"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.

SIXTH CONFIGURATION

"Order collapses in simultaneous regions. Survival is

now unlikely for individuals and groups."

IAN MALCOLM

Chase

The motorcycle raced forward across the grassy plain. Kelly clutched Sarah with one hand, and held the rifle with the other; the rifle was heavy; her arm was getting tired. The motorcycle jolted over the terrain. The wind blew her hair around her face.

    "Hold on!" Sarah shouted.

    The moon broke through the clouds, and the grass before them w as silver in the moonlight. The raptor was forty yards ahead of them, the animal just within range of their headlamp. They were gaining steadily. Kelly saw no other animals on the plain, except for the apatosaur herd in the far distance.

    They came closer to the raptor. The animal ran swiftly, its tall stiff, barely visible above the grass. Sarah angled the bike to the right, as they came alongside the raptor. They moved steadily closer. She leaned back, her month close to Kelly's ear.

    "Get ready!" she shouted.

    "What do I do?"

    They were running parallel to the raptor, back by its tail. Sarah accelerated, passing the legs, moving toward the head.

    "The neck!" she shouted. "Shoot it in the neck!"

    "Where?"

    "Anywhere! The neck!"

    Kelly fumbled with the gun. "Now?"

    "No! Wait! Wait!"

    The raptor panicked as the motorcycle approached. It increased its speed.

    Kelly was trying to find the safety. The gun was bouncing. Everything was bouncing. Her fingers touched the safety, slid off. She reached again. She was going to have to use two hands, and that meant letting go of Sarah -

    "Get ready!" Sarah shouted.

    "But I can't - "

    "Now! Do it! Now!"

    Sarah swerved the bike, coming alongside the raptor. They were now just three feet away. Kelly could smell the animal. It turned its head and snapped at them. Kelly fired. The gun bricked in her hands; she grabbed Sarah again. The raptor kept running.

    "What happened?"

    "You missed!"

    Kelly shook her head. "Never mind!" Sarah shouted. "You can do it! I'll get closer!"

    She angled the bike toward the raptor again, moving closer. But this time was different: as they came alongside, the raptor abruptly charged them, butting at them with its head. Sarah howled and twisted the bike away, widening the gap. "Smart bastards, aren't they!" she shouted. "No second chances!"

    The raptor chased them for a moment, then suddenly turned, changing direction, racing away across the plains.

    "It's going for the river!" Kelly shouted.

    Sarah gunned the engine. The bike shot forward. "How deep?"

    Kelly didn't answer.

    "How deep!"

    "I don't know!" Kelly shouted. She was trying to remember how the raptors looked when they crossed the river. She seemed to remember they were swimming. That meant it must be at least -

    "More than three feet?" Sarah said.

    "Yes!"

    "No good!"

    They were now ten yards behind the raptor, and losing ground. The animal had entered an area marked with thick Benettitalean cycads. The rough trunks scratched at them. The terrain was uneven; the bike botinced and jolted over the bumps. "Can't see!" Sarah shouted. "Hold on!" She angled left, moving away from the raptor, heading for the river. The animal was disappearing in the grass.

    "What're you doing?" Kelly shouted.

    "We have to cut him off!"

    Shrieking, a flock of startled birds rose up in front of them. Sarah drove through flapping wings, and Kelly ducked her head. The rifle thunked in her hand.

    "Careful!" Sarah shouted.

    "What happened?"

    "It went off!"

    "How many shots do I have?"

    "Two more! Make 'em good!"

    The river was up ahead, shimmering in the moonlight. They burst out of the grass and came onto the muddy bank. Sarah turned, the motorcycle swerved, slipped, and the bike shot away. Kelly fell, hitting the cold mud, Sarah landing hard on top of her. Immediately Sarah jumped up, running for the bike, shouting, "Come on!"

    Dazed, Kelly followed her. The rifle in her hands was thick with mud. She wondered if it would still work. Sarah was already on the bike, gunning the engine, waving her forward. Kelly jumped on, and Sarah headed up the riverbank.

    The raptor was twenty yards ahead of them. Approaching the water. "It's getting away!"

Thorne's Jeep crashed down the hillside, out of control. Palms slapped against the windshield; they could see nothing at all, but they felt the steepness of the incline. The Jeep fished sideways. Levine yelled.

    Thorne gripped the steering wheel, tried to turn the car back. He touched the brake; the Jeep straightened and continued down the hill. There was a gap in the palms - he saw a field of black boulders looming directly ahead. The raptors were scrambling over the boulders. But maybe if he went left -

    "No!" Levine shouted. "No!"

    "Hang on!" Thorne yelled, and he twisted the wheel. The car lost traction and slid downward. They hit the first of the boulders, shattering a headlight. The car swung up at an angle, crashed down again. Thorne thought that had finished the transmission but somehow the car was still going, angling down the hillside, moving off to the left. The second headlight smashed on a tree branch. They continued down in darkness, through another layer of palms, and then abruptly they banged down on level ground.

    The Jeep tires rolled across soft earth.

    Thorne brought the car to a stop.

    Silence.

    They peered out the windows, trying to see where they were. But it was so dark, it was hard to see anything. They seemed to be at the bottom of a deep gully, a canopy of trees overhead.

    "Alluvial contours," Levine said. "We must be in a streambed."

    As his eyes adjusted, Thorne saw he was right. The raptors were running down the center of the streambed, which was lined with big boulders on both sides, But the bed itself was sandy, and it was wide enough for the car to pass through. He followed them.

    "You have any idea where we are?" Levine said, staring at the raptors.

    "No," Thorne said.

    The car drove forward. The streambed widened, opening out into a flat basin. The boulders disappeared; there were trees on both sides of the river. Patches of moonlight appeared here and there. It was easier to see.

    But the raptors were gone. He stopped the car, rolled down the window, and listened. He could hear them hissing and growling. The sound seemed to be coming from off to the left.

    Thorne put the car in gear, and left the streambed, in moving off among ferns and occasional pine trees. Levine said, "Do you suppose the boy survived that hill?"

    "I don't know," Thorne said. "I can't imagine."

    He drove forward slowly. They came to a break in the trees, and saw a clearing where the ferns had been tram led flat. Beyond the clearing, they saw the banks of the river, moonlight glinting on the water. Somehow they had returned to the river.

    But it was the clearing itself that held their attention. Within the broad open space, they saw the huge pale skeletons of several apatosaurs. The giant rib cages, arcs of pale bone, shone in the silver light. The dark hulk of a partially eaten carcass lay on its side in the center, clouds of flies buzzing above it in the night.

    "What is this place?" Thorne said. "It looks like graveyard."

    "Yes," Levine said. "But it's not."

    The raptors were all clustered to one side, fighting over the remains of Eddie's carcass. At the opposite side of the clearing they saw three low mud mounds; the walls were broken in many places. Within the nests they saw crushed fragments of eggshells. There was the strong stench of decay.

    Levine leaned forward, staring. "This is the raptor nest," he said.

In the darkness of the trailer, Malcolm sat up, wincing. He grabbed the radio. "You found it? The nest?"

    The radio crackled. Levine said, "Yes. I think so."

    "Describe it," Malcolm said.

Levine spoke quietly, reporting features, estimating dimensions, to Levine, the velociraptor nest appeared slovenly, uncared for, ill-made. He was surprised, because dinosaur nests usually conveyed an unmistakable sense of order. Levine had seen it time and again, in fossil sites from Montana to Mongolia. The eggs in the nest were arranged in neat concentric circles. Often there were more than thirty eggs in a single nest, suggesting that many females cooperated to share a single mud mound. Numerous adult fossils would be found nearby, indicating that the dinosaurs cared communally for the eggs. At a few excavations, it was even possible to get a sense of the spatial arrangement, with the nests in the center, the adults moving carefully around the outside, so as not to disturb the incubating eggs. In this rigid structure, the dinosaurs were reminiscent of their descendants the birds, which also displayed precise courtship, mating, and nest-building patterns.

    But the velociraptors behaved differently. There was a disorderly chaotic feeling to the scene before him: ill-formed nests; quarreling adults; very few young and juvenile animals; the eggshells crushed; the broken mounds stepped on. Around the mounds, Levine now saw scattered small bones which he presumed were the remains of newborns. He saw no living infants anywhere in the clearing. There were three juveniles, but these younger animals were forced to fend for themselves, and they already showed many scars on their bodies. The youngsters looked thin, undernourished. Poking around the periphery of the carcass, they were cautious, backing away whenever one of the adults snapped at them.

    "And what about the apatosaurs?" Malcolm asked. "What about the carcasses?"

    Levine counted four, all together. In various stages of decomposition.

    "You have to tell Sarah," Malcolm said.

    But Levine was wondering about something else: he was wondering how these big carcasses had gotten here in the first place. They hadn't died here by accident, surely all animals would have avoided this nest. They couldn't have been lured here, and they were too large to carry. So how did they get here? Something was tickling the back of his mind, some obvious thought that he wasn't -

    "They brought Arby," Malcolm said.

    "Yes," Levine said. "They did."

    He stared at the nest, trying to figure it out. Then Thorne nudged him. "There's the cage," he said, pointing. At the far side of the clearing lying on the ground, partially hidden behind fronds, Levine saw the glint of aluminum struts. But he couldn't see Arby.

    "Way over there," Levine said.

    The raptors were ignoring the cage, still fighting over Eddie's carcass. Thorne brought out a Lindstradt rifle, snapped open the cartridge pack. He saw six darts. "Not enough," he said, and snapped it shut. There were at least ten raptors in the clearing.

    Levine rummaged in the back seat, found his knapsack, which had fallen to the floor. He unzipped it, came out with a small silver cylinder the size of a large soft-drink bottle. It had a skull and crossbones stenciled on it, Beneath, lettering read: CAUTION TOXIC METACHOLINE (MIVACURIAM).

    "What's that?" Thorne said.

    "Something they cooked up in Los Alamos," Levine said. "It's a nonlethal area neutralizer. Releases a short-acting cholinesterase aerosol. Paralyzes all life forms for up to three minutes. It'll knock all the raptors out.

