The Lost World

Costa Rica

There was a drenching downpour in Puerto Cortes. Rain drummed on the roof of the little metal shed beside the airfield. Dripping wet, Thorne stood and waited while the Costa Rican official went over the papers, again and again. Rodriguez was his name, and he was just a kid in his twenties, wearing an ill-fitting uniform, terrified of making a mistake.

Thorne looked out at the runway, where, in the soft dawn light, the cargo containers were being clamped to the bellies of two big Huey helicopters. Eddie Carr was out there in the rain with Malcolm, shouting as the workmen secured the clamps.

Rodriguez shuffled the papers. "Now, Senor Thorne, according to this, your destination is Isla Sorna…"

"That's right."

"And your containers have only vehicles?"

"Yes, that's right. Research vehicles."

"Sorna is a primitive place. There is no petrol, no supplies, not even any roads to speak of…"

"Have you been there'?"

"Myself, no. People here have no interest in this island. It is a wild spot, rock and jungle. And there is no place for a boat to land, except in very special weather conditions. For example, today one cannot go there.

"I understand," Thorne said.

"I just wish that you will be prepared," Rodriguez said, "for the difficulties you will find there.

"I think we're prepared."

"You are taking adequate petrol for your vehicles?"

"Thorne sighed. Why bother to explain? "Yes, we are."

"And there are just three of you, Dr. Malcolm, yourself, and your assistant, Senor Carr?"

"Correct."

"And your intended stay is less than one week?"

"That's correct. More like two days: with anv luck, we expect to be off the island sometime tomorrow."

Rodriguez shuffled the papers again, as if looking for a hidden cule. "Well…"

"Is there a problem?" Thorne said, glancing at his watch.

"No problem, senor. Your permits are signed by the Director General of the Biological Preserves. They are in order… " Rodriguez hesitated. "But it is very unusual, that such a permit would be granted at all."

"Why is that?"

"I do not know the details, but there was some trouble on one of the islands a few years ago, and since then the Department of Biological Preserves has closed all the Pacific islands to tourists."

"We're not tourists," Thorne said.

"I understand that, Senor Thorne." More shuffling of papers.

Thorne waited.

Out on the runway, the container clamps locked in place, and the containers lifted off the ground.

"Very well, Senor Thorne," Rodriguez said finally, stamping the papers. "I wish you good luck."

"Thank you," Thorne said. He tucked the papers in his pocket, ducked his head against the rain, and ran back out on the runway.

Three miles offshore, the helicopters broke through the coastal cloud layer, into early-morning sunlight. From the cockpit of the lead Huey, Thorne could look up and down the coast. He saw five islands at various distances offshore - harsh rocky pinnacles, rising out of rough blue sea. The islands were each several miles apart, undoubtedly part of an old volcanic chain.

He pressed the speaker button. "Which is Sorna?"

The pilot pointed ahead. "We call them the Five Deaths," he said. "Isla Muerte, Isla Matanceros, Isla Pena, Isla Tacano, and Isla Sorna, which is the big one farthest north,"

"Have you been there?"

"Never, senor. But I believe there will be a landing site."

"How do you know?"

"Some years ago, there were some flights there. I have heard the Americans would come, and fly there, sometimes."

"Not Germans?"

"No, no. There have been no Germans since…I do not know. The World War. They were Americans that came."

"When was that?"

"I am not sure. Perhaps ten years ago."

The helicopter turned north, passing over the nearest island. Thorne glimpsed rugged, volcanic terrain, overgrown with dense jungle. There was no sign of life, or of human habitation.

"To the local people, these islands are not happy places," the pilot said. "They say, no good comes from here." He smiled. "But they do not know. They are superstitious Indians."

Now they were over open water, with Isla Sorna directly ahead. It was clearly an old volcanic crater: bare, reddish-gray rock walls, an eroded cone.

"Where do the boats land?"

The pilot pointed to where the sea surged and crashed against the cliffs. "On the east side of this island, there are many caves, made by the waves. Some of the local people call this Isla Gemido. It means 'groan', from the sound of the waves inside the caves. Some of the caves go all the way through to the interior, and a boat can pass through at certain times. But not in weather as you see it now."

Thorne thought of Sarah Harding. If she was coming, she would land later today. "I have a colleague who may be arriving this afternoon said. "Can you bring her out?"

"I am sorry the pilot said. "We have a job in Golfo Juan. We will not be back until tonight."

"What can she do?"

The pilot squinted at the sea, "Perhaps she can come by boat. The sea changes by the hour. She might have luck."

"And you will come back for us tomorrow?"

"Yes, Senor Thorne. We will come in the early morning. It is the best time, for the winds."

The helicopter approached from the west, rising several hundred feet, moving over the rocky cliffs to reveal the interior of Isla Gemido. It appeared just like the others: volcanic ridges and ravines, heavily overgrown with dense jungle. It was beautiful from the air, but Thorne knew it would be dauntingly difficult to move through that terrain. He stared down, looking for roads.

The helicopter thumped lower, circling the central area of the island. Thorne saw no buildings, no roads. The helicopter descended toward the jungle. The pilot said, "Because of the cliffs, the winds here are very bad. Many gusts and updrafts. There is only one place on the island where it is safe to land." He peered out the window. "Ah. Yes. There."

Thorne saw an open clearing, overgrown with tall grass.

"We land there," the pilot said.

Isla Sorna

Eddie Carr stood in the tail grass of the clearing, turned away from the flying dust as the two helicopters lifted off the ground and rose into the sky. In a few moments they were small specks, their sound fading. Eddie shaded his eyes as he looked upward. In a forlorn voice he said, "When're they coming back?"

"Tomorrow morning," Thorne said. "We'll have found Levine by then."

"At least, we'd better," Malcolm said.

And then the helicopters were gone, disappearing over the high rim of the crater. Carr stood with Thorne and Malcolm in the clearing, enveloped in morning heat, and deep silence on the island.

"Kind of creepy here," Eddie said, pulling his baseball cap down lower over his eyes.

Eddie Carr was twenty-four years old, raised in Daly City. Physically, he was dark-haired, compact and strong. His body was thick, the muscles bunched, but his hands were elegant, the fingers long and tapered. Eddie had a talent - Thorne would have said, a genius - for mechanical things. Eddie could build anything, and fix anything. He could see how things worked, just by looking at them. Thorne had hired him three years earlier, his first job out of community college. It was supposed to be a temporary job, earning money so he could go back to school and get an advanced degree. But Thorne had long since become dependent on Eddie. And Eddie, for his part, wasn't much interested in going back to the books.

At the same time, he hadn't counted on anything like this, he thought, looking around him at the clearing. Eddie was an urban kid, accustomed to the action of the city, the honk of horns and the rush of traffic. This desolate silence made him uneasy.

"Come on," Thorne said, putting a hand on his shoulder, "let's get started." They turned to the cargo containers, left by the helicopter. They were sitting a few yards away, in the tall grass.

"Can I help?" Malcolm said, a few yards away.

"If you don't mind, no," Eddie said. "We'd better unpack these ourselves."

They spent half an hour unbolting the rear panels, lowering them to the ground, and entering the containers. After that, they took only a few minutes to release the vehicles. Eddie got behind the wheel of the Explorer and flicked on the ignition. There was hardly any sound, just a soft whirr of the vacuum pump starting up. Thorne said, "How's your charge?"

"Full," Eddie said.

"Batteries okay?"

"Yeah. Seem fine."

Eddie was relieved. He had supervised the conversion of these vehicles to electric power, but it was a rush job, and they hadn't had time to test them thoroughly afterward. And though it was true that electric cars employed less complex technology than the internal-combustion engine-that chugging relic of the nineteenth century - Eddie knew that taking untested equipment into the field was always risky.

Especially when that equipment also used the latest technology. That fact troubled Eddie more than he was willing to admit. Like most born mechanics, he was deeply conservative. He liked things to work - work, no matter what - and to him that meant using established, proven technology. Unfortunately, he had been voted down this time.

Eddie had two particular areas of concern. One was the black photovoltaic panels, with their rows of octagonal silicon wafers, mounted on the roof and hood of the vehicles. These panels were efficient, and much less fragile than the old photovoltaics. Eddie had mounted them with special vibration-damping units of his own design. But the fact remained, if the panels were injured in any way, they would no longer be able to charge the vehicles, or run the electronics. All their systems would stop dead.

His other concern was the batteries themselves. Thorne had selected the new lithium-ion batteries from Nissan, which were extremely efficient on a weight basis. But they were still experimental, which to Eddie was just a polite word for "unreliable."

Eddie had argued for backups; he had argued for a little gasoline generator, just in case; he had argued for lots of things. And he had always been voted down. Under the circumstances, Eddie did the only sensible thing: he built in a few extras, and didn't tell anybody about it.

He was pretty sure Thorne knew he had done that. But Thorne never said anything. And Eddie never brought it up. But now that he was here, on this island in the middle of nowhere, he was glad he had. Because the fact was, you never knew.

Thorne watched as Eddie backed the Explorer out of the container, and into the high grass. Eddie left the car in the middle of the clearing, where the sunlight would strike the panels and top up the charge.

Thorne got behind the wheel of the first trailer, and backed it out. It was odd to drive a vehicle which was so quiet; the loudest sound was the tires on the metal container. And once it was on the grass, there was hardly any sound at all. Thorne climbed out, and linked up the two trailers, locking them together with the flexible steel accordion connector.

Finally, he turned to the motorcycle. It, too, was electric; Thorne rolled it to the rear of the Explorer, lifted it onto brackets, hooked the power cord into the same system that ran the vehicle, and recharged the battery. He stepped back. "That does it."

In the hot, quiet clearing, Eddie stared toward the high circular rim of the crater, rising in the distance above the dense jungle. The bare rock shimmered in the morning heat, the walls forbidding and harsh. He had a sense of desolation, of entrapment. "Why would anyone ever come here?" he said.

Malcolm, leaning on his cane, smiled. "To get away from it all, Eddie. Don't you ever want to get away from it all?"

"Not if I can help it," Eddie said. "Me, I always like a Pizza Hut nearby, you know what I mean?"

"Well, you're a ways from one now."

Thorne returned to the back panel of the trailer, and pulled out a pair of heavy rifles. Beneath the barrel of each hung two aluminum canisters, side by side. He handed one rifle to Eddie, showed the other to Malcolm. "You ever seen these?"

"Read about them," Malcolm said. "This is the Swedish thing?"

"Right. Lindstradt air gun. Most expensive rifle in the world. Rugged, simple, accurate, and reliable. Fires a subsonic Fluger impact delivery dart, containing whatever compound you want." Thorne cracked open the cartridge bank, revealing a row of plastic containers filled with straw-colored liquid. Each cartridge was tipped with a three-inch needle. "We've loaded the enhanced venom of Conus purpurascens, the South Sea cone shell. It's the most powerful neurotoxin in the world. Acts within a two-thousandth of a second. It's faster than the nerve-conduction velocity. The animal's down before it feels the prick of the dart."

"Lethal?"

Thorne nodded. "No screwing around here. Just remember, you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot with this, because you'll be dead before you realize that you've pulled the trigger."

Malcolm nodded. "Is there an antidote?"

"No. But what's the point? There'd be no time to administer it if there was."

"That makes things simple," Malcolm said, taking the gun.

"Just thought you ought to know," Thorne said. "Eddie? Let's get going."

The Stream

Eddie climbed into the Explorer. Thorne and Malcolm climbed into the cab of the trailer. A moment later, the radio clicked. Eddie said, "You putting up the database, Doc?"

"Right now," Thorne said.

He plugged the optical disk into the dashboard slot. On the small monitor facing him, he saw the island appear, but it was largely obscured behind patches of cloud. "What good is that?" Malcolm said.

"Just wait," Thorne said. "It's a system. It's going to sum data."

