The Lost World

Baby

In the trailer, they were clustered around the table where the baby Tyrannosaurus rex now lay unconscious on a stainless-steel pan, his large eyes closed, his snout pushed into the clear plastic oval of an oxygen mask. The mask almost fitted the baby's blunt snout. The oxygen hissed softly.

"I couldn't just leave him," Eddie said. "And I figured we can fix his leg…"

"But Eddie," Malcolm said, shaking his head.

"So I shot him full of morphine from the first-aid kit, and brought him back. You see? The oxygen mask almost fits him."

"Eddie," Malcolm said, "this was the wrong thing to do."

"Why? He's okay. We just fix him and take him back."

"But you're interfering with the system," Malcolm said.

The radio clicked. "This is extremely unwise," Levine said, over the radio. "Extremely."

"Thank you, Richard," Thorne said.

"I am entirely opposed to bringing any animal back to the trailer."

"Too late to worry about that now," Sarah Harding said. She had moved forward alongside the baby, and began strapping cardiac leads to the animal's chest; they heard the thump of the heartbeat. It was very fast, over a hundred and fifty beats a minute. "How much morphine did you give him?"

"Gee," Eddie said. "I just…you know. The whole syringe."

"What is that? Ten cc's?"

"I think. Maybe twenty."

Malcolm looked at Harding. "How long before it wears off?"

"I have no idea," she said. "I've sedated lions and jackals in the field, when I tagged them. With those animals, there's a rough correlation between dose and body weight. But with young animals, it's unpredictable. Maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours. And I don't know a thing about baby tyrannosaurs. Basically, it's a function of metabolism, and this one seems to be rapid, bird-like. The heart's pumping very fast. All I can say is, let's get him out of here as quickly as possible."

Harding picked up the small ultrasound transducer and held it to the baby's leg. She looked over her shoulder at the monitor. Kelly and Arby were blocking the view. "Please, give us a little room here," she said, and they moved away. "We don't have much time. Please."

As they moved away, Sarah saw the green-and-white outlines of the leg and its bones. Surprisingly like a large bird, she thought. A vulture or a stork. She moved the transducer. "Okay…there's the metatarsals…and there's the tibia and fibula, the two bones of the lower leg…"

Arby said, "Why are the bones different shades like that?" The legs had some dense white sections within paler-green outlines.

"Because it's an infant," Harding said. "His legs are still mostly cartilage, with very little calcified bone. I'd guess this baby probably can't walk yet - at least, not very well. There. Look at the patella…You can see the blood supply to the joint capsule…"

"How come you know all this anatomy?" Kelly said.

"I have to. I spend a lot of time looking through the seat of predators, she said. "Examining pieces of bones that are left behind, and figuring out which animals have been eaten. To do that, you have to know comparative anatomy very well." She moved the transducer along the baby's leg. "And my father was a vet."

Malcolm looked up sharply. "Your father was a vet?"

"Yes. At the San Diego Zoo. He was a bird specialist. But I don't see…Can you magnify this?"

Arby flicked a switch. The image doubled in size.

"Ah. Okay. All right. There it is. You see it?"

"No."

"It's mid-fibula. See it? A thin black line. That's a fracture, just above the epiphysis."

"That little black line there?" Arby said.

"That little black line means death for this infant," Sarah said. "The fibula won't heal straight, so the ankle joint can't pivot when he stands on his hind feet. The baby won't be able to run, and probably can't even walk. It'll be crippled, and a predator will pick it off before it gets more than a few weeks old."

Eddie said, "But we can set it."

"Okay," Sarah said. "What were you going to use for a cast?"

"Diesterase," Eddie said. "I brought a kilo of it, in hundred-cc tubes. I packed lots, for glue. The stuff's polymer resin, it solidifies hard as steel."

"Great," Harding said. "That'll kill him, too."

"It will?"

"He's growing, Eddie. In a few weeks he'll be much larger. We need something that's rigid, but biodegradeable," she said. "Something that will wear off, or break off, in three to five weeks, when his leg's healed. What have you got?"

Eddie frowned. "I don't know."

"Well, we haven't got much time," Harding said.

Eddie said, "Doc? This is like one of your famous test questions. How to make a dinosaur cast with only Q-tips and superglue."

"I know," Thorne said. The irony of the situation was not lost on him. He had given problems such as these to his engineering students for three decades. Now he was faced with one himself.

Eddie said, "Maybe we could degrade the resin - mix it with something like table sugar."

Thorne shook his head. "Hydroxy groups in the sucrose will make the resin friable. It'll harden okay, but it'll shatter like glass as soon as the animal moves."

"What if we mix it with cloth that's been soaked in sugar?"

"You mean, to get bacteria to decay the cloth?"

"Yeah."

"And then the cast breaks?"

"Yeah."

Thorne shrugged. "That might work," he said. "But without testing, we can't know how long the cast will last. Might be a few days, it might be a few months."

"That's too long," Sarah said. "This animal is growing rapidly. If growth is constricted, it'll end up being crippled by the cast."

"What we need," Eddie said, "is an organic resin that will form a decaying binder. Like a gum of some kind."

"Chewing gum?" Arby said. "Because I have plenty of - "

"No, I was thinking of a different kind of gum. Chemically speaking, the diesterase resin - "

"We'll never solve it chemically," Thorne said. "We don't have the supplies."

"What else can we do? There's no choice but - "

"What if you make something that's different in different directions?" Arby said. "Strong one way and weak in another?"

"You can't," Eddie said. "It's a homogeneous resin. It's all the same stuff, goopy glue that turns rock-hard when it dries, and - "

"No, Wait a minute," Thorne said, turning to the boy. "What do you mean, Arby?"

"Well," Arby said, "Sarah said the leg is growing. That means it's, going to grow longer, which doesn't matter for a cast, and wider, which does, because it'll start to squeeze the leg. But if you made it weak in the diameter - "

"He's right," Thorne said. "We can solve it structurally."

"How?" Eddie said.

"Just build in a split-line. Maybe using aluminum foil. We have some for cooking."

"That'd be much too weak," Eddie said.

"Not if we coat it with a layer of resin." Thorne turned to Sarah. "What we can do is make a cast that is very strong for vertical stresses, but weak for lateral stresses. It's a simple engineering problem. The baby can walk around on its cuff, and everything is fine, as long as the stresses are, vertical. But when its leg grows, it will pop the split-line open, and the cuff will fall away."

"Yes," Arby said, nodding.

"Is that hard to do?" she said.

"No. It should be pretty easy. You just build a cuff of aluminum foil, and coat it with resin."

Eddie said, "And what'll hold the cuff together while you coat it.

"How about chewing gum?" Arby said.

"You got it," Thorne said, smiling.

At that moment, the baby rex stirred, its legs twitching. It raised its head, the oxygen mask dropping away, and gave a low, weak squeak.

"Quickly," Sarah said, grabbing the head. "More morphine."

Malcolm had a syringe ready. He jabbed it into the animal's neck.

"Just five cc's now," Sarah said.

"What's wrong with more? Keep him out longer?"

"He's in shock from the injury, Ian. You can kill him with too much morphine. You'll put him into respiratory arrest. His adrenal glands are probably stressed, too."

"If he even has adrenals, " Malcolm said. "Does a Tyrannosaurus rex have hormones at all? The truth is, we don't know anything about these animals."

The radio clicked, and Levine said, "Speak for yourself, Ian. In point of fact, I suspect we will find that dinosaurs have hormones. There are compelling reasons to imagine they do. As long as you have gone to the misguided trouble of taking the baby, you might draw some tubes of blood. Meanwhile, Doc, could you pick up the phone?"

Malcolm sighed. "That guy," he said, "is starting to get on my nerves."

Thorne moved down the trailer to the communications module near the front. Levine's request was odd; there was a perfectly good system of microphones throughout the trailer. But Levine knew that; he had designed the system himself.

Thorne picked up the phone. "Yes?

"Doc," Levine said, "I'll get right to the point. Bringing the baby to the trailer was a mistake. It's asking for trouble."

"What sort of trouble?"

"We don't know, is the point. And I don't want to alarm anybody. But why don't you bring the kids out to the high hide for a while? And why don't you and Eddie come, too?"

"You're telling me to get the hell out of here. You really think it's necessary?"

"In a word," Levine said, "yes. I do."

As the morphine was injected into the baby, he gave a sighing wheeze and collapsed back onto the steel pan. Sarah adjusted the oxygen mask around his face. She glanced back at the monitor, checking the heart rate, but once again Arby and Kelly were blocking her view. "Kids, please."

Thorne stepped forward, clapped his bands. "Okay, kids! Field trip! Let's get moving."

Arby said, "Now? But we want to watch the baby - "

"No, no," Thorne said. "Dr. Malcolm and Dr. Harding need room to work. This is the time for a field trip to the high hide. We can watch the dinosaurs for the rest of the afternoon."

"But Doc - "

"Don't argue. We're just in the way here, and we're going," Thorne said. "Eddie, you come, too. Leave these two lovebirds to do their work."

In a few moments, they left. The trailer door slammed shut behind them. Sarah Harding heard the soft whirr of the Explorer as it drove away. Bent over the baby, adjusting the oxygen mask, she said, "Lovebirds?"

Malcolm shrugged. "Levine…"

"Was this Levine's idea? Clearing everybody out?"

"Probably."

"Does he know something we don't?"

Malcolm laughed. "I'm sure he thinks he does."

"Well, let's start the cast," she said. "I want to get it done quickly, and take this baby home again."

The High Hide

The sun had disappeared behind low-banging clouds by the time they reached the high hide. The entire valley was bathed in a soft reddish glow as Eddie parked the Explorer beneath the aluminum scaffolding, and they all climbed up to the little shelter above. Levine was there, binoculars to his eyes. He did not seem glad to see them. "Stop moving around so much," he said irritably.

From the shelter, they had a magnificent view over the valley. Somewhere in the north, thunder rumbled. The air was cooling, and felt electric.

"Is there going to be a storm?" Kelly asked.

"Looks like it," Thorne said.

Arby glanced doubtfully at the metal roof of the shelter. "How long are we staying out here?"

"For a while," Thorne said. "This is our only ay here. The helicopters are taking us away tomorrow morning. I thought you kids deserved a chance to see the dinosaurs in the field one more time."

Arby squinted at him. "What's the real reason?"

"I know," Kelly said, in a worldly tone.

"Yeah? What?"

"Dr. Malcolm wants to be alone with Sarah, stupid."

"Why?"

"They're old friends," Kelly said.

"So? We were just going to watch."

"No," Kelly said. "I mean, they're old friends."

"I know what you're talking about," Arby said. "I'm not stupid, you know."

"Knock it off," Levine said, staring through the binoculars. "You're missing the interesting stuff."

"What's that?"

"Those triceratops, down at the river. Something's bothering them."

The triceratops herd had been drinking peacefully from the river, but now they were beginning to make noise. For such huge animals, their vocalizations were incongruously high-pitched: they sounded more like yelping dogs.

Arby turned to look. "There's something in the trees," he said, "across the river." There was some hint of dark movement, beneath the trees.

The triceratops herd shifted, and began backing toward each other until they formed a sort of rosette, with their curved horns facing outward, against the unseen menace. The solitary baby was in the center, yelping in fear. One of the animals, presumably its mother, turned and nuzzled it. Afterward, the baby was silent.

"I see them," Kelly said, staring at the trees. "They're raptors. Over there."

The triceratops herd faced the raptors, the adults barking as they swung their sharp horns up and down. They created a kind of barrier of moving spikes. There was an unmistakable sense of coordination, of group defense against predators.

Levine was smiling happily. "There's never been any evidence for this," he said, suddenly cheerful. "In fact, most paleontologists don't believe it happens."

"Don't believe what happens?" Arby said.

"This kind of group defensive behavior. Especially with trikes - they look a bit like rhinos, so they've been assumed to be solitary, like rhinos. But now we will see…Ah.Yes."

From beneath the trees, a single velociraptor hopped out into view. It moved quickly on its hind legs, balancing with a stiff tall.

The triceratops herd barked noisily at the appearance of the raptor. The other raptors remained hidden beneath the trees, The solitary velociraptor in full view moved in a slow semicircle around the herd, entering the water on the far side. It crossed, swimming easily, and came out on the other bank, It was now about fifty yards upstream from the barking triceratops- herd, which wheeled to present a united front. All their attention was focused on the single velociraptor.

