"Doctor7" said Whiteside, "you look a little pale around the gills."
"I suspect I do," admitted Allen. "This goes against the grain, against all the knowledge that we have. Those damn things are made up of cellulose."
"Cellulose?" asked the President. "That white, fluffy stuff?"
"When the visitors get through with it, it's no longer white or fluffy." Allen looked around the room. "There are only the four of us. 1vVill there be others arriving?"
"Not this time," said the President. "Later on, when we know more, there may be another briefing with other personnel. This time around, just the four of us. General Whiteside has a special interest and should know what you've found. Dave is here because, by and large, he knows everything I know. At the moment, everything you say here is confidential. I assume your staff is not doing any talking."
Allen stiffened. "Only four men are involved," he said. "They understand the need of confidentiality."
"But there are a lot more involved than four," said Whiteside.
"The others are field workers," said Allen. "Collecting samples and doing other basic work on the Minnesota visitor. Only four are involved in the lab work. They are the only ones who know what I'm about to tell you."
"O.K., Doctor," said the President. "So go ahead and tell us."
"The creature basically is made up of cellulose," said Allen.
"But not cellulose in the form that we know it. To precisely describe the situation, we have had to make use of highly technical terminology."
"Which we wouldn't understand," said the President. "You'll have to simplify it for us, Doctor."
"I'll do what I can. What I tell you will have to be oversimplified. And because of the oversimplification, perhaps a little short of the exact truth, but it will give you an idea of what we have come up with.
"The inner part of the creature is closely packed cellulose, compressed to an unbelievable extent. So closely packed that it can withstand structural stresses of several tons per square inch. On the face of it, this would seem impossible, but the figures are there. How it can be managed we have no idea, no inkling as to the process involved."
"You talk about the inner part of the creature," said White-side. "Does that mean the outer part is different?"
Allen shuddered. "Yes, General, it is different. An entirely different story. It is what you might call a cellulose-silicon polymer involving in some manner that we're not sure we understand the use of silicon-oxide bonds and hydroxyl bonds—that is, hydrogen-oxide bonds. There is a lot of oxygen in cellulose. In the silicon-oxygen bonding, there are a couple of different forms and, to make matters even more complicated, a mix of the two forms are employed. In some cases, it amounts to a tetrahedral structure, a silicate akin to rock—a structure similar to feldspar and quartz. It's hard to say exactly what we have. There are a number of various linkages to make up what we tentatively describe as a polymer."
"It seems to me you are talking about the thing having a rock-like skin," said Porter.
"In layman language, that is what I am talking about," said Allen. "Hard as rock, probably much harder, and yet the silicon provides it with some elasticity, some give. Rocks can't normally be dented. This stuff can. It can be dented and then bounces back. It has at once hardness and ductility and an incredible thermal stability.
"We have theorized the use to which these capabilities can be put. It is only a theory, of course, but it does make sense. If these things operate across vast extents of interstellar space, they would have to get energy from somewhere. Their high thermal stability means they could soak up all sorts of energy, a lot of it, perhaps, from the impact of interstellar dust. The dust particles, no matter how small, would carry some energy. But in the form of kinetic energy. We think the skins of these things can convert the kinetic energy to potential energy, possibly can change that energy to whatever form it needs. Occasionally, they might collide with larger pieces of matter. Such a strike would indent the skin, with the skin picking up as much energy as it could handle, deflecting what it can't use when the indentation in the skin bounces back, in effect rejecting that part of the energy it can't handle. The dent in the skin would produce a reflected wave of energy, getting rid of it as the surface of a mirror would reflect sunlight."
Porter sneaked a quick look at Whiteside. The general had stiffened in his chair and wore a slightly slack-jawed appearance.
Allen sighed. "We also have some reason to believe," he said, "and I can't go into this as closely as I would like, for it can't be explained in layman terms—but we have reason to believe that the skin's composition is such that it can change gravitational flux and thus points to the possibility that the creatures can manipulate gravitational forces, that they can either be attracted or repulsed by gravitation. Which would explain, if true, how they are able to float an inch or two off the ground. It might also mean that gravitational control may be, at least partially, an explanation of how they travel through space. Locked in on a gravitational source in the direction in which they want to travel, they would move toward the source. Locked into another behind them, they could utilize it as a repulsor to push them away from that ~‘
Allen ceased talking and looked at each of the three in turn.
"Well, that's it," he said. "It sounds insane and I keep telling myself it has to be insane. Aliens, we said. And these things are alien. What bothers me, what keeps me awake at night is this—if they are so alien in the physical sense, how alien are they mentally? What chance will we ever have of understanding them, what hope they will ever be able to understand us?"
"Perhaps the intellectual span is not as great as the physical span," said Porter. "They seem to have done a fairly good job so far in understanding us. Somehow they seem to have sensed a lot
of things they should not do. They have fairly well kept within the basic rules of human conduct."
"I hope you're right," said Allen. "I sincerely hope you are."
He spoke to the President. "In a couple of weeks, we may know more. We may find that some of our present thinking is wrong. We may have to modify some of our theories. Or we may come across some new and significant data. For the present, I have told you basically all I know. Of course, it could be elaborated upon endlessly, but there's no point in doing that now."