"Data from what?"

"Radar." In a moment, a satellite radar image overlaid the photograph. The radar could penetrate the clouds. Thorne pressed a button, and the computer traced the edges, enhancing details, highlighting the faint spidery track of the road system.

"Pretty slick," Malcolm said. But to Thorne, he seemed tense.

"I've got it," Eddie said, on the radio.

Malcolm said, "He can see the same thing?"

"Yes. On his dashboard."

"But I don't have the CPS," Eddie said, anxiously. "Isn't it working?"

"You guys," Thorne said. "Give it a minute. It's reading the optical. Waystations are coming up."

There was a cone-shaped Global Positioning Sensor mounted in the roof of the trailer. Taking radio data from orbiting navigation satellites thousands of miles overhead, the GPS could calculate the position of the vehicles within a few yards. In a moment, a flashing red X appeared on the map of the island.

"Okay," Eddie said, on the radio. "I got it. Looks like a road leading out of the clearing to the north. That where we're going?"

"I'd say so," Thorne said. According to the map, the road twisted several miles across the interior of the island, before finally reaching a place where all the roads seemed to meet. There was the suggestion of buildings there, but it was hard to be sure.

"Okay, Doc. Here we go."

Eddie drove past him, and took the lead. Thorne stepped on the accelerator, and the trailer hummed forward, following the Explorer.

Beside him, Malcolm was silent, fiddling with a small notebook computer on his lap. He never looked out the window.

In a few moments, they had left the clearing behind, and were moving through dense jungle. Thorne's panel lights flashed: the vehicle switched to its batteries. There wasn't enough sunlight coming through the trees to power the trailer any more. They drove on.

"How you doing, Doc?" Eddie said. "You holding charge?"

"Just fine, Eddie."

"He sounds nervous," Malcolm said.

"Just worried about the equipment."

"The hell," Eddie said. "I'm worried about me."

Although the road was overgrown and in poor condition they made good progress. After about ten minutes, they came to a small stream, with muddy banks. The Explorer started across it, then stopped. Eddie got out, stepping over rocks in the water, walking back.

"What is it?"

"I saw something, Doc."

Thorne and Malcolm got out of the trailer, and stood on the banks of the stream. They heard the distant cries of what sounded like birds. Malcolm looked up, frowning.

"Birds?" Thorne said.

Malcolm shook his head, no.

Eddie bent over, and plucked a strip of cloth out of the mud. It was dark-green Gore-Tex, with a strip of leather sewn along one edge. "That's from one of our expedition packs," he said.

"The one we made for Levine?"

"Yes, Doc."

"You put a sensor in the pack?" Thorne asked. They usually sewed location sensors inside their expedition packs.

"Yes."

"May I see that?" Malcolm asked. He took the strip of cloth and held it up to the light. He fingered the torn edge thoughtfully

Thorne uncapped a small receiver from his belt. It looked like an oversized pager. He stared at the liquid-crystal readout. "I'm not getting any signal…"

Eddie stared at the muddy bank. He bent over again. "Here's another piece of cloth. And another, Seems like the pack was ripped into shreds, Doc."

Another bird cry floated toward them, distant, unworldly. Malcolm stared off in the distance, trying to locate its source. And then he heard Eddie say, "Uh-oh. We have company."

There were a half-dozen bright-green lizard-like animals, standing in a group near the trailer. They were about the size of chickens, and they chirped animatedly. They stood upright on their hind legs, balancing with their tails straight out. When they walked, their heads bobbed up and down in nervous little jerks, exactly like a chicken. And they made a distinctive squeaking sound, very reminiscent of a bird. Yet they looked like lizards with long tails. They had quizzical, alert faces, and they cocked their heads when they looked at the men.

Eddie said, "What is this, a salamander convention?"

The green lizards stood, watched. Several more appeared, from beneath the trailer, and from the foliage nearby. Soon there were a dozen lizards, watching and chattering.

"Compys," Malcolm said. "Procompsognathus triassicus, is the actual name."

"You mean these are - "

"Yes. They're dinosaurs."

Eddie frowned, stared. "I didn't know they came so small," he said finally.

"Dinosaurs were mostly small," Malcolm said. "People always think they were huge, but the average dinosaur was the size of a sheep, or a small pony."

Eddie said, "They look like chickens."

"Yes. Very bird-like."

"Is there any danger?" Thorne said.

"Not really," Malcolm said. "They're small scavengers, like jackals.

They feed on dead animals. But I wouldn't get close. Their bite is mildly poisonous."

"I'm not getting close," Eddie said. "They give me the creeps. It's like they're not scared."

Malcolm had noticed that, too. "I imagine it's because there haven't been any human beings on this island. These animals don't have any reason to fear man."

"Well, let's give them a reason," Eddie said. He picked up a rock.

"Hey!" Malcolm said. "Don't do that! The whole idea is - "

But Eddie had already thrown the rock. It landed near a cluster of compys, and the lizards ducked away. But the others hardly moved. A few of them hopped up and down, showing agitation. But the group stayed where they were. They just chittered, and cocked their heads.

"Weird," Eddie said. He sniffed the air. "You notice that smell?"

"Yes," Malcolm said. "They have a distinctive odor."

"Rotten, is more like it," Eddie said. "They smell rotten. Like something dead. And you ask me, it's not natural, animals that don't show fear like that. What if they have rabies or something?"

"They don't," Malcolm said.

"How do you know?"

"Because only mammals carry rabies." But even as he said it, he wondered if that was right. Warm-blooded animals carried rabies. Were the compys warm-blooded? He wasn't sure.

There was a rustling sound from above. Malcolm looked up at the canopy Of trees overhead. He saw movement in the high foliage, as unseen small animals jumped from branch to branch. He heard squeaks and chirps, distinctly animal sounds.

"Those aren't birds, up there," Thorne said. "Monkeys?"

"Maybe," Malcolm said. "I doubt it."

Eddie shivered. "I say we get out of here,"

He returned to the stream, and climbed into the Explorer. Malcolm walked cautiously with Thorne back to the trailer entrance. The compys parted around them, but still did not run away. They stood all around their legs, chattering excitedly. Malcolm and Thorne climbed into the trailer and closed the doors, being careful not to shut them on the little creatures.

Thorne sat behind the wheel, and turned on the motor. Ahead, they saw that Eddie was already driving the Explorer through the stream, and heading up the sloping ridge on the far side.

"The, uh, procomso-whatevers, Eddie said, over the radio. "They're real, aren't they?"

"Oh yes, Malcolm said softly. "They're real."

The Road

Thorne was uneasy. He was beginning to understand how Eddie felt. He had built these vehicles, and he had an uncomfortable sense of isolation, of being in this faraway place with untested equipment. The road continued steeply upward through dark jungle for the next fifteen minutes. Inside the trailer, it grew uncomfortably warm. Sitting beside him, Malcolm said, "Air conditioning?"

"I don't want to drain the battery." "Mind if I open the window?"

"If you think it's all right," Thorne said.

Malcolm shrugged. "Why not?" He pushed the button, and the power window rolled down. Warm air blew into the car. He glanced back at Thorne. "Nervous, Doc?"

"Sure," Thorne said. "Damned right I am." Even with the window open, he felt sweat running down his chest as he drove.

Over the radio, Eddie was saying, "I'm telling you, we should have tested first, Doc. Should have done it by the book. You don't come to a place with poisonous chickens if you're not sure your vehicles will hold up."

"The cars are fine," Thorne said. "How's your levels?"

"High normal, Eddie said. "Just great. Of course, we've only gone five miles. It's nine in the morning, Doc."

The road swung right, then left, following a series of switchbacks as the terrain became steeper. Hauling the big trailers, Thorne had to concentrate on his driving; it was a relief to focus his attention.

Ahead of them, the Explorer turned left, going higher up the road. "I don't see any more animals," Eddie said. He sounded relieved.

Finally the road flattened out as it turned, following the crest of the ridge. According to the GPS display, they were now heading north west, toward the interior of the island. But the jungle still hemmed them in on all sides; they could not see much beyond the dense walls of foliage.

They came to a Y intersection in the road, and Eddie pulled over to the side. Thorne saw that in the crook of the Y was a faded wooden sign, with arrows pointing in both directions. To the left, the sign said "To Swamp." To the right was another arrow, and the words, "To Site B."

Eddie said, "Guys? Which way?"

"Go to Site B," Malcolm said.

"You got it," The Explorer started down the right fork, Thorne followed. Off to the right, sulfurous yellow steam issued from the ground, bleaching the nearby foliage white. The smell was strong.

"Volcanic," Thorne said to Malcolm, "just as you predicted." Driving past, they glimpsed a bubbling pool in the earth, crusted thick yellow around the edges.

"Yeah," Eddie said, "but that's active. In fact, I'd say that - holy shit!" Eddie's brake lights flashed on, and his car slammed to a stop.

Thorne had to swerve, scraping jungle ferns on the side of the trailer, to miss him. He pulled up alongside the Explorer, and glared at Eddie. "Eddie, for Pete's sake, will you - "

But Eddie wasn't listening.

He was staring straight forward, his mouth wide open.

Thorne turned to look.

Directly ahead, the trees along the road had been beaten down, creating a gap in the foliage. They could see all the way from the ridge road across the entire island to the west. But Thorne hardly registered the panoramic view. Because all he saw was a large animal, the size of a hippopotamus, ambling across the road. Except it wasn't a hippopotamus. This animal was pale brown, its skin covered with large plate-like scales. Around its head, it had a curving bony crest, and rising from this crest were two blunted horns. A third horn protruded above its snout.

Over the radio, he heard Eddie breathing in shallow gasps. "You know what that is?"

"That's a triceratops," Malcolm said. "A young one, by the looks of it."

"Must be," Eddie said. Ahead of them, a much larger animal now crossed the road. It was easily twice the size of the first, and its horns were long, curving, and sharp. "Because that's his mom."

A third triceratops appeared, then a fourth. There was a whole herd of creatures, ambling slowly across the road. They paid no attention to the vehicles as they crossed, passed through the gap, and descended down the hill, disappearing from view.

Only then were the men able to see through the gap itself. Thorne had a view across a vast marshy plain, with a broad river coursing through the center. On either side of the river, animals grazed. There was a herd of perhaps twenty medium-sized, dark-green dinosaurs to the south, their large heads intermittently poking up above the grass along the river. Nearby, Thorne saw eight duck-billed dinosaurs with large tube-like crests rising above their heads; they drank and lifted their heads, honking mournfully. Directly ahead, he saw a]one stegosaurus, with its curved back and its vertical rows of plates. The triceratops herd moved slowly past the stegosaur, which paid no attention to them. And to the west, rising above a clump of trees, they saw a dozen long, graceful necks of apatosaurs, their bodies hidden by the foliage that they lazily ate. It was a tranquil scene -but it was a scene from another world.

"Doc?" Eddie said. "What is this place?"

Site B

Sitting in the cars, they stared out over the plain. They watched the dinosaurs move slowly through the deep grass. They beard the soft cry of the duckbills. The separate herds moved peacefully beside the river.

Eddie said, "So what are we saying, this is a place that got bypassed by evolution? One of those places where time stands still?"

"Not at all," Malcolm said, "There's a perfectly rational explanation for what you are seeing. And we are going to - "

From the dashboard, there was a high-pitched beeping. On the GPS map, a blue grid was overlaid, with a flashing triangular point marked LEVN.

"It's him!" Eddie said. "We got the son of a bitch!"

"You're reading that?" Thorne said. "It's pretty weak…"

"It's fine - it's got enough signal strength to transmit the ID tab. That's Levine, all right. Looks like it is coming from the valley over there."

He started the Explorer, and it lurched forward up the road. "Let's go," Eddie said. "I want to get the hell out of here."