Slowly, other raptors began to slink out of their hiding place. They moved low, bodies hidden in the tall grass.

"Jeez," Arby said. "They're hunting."

"In a pack," Levine said, nodding. He picked up a bit of candy bar wrapper from the floor of the shelter, and dropped it, watching it flutter off in the wind. "The main pack is downwind, so the trikes can't smell them." He raised the binoculars to his eyes again. "I think," he said, "that we're about to see a kill."

They watched as the raptors closed in around the herd. And then suddenly, lightning cracked on the island rim, brilliantly lighting the valley floor. One of the stalking raptors stood up in surprise. Its head was briefly visible above the grass.

Immediately, the triceratops herd wheeled again, regrouping to face the new menace. All the raptors stopped, as if to reconsider their plan.

"What happened?" Arby said. "Why are they stopping?"

"They're in trouble."

"Why?"

"Look at them. The main pack is still across the river. They're too far away to mount an attack."

"You mean they're giving up? Already?"

"Looks like it," Levine said.

One by one, the raptors in the grass raised their heads, making their positions known, As each new predator appeared, the triceratops barked loudly. The raptors seemed to know the situation was hopeless. They slunk away, moving back toward the trees. Seeing them retreat, the triceratops barked even louder.

And then the single raptor by the water's edge charged. It moved incredibly fast - astonishingly fast - streaking like a cheetah across the fifty yards that separated it from the herd. The adult triceratops had no time to re-form. The baby was exposed. It squealed in fright as it saw the approaching animal.

The velociraptor leapt into the air, raising both its hind legs. Lightning cracked again, and in the brilliant light they saw the twin curved claws high in the air. At the last moment, the nearest adult turned, swiveling its big horned head with the wide bony crest, and it knocked the raptor a glancing blow, sending the animal sprawling on the muddy bank. Immediately the adult triceratops charged forward, its head high. When it reached the raptor it stopped abruptly and swung its big head down, lowering its horns toward the fallen animal. But the raptor was quick; hissing, it leapt to its feet, and the triceratotops horns slashed harmlessly into the mud. The raptor spun sideways, and kicked the adult on the snout, drawing blood with its big curved claw. The adult bellowed, but by then two other adults were charging forward, while the others remained behind with the baby. The raptor scrambled away, back into the grass.

"Wow," Arby said. "That was something!"

The Herd

King gave a long sigh of relief as he came to the Y-fork in the road, and drove the red Jeep left, coming onto a wide dirt road. He recognized it at once: this was the ridge road that led back to the boat. As he looked off to his left, he could see down across the east valley. The boat was still there! All right! He gave a shout and accelerated sharply, relief flooding through him. On the deck, he could see the Spanish fishermen, staring up at the sky. Despite the threatening storm, they didn't seem to be preparing to leave. Probably they were waiting for Dodgson.

Well, he thought, that was fine. King would be there in a few minutes. After working his wav through dense jungle, he could finally see exactly where he was. The ridge road was high, following the crest of one of the volcanic spines. There was almost no foliage up here, and as the road twisted and turned, he had views across the entire island. To the east, he could look down into the ravine, and the boat at the shore. To the west, he could look straight across at the laboratory, and Malcolm's twin trailers parked near the far edge of the clearing.

They never did find out what the hell Malcolm was doing here, he thought. Not that it mattered now. King was getting off the island. That was the only thing that mattered. He could almost feel the deck beneath his feet. Maybe one of the fishermen would even have a beer. A nice cold beer, while they chugged down the river, and pulled out of this damned island. He'd toast Dodgson, is what he'd do.

Maybe, he thought, I'll have two beers.

King came around a curve, and saw a herd of animals standing thickly in the road. They were some kind of green dinosaurs, about four feet tall, with big domed heads and a bunch of little horns. They reminded him of green water buffalo. But there were a lot of them. He braked sharply; the car swerved to a stop.

The green dinosaurs looked at his car, but they did not move. The herd just stood there in a lazy, contented way. King waited, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. When nothing happened, he honked the horn, and flashed his headlights.

The animals just stared.

They were funny-looking creatures, with that smooth bulging curve on the forehead and all those little horns around it. They just stared at him, with a stupid cow-like look. He slipped the car into gear and edged it forward slowly, expecting that he could push his way through the animals. They didn't move aside. Finally his front bumper nudged the nearest animal, which grunted, took a couple of steps back, lowered its head, and butted the front of the car, hard, with a metallic clang!

Christ, he thought. It could puncture the radiator, if he wasn't careful. He stopped the car again and waited, the motor idling. The animals settled down again.

Several of them lay down on the road. He couldn't drive over them. He looked ahead toward the river and saw the boat, not more than a quarter of a mile away. He hadn't realized it was so near. As he watched, he realized that the fishermen were very busy on the deck. They were swinging the crane back, lashing it down. They were getting ready to leave!

The hell with waiting, he thought. He opened the door, and climbed out, leaving the car in the center of the road. Immediately, the animals jumped to their feet, and the nearest one charged him. He had the door open; the animal smashed into it, slamming it shut, leaving a deep dent in the metal. King scrambled toward the edge of the hill, only to find he was at the top of a steep vertical descent of more than a hundred feet. He'd never make it down, at least not here. Farther along, the slope was not so steep. But now more animals were charging him. He had no choice. He ran around the back of the car, just as another animal smashed into the rear taillight, shattering the plastic.

A third animal charged the back of the car directly. King scrambled up onto the spare tire, as the animal slammed into the bumper. The jolt knocked him off, and he fell to the ground, rolling, while the buffaloes snorted all around him. He got to his feet and ran to the opposite side of the Toad, where there was a slight rise; he scrambled up it, moving into foliage. The animals did not pursue him. Not that it did him any good-now he was on the wrong side of the road!

Somehow he had to get back to the other side.

He climbed to the top of the rise and started down, swearing to himself. He decided to work his way forward a hundred yards or so, until he was beyond the butting animals, and then cross the road. If he could do that, then he could get to the boat.

Almost immediately, he was surrounded by dense jungle. He tripped, tumbled down a muddy slope, and when he got to his feet was no longer sure which way to go. He was at the bottom of a ravine, and the palm trees were ten feet tall, and very thick. He couldn't see more than a few feet in any direction. In a moment of panic, he realized he didn't know which way to go. He pushed forward through the wet leaves, hoping to get his bearings back.

The kids were still peering over the railing, looking at the departing raptors. Thorne pulled Levine to one side, and said quietly, "Why did you want us to come here?"

"Just a precaution," Levine said. "Bringing the infant to the trailer is asking for trouble."

"What sort of trouble?"

Levine shrugged. "We don't know, is the point. But in general, parents don't like it when their babies are taken away. And that baby has some very big parents."

From the other side of the shelter Arby said, "Look! Look!"

"What is it?" Levine said.

"It's a man."

Gasping for breath, King emerged from the jungle and walked out onto the plain. At last he could see where he was! He paused, soaked and muddy, to get his bearings.

He was disappointed to find that he was nowhere near the boat. In fact, he still seemed to be on the wrong side of the road. He was facing a broad grassy plain, with a river coursing through it. The plain was mostly deserted, although there were several dinosaurs farther down the banks. They were the horned ones: triceratops. And they looked a little agitated. The big adults were raising their heads up and down, making barking sounds.

Obviously, he would have to follow the river, until it brought him to the boat. But he'd have to be careful getting past these triceratops. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a candy bar. He ripped the wrapping while he watched the triceratops, wishing they would go away. How long would it take him to reach the boat? That was the only question on his mind. He decided to move, triceratops or not. He began walking through the tall grass.

Then he heard a reptilian hiss. It was coming from the grass, somewhere to his left. And he noticed a smell, a peculiar rotten smell. He paused, waiting. The candy bar didn't taste so good, any more.

Then, behind him, he heard splashing. It was coming from the river.

King turned to look.

"It's one of those men from the jeep," Arby said, standing in the high hide. "But why is he waiting?"

From their vantage point, they could see the dark shapes of the raptors, moving through the grass on the other side of the river. Now two of the raptors came forward, splashing in the water. Moving toward the man.

"Oh no," Arby said.

King saw two dark, striped lizards moving across the river. They walked on their hind legs, with a sort of hopping motion. Their bodies were reflected in the flowing water of the river. They snapped their long jaws, and hissed menacingly at King.

He glanced upstream, and saw another lizard crossing, and another beyond that. Those other animals were already deep in the water, and had begun to swim.

Howard King backed away from the river, moving deeper into the tall grass. Then he turned, and ran. He was chest-deep in grass and running hard, gasping for breath, when suddenly another lizard head rose up in front of him, hissing and snarling. He dodged, changed direction, but suddenly the nearest lizard leapt in the air. It jumped so high its body cleared the grass-, he could see the entire animal flying through the air, its two hind legs raised to pounce. He glimpsed curved, dagger-like claws.

King turned again and the lizard shrieked as it landed on the ground behind him, and tumbled away in the grass. King ran on. He was energized by pure fear. Behind him he heard the lizard snarling. He ran hard: ahead was another twenty yards of grassy clearing, and then the jungle began again. He saw trees - big trees. He could climb one and get away.

Off to the left, he saw another lizard moving diagonally across the clearing toward him. King could only see the head above the grass. The lizard seemed to be moving incredibly fast. He thought: I'm not going to make it.

But he would try.

Panting, lungs searing, he sprinted for the trees. Only ten more yards now. His arms pumped, his legs churned. His breath came in ragged gasps.

And then something heavy struck him from behind, forcing him to the ground, and he felt searing pain down his back and he knew -it was the claws, they dug into the flesh of his back as he was knocked down. He hit the dirt hard, and tried to roll, but the animal on his back held on, he could not move. He was pinned down on his stomach, hearing the animal snarl behind him. The pain in his back was excruciating, dizzying.

And then he felt the animal's hot breath on the back of his neck, and he heard the snorting breath, and his terror was extreme. Then suddenly a kind of lassitude, a deep and welcome sleepiness, took him. Everything became slow. As if in a dream, he could see all the blades of grass in the ground in front of his face. He saw them with a kind of languid intensity, and he almost did not mind the sharp pain on his neck, and he almost did not care that his neck was within the animal's hot jaws. It seemed to be happening to someone else. He was many miles away. He had a moment of surprise when he felt the bones of his neck crunching loudly -

And then blackness.

Nothing.

"Don't look," Thorne said, turning Arby away from the railing in the high hide. He drew the boy toward his chest, but Arby impatiently pushed away again, to watch what was happening. Thorne reached for Kelly, but she stepped away from him, and stared out at the plain.

"Don't look," Thorne kept saying. "Don't look."

The kids watched, in silence.

Levine focused his binoculars on the kill. There were now five raptors snarling around the man's body, tearing viciously at the carcass. As he watched, one of the raptors jerked its head up, tearing away a piece of blood-soaked shirt, the ragged edge of the collar. Another was shaking the man's severed head in its jaws, before finally dropping it on the ground. Thunder rumbled, and lightning flashed in the distant sky. It was growing dark, and Levine was having difficulty seeing exactly what was happening. But it was clear that whatever hierarchical organization they had adopted for hunting was abandoned for a kill.

Here it was every animal for itself; the frenzied raptors hopped and ducked their heads as they tore the body to pieces; and there was plenty of nipping and fighting among themselves. One animal came up, with something brown hanging from its jaws. The animal got an odd expression on its face as it chewed. Then it turned away from the rest of the pack, and held the brown object carefully in its forearms. In the growing darkness, it took Levine a moment to recognize what it was doing: it was eating a candy bar. And it seemed to be enjoying it.

The raptor turned back, and buried its long nose in the bloody carcass again. From across the plain, other raptors were racing to join the feast, half-running, half-bounding in great forward leaps. Snarling and furious, they threw themselves into the fray.

Levine lowered his glasses, and looked at the two kids. They were staring silently and calmly at the kill.

Dodgson

Dodgson was awakened by a noisy chattering, like the sound of a hundred tiny birds. It seemed to be coming from all around him. Slowly, he realized that he was lying on his back, on damp sloping ground. He tried to move, but his body felt painful and heavy. Some sort of weight pressed down on his legs, his stomach, his arms. The weight on his chest made it difficult to breathe.

