Griffie moves the tip of the beam to the contents of the first bowl. What are the liquids and what was that black substance, anyway? Cornelia looks focused. Griffie can ask later.

"…all right, the next now."

Griffie moves on to the next liquid.

This one catches fire after a bit, the fire looking normal to Griffie.

"…next…"

Cornelia seems surprised by things. Hopefully she will explain soon. Griffie moves on to the next liquid.

The next and final liquid catches fire quickly.

Cornelia looks down at her tablet, blinking, then taps on it and the screen to the bridge turns on again.

"Have you found something? Fee is still working on packing up the microscope."

"…I still want that, but…"

"…I think Griffith may be telling the truth."

"Even if I were going to lie to you, I wouldn't lie about my own life-support requirements to someone offering to help me."

Leonarda is focused on Cornelia "Explain."

Cornelia sighs, and turns so she can face the screen and Griffie.

"All right. I'll explain this to both of you. But I should warn you, this makes meeting the mercurials look… mundane."

Griffie doesn't react much to the mention of meeting the mercurials, but does appear to be listening intently.

"We have multiple, radically different, yet superficially similar, phenomenon here. I'm going to give tentative names to them. 'Oxygenation Fire', 'Elemental Fire', and 'Heat of Motion'. Matter as we know it is typically made of tiny objects we call 'atoms'. I am no longer confident that Griffith or their objects are made of this. We have, in various cases, created or observed or predicted alternatives. 'Neutronium', for example. There is some set of forces that enable matter as we know it to exist. Extrapolating, Griffith is made of and manipulates some sort of exotic matter that uses… those things they were talking about. 'Oxygenation Fire' is not a substance, but a process, more like how things might bubble–"

She cuts her self off with a look of alarm.

"–Griffith, is bubbling where you come from a process where a gas is inside a liquid and rises up, or is that different too?"

"Where I come from, bubbling is a process where a gas is inside a liquid and rises up."

Cornelia looks a bit relieved.

"All right. 'Oxygenation Fire' is not a substance, but a process, more like how things might bubble. This process can be triggered and sped up by 'Heat of Motion', a thing where there is lots of little wiggling of the atoms and tiny things made of the atoms. What Griffith generated when I asked for fire, however…"

"One of the very strong laws about how 'Heat of Motion' works governs what is called 'black body radiation'. Objects glow when they are hot with 'Heat of Motion', and in an extremely predictable way. When 'Elemental Fire' is applied to them, they also begin to glow in a similar way. However, it does not follow the same curves for different wavelengths of light. When Griffith did something to the metal, my best estimate is that it did some other change which produced both its own light and 'Heat of Motion'. This then decayed according to a curve very similar to how Griffith's 'Water' decayed. 'Elemental Fire' does not create the level of temperature fluctuations required for standard ignition, to ignite our matter with it involves a process between applying fire and applying uniform heat."

"If exposure to 'Elemental Fire' produces light and heat, but decayed similarly to the 'Elemental Water' which didn't, and back where Griffith comes from the 'Elemental Water' just doesn't decay, wouldn't that mean that a non-decaying sample could–"

"Art, you are hereby required to leave the bridge and are confined to your quarters with no contact with anyone who was not in this room at the time of this conversation."

"I'm not going to try to weaponize things in ways which would produce persistent problems you can't clean up, if that's your concern! I don't know how to permanently make the fire field exist. If I did, I would probably also know how to make the air, earth, and water fields exist, and then that would allow a means of extinguishing the fire. Also, I wouldn't do that without talking to people unless I was very very confident that it was a very important thing to do without talking to anyone first. Also if I could make the elemental fields permanent, I would want to do it in a space for me to live and a space for you to study, not everywhere at once without testing. Also if I made a fire that you couldn't extinguish, and it kept causing problems for a long time, my shard of the power of Nature would be displeased with me, and it would stop giving me the power to cast spells and some other things."

"Apparently you are aware of how weaponizable your abilities are. All right. Art, you are instead confined to the bridge. Boyd, figure out if Fee was listening in and make sure this does not get out."

Boyd gets up to go find Pheodair.

"Captain, I have no intention of–"

"Your intentions are not my concern here. My concern is safety, for this ship, my civilization, your civilization, and who knows who else. Your people cannot be trusted to keep secrets on their own, even to save lives. I know this. You know this. So you will obey. Unless you want to risk the life of the creature you have so vocally called for the protection of, along with every person in either of our civilizations."

The captain turns to Griffie.

"Now. You mentioned a large war that people don't want to repeat. You mentioned concerns about how if we came in contact with your world, they might be able to destroy us without us getting a chance to resist. I would like to apologize for not taking this seriously enough. I believe I am starting to get the picture now."