    "But what about the boy?" Thorne said. "You can't use that. You'll paralyze him."

    Levine pointed. "If we throw the canister to the right of the cage, the gas'll blow away from him, toward the raptors."

    "Or it may not," Thorne said, "And he may be badly injured."

    Levine nodded. He put the cylinder back in the knapsack, then sat, facing forward, staring at the raptors. "So," Levine said. "What do we do now?"

    Thorne looked over at the aluminum cage, partially blocked by ferns. Then he saw something that made him sit up: the cage moved slightly, the bars shifting in the moonlight.

    "Did you see that?" Levine said.

    Thorne said, "I'm going to get that kid out of there."

    "But how?" Levine said.

    "The old-fashioned way, " Thorne said.

    He climbed out of the car.

Sarah accelerated, racing the motorcycle up the mud banks of the river. The raptor was just ahead, cutting diagonally toward them, heading for the water.

    "Go!" Kelly shouted. "Go!"

    The raptor saw them and changed course, angling farther ahead. It was trying to get distance on them but they were moving faster on the open banks. They came abreast of the animal, flanking it, and then Sarah left the banks, heading back onto the grassy plain. The raptor moved right, deeper into the plain. Away from the river.

    "You did it!" Kelly shouted.

    Sarah maintained her speed, moving slowly closer to the raptor. It seemed to have given up on the river, and now had no plan. It was just running up the plain. And they were steadily, inexorably gaining. Kelly was excited. She tried to wipe the maid off her rifle, preparing to shoot again.

    "Damn!" Sarah shouted.

    "What?"

    "Look!"

    Kelly leaned forward, stared past Sarah's shoulder. Directly ahead, she saw the herd of apatosaurs. They were only fifty yards from the first of the enormous animals, which bellowed and wheeled in sudden fear. Their bodies were green-gray in the moonlight.

    The raptor streaked directly toward the herd.

    "It thinks it's going to lose us!" Sarah gunned the bike, moving closer. "Get it now! Now!"

    Kelly aimed and fired. The gun bucked. But the raptor kept going.

    "Missed!"

    Up ahead, the apatosaurs were turning, their big legs stomping the ground. Their heavy tails whipped through the air. But they were too slow to move away. The raptor raced forward, heading directly beneath the big apatosaurs.

    "What do we do?" Kelly shouted.

    "No choice!"' Sarah yelled. She pulled parallel to the raptor just as they passed into shadow, racing beneath the first animal. Kelly glimpsed the curve of the belly, hanging three feet above her. The legs were as thick as tree trunks, stamping and turning.

    The raptor ran on, darting among the moving legs. Sarah swerved, followed. Above them, the animals roared and turned, and roared again. They were beneath another belly, then out into moonlight, then in shadow again. Now they were in the middle of the herd. It was like being in a forest of moving trees.

    Directly ahead, a big leg came down with a slam! that shook the ground. The bike bounced as Sarah swung left; they scraped against the animal's flesh. "Hang on!" she shouted, and swerved again, following the raptor. Above them, the apatosaurs were bellowing and moving. The raptor dodged and turned, and then broke clear, racing out the back of the herd.

    "Shit!" Sarah said, spinning the bike around. A whiptail swung low, narrowly missing them, and then they too were free, chasing the raptor again.

    The motorcycle raced across the grassy plain.

    "Last chance!" Sarah shouted. "Do it"'

    Kelly raised the rifle. Sarah was driving hard and fast, pulling very close to the running raptor. The animal turned to butt her, but she held her position, punched it hard in the head with her fist. "Now! "

    Kelly shoved the barrel against the flesh of the neck, and squeezed the trigger. The gun snapped back hard, jolting her in the stomach.

    The raptor ran on.

    "No!" she shouted. "No!"

    And then suddenly the raptor fell, tumbling end over end in the grass, and Sarah swung the bike away and pulled to a stop. The raptor was five yards away, flopping in the grass. It snarled and yelped. Then it was silent.

    Sarah took the rifle, snapped open the cartridge pack. Kelly saw five more darts.

    "I thought that was the last one," she said.

    "I lied," Sarah said. "Wait here."

    Kelly stayed by the bike while Sarah moved cautiously forward through the grass. Sarah fired one more shot, then stood waiting for a few moments. Then she bent down.

    When she came back, she was holding the key in her hand.

In the nest, the raptors were still tearing at the carcass, off to one side. But the intensity of the behavior was diminishing: some of the animals were turning away, rubbing their jaws with their clawed hands, drifting slowly toward the center of the clearing.

    Moving closer to the cage.

    Thorne climbed into the back of the jeep, pushing aside the canvas cover. He checked the rifle in his hands.

    Levine slid into the driver's seat. He started the engine. Thorne steadied himself in the back of the jeep, gripped the rear bar. He turned to Levine.

    "Go!"

    The Jeep raced forward across the clearing- By the carcass, the raptors looked up in surprise as they saw the intruder. By then the jeep was past the center of the clearing, driving past the enormous dead skeletons, the broad ribs high over their heads, and then Levine was swinging the car left, pulling alongside the aluminum cage. Thorne jumped out, and grabbed the cage in both hands. In the darkness he couldn't tell how badly Arby was hurt; the boy was turned face down. Levine climbed out of the car; Thorne yelled for him to get back in, as he lifted the cage high and swung it onto the back of the Jeep. Thorne jumped into the back, next to the cage, and Levine shoved the car in gear. Behind them, the raptors snarled and raced forward in pursuit, running among the skeletal ribs. They crossed the clearing with stunning speed.

    As Levine stepped on the gas, the nearest raptor leapt high, landing up on the back of the car, and grabbing the canvas tarp in its teeth. The animal hissed and held on.

    Levine accelerated, and the Jeep bounced out of the clearing.

In darkness, Malcolm sank back into morphine dreams, images floated in front of his eyes: fitness landscapes, the Multicolored computer images now employed to think about evolution. In this mathematical world of peaks and valleys, populations of organisms were seen to climb the fitness peaks, or slide down into the valleys of nonadaptation. Stu Kauffman and his coworkers had shown that advanced organisms had complex internal constraints which made them more likely to fall off the fitness optima, and descend into the valleys. Yet, at the same time complex creatures were themselves selected by evolution. Because complex creatures were able to adapt on their own. With tools, with learning, with cooperation.

    But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost-they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching. Chimpanzees taught their young to collect termites with a stick. Such actions implied at least the rudiments of a culture. a structured social life. But animals raised in isolation, without parents, without guidance, were not fully functional. Zoo animals frequently could not care for their offspring, because they had never seen it done. They would ignore their infants, or roll over and crush them, or simply become annoyed with them and kill them.

    The velociraptors were among the most intelligent dinosaurs, and the most ferocious. Both traits demanded behavioral control. Millions of years ago, in the now-vanished Jurassic world, their behavior would have been socially determined, passed on from older to younger animals. Genes controlled the capacity to make such patterns, but not the patterns themselves. Adaptive behavior was a kind of morality; it was behavior that had evolved over many generations because it was found to succeed - behavior that allowed members of the species to cooperate, to live together, to hunt, to raise young.

    But on this island, the velociraptors had been re-created in a genetics laboratory. Although their physical bodies were genetically determined, their behavior was not. These newly created raptors came into the world with no older animals to guide them, to show them proper raptor behavior. They were on their own, and that was just how they behaved - in a society without structure, without rules, without cooperation. They lived in an uncontrolled, every-creature-for-himself world where the meanest and the nastiest survived, and all the others died.

The Jeep picked up speed, bouncing hard. Thorne held on to the bars, to keep from being thrown out. Behind him, he saw the raptor swinging back and forth in the air, still clinging to the tarp. It wasn't letting go. Levine drove back onto the flat muddy banks of the river, and turned right, following the edge of the water. The raptor hung on tenaciously.

    Directly ahead, lying in the mud, Levine saw another skeleton. Another skeleton? Why were all these skeletons here? But there was no time to think - he drove forward, passing beneath the row of ribs. Without lights, he leaned forward and squinted in the moonlight, looking for obstacles ahead.

    In the back of the car, the raptor scrambled up, released the tarp, clamped its jaws on the cage, and began to pull it out of the back of the Jeep. Thorne lunged, grabbed the end of the cage nearest him. The cage twisted rolling Thorne onto his back. He found himself in a tug of war with the raptor - and the raptor was winning. Thorne locked his legs around the front passenger seat, trying to hold on. The raptor snarled; Thorne sensed the sheer fury of the animal, enraged that it might lose its prize.

    "Here!" Levine shouted, holding a gun out to Thorne. Thorne was on his back, gripping the cage in both hands. He couldn't take the gun. Levine looked back, and saw the situation. He looked in the rearview mirror. Behind them, he saw the rest of the pack still in pursuit, snarling and growling. He could not slow down. Thorne could not let go of the cage. Still driving fast, Levine swung around in the passenger seat, and aimed the rifle backward. He tried to maneuver the gun, knowing what would happen if he accidentally shot Thorne, or Arby.

    "Watch it!" Thorne was shouting. "Watch it!"

    Levine managed to get the safety off, and swung the barrel straight at the raptor, which was still gripping the cage bars in its jaws. The animal looked up, and in a quick movement closed its jaws over the barrel. It tugged at the gun.

    Levine fired.

    The raptor's eyes popped wide as the dart slammed into the back of its throat. It made a gurgling sound, then went into convulsions, toppling backward out of the Jeep - and yanking the gun from Levine's hands as it fell.

    Thorne scrambled to his knees, and pulled the cage inside the car. He looked down inside it, but he couldn't tell about Arby. Looking back, he saw the other raptors were still pursuing, but they were now twenty yards back, and losing ground.

    On the dashboard, the radio hissed. "Doc." Thorne recognized Sarah's voice.

    "Yes, Sarah."

    "Where are you?"

    "Following the river," Thorne said.

    The storm clouds had now cleared, and it was a bright moonlit night. Behind him, the raptors still continued to chase the Jeep. But they were now failing steadily behind.

    "I can't see your lights," Sarah said.

    "Don't have any."

    There was a pause. The radio crackled. Her voice was tense: "What about Arby."

