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By Janice Boekhoff

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Dinosaurs held him captive. Not in the I've-loved-dinosaurs-since-I-was-a-kid sense, although of course he had, but in the dinosaurs-pay-my-bills sense. Paleontology Professor Travis Perego had sacrificed his life to the long dead creatures. He'd spent countless hours memorizing anatomy and forms, and even more hours at dusty dig sites brushing dirt from entombed bones.
He'd done it gladly, with no thought of career or advancement, simply for the sake of passion. Recently, though, his burning quest for knowledge had morphed into a smoldering mass of confusion.
Travis gathered the papers from the pop quiz he'd given to his Evolution of Dinosaurs class. He tapped them on one end to make a neat pile, then glanced around at the empty seats of the small lecture hall. Fifteen minutes ago, almost every seat held an eager student soaking up facts about the ancient reptiles. He had played the part of the engaging, confident professor. Not one student knew of his struggle.
"Professor Perego?"
He turned around at the quiet word to see a former student standing in the doorway. "Harmony, how's your semester going?"
Harmony tried to push a strand of brown hair behind one ear, but the too-short lock wouldn't stay. She tugged on it again, finally holding it against the side of her head. "It's been, uh ... strange."
He leaned against the edge of the desk. "How so?"
She took a few steps into the room. "Maybe we could talk about that later. Right now, I need some help. Can you give me some information about raptor to bird evolution?"
Travis changed his position on the desk and folded his arms across his chest. "Care to be a bit more specific?"
"I need to know about the evolution of flightless birds."
"Okay, but why not ask Dr. Tiernay?" Harmony worked as a graduate assistant in Dr. Tiernay's biology lab. Surely, he had access to that information.
"He's out of town." She shifted on her feet. "I'm doing research for a project."
"Your graduate research?"
She nodded without elaborating.
He peered at her, noting the dark circles under her eyes and the fidgety way she rubbed her hands together. Not like her. As an undergraduate, Harmony had been a student in his Evolution of Dinosaurs class. Although she'd decided to pursue biology, instead of paleontology, they'd kept in contact through their mutual interest in dinosaurs. Every time a new skeleton was discovered, he'd send her an email and they'd debate the name. Often, she'd come up with funny alternative ones, like Scarfasaurus for a dinosaur that looked to be wearing an elaborate headdress. He knew her to be a confident, carefree person, but right now she looked uncomfortable, like she'd swallowed a handful of rocks.
"Is everything okay?" he asked.
She shook her head and seemed to consider her next words. "I think I'm in some trouble."
He pushed off the desk and took a step toward her. "What kind of trouble?"
"I might have helped Dr. Tiernay do something unethical."
Whoa. Was she serious? "Let's go to my office."
They made their way out of the classroom and down two hallways to a quiet part of the building. A dozen small offices lined the north wall. They walked down the hall to his, the last one on the right.
As he opened the office door, he breathed in the comforting smell of old books mingled with the earthy scent of bones which had long ago turned to stone. Corinne, his teaching assistant, spun in her chair, a long blond braid swinging behind her like a rope.
Travis gestured between the two young women. "Corinne, this is Harmony. She's a grad student who used to be in my Dino class."
Corinne nodded and smiled, then turned back to the desk against the far wall. She grabbed resumed her work of making changes to the digital version of a handout.
Travis and Harmony walked through a doorway, with no door attached, to his inner office. He sat at the large mahogany desk that was as wide as the office and tucked up against the far wall. Sunlight from a brilliant spring day shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows, transforming hundreds of dust particles into a shimmering curtain.
"Have a seat." He pointed at the old desk chair across from him. "Do you want to tell me what you've been doing for Dr. Tiernay?"
She sat, holding herself stiff on the edge of the chair. "For about a year, I've modified embryos for him. Depending on how the results turn out, the work is supposed to be part of my doctoral thesis. I think that's all I can say right now."
Travis ran a hand through his hair. Despite her earlier admission, he couldn't imagine Harmony being involved in anything unethical. And James Tiernay was a well-respected biologist in the field of molecular genetics. How could either of them be involved in something questionable?
He rolled his chair backward to the filing cabinet and pulled open a drawer, looking for the file labeled Evolution of Dinosaurs. It contained handouts he'd used last spring, the same ones Corinne was revising for this class. He grabbed one that showed an intricate evolutionary tree starting at Deinonychus, a fast bipedal dinosaur, and branching out until it ended with modern birds.
"Here's what you're looking for." He swiveled in the chair to see her staring at a different paper on the corner of his desk. Instead of an evolutionary tree, this sheet had a list of several dinosaur ancestors with question marks between the ancestors and their descendants. The question marks were the result of hours of his unsanctioned research.
She tapped the paper. "What's this?"
"Something else I'm working on." He grabbed the paper, quickly sliding it under a stack of books, then gave her the handout on bird evolution.
She took the paper with two fingers, her skepticism showing on her face. "Thanks."