And he was sleepy, incredibly sleepy. He wanted nothing more in all the world than to go back to sleep. Dodgson started to drift off to unconsciousness, but something was pulling at his hand. Tugging at his fingers, one by one. As if pulling him back to consciousness. Slowly, slowly, pulling him back.

Dodgson opened his eyes.

There was a little green dinosaur standing beside his hand. It leaned over, and bit his finger in its tiny jaws, tugging at the flesh. His fingers were bleeding; ragged chunks of flesh had already been bitten away.

He pulled his hand away in surprise, and suddenly the chattering grew louder. He turned and saw that he was surrounded by these little dinosaurs; they were standing on his chest and legs as well. They were the size of chickens and they pecked at him like chickens, quick darting bites on his stomach, his thighs, his crotch -

Revolted, Dodgson jumped to his feet, scattering the lizards, which hopped away, chirping in annoyance. The little animals moved a few feet away, then stopped. They turned back, and stared at him, showing no sign of fear. On the contrary, they seemed to be waiting.

That was when he realized what they were. They were procompsognathids. Compys.

Scavengers.

Christ, he thought. They thought I was dead.

He staggered back, almost losing his balance. He felt pain and a wave of dizziness. The little animals chittered, watched his every move.

"Go on," he said, waving his hand. "Get out of here."

They did not leave. They stood there, cocking their heads to one side quizzically, and waited.

He bent his head, stared down at himself. His shirt, his trousers were torn in a hundred places. Blood dribbled from a hundred tiny wounds down his clothes. He felt a wave of dizziness and put his hands on his knees. He took a deep breath, and watched his blood drip onto the leaf-strewn ground.

Christ, he thought. He took another deep breath.

When he did not move, the animals began to inch forward. He stood up, and they backed away. But a moment later, they began to come forward again.

One came close. Dodgson kicked it viciously, sending the little body flying through the air. The animal squealed in alarm, but it landed like a cat, upright and uninjured.

The others remained where they were. Waiting.

He looked around, realized it was getting dark. He looked at his watch: 6:40. There were only a few minutes more of daylight. Beneath the jungle canopy, it was already quite dark.

He had to get to safety, and soon. He checked the compass on his watch strap, and headed south. He was pretty sure the river was to the south. He had to get back to the boat. He would be safe at the boat.

As he started walking, the compys chittered and followed after him. They stayed about five or ten feet behind, making a lot of noise as they hopped and crashed through the low foliage. There were dozens of them, he realized. As darkness descended, their eyes glowed bright green.

His body was a mass of pain. Every step hurt. His balance was not good. He was losing blood, and he was very, very sleepy. He would never make it all the way to the river. He would not make it more than another couple of hundred yards. He fell, tripping over a root. He got up slowly, dirt clinging to his blood-soaked clothes.

He looked back at the green eyes behind him, and forced himself onward. He could go a little farther, he thought. And then, directly ahead, he saw a light through the foliage. Was it the boat? He moved faster, hearing the compys behind him.

He pushed through the foliage and then saw a little shed, like a toolshed or a guardhouse, made of concrete, with a tin roof. It had a square window and light was shining through the window. He fell again, got to his knees, and crawled the rest of the way to the house. He reached the door, pulled himself up on the doorknob, and opened the door.

Inside, the shed was empty. Some pipes came up through the floor. Some time in the past, they had connected to machinery, but the machinery was gone; there were only the rust spots where it had once been bolted to the concrete floor.

In a corner of the room was an electric light. It was fitted with a timer, so that it came on at night. That was the light he had seen. Did they have electricity on this island? How? He didn't care. He staggered into the room, closed the door firmly behind him, and sank down onto the bare concrete. Through the dirty windowpanes, he saw the compys outside, banging against the glass, hopping in frustration. But he was safe for the moment.

He would have to go on, of course. He would somehow have to get off this fucking island. But not now, he thought.

Later.

He'd worry about everything later.

Dodgson laid his cheek on the damp concrete floor, and slept.

Trailer

Sarah Harding laced the aluminum-foil cuff around the baby's injured leg. The baby was still unconscious, breathing easily, not moving. Its body was relaxed. The oxygen hissed softly.

She finished shaping the aluminum foil into a cuff six inches long. Using a small brush, she began to paint resin over it, to make a cast.

"How many raptors are there?" she said. "I couldn't tell for sure, when I saw them. I thought nine."

"I think there's more," Malcolm said "I think eleven or twelve in all."

"Twelve?" she said, glancing up at him. "On this little island?"

"Yes."

The resin had a sharp odor, like glue. She brushed it evenly on the aluminum. "You know what I'm thinking," she said.

"Yes," he said. "There are too many."

"Far too many, Ian." She worked steadily. "It doesn't make sense. In Africa, active predators like lions are very spread out. There's one lion for every ten square kilometers. Sometimes every fifteen kilometers. That's all the ecology can support. On an island like this, you should have no more than five raptors. Hold this."

"Uh-huh. But don't forget, the prey here is huge…Some of those animals are twenty, thirty tons."

"I'm not convinced that's a factor," Sarah said, "but for the sake of argument, let's say it is. I'll double the estimate, and give you ten raptors for the island. But you tell me there are twelve. And there are other major predators, as well. Like the rexes…"

"Yes. There are."

"That's too many, she said, shaking her head.

"The animals are pretty dense here," Malcolm said.

"Not dense enough," she said. "In general, predator studies - whether tigers in India, or lions in Africa - all seem to show that you can support one predator for every two hundred prey animals. That means to support twenty-five predators here, you need at least five thousand prey on this island. Do you have anything like that?"

"No."

"How many animals in total do you think are here?"

He shrugged. "A couple of hundred. Maybe five hundred at most."

"So you're off by an order of magnitude, Ian. Hold this, and I'll get the lamp."

She swung the heat lamp over the baby, to harden the resin. She adjusted the oxygen mask over the baby's snout.

"The island can't support all those predators," she said. "And yet they're here."

He said, "What could explain it?"

She shook her head. "There has to be a food source that we don't know about."

"You mean, an artificial source?" he said. "I don't think there is one."

"No," she said. "Artificial food sources make animals tame. And these animals aren't tame. The only other possibility I can think of is that there's a differential death rate among prey. If they grow very fast, or die young, then that might represent a larger food supply than expected."

Malcolm said, "I've noticed, the largest animals seem small. It's as if they don't seem to reach maturity. Maybe they're being killed off early."

"Maybe," she said. "But if there's a differential death rate large enough to support this population, you should see evidence of carcasses, and lots of skeletons of dead animals. Have you seen that?"

Malcolm shook his head. "No. In fact, now that you mention it, I haven't seen any skeletons at all."

"Me neither." She pushed the light away. "There's something funny about this island, Ian."

"I know," Malcolm said.

"You do?"

"Yes," he said. "I've suspected it from the beginning."

Thunder rumbled. From the high hide, the plain below them was dark and silent, except for the distant snarling of the raptors. "Maybe we should go back," Eddie said anxiously.

"Why?" Levine said. Levine had switched to his night-vision glasses, pleased with himself that he had thought to bring them. Through the goggles, the world was shades of pale green. He clearly saw the raptors at the kill site, the tall grass trampled and bloody all around. The carcass was long since finished, though they could still hear the cracking of bones as the animals gnawed on them.

"I just think," Eddie said, "that now that it's night, we'd be safer in the trailer."

"Why?" Levine said.

"Well, it's reinforced, it's strong, and very safe. It has everything that we need. I just think we should be there. I mean, you're not planning on staying out here all night, are you?"

"No," Levine said. "What do you think I am, a fanatic?" Eddie grunted.

"But let's stay for a while longer," Levine said.

Eddie turned to Thorne. "Doc? What do you say? It's going to start raining soon.

"Just a little longer," Thorne said. "And then we'll all go back together."

"There have been dinosaurs on this island for five years, maybe more, " Malcolm said, "but none have appeared elsewhere. Suddenly, in the last year, carcasses of dead animals are showing up on the beaches of Costa Rica, and according to reports, on islands of the Pacific as well."

"Carried by currents?"

"Presumably. But the question is, why now? Why all of a sudden, after five years? Something has changed, but we don't know - wait a minute" He moved away from the table, over to the computer console. He turned toward the screen.

"What are you doing?" she said.

"Arby got us into the old network," he said, "and it still has research files from the eighties." He moved the mouse across the screen. "We haven't looked at them…" He saw the menu come up, showing work files and research files. He began to scroll through screens of text.

"Years ago, they had trouble with some disease," he said. "There were a lot of notes about it in the laboratory."

"What kind of disease'?"

"They didn't know," Malcolm said.

"In the wild, there are some very slow-acting illnesses," she said. "May take five or ten years to show up. Caused by viruses, or prions. You know, protein fragments-like scrapie or mad-cow disease."

"But," Malcolm said, "those diseases only come from eating contaminated food."

There was a silence.

"What do you suppose they fed them, back then?" she asked. "Because if I was growing baby dinosaurs, I'd wonder. What do they cat? Milk, I suppose, but - "

"Milk, yes," Malcolm said, reading the screens. "First six weeks, goat's milk."

"That's the logical choice," she said. "Goat's milk is what they always use in zoos, because it's so hypoallergenic. But what about later?"

Give me a minute here," Malcolm said.

Harding held the baby's leg in her hand, waiting for the resin to harden. She looked at the cast, sniffed it. It was still strong-smelling. "I hope that's all right," she said. "Sometimes if there's a distinctive smell, the animals won't allow infants to return. But maybe this will dissipate after the compound hardens. How long has it been?"

Malcolm glanced at his watch. "Ten minutes. Another ten minutes and it'll set."

She said, "I'd like to take this guy back to the nest."

Thunder rumbled. They looked out the window at the black night.

"Probably too late to return him tonight," Malcolm said. He was still typing, peering at the screen.

"So…what did they feed them? Okay. In the period from 1988 to 1989…the herbivores got a macerated plant matter on a feeding schedule three times a day…and the carnivores got…"

He stopped.

"What'd the carnivores get?"

"Looks like a ground-up extract of animal protein…"

"From what? The usual source is turkey or chicken, with some antibiotics added."

"Sarah," he said. "They used sheep extract."

"No," she said. "They wouldn't do that."

"Yeah, they did. Came from their supplier, who used ground-up sheep."

"You're kidding," she said.

Malcolm said, "I'm afraid so. Now, let me see if I can find ou - "

A soft alarm sounded. On the wall panel above him, a red light began to flash. A moment later, the exterior lights above the trailer turned on, bathing the grassy clearing around them in bright halogen glare.

"What's that?" Harding said.

"The sensors - something set them off." Malcolm moved away from the computer, peered out the window. He saw nothing but tall grass, and the dark trees at the perimeter. It was silent, still.

Sarah, still intent on the baby, said, "What happened?"

"I don't know. I don't see anything."

"But something triggered the sensors?"

"I guess."

"Wind?"

"There's no wind," he said.

In the high hide, Kelly said,"Hey, look!"

Thorne turned. From their location in the valley, they could look north to the high cliff behind them and the two trailers above, in the grassy clearing.

The exterior lights on the trailers had come on.

Thorne unclipped the radio at his belt. "Ian? Are you there?"

A momentary crackle: "I'm here, Doc."

"What's happening?"

"I don't know," Malcolm said.

"The perimeter lights just turned on. I think the sensor was activated. But we don't see anything out there."

Eddie said, "Air's cooling off fast now. Might have been convection currents, set it off."

Thorne said, "Ian? Everything okay?"

"Yes. Fine. Don't worry."

Eddie said, "I always figured we set the sensitivity too high. That's all it is.

Levine frowned, and said nothing.

Sarah finished with the baby, and wrapped him in a blanket, and gently strapped him down to the table with cloth restraint straps. She came over and stood beside Malcolm. She looked out the window.

"What do you think?"

Malcolm shrugged. "Eddie says the system's too sensitive."

"Is it?"

"I don't know. It's never been tested before." He scanned the trees at the edge of the clearing, looking for any movement. Then he thought he heard a snorting sound, almost a growl. It seemed like it was answered from somewhere behind him. He went to look out the other side of the trailer, at the trees on the other side.

Malcolm and Harding looked out, straining to see something in the night. Malcolm held his breath, tensely. After a moment, Harding sighed. "I don't see anything, Ian."

"No. Me neither."

'Must be a false alarm."