    "We have him," Thorne said.

    "Thank God. How is he?"

    "I don't know. Alive."

    The landscape opened out. They came back into a broad valley, the grass silvery in the moonlight. Thorne looked around, trying to orient himself. Then he realized: they were back on the plain, but much farther to the south. They must still be on the same side of the river as the high hide. In that case, they ought to be able to make their way up onto the ridge road, somewhere to the left. That road would lead them back to the clearing, and the remaining trailer. And safety. He nudged Levine, pointed to the right. "Go there!"

    Levine turned the car, Thorne clicked the radio. "Sarah."

    "Yes, Doc."

    "We're going back to the trailer on the ridge road."

    "Okay," Sarah said. "We'll find you."

Sarah looked back at Kelly. "Where's the ridge road?"

    "I think it's that one up there," Kelly said, pointing to the spine of the ridge, on the cliffs high above them.

    "Okay," Sarah said. She gunned the bike forward.

The Jeep rumbled across the plain, deep in silvery grass. They were moving fast. The raptors were no longer visible behind them. "Looks like we lost them," Thorne said.

    "Maybe," Levine said. When he had pulled out of the streambed, he had seen several animals dart off to the left. They would now be hidden in the grass. He wasn't sure they would give up so easily.

    The Jeep was roaring toward the cliffs. Directly ahead he saw a curving switchback road, running up from the valley floor. That was the ridge road, he felt sure.

Now that the terrain was smoother, Thorne crawled back between the seats and crouched over the cage. He peered in through the bars at Arby, who was groaning softly.

    Half the boy's face was slick with blood, and his shirt was soaked. But his eyes were open, and he seemed to be moving his arms and legs.

    Thorne leaned close to the bars. "Hey, son," he said gently. "Can you hear me?"

    Arby nodded, moaning.

    "How you doing there?"

    "Been better," Arby said.

The Jeep ground onto the dirt road, and headed upward along the switchbacks. Levine felt a sense of relief as they moved higher, away from the valley. He was finally on the ridge road, and he was going to be safe.

    He looked up, toward the crest. And then he saw the dark shapes 'in the moonlight, already at the top of the road, hopping up and down.

    Raptors.

    Waiting for him.

    He pulled to a stop. "What do we do now?"

    "Move over," Thorne said grimly. "I'll take it from here."

At the Edge OF Chaos

Thorne came up onto the ridge, and turned left, accelerating. The road stretched ahead in the moonlight, a narrow strip running between a rock wall to his left, and a sheer cliff falling away on the right. Twenty feet above him, on the ridge, he saw the raptors, leaping and snorting as they ran parallel to the Jeep.

    Levine saw them too.

    "What are we going to do?" he said.

    Thorne shook his head. "Look in the too] kit. Look in the glove compartment. Get anything you can find."

    Levine bent over, fumbling in darkness. But Thorne knew they were in trouble. Their gun was gone. They were in a jeep with a cloth top, and the raptors were all around them. He guessed he was probably about half a mile from the clearing, and the trailer.

    Half a mile to go.

    Thorne slowed as he came into the next curve, moving the car away from the plunging drop of the cliff. Rounding the curve, he saw a raptor crouched in the middle of the road, facing them, its head lowered menacingly. Thorne accelerated toward it. The raptor leapt up in the air, legs raised high. It landed on the hood of the car, claws squealing as they raked metal. It smashed against the windshield, the glass streaking spiderwebs. With the animal's body lying against the windshield, Thorne couldn't see anything. On this dangerous road, he slammed on the brakes.

    "Hey!" Levine shouted, tumbling forward.

    The raptor on the hood slid off to the side. Now Thorne could see again, and he stamped on the gas. Levine fell back again as the car moved forward. But three raptors were charging the car from the side.

    One jumped onto the running board and locked its jaws on the side mirror. The animal's glaring eye was close to Thorne's face. He swung the wheel left, scraping the car along the rocky face of the road. Ten yards ahead a boulder protruded. He glanced at the raptor, which continued to hold on tenaciously, right to the moment when the boulder smashed into the side mirror, tearing it away. The raptor was gone.

    The road widened a little. Thorne had more room to maneuver now. He felt a heavy thump, and looked up to see the canvas top sagging above his head. Claws slashed down by his ear, ripping through the canvas.

    He swung the car right, then left again. The claws pulled out, but the animal was still up there, its body still indenting the cloth. Beside him, Levine produced a big hunting knife, and thrust it upward through the Cloth. Immediately, another claw raked downward, slashing Levine's hand. He yelled in pain, dropping the knife. Thorne bent over, reaching down to the floor for it.

    In the rearview mirror, he saw two more raptors in the road behind him, chasing the Jeep. They were gaining on him,

    But the road was broader now, and he accelerated. The raptor on the roof peered over the top, looking in through the broken windshield. Thorne held the knife in his fist and jabbed it straight up with full force, again and again. It didn't seem to make any difference. As the road curved, he jerked the wheel right, then back, the whole jeep tilting, and the raptor on the roof lost its grip and rolled backward off the top. It tore most of the canvas roof away as it went. The animal bounced on the ground and hit the two pursuing raptors. The impact knocked all three over the side; they fell snarling down the cliff face.

    "That does it!" Levine shouted.

    But a moment later, another raptor jumped down from the cliff and ran forward, only a few feet from the Jeep.

    And lightly, almost easily, the raptor leapt up into the back of the Jeep.

In, the passenger seat, Levine stared. The raptor was fully inside the Jeep, its head low, arms up, jaws wide, in an unmistakable posture. The raptor hissed at him.

    Levine thought, It's all over.

    He was shocked: his entire body broke out in sweat, be felt dizzy, and he realized in a single instant there was nothing he could do, that he was moments from death. The creature hissed again, snapping its jaws, crouching to lunge - and then suddenly white foam appeared at the corners of its mouth, and its eyes rolled back. Foam bubbled out of its jaws. It began to twitch, its body going into spasms. It fell over on its side in the back of the car.

     Behind them he now saw Sarah on the motorcycle, and Kelly holding the rifle. Thorne slowed, and Sarah pulled alongside them. She handed the key to Levine.

    "For the cage!" she shouted.

    Levine took it numbly, almost dropped it. He was in shock. Moving slowly. Dumbly. I nearly died, he thought.

    "Get her gun!" Thorne said.

    Levine looked off to the left, where more raptors were still racing along, parallel to the car. He counted six, but there were probably more. He tried to count again, his mind working slowly -

    "Get the damned gun!"

    Levine took the gun from Kelly, feeling the cold metal of the barrel in his hands.

    But now the car sputtered, the engine coughing, dying, then coughing again. Jerking forward.

    "What's that?" he said, turning to Thorne.

    "Trouble," Thorne said. "We're out of gas."

Thorne popped the car into neutral, and it rolled forward, losing speed.

    Ahead was a slight rise, and beyond that, across a curve, he could see the road sloped down again. Sarah was on the motorcycle behind them, shaking her head.

    Thorne realized his only hope was to make it over the rise. He said to Levine, "Unlock the cage. Get him out of there." Levine was suddenly moving quickly, almost panicky, but crawled back, and got the key in the lock. The cage creaked open. He helped Arby out.

    Thorne watched the speedometer as the needle fell. They were going twenty-five miles an hour...then twenty...then fifteen. The raptors, running alongside, began to move closer, sensing the car was in trouble.

    Fifteen miles an hour. Still falling.

    "He's out," Levine said, from the back. He clanged the cage shut.

    "Push the cage off," Thorne said. The cage rolled off the back, bouncing down the hill.

    Ten miles an hour.

    The car seemed to be creeping. And then they were over the rise, moving down the other side, gaining speed again. Twelve miles an hour. Fifteen. Twenty. He careened around the curves, trying not to touch the brakes.

    Levine said, "We'll never make it to the trailer!" He was screaming at the top of his lungs, eyes wide with fear.

    "I know." Thorne could see the trailer off to the left, but separated from them by a gentle rise in the road. They could not get there. But up ahead the road forked, sloping down to the right, toward the laboratory. And if he remembered correctly, that road was all downhill.

    Thorne turned right, away from the trailer.

He saw the big roof of the laboratory, a flat expanse in the moonlight. He followed the road past the laboratory, down around the back, toward the worker village. He saw the manager's house to the right, and the convenience store, with the gas pumps in front. Was there a chance they might still have gasoline?

    "Look!" Levine said, pointing behind them. "Look! Look!" Thorne glanced over his shoulder and saw that the raptors were dropping back, giving up the chase. In the vicinity of the laboratory, they seemed to hesitate.

    "They're not following us any more!" Levine shouted.

    "Yeah," Thorne said. "But where's Sarah?"

    Behind them, Sarah's motorcycle was nowhere to be seen.

Trailer

Sarah Harding twisted the handlebars, and the motorcycle shot forward over the low rise in the road ahead. She crested and came down again, heading toward the trailer. Behind her, four raptors snarled in pursuit. She accelerated, trying to get ahead of them, to gain precious yards. Because they were going to need it.

    She leaned back, and shouted to Kelly, "Okay! This has to be fast!"

    "What?" Kelly shouted.

    "When we get to the trailer, you jump off and run in. Don't wait for me. Understand?"

    Kelly nodded, tensely.

    "Whatever happens, don't wait for me!"

    "Okay."

    Harding roared up to the trailer, braked hard. The bike skidded on the wet grass, banged into the metal siding. But Kelly was already leaping off, scrambling up toward the door, going into the trailer. Sarah had wanted to get the bike inside, but she saw the raptors were very close, too close. She pushed the bike toward them and in a single motion stepped up and threw herself through the trailer door, landing on her back on the floor, She twisted her body around and kicked the door shut with her legs, just as the first of the raptors slammed against it.

    Inside the dark trailer, she held the door shut as the animals pounded it repeatedly. She felt for a lock on the door, but couldn't find one.

    "Ian. Does this door lock?"

    She heard Malcolm's voice, dreamy in the darkness. "Life is a crystal," he said.

    "Ian. Try and pay attention."