He refused to explain further. His personal research was none of her business. "There are references at the bottom. If you need more information, you can look up those articles in the university's database."
She looked at him for a minute, quietly studying him.
He sensed her hesitation to leave. "Are you sure you don't want to tell me what's going on? Maybe I could help."
She lowered her head and picked at teal blue nail polish, most of which had already flaked off. When she spoke, she kept her head down, and he had to lean closer to hear the quiet words. "I think he created something."
"You mean Dr. Tiernay?"
She looked up, her gray eyes reflecting a determination as hard as steel. Her voice grew stronger. "A few days ago, a friend of mine, Bob, told me about something that happened while he was at work. He's a janitor. After it happened, a couple of security guards came to his apartment to threaten him. He was freaked out."
"Okay. Back up. What happened?"
Her fingers kept working at the nail polish. "Bob was emptying the trash in the basement when the door to Dr. Tiernay's lab flew open. The one down in the basement of Kepler Hall. I've been down there, but not inside the lab." She took a deep breath before continuing. "So, the lab door opened, and Bob turned around. Something big ran into him and knocked him down. When he got back up, he was face to face with Dr. Tiernay who was holding a tranquilizer gun. Dr. Tiernay shot at something over Bob's shoulder. As he turned around, he saw the side profile of a strange creature falling to the floor."
"A strange creature?"
She nodded. Her lips parted as if she wanted to stay something more, but again she hesitated.
"What did this creature look like?" he asked.
"Bob described it as wide in the rear end with a fat tail, but skinny legs. It had a thick neck and a long snout. He also said the skin felt rough where it bumped into him."
"What color was the skin?"
"Brown and green together."
"Like camouflage?"
"I think that's what he meant." Her eyes widened. "Oh, and it had a thick ridge of furry stuff going down its back. His words, not mine."
Travis stretched out in his chair, having a hard time believing he was having a conversation about a mysterious creature on campus. If this had come from a different student, he would have recommended counseling. But then again, this was Bob's story. Maybe Bob needed counseling. "So the dart hits the creature. It goes down. Then what?"
"Bob said Charles came out to help Dr. Tiernay, and they started to drag it back to the lab. Oh, Charles is Dr. Tiernay's other lab assistant. Bob knows him from Vertebrate Biology class."
"Did they get the creature back into the lab?"
"Bob didn't know. Dr. Tiernay yelled at him to leave, so he did."
"Bob left without finishing his shift?"
"Yeah. He said he didn't want to be anywhere near that thing. He tried to forget about it, but then, a couple of days later, these men came to his apartment. They didn't have uniforms, but said they were campus security. They told him not to talk about what happened or he'd lose his scholarship."
Travis tapped his foot on the floor as he thought about the story. This could be a prank. Perhaps Bob wanted to get a little attention from Harmony. But that didn't explain why Harmony, an intelligent, level-headed girl would believe him. Unless ... "You think Dr. Tiernay grew this creature from the embryos you modified. Is that the unethical part you were talking about?"
She hung her head. "Yes. I wanted to ask Dr. Tiernay about it, but he's gone."
"Gone where?"
"I don't know. I think Charles knows, but he won't tell me."
Travis leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. This was the weirdest thing he had ever heard, but technically it was possible to grow modified embryos. Most of the time they didn't live much past the initial stages of development. But Tiernay was a brilliant researcher. Maybe he had found a way. And depending on what he did, Harmony could be right about it being unethical. "If Dr. Tiernay did what you suspect, how could we find out?"
She gave him a relieved smile. "I don't know if Bob will talk to you. He didn't want me to tell anyone else. He's the first in his family to go to college and can't afford to lose his scholarship."
"It won't hurt to try. Let's meet up after my next class and we'll visit Bob together."

###
Travis paced in front of the Evolution of Dinosaurs class, thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans. Harmony's words cycled through his mind on a continuous loop. I think the professor created something. Was she right or was this Bob's idea of a classic practical joke?
His curiosity threatened to derail him. All eyes were riveted on him, waiting for him to continue his train of thought. He set his gaze on the seats in the middle of the group and let his natural teaching instinct take over. For forty-five minutes, the students scribbled down his every word as if words alone could recreate the gigantic beasts in their minds. Dinosaur junkies. He understood it—that longing to see what you never could, the fascination with the unknown. What did they really look like? What did their skin feel like? How intelligent were they? The questions were endless.
As he talked, he flipped through several slides. "The Saurischian dinosaurs are closely related in form to the Ornithschian dinosaurs. The main difference in the two groups is the shape of their pelvic bone. The Saurischian dinosaurs had pelvic bones similar to lizards, so they're called lizard-hipped, and the Ornithschian dinosaurs had pelvic bones like birds and ... you guessed it, they're called bird-hipped dinosaurs."
A hand shot up in the third row. He pointed at the young man in a plaid shirt who needed a shave. "Then the Ornithschian dinosaurs gave rise to modern birds?"
