the floor, hands over his face.

Howard let out a long, shuddering breath and looked at Leonard, who was staring at the orange fabric wall of the tent. "We've got to call it in," he said finally. "Maybe if they can mount a search party—"

"No!" Leonard yelled. He cleared his throat. "I mean no, that's not necessary. Come on, guys, this is Sheldon. He may be crazy, but he's also a genius. I'm sure he's already figured out a dozen ways to keep warm and is just sitting out there laughing at us. Any minute now, he'll walk through that tent flap and say bazinga."

Raj lifted his head from his hands long enough to stare at Leonard. His expression was a mixture of pity and disgust.

"I guess it couldn't hurt to give it another hour or two," Howard agreed uneasily. A glance at Raj assured him that they shared the same suspicion. Leonard was delusional. Sheldon had been devastated when he found out about their prank—no, more than that, he'd been heartbroken by their betrayal. It was amazing that he'd had the presence of mind to grab his down parka before storming out. This was not a trick, a prank or a bazinga.

A second hour ticked by, and then another. Howard and Raj held a few whispered conversations, but decided to give Leonard the extra time he needed for reality to sink in. At the three hour mark, Howard stood up. "I'm calling it in," he announced, turning the dial on his radio to the emergency channel. "Any longer than that, and it's gonna look suspicious," he added pointedly.

Just then, there was a noise near the opening of the tent, and three heads turned simultaneously. The flap was unzipped from the outside, and a tall figure entered, covered in frost and small icicles. Raj almost screamed, and Leonard's knees almost gave way as he saw his friend. Everything's fine. I knew I was right! he thought to himself.

"Hey, buddy, you had us all going there for a while," Leonard said in a mock-cheerful tone.

"How... how is he still alive?" Howard asked to no one in particular.

Sheldon ignored them all and retreated to the tiny alcove he had claimed as his space, not bothering to take off his coat or gloves.

Leonard watched him, worry etched into the lines of his face. After a moment, he approached Sheldon's "room" (no one was allowed in it but Sheldon) and called, "Are you okay, buddy?"

"Leave me alone," was the terse, muffled reply. Leonard turned back to his two friends and shrugged. After another whispered conference, they decided to let him be until he had gotten over his sulk. By the next morning, however, the situation had not improved. Sheldon got up, ate breakfast, and retreated back to his room without a word to anyone. The strangest thing was that he appeared to be cradling a whitish globe, a little larger than a grapefruit. The three scientists were naturally curious, but Sheldon still refused to speak to them and sheltered the sphere from their view. When Leonard tried to question him, he snarled at them with such uncharacteristic menace that they backed off. Eventually, they agreed to continue recording data for Sheldon's experiment and ignore his strange behavior. There was little else they could do. They were only days away from returning to California, and they hoped that by then, Sheldon would have forgiven them.

On the trip back home, they anticipated that the mystery of the sphere would be solved when they had to go through customs. At first, Sheldon adamantly refused to let go of the orb, which resembled nothing so much as a large ball of ice. Howard commented that whatever it was, Sheldon was guarding it as if he was Gollum and it was the One Ring. Eventually, Sheldon was persuaded to surrender the orb briefly, to a security guard who would have given Penny's old boyfriend Kurt a run for his money in the muscles department. Sheldon hovered possessively over the sphere as it went through the scanner. The guard shrugged as he handed it back. "I don't see what the big deal is; it's just a rock," he commented.

On the flight home, Leonard, Raj and Howard discussed the possibility that Sheldon may have become slightly unhinged by their sabotage. They all knew that at one point, even his mother thought he was insane. Maybe it was time for Sheldon to get re-tested. After almost twelve hours of travel (which included one layover, waiting for their baggage and a taxi ride), they arrived back at 2311 North Robles. Penny heard the commotion as they wearily dragged their luggage up the last flight of stairs.

"Leonard!" she cried. "Oh, I missed you guys so much!" She hugged Leonard and then looked at him with a tender smile and leaned toward him. He felt so excited he could hardly breathe and frantically hoped that he would be able to kiss the girl of his dreams before going into respiratory shock and passing out. Her face was just inches from his when her eyes darted to a point past his shoulder. He barely suppressed a groan as she recoiled in shock and said, "Wait. What's wrong with Sheldon?"