    Then Kelly was alongside her, hands moving up and down. The raptors thumped against the door. After a moment she said, "It's down here. By the floor." Harding heard a metallic click, and stepped away.

    Kelly reached out, took her hand. The raptors were pounding and snarling outside. "It'll be okay," Harding said reassuringly.

    She went over to Malcolm, still lying on the bed. The raptors snapped and lunged at the window near his head, their claws raking the glass. Malcolm watched them calmly. "Noisy bastards, aren't they?" By his side, the first-aid kit was open, a syringe on the cushion. He had probably injected himself again.

    Through the windows, the animals stopped throwing themselves against the glass. She heard the sound of scraping metal, from over by the door, and then saw that the raptors were dragging the motorbike away from the trailer. They were hopping up and down on it in fairy. It wouldn't be long before they punctured the tires.

    "Ian," she said. "We have to do this fast."

    "I'm in no rush," he said calmly.

    She said, "What kind of weapons have you got here?"

    "Weapons...oh...I don't know..." He sighed. "What do you want weapons for?"

    "Ian, please."

    "You're talking so fast," he said. "You know, Sarah, you really ought to try to relax."

In the darkened trailer, Kell was frightened, but she was reassured at the no-nonsense way Sarah talked about weapons. And Kelly was beginning to see that Sarah didn't let anything stop her, she just went and did it. This whole attitude of not letting other people stop you, of believing that you could do what you wanted, was something she found herself imitating.

    Kelly listened to Dr. Malcolm's voice and knew that he would be of no help. He was on drugs and he didn't care. And Sarah didn't know her way around the trailer, Kelly did; she had searched the trailer earlier, looking for food. And she seemed to remember...

    In the darkness, she pulled open the drawers quickly. She squinted, trying to see. She was sure she remembered one drawer, low down had contained a pack marked with a skull and crossbones. That pack might have some kind of weapons, she thought.

    She heard Sarah say, "Ian: try and think."

    And she heard Dr. Malcolm say, "Oh, I have been, Sarah. I've had the most wonderful thoughts. You know, all those carcasses at the raptor site present a wonderful example of - "

    "Not now, Ian."

    Kelly went through the drawers, leaving them open so she would know which ones she had already checked. She moved down the trailer, and then her hand touched rough canvas. She leaned forward. Yes, this was it.

    Kelly pulled out a square canvas pack that was surprisingly heavy. She said, "Sarah. Look."

Sarah Harding took the pack to the window, where moonlight shone in. She unzipped the pack and stared at the contents. The pack was divided into padded sections. She saw three square blocks made of some substance that felt rubbery. And there was a small silver cylinder, like a small oxygen bottle. "What is all this stuff?"

    "We thought it was a good idea," Malcolm said. "But now I'm not sure it was. The thing is that -"

    "What is it?" she said, interrupting. She had to keep him focused. His mind was drifting.

    "Nonlethals," Malcolm said. "Alexander's ragtime band. We wanted to have - "

    "What's this?" she said, holding up one of the blocks in front of his face.

    "Area-dispersal smoke cube. What you do is - "

    "Just smoke?" she said. "It just makes smoke?"

    "Yes, but - "

    "What's this?" she said, raising the silver cylinder. It had writing on it.

    "Cholinesterase bomb. Releases gas, Produces short-term paralysis when it goes off. Or so they say."

    "How short?"

    "A few minutes, I think, but - "

    "How does it work?" she said, turning it in her hand. There was a cap at the end, with a locking pin. She started to pull it off, to get a look at the mechanism.

    "Don't!" he said. "That's how you do it. You pull the pin and throw. Goes off in three seconds."

    "Okay," she said. Hastily, she packed up the medical kit, throwing the syringe inside, shutting the lid.

    "What are you doing?" Malcolm said, alarmed.

    "We're getting out of here," she said, as she moved to the door.

    Malcolm sighed. "It's so nice to have a man around the house," he said.

The cylinder sailed high through the air, tumbling in the moonlight. The raptors were about five yards away, clustered around the bike. One of the animals looked up and saw the cylinder, which landed in the grass a few yards away.

    Sarah stood by the door, waiting.

    Nothing happened.

    No explosion.

    Nothing.

    "Ian! It didn't work."

    Curious, one raptor hopped over toward where the cylinder had landed in the grass. It ducked down, and when it raised its head, it held the cylinder glinting in its jaws.

    She sighed. "It didn't work."

    "Oh, never mind," Malcolm said calmly.

    The raptor shook its head, biting into the cylinder.

    "What do we do now?" Kelly said.

    There was a loud explosion, and a cloud of dense white smoke blasted outward across the clearing. The raptors disappeared in the cloud.

    Harding closed the door quickly. "Now what?" Kelly said.

With Malcolm leaning on her shoulder, they moved across the clearing in the night. The gas cloud had dissipated, several minutes before. The first raptor they found in the grass was lying on its side, eyes open, absolutely motionless. But it wasn't dead: Harding could see the steady pulse in the neck. The animal was merely paralyzed. She said to Malcolm, "How long will it last?"

    "Have no idea," Malcolm said. "Much wind?"

    "There's no wind, Ian."

    "Then it should last a bit."

    They moved forward. Now the raptors lay all around them. They stepped around the bodies, smelling the rotten odor of carnivores. One of the animals lay across the bike. She eased Malcolm down to the ground, where he sat, sighing. After a moment, he began to sing: "I wish in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten, look away..."

    Harding tugged at the motorcycle handlebars, trying to pull the bike from beneath the raptor. The animal was too heavy. Kelly said, "Let me," and reached for the handlebars. Harding went forward. Without hesitating, she bent over and put her arms around the raptor's neck, and pulled the head upward. She felt a wave of revulsion. Hot scaly skin scraped her arms and cheek. She grunted as she leaned back, raising the animal.

    "In Dixie land...duh-duh-duh-duh...to live and die in Dixie..."

    She said to Kelly, "Got it?"

    "Not yet," Kelly said, pulling on the handlebars.

    Harding's face was inches from the velociraptor's head and laws. The head flopped back and forth as she adjusted her grip. Close to her face, the open eye stared at her, unseeing. Harding tugged, trying to lift the animal higher.

    "Almost... " Kelly said.

    Harding groaned, lifting.

    The eye blinked.

    Frightened, Harding dropped the animal. Kelly pulled the bike away. "Got it!"

    "Away, away...away down south...in Dixie..."

    Harding came around the raptor. Now the big leg twitched. The chest began to move.

    "Let's go," she said. "Ian, behind me. Kelly, on the handlebars."

    "Away...away...a-way down south..."

    "Let's go," Harding said, climbing on the bike. She kept her eyes on the raptor. The head gave a convulsive jerk. The eye blinked again. It was definitely waking up. "Let's go, let's go. Let's go!"

Village

Sarah drove the motorcycle down the hill toward the worker village. Looking past Kelly, Sarah saw the Jeep parked at the store, not far from the gas pumps. She braked to a stop, and they all climbed off in the moonlight. Kelly opened the door to the store, and helped Malcolm inside. Sarah rolled the motorcycle into the store, and closed the door.

    "Doc?" she said.

    "We're over here," Thorne said. "With Arby."

    By the moonlight filtering in through the windows, she could see the store looked very much like an abandoned roadside convenience stand. There was a glass-walled refrigerator of soft drinks, the cans obscured by mold on the glass. A wire rack nearby held candy bars and Twinkies, the wrappers speckled green, crawling with larvae. In the adjacent magazine rack, the pages were curled, the headlines five years old.

    To one side were rows of basic supplies: toothpaste, aspirin, suntan lotion, shampoo, combs and brushes. Alongside this were racks of clothing, tee shirts and shorts, socks, tennis rackets, bathing suits. And a few souvenirs: key chains, ashtrays, and drinking glasses.

    In the center of the room was a little island with a computer cash register, a microwave, and a coffee maker. The microwave door hung wide; some animal had made a nest inside. The coffee maker was cracked, and laced with cobwebs.

    "What a mess," Malcolm said.

    "Looks fine to me," Sarah Harding said. The windows were all barred. The walls seemed solid enough. The canned goods would still be edible. She saw a sign that said "Restrooms," so maybe there was plumbing, too. They should be safe here, at least for a while.

    She helped Malcolm to lie down on the floor. Then she went over to where Thorne and Levine were working on Arby. "I brought the first-aid kit," she said. "How is he?"

    "Pretty bruised," Thorne said. "Some gashes. But nothing broken. Head looks bad."

    "Everything hurts," Arby said. "Even my mouth."

    "Somebody see if there's a light," she said. "Let me look, Arby. Okay, you're missing a couple of teeth, that's why. But that can be fixed. The cut on your head isn't so bad." She swabbed it clean with gauze, turned to Thorne. "How long until the helicopter comes?"

    Thorne looked at his watch. "Two hours."

    "And where does it land?"

    "The pad is several miles from here."

    Working on Arby, she nodded. "Okay. So we have two hours to get to the pad."

    Kelly said, "How can we do that? The car's out of gas."

    "Don't worry," Sarah said. "We'll figure something out. It's going to be fine."

    "You always say that," Kelly said.

    "Because it's always true," Sarah said. "Okay, Arby, I need you to help now. I'm going to sit you up, and get your shirt off...."

Thorne moved off to one side with Levine. Levine was wild-eyed, his body moving in a twitchy way. The drive in the Jeep seemed to have finished him off. "What is she talking about?" he said. "We're trapped here. Trapped!" There was hysteria in his voice. "We can't go anywhere. We can't do anything. I'm telling you, we're all going to d - "

    "Keep it down," Thorne said, grabbing his arm, leaning close. "Don't upset the kids."

    "What difference does it make?" Levine said. "They're going to find out sooner or - Ow! Take it easy."

    Thorne was squeezing his arm hard. He leaned close to Levine. "You're too old to act like an asshole," he said quietly. "Now, pull yourself together, Richard. Are you listening to me, Richard?"

    Levine nodded.

    "Good. Now, Richard, I'm going to go outside, and see if the pumps work."

    "They can't possibly work," Levine said. "Not after five years. I'm telling you, it's a waste of - "

    "Richard," Thorne said. We have to check the pumps."