Travis paced the length of the floor before answering. "Actually, no definitive evidence exists to prove the ancestry of dinosaurs to birds, but most paleontologists believe the smaller raptor dinosaurs like Velociraptor and Oviraptor gave rise to modern birds. Those dinosaurs were part of the Saurischian, or lizard-hipped, dinosaurs."
The young man tilted his head. "Birds didn't evolve from the bird-hipped dinosaurs?"
"Not according to current evolutionary thinking."
"Weird." The guy scratched at his stubble. "How long ago did the Sauri ... The lizard-hipped dinos live?"
Travis stopped pacing. "It's not known for sure, but sometime during the Triassic and Jurassic periods."
"Okay, but can you give me a few dates so I know which dinosaurs lived together?"
Travis pointed at the slide, projected like a mural on the wall—a jungle scene packed with dinosaurs. Dinosaurs in the wild would never have congregated so close to one another, but the students liked the "Jurassic Park" feel of it. "We'll discuss habitats in detail next week. Specific dates are not important because these periods covered many years." The young man furrowed his brow and opened his mouth to say more, but Travis glanced at his watch. "Actually I think that's all the time we have for today. Read chapters six and seven for Friday. Class dismissed."
Travis turned off the projector. For a few minutes, the rustling of papers and backpacks filled the air, then students filed out both doors, their chattering voices receding down the hall. He closed the computer program. When he looked up, the scruffy young man stood before him.
"Professor, why aren't we going to study dates?"
His question, probably innocent and curious, made Travis's pulse pound. He straightened and ran a hand through his hair. "Scientists disagree on exact dates for the time periods surrounding the dinosaurs."
"So you're not going to share them at all?"
"Not when there is disparity among the experts. I'll focus on the relationships between the animals. If you're concerned with dates, you should take Professor Dornan's Paleostratigraphy class."
The young man tilted his head. Travis didn't blame him for being confused, in fact his refusal to discuss dates stemmed from his own confusion.
The young man shrugged and walked away with a curt, "If you say so."
The sing-song tone of his phone saved Travis from dwelling on the conversation. He checked his watch. He could talk on his way to the cafeteria to meet Harmony. He threw his laptop into the computer bag and answered his cell phone as he headed out the door. "Hello?"
"Hi. Oh, hold on a sec. Eddie, stop telling your sister she's not as smart as you. She's only in first grade. Sorry, Trav. How are you?"
He smiled at his sister's loud voice. Trudy always had trouble with volume control. "I'm hanging in there."
"That doesn't sound great."
"I'm all right. It's just that something weird got thrown at me today, but I don't know for sure what's going on, so I'd better not talk about it yet."
"Okay. How's the research going?"
"Interesting, although I may have to stop for a while."
"Why?"
He breathed in the cool spring air as he stepped outside and made his way toward the quad. Shafts of sunlight sliced across the majestic columned buildings and manicured walkway, creating a facade of peace and serenity, typical of a college campus, but rarely found in the real world. "The dean seems to be watching my every move. If what I'm researching gets back to him, he'll lose confidence in my ability to teach."
"But as a researcher..." He imagined her putting air quotes around the last word. "Wouldn't he want you to do research?"
Travis lowered his voice. "Yes, but not about God creating the world."
"Why not?"
"Because it goes against evolution."
Trudy huffed out a breath. "You can get in trouble for that?"
"Yeah." He rubbed a hand across his face. "It's kind of my job to teach evolution."
"I guess, but it's supposed to be a theory."
He gave a humorless laugh. "Not in geological circles. Evolution is fact."
A whining cry came through the phone. "Sorry, one more sec. Eddie, I told you, she doesn't know long division, and it doesn't make you smarter, only older. If you can't talk nice, then you can go to your room. Okay, now he should finally stop pestering her." The children's voices in the background faded. "The dean can tell you what to teach in your classes?"
"Sort of. He can't dictate what I teach, but I don't have tenure, so he can fire me, instead."
Trudy's voice softened, and her words came slowly. "Maybe you should think about whether this profession is worth it."
He pushed through the outside door and into the open green space of the quad. He squinted against the bright sunshine. "Paleontology is all I've ever wanted to do."
"But when you became a Christian, you made a commitment to a certain set of beliefs. How can you teach evolution when the Bible says God created everything?" She paused, and for a second, he thought she might break out into scolding the kids again. "If it helps, I'd say the same thing if you were an actor in adult movies."
"Seriously?" He gripped the phone tighter. She was trying to make him laugh, but nothing seemed funny today. "There are intelligent Christians who believe there's not a conflict with evolution."
"And do you still think that? What about all the gaps in the tree?"
This religion thing was new to him. He couldn't just dismiss a lifetime of believing in evolution so easily. "Maybe missing specimens?"
"You know better."
"Come on, Tru. This is my job."
A few minutes later, he said he need to go and hung up. It was pointless to argue with her. She couldn't understand. All the research papers, the doctoral dissertation, the hot desert summers spent with only bones for company. If evolution proved false, then his career—and his life—had been wasted.

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