Daniel ignored the scientist, and instead focused on the metallic orb.
The reason why he had stolen the grey matter, was because he wanted to test at what level a cosmic event caused by the use of the grey matter, would attract the attention of the monsters that only he, Nova, and Edmund could see.
Unfortunately, the amount of grey matter in Daniel's possession was not enough to be used in a propulsor that, installed on Daniel's planet, could make it travel at a speed faster than light, or at least, not if the planet maintained its size, and definitely not for too long.
All he could do was to force the scientist to build a burner that would consume a large amount of grey matter all at once. A task which the scientist had completed by simply reengineering the object he was so familiar with, and remove any of the dozens of limitations built to dose the quantity of grey matter that was consumed.