    There was a pause. The two men looked at each other.

    "You mean you're going outside?" Levine said.

    "Yes."

    Levine frowned. Another pause.

    Crouched over Arby, Sarah said, "Where are the lights, guys?"

    "Just a minute," Thorne said to her. He leaned close to Levine. "Okay?"

    "Okay," Levine said, taking a breath.

    Thorne went to the front door, opened it, and stepped out into darkness. Levine closed the door behind him. Thorne heard a click as the door locked.

    He immediately turned, and rapped softly. Levine opened the door a few inches, peering out.

    "For Christ's sake," Thorne whispered. "Don't lock it!"

    "But I just thought - "

    "Don't lock the damn door!"

    "Okay, okay. I'm sorry."

    "For Christ's sake," Thorne said.

    He closed the door again, and turned to face the night.

Around him, the worker village was silent. He heard only the steady drone of cicadas in the darkness. It seemed almost too quiet, he thought. But perhaps it was just the contrast from the snarling raptors. Thorne stood with his back to the door for a long time, staring out at the clearing. He saw nothing.

    Finally he walked over to the jeep, opened the side door, and fumbled in the dark for the radio. Ills hand touched it; it had slid under the passenger seat. He pulled it out and carried it back to the store, knocked on the door.

    Levine opened it, said "It's not lock - "

    "Here." Thorne handed him the radio, closed the door again.

    Again, he paused, watching. Around him, the compound was silent. The moon was full. The air was still.

    He moved forward and peered closely at the gas pumps. The handle of the nearest one was rusted, and draped with spiderwebs. He pulled the nozzle up, and flicked the latch. Nothing happened. He squeezed the nozzle handle. No liquid came out. He tapped the glass window on the pump that showed the number of gallons, and the glass fell out in his hand. Inside, a spider scurried across the metal numerals.

    There was no gas.

    They had to find gas, or they'd never get to the helicopter. He frowned at the pumps, thinking. They were simple, the kind of very reliable pumps you found at a remote construction site. And that made sense, because after all, this was an island.

    He paused.

    This was an island. That meant everything came in by plane, or boat. Most times, probably by boat. Small boats, where supplies were offloaded by hand. Which meant...

    He bent over, examining the base of the pump in the moonlight. just as he thought, there were no buried gas tanks. He saw a thick black PVC pipe running at an angle just tinder the ground. He could see the direction the pipe was going - around the side of the store.

    Thorne followed it, moving cautiously in the moonlight. He paused for a moment to listen, then moved on.

    He came around to the side and saw just what he expected to see: fifty-gallon metal drums, ranged along the side wall. There were three of them, connected by a series of black hoses, That made sense. All the gasoline on the island would have had to come here in drums.

    He tapped the drums softly with a knuckle. They were hollow. He lifted one, hoping to hear the slosh of liquid at the bottom. They needed only a gallon or two -

    Nothing.

    The drums were empty.

    But surely, he thought, there must be more than three drums. He did a quick calculation in his head. A lab this large would have had a half-dozen support vehicles, maybe more. Even if they were fuel-efficient, they'd burn thirty or forty gallons a week. To be safe, the company would have stored at least two months' supply, perhaps six months' supply.

    That meant ten to thirty drums. And steel drums were heavy, so they probably stored them close by. Probably just a few yards...

    He turned slowly, looking. The moonlight was bright, and he could see well.

    Beyond the store, there was an open space, and then clumps of tall rhododendron bushes which bad overgrown the path leading to the tennis court. Above the bushes, the chain-link fence was laced with creeping vines. To the left was the first of the worker cottages. He could see only the dark roof. To the right of the court, nearer the store, there was thick foliage, although he saw a gap -

    A path.

    He moved forward, leaving the store behind. Approaching the dark gap in the bushes he saw a vertical line, and realized it was the edge of an open wooden door. There was a shed, back in the foliage. The other door was closed. As he came closer, he saw a rusted metal sign, with flaking red lettering. The letters were black in the moonlight.

PRECAUCION

NON FUMARE

INFLAMMABLE

    He paused, listening. He heard the raptors snarling in the distance, but they seemed far away, back up on the hill. For some reason they still had not approached the village.

    Thorne waited, heart pounding, staring forward at the dark entrance to the shed. At last he decided it wasn't going to get any easier. They needed gas. He moved forward.

    The path to the shed was wet from the night's rain, but the shed was dry inside, His eyes adjusted. It was a small place, perhaps twelve by twelve. In the dim light he saw a dozen rusted drums, standing on end. Three or four more, on their sides. Thorne touched them all quickly, one after another. They were light: empty.

    Every one, empty.

    Feeling defeated, Thorne moved back toward the entrance to the shed. He paused for a moment, staring out at the moonlit night. And then, as he waited, he heard the unmistakable sound of breathing.

Inside the store, Levine moved from window to window, trying to follow Thorne's progress. His body was jumpy with tension. What was Thorne doing? He had gone so far from the store. It was very unwise. Levine kept glancing at the front door, wishing he could lock it. He felt so unsafe with the door unlocked.

    Now Thorne had gone off into the bushes, disappearing entirely from view. And he had been gone a long time. At least a minute or two.

    Levine stared out the window, and bit his lip. He heard the distant snarl of the raptors, and realized that they had remained up at the entrance to the laboratory. They hadn't followed the vehicles down, even now. Why not? he wondered. The question was welcome in his mind. Calming, almost soothing. A question to answer. Why had the raptors stayed up at the laboratory?

    All kinds of explanations occurred to him. The raptors had an atavistic fear of the laboratory, the place of their birth. They remembered the cages and didn't want to be captured again. But he suspected the most likely explanation was also the simplest - that the area around the laboratory was some other animal's territory, it was scent-marked and demarcated and defended, and the raptors were reluctant to enter it. Even the tyrannosaur, he remembered now, had gone through the territory quickly, without stopping.

    But whose territory?

    Levine stared out the window impatiently, as he waited.

    "What about the lights?" Sarah called, from across the room. "I need light here."

    "In a minute" Levine said.

At the entrance to the shed, Thorne stood silently, listening.

    He heard Soft, snorting exhalations, like a quiet horse. A large animal, waiting. The sound was coming from somewhere to his right. Thorne looked over, slowly.

    He saw nothing at all. Moonlight shone brightly over the worker village. He saw the store, the gas pumps, the dark shape of the Jeep. Looking to his right, he saw an open space, and clijmps of rhododendron bushes. The tennis court beyond.

    Nothing else.

    He stared, listening hard.

    The soft snorting continued. Hardly louder than a faint breeze. But there was no breeze: the trees and bushes were not moving.

    Or were they?

    Thorne had the sense that something was wrong. Something right before his eyes, something that he could see but couldn't see. With the effort of staring, he began to think his eyes were playing tricks on him. He thought he detected a slight movement in the bushes to the Tight. The pattern of the leaves seemed to shift in the moonlight. Shift, and stabilize again.

    But he wasn't sure.

    Thorne stared forward, straining. And as he looked he began to think that it wasn't the bushes that had caught his eye, but rather the chain-link fence. For most of its length, the fence was overgrown with an irregular tangle of vines, but in a few places the regular diamond pattern of links was visible. And there was something strange about that pattern. The fence seemed to be moving, rippling.

    Thorne watched carefully. Maybe it is moving, he thought. Maybe there's an animal inside the fence, pushing against it, making it move. But that didn't seem quite right.

    It was something else....

    Suddenly, lights came on inside the store. They shone through the barred windows, casting a geometric pattern of dark shadows across the open clearing, and onto the bushes by the tennis court. And for a moment - just a rnoment - Thorne saw that the bushes beside the tennis court were oddly shaped, and that they were actually two dinosaurs, seven feet tall, standing side by side, staring right at him.

    Their bodies seemed to be covered in a patchwork pattern of light and dark that made them blend in perfectly with leaves behind them, and ith the fence of the tennis court. Thorne was confused. Their concealment had been perfect - too perfect - until the lights from the store windows had shone out and caught them in the sudden bright glare.

    Thorne watched, holding his breath. And then he realized that the leafy light-and-dark pattern went only partway up their bodies, to mid-thorax. Above that, the animals had a kind of diamond-shaped crisscross pattern that matched the fence.

    And as Thorne stared, the complex patterns on their bodies faded, the animals turned a chalky white, and then a series of vertical striped shadows began to appear, which exactly matched the shadows cast by the windows.

    And before his eyes, the two dinosaurs disappeared from view again. Squinting, with concentrated effort, he could just barely distinguish the outlines of their bodies. He would never have been able to see them at all, had he not already known they were there.

    They were chameleons. But with a power of mimicry unlike any chameleon Thorne had ever seen.

    Slowly, he backed away into the shed, moving deeper into darkness.

"My God!" Levine exclaimed, staring out the window.

    "Sorry," Harding said "But I had to turn on the lights. That boy needs help. I can't do it in the dark."

    Levine did not answer her. He was staring out the window, trying to comprehend what he had just seen. He now realized what he had glimpsed the day Diego was killed. That brief momentary sense that something was wrong. Levine now knew what it was. But it was quite beyond anything that was known among terrestrial animals and -

    "What is it?" she said, standing alongside him at the window. "Is it Thorne?"

    "Look," Levine said.

    She stared out through the bars. "At the bushes? What7 What am I supposed to - "

    Look," he said.

    She watched for a moment longer, then shook her head. "I'm sorry."

    "Start at the bottom of the bushes," Levine told her. "Then let your eyes move up very slowly....Just look...and you'll see the outline."

    He heard her sigh. "I'm sorry."

    "Then turn out the lights again," he said. "And you'll see,"

    She turned the lights out, and for a moment Levine saw the two animals in sharp relief, their bodies pale white with vertical stripes in the moonlight. Almost immediately, the pattern started to fade.

    Harding came back, pushed in alongside him, and this time she saw the animals instantly. Just as Levine knew she would.

    "No shit," she said. "There are two of them?"

    "Yes. Side by side."

    "And...is the pattern fading?"

