        He looked at the hair again, thoughtfully.  What if it were some kind of nanotechnology?  He’d heard of all sorts of things that could be done on a near-atomic level, so why not make a color-changing hair that sparkled occasionally?  Perhaps, to these creatures, it was the latest thing in fashion.  Maybe, as a space-faring race, they liked the look of magnetic storms.  It could even be tuned to solar emissions, which would explain how the colors so closely mirrored the aurora he had seen in the morning.  If it somehow gave off magnetic interference, it could have blocked his radio signals.