The Menagerie 2 (Eden) Read Online Free PDF Page B

further. “Right now there’s an energy field pushing back,” he said. “I can only reach so far before it counters my action with a reaction. It’s a protective shield that surrounds all the specimens. So far we haven’t figured out a way to penetrate or breach it in any way. It exists, even though we can’t relate to it with any of the senses.”
    Alyssa took a step closer. “Amazing,” she said. “Its body. It’s a natural formation of an exoskeleton.”
    Savage moved beside her with curious study. “And to think that we were arrogant enough to believe that we were the only ones existing on our level when life actually existed elsewhere in much more than the form of a microbe or a bacterium,” he said.
    O’Connell went to the side of the chamber. On its base was another mushroom gem. He waved his hand over it.
    Three holographic diagrams appeared in the air in front of the chamber, each image displayed side by side of each other. They were well defined and clear. But the holograms were still translucent. On the suspended image to the left was a three-dimensional grid-like pattern of the creature, the rotating likeness reminiscent of Da Vinci’s Vitruvius Man, its arms and legs spread out with alien script and captions denoting certain physical aspects. The second holographic chart was a picture of an unchartered galaxy, the creature’s point of origin. And the third of a rotating planet within that galaxy, surmised to be the creature’s world.
    O’Connell pointed to the second image. “We believe this illustration to be its point of origin. It’s a galaxy that none of our astronomers recognize. It’s just one of several yet to be discovered by our means or capabilities.” He hesitated as if mulling something over. And then: “We really haven’t traveled far from cradle Earth, have we? What’s humbling is that we really are insignificant in the scheme of all things.”
    Savage reached out with the tip of his forefinger and touched the hologram. The image rippled in concentric waves quite similar to the surface of water after a stone is cast into its depths. And then the image realigned itself, once again becoming still. “Wormholes,” he finally said. “Whoever navigated this craft had to use wormholes in order to get from one galaxy to the next.”
    “Precisely,” said O’Connell. “This race obviously used wormholes as easily as we open a door to get to the next room. Whereas we are on the cusp of theorizing that such doorways exist, these images and these creatures, the places they come from, proves all that. There’s no way that a ship can travel from one stretch of the universe to the other and collect all these specimens in a lifetime—in ten dozen lifetimes.”
    “Unless they were able to bend time,” Savage completed.
    Alyssa looked at Savage and was quite impressed: Well, look at you. My little scientist .
    “We are so low on the evolutionary scale it’s not funny,” said O’Connell. “We need to understand the ancient script to help balance the playing field as much as we can and as fast as we can. We need Ms. Moore to break down the language so that we can bypass these systems and begin the process of reverse engineering.”
    Alyssa examined the warrior hominid with studious eyes. For nearly sixty-five million years it remained unblemished, not a single nick upon its armor-plated hide. “Are you sure these things are not in stasis form that’s similar to our cryogenics, but far more advanced?”
    “Ms. Moore, we’re talking about sixty-five million years here. They’re dead. Every single specimen, I assure you.”
    “But you said yourself that this race was on a level to us as we are to the amoeba. Who’s to say that they haven’t devised a way to perfectly preserve these specimens? Just because we don’t think that something beyond our understanding can’t exist when, in fact, it certainly could, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist at all. Look around you.