    "Yes. It's fading." As they watched, the striped pattern on their skins was replaced by the leafy pattern of the rhododendrons behind them. Once again, the two dinosaurs blended into invisibility. But such complex patterning implied that their epidermal layers were arranged in a manner similar to the chromatophores of marine invertebrates. The subtlety of shading, the rapidity of the changes all suggested -

    Harding frowned. "What are they?" she asked.

    "Chameleons of unparalleled skill, obviously. Although I'm not sure one is entirely justified in referring to them as chameleons, since technically chameleons have only the ability - "

    "What are they?" Sarah said impatiently.

    "Actually, I'd say they're Carnotaurus sastrei. Type specimen's from Patagonia. Two meters in height, with distinctive heads - you notice the short, bulldog snouts, and the pair of large horns above the eyes? Almost like wings - "

    "They're carnivores?"

    "Yes, of course, they have the - "

    "Where's Thorne?"

    "He went into that clump of bushes to the right, some time ago. I haven't seen him, but - "

    "What do we do?" she said.

    "Do?" Levine said. "I'm not sure I follow you."

    "We have to do something," she said, speaking slowly, as if he were a child. "We have to help Thorne get back."

    "I don't know how," Levine said. "Those animals must weigh five hundred pounds each. And there are two of them. I told him not to go out in the first place. But now..."

    Harding frowned. Staring out, she said, "Go turn the lights back on."

    "I'd prefer to - "

    "Go turn the lights back on!"

    Levine got up irritably. He had been relishing his remarkable discovery, a truly unanticipated feature of dinosaurs - although not, of course, entirely without precedent among related vertebrates - and now this little muscle-bound female was barking orders at him. Levine was offended. After all, she was riot much of a scientist. She was a naturalist. A field devoid of theory. One of those people who poked around in animal crap and imagined they were doing original research. A nice outdoor life, is all it amounted to. It wasn't science by any stretch -

    "On!" Harding shouted, looking out the window.

    He flicked the lights on, and started to head back to the window.

    Hastily, he went back and turned them off.

    "On!"

    He turned them on again.

    She got up from the window, and crossed the room. ,They didn t like that," she said. "It bothered them."

    "Well, there's probably a refractory period - "

    "Yeah, I think so. Here. Open these." She scooped up a handful of flashlights from one of the shelves, handed them to him, then went and got batteries from an adjacent wire rack. "I hope these still work."

    "What are you going to do?" Levine said.

    "We," she said, grimly. "We."

Thorne stood in the darkness of the shed, staring outward through the open doors. Someone had been turning the lights on and off inside the store. Then, for a while they remained on. But now suddenly they went off again. The area in front of the shed was lit only by moonlight.

    He heard movement, a soft rustling. He heard the breathing again. And then he saw the two dinosaurs, walking upright with stiff tails. Their skin patterns seemed to shift as they walked, and it was difficult to follow them, but they were moving toward the shed.

    They arrived at the entrance, their bodies silhouetted against the moonlight beyond, their outlines finally clear. They looked like small tyrannosaurs, except they had protuberances above the eyes, and they had very small, stubby forelimbs. The carnivores ducked their squarish heads down, and looked into the shed cautiously. Snorting, sniffing. Their tails swinging slowly behind them.

    They were really too big to come inside, and for a moment he hoped that they would not. Then the first of them lowered its head, growled, and stepped through the entrance.

    Thorne held his breath. He was trying to think what to do, but he couldn't think of anything at all. The animals were methodical, the first one moving aside so the second could enter as well,

    Suddenly, from along the side of the store, a half-dozen glaring lights shone out in bright beams. The lights moved, splashed on the dinosaurs' bodies. The beams began to move back and forth in slow, erratic patterns, like searchlights.

    The dinosaurs were clearly visible, and they didn't like it. They growled and tried to step away from the lights, but the beams moved continuously, searching them out, crisscrossing over their bodies. As the lights passed over their torsos, the skin paled in response, reproducing the movement of the beams, after the lights had moved on. Their bodies streaking white, fading to dark, streaking white again.

    The lights never stopped moving, except when they shone into the faces of the dinosaurs, and into their eyes. The big eyes blinked beneath their hooded wings; the animals twitched their heads and ducked away, as if annoyed by flies.

    The dinosaurs became agitated. They turned, backing out of the shed, and bellowed loudly at the moving lights.

    Still the lights moved, relentlessly swinging back and forth in the night. The pattern of movement was complex, confusing. The dinosaurs bellowed again, and took a menacing step toward the lights. But it was half-hearted. They clearly didn't like being around these moving sources. After a moment, they shuffled off, the lights following them, driving them away past the tennis courts.

    Thorne moved forward.

    He heard Harding say, "Doc? Better get out of there, before they decide to come back."

    Thorne moved quickly toward the lights. He found himself standing beside Levine and Harding. They were swinging fistfuls of flashlights back and forth.

    They all went back to the store.

Inside, Levine slammed the door shut, and sagged back against it. "I was never so frightened in my entire life."

    "Richard," Harding said coldly. "Get a grip on yourself." She crossed the room, and placed the flashlights on the counter.

    "Going out there was insane," Levine said, wiping his forehead. He was drenched in sweat, his shirt stained dark.

    "Actually, it was a slam dunk," Harding said. She turned to Thorne. "You could see they had a refractory period for skin response. It's fast compared to, say, an octopus, but it's still there. My assumption was that those dinosaurs were like all animals that rely on camouflage. They're basically ambushers. They're not particularly fast or active. They stand motionless for hours in an unchanging environment, disappearing into the background, and they wait until some unsuspecting meal comes along. But if they have to keep adjusting to new light conditions, they know they can't hide. They get anxious. And if they get anxious enough, they finally just run away. Which is what happened."

    Levine turned and glared angrily at Thorne. "This was all your fault. If you hadn't gone out there that way, just wandering off - "

    "Richard," Harding said, cutting him off. "We need gas or we'll never get out of here. Don't you want to get out of here?"

    Levine said nothing. He sulked.

    "Well," Thorne said, "there wasn't any gas in the shed anyway."

    "Hey, everybody," Sarah said. "Look who's here!"

Arby came forward, leaning on Kelly. He had changed into clothes from the store: a pair of swimming trunks and a tee shirt that said "InGen Bioengineering Labs" and beneath, "We Make The Future."

    Arby had a black eye, a swollen cheekbone, and a cut that Harding had bandaged on his forehead. His arms and legs were badly bruised. But he was walking, and he managed a crooked smile.

    Thorne said, "How do you feel, son?"

    Arby said, "You know what I want more than anything, right now?"

    "What?" Thorne said.

    "Diet Coke," Arby said. "And a lot of aspirin."

Sarah bent over Malcolm. He was humming softly, staring upward. "How is Arby?" he asked.

    "He'll be okay."

    "Does he need any morphine?" Malcolm asked.

    "No, I don't think so."

     "Good," Malcolm said. He stretched out his arm, rolling up the sleeve.

Thorne cleaned the nest out of the microwave, and heated up some canned beef stew. He found a package of paper plates decorated in a Halloween motif - pumpkins and bats - and spooned the food onto the plates. The two kids ate hungrily.

    He gave a plate to Sarah, then turned to Levine. "What about you?"

    Levine was staring out the window. "No."

    Thorne shrugged.

    Arby came over, holding his plate. "Is there any more?"

    "Sure," Thorne said. He gave him his own plate.

Levine went over and sat with Malcolm. Levine said, "Well, at least we were right about one thing. This island was a true lost world - a pristine, untouched ecology. We were right from the beginning."

    Malcolm looked over, and raised his head. "Are you joking?" he said. "What about all the dead apatosaurs?"

    "I've been thinking about that," Levine said. "The raptors killed them, obviously. And then the raptors - "

    "Did what? Malcolm said. "Dragged them to their nest? Those animals weigh hundreds of tons, Richard. A hundred raptors couldn't drag them. No, no." He sighed. "The carcasses must have floated to a bend in the river, where they beached. The raptors made their nest at a source of convenient food supply - dead apatosaurs."

    "Well, possibly..."

    "But why so many dead apatosaurs, Richard? Why do none of the animals attain adulthood? And why are there so many predators on the island?"

    "Well. We need more data, of course - " Levine began.

    "No, we don't," Malcolm said. "Didn't you go through the lab? We already know the answer."

    "What is it?" Levine said, irritably.

    "Prions," Malcolm said, closing his eyes.

    Levine frowned. "What're prions?"

    Malcolm sighed.

    "Ian," Levine said, "What are prions?"

    "Go away," Malcolm said, waving his hand.

Arby was curled up in a cornet, near sleep. Thorne rolled up a tee shirt, and put it under the boy's head. Arby mumbled something, and smiled.

    In a few moments, he began to snore.

    Thorne got up and went over to Sarah, who was standing by the window. Outside, the sky was beginning to lighten above the trees, turning pale blue.

    "How much time now?" she said.

    Thorne looked at his watch. "Maybe an hour."

    She started to pace. "We've got to get gas," she said. "If we have gas we can drive the Jeep to the helicopter site."

    "But there's no gas," Thorne said.

    "There must be some, somewhere." She continued to pace. "You tried the pumps...."

    "Yes, They're dry."

    "What about inside the lab?"

    "I don't think so."

    "Where else? What about the trailer?"

    Thorne shook his head. "It's just a passive tow-trailer. The other unit has an auxiliary generator and some gas tanks. But it went over the cliff."

    "Maybe the tanks didn't rupture when it fell. We still have the motorcycle. Maybe I can go out there and - "

    "Sarah," he said.

    "It's worth a try."

    "Sarah - "

    From the window, Levine said softly, "Heads up. We have visitors."

Good Mother

In the predawn light, the dinosaurs came out of the bushes and went directly toward the Jeep. There were six of them, big brown duckbills fifteen feet high, with curving snouts.

    "Maiasaurs," Levine said, "I didn't know there were any here." "What are they doing?"

    The huge animals clustered around the jeep, and immediately began to tear it apart. One ripped away the canvas top. Another poked at the roll bar, rocking the vehicle back and forth.

    "I don't understand," Levine said. "They're hadrosaurs. Herbivores. This aggressiveness is quite uncharacteristic."