Like a bad accident, he found himself looking over at his roommate, however much he didn't want to. Sheldon, body hunched protectively over his stupid oversized marble, disappeared into the apartment just as a panting Raj and Howard collapsed onto the fourth floor landing, laden with bags like pack mules.

Leonard began to stammer and sweat while Penny watched him, eyes narrowing in suspicion. He finally choked out his version of the story: They had to screw up his experiment; she knew what Sheldon was like. It was either that or they were going to kill him. Can you imagine spending three months trapped inside a tent with all his craziness?

"I don't believe you did that," Penny hissed furiously. "How could you? I thought you were his friend. And you, of all people, should be used to living with him." She threw her hands up in the air. "I'm going to go talk to him, and then you, mister, are going to apologize. That goes for the two of you too," she added in a louder voice to Raj and Howard, who were still lying on the floor in a pile of bags and suitcases.

"But... but..." Leonard stammered. He held out a necklace, with its pendant of a snowflake preserved in cyanoacrylate, to empty air as Penny stormed off and his dreams of a romantic reunion went up in smoke.

Inside apartment 4A, Penny went to Sheldon's bedroom. She knocked on his door and asked for permission to enter. There was no response, so she pushed open the door and walked in to find Sheldon curled in a ball on his bed. He seemed to be hugging some large, whitish rock. Since this was far from the weirdest thing Penny had ever seen Sheldon do, she didn't pay it much attention.

"Hey, sweetie," she said softly.

"Penny? What are you doing in my room?" Sheldon said mournfully. "People can't be in—"

"Your room. I know," Penny said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Look, I heard about what happened with your experiment. Do you wanna talk about it?"

As she spoke, she reached for his hand. Her fingers accidentally brushed the pale-colored sphere, and there was a brilliant flash of light. Sheldon later claimed that it seemed like the light was somehow directed at Penny. There was a howling noise like a winter gale, and Sheldon heard a sonorous voice speaking in a guttural language that he didn't recognize. Sheldon put up an arm to shield his eyes as he looked at her, because she was suddenly glowing. A soft white light seemed to emanate from her as she stood motionless. In seconds, the light was so bright that Sheldon couldn't look directly at her. Without warning, a concussive blast of energy exploded outward with Penny as the epicenter. Sheldon had risen to a sitting position, and the force of the blast knocked him off the bed. He struck his head on the corner of his night stand, and everything went black.

He must've been out for less than a minute. When he came to, the first thing he saw was Penny floating limply in the air like a discarded marionette. The wind and voice had ceased. Just then, Leonard, Howard and Raj burst into his room (for once, he didn't even think about giving them a strike) and came to an abrupt halt when they saw Penny.

They stared, speechless for a moment, and then Leonard rounded on Sheldon.

"What did you do to her?" Leonard yelled in a panicky voice.

Sheldon winced and put a hand to his head, feeling something warm and wet. "I didn't do anything. She touched it," he said plaintively.

Howard was clearly in shock to let that obvious double entendre go by without comment. While Sheldon woozily looked around for the orb, Leonard reached out a hand to Penny. The resulting shock wave wasn't nearly as strong as the initial one, but it still knocked them all off their feet. Sheldon had managed to not knock his head on a hard surface this time. As he clambered to his feet, pressing a clean handkerchief to his forehead to stanch the blood, he snarled at his roommate, "I would strongly advise you not to attempt such a foolhardy action again."

Leonard nodded sheepishly.

"But we have to do something!" Raj cried.

"Yeah, whatever this is, it can't be good," muttered Howard.

"Gentlemen—and I use that term very loosely—we must first determine the nature of this object and the effect it has over Penny," Sheldon said gravely, holding out the sphere, which he had located under the bed.

"It's nothing but a rock. The security guard said so when he scanned it at the airport," Howard pointed out.

"Maybe we should start by asking Sheldon where he got it and why he's been acting so weird about it," Leonard said with a bellicose glare at his roommate.

Before Sheldon could respond, there was a loud knocking on their front door. Raj reached the door first and pulled it open, only to squeak in dismay as he saw a woman in a business suit standing there, holding out a shiny gold badge.