Then he felt the vibration, a deep resonant thumping in the ground, that was carried to them through the floor of the trailer. He glanced at Sarah. Her eyes widened.

Malcolm knew what it was. The vibration came again, unmistakably this time.

Sarah stared out the window. She whispered, "Ian: I see it."

Malcolm turned, and joined her. She was pointing out the window toward the nearest trees.

"What?"

And then he saw the big head emerge from the foliage midway u one tree. The head turned slowly from side to side, as if listening. It was an adult Tyrannosaurus rex.

"Ian," she whispered. "Look - there are two of them."

Over to the right, he saw a second animal step from behind the trees. It was larger, the female of the pair. The animals growled, a deep rumble in the night. They emerged slowly from the cover of the trees, stepping into the clearing. They blinked in the harsh light.

"Are those the parents?"

"I don't know. I think so."

He glanced over at the baby. It was still unconscious, breathing steadily, the blanket rising and falling regularly.

"What are they doing here?" she said.

"I don't know."

The animals were still standing at the edge of the clearing, near the cover of the trees. They seemed hesitant, waiting.

"Are they looking for the baby?" she said.

"Sarah, please."

"I'm serious."

"That's ridiculous."

"Why? They must have tracked it here."

The tyrannosaurs raised their heads, lifting their jaws. Then they turned their heads left and right, in slow arcs. They repeated the movement, then took a step forward, toward the trailer.

"Sarah," he said. "We're miles from the nest. There isn't any way for them to track it."

"How do you know?"

"Sarah - "

"You said yourself, we don't know anything about these animals. We don't know anything about their physiology, their biochemistry, their nervous systems, their behavior. And we don't know anything about their sensory equipment, either."

"Yes, but - "

"They're predators, Ian. Good sense of vision, good sense of hearing and smell."

"I assume so, yes."

"But we don't know what else," Sarah said.

"What else?" Malcolm said.

"Ian. There are other sensory modalities. Snakes sense infrared. Bats have echolocation. Birds and turtles have magnetosensors - they can detect the earth's magnetic field, which is how they migrate. Dinosaurs may have other sensory modalities that we can't imagine."

"Sarah, this is ridiculous."

"Is it? Then you tell me. What are they doing out there?"

Outside, near the trees, the tyrannosaurs had become silent. They were no longer growling, but they were still moving their heads back and forth in slow arcs, turning left and right.

Malcolm frowned. "It looks like…they're looking around…"

"Straight into bright lights? No, Ian. They're blinded."

As soon as she said it, he realized she was right. But the heads were turning back and forth in that regular way. "Then what are they doing? Smelling?"

"No. Heads are high. Nostrils aren't moving."

"Listening?"

She nodded. "Possibly."

"Listening to what?"

"Maybe to the baby."

He glanced over again. "Sarah. The baby is out cold."

"I know."

"It isn't making any noise."

"None that we can hear." She stared at the tyrannosaurs. "But they're doing something, Ian. That behavior we're seeing has meaning. We just don't know what it is."

From the high hide, Levine stared through his night-vision glasses at the clearing. He saw the two tyrannosaurs standing at the edge of the forest. They were moving their heads in an odd, synchronized way.

They took a few hesitant steps toward the trailer, lifted their heads, turned right and left, and then seemed finally to make up their minds. The animals moved quickly, almost aggressively, across the clearing.

Over the radio, they heard Malcolm say, "It's the lights! The lights are drawing them."

A moment later, the exterior lights were turned off, and the clearing went black. They all squinted in the darkness. They heard Malcolm say, "That did it."

Thorne said to Levine, "What do you see?"

"Nothing."

"What're they doing?"

"They're just standing there."

Through the night-vision goggles, he saw that the tyrannosaurs had paused, as if confused by this change in light. Even from a distance, he could hear their growls, but they were uneasy. They swung their great heads up and down, and snapped their jaws. But they did not move closer.

Kelly said, "What is it?"

"They're waiting," Levine said. "At least for the moment."

Levine had the distinct impression that the tyrannosaurs were unsettled. The trailer must represent a large and fearsome change in their environment. Perhaps they would turn away, he thought, and leave. Despite their enormous size, they were cautious, almost timid animals.

They growled again. And then he saw them move forward, toward the darkened trailer.

"Ian: what do we do?"

"Damned if I know," Malcolm whispered.

They were crouched down side by side in the passageway, trying to stay out of sight in the windows. The tyrannosaurs moved implacably forward. They could feel each step as a distinct vibration now - two ten ton animals, moving toward them.

"They're coming right at us!"

"I noticed," he said.

The first of the animals reached the trailer, coming so close that the body blocked the entire window. All Malcolm could see was powerfully muscled legs and underbelly. The head was far above them, out of view.

Then the second tyrannosaur came up on the opposite side. The two animals began to circle the trailer, growling and snorting. Heavy footsteps shook the floor beneath them. They smelled the pungent predator odor. One of the tyrannosaurs brushed against the side of the trailer and they heard a scraping sound, scaly flesh on metal.

Malcolm felt sudden panic. It was the smell that did it, the smell that he suddenly remembered, from before. He began to sweat. He glanced over at Sarah, and saw that she was intent, watching the movements of the animals. "This isn't hunting behavior," she whispered.

"I don't know," Malcolm said. "Maybe it is. They aren't lions, you know."

One of the tyrannosaurs bellowed in the night, a frightening earsplitting sound.

"Not hunting," she said "They're searching, Ian."

A moment later, the second tyrannosaur bellowed in reply. Then the big head swung down, and peered in through the window in front of them. Malcolm ducked down, flattening himself on the trailer floor, and Sarah collapsed on top of him. Her shoe pressed on his ear.

"It's going to be fine, Sarah."

Outside, they heard the tyrannosaurs snorting and growling.

Malcolm whispered, "Would you mind moving?"

She edged to one side, and he eased up slowly, peering cautiously over the seat cushions. He had a glimpse of the big eye of the rex staring in at him. The eye swiveled in the socket. He saw the jaws open and close. The hot breath of the animal fogged the glass.

The tyrannosaur's head swung away, moving back from the trailers and for a moment Malcolm breathed more easily. But then the head swung back, and slammed with a heavy thud into the trailer, rocking it hard.

"Don't worry, Sarah. The trailer's very strong."

She whispered, "I can't tell you how relieved I am."

From the opposite side, the other rex bellowed and struck the trailer with it's snout. The suspension creaked with the impact.

The two tyrannosaurs now began an alternating, rhythmic pounding of the trailer from either side. Malcolm and Harding were thrown back and forth. Sarah tried to steady herself, but was knocked away at the next impact. The floor tilted crazily under each blow. Lab equipment flew off the tables. Glass shattered.

And then, abruptly, the pounding stopped. There was silence.

Grunting, Malcolm got up on one knee. He peered out the window, and saw the hindquarters of one of the tyrannosaurs, as it moved forward.

"What do we do?" he whispered.

The radio crackled. Thorne said, "Ian, are you there? Ian!"

"For God's sake, turn that off," Sarah whispered.

Malcolm reached for his belt, whispered, "We're okay," and clicked the radio off.

Sarah was crawling on her hands and knees forward through the trailer, into the biology lab. He followed her, and saw the big tyrannosaur peering in through the window, at the baby, strapped down. The tyrannosaur made a soft grunting sound.

Then it paused, looking in the window. It grunted again.

"She wants her baby, Ian," Sarah whispered.

"Well, God knows," Malcolm said, "it's all right with me."

They were huddled on the floor, trying to stay out of sight.

"How are we going to get it to her?"

"I don't know. Maybe push it out the door?"

"I don't want them to step on it," Sarah said.

"Who cares?" Malcolm said.

The tyrannosaur at the window made a series of soft grunts, followed by a long, menacing growl. It was the big female.

"Sarah - "

But she was already standing up, facing the tyrannosaur. She immediately began to speak, her voice soft, soothing. "It's okay…It's all right now…The baby is fine…I'm just going to loosen these straps here…You can watch me…"

The head outside the window was so huge it filled the entire glass frame. Sarah saw the powerful muscles of the neck ripple beneath the skin. The jaws moved slightly. Her hands trembled as she undid the straps.

"That's right…Your baby is fine…See, it's just fine…"

Crouched below at her feet, Malcolm whispered, "What are you doing?"

She did not change her soft, soothing tone. "I know it sounds crazy…But it works with lions…sometimes…There we are…Your baby is free…"

Sarah unwrapped the blanket, and took away the oxygen mask, all the while speaking calmly. "Now…all I have to do…" She lifted the baby up in her hands. "…is get it to you…"

Suddenly, the female's head swung back, and smashed side-on into the glass, which shattered into a white spiderweb with a harsh crack. Sarah couldn't see through it, but she saw a shadow move and then the second impact broke the glass free. Sarah dropped the baby on the tray and jumped back as the head crashed through, and pushed several feet into the trailer. Streams of blood ran down the adult's snout, from the shards of glass. But after the initial violence it stopped, and became delicate in its movements. It sniffed the baby, starting at the head, moving slowly down the body. It sniffed the cast, too, and licked it briefly with its tongue. Finally, it rested its lower jaw lightly on the baby's chest. It stayed that way for a long time, not moving. Only the eyes blinked slowly, staring at Sarah.

Malcolm, lying on the floor, saw blood dripping over the edge of the counter. He started to get up, but she pushed his head back down with her hand. She whispered, "Ssssh."

"What's happening?"

"It's feeling the heartbeat."

The tyrannosaur grunted, opened its mouth, and gently gripped the infant between its jaws. Then it moved slowly back, out through the broken glass, carrying the baby outside.

It set the baby on the ground, below their vision. It bent over, the head disappearing from view.

Malcolm whispered, "Did it wake up? Is the baby awake?"

"Ssssh!"

There was a repetitive slurping sound, coming from outside the trailer. It was interspersed with soft, guttural growls. Malcolm saw Sarah leaning forward, trying to see out the window. He whispered, "What's happening?"

"She's licking him. And pushing him with her snout."

"And?"

"That's all. She just keeps doing it."

"What about the baby?"

"Nothing. It keeps rolling over, like it's dead. How much morphine did we give him, the last time?"

"I don't know," he said. "How should I know?"

Malcolm remained on the floor, listening to the slurping and the growling. And finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he heard a soft high-pitched squeak.

"He's waking up! Ian! The baby's waking up!"

Malcolm crawled up on his knees, and looked out the window in time to see the adult carrying the baby in its jaws, walking away toward the perimeter of the clearing.

"What's it doing?"

"I guess, taking it back."

The second adult came into view, following the first. Malcolm and Sarah watched the two tyrannosaurs move away from the trailer, across the clearing.

Malcolm's shoulders dropped. "That was close," he said.

"Yes. That was close." She sighed, and wiped blood from her forearm.

In the high hide, Thorne pressed the radio button. "Ian! Are you there? Ian!"

Kelly said, "Maybe they turned the radio off."

A light rain began to fall, pattering on the metal roof of the shed. Levine was staring through his night-vision glasses toward the cliff. Lightning flashed, and Thorne said, "Can you see what the animals are doing?"

"I can," Eddie said. "It looks…it looks like they're going away." They all began to cheer.

Only Levine remained silent, watching through the glasses. Thorne turned to him. "Is that right, Richard? Is everything okay?"

Actually, I think not," Levine said. "I'm afraid we have made a serious error.

Malcolm watched the retreating tyrannosaurs through the shattered glass window. Beside him, Sarah said nothing. She never took her eyes off the animals.

Rain started to fall; water dripped from the shards of lass. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and lightning cracked harshly down, illuminating, the giant animals as they moved away.

At the nearest of the big trees, the adults stopped, and placed the baby on the ground.

"Why are they doing that?" Sarah said. "They should be going back to the nest."

"I don't know, maybe they're - "

"Maybe the baby is dead," she said.

But no, in the next flash of lightning they could see the baby moving. It was still alive. They could hear its high-pitched squeaking as one of the adults took the baby in its laws, and gently placed it in a fork among the high branches of a tree.

"Oh no," Sarah said, shaking her head. "This is wrong Ian. This is all wrong."

The female tyrannosaur remained with the baby for some moments, moving it, positioning it. Then the female turned, opened its jaws, and roared.

The male tyrannosaur roared in response.

And then both animals charged the trailer at full speed, racing across the clearing toward them.

