Captain Baird stood now at the window and looked out at the dismantled rocket. He looked but his mind was not on the parts of the rocket he could see from the window.
"The materials, they're not ours?" the captain asked.
"Unknown here," the doctor said.
The captain nodded. "Those were our instruments?"
"Yes." The doctor still held the whiskey bottle in a tight grip.
"They sent them back," the captain said.
The doctor crashed the bottle hard against the desk top. "Ask it, Captain, for God's sake!!"
The captain turned to face the doctor directly. "It was a man, a full grown man."
The doctor sighed as if letting the pent-up steam of his heart escape. "Yes, it is a man. It breathes, it eats, it has all the attributes of a man. But it is not of our planet."