With the flick of a switch, Thorne turned on the electric Motor for the trailer, and beard the chug of the vacuum pump, the low whine of the automatic transmission. He put the trailer in gear, and followed behind.

The impenetrable jungle closed in around them again, close and hot. The trees overhead blocked nearly all the sunlight. As he drove, he heard the beeping become irregular. He glanced at the monitor, saw the flashing triangle was disappearing, then coming back again.

"Are we losing him, Eddie?" Thorne said.

"Doesn't matter if we do," Eddie said. "We've got a location on him now, and we can go right there. In fact, it should be just down this road here. Right past this guardhouse or whatever it is, dead ahead."

Thorne looked past the Explorer, and saw a concrete structure and a tilting steel road-barrier. It did indeed look like a guardhouse. It was in disrepair, and overgrown with vines. They drove on, coming onto paved road. It was clear the foliage on either side had once been cut far back, fifty feet on either side. Pretty soon they came to a second guardhouse, and a second checkpoint.

They continued on another hundred yards, the road still curving slowly along the ridge. The surrounding foliage became sparser; through gaps in the ferns Thorne could see wooden outbuildings, all painted identical green. They seemed to be utility structures, perhaps sheds for equipment. He had the sense of entering a substantial complex.

And then, suddenly, they rounded a curve, and saw the entire complex spread out below them. It was about a half-mile away.

Eddie said, "What the hell is that?"

Thorne stared, astonished. In the center of the clearing he saw the flat roof of an enormous building. It covered several acres, stretching away into the distance. It was the size of two football fields. Beyond the vast roof was a large blocky building with a metal roof, which had the functional look of a power plant, But if so, it was as big as the power plant for a small town.

At the far end of the main building, Thorne saw loading docks, and turnarounds for trucks. Over to the right, partially hidden in foliage, there were a series of small structures that looked like cottages. But from a distance it was hard to be sure.

Taken together, the whole complex had a utilitarian quality that reminded Thorne of an industrial site, or a fabrication plant. He frowned, trying to put it together.

"Do you know what this is?" Thorne said to Malcolm.

"Yes," Malcolm said, nodding slowly. "It's what I suspected for some time now."

"Yes?"

"It's a manufacturing plant," Malcolm said. "It's a kind of factory."

"But it's huge," Thorne said.

"Yes," Malcolm said. "It had to be."

Over the radio, Eddie said, "I'm still getting a reading from Levine. And guess what? It seems to be coming from that building."

They drove past the covered front entrance to the main building, beneath the sagging portico. The building was of modern design, concrete and glass, but the jungle had long ago grown up around it. Vines hung from the roof Panes of glass were broken; ferns sprouted between cracks in the concrete.

Thorne said, "Eddie? Got a reading?"

Eddie said, "Yeah. Inside. What do you want to do?"

"Set up base camp in that field over there," Thorne said, pointing a half-mile to the left, where once, it seemed, there had been an extensive lawn. It was still an open clearing in the jungle; there would be sunlight for the photovoltaics. "Then we'll have a look around."

Eddie parked his Explorer, turning it around to face back the way they had come. Thorne maneuvered the trailers alongside the car, and cut the engine. He climbed out into the still, hot morning air. Malcolm got out and stood with him. Here in the center of the island, it was completely silent, except for the buzz of insects.

Eddie came over, slapping himself. "Great place, huh? No shortage of mosquitoes. You want to go get the son of a bitch now?" Eddie unclipped a receiver from his belt, and cupped his hand over the display, trying to see it in the sunlight. "Still right over there." He pointed to the main building. "What do you say?"

"Let's go get him," Thorne said.

The three men turned, climbed into the Explorer, and, leaving the trailers behind, drove in hot sunlight toward the giant, ruined building.

Trailer

Inside the trailer, the sound of the car engine faded away, and there-was silence. The dashboard glowed, the GPS map remained visible on the monitor; the flashing X marking their position. A small window in the monitor, titled "Active Systems," indicated the battery charge, photovoltaic efficiency, and usage over the past twelve hours. The electronic readouts all glowed bright green.

In the living section, where the kitchen and beds were located, the recirculating water supply in the sink gurgled softly. Then there was a thumping sound, coming from the upper storage compartment, located near the ceiling. The thumping was repeated, and then there was silence.

After a moment, a credit card appeared through the crack of the compartment door. The card slid upward, lifting the panel latch, unhooking it. The door swung open, and a white bundle of padding fell Out, landing with a dull thud on the floor. The padding unrolled, and Arby Benton groaned, stretching his small body.

"If I don't pee, I'm going to scream," he said, and he hurried on shaky legs into the tiny bathroom.

He sighed in relief. It had been Kelly's idea for them to go, but she left it to Arby to figure out the details. And he had figured everything out perfectly, he thought - at least, almost everything. Arby had correctly anticipated it would be freezing cold in the cargo plane, and that they would have to bundle up; he'd stuffed their compartments with every blanket and sheet in the trailer. He'd anticipated they would be there at least twelve hours, and he put aside some cookies and bottles of water. In fact, he'd anticipated everything except the fact that, at the last minute, Eddie Carr would go through the trailer and latch all the storage compartments from the outside. Locking them in, so that, for the next twelve hours, he wouldn't be able to go to the bathroom. For twelve hours!

He sighed again, his body relaxing. A steady stream of urine still flowed into the basin. No wonder! Agony! And he'd still be locked in there, he thought, if he hadn't finally figured out -

Behind him, he heard muffled shouts. He flushed the toilet and went back, crouching down by the storage compartment beneath the bed. He quickly unlatched it; another padded bundle unrolled, and Kelly appeared beside him.

"Hey, Kel," he said proudly. "We made it!"

"I have to go," she said, dashing. She pulled the door shut behind her.

Arby said, "We did it! We're here!"

"Just a minute, Arb. Okay?"

For the first time, he looked out the window of the trailer. All around them was a grassy clearing, and beyond that, the ferns and high trees of the jungle. And high above the tops of the trees, he saw the curving black rock of the volcanic rim.

So this was Isla Sorna, all right.

All right!

Kelly came out of the bathroom. "Ohhh. I thought I was going to die!" She looked at him, gave him high five. "By the way, how'd you get your door unlatched?"

"Credit card," he said.

She frowned. "You have a credit card?"

"My parents gave it to me, for emergencies," he said. "And I figured this was an emergency." He tried to make a joke out of it, to treat it lightly. Arby knew Kelly was sensitive about anything to do with money. She was always making comments about his clothes and things like that. Arid how he always had money for a taxi or a Coke at Larson's Deli after school, or whatever. Once he said to her that he didn't think money was so important, and she said, "Why would you?" in a funny voice. Arid ever since then he had tried to avoid the subject.

Arby wasn't always clear about the right thing to do around people. Everyone treated him so weird, anyway. Because he was younger, of course. And because he was black. Arid because he was what the other kids called a brainer. He found himself engaged in a constant effort to be accepted, to blend in. Except he couldn't. He wasn't white, he wasn't big, he wasn't good at sports, and he wasn't dumb. Most of his classes at school were so boring Arby could hardly stay awake in them. His teachers sometimes got annoyed with him, but what could he do? School was like a video played at super-slow speed. You could glance at it once an hour and not miss anything. And when he was around the other kids, how could he be expected to show interest in TV shows like "Melrose Place," or the San Francisco 49ers, or the Shaq's new commercial. He couldn't. That stuff wasn't important.

But Arby had long ago discovered it was unpopular to say so. It was better to keep your mouth shut. Because nobody understood him, except Kelly. She seemed to know what he was talking about, most of the time.

And Dr. Levine. At least the school had an advanced-placement track, which was moderately interesting to Arby. Not very interesting, of course, but better than the other classes. And when Dr. Levine had decided to teach the class, Arby had found himself excited by school for the first time in his life. In fact -

"So this is Isla Sorna, huh?" Kelly said, looking out the window at the jungle.

"Yeah," Arby said. "I guess so."

"You know, when they stopped the car earlier," Kelly said, "could you hear what they were talking about?"

"Not really. All the padding."

"Me neither," Kelly said. "But they seemed pretty worked up about something."

"Yeah, they did."

"It sounded like they were talking about dinosaurs, Kelly said. "Did you hear anything like that?"

Arby laughed, shaking his head. "No, Kel," he said.

"Because I thought they did."

"Come on, Kel."

"I thought Thorne said 'triceratops."'

"Kel," he said. "Dinosaurs have been extinct for sixty-five million years.

"I know that…"

He pointed out the window. "You see any dinosaurs out there?"

Kelly didn't answer. She went to the other side of the trailer, and looked out the opposite window. She saw Thorne, Malcolm, and Eddie disappearing into the main building.

"They're going to be pretty annoyed when they find us," Arby said. "How do you think we should tell them?"

"We can let it be a surprise.

"They'll be mad," he said.

"So? What can they do about it?" Kelly said.

"Maybe they'll send us back."

"How? They can't."

"Yeah. I guess." Arby shrugged casually, but he was more troubled by this line of thought than he wanted to admit. This was all Kelly's idea. Arby had never liked to break the rules, or to get into any kind of trouble. Whenever he had even had a mild reprimand from a teacher, he would get flushed and sweaty. And for the last twelve hours, he had been thinking about how Thorne and the others would react.

"Look," Kelly said. "The thing is, we're here to help find our friend Dr. Levine, that's all. We've helped Dr. Thorne already."

"Yes

"And we'll be able to help them again."

"Maybe…"

"They need our help."

"Maybe," Arby said. He didn't feel convinced.

Kelly said, "I wonder what they have to eat here." She opened the refrigerator. "You hungry?"

"Starving," Arby said, suddenly aware that he was.

'So what do you want?"

"What is there?" He sat on the padded gray couch and stretched, as he watched Kelly poke through the refrigerator.

"Come and look," she said, annoyed. "I'm not your stupid housekeeper,"

"Okay, okay, take it easy."

"Well, you expect everybody to wait on you," she said.

"I do not," he said, getting quickly off the couch.

"You're such a brat, Arby."

"Hey," he said. "What's the big deal? Take it easy. You nervous about something?"

No, I am not," she said. She took a wrapped sandwich out of the refrigerator. Standing beside her, he looked briefly inside, grabbed the first sandwich he saw.

"You don't want that," she said.

"Yes, I do."

"It's tuna salad."

Arby hated tuna salad. He put it back quickly, looked around again.

"That's turkey on the left," she said. "In the bun."

He brought out a turkey sandwich. "Thanks."

"No problem." Sitting on the couch, she opened her own sandwich, wolfed it down hungrily.

"Listen, at least I got us here," he said, unwrapping his own carefully. He folded the plastic neatly, set it aside.

"Yeah. You did. I admit it. You did that part all right."

Arby ate his sandwich. He thought he had never tasted anything so good in his entire life. It was better even than his mother's turkey sandwiches.

The thought of his mother gave him a pang. His mother was a gynecologist and very beautiful. She had a busy life, and wasn't home very much, but whenever he saw her, she always seemed so peaceful. And Arby felt peaceful around her, too. They had a special relationship, the two of them. Even though lately she sometimes seemed uneasy about how much he knew. One night he had come into her study; she was going over some journal articles about progesterone levels and FSH. He looked over her shoulder at the columns of numbers and suggested that she might want to try a nonlinear equation to analyze the data. She gave him a funny look, a kind of separate look, thoughtful and distant from him, and at that moment he had felt -

"I'm getting another one," Kelly said, going back to the refrigerator. She came out with two sandwiches, one in each hand.

"You think there's enough?"

"Who cares? I'm starving," she said, tearing off the wrapping on the first.

"Maybe we shouldn't eat - "

"Arb, if you're going to worry like this, we should have stayed home."

He decided that was right. He was surprised to see that he had somehow finished his own sandwich. So he took the other one Kelly offered him.