"Oh, my God," Sarah said.

"Brace yourself, Sarah!" Malcolm shouted. "It's going to be bad!"

The impact was stunning, knocking them sideways through the air. Sarah screamed as she tumbled away. Malcolm hit his head and fell to the floor, seeing stars. Beneath him, the trailer rocked on its suspension, with a metallic scream. The tyrannosaurs roared, and slammed into it again.

He heard her shouting, "Ian! Ian!" and then the trailer crashed over onto its side. Malcolm turned away; glassware and lab equipment smashed all around him. When he looked up, everything was cockeyed. Directly above him was the broken window the tyrannosaur had smashed. Rain dripped through onto Malcolm's face. Lightning flashed, and then he saw a big head peering down at him and snarling. He heard the harsh scratching of the tyrannosaurs' claws on the metal side of the trailer, then the face disappeared. A moment later, he heard them bellowing as they pushed the trailer through the dirt.

He called "Sarah!" and he saw her, somewhere behind him, just as the world spun crazily again, and the trailer was upended with a crash. Now the trailer was lying on its roof; Malcolm started crawling along the ceiling, trying to reach Sarah. He looked up at the lab equipment, locked down on the lab benches, above his head. Liquid dripped onto him from a dozen sources. Something stung his shoulder. He heard a hiss, and realized it must be acid.

Somewhere in the darkness ahead, Sarah was groaning. Lightning flashed again, and Malcolm saw her, lying crumpled near the accordion junction that connected the two trailers. That junction was twisted almost shut, which must mean that the second trailer was still upright. It was crazy. Everything was crazy.

Outside, the tyrannosaurs roared, and he heard a muffled explosion. They were biting the tires. He thought: Too bad they don't bite into the battery cable. That'd give them a real surprise.

Suddenly, the tyrannosaurs slammed into the trailer again, knocking it laterally along the clearing. As soon as it stopped, they slammed again. The trailer lurched sideways.

By then he had reached Sarah. She threw her arms around him. "Ian," she said. The whole left half of her face was dark. When the lightning flashed, he saw it was covered in blood.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she said. With the back of her hand, she wiped blood out of her eye. "Can you see what it is?"

In another lightning flash, he saw the glint of a large chunk of glass, embedded near her hairline. He pulled it out, and pressed his hand against the sudden gush of blood. They were in the kitchen; he reached up toward the stove, and pulled down a dishtowel. He held 'it against her head, and watched the cloth darken.

"Does it hurt?"

"It's okay."

"I think it's not too bad," he said. Outside, the tyrannosaurs roared in the night.

"What are they doing?" she said. Her voice was dull.

The tyrannosaurs slammed into the trailer again. With this impact, the trailer seemed to move a lot more than before, sliding sideways - and down.

Sliding down.

"They're pushing us," he said.

"Where, Ian?"

"To the edge of the clearing." The tyrannosaurs slammed again, and the trailer moved farther. "They're pushing us over the cliff," The cliff was five hundred feet of sheer rock, straight down to the valley below.

They'd never survive the fall.

She held the dishtowel with her own hand, pushing his hand away. "Do something."

"Yeah, okay," he said.

He moved away from her, bracing for the next impact. He didn't know what to do. He had no idea what to do. The trailer was upside down, and everything was crazy. His shoulder burned and he could smell the acid eating his shirt. Or maybe it was his flesh. It burned a lot. The whole trailer was dark, all the power was out, there was glass everywhere, and he -

All the power was out.

Malcolm started to get to his feet, but the next impact flung him sideways, and he fell hard, slamming his head against the refrigerator. The door swung open and cartons of cold milk, glass bottles, crashed down on him. But there was no light from the refrigerator.

Because all the power was out.

Lying on his back, Malcolm looked out the window and saw the big foot of a tyrannosaur standing in the grass. Lightning flashed as the foot raised to kick, and immediately the trailer moved again, sliding easily now, metal screeching, and then tilting downward.

"Oh, shit," he said.

"Ian…"

But it was too late, the whole trailer was groaning and creaking in metallic protest, and then Malcolm saw the far end sink down, as the trailer slid over the cliff. It started slowly, and then gathered speed, the ceiling they were lying on falling away, everything falling, Sarah falling, clutching at him as she went, and the tyrannosaurs bellowing in triumph.

We're going over the cliff, he thought.

Not knowing what else to do, he grabbed the refrigerator door, hanging on tightly. The door was cold, and slippery with moisture. The trailer tilted and fell, the metal creaking loudly. Malcolm felt his hands sliding off the white enamel, sliding…sliding…And then be lost his grip and fell free, dropping helplessly straight down toward the far end of the trailer. He saw the driver's seat rushing up to him, but before he got there he struck something in the darkness, felt a moment of searing pain, and bent double.

And slowly, gently, everything around him went black.

Rain drummed on the roof of the shed, and poured in a continuous sheet down the sides. Levine wiped the lenses of his glasses, then lifted them again to his eyes. He stared at the cliffs in the darkness.

Arby said, "What is it? What happened?"

"I can't tell," Levine said. It was hard to see anything in this downpour. Moments before, they had watched in horror as the two tyrannosaurs pushed the trailer toward the cliff. The large animals had done it with ease: Levine guessed the tyrannosaurs had a combined mass of twenty tons, and the trailer only weighed about two tons. Once they had turned it over, it slid easily over the wet grass as they pushed it with their underbellies, and kicked it with their powerful leg muscles.

"Why are they doing that?" Thorne said to Levine, standing beside him.

"I suspect, he said, that we have changed the perceived territory."

"How's that again?"

"You have to remember what we're dealing with," Levine said. "Tyrannosaurs may show complex behavior, but most of it is instinctual. It's unthinking behavior, wired in. And territoriality is part of that instinct. The tyrannosaurs mark territory, they defend territory. It's not thinking behavior - they don't have very large brains - but they do it from instinct. All instinctive behavior has triggers, releasers for the behavior. And I'm afraid that, by moving the baby, we redefined their territory to include the clearing where the baby was found. So now they're going to defend their territory, by driving out the trailers."

Then lightning flashed, and they all saw it in the same horrifying moment. The first trailer had gone over the cliff. It was hanging upside down in space, still connected by the accordion connector to the second trailer in the clearing above.

That connector won't hold!" Eddie shouted. "Not long!"

In the glare of lightning, they saw the tyrannosaurs up in the clearing. Methodically, they were now pushing the second trailer toward the cliff.

Thorne turned to Eddie. "I'm going!" he said.

"I'll come with you!" Eddie said.

"No! Stay with the kids!"

"But you need - "

"Stay with the kids! We can't leave them alone!"

"But Levine can - "

"No, you stay!" Thorne said. He was already climbing down the scaffolding, slippery in drenching rain, toward the Explorer below. He saw Kelly and Arby looking down at him. He jumped in the car, clicked on the ignition. He was already thinking of the distance to the clearing. It was three miles, maybe more. Even driving fast, it would take him seven or eight minutes to get there.

And by then it would be too late. He'd never make it in time.

But he had to try.

Sarah Harding heard a rhythmic creaking, and opened her eyes.

Everything was dark- she was disoriented. Then lightning flashed and she stared straight down toward the valley, five hundred feet below. The view swung gently, back and forth.

She was looking through the windshield of the trailer, hanging down the side of the cliff. They were not falling any more. But they were hanging precariously in space.

She herself was lying across the driver's seat, which had broken free of its mounting, and shattered a control panel in the wall; loose wires hung out, panel indicators flickered.

She was having trouble seeing, from the blood in her left eye. She pulled out the tail of her shirt, and ripped two strips of cloth. She folded one to make a compress, and pressed it against the gash on her forehead. Then she tied the second strip around her head, to hold the compress down. The pain was intense for a moment; she gritted her teeth until it faded.

From somewhere above her, she felt a thumping vibration. She turned and looked straight up. She saw the whole length of the trailer, suspended vertically. Malcolm was ten feet above her, bent over a lab table, not moving.

"Ian," she said.

He didn't answer. He didn't move.

The trailer shuddered again, creaking under a dull impact. And then Harding realized what was happening. The first trailer was dangling straight down the cliff face, swinging freely in space. But it was still connected to the second trailer, up on the clearing. The first trailer now hung from the accordion connector. And the tyrannosaurs, up above, were now pushing the second trailer off the cliff.

"Ian," she said. "Ian."

She scrambled to her feet, ignoring the pain in her body. She felt a wave of dizziness, and wondered how much blood she had lost. She began to climb straight up, standing first on the back of the driver's seat, grabbing for the nearest biology table. She pulled herself upward, until she could reach a handle mounted in the wall. The trailer swayed beneath her.

From the handle, she managed to grab the refrigerator door, putting her fingers through a wire shelf She tested it, it held, and she gave it her full weight. She raised her leg, until she got her shoe into the refrigerator itself Then she swung her body still higher, until she was standing up and could reach the handle to the oven.

It was like mountain climbing through a damn kitchen, she thought.

Soon she was alongside Malcolm. Lightning flashed again, and she saw his battered face. He groaned. She crawled over to him, trying to see how badly he was hurt.

"Ian," she said.

His eyes were closed. "Sorry."

"Never mind."

"I got you into this."

"Ian. Can you move? Are you okay?"

He groaned. "My leg."

"Ian. We have to do something."

From the clearing above them, she heard the tyrannosaurs roaring. It seemed to her that they had been roaring her whole life. The trailer lurched and swung; her legs slid out of the refrigerator and she was hanging free in space from the oven door. The far end of the trailer was some twenty feet below.

The oven handle wouldn't hold her weight, she knew. Not for long.

Harding swung her legs, kicking wildly, finally touched something solid. She felt with her feet, then stepped down. Looking back, she saw she was standing on the side of the stainless-steel sink. She moved her foot and the faucet turned on, soaking her feet.

The tyrannosaurs roared, pounding hard. The trailer moved farther out into space, swinging.

"Ian. There's not much time. We have to do something."

He raised his head, stared at her with blank eyes. Lightning flashed again. His lips moved, "Power," he said.

"What about it?"

"Power is off."

She didn't know what he was talking about. Of course the power was off. Then she remembered: he had turned it off earlier. When the tyrannosaurs were approaching. The light had bothered them before, maybe it would bother them again.

"You want me to turn the power on?"

His head nodded fractionally. "Yes. Turn it on."

"How, Ian?" She looked around in the darkness.

"There's a panel."

"Where?"

He didn't answer her. She reached out, shook his shoulder. "Ian: where is the panel?"

He pointed downward.

She looked down, saw the loose wires from the panel. "I can't. It's broken."

"Up…"

She could hardly hear him. Vaguely, she remembered that there was another control panel just inside the second trailer. If she could get in, she might be able to turn the power on. "Okay, Ian," she said "I'll do it."

She moved on, going higher. The floor of the trailer was now thirty feet below her. The tyrannosaurs roared, and kicked again. She swung in space. She moved on.

She intended to go through the accordion passage into the second trailer, but as she came closer to the top, she saw that it was not possible. In the harsh flare of lightning she saw the accordion passage was twisted tightly shut.

She was trapped in the first trailer.

She heard the tyrannosaurs bellowing, and slamming the second trailer above. "Ian!"

She looked down. He wasn't moving.

Hanging there, she realized with a sick feeling that she was defeated. Another kick, another two kicks, and it would be all over. They would fall. There was nothing they could do. There was no time left. She was hanging suspended in blackness, the power was out, and there was nothing -

Or was there? She heard an electrical hum, not far away in the darkness. Was there a panel Lip here, at this end of the trailer? Did they design it to have panels at both ends?

Hanging near the top of the trailer, her shoulders and forearms burning with strain, she looked around for a second power panel. She was up near the far end. If there was a panel, it should be nearby. But where? In the glare of lightning, she looked over one shoulder, then the other.

She saw no panel.

Her arms ached.

"Ian, please…"

No panel.

It wasn't possible. She kept hearing that hum. There had to be a panel. She just wasn't seeing it. There had to be a panel. She swung left and right, and lightning flashed again, casting crazy shadows, and then at last she saw it.

It was just six inches above her head. It was upside down, but she could see all the buttons and switches. They were dark now. If she could just figure out which was which -

The hell with it.

She released her right hand, and hanging from her left, pressed every button on the panel she could touch. Immediately, the trailer began to light up, every interior light coming on.

