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there seem to be extra joints, or more versatile ones than we have, judging by the way they walk and point at things. It makes them look graceful and it made us wonder what kind of dances they have. They have a head covering similar to human hair in different shades of brown, but it’s thin, sparse. You wouldn’t think it would give much protection from the weather, but nobody ever saw one wear a hat. Of course, it was summer, and we didn’t have much rain while they were here.
    â€œUnder the forehead there are what look like two bony plates most of the time, but a few responsible, truthful people saw the plates slide up and roll back one time, in one individual, and there were eyes under them, although they must not use that pair often. Maybe when they want to get a really good look at something.
    â€œUnder that there’s a pair of regular eyes. They come in different colors, but they’re all on the light side, gray or yellowish. They don’t seem to have pupils, so we don’t have any idea what the mechanism is for seeing. There isn’t any equivalent of a human nose on the face, which is all eyes and mouth. Their mouths seem to be perfectly round. Several people got a glimpse of teeth, not white like ours but black or dark gray, and they have flexible tongues, the impression being that those are longer and thinner than ours.
    â€œTheir ears are where you’d expect them to be, but stretched out they’re huge—as I said, flapping them seems to be part of the way they communicate. Most of the time, though, they keep them folded toward the backs of their heads. The ears move around a lot, but they’re only completely unfolded for that flapping. All the individuals we saw, by the way, had shades of grayish-brown skin. None of them were anywhere near as dark as some of our people.
    â€œBut their noses! If I may interject a personal comment, their noses—I have to call them that, they obviously function for breathing—were the most surprising thing of all to me. They’ve got one on each side of the neck, finger-shaped but short, sort of curved to fit the neck and attached there like tubes, and the tips are flexible too, though nothing like the ears—the tubes just seem to expand and contract with the breath, and they each have three openings at the front. They might connect directly to lungs, bypassing the gullet, but there’s no way to know, and no way to know what they use for a larynx or how air gets to it or how it works.
    â€œTheir hands look surprisingly like ours—four fingers, although proportionately longer and with an extra joint, opposable thumbs, ditto. Nobody ever saw their feet. That I know of.
    â€œThe rest of this report is not consensus. I want to make that clear.
    â€œI heard a rumor that one of the nonhumans, just one, had been seen coming out of the woods with Mi-o Roland, who is about twelve in Earth years, so I went to ask her about it. That did happen—it was her mother who saw them. If I didn’t know better, I would suspect they had been having some kind of sex. Mi-o is said to be somewhat advanced for her age in that respect. Anyway, Mi-o’s mother was there, and Mi-o wouldn’t answer any questions with a yes or no, unless a giggle means one thing or the other. I wish I had recorded that conversation! Mi-o did seem to be implying that that’s exactly what they had been doing. But she wouldn’t come out and admit it, so even if she knows what’s under those creatures’ boots and baggy coveralls, the rest of us might never find out.
    â€œMaybe she said more to her mother, though, because when Ms. Roland walked me outside, she asked if I thought a nonhuman could get a human pregnant. I told her it was genetically impossible.
    â€œRespectfully submitted by Maya Selig. Sworn statements from forty-seven citizens attached.”
    Hanna sat back and muttered, “Thank you very much for nothing,