Kelly ate, and stared out the window. "I wonder what that building is, that they went into? It looks abandoned."

"Yeah. For years."

"Why would somebody build a big building here, on some deserted island in Costa Rica?" she said.

"Maybe they were doing something secret."

"Or dangerous," she said.

"Yeah. Or that." The idea of danger was both titillating and unnerving. He felt far from home.

"I wonder what they were doing?" she said. Still eating, she got up off the couch and went to look out the window. "Sure is a big place. Huh," she said. "That's weird."

"What is?"

"Look out here. That building is all overgrown, like nobody's been there for years and years. And this field is all grown up, too. The grass is pretty high."

"Yes…"

"But right down here," she said, pointing near the trailer, "there's a clear path."

Chewing, Arby came over and looked. She was right. Just a few yards from their trailer, the grass had been trampled down, and was yellowed. In many places, bare earth showed through. It was a narrow but distinct trail, coming in from the left, going off to the right, across the open clearing.

"So," Kelly said. "If nobody's been here for years, what made the trail?"

"Has to be animals," he said. It was all he could think of "Must be a game trail."

" Like what animals?"

"I don't know. Whatever's here. Deer or something."

'I haven't seen any deer."

He shrugged. "Maybe goats. You know, wild goats, like they have in Hawaii."

"The trail's too wide for deer or goats."

"Maybe there's a whole herd of wild goats."

"Too wide," Kelly said. She shrugged, and turned away from the window. She went back to the refrigerator. "I wonder if there's anything for dessert."

Mention of dessert gave him a sudden thought. He went to the com partment above the bed, climbed up, and poked around.

"What're you doing?" she said.

"Checking my pack."

"For what?"

"I think I forgot my toothbrush.

"So?"

"I won't be able to brush my teeth."

"Arb," she said. "Who cares?"

"But I always brush my teeth…"

"Be daring," Kelly said. "Live a little."

Arby sighed. "Maybe Dr. Thorne brought an extra one." He came back and sat down on the couch beside Kelly. She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head.

"No dessert?"

"Nothing. Not even frozen yogurt. Adults. They never plan right."

"Yeah. That's true."

Arby yawned, It was warm in the trailer. He felt sleepy. Lying huddled in that compartment for the last twelve hours, shivering and cramped, he hadn't slept at all. Now he was suddenly tired.

He looked at Kelly, and she yawned, too. "Want to go outside? Wake us up?"

"We should probably wait here," he said.

"If I do, I'm afraid I'll go to sleep," Kelly said.

Arby shrugged. Sleep was overtaking him fast. He went back to the living compartment, and crawled onto the mattress beside the window. Kelly followed him back.

"I'm not going to sleep," she said.

"Fine, Kel." His eyes were heavy. He realized he couldn't keep them open.

"But" - she yawned again - "maybe I'll just lie down for a minute."

He saw her stretch out on the bed opposite him, and then his eyes closed, and he was immediately asleep. He dreamed he was back in the airplane, feeling the gentle rocking motion, hearing the deep rumble of the engines. He slept lightly, and at one moment woke up, convinced that the trailer actually was rocking, and that there really was a low rumbling sound, coming from right outside the window. But almost immediately he was asleep again, and now he dreamed of dinosaurs, Kelly's dinosaurs, and in his light sleep there were two animals, so huge that he could not see their heads through the window, only their thick scaly legs as they thumped on the ground and walked past the trailer. But in his dream the second animal paused, and bent over, and the big head peered in curiously through the window, and Arby realized that he was seeing the giant head of a Tyrannosaurus rex, the great jaws working, the white teeth glinting in the sunlight, and in his dream he watched it all calmly, and slept on.

Interior

Two large swinging glass doors at the front of the main building led into a darkened lobby beyond. The glass was scratched and dirty, the chrome door-handles pitted with corrosion. But it was clear that the dust, debris, and dead leaves in front of the doorway had been disturbed in twin arcs.

"Somebody's opened these doors recently," Eddie said.

"Yes," Thorne said. "Somebody wearing Asolo boots." He opened the door. "Shall we?"

They stepped into the building. Inside, the air was hot and still and fetid. The lobby was small and unimpressive. A reception counter directly ahead was once covered with gray fabric, now overgrown with a dark, lichen-like growth. On the wall behind was a row of chrome letters that said "We Make The Future," but the words were obscured by a tangle of vines. Mushrooms and fungi sprouted from the carpet. Over to the right, they saw a waiting area, with a coffee table, and two long couches.

One of the conches was speckled with crusty brown mold; the other had been covered with a plastic tarp. Next to this couch was what was left of Levine's green backpack, with several deep tears on the fabric. On the coffee table were two empty plastic Evian bottles, a satellite phone, a pair of muddy hiking shorts, and several crumpled candy-bar wrappers. A bright-green snake slithered quickly away as they approached.

"So this is an InGen building?" Thorne said, looking at the wall sign.

"Absolutely," Malcolm said.

Eddie bent over Levine's backpack, ran his fingers along the tears in the fabric. As he did so, a large rat jumped out from the pack.

"Jesus!"

The rat scurried away, squeaking. Eddie looked cautiously inside the pack. "I don't think anybody's going to want the rest of these candy bars," he said. He turned to the pile of clothes. "You getting a reading from this?" Some of the expedition clothes had micro-sensors sewn into them.

"No," Thorne said, moving his hand monitor. "I have a reading, but…it seems to be coming from there."

He pointed to a set of metal doors beyond the reception desk, leading into the building beyond. The doors had once been bolted shut and locked with rusted padlocks. But the padlocks now lay on the floor, broken open.

"Let's go get him," Eddie said, heading for the doors. "What kind of a snake do you think that was?"

"I don't know."

"Was it poisonous?"

"I don't know."

The doors opened with a loud creak. The three men found themselves in a blank corridor, with broken windows along one wall, and dried leaves and debris on the floor. The walls were dirty and darkly stained in several places with what looked like blood. They saw several doors opening off the corridor. None appeared to be locked.

Plants were growing up through rips in the carpeted floor. Near the windows, where it was light, vines grew thickly over the cracked walls. More vines hung down from the ceiling. Thorne and the others headed down the hallway. There was no sound except their feet crunching on the dried leaves.

"Getting stronger," Thorne said, looking at his monitor. "He must be somewhere in this building."

Thorne opened the first door he came to, and saw a plain office: a desk and chair, a map of the island on the wall. A desk lamp, toppled over from the weight of tangled vines. A computer monitor, with a film of mold. At the far end of the room, light filtered through a grimy window.

They went down the hall to the second door, and saw an almost identical office: similar desk and chair, similar window at the far side of the room.

Eddie grunted. "Looks like we're in an office building," he said.

Thorne went on. He opened the third door, and then the fourth. More offices.

Thorne opened the fifth door, and paused.

He was in a conference room, dirty with leaves and debris. There were animal droppings on the long wooden table in the center of the room. The window on the far side was dusty. Thorne was drawn to a large map, which covered one whole wall of the conference room. There were pushpins of various colors stuck in the map. Eddie came in, and frowned.

Beneath the map was a chest of drawers. Thorne tried to open them, but they were all locked. Malcolm walked slowly into the room, looking around, taking it in. "What's this map mean?" Eddie said. "You have any idea what the pins are?"

Malcolm glanced at it. "Twenty pins in four different colors. Five pins of each color. Arranged in a pentagon, or anyway a five-pronged pattern of some kind, going to all parts of the island. I'd say it looks like a network."

"Didn't Arby say there was a network on this island?"

"Yes, he did…Interesting…"

"Well, never mind that now," Thorne said. He went back into the hallway again, following the signal from his hand unit. Malcolm closed the door behind them, and they continued on. They saw more offices, but no longer opened the doors. They followed the signal from Levine.

At the end of the corridor was a pair of sliding glass doors marked NO ADMITTANCE AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Thorne peered through the glass, but he could not see much beyond. He had the sense of a large space, and complex machinery, but the glass was dusty and streaked with grime. It was difficult to see.

Thorne said to Malcolm, "You really think you know what this building was for?"

"I know exactly what it was for," Malcolm said. "It's a manufacturing plant for dinosaurs."

"Why," Eddie said, "would anybody want that?"

"Nobody would," Malcolm said. "That's why they kept it a secret."

"I don't get it," Eddie said.

Malcolm smiled. "Long story," he said.

He slipped his hands between the doors, and tried to pull them open, but they remained shut fast. He grunted, straining with effort. And then suddenly, with a metallic screech, they slid apart.

They stepped into the darkness beyond.

Their flashlights shone down an inky corridor, as they moved forward. "To understand this place, you have to go back ten years, to a man named John Hammond, and an animal called the quagga."

"The what?"

"The quagga," Malcolm said, "is an African mammal, rather like a zebra. It became extinct in the last century. But in the 1980s, somebody used the latest DNA-extraction techniques on a piece of quagga hide, and recovered a lot of DNA. So much DNA that people began to talk about bringing the quagga back to life. And if you could bring the quagga back to life, why not other extinct animals? The dodo? The saber-toothed tiger? Or even a dinosaur?"

"Where could you get dinosaur DNA?" Thorne said.

"Actually," Malcolm said, "paleontologists have been finding fragments of dinosaur DNA for years. They never said much about it, because they never had enough material to use it as a classification tool. So it didn't seem to have any value; it was just a curiosity,"

"But to re-create an animal, you'd need more than DNA fragments," Thorne said. "You'd need the whole strand."

"That's right," Malcolm said. "And the man who figured out how to, get it was a venture capitalist named John Hammond. He reasoned that, when dinosaurs were alive, insects probably bit them, and sucked their blood, just as insects do today. And some of those insects would afterward land on a branch, and be trapped in sticky sap. And some of that sap would harden into amber. Hammond decided that, if you drilled into insects preserved in amber, and extracted the stomach contents, you would eventually get some dino-DNA."

"And did he?"

"Yes. He did, And he started InGen, to develop this discovery. Hammond was a hustler, and his true talent was raising money. He figured out how to get enough money to do the research to go from a DNA strand to a living animal. Sources of funding weren't immediately apparent. Because, although it would be exciting to re-create a dinosaur, it wasn't exactly a cure for cancer.

"So he decided to make a tourist attraction. He planned to recover the cost of the dinosaurs by putting them in a kind of zoo or theme park, where he would charge admission."

"Are you joking?" Thorne said.

"No. Hammond actually did it. He built his park on an island called Isla Nublar, north of here, and he planned to open it to the public in late 1989. I went to see the place myself, shortly before it was scheduled to open. But it turned out Hammond had problems," Malcolm said. "The park systems broke down, and the dinosaurs got free. Some visitors were killed. Afterward, the park and all its dinosaurs were destroyed."

They passed a window where they could look out over the plain, at the herds of dinosaurs browsing by the river. Thorne said, "If they were all destroyed, what's this island?"

"This island," Malcolm said, "is Hammond's dirty little secret. It's the dark side of his park."

They continued down the corridor.

"You see," Malcolm said, "visitors to Hammond's park at Isla Nublar were shown a very impressive genetics lab, with computers and gene sequencers, and all sorts of facilities for hatching and growing young dinosaurs. Visitors were told that the dinosaurs were created right there at the park. And the laboratory tour was entirely convincing.

"But actually, Hammond's tour skipped several steps in the process In one room, he showed you dinosaur DNA being extracted. In the next room, he showed you eggs about to hatch. It was very dramatic, but how had he gotten from DNA to a viable embryo? You never saw that critical step. It was just presented as having happened, between rooms.

"The fact was, Hammond's whole show was too good to be true. For example, he had a hatchery where the little dinosaurs pecked their way out of the eggs, while you watched in amazement. But there were never any problems in the hatchery. No stillbirths, no deformities, no difficulties of any sort. In Hammond's presentation, this dazzling technology was carried off without a hitch.