She kept pressing the buttons, one after another. Some shorted out; there were sparks and smoke.

She kept pressing more.

Suddenly the side monitor came on, just inches from her face, a streaky video blur. Then it came into focus. Although she was looking at it sideways, she could see the tyrannosaurs up on the clearing, standing over the second trailer, their forearms touching it, their powerful legs kicking and pushing at it. She pressed more buttons. The final one had a silver protective cover; she flipped the cover open, and pressed that button, too.

On the monitor she saw the tyrannosaurs disappear in a sudden flaring burst of incandescent sparks, and she heard them roar in rage. And then the video monitor went off, and there was a crackling explosion of sparks all around Harding, stinging her face and hands, and then everything in the trailer went off, and it was dark again.

There was silence for a long moment.

Then, inexorably, the pounding began again.

Thorne

The windshield wipers flicked back and forth. Thorne took the curves fast, despite the driving rain. He glanced at his watch. Two minutes gone, perhaps three.

Perhaps more. He wasn't sure.

The road was a muddy track, slippery and dangerous. He splashed through deep puddles, holding his breath each time. The car had been waterproofed back in his shop, but you were never sure about these things. Each puddle was another test. So far, so good.

Three minutes gone.

At least three.

The road curved, opened out, and in a flash of lightning he saw a deep puddle ahead. He accelerated through it, the car kicking up plumes of water on both side windows. And then he was through it, still going. Still going! As he headed up a hill, he saw the dashboard needles swing wildly, and he heard the sizzle that he knew meant a fatal electrical short, There was an explosion under the hood, and acrid smoke poured out from the radiator, and the car stopped dead.

Four minutes.

He sat in the car, hearing the rain pound on the metal roof He turned the ignition key. Nothing happened.

Dead.

Rain poured in sheets down the windshield. He sat back in his seat sighed, and stared at the road ahead. The radio crackled on the seat beside him. "Doc? Are you almost there?"

Thorne stared at the road, trying to guess where he was. He estimated that he must still be more than a mile from the trailer in the clearing, maybe more. Too far to try it on foot. He swore, and pounded the seat.

"No, Eddie. I shorted."

"You what?"

"Eddie, the car's dead. I'm - "

Thorne broke off.

He noticed something.

From around the curve ahead, he saw a faint, flashing red glow. Thorne squinted, trying to be sure. Yes, his eyes were not playing tricks on him. It was there, all right: a flashing red glow.

Eddie said: "Doc? You there?"

Thorne didn't answer; he grabbed the radio and the Lindstradt rifle, jumped out of the car, and ducking his head against the rain, began to run up the hill toward the junction of the ridge road. Coming around a curve, he saw the red jeep, standing in the middle of the ridge road, its taillights flashing. One of the lights was broken, glaring white.

He ran forward, trying to see inside. In a flash of lightning he could see there was no driver. The driver's door was not even closed- the side was deeply dented. Thorne climbed inside, reaching down with his hand for the steering wheel…Yes, the keys were there! He turned the ignition. The motor rumbled to life.

He shoved the Jeep in gear, backed it around, and headed up the ridge toward the clearing. It was only another few curves before he saw the green roof of the laboratory and turned left, his headlights swinging across the grassy clearing, and shining onto the dinosaurs pushing the trailer.

Confronted by these new lights, the tyrannosaurs turned in unison, and bellowed at Thorne's Jeep. They abandoned the trailer, and charged. Thorne threw the jeep into reverse and was backing away frantically before he realized the animals were not coming toward him.

Instead, they were running diagonally across the clearing, toward a tree near Thorne. Beneath the tree they paused, their heads turned upward. Thorne doused his lights, and waited. Now he saw the animals only intermittently, in the flashes of lightning. In one crackling burst, he saw them take down the baby from the tree. Then he saw them nuzzling the baby. Obviously his sudden arrival had made them anxious about the infant.

The next time lightning flashed, the tyrannosaurs were gone. The clearing was empty. Were they really gone? Or were they just hiding? He rolled down the window, stuck his head out in the rain. That was when he heard an odd, low, continuous squealing sound. It sounded like the extended cry of an animal, but it was too steady, too continuous. As he listened, he realized it was something else. It was metal.

Thorne turned on his lights again, and drove for-ward slowly. The tyrannosaurs were gone. In the pale beam of the headlamps, he saw the second trailer.

With a continuous metallic squeal, it was still sliding slowly across the wet grass, toward the edge of the cliff.

"What is he doing now?" Kelly yelled, over the rain.

"He's driving," Levine said, looking through goggles. From the high hide, they could see Thorne's headlamps cross the clearing. "He's driving to the trailer. And he's…"

"He's what?" Kelly said. "What is he doing now?"

"He's driving around and around a tree," Levine said. "A big tree by the clearing."

"Why?"

"He must be running the cable around the tree, Eddie said. "That's the only possible reason."

There was a moment of silence.

"What's he doing now?" Arby said.

"He's gotten out of the Jeep. Now he's running toward the trailer."

Thorne was down on his hands and knees in the mud, holding the big hook of the jeep winch in his hands. The trailer was sliding away from him, but he managed to crawl beneath it, and get the hook around the rear axle. He pulled his fingers clear just as the hook slammed tight against the brake cover, and he rolled his body away. Newly restrained, the trailer jumped sideways in the grass, the tires slamming down where his body had been moments before.

The metal cable from the winch was pulled taut. The whole underbelly of the trailer creaked in protest.

But it held.

Thorne crawled out from beneath the trailer, and squinted at it in the rain. He looked carefully at the wheels of the jeep, to see if they were moving at all. No. With the cable wrapped around the tree, the counterbalancing weight of the jeep was enough to hold the second trailer on the rim of the cliff.

He went back to the Jeep, climbed inside, and set the brake. He heard Eddie saying, "Doc, Doc."

"I'm here, Eddie."

"You manage to stop it?"

"Yeah. It's not moving any more."

The radio crackled. "That's great. But listen. Doc. You know that connector is just five-mil mesh over stainless rod. It was never intended to - "

"I know, Eddie. I'm working on it." Thorne climbed out of the car again. He ran quickly through the rain toward the trailer.

He opened the side door, and went inside. The interior was inky black. He could see nothing at all. Everything was overturned. His feet crunched on glass. All the windows were shattered. He held the radio in his hand. "Eddie!"

"Yes, Doc."

"I need rope." He knew that Eddie had all sorts of supplies squirreled away.

"Doc…"

"Just tell me."

"It's in the other trailer. Doc."

Thorne crashed against a table in the darkness, "Great."

"There might be some nylon line in the utility locker," Eddie said. "But I don't know how much." He didn't sound hopeful. Thorne pushed his way down the trailer, came to the wall cabinets. They were jammed shut. He tugged at them in the darkness, then turned away. The utility locker was just beyond. Maybe there would be rope there. And right now, he needed rope.

Trailer

Sarah Harding, still hanging by her arms from the top of the trailer, stared up at the twisted accordion connector, leading to the second trailer. The pounding from the dinosaurs had stopped, and the other trailer was no longer moving. But now she felt water, dripping cold onto her face. And she knew what that meant.

The accordion connector was beginning to leak.

She looked up, and saw a tear had begun to open in the mesh fabric, revealing the twisted coils of steel that formed the connector. The tear was small now, but it would rapidly widen. And as the mesh broke, the steel would begin to uncoil, to lengthen, and finally snap.

They had only minutes before the hanging trailer broke free and fell to the ground below,

She climbed back down to Malcolm, bracing herself to stand beside him. "Ian."

"I know," he said, shaking his head.

"Ian, we have to get out of here." She grabbed him under his armpits, and pulled him upright. "And you're coming with me."

He shook his head, defeated. She had seen that gesture before in her life, that futile shake, giving up. She hated to see it. Harding never gave up. Not ever.

Malcolm grunted. "I can't…"

"You have to," she said.

"Sarah…"

"I don't want to hear it, Ian. There's nothing to talk about. Now let's go." She was pulling him, and he groaned, but he straightened his body. She pulled hard, and got him up off the table. Lightning flashed, and he seemed to find some energy. He managed to stand on the edge of the seat, facing the table. He was unsteady, but standing. "What do we do?"

"I don't know, but we're going to get out of here…Is there any rope?"

He nodded, weakly.

"Where?"

He pointed straight down, toward the nose of the trailer, now hanging in space. "Down there. Under the dash."

"Come on."

She leaned out into space, and spread her legs so she was braced against the floor opposite her. She was standing like a rock climber in a chimney. Twenty feet below her to the dashboard.

"Okay, Ian. Let's go."

Malcolm said, "I can't do it, Sarah. Seriously."

"Then lean on me. I'll carry you."

"But - "

"Now, damn it!"

Malcolm hoisted himself up, grasped a wall fitting, his arm trembling. He was dragging his right leg. Then she felt his weight on her, sudden and heavy, almost knocking her free. His arms locked around her neck, choking her. She gasped, reached back with both arms, grabbed his thighs, and lifted him while he adjusted his arms better around her neck. Finally she could breathe.

"Sorry," he said.

"It's okay," she said. "Here we go."

She started to make her way down the vertical passageway, grabbing at whatever she could, In places there were handholds, and when there were no handholds, she clutched at drawer handles, table legs, window latches, even the carpeting on the floor, her fingers tearing the cloth. At one point, the carpet came away in a big strip, and she slipped before her legs tightened wider, and she halted her downward slide. Hanging behind her, Malcolm wheezed; his arms around her neck were trembling. He said, "You're very strong."

"But still feminine," she said, grimly.

She was only ten feet from the dashboard. Then five. She found a wall grip, hung, dangling her legs. Her feet touched the steering wheel. She lowered herself down, easing Malcolm onto the dashboard. He lay back, gasping-

The trailer creaked and swayed. She fumbled under the dashboard, found a utility box, popped it open. Metal tools spilled out, clattering. And she found a rope. Half-inch nylon, easily fifty feet of it.

She got up, staring down through the windshield at the bottom of the valley hundreds of feet below. Directly to her side, she saw the driver's door to the trailer. She twisted the handle, pushed it open. It clanged against the outer surface of the trailer, and she felt rain on her face.

She leaned out and looked up the side of the trailer. She saw smooth metal paneling, with no hand grips. But underneath the trailer, there must be axles and boxes and other things to stand on. Gripping the wet metal of the doorjamb, she bent over, trying to look at the underside of the trailer. She heard a metallic clanking, and she heard someone say, "Finally!" And a bulky shape suddenly loomed in front of her. It was Thorne, hanging on the undercarriage.

"For Christ's sake," Thorne said. "What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation? Let's go!"

"It's Ian," she said. "He's hurt."

Typical, Kelly thought, looking at Arby in the high hide. When things got tough, he just couldn't handle it. Too much emotion, too much tension, and he got all trembly and weird. Arby had long since turned away from the cliff, and now was looking out the other side of the shelter, toward the river. Almost as if nothing was going on. Typical.

Kelly turned back to Levine. "What's happening now?" she said. "Thorne just went in," Levine said, peering through the goggles. "He went in? You mean, in the trailer?"

"Yes. And now…someone's coming out."

"Who?

"I think Sarah. She's getting everybody out."

Kelly strained in the night, trying to see. The rain had almost stopped; there was only a light drizzle now. Across the valley, the trailer still swung free in space. She thought she could make out a figure, clinging to the undercarriage. But she couldn't be sure.

'What's she doing?"

"Climbing."

"Alone?"

"Yes," Levine said. "Alone."

Sarah Harding came out through the door, twisting her body in the rain. She did not look down. She knew the valley was five hundred feet below her. She could feel the trailer swinging. She had the rope slung around her shoulder. She edged around, lowered her leg, and stood on a gearbox. She felt with her hand, gripped a cable. Swung around.

Thorne was inside the trailer, talking to her. "We'll never get Malcolm up without a rope," he said. "Can you climb it?"

Lightning flashed. She stared straight up at the underside of the trailer, glistening wet with rain. She saw the slick learn of grease. Then blackness again.

"Sarah: can you do it?"

"Yes," she said. She reached up, and started to climb.

In the high hide, Kelly was saying, "Where is she? What's happening? Is she all right?"

Levine watched through the glasses. "She's climbing," he said.

Arby listened to their voices distantly. He was turned away, staring off at the river in the darkened plain. He waited impatiently for the next lightning flash. Waited to see if it was true, what he had seen earlier.