    "Uh-huh," Thorne said. As they watched, the maiasaurs tipped the jeep over. The vehicle crashed over on its side. One of the adults reared up, and stood on the side panels. Its huge feet crushed the vehicle inward.

    But when the Jeep fell over, two white Styrofoam cases tumbled out onto the ground. The maiasaurs seemed to be focused on these cases. They nipped at the Styrofoam, tossing chunks of white around the ground. They moved hurriedly, in a kind of frenzy.

    "Something to eat?" Levine said. "Some kind of dinosaur catnip? What?"

    Then the top of one case tore away, and they saw a cracked egg inside. Protruding from the egg was a wrinkled bit of flesh. The maiasaurs slowed. Their movements were now cautious, gentle. They honked and grunted. The big bodies of the animals blocked their view.

    There was a squeaking sound.

    "You're kidding," Levine said.

    On the ground, a tiny animal moved about. Its body was pale brown, almost white. It tried to stand, but flopped down at once. It was barely a foot long, with wrinkled folds of flesh around its neck. In a moment, a second animal tumbled out beside it.

    Harding sighed.

    Slowly, one of the maiasaurs ducked its huge head down, and gently scooped the baby up in its broad bill. It kept its mouth open as it raised its head. The baby sat calmly on the adult's tongue, looking around with its tiny head as it rose high into the air.

    The second baby was picked up. The adults milled around for a moment, as if unsure whether there was more to do, and then, honking loudly, they all moved off.

    Leaving behind a crumpled, shattered vehicle.

    Thorne said, "I guess gas is no longer a problem."

    "I guess not," Sarah said.

Thorne stared at the wreckage of the Jeep, shaking his head. "It's worse than a head-on collision," he said. "It looks like it's been put in a compactor. Just wasn't built for those sorts of stresses."

    Levine snorted. "Engineers in Detroit didn't expect a five-ton animal to stand on it."

    "You know," Thorne said, "I would have liked to see how our own car stood up under that."

    "You mean, because we beefed it up?"

    "Yes," Thorne said. "We really built it to take fantastic stresses. Huge stresses. Ran it through computer programs, added those honeycomb panels, the whole - "

    "Wait a minute," Harding said, turning away from the window. "What are you talking about?"

    "The other car," Thorne said.

    "What other car?"

    "The car we brought," he said. "The Explorer."

    "Of course!" she said, suddenly excited. "There's another car! I completely forgot! The Explorer!"

    "Well, it's history now," Thorne said. "It shorted out last night, when I was coming back to the trailer. I ran it through a puddle and it shorted out."

    "So? Maybe it still - "

    "No," Thorne said, shaking his head. "A short like that'd blow the VR. It's an electric car. It's dead."

    "I'm surprised you don't have circuit breakers for that."

    "Well, we never used to put them in, although on this latest version...He trailed off. He shook his head. "I can't believe it."

    "The car has circuit breakers?"

    "Yes, Eddie put them in, last minute."

    "So the car might still run?"

    "Yes, it probably would, if you reset the breakers."

    "Where is it?" she said. She was heading for the motorcycle.

    "I left it on that side road that runs from the ridge road down to the hide. But Sarah - "

    "It's our only chance," she said. She pulled on her radio headset, adjusted the microphone to her cheek, and rolled the motorcycle to the door. "Call me," she said. "I'm going to go find us a car."

    They watched through the windows. In the early-morning light, she climbed onto the motorcycle, and roared off up the hill.

    Levine watched her go. "What do you figure her odds are?"

    Thorne just shook his head.

The radio crackled. "Doc."

    Thorne picked it up. "Yes, Sarah."

    "I'm coming up the hill now. I see...there's six of them."

    "Raptors?"

    "Yeah. They're, uh...Listen. I'm going to try another path. I see a - "

    The radio crackled.

    "Sarah?" She was breaking up.

    " - sort of a game trail that - here - think I better - "

    "Sarah," Thorne said. "You're breaking up."

    " - do now. So just - ish me luck.."

    Over the radio, they heard the hum of the bike. Then they heard another sound, which might have been an animal snarl, and might have been more static. Thorne bent forward, holding the radio close to his ear. Then, abruptly, the radio clicked and was silent. He said, "Sarah?"

    There was no answer.

    "Maybe she turned it off," Levine said.

    Thorne shook his head. "Sarah?"

    Nothing.

    "Sarah? Are you there?"

    They waited.

    Nothing.

    "Hell," Thorne said.

Time passed slowly, Levine stood by the window, staring out. Kelly was snoring in a corner. Arby lay next to Malcolm, fast asleep. And Malcolm was humming tunelessly.

    Thorne sat on the floor in the center of the room, leaning back against the checkout Counter. Every so often, he'd pick up the radio and try to call Sarah, but there was never any answer. He tried all six channels. There was no answer on any of them.

    Eventually he stopped trying.

The radio crackled. " - ate these damned things. Never work right." A grunt. "Can't figure out what - things - damn."

    Across the room, Levine sat forward.

    Thorne grabbed the radio. "Sarah? Sarah?"

    "Finally," she said, her voice crackling. "Where the hell have you been, Doc?"

    "Are you all right?"

    "Of course I'm all right."

    "There's something wrong with your radio. You're breaking up."

    "Yeah? What should I do?"

    "Try screwing down the cover on your battery pack. It's probably loose."

    "No. I mean, what should I do about the car?"

    Thorne said, "What?"

    "I'm at the car, Doc, I'm there. What should I do?"

    Levine glanced at his watch. "Twenty minutes until the helicopter arrives, " he said. "You know, she just might make it."

Dodgson

Dodgson awoke, aching and stiff, on the floor of the concrete utility shed. He got to his feet, and looked out the window. He saw streaks of red in a pale-blue sky. He opened the door to the utility shed, and went outside.

    He was very thirsty, and his body was sore. He started walking beneath the canopy of trees. The 'tingle around him was silent in the early morning. He needed water. More than anything, he needed water. Somewhere off to his left, he heard the soft gurgle of a stream. He headed toward it, moving more quickly.

    Through the trees, he could see the sky growing lighter. He knew that Malcolm and his party were still here. They must have some plan to get off the island. If they could get off, he could too.

    He came over a low rise, and looked down at a gully and a flowing stream. It looked clear. He hurried down toward it, wondering if it was polluted. He decided he didn't care. Just before he reached the stream, he tripped over a vine and fell, swearing.

    He got to his feet, and looked back. Then he saw it wasn't a vine he had tripped over.

    It was the strap of a green backpack.

    Dodgson tugged at the strap, and the whole backpack slid out of the foliage. The pack had been torn apart, and it was crusty with dried blood. As he pulled it, the contents clattered out among the ferns. Flies were buzzing everywhere. But he saw a camera, a metal case for food, and a plastic water bottle. He searched quickly through the surrounding ferns. But he didn't find much else, except some soggy candy bars.

    Dodgson drank the water, and then realized he was very hungry. He popped open the metal case, hoping for some decent food. But the case didn't contain food. It was filled with foam packing.

    And in the center of the packing was a radio.

    He flicked it on. The battery light glowed strongly. He flicked from one channel to another, hearing static.

    Then a man's voice. "Sarah? This is Thorne. Sarah."

    After a moment, a woman's voice: "Doc. Did you hear me? I said, I'm at the car."

    Dodgson listened, and smiled.

    So there was a car.

In the store, Thorne held the radio close to his cheek. "Okay," he said.

    Sarah? Listen carefully. Get in the car, and do exactly what I tell you."

    "Okay fine," she said. "But tell me first. Is Levine there?"

    "He's here."

    The radio clicked. She said, "Ask him if there's any danger from a green dinosaur that's about six feet tall and has a domed forehead."

    Levine nodded. "Tell her yes. They're called pachycephalosaurs."

    "He says yes," Thorne said. "They're pachycephalo-somethings, and you should be careful. Why?"

    "Because there's about fifty of them, all around the car."

Explorer

The Explorer was sitting in the middle of a shady section of the road, with overhanging trees above. The car had stopped just beyond a depression, where there had no doubt been a large puddle the night before. Now the puddle had become a mudhole, thanks to the dozen or so animals that sat in it, splashed in it, drank from it, and rolled at its edges. These were the green dome-headed dinosaurs that she had been watcing for the last few minutes, trying to decide what to do. Because not only were they near the mudhole, they were also located in front of the car, and around the sides of the car.

    She had watched the pachycephalosaurs with uneasiness. Harding had spent a lot of time on the ground with wild animals, but usually animals she knew well. From long experience, she knew how closely she could approach, and under what circumstances. If this were a herd of wildebeest, she would walk right in without hesitation. If it were a herd of American buffalo, she would be cautious, but she'd still go in. And if it was a herd of African buffalo, she wouldn't go anywhere near them.

    She pushed the microphone against her cheek and said, "How much time left?"

    "Twenty minutes."

    "Then I better get in there," she said. "Any ideas?"

    There was a pause. The radio crackled.

    "Levine says nobody knows anything about these animals, Sarah."

    "Great."

    "Levine says a complete skeleton has never been recovered. So nobody has even a guess about their behavior, except that they're probably aggressive.

    "Great," she said.

    She was looking at the situation of the car, and the overhanging trees. It was a shady area, peaceful and quiet in the early-morning light.

    The radio crackled. "Levine says you might try walking slowly in, and see if the herd lets you through. But no quick movements, no sudden gestures."

    She stared at the animals and thought: They have those domed heads for a reason.

    "No thanks," she said. "I'm going to try something else."

    "What?"

In the store, Levine said, "What'd she say?"

    "She said she was going to try something else."

    "Like what?" Levine said. He went to the window and looked out. The sky was growing lighter. He frowned. There was some consequence to that, he thought. Something he knew in the back of his mind, but wasn't thinking about.

    Something about daylight...

    And territory.

    Territory.

    Levine looked out at the sky again, trying to put it together. What difference did it make that daylight was coming? He shook his head, gave it up for the moment. "How long to reset the breakers?"

    "Just a minute or two," Thorne said.

    "Then there might still be time," Levine said.

    There was static hiss from the radio, and they heard Harding say, "Okay, I'm above the car."

