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to create a visual image, enabling the occupants to navigate and observe in darkness. And because it could elude our interceptors and appear and disappear on our radar screens at will, we believed that the occupants simply stayed inside and observed rather than roamed about. Perhaps other types of craft deployed from this same culture were equipped to land and carry out missions and therefore had breathing and antigravity apparatus on board for its crew that permitted them to exit the craft without suffering any consequences. The medical examiner didn't speculate on this. What did intrigue those who inspected the aircraft once it was shipped to Wright Field was the complete absence of any food preparation facilities. Nor were there any stored foodstuffs on board. At a time when space travel was a science fiction writer's fantasy, military analysts were already at work formulating ideas for how just such a technology could be practically implemented. It was not for travel to other planets, but for navigation around the earth because that's the technology that military planners believed the Germans were developing as an extension of their V2 rocket program. If you're going to put airmen into earth orbit, how do you process their waste products, provide adequate oxygen, and sustain them during prolonged periods? Clearly, after you've developed a launch vehicle with enough thrust to put a craft into earth orbit, keeping it there long enough for it to accomplish a mission is the next problem to tackle. The Roswell craft seemed to have tackled it because somehow it got here from somewhere else. But there was no indication of how such household problems as food preparation and the disposal of waste were solved. There was much speculation from the different medical analysts about what these beings were composed of and what could have sustained them. First of all, doctors were more tantalized by the similarities the creatures shared with us than they were concerned about the differences. Rather than hideous-looking insects or the reptilian man-eaters that attacked Earth in War of the Worlds, these beings looked like little versions of us, only different. It was eerie. While doctors couldn't figure out how the entities' essential body chemistry worked, they determined that they contained no new basic elements. However, the reports that | had suggested new combinations of organic compounds that required much more evaluation before doctors could form any opinions. Of specific interest was the fluid that served as blood but also seemed to regulate bodily functions in much the same way glandular secretions do for the human body. In these biological entities, the blood system and lymphatic systems seem to have been combined. And if an exchange of nutrients and waste occurred within their systems, that exchange could have only taken place through the creature's skin or the outer protective covering they wore because there were no digestive or waste systems. The medical report revealed that the creatures were enclosed within a one piece protective covering like a jumpsuit or outer skin in which the atoms were aligned so as to provide a great tensile strength and flexibility. One examiner wrote that it reminded him of a spider's web, which appears very fragile but is, in fact, very strong. The unique qualities of a spiderweb result from the alignment of fibers that provide great tenacity because they're able to stretch under great pressure, yet display a resiliency that allows them to snap back into shape even after the shock of an impact. Similarly, the creature's spacesuit or outer skin appeared to be stretched around it as if it were literally spun over the creature and seized up around it, providing a perfect skin-tight protective fit. The doctors had never seen anything like it before. | think | finally understood it years later, after | had left the Pentagon and | was buying a Christmas tree. As | stood there in the frosty air, | watched as the young man who prepared the tree for transport inserted it, top first, into a stubby barrel like device that automatically spun a twine mesh covering around the branches to keep them in place for the trip home. After | got home | had to cut through the mesh with a knife to remove the tree and separate the branches. This tree set up reminded me specifically of the medical report on the creature from the Roswell crash, and | imagined that maybe the spinning process of the creature's outer garment resembled something like this. The lengthwise alignment of the fibers in the suit also prompted the medical analysts to suggest that the suit might have been capable of protecting the wearer against the low energy cosmic rays that would routinely bombard any craft during a space journey. The interior organs of the creature seemed so fragile and oversized that the Walter Reed medical analysts imagined that without the suit the entity would have been vulnerable to the cumulative physical trauma from a constant energy particle bombardment. Space travel without protection from subatomic particle bombardment might subject the traveler to the same kind of effects he'd experience if he were cooked in a microwave oven. The particle bombardment inside the craft, if heavy enough to constitute a shower, would so excite and accelerate the creature's atomic structure that the resulting heat energy would literally cook the entity up. The Walter Reed doctors were also fascinated by the nature of the creature's inner skin. It resembled, although their preliminary reports didn't go into any chemical analysis, a thin layer of fatty tissue unlike any they'd ever seen before. And it was completely permeable, as if it were constantly exchanging chemicals back and forth with the combination blood/lymphatic system. Was this the way the creatures nourished themselves during their journeys and was this how waste was processed? The very small mouths and the lack of a human digestive system troubled the doctors at first because they didn't know how these things were sustained. But their hypothesis that 41