She did not know how, but slipping and sliding, she somehow got to the top of the cliff, and flung herself over the side. There was no time to waste; she uncoiled the rope, and crawled beneath the second trailer. She looped the rope through a metal bracket, quickly knotted it. Then she went back to the edge of the cliff, and threw the rope down.

"Doc!" she shouted.

Standing at the trailer door, Thorne caught the rope, and tied it around Malcolm. Malcolm groaned. "Let's go," Thorne said. He put his arm around Malcolm and swung them both out, until they were standing on the gearbox.

"Christ," Malcolm said, looking upward. But Sarah was already pulling him, the rope tightening.

"Just use your arms," Thorne said. Malcolm started to rise; in a few moments, he was ten feet above Thorne. Sarah was up on the cliff, but Thorne couldn't see her; Ian's body blocked his view. Thorne began to climb, his legs struggling for purchase. The underside of the trailer was slippery. He thought: I should have made it nonskid. But who would ever make the undercarriage of a vehicle nonskid?

In his mind's eye, he saw the accordion connector, tearing…slowly tearing…opening wider…

He climbed upward. Hand over hand. Foot by foot.

Lightning flashed, and he realized that they were close to the top.

Sarah was standing on the edge of the cliff, reaching down for Malcolm. Malcolm was pulling himself up with his arms; his legs swung limp, free. But he was still going. Another few feet…Sarah grabbed Malcolm by the shirt collar, and hauled him up the rest of the way. Malcolm flopped over, out of sight.

Thorne continued up. His feet slipped. His arms ached. He climbed.

Sarah was reaching down to him.

"Come on, Doc," she said.

Her hand was extended.

Fingers reaching toward him.

With a metallic whang! the mesh ripped on the connector, and the trailer dropped down ten feet, the coils widening.

Thorne climbed faster. Looking up toward Sarah.

Her hand still reached down.

"You can do it, Doc…"

He climbed, closing his eyes, just climbing, holding the rope, gripping it tightly. His arms ached, his shoulders ached, and the rope seemed to become smaller in his hands. He twisted it around his fist, trying to hold on. But at the last moment he began to slip, and then he felt a sudden burning pain in his scalp.

"Sorry about that," Sarah said, and she pulled him up by his hair. The pain was intense but he didn't care, he hardly noticed, because now he was alongside the accordion connector, watching the coils pop free like a bursting corset, and the trailer dropped lower but she still pulled him, she was immensely strong, and then his fingers touched wet grass, and he was over the side. Safe.

Beneath them, there was a sharp series of metallic sounds - whang whang! whang! -as the coiled metal rods snapped one after another and then, with a final groan, the trailer broke all connection, and fell free down the cliff face, growing smaller and smaller, until it smashed on the rocks far below. In the glare of lightning, it looked like a crumpled paper bag.

Thorne turned, and looked up at Sarah. "Thanks," he said.

Sarah sat heavily on the ground beside him. Blood dripped from her bandaged head. She opened her fingers, and released a handful of his gray hair, which fell in a wet clump onto the grass.

"Hell of a night," she said.

The High Hide

Watching through the night-vision glasses, Levine said, "They made it!"

Kelly said, "All of them?"

"Yes! They made it!"

Kelly began to jump and cheer.

Arby turned, and grabbed the glasses out of Levine's hand.

"Hey," Levine said. "Just a minute - "

"I need them," Arby said. He spun back around and looked out at the dark plain. For a moment, he couldn't see anything, just a green blur. His fingers found the focus knob, he twisted it quickly, and the image came into view.

What the hell is so important?" Levine said irritably. "That's an expensive piece of equipment - "

And then they all heard the snarling. It was coming closer.

In pale shades of luminous green, Arby saw the raptors clearly. There were twelve of them, moving in a loose cluster through the grass, heading in the direction of the high hide. One animal was a few yards ahead and seemed to be the leader; but it was hard to discern any organization in the pack. The raptors were all snarling and licking the blood off their snouts, wiping their faces with their clawed forearms, a gesture oddly intelligent, almost human. In the night-vision glasses, their eyes glowed bright green.

They did not seem to have noticed the high hide. They never looked up toward it. But they were certainly headed in that direction.

Abruptly, the glasses were yanked out of Arby's hands. "Excuse me," Levine said. "I think I'd better handle this."

Arby said, "You wouldn't even know about it, if it wasn't for me."

"Be quiet," Levine said. He brought the glasses to his eyes, focused them, and sighed at what he saw. Twelve animals, about twenty yards away.

Eddie said quietly, "Do they see us?"

"No. And we're downwind of them, so they won't smell us. My guess is they're following the game trail that runs past the hide. If we're quiet, they'll go right past us."

Eddie's radio crackled. He hastily reached to turn it down.

They all stared out at the plain. The night was now calm and still. The rain had stopped, and the moon was breaking through thinning clouds. Faintly, they saw the approaching animals, dark against the silver grass.

Eddie whispered, "Can they get up here?"

"I don't see how," Levine whispered. "We're almost twenty feet above the ground. I think we'll be fine."

"But you said they can climb trees."

"Ssssh. This isn't a tree. Now, everybody down, and quiet."

Malcolm winced in pain as Thorne stretched him out on a table in the second trailer. "I don't seem to have much luck on these expeditions, do I?"

"No, you don't," Sarah said. "Just take it easy, Ian." Thorne held a flashlight while she cut away Malcolm's trouser. He had a deep gash on his right leg, and he had lost a lot of blood. She said, "We have a medical kit?"

Thorne said, "I think there's one outside, where we store the bike."

"Get it."

Thorne went outside to get it. Malcolm and Harding were alone in the trailer. She shone the light into the wound, peering closely. Malcolm said, "How bad is it?"

"It could be worse," she said lightly. "You'll survive." In fact, the wound cut deep, almost to the bone. Somehow it had missed the artery; that was lucky. But the gash was filthy - she saw grease and bits of leaves mashed into the ragged red muscle. She'd have to clean it out, but she'd wait for the morphine to take effect first.

"Sarah," Malcolm said, "I owe you my life."

"Never mind, Ian."

"No, no, I do."

"Ian," she said, looking at him. "This sincerity is not like you."

"It'll pass," he said, and smiled a little. She knew he must be in pain. Thorne returned with the medical kit, and she filled the syringe, tapped out the bubbles, and injected it into Malcolm's shoulder.

He grunted. "Ow. How much did you give me?"

"A lot."

"Why?"

"Because I have to clean the wound out, Ian. And you're not going to like it when I do."

Malcolm sighed. He turned to Thorne. "It's always something, isn' t it? Go on, Sarah, do your damnedest."

Levine watched the approaching raptors through the night glasses. They moved in a loose group, with their characteristic hopping gait. He watched, hoping to see some organization in the pack, some structure, some sign of a dominance hierarchy. Velociraptors were intelligent and it made sense that they would organize themselves hierarchically, and that this would appear in their spatial configuration. But he could see nothing. They were like a band of marauders, shapeless, hissing and snapping at one another.

Near Levine in the high hide, Eddie and the kids were crouched down. Eddie had his arms around the kids, comforting them. The boy especially was panicky. The girl seemed to be okay. She was calmer.

Levine didn't understand why anyone was afraid. They were perfectly secure, high up here. He watched the approaching pack with academic detachment, trying to discern a pattern in their rapid movements.

There was no doubt they were following the game trail. Their path exactly matched the paras earlier in the day: up from the river, then over the slight rise, and along the back of the high hide. The raptors paid no attention to the hide itself. They seemed mostly to interact with each other.

The animals came around the side of the structure, and were about to continue on, when the nearest animal paused. It fell behind the rest of the pack, sniffing the air. Then it bent over, and began to poke its snout through the grass around the bottom of the hide.

What was it doing? Levine wondered.

The solitary raptor growled. It continued to root in the grass. And then it came up with something in its hand, something it held in its clawed fingers. Levine squinted, trying to see it.

It was a piece of wrapping paper from a candy bar.

The raptor looked up at the high hide, its eyes glowing. It stared right at Levine. And it snarled.

Malcolm

"You feel okay?" Thorne said.

"Better all the time," Malcolm said. He sighed. His body relaxed. "You know, there's a reason why people like morphine," he said.

Sarah Harding adjusted the inflatable plastic splint around Malcolm's leg. She said to Thorne, "How long until the helicopter comes?"

Thorne glanced at his watch. "Less than five hours. Dawn tomorrow."

"For sure?"

"Yes, absolutely."

Harding nodded. "Okay. He'll be okay."

"I'm fine," Malcolm said, in a dreamy voice. "I'm just sad that the experiment is over. And 'it was such a good experiment, too. So elegant. So unique. Darwin never knew."

Harding said to Thorne, "I'm going to clean this out now. Hold his leg for me." More loudly, she said, "What didn't Darwin know, Ian?"

"That life is a complex system," he said, "and everything that goes along with that. Fitness landscapes. Adaptive walks. Boolean nets. Self-organizing behavior. Poor man. Ouch! What are you doing there?"

"Just tell us," Harding said, bent over the wound. "Darwin had no idea…"

"That life is so unbelievably complex," Malcolm said. "Nobody realizes it. I mean, a single fertilized egg has a hundred thousand genes, which act in a coordinated way, switching on and off at specific times, to transform that single cell into a complete living creature. That one cell starts to divide, but the subsequent cells are different. They specialize. Some are nerve. Some are gut. Some are limb. Each set of cells begins to follow its own program, developing, interacting. Eventually there are two hundred and fifty different kinds of cells, all developing together, at exactly the right time. Just when the organism needs a circulatory system, the heart starts pumping. Just when hormones are needed, the adrenals start to make them. Week after week, this unimaginably complex development proceeds perfectly - perfectly. It's incredible. No human activity comes close.

"I mean, you ever build a house? A house is simple in comparison. But even so, workmen build the stairs wrong, they put the sink in backward, the tile man doesn't show up when he's supposed to. All kinds of things go wrong. And yet the fly that lands on the workman's lunch is perfect. Ow! Take it easy."

"Sorry," she said, continuing to clean his wound.

"But the point," Malcolm said, "is that this intricate developmental process in the cell is something we can barely describe, let alone understand. Do you realize the limits of our understanding? Mathematically, we can describe two things interacting, like two planets in space. Three things interacting - three planets in space - well, that becomes a problem. Four or five things interacting, we can't really do it. And inside the cell, there's one hundred thousand things interacting. You have to throw up your hands. It's so complex - how is it even possible that life ever happens at all? Some people think the answer is that living forms organize themselves. Life creates its own order, the way crystallization creates order. Some people think life crystallizes into being, and that's how the complexity is managed.

"Because, if you didn't know any physical chemistry, you could look at a crystal and ask all the same questions. You'd see those beautiful spars, those perfect geometric facets, and you could ask, What's controlling this process? How does the crystal end up so perfectly formed - and looking so much like other crystals? But it turns out a crystal is just the way molecular forces arrange themselves in solid form. No one controls it. It happens on its own. To ask a lot of questions about a crystal means you don't understand the fundamental nature of the processes that led to its creation.

"So maybe living forms are a kind of crystallization. Maybe life just happens. And maybe, like crystals, there's a characteristic order to living things that is generated by their interacting elements. Okay. Well, one of the things that crystals teach us is that order can arise very fast. One minute you have a liquid, with all the molecules moving randomly. The next minute, a crystal forms, and all the molecules are locked in order. Right?"

"Right…"

"Okay. Now. Think of the interaction of life forms on the planet to make an ecosystem. That's even more complex than a single animal. All the arrangements are very complicated. Like the yucca plant. You know about that?"

"Tell me."

"The yucca plant depends on a particular moth which gathers pollen into a ball, and carries the ball to a different plant - not a different flower on the same plant - where it rubs the ball on the plant, fertilizing it. Only then does the moth lay its eggs. The yucca plant can't survive without the moth. The moth can't survive without the plant. Complex interactions like that make you think maybe behavior is a kind of crystallization, too."

"You're speaking metaphorically?" Harding said.

"I'm talking about all the order in the natural world," Malcolm said. "And how perhaps it can emerge fast, through crystallization. Because complex animals can evolve their behavior rapidly. Changes can occur very quickly. Human beings are transforming the planet, and nobody knows whether it's a dangerous development or not. So these behavioral processes can happen faster than we usually think evolution occurs. In ten thousand years human beings have gone from hunting to farming to cities to cyberspace. Behavior is screaming forward, and it might be nonadaptive. Nobody knows. Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species."