"And if you think about it, it couldn't possibly be true. Hammond was claiming to manufacture extinct animals using cutting-edge technology. But with any new manufacturing technology, initial yields are low: on the order of one percent or less. So in fact, Hammond must have been growing thousands of dinosaur embryos to get a single live birth. That implied a giant industrial operation, not the spotless little laboratory we were shown."

"You mean this place," Thorne said.

"Yes. Here, on another island, in secret, away from public scrutiny, Hammond was free to do his research, and deal with the unpleasant truth behind his beautiful little park. Hammond's little genetic zoo was a showcase. But this island was the real thing. This is where the dinosaurs were made."

"If the animals at the zoo were destroyed," Eddie said, "how come they weren't destroyed on this island, too?"

"A critical question," Malcolm said. "We should know the answer in a few minutes." He shone his light down the tunnel; it glinted off glass walls. "Because, if I am not mistaken," he said, "the first of the manufacturing bays is just ahead."

Arby

Arby awoke, sitting upright in bed, blinking his eyes in the Morning light that streamed in through the trailer windows. In the next bunk, Kelly was still asleep, snoring loudly.

He looked out the window at the entrance to the big building, and s aw that the adults were gone. The Explorer was standing by the entrance, but there was no one inside the car. Their trailer sat isolated 'n the clearing of tall grass. Arby felt entirely alone - frighteningly alone and a sudden sense of panic made his heart pound. He never should have come here, he thought. The whole idea was stupid. And Worst Of all, it had been his plan. The way they had huddled together in the trailer, and then had gone back to Thorne's office. And Kelly had talked to Thorne, so that Arby could steal the key. The way he had set up a delayed radio message to be transmitted to Thorne so that Thorne would think they were still in Woodside. Arby had felt very clever at the time, but now he regretted it all. He decided that he had to call Thorne immediately. He had to turn himself in. He was filled with an overwhelming desire to confess.

He needed to hear somebody's voice. That was the truth.

He walked from the back of the trailer, where Kelly was sleeping, to the front, and turned on the ignition key in the dashboard. He picked up the radio handset and said, "This is Arby. Is anybody there? Over. This is Arby."

But nobody answered. After a moment, he looked at the dashboard systems monitor, which registered all the systems that were operative. He didn't see anything about communications. It occurred to him that the communications system was probably hooked into the computer. He decided to turn the computer on.

So he went back to the middle of the trailer, unstrapped the keyboard, plugged it in, and turned the computer on. There was a menu screen that said "Thorne Field Systems" and underneath that a listing of subsystems inside the trailer. One of them was radio communications. So he clicked on that, and turned it on.

The computer screen showed a scrambled hash of static. At the bottom was a command line that read: "Multiple Frequency Inputs Received. Do you want to Autotune?"

Arby didn't know what that meant, but he was fearless around computers. Autotune sounded interesting. Without hesitation, he typed "Yes."

The static scramble remained on the screen, while numbers rolled at the bottom. He guessed he was seeing frequencies in megahertz. But he didn't really know.

And then, suddenly, the screen went blank, except for a single flashing word in the upper-left corner:

LOGIN:

He paused, frowning. That was odd. Apparently he was required to log into the trailer's computer system. That meant he would need a password. He tried: THORNE.

Nothing happened.

He waited a moment, then tried Thorne's initials: JT.

Nothing.

LEVINE

Nothing.

THORNE FIELD SYSTEMS.

Nothing.

TFS.

Nothing.

FIELD.

Nothing.

USER.

Nothing.

Well, he thought, at least the system hadn't dumped him out. Most networks logged you off after three wrong tries. But apparently Thorne hadn't designed any security features into this one. Arby would never have made it this way. The system was too patient and helpful.

He tried: HELP.

The cursor moved to another line. There was a pause. The drives whirred.

"Action," he said, rubbing his hands.

Laboratory

As Thorne's eyes adjusted to the low light, he saw they were standing inside an enormous space, consisting of row after row of rectangular stainless-steel boxes, each fitted with a tangled maze of plastic tubing. Everything was dusty; many of the boxes were knocked over.

"The first rows," Malcolm said, "are Nishihara gene sequencers. And beyond are the automatic DNA synthesizers."

"It's a factory," Eddie said. "It's like agribusiness or something."

"Yes, it is."

At the corner of the room was a printer, with some loose sheets of yellowing paper lying beside it. Malcolm picked up one, and glanced at it.

[GALRERYF1] Gailimimus erythroid-specific transcription factor eryf1

mRNA, complete cds. [GALRERYF1 1068 bp ss-mRNA VRT 15-DEC-1989]

SOURCE [SRC]

Gallimimus bullatus (Male) 9 day embryonic blood, cDNA to mRNA,

clone E120-1.

ORGANISM Gallimimus bullatus

Animalia; Chordata; Vertebrata; Archosauria; Dinosauria;

Ornithomimisauria.

REFERENCE [REF]

1 (bases 1 to 1418) T.R.Evans, 17-JUL-1989.

FEATURES [FEA]

Location/Qualifiers

/note='Eryf1 protein gi: 212629"

/codon_start=l

/translation="MEFVALGGPDAGSPTPFPDEAGAFLGLGGGPRTEAGGLLASYPP SGRVSLVPWADTOTLGTPQWVPPATQMEPPHYLELLQPPRGSPPHPSSGPLLPLSSGP PPCEARECVNCGATATPLWRRDGTGHYLCNACGLYHRLNGQNRPLIRPKKRLLVSKRA GTVCSNCQTSTTTLWRRSPMGDPVCNACGLYYKLHQVNRPLTMRKDGIQTRNRKVSSK GKKRRPPGGONPSATAGGGAPMGGGGDPSMPPPPPPPAAAPPQSDALYALGPVVLSGH FLPFGNSGGFFGGGAGGYTAPPGLSPQI"

BASE COUNT [BAS]

206 a 371 c 342 g 149 t

"It's a reference to a computer database," Malcolm said. "For some dinosaur blood factor. Something to do with red cells."

"And is that the sequence?"

"No," Malcolm said. He started shuffling through the papers. "No, the sequence should be a series of nucleotides…Here."

He picked up another sheet of paper.

SEQUENCE

1 GAATTCCGGA AGCGACCAAG AGATAARTCC TGGCATCAGA TACAGTTOGA GATAAGGACG

61 CACGTGTGGC AGCTCCCGCA GAGGATTCAC TGGAAGTGCA TTACCTATCC CATGGGAOCC

121 ATGGAGTTCG TGGCGCTGGG GGGGCCGGAT GCGGGCTCCC CCACTCCGTT CCCTGATGAA

181 GCCGGAGCCT TCCTGGGGCT GGGGGGGGOC GAGAGGACGG AGGCGGGGGG GCTGCTGGCC

241 TCCTACCCCC CCTCAGGCCG COTGTCCCTG GTGCCGTGGG CAGACACGGG TACTTTGGGG

301 ACCCCCCAGT GGGTGCCGCC CGCCACCCAA ATGGAGCCCC CCCACTACCT COAGCTGCTG

361 CAACCCCCCC GGCGCAGCCC CCCCCATCCC TCCTCCGGGC CCCTACTOCC ACTCAGCAGC

421 GGGCCCCCAC CCTGCGAGGC CCGTGAGTGC GTCATGGCCA OGAAGAACTG CGGAGCGACG

481 GCAACGCCGC TGTGGCGCCG GGACGGCACC GGGCATTACC TGTGCAACTG GGCCTCAGCC

541 TGCOGGCTCT ACCACCGCCT CAACGOCCAG AACCGCCCGC TCATCCGCCC CAAAAAGCGC

601 CTGCTGGTGA GTAAGCGCGC AGGCACAGTG TGCAGCCACG AGCGTGAAAA CTGCCAGACA

661 TCCACCACCA CTCTGTGGCG TCGCAGCCCC ATGGGGGACC CCGTCTGCAA CAACATTCAC

721 GCCTGCGGCC TCTACTACAA ACTGCACCAA GTGAACCGCC CCCTCACGAT GCGCAAAGAC

781 GGAATCCAAA CCCGAAACCG CAAAGTTTCC TCCAAGOGTA AAAAGCGGCO CCCCCCGGGG

841 COGGGAAACC CCTCCGCCAC CGCGGGAGGG GGCGCTCCTA TGGGGGGAGG GGGGGACCCC

901 TCTATGCCCC CCCCGCCGCC CCCCCCGGCC GCCGCCCCCC CTCAAAGCGA CGCTCTGTAC

961 OCTCTCGGCC CCGTGGTCCT TTCGGGCCAT TTTCTGCCCT TTGGAAACTC CGGAGGGTTT

1021 TTTGGGGGGG GGGCGGGGGG TTACACGGCC CCCCCGGGGC TGAGCCCGCA GATTTAAATA

1081 ATAACTCTGA CGTGGRCAAG TGGGCCTTGC TGAGAAGACA GTGTAACATA ATAATTTGCA

1141 CCTCGGCAAT TGCAGAGOGT CGATCTCCAC TTTGGACACA ACAGGGCTAC TCGGTAGGAC

1201 CAGATAAOCA CTTTGCTCCC TGGACTGAAA AAGAAAGOAT TTATCTGTTT GCTTCTTOCT

1261 GACAAATCCC TGTGAAAGGT AAAAGTCGGA CACAGCAATC GATTATTTCT CGCCTGTGTG

1321 AAATTACTGT GAATATTGTA AATATATATA TATATATATA TATATCTGTA TAGAACAGCC

1381 TCGGAGGCGG CATGGACCCA GCGTACATCA TGCTGGATTT GTACTGCCOG AATTC

Distribution [DIS]

Wu /HQ-Ops

Lori Ruso /Prod

Venn /LLv-1

Chang /89 Pen

PRODUCTION NOTE [PNOT]

Sequence is final and approved.

"Does this have something to do with why the animals survived?" Thorne said.

"I'm not sure," Malcolm said. Was this sheet related to the final days of the manufacturing facility? Or was it just something that a worker printed out years ago, and somehow left behind?

He looked around by the printer, and found a shelved stack of sheets. Pulling them out, he discovered that they were memos. They were on faded blue paper, and they were all brief.

From: CC/D-P. Jenkins

To: H. Wu

Excess dopamine in Alpha 5 means DI receptor still not func-

tioning with desired avidity. To minimize aggressive behavior in

finished orgs must try alternate genetic backgrounds. We need

to start this today.

And again:

From: CC/D

To: H. Wu/Sup

Isolated glycogen synthase kinase-3 from Xenopus may work

better than mammalian GSK-3 alpha/beta currently in use.

Anticipate more robust establishment of dorsoventral polarity

and less early embyro wastage. Agree?

Malcolm looked at the next one:

From: Backes

To: H. Wu/Sup

Short protein fragments may be acting as prions. Sourcing

doubtful but suggest halt all exogenous protein for carniv. orgs

until origin is cleared up. Disease cannot continue!

Thorne looked over his shoulder. "Seems like they had problems," he said.

"Undoubtedly they did," Malcolm said. "It would be impossible not to have them. But the question is…"

He drifted off, staring at the next memo, which was longer.

INGEN PRODUCTION UPDATE 10/10/88

From: Lori Ruso

To: All Personnel

Subject: Low Production Yields

Recent episodes of wastage of successful live births in the

period 24-72 hours post-hatching have been traced to contami-

nation from Escherichia coli bacteria. These have cut produc-

tion yields by 60%, and arise from inadequate sterile

precautions by floor personnel, principally during Process H

(Egg Maintenance Phase, Hormone Enhancement 2G/H).

Komera swing arms have been replaced and re-sleeved on

robots 5A and 7D, but needle replacement must still be done

daily in accordance with sterile conditions (General Manual:

Guideline 5-9).

