EVENT GROUP CENTER NELLIS AFB, NEVADA

Professor Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III was deep in thought. He had been staring at the same CT scan for the last twenty minutes. He had compared the latest shots to that of the sample of material in the electron microscope. He couldn’t figure it out. The film was cloudy around the third finger of the fossil, as if the film had a flaw in it. But it was the same on the first set of scans they had done. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought someone was playing a joke on him.

“Heidi, would you look at this please?” he asked, handing over the film.

Heidi Rodriguez took the X-ray and reviewed it. “Looks like bad film; is this a shot of the claw’s third digit?”

“Yes, it is, but the same thing happened on the first CT scan, look,” he said as he held out the second set of film. “And if you would take a look at this also,” he said, pointing to a monitor that was connected to the electron microscope.

Heidi looked from the film to the monitor. “All I see is bone, Professor. Are you seeing something different?” she asked, looking closer.

“Right here, that spec, that isn’t bone,” he said, using a pencil to point out a black object that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye.

“Dirt, or sand perhaps,” she said.

“It’s right in the area where the CT scan didn’t take. It’s as if the entire area was wiped clean.”

“Interference?” she asked.

“I don’t know, probably just coincidence. It does look like an outside contaminant, sand probably. It must have been placed there postmortem. But let’s get some more film on it. If the blur continues to be in the same area, it may indicate a malfunction in the scanner itself, either that or our ancient friend here has been playing around with a radioactive isotope.”

He glanced up but saw Heidi wasn’t smiling at his small joke. Instead she was looking at the monitor with renewed interest.

“This is no flaw in the film or the machine,” Heidi said as she looked closer at the image. “And you’re right, Professor, the only thing that could cause this effect is …” she paused, “radioactivity.”