"Yes? Why is that?"

"Because it means the end of innovation," Malcolm said. "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovavate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benneton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity - our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. Oh, that hurts. Are you done?"

"Almost," Harding said. "Hang on."

"And believe me, it'll be fast. If you map complex systems on a fitness landscape, you find the behavior can move so fast that fitness can drop precipitously. It doesn't require asteroids or diseases or anything else. It's just behavior that suddenly emerges, and turns out to be fatal to the creatures that do it. My idea was that dinosaurs - being complex creatures - might have undergone some of these behavioral changes. And that led to their extinction."

"What, all of them?"

"It just takes a few," Malcolm said. "Some dinosaur roots in the swamps around the inland sea, changes the water circulation, and destroys the plant ecology that twenty other species depend on. Bang! They're gone. That causes still more dislocations. A predator dies off, and its prey grow unchecked. The ecosystem becomes unbalanced. More things go wrong. More species die. And suddenly it's over. It could have happened that way."

"Just behavior…"

"Yes," Malcolm said. "Anyway, that was the idea. And I had this nice thought that we might prove it…But now it's finished. We have to get out of here. You better tell the others."

Thorne clicked on the radio. "Eddie? It's Doc."

There was no answer.

"Eddie?"

The radio crackled. And then they heard a noise that at first sounded like static. It was a moment before they realized it was a high-pitched human scream.

The High Hide

The first of the raptors hissed as it began jumping up, clattering against the high hide shaking the structure. Its claws raked against the metal, and it fell down again. Eddie was astonished at how high it jumped - the animal could leap eight feet straight up, again and again, without apparent effort. Its jumps attracted the other animals, which slowly came back to circle the hide.

Soon the hide was surrounded by leaping, snarling raptors. It swayed back and forth as the animals slammed into it, clawed for purchase, and fell back again. But more ominously, Levine saw, they were learning. Already, some of them had begun to use their clawed forearms to grip the structure, holding on while their legs got footing. One of the raptors came within a few feet of their little shelter before finally falling back. The falls never seemed to hurt the animals. They immediately leapt up, and jumped again.

Eddie and the kids scrambled to their feet. Levine said, "Get back! Don't look out," and he pushed the kids into the center of the shelter.

Eddie was bent over his knapsack, and held up an incandescent flare. He poppcd it and flung it over the side; two of the raptors fell away. The flare sputtered an the wet ground, casting harsh red shadows. But the raptors kept coming. Eddie pulled up one of the aluminum bars from the floor, leaned over the side railing brandishing the bar like a club.

One of the raptors had already climbed high enough to dart forward, jaws gaping, at Eddie's neck. Surprised, Eddie shouted and jerked his head back; the raptor narrowly missed him, but its jaws closed on his shirt. Then the raptor fell back, jaws clenched tight, and its weight pulled Eddie forward over the failing.

He yelled "Help me! Help!" as he started to topple over the side; Levine threw his arms around him, dragging him back. Levine looked past Eddie's shoulder at the raptor, which was now dangling in space, hissing furiously, still gripping the shirt. Eddie pounded the raptor on the snout with his bar. But the raptor held on like a bulldog. Eddie was bent precariously over the railing; he might fall at any moment.

He jabbed the bar into the animal's eye, and abruptly the raptor released its grip. The two men fell back into the shelter. When they got to their feet, they saw raptors climbing up the sides of the hide. As they appeared at the rail, Eddie swung at them with the strut, knocking them back.

"Quick!" he shouted to the kids. "Up on the roof! Quick!" Kelly started climbing one of the struts, then pushed herself easily up onto the roof. Arby stood there, his expression blank. She looked back down and said, "Come on, Arb!"

The boy was frozen, his eyes wide with fear. Levine ran to help him, lifted him up. Eddie was swinging the strut in wide arcs, the metal smacking against the raptors.

One of the raptors caught the strut in its jaws and jerked it hard. Eddie lost his balance, twisted, and fell backward, toppling over the side. He cried "Nooo!" as he fell. Immediately all the animals dropped down to the ground. They heard Eddie screaming in the night. The raptors snarled.

Levine was terrified. He was still holding Arby in his arms, Pushing him up to the roof "Go on," he kept saying. "Go on. Go on."

From the roof, Kelly was saying, "You can do it, Arb."

The boy gripped the roof, pulling himself up, his legs churning in panic. He kicked Levine hard in the mouth and Levine dropped him. He saw the boy slide away, and drop backward to the ground.

"Oh Christ," Levine said. "Oh Christ."

Thorne was underneath the trailer, unhooking the cable. He released it, crawled out, and sprinted for the Jeep. He heard the whirr of a motor and saw that Sarah had gotten onto the motorbike, and was already racing off, a Lindstradt rifle slung across her shoulder.

He got behind the wheel, turned on the engine, and waited impatiently while the cable winched in, the hook sliding across the grass. It seemed to take forever. Now the cable was snaking around the tree. He waited. He looked over and saw the light from Sarah's bike moving off through the foliage, heading down toward the high hide.

At last the winch motor stopped. Thorne threw the car in gear, and roared away from the clearing. The radio clicked. "Ian," he said.

" Don't worry about me," Malcolm said, in a dreamy voice. "I'm just fine."

Kelly was lying flat on the angled roof of the shed, looking down over the side. She saw Arby hit the ground, on the other side of the structure from Eddie. He seemed to hit hard. But she didn't know what happened to him, because she had turned away to grip the wet roof, and when she looked back down again, Arby was gone.

Gone.

Sarah Harding drove fast on the muddy jungle road. She wasn't sure where she was, but she thought by following the terrain downward she would eventually come out onto the plain. At least that was her hope.

She accelerated, came around a curve, and suddenly saw a big tree blocking the road. She braked to a stop, spun the bike around, and headed back again. Farther up the road, she saw Thorne's twin headlights, turning off to the right. She followed his Jeep, racing her engine in the night.

Levine stood in the center of the high hide, frozen with terror. The raptors were no longer jumping, no longer trying to climb the structure. He heard them down on the ground, snarling. He heard the sharp crunch of bones. The boy had never made a sound.

Cold sweat broke out all over his body.

Then he heard Arby shout, "Back! Get back!"

Up on the roof, Kelly twisted around, trying to see down on the other side. In the dying light of the flare, she saw that Arby was inside the cage. He had managed to close the door, and was reaching his hand back through the bars, to turn the key in the lock. There were three raptors near him; they leapt forward when they saw his hand, and he pulled it back quickly. He shouted, "Get back!" The raptors began to bite the cage, turning their heads sideways to gnaw the bars. One of the animals got its lower jaw tangled up in the looped elastic band that hung from the key. The raptor pulled its head away, stretching the elastic, and suddenly the key snapped out of the lock, smacking against its neck.

The raptor squealed in surprise and stepped backward. The elastic was now looped tight around the lower jaw, the key glinting in the light. The raptor scratched at it with its forearms, trying to pull the elastic loop off, but it was caught around the curved back teeth, and the animal's efforts just made the elastic snap on the skin. Soon it gave up, and began rubbing its snout in the dirt, trying to get the key off.

Meanwhile the other raptors managed to pull the cage free from the superstructure, and knock it over onto the ground. They ducked their heads, slashing Arby behind the bars. When they realized that wouldn't work, they kicked and stomped the cage repeatedly. More animals joined them. Soon seven raptors were clustered over the cage. They kicked it and it rolled away from the hide. Their bodies blocked her view of Arby.

She heard a faint sound, and looked up to see two headlights in the distance. It was a car.

Someone was coming.

Arb was in hell. Inside the cage, he was surrounded by black snarling shapes. The raptors couldn't get their jaws through the spaces in the bars, but their hot saliva dripped down on him, and when they kicked their claws came through, slashing his arms and shoulders as he rolled. His body was bruised. His head hurt from banging against the bars. His world was swirling, terrifying pandemonium. He knew only one thing with certainty.

The raptors were rolling him away from the hide.

As the car came closer, Levine went to the railing and looked down. In the light of the red flare, he saw three raptors dragging what remained of Eddie's body toward the jungle. They paused frequently to fight over it, snapping at each other, but they still managed to haul it away.

Then he saw that another group of raptors were kicking and pushing the cage. They rolled it down the game trail, and into the forest.

Now he could hear the rumble of the jeep engine, as the car came closer. He saw Thorne's silhouette behind the wheel.

He hoped he had a gun. Levine wanted to kill every one of these damned animals. He wanted to kill them all.

Up on the roof, Kelly watched the raptors kicking the cage, rolling it away. One raptor remained behind, turning around and around in circles, like a frustrated dog. Then she saw it was the raptor that had caught its jaw in the elastic loop. The key still dangled along its check, glinting in the red light. The raptor jerked its head up and down, trying to get free.

The Jeep came roaring forward, and the raptor seemed confused by the sudden bright lights. Thorne accelerated, trying to hit it with his car. The raptor turned and ran off, out into the plain.

Kelly scrambled off the roof, and headed down.

Thorne threw open the door as Levine jumped into the car. "They got the kid," Levine said, pointing along the trail.

Kelly was still coming down, shouting, "Wait!"

Thorne said, "Get back up there. Sarah's coming! We'll get Arby!"

"But - "

"We can't lose them!" Thorne grinned the engine, and started to drive down the game trail, chasing the raptors.

In the trailer, Ian Malcolm listened to the voices shouting over the radio. He heard the panic, the confusion.

Black noise, he thought. Everything going to hell at once.

A hundred thousand things interacting.

He sighed, and closed his eyes.

Thorne drove fast. The jungle was dense around them. The trail ahead began to narrow, the big palms edging closer, slapping the car. He said, "Can we make it?"

"It's wide enough," Levine said. "I walked it earlier today. Paras use this trail."

"How could this happen?" Thorne said. "The cage was attached to the scaffolding."

"I don't know," Levine said. "It broke off."

"How? How?"

"I didn't see. A lot happened."

"And Eddie?" Thorne said grimly.

"It was fast," Levine said.

The Jeep plunged through the jungle, bouncing hard as it followed the game trail; they banged their heads on the cloth roof. Thorne drove recklessly. Up ahead, the raptors were moving fast; he could hardly see the last of the animals, sprinting in the darkness up ahead.

"They wouldn't listen to me!" Kelly shouted, as Sarah pulled up on the motorcycle.

"About what?"

"The raptor took the key! Arby's locked in the cage and the raptor took the key!"

"Where?" Sarah said.

"There!" she said, pointing across the plain. In the moonlight they could just see the dark shape of the fleeing raptor. "We need the key!"

Get on," Sarah said, unshouldering her rifle. Kelly climbed behind her on the bike. Sarah thrust the gun into her hands. "Can you shoot?"

"No. I mean, I never - "

"Can you drive a bike?"

"No, I - "

"Then you have to shoot," Sarah said. "Now, look: trigger's here. Okay? Safety's here. Twist it like this. Okay? It'll be a rough ride, so don't release it until we get close."

"Close to what?"

But Sarah didn't hear her. She grinned the engine, and the bike accelerated, heading out into the plain, chasing the fleeing raptor. Kelly put one arm around Sarah, and tried to hold on.

The Jeep bounced along the jungle trail, splashing through muddy pools. "I don't remember it this rough," Levine said, clutching the armhold. "Maybe you should slow down - "

"Hell no," Thorne said. "If we lose sight of him, it's over. We don't know where the raptor nest is. And in this jungle, at night…Ah, hell."

Up ahead, the raptors were leaving the trail, running off into the underbrush. The cage was gone. Thorne could not see the terrain very well, but it looked like a sheer hill, going almost straight down.

" You can't do it," Levine said. "It's too steep."

"I have to do it, " Thorne said.

"Don't be crazy," Levine said. "Face facts. We've lost the kid, Doe. It's too bad, but we've lost him."

Thorne glared at Levine. "He didn't give up on you," he said. "And we're not giving up on him."

Thorne spun the wheel and drove the Jeep over the edge. The car nosed down sickeningly, gained speed, and began a steep descent.

"Shit!" Levine yelled. "You'll kill us all"

"Hang on!"

Bouncing, they plunged downward into darkness.