During the next production cycle (10/12-10/26) we will sacri-

fice every tenth egg at H Step to test for contamination. Begin

set-asides at once. Report all errors. Stop the line whenever

necessary until this is cleared up.

"They had problems with infection, and contamination of the production line,' Malcolm said. "And maybe other sources of contamination as well. Look at this."

He handed Thorne the next memo:

INGEN PRODUCTION UPDATE 12/18/88

From: H. Wu

To: All Personnel

Subject: DX: TAG AND RELEASE

Live births will be fitted with the new Grumbach field tags at

the earliest viable interval. Formula or other feeding within the

laboratory confines will no longer be done. The release pro-

gram is now fully operational and tracking networks are acti-

vated to monitor.

Thorne said, "Does this mean what I think it means?"

"Yes," Malcolm said. "They were having trouble keeping the newborn animals alive, so they tagged them and released them."

"And kept track of them on some kind of network?"

"Yes. I think so."

"They set dinosaurs loose on this island?" Eddie said. "They must have been crazy."

"Desperate, is more like it, Malcolm said. "Just imagine: here's this huge expensive high-tech process, and in the end the animals are getting sick and dying. Hammond must have been furious. So they decided to get the animals out of the laboratory, and into the wild."

"But why didn't they find the cause of the sickness, why didn't they - "

"Commercial process," Malcolm said. "It's all about results. And I'm sure they thought they were keeping track of the animals, they could get them back anytime they wanted. And don't forget, it must have worked. They must have put the animals into the field, then collected them after a while, when they were older, and shipped them to Hammond's zoo."

"But not all of them…"

"We don't know everything yet," Malcolm said. "We don't know what happened here."

They went through the next doorway, and found themselves in a small, bare room, with a central bench, and lockers on the walls. Signs said OBSERVE STERILE PRECAUTIONS and MAINTAIN SK4 STANDARDS. At the end of the room was a cabinet with stacks of yellowing gowns and caps. Eddie said, "It's a changing room."

"Looks like it," Malcolm said. He opened a locker; it was empty, except for a pair of men's shoes. He opened several other lockers. They were all empty. Inside one, a sheet of paper was taped:

Safety Is Everybody's Business!

Report Genetic Anomalies!

Dispose of Biowaste Properly!

Halt the Spread of DX Now!

"What's DX?" Eddie said.

"I think," Malcolm said, "it's the name for this mysterious disease."

At the far end of the changing room were two doors. The right-hand door was pneumatic, operated by a rubber foot-panel set in the floor. But that door was locked, so they went through the left door, which opened freely.

They found themselves in a long corridor, with floor-to-ceiling glass panels along the right wall. The glass was scratched and dirty, but they peered through it into the room beyond, which was unlike anything Thorne had ever seen.

The space was vast, the size of a football field. Conveyor belts crisscrossed the room at two levels, one very high, the other at waist level. At various stations around the room, clusters of large machinery, with intricate tubing and swing arms, stood beside the belts.

Thorne shone his light on the conveyor belts. "An assembly line," he said.

"But it looks untouched, like it's still ready to go," Malcolm said. "There are a couple of plants growing through the floor over there, but, overall, remarkably clean."

"Too clean," Eddie said.

Thorne shrugged. "If it's a clean-room environment, then it's probably air-sealed," he said. "I guess it just stayed the way it was years ago."

Eddie shook his head. "For years? Doc, I don't think so."

"Then what do you think explains it?"

Malcolm frowned, peering through the glass. How was it possible for a room this size to remain clean after so many years? It didn't make any -

"Hey!" Eddie said.

Malcolm saw it, too. It was in the far corner of the room, a small blue box halfway up the wall, cables running into it. It was obviously some kind of electrical junction box. Mounted on the box was a tiny red light.

It was glowing.

"This place has power!"

Thorne moved close to the glass, looking through with them. "That' s impossible. It must be some kind of stored charge, or a battery…"

"After five years? No battery can last that long," Eddie said. "I'm telling you, Doc, this place has power!"

Arby stared at the monitor as white lettering slowly printed across the screen:

ARE YOU FIRST-TIME USER OF THE NETWORK?

He typed:

YES.

There was another pause.

He waited.

More letters slowly appeared:

YOUR FULL NAME?

He typed in his name.

DO YOU WANT A PASSWORD ISSUED TO YOU?

You're kidding, he thought. This was going to be a snap. It was almost disappointing. He really thought Dr. Thorne would have been more clever. He typed:

YES.

After a moment:

YOUR NEW PASSWORD IS VIG/ amp;*849/. PLEASE MAKE A NOTE OF IT.

Sure thing, Arby thought. You bet I will. There was no paper on the desk in front of him; he patted his pockets, found a scrap of paper, and wrote it down.

PLEASE RE-ENTER YOUR PASSWORD NOW.

He typed in the series of characters and numbers.

There was another pause, and then more printing appeared across the screen. The speed of the printing was oddly slow, and halting at times. After all this time, maybe the system wasn't working very

THANK YOU. PASSWORD CONFIRMED.

The screen flashed, and suddenly turned dark blue. There was an electronic chime.

And then Arby's jaw dropped open as he stared at the screen, which read:

INTERNATIONAL GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES

SITE B

LOCAL NODE NETWORK SERVICES

It didn't make any sense. How could there be a Site B network? InGen had closed Site B years ago. Arby had already read the documents. And InGen was out of business, long since bankrupt. What network? he thought. And how had he managed to get on it? The trailer wasn't connected to anything. There were no cables or anything. So it must be a radio network, already on the island. Somehow he'd managed to log onto it. But how could it exist? A radio network needed power, and there was no power here.

Arby waited.

Nothing happened. The words just sat there on the screen. He waited for a menu to come up, but one never did. Arby began to think that perhaps the system was defunct. Or hung up. Maybe it just let you log on, and then nothing happened after that.

Or maybe, he thought, he was supposed to do something. He did the simplest thing, which was to press RETURN.

He saw:

REMOTE NETWORK SERVICES AVAILABLE

CURRENT WORKFILES Last Modified

R/Research 10/02/89

P/Production 10/05/89

F/Field Rec 10/09/89

M/Maintenance 11/12/89

A/Administration 11/11/89

STORED DATAFILES

Rl/Research (AV-AD) 11/01/89

R2/Research (GD-99) 11/12/89

P/Production (FD-FN) 11/09/89

VIDEO NETWORK

A, 1-20 CCD NDC. 1. I

So it really was an old system: files hadn't been modified for years. Wondering if it still worked, he clicked on VIDEO NETWORK, And to his amazement, he saw the screen begin to fill with tiny video images.

There were fifteen in all, crowding the screen, showing views of various parts of the island. Most of the cameras seemed to be mounted high up, in trees or something, and they showed -

He stared.

They showed dinosaurs.

He squinted. It wasn't possible. These were movies or something he was seeing. Because in one corner he saw a herd of triceratops. In an adjacent square, some green lizard-looking things, in high grass, with just their heads sticking up. In another, a single stegosaurus, ambling along.

They must be movies, he thought. The dinosaur channel.

But then, in another image, Arby saw the two connected trailers standing in the clearing. He could see the black photovoltaic panels glistening on the roof He almost imagined he could see himself, through the window of the trailer.

Oh, my God, he thought.

And in another image, he saw Thorne and Malcolm and Eddie get quickly into the green Explorer, and drive around the back of the laboratory. And he realized with a shock:

The pictures were all real.

Power

They drove the Explorer to the back of the main building, heading for the power station. On the way, they passed a little village to their right. Thorne saw six plantation-style cottages and a larger building marked "Manager's Residence." It was clear that the cottages had once been nicely landscaped, but they were now overgrown, partially retaken by the jungle. In the center of the complex, they saw a tennis court, a drained swimming pool, a small gas pump in front of what looked like a little general store.

Thorne said, "I wonder how many people they had here?" Eddie said, "How do you know they're all gone?"

"What do you mean?"

"Doc - they have power. After all these years. There has to be an explanation for it." Eddie steered the car around the back of the loading bays, and drove toward the power station, directly ahead.

The power station was a windowless, featureless concrete blockhouse, marked only by a corrugated-steel rim for ventilation around the top. The steel vents were long since rusted a uniform brown, with flecks of yellow.

Eddie drove the car around the block, looking for a door. He found it at the back. It was a heavy steel door, with a peeling, painted sign that said: CAUTION HIGH VOLTAGE DO NOT ENTER.

Eddie jumped out of the car, and the others followed. Thorne sniffed the air. "Sulfur," he said.

"Very strong, " Malcolm said, nodding.

Eddie tugged at the door. "Guys, I got a feeling…"

The door opened suddenly with a clang, banging against the concrete wall. Eddie peered into darkness inside. Thorne saw a dense maze of pipes, a trickle of steam coming out of the floor. The room was extremely hot. There was a loud, constant whirring sound.

Eddie said, "I'll be damned." He walked forward, looking at the gauges, many of which were unreadable, the glass thickly coated with yellow. The joints of the pipes were also rimmed with yellow crust. Eddie wiped away some of the crust with his finger. "Amazing," he said.

"Sulfur?"

"Yeah, sulfur. Amazing." He turned toward the source of the sound, saw a large circular vent, a turbine inside. The turbine blades, spinning rapidly, were drill yellow.

"And that's sulfur, too?" Thorne said.

"No," Eddie said. "That must be gold. Those turbine blades are gold alloy."

"Gold?"

"Yeah. It would have to be very inert." He turned to Thorne. "You realize what all this is? It's incredible. So compact and efficient. Nobody has figured out how to do this. The technology is - "

"You're saying it's geothermal?" Malcolm said.

"That's right," Eddie said. "They've tapped a heat source here, probably gas or steam, which is piped up through the floor over there. Then the heat is used to boil water in a closed cycle - that's the network of pipes up there - and turn the turbine - there - which makes electric power. Whatever the heat source, geothermal's almost always corrosive as hell. Most places, maintenance is brutal. But this plant still works. Amazing,"

Along one wall was a main panel, which distributed power to the en-tire laboratory complex. The panel was flecked with mold, and dented in several spots.

Doesn't look like anybody's been in here in years," he said. "And a lot of the power grid is dead. But the plant itself is still going - incredible."

Thorne coughed in the sulfurous air, and walked back into the sunlight. He looked up at the Year of the laboratory. One of the loading bays seemed in good shape, but the other had collapsed. The glass at the rear of the building was shattered.

Malcolm came to stand beside him. "I wonder if an animal hit the building."

"You think an animal could do that much damage?"

Malcolm nodded. "Some of these dinosaurs weigh forty, fifty tons. A single animal has the mass of a whole herd of elephants. That could easily be damage from an animal, yes. You notice that path, running there? That's a game trail going past the loading bays, and down the hill. It could have been animals, yes."

Thorne said, Didn't they think of that when they released the animals in the first place?"

Oh, I'm sure they just planned to release them for a few weeks or months, then round them up when they were still juvenile. I doubt they ever thought they - "

They were interrupted by a crackling electrical hiss, like static. It was coming from inside the Explorer. Behind them, Eddie hurried toward the car, with a worried look.

"I knew it," Eddie said. "Our communications module is frying. I knew we should have put in the other one." He opened the door to the Explorer and climbed in the passenger side, picked up the handset, pressed the automatic tuner. Through the windshield, he saw Thorne and Malcolm coming back toward the car.

And then the transmission locked. " - into the car!" said a scratchy voice.

"Who is this?"

"Dr. Thorne! Dr. Malcolm! Get in the car!"

As Thorne arrived, Eddie said, "Doc. It's that damn kid."

"What?" Thorne said.

"It's Arby."

Over the radio, Arby was saying, Get in the car! I can see it coming!"

What's he talking about?" Thorne said, frowning. "He's not here, is he? Is he on this island?"

The radio crackled. "Yes, I'm here! Dr. Thorne!"

