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much larger and heavier, its carcass armor plated like the skin of a rhinoceros, with protective folds and flaps. Its eyes were marble-sized inside a gargantuan head. Its jaw powerful and slightly agape, revealing teeth that was more saber-like than those of the Rex. And the spine of its tail bore the same razor-like ridges similar to its neighbor, the velociraptor.
    O’Connell stopped before the velociraptors and pressed the flat of his palm against the force field, which ultimately repelled his hand with an equal force. “As you can see, these look more like the cousins to our own velociraptors. And that,” he inclined his head toward the Rex, “came from the same planet as these specimens. It’s amazing how creatures from distant galaxies can resemble creatures from our own planet. That tells me that the evolution between our planets were at least on an even scale. It would be interesting to see how they have evolved over the past sixty-five million years. Did a bolide ultimately collide with their planet and wipe them out as well, giving rise to a new race of apex predators? Or do they continue to thrive?”
    Alyssa and Savage moved closer to the stasis bins.
    “Minor differences,” she commented.
    O’Connell nodded in agreement. He then waved his hand over the mushroom gem, prompting holographic images of the creature’s anatomy and its point of origin. The second image, their point of origin, was the Milky Way. The third holographic screen was that of a planet based at the edge of the Cygnus Arm of the Milky Way, which is an area far removed from the Orion Spur, the minor arm that planet Earth is stationed. “Our planets are separated by hundreds of thousands of light years, but the similarities are uncanny. There’s no doubt in my mind that humanoids similar to us exist as well. The question is, are they friend or foe? If they fall into the latter category, then we need to prepare ourselves defensively.”
    “Getting a little paranoid, aren’t you?” asked Savage.
    “Paranoid?” O’Connell stood back from the chamber. “It didn’t work out too well for the Native Americans when Columbus first set foot on North America, did it?”
    “That was different.”
    “Really?” And then: “What you see here, Mr. Savage, is a menagerie of what our team believes to be the universe’s greatest apex predators—some humanoid, some not. But apex predators they are. And to prove my point—” O’Connell cut himself short, turned, and began to walk at a normal clip. After passing several bins bearing the oddest configurations of creatures, O’Connell stood before two empty chambers. With a wave of his hand the corresponding holographic images took shape. Savage and Alyssa caught up and took note.
    The first holograph from the first empty chamber was that of Earth’s velociraptor and its anatomy, the image rotating. The second was its point of origin, the Milky Way. The third image was the planet Earth before the land masses split off into independent continents. “They were coming here,” he said evenly, “to this planet to fill these bins. But something obviously happened, which caused this ship to become the bolide that created the final extinction event.”
    Savage went to the second chamber, one that was built for something that was obviously large, and waved his hand over the gem. Three holographic images popped up, as required. The first image was that of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, its phantom likeness rotating with alien script denoting certain regions of its body. The velociraptor and the T-Rex, he thought, the dominant predators of their time, their bins empty—the caretakers, the zookeepers, long dead.
    “Why?” asked Alyssa. “Why this particular collection of apex predators?”
    O’Connell shrugged. “As to guesses, I’d say they’re more for study. But this intergalactic ark holds many secrets. And the quicker you can decipher the language, then the faster we can find the answers to your