"But how the hell did he - "

"Dr. Thorne! Get in the car!"

Thorne turned purple with anger. He bunched his fists. "How did that little son of a bitch manage to do this?" He grabbed the handset from Eddie. "Arby, God damn it - "

"It's coming!"

Eddie said, "What's he talking about? He sounds completely hysterical."

I can see it on the television! Dr. Thorne!"

Malcolm looked around at the jungle. "Maybe we should get in the car, he said quietly.

"What does he mean, television?" Thorne said. He was furious.

Eddie said, "I don't know, Doc, but if he's got a feed in the trailer, we can see it too." He flicked on the dashboard monitor. He watched as the screen glowed to life.

"That damn kid," Thorne said. "I'm going to wring his neck."

"I thought you liked that kid," Malcolm said. "I do, but-"

"Chaos at work," Malcolm said, shaking his head. Eddie was looking at the monitor.

"Oh shit," he said.

On the tiny dashboard monitor, they had a view looking straight down at the powerful body of a Tyrannosaurus rex, as it moved up the game trail toward them. Its skin was a mottled reddish brown, the color of dried blood. In dappled sunlight, they could clearly see the powerful muscles of its haunches. The animal moved quickly, without any sign of fear or hesitation.

Staring, Thorne said, "Everybody in the car."

The men climbed hurriedly in. On the monitor, the tyrannosaur moved out of view of the camera. But, sitting in the Explorer, they could hear it coming. The earth was shaking beneath them, swaying the car slightly.

Thorne said, "Ian? What do you think we should do?"

Malcolm didn't answer. He was frozen, staring forward, eyes blank.

"Ian?" Thorne said.

The radio clicked. Arby said, "Dr. Thorne, I've lost him on the monitor. Can you see him yet?"

"Jesus," Eddie said.

With astonishing speed the Tyrannosaurus rex burst into view, emerging from the foliage to the right of the Explorer. The animal was immense, the size of a two-storey building, its head rising high above them, out of sight. Yet for such a large creature it moved with incredible speed and agility. Thorne stared in stunned silence, waiting to see what would happen. He felt the car vibrate with each thundering footstep. Eddie moaned softly.

But the tyrannosaur ignored them. Continuing at the same rapid pace, it moved swiftly past the front of the Explorer. They hardly had a chance to see it before its big head and body disappeared into the foliage to the left. Now they saw only the thick counterbalancing tail, some seven feet in the air, swinging back and forth with each footstep as the animal moved on.

So fast! Thorne thought. Fast! The giant animal had emerged, blocked their vision, and then was gone again. He was not accustomed to seeing something that big move so fast. Now there was only the tip of the tail swinging back and forth as the animal hurried away.

Then the tail banged against the front of the Explorer, with a loud metallic clang.

And the tyrannosaur stopped.

They heard a low, uncertain growl from the jungle. The tail swung back and forth in the air again, more tentatively. Soon enough, the tail brushed lightly against the radiator a second time.

Now they saw the foliage to the left rustling and bending, and the tail was gone.

Because the tyrannosaur, Thorne realized, was coming back.

Re-emerging from the jungle, it moved toward the car, until it was standing directly in front of them. It growled again, a deep rumbling sound, and turned its head slightly from side to side to look at this strange new object. Then it bent over, and Thorne could see that the tyrannosaur had something in its mouth; he saw the legs of a creature dangling on both sides of the 'aws. Flies buzzed in a thick cloud around the tyrannosaur's head.

Eddie moaned. "Oh, fuck."

"Quiet," Thorne whispered.

The tyrannosaurus snorted, and looked at the car. It bent lower, and sniffed repeatedly, moving its head slightly to the left and right with each inhalation. Thorne realized it was smelling the radiator. It moved laterally, and sniffed the tires. Then it lifted its huge head slowly, until its eyes rose above the surface of the hood. It stared at them through the windshield. Its eyes blinked. The gaze was cold and reptilian.

Thorne had the distinct impression that the tyrannosaur was looking at them: its eyes shifted from one person to the next. With its blunt nose, it pushed at the side of the car, rocking it slightly, as if testing its weight, measuring it as an opponent. Thorne gripped the steering wheel tightly and held his breath.

And then, abruptly, the tyrannosaur stepped away, and walked to the front of the car. It turned its back on them, lifting its big tail high. The tyrannosaur backed up toward them. They heard the tail scraping across the roof of the car. The rear haunches came closer…

And then the tyrannosaur sat down on the hood, tilting the vehicle pushing the bumper into the ground with its enormous weight. At first: it did not move, but simply sat there. Then, after a moment, it began to wriggle its hips back and forth in a quick motion, making the metal squeak.

"What the hell?" Eddie said.

The tyrannosaur stood again, the car sprang back up, and Thorne saw thick white paste smeared across the hood. The tyrannosaur immediately moved away, heading down the game trail, disappearing into the jungle.

Behind them, they saw it emerge into the open again, stalk across the open compound. It lumbered behind the convenience store, passed between two of the cottages, and then disappeared from sight again.

Thorne glanced at Eddie, who jerked his head toward Malcolm. Malcolm had not turned to watch the departing tyrannosaur. He was still staring forward, his body tense. "Ian?" Thorne said. He touched him on the shoulder

Malcolm said, "Is he gone?"

"Yes. He's gone,

Ian Malcolm's body relaxed, his shoulders dropping. He exhaled slowly. His head sagged to his chest. He took a deep breath, and raised his head again. "You've got to admit," he said. "You don't see that every day."

"Are you okay?" Thorne said.

"Yeah, sure. I'm fine." He put his hand on his chest, feeling his heart. "Of Course I'm fine. After all, that was just a small one."

"Small?" Eddie said. "You call that thing small - "

"Yes, for a tyrannosaur. Females are quite a bit larger. There's sexual dimorphism in tyrannosaurs - the females are bigger than the males. And it's generally thought they did most of the hunting. But we may find that out for ourselves."

"Wait a minute,"Eddiesaid."What makes you so sure he was a male?"

Malcolm pointed to the hood of the car, where the white paste now gave off a pungent odor. "He scent-marked territory."

"So? Maybe females can also mark - "

"Very likely they can," Malcolm said. "But anal scent glands are found only among males. And you saw how he did it."

Eddie stared unhappily at the hood. "I hope we can get that stuff off," he said. "I brought some solvents, but I wasn't expecting, you know…dino musk."

The radio clicked. "Dr. Thorne," Arby said. "Dr. Thorne? Is everything all right?"

"Yes, Arby. Thanks to you," he said.

"Then why are you waiting? Dr. Thorne? Didn't you see Dr. Levine?"

"Not yet, no." Thorne reached for his sensor unit, but it had fallen to the floor. He bent over, and picked it up. Levine's coordinates had changed. "He's moving…"

"I know he's moving. Dr. Thorne?"

"Yes, Arby," Thorne said. And then he said, "Wait a minute. How do you know he's moving?"

"Because I can see him," Arby said. "He's riding a bicycle."

Kelly came into the front of the trailer, yawning and pushing her hair back from her face. "Who're you talking to, Arb?" She stared at the monitor and said, "Hey, pretty neat."

"I got onto the Site B network," he said. "What network?"

"It's a radio LAN, Kel. For some reason it's still up.

'Is that right? But how did - "

"Kids," Thorne said, over the radio. "If you don't mind. We're looking for Levine."

Arby picked up the handset. "He's riding a bicycle down a path in the jungle. It's pretty steep and narrow. I think he's following the same path as the tyrannosaur."

Kelly said, "As the what?"

Thorne put the car in gear, driving away from the power station, toward the worker compound. He went past the gas station, and then between the cottages. He followed the same path the tyrannosaur had taken. The game trail was fairly wide, easy to follow.

"We shouldn't have those kids here," Malcolm said, gloomily. "It's not safe."

"Not much we can do about it now," Thorne said. He clicked the radio. "Arby, do you see Levine now?"

The car bounced through what had once been a flower bed, and around the back of the Manager's Residence. It was a large two-storey building built in a tropical colonial style, with hardwood balconies all around the upper floor. Like the other houses, it was overgrown.

The radio clicked. "Yes, Dr. Thorne. I see him."

"Where is he?"

"He's following the tyrannosaur. On his bicycle."

"Following the tyrannosaur." Malcolm sighed. "I should never have gotten involved with him."

"We all agree on that," Thorne said. He accelerated, driving past a section of broken stone wall which seemed to mark the outer perimeter of the compound. The car plunged on into jungle, following the game trail.

Over the radio, Arby said, "Do you see him yet?"

"Not yet."

The trail became progressively narrower, twisting as it ran down the hillside. They came around a curve, and suddenly saw a fallen tree blocking the path. The tree had been denuded in the center, its branches stripped and broken - presumably because large animals had repeatedly stepped over it.

Thorne braked to a stop in front of the tree. He got out, and walked around to the back of the Explorer.

"Doc," Eddie said. "Let me do it."

"No," Thorne said. "If anything happens, you're the only one who can repair the equipment You're more important, especially now that we have the kids."

Standing behind the car, Thorne lifted the motorcycle off the carrier hooks. He swung it down, checked the battery charge, and rolled it to the front of the car. He said to Malcolm, "Give me that rifle," and slung the rifle around his shoulder.

Thorne took a headset from the dashboard, and put it over his head. He clipped the battery pack to his belt, placed the microphone alongside his cheek. "You two go back to the trailer," Thorne said. "Take care of the kids."

"But Doc…" Eddie began.

"Just do it," Thorne said, and lifted the motorcycle over the fallen tree. He set it down on the other side, and climbed over himself. Then he saw the same pungent, pale secretions on the trunk; it had smeared on his hands. He glanced back at Malcolm, questioningly.

"Marking territory," Malcolm said.

"Great," Thorne said. "Just great." He wiped his hands on his trousers.

Then he got on the motorcycle, and drove off.

Foliage slapped at Thorne's shoulders and legs as he drove down the game trail, following the tyrannosaur. The animal was somewhere up ahead, but he couldn't see it. He was driving fast.

The radio headset crackled. Arby said, "Dr. Thorne? I can see you now."

"Okay," Thorne said.

It crackled again. "But I can't see Dr. Levine any more," Arby said. He sounded worried.

The electric motorcycle made hardly any noise, particularly going downhill. Up ahead, the game trail divided in two. Thorne stopped, leaned over the bike, looking at the muddy path. He saw the footprints of the tyrannosaur, going off to the left. And he saw the thin line of the bicycle tires. Also going off to the left.

He took the left fork, but now he drove more slowly.

Ten yards ahead, Thorne passed the partially eaten leg of a creature, which lay at the side of the path. The leg was old; it was crawling with white maggots and flies. In the morning heat, the sharp smell was nauseating. He continued, but soon saw the skull of a large animal, some of the flesh and green skin still adhering to the bone. It, too, was covered with flies.

Speaking into the microphone, he said, "I'm passing some partial carcasses…"

The radio crackled. Now he heard Malcolm say, "I was afraid of that."

"Afraid of what?"

"There may be a nest," Malcolm said. "Did you notice the carcass that the tyrannosaur had in his jaws? It was scavenged, but he hadn't eaten it. 'There's a good chance he was taking the food home, to a nest."

"A tyrannosaur nest…" Thorne said.

"I'd be cautious," Malcolm said.

Thorne slipped the bike into neutral, and rolled the rest of the way down the hill. When the ground leveled out, he climbed off the motorcycle. He could feel the earth vibrate beneath his feet, and from the bushes ahead, he heard a deep rumbling sound, like the purr of a large jungle cat. Thorne looked around. He didn't see any sign of Levine's bicycle.

Thorne unshouldered the rifle, and gripped it in sweating hands. He heard the purring growl again, rising and falling. There was something odd about the sound. It took Thorne a moment to realize what it was.

It came from more than one source: more than one big animal, purring beyond the foliage directly ahead.

Thorne bent over, picked up a handful of grass, and released it in the air. The grass blew back toward his legs: he was downwind. He slipped forward through the foliage.

The ferns around him were huge and dense, but up ahead he could see sunlight shining through, from a clearing beyond. The sound of purring was very loud now. There was another sound as well-an odd, squeaking sound. It was high-pitched, and at first sounded almost mechanical, like a squeaking wheel.

Thorne hesitated. Then, very slowly, he lowered a frond. And he stared.

Nest

In the midmorning light, two enormous tyrannosaurs - each twenty feet high - loomed above him. Their reddish skin had a leathery appearance. Their huge heads were fierce-looking, with heavy jaws and large sharp teeth. But somehow here the animals conveyed no sense of menace to Thorne. They moved slowly, almost gently, bending repeatedly over a large circular rampart of dried mud, nearly four feet high. The two adults held bits of red flesh in their jaws as they ducked their heads below the mud wall. This movement was greeted by a frantic high-pitched squeaking sound, which stopped almost immediately. Then, when the adults lifted their heads again, the flesh was gone.

There was no question: this was the nest. And Malcolm had been right: one tyrannosaur was noticeably larger than the other.

In a few moments, the squeaking resumed. It sounded to Thorne like baby birds. The adults continued to duck their heads, feeding the unseen babies. A bit of torn flesh landed on the top of the mud mound. As he watched, Thorne saw an infant tyrannosaur rise into view above the rampart, and start to scramble over the side. The infant was about the size of a turkey, with a large head and very large eyes. Its body was covered with a fluffy red down, which gave it a scraggly appearance. A ring of pale-white down circled its neck. The infant squeaked repeatedly and it crawled awkwardly toward the meat, using its weak forearms. But when it finally reached the carrion, it jabbed, biting the flesh decisively with tiny, sharp teeth.

It was busily eating the food when it screeched in alarm and started to slide down the outer wall of dried mud. Immediately, the mother tyrannosaur dropped her head and intercepted the baby's fall, then gently nudged the animal back inside the nest. Thorne was impressed by the delicacy of her movements, the attentive way she cared for her young. The father, meanwhile, continued to tear small pieces of meat. Both animals kept up a continuous purring growl, as if to reassure the infants.

As Thorne watched, he shifted his position. His foot stepped on a branch: there was a sharp crack.

Immediately, both adults jerked their heads up.

Thorne froze; he held his breath.

The tyrannosaurs scanned the area around the nest, looking intently in every direction. Their bodies were tense, their heads alert. Their eyes flicked back and forth, accompanied by little head jerks. After a moment, they seemed to relax again. They bobbed their heads up and down, and rubbed their snouts against each other. It seemed to be some kind of ritual movement, almost a dance. Only then did they resume feeding the infants.

When they had calmed down, Thorne slipped away, moving quietly back to the motorcycle. Arby whispered over the headset, "Dr. Thorne. I can't see you."

Thorne didn't answer. He tapped the microphone with his finger, to signal that he had heard..

Arby whispered, "I think I know where Dr. Levine is. He's off to your left."

Thorne tapped the mike again, and turned.

To his left, among ferns, he saw a rusted bicycle. It said "Prop. InGen Corp." It was leaning against a tree.

Not bad, Arby thought, sitting in the trailer and watching the remote videos as he clicked on them. He now had the monitor divided into quarters; it was a good compromise between lots of views, and images large enough to see.

One of the views looked down from above on the two tyrannosaurs in the secluded clearing. It was midmorning; the sun shone brightly on the muddy, trampled grass of the clearing. In the center he saw a round steep-walled nest of mud. Inside the nest were four mottled white eggs, about the size of footballs. There were also some broken egg fragments, and two baby tyrannosaurs, looking exactly like featherless, squeaking birds, They sat in the nest with their heads turned up like baby birds, mouths gaping wide, waiting to be fed.

Kelly watched the screen and said, "Look how cute they are." And then she added, "We should be out there."

Arby didn't answer her. He was not at all sure he wanted to be any closer. The adults were being very cool about it, but Arby found the idea of these dinosaurs very unnerving in some deep way that he couldn't analyze. Arby had always found it reassuring to organize, to create order in his life - even arranging the images neatly on the computer monitor was calmlng to him. But this island was a place where everything was unknown and unexpected. Where you didn't know what would happen. He found that troubling.

On the other hand, Kelly was excited. She kept making comments about the tyrannosaurs, how big they were, the size of their teeth. She seemed entirely enthusiastic, without any fear at all.

Arby felt annoyed with her.

"Anyway," she said, "what makes you think you know where Dr. Levine is?"

Arbv pointed to the image of the nest, on the monitor. "Watch."

"I see it."

"No. Watch, Kel."

As they stared at the screen, the image moved slightly. It panned to the left, then centered again. "See that?" Arby said.

"So what? Maybe the wind is blowing the carMera or something."

Arby shook his head. "No, Kel. He's up in the tree. Levine's moving the camera."

"Oh." A pause. She watched again. "You might be right."

Arby grinned. That was about all he could expect to get from Kelly. "Yeah, I think so."

"But what's Dr. Levine doing in the tree?"

"Maybe he's adjusting the camera."

They listened to Thorne's breathing over the radio.

Kelly stared at the four video images, each showing a different view of the island. She sighed. "I can't wait to get out there," she said.

"Yeah, me too," Arby said. But he didn't mean it. He glanced out the window of the trailer and saw the Explorer coming back, with Eddie and Malcolm. Secretly, he was glad to see them return.

Thorne stood at the base of the tree, looking up. He couldn't see Levine through the leaves, but he knew he must be somewhere up above, because he was making what seemed to Thorne like a lot of noise. Thorne glanced nervously back at the clearing, screened by intervening foliage. He could still hear the purring; it remained steady, uninterrupted.

Thorne waited. What the hell was Levine doing up in a tree, anyway? He heard rustling in the branches above, and then silence. A grunt. Then more rustling.

And then Levine said aloud, "Oh, shit!" Then a loud crashing sound, the crack of branches, and a howl of pain. And then Levine crashed down on the ground in front of Thorne, landing hard on his back. He rolled over, clutching his shoulder.

"Damn!" he said.

Levine wore muddy khakis that were torn in several places. Behind a three-day growth of beard, his face was haggard and spattered with mud. He looked up as Thorne moved toward him, and grinned.

"You're the last person I expected to see, Doc," Levine said. "But your timing is flawless."

Thorne extended his hand, and Levine started to reach for it, when, from the clearing behind them, the tyrannosaurs gave a deafening roar.

"Oh, not" Kelly said. On the monitor, the tyrannosaurs were agitated, moving swiftly in circles, raising their heads and bellowing.

"Dr. Thorne! What's happening?" Arby said.

They heard Levine's voice, tinny and scratchy on the radio, but they couldn't make out the words. Eddie and Malcolm came into the trailer. Malcolm took one look at the monitor and said, "Tell them to get out of there right now!"

On the monitor, the two tyrannosaurs had turned their backs to each other, so they were facing outward in a posture of defense. The babies were protected in the center. The adults swung their heavy tails back and forth over the nest, above the babies' heads. But the tension was palpable.

And then one of the adults bellowed, and charged out of the clearing. "Dr. Thorne! Dr. Levine! Get out of there!"

Thorne swung his leg over the bike and gripped the rubber handles. Levine jumped on behind, clutched him around the waist. Thorne heard a chilling roar, and looked back to see one of the tyrannosaurs crash through the foliage and charge them. The animal was running at full speed-head low, jaws open, in an unmistakable posture of attack…

Thorne twisted the throttle. The electric motor whirred, the back wheel spun in the mud, not moving.

"Go!" Levine shouted. "Go!"

The tyrannosaur rushed toward them, roaring. Thorne could feel the ground shake. The roar was so loud it hurt his ears. The tyrannosaur was nearly on them, the big head lunging forward, jaws wide open Thorne kicked back with his heels, pushing the bike forward. Suddenly the rear wheel caught, throwing up a plume of mud, and the bike roared up the muddy track. He accelerated fast. The motorcycle fished and swerved treacherously on the trail.

Behind him Levine was shouting something, but Thorne didn't listen. His heart was pounding. The bike jumped across a rut in the path and they almost lost their balance, then regained it, accelerating again. Thorne did not dare look back. He could smell the odor of rotten flesh, could hear the rasping breath of the giant animal in pursuit…

"Doc! Take it easy!" Levine shouted.

Thorne ignored him. The bike roared up the hill. The foliage slapped at them; mud spit up on their faces and chests. He was pulled over into a rut, then brought the bike back to the center of the trail. He heard another roar, and imagined it was a bit fainter, but -

"Doc!" Levine shouted, leaning close to his car, "What're you trying to do, kill us? Doc! We're alone!"

Thorne came to a flat part of the path, and risked a glance back over his shoulder. Levine was right.They were alone. He saw no sign of the pursuing tyrannosaur, though he still heard it roaring, somewhere in the distance.

He slowed the bike.

"Take it easy," Levine said, shaking his head. His face was ashen, frightened. "You're a terrible driver, do you know that? You ought to take some lessons. You almost got us killed there."

"He was attacking us," Thorne said angrily. He was familiar with Levine's critical manner, but right now -

"That's absurd," Levine said. "He wasn't attacking at all."

"It sure as hell looked like it," Thorne said.

"No, no, no," Levine said. "He wasn't attacking us. The rex was defending his nest. There's a big difference."

"I didn't see any difference," Thorne said. He pulled the bike to a stop, and glared at Levine.

"In point of fact," Levine said, "if the rex had decided to chase you, we d be dead right now. But he stopped almost immediately."

"He did?" Thorne said.

"There's no question about it," Levine said, in his pedantic manner. "The rex only intended to scare us off, and defend his territory. He'd never leave the nest unguarded, unless we took something, or disrupted the nest. I'm sure he's back there with his mate right now, hovering over the eggs, not going anywhere."

"Then I guess we're lucky he's a good parent," Thorne said, gunning the motor.

"Of course he's a good parent, Levine continued. "Any fool could tell that. Didn't you see how thin he was? He's been neglecting his own nourishment to feed his offspring. Probably been doing it for weeks. A Tyrannosaurus rex is a complex animal, with complex hunting behavior. And he has complex childrearing behavior as well. I wouldn't be surprised if adult tyrannosaurs have an extended parenting role that lasts for months. He may teach his offspring to hunt, for example. Start by bringing in small wounded animals, and letting the youngsters finish them off. That kind of thing. It'll be interesting to find out exactly what he does. Why are we waiting here?"

Through Thorne's earpiece, the radio crackled. Malcolm said, "It would never occur to him to thank you for saving his life."

Thorne grunted. "Evidently not," he said.

Levine said, "Who are you talking to? Is it Malcolm? Is he here?"

"Yes," Thorne said.

I "He's agreeing with me, isn't he," Levine said.

"Not exactly," Thorne said, shaking his head.

"Look, Doc," Levine said, "I'm sorry if you got upset. But there was no reason for it. The truth is, we were never in danger - except from your bad driving."

"Fine. That's fine." Thorne's heart was still pounding in his chest. He took a deep breath, swung the bike to the left, and headed down a wider path, back toward their camp.

Sitting behind him, Levine said, "I'm very glad to see you, Doc. I really am."

Thorne didn't answer. He followed the path downward, through foliage. They descended to the valley, picking up speed. Soon they saw the trailers in the clearing below. Levine said, "Good. You brought everything. And the equipment's working? Everything in good condition?"

"It all seems to be fine."

"Perfect," Levine said. "Then this is just perfect."

"Maybe not," Thorne said.

Through the back window of the trailer, Kelly and Arby were waving cheerfully through the glass.

"You're kidding," Levine said.