    "You're where?"

    "I'm above the car," she said. "In a tree."

Harding climbed out on the branch, moving farther from the trunk, feeling it bend under her weight. The branch seemed supple. She was now ten feet above the car, swinging lower. Few of the animals below had looked up at her, but the herd seemed to be restless. Animals sitting in the mud got up, and began to turn and mill. She saw their tails flicking back and forth anxiously.

    She moved farther out, and the branch bent lower. It was slippery from the night's rain. She tried to gauge her position above the car. It looked pretty good, she thought.

    Suddenly, one of the animals charged the trunk of the tree she was in, butting it hard. The impact was surprisingly forceful. The tree swayed, her branch swinging up and down, while she struggled to hold on.

    Oh shit, she thought.

    She rose up into the air, came down again, and then she lost her grip. Her hands slipped on wet leaves and wet bark, and she fell free. At the last moment, she saw that she would miss the car entirely. Then she hit the ground, landing hard in muddy earth.

    Right beside the animals.

The radio crackled. "Sarah?" Thorne said.

    There was no answer.

    "What's she doing now?" Levine began to pace nervously. "I wish we could see what she's doing."

    In the corner of the room, Kelly got up, rubbing her eyes. "Why don't you use the video?"

    Thorne said, "What video?"

    Kelly pointed to the cash register. "'That's a computer."

    "It is?"

    "Yeah. I think so."

Kelly yawned as she sat in the chair facing the cash register. It looked like a dumb terminal, which meant it probably didn't have access to much, but it was worth a try anyway. She turned it on. Nothing happened. She flicked the power switch back and forth. Nothing.

    Idly, she swung her legs, and kicked a wire beneath the table. She bent over and saw that the terminal was unplugged. So she plugged it in.

    The screen glowed, and a single word appeared:

    LOGIN:

    To proceed further, she knew she needed a password. Arby had a password. She glanced over and saw that he was still asleep. She didn't want to wake him up. She remembered that he had written it down on a piece of paper and stuck it in his pocket. Maybe it was still in his clothes she thought. She crossed the room, found the bundle of his wet, muddy clothes, and began going through the pockets. She found his wallet, the keys to his house, and some other stuff. Finally she found a piece of paper in his back pocket. It was damp, and streaked with mud. The ink had smeared, but she could still read his writing:

    VIG/&*849/

    Kelly took the paper and went back to the computer. She typed in all the characters carefully, and pressed the return key. The screen went blank, and then a new screen came up. She was surprised. It was different from the screen she had seen earlier, in the trailer.

    She was in the system. But the whole thing looked different. Maybe because this wasn't the radionet, she thought. She must be logged into the actual laboratory system. It had more graphics because the terminal was hard-wired. Maybe they even ran optical pipe out here.

    Across the room, Levine said, "Kelly? How about it?"

    "I'm working on it," she said,

    Cautiously, she began to type. Rows of icons appeared rapidly across the screen, one after another.

    She knew she was looking at a graphic interface of some kind, but the meaning of the images wasn't obvious to her, and there were no explanations. The people who had used this system were probably trained to know what the images meant. But Kelly didn't know. She wanted to get into the video system, yet none of the pictures suggested anything to do with video. She moved the cursor around, wondering what to do.

    She decided she'd have to guess. She picked the diamond-shaped icon on the lower left, and clicked on it.

    "Uh-oh," she said, alarmed.

    Levine looked over. "Something wrong?"

    "No," she said. "It's fine." She quickly clicked on the header, and got back to the previous screen. This time she tried one of the triangularshaped icons.

    The screen changed again:

    That's it, she thought. Immediately the image popped off, and the actual video images began to flash up on the screen. On this little cash register monitor, the pictures were tiny, but now she was in familiar territory, and she moved around quickly, moving the cursor, manipulating the images.

    "What are you looking for?" she said.

    "The Explorer," Thorne said.

    She clicked the screen. The image zoomed up. "Got it," she said.

    Levine said, "You do?" He sounded surprised.  

    Kelly looked at him and said, "Yeah, I do."

    The two men came and stared at the screen over her shoulder. They could see the Explorer, on a shaded road. They could see the pachycephalosaurs, lots of them, milling around the car. The animals were poking at the tires and the front fender.

    But they didn't see Sarah anywhere. "Where is she?" Thorne said.

Sarah Harding was underneath the car, lying on her face in the mud.

    She had crawled there after she fell - it was the only place to go - and now she was staring out at the animals' feet milling all around her. She said, "Doc. Are you there? Doc? Doc." But the damned radio wasn't working again. The pachys were stamping and snorting, trying to get at her tinder the car.

    Then she remembered that Thorne had said something about screwing down the battery pack. She reached behind her back, and found the pack, and twisted the cover shut tight.

    Immediately, her earpiece began to crackle with static.

    "Doc," she said.

    "Where are you?" Thorne said.

    "I'm under the car."

    "Why? Did you already try it?"

    "Try what?"

    "Try to start it. To start the car."

    "No," she said, "I didn't try to start it, I fell."

    "Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said.

    "The breakers are under the car?"

    "Some of them. Look up by the front wheels."

    She twisted her body, sliding in the mud. "Okay. I'm looking."

    "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."

    "I see it."

    "Can you open it?"

    "I think so." She crawled forward, and pulled at the latch. The lid came down. She was staring at three black switches. "I see three switches and they are all pointing up."

    "Up?"

    "Toward the front of the car."

    "Hmmm," Thorne said. "That doesn't make sense. Can you read the writing?"

    "Yes. It says '15 VV' and then '02 R."'

    "Okay," he said. "That explains it."

    "What?"

    "The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"

    "No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."

    "Well then, use your shirtsleeve or something."

    Harding pulled herself forward, approaching the bumper. The nearest pachys snorted and banged on the bumper. They leaned down and twisted their heads, trying to get to her. "They have very bad breath," she said.

    "Say again?"

    "Never mind." She flipped the switches, one after another. She heard a hum, from the car above her. "Okay. I did it. The car is making a noise.

    "That's fine," Thorne said.

    "What do I do now?"

    "Nothing. You better wait."

    She lay back in the mud, looking at the feet of the pachys. They were moving, tramping all around her.

    "How much time left?" she said.

    "About ten minutes."

    She said, "Well, I'm stuck under here, Doc."

    "I know."

    She looked at the animals. They were on all sides of the car. If anything, they seemed to be growing more active and excited. They stamped their feet and snuffled impatiently. Why were they so worked up? she wondered. And then, suddenly, they all thundered off. They ran toward the front of the car, and away, up the road. She twisted her body and watched them go.

    There was silence.

    "Doc?" she said.

    "Yeah."

    "Why'd they leave?"

    "Stay under the car," Thorne said.

    "Doc?"

    "Don't talk." The radio clicked off.

    She waited, not sure what was happening. She had heard the tension in Thorne's voice. She didn't know why. But now she heard a soft scuffling sound, and looking over, saw two feet standing by the driver's side of the car.

    Two feet in muddy boots.

    Men's boots.

    Harding frowned. She recognized the boots. She recognized the khaki trousers, even though they were now caked with mud.

    It was Dodgson.

The man's boots turned to face the door. She heard the door latch click. Dodgson was getting in the car.

    Harding acted so swiftly, she was not aware of thinking. Grunting, she swung her body around sideways, reached out with her arms, grabbed both ankles, and pulled hard. Dodgson fell, giving a yell of surprise. He landed on his back, and turned, his face dark and angry.

    He saw her and scowled. "No shit," he said. "I thought I finished you off on the boat."

    Harding went red with rage, and started to crawl out from under the car. Dodgson scrambled to his knees as she was halfway out, but then she felt the ground begin to shake. And she immediately knew why. She saw Dodgson look over his shoulder, and flatten himself on the ground. Hurriedly, he started to crawl under the car beside her.

    She turned in the mud, looking down along the length of the car. And she saw a tyrannosaurus coming up the road toward them. The ground vibrated with each step. Now Dodgson was crawling toward the center of the car, pushing himself close to her, but she ignored him. She watched the big feet with the splayed claws as they came alongside the car, and stopped. Each foot was three feet long. She heard the tyrannosaur growling.

    She looked at Dodgson. His eyes were wide with terror. The tyrannosaur paused beside the car. The big feet shifted. She heard the animal somewhere above, sniffing. Then, growling again, the head came down. The lower jaw touched the ground. She could not see the eye, just the lower jaw. The tyrannosaur sniffed again, long and slow.

    It could smell them.

    Beside her, Dodgson was trembling uncontrollably. But Harding was strangely calm. She knew what she had to do. Quickly, she shifted her body, twisting around, moving so her head and shoulders were braced against the rear wheel of the car. Dodgson turned to look at her just as her boots began to push against his lower legs. Pushing them out from beneath the car.

    Terrified, Dodgson struggled, trying to push back, but her position was much stronger. Inch by inch, his boots moved out into the cold morning light. Then his calves. She grunted as she pushed, concentrating every ounce of her energy. In a high-pitched voice, Dodgson said, "What the hell are you doing?"

    She heard the tyrannosaur growling. She saw the big feet move.

    Dodgson said, "Stop it! Are you crazy? Stop it!"

    But Harding didn't stop. She got her boot on his shoulder, and pushed once more. For a while Dodgson struggled against her, and then suddenly his body moved easily, and she saw that the tyrannosaur had his legs in its jaws and was pulling Dodgson out from under the car.

    Dodgson wrapped his hands around her boot, trying to hold on, trying to drag her with him. She put her other boot on his face and kicked hard. He let go. He slid away from her.

    She saw his terrified face, ashen, month open. No words came out. She saw his fingers, digging into the mud, leaving deep gouges as he was pulled away. And then his body was dragged out. Everything was strangely quiet. She saw Dodgson spin around onto his back, and look upward. She saw the shadow of the tyrannosaur fall across him. She saw the big head come down, the jaws wide. And she heard Dodgson begin to scream as the jaws closed around his body, and he was lifted up.

Dodgson felt himself rise high into the air, twenty feet above the ground, and all the time he continued to scream. He knew at any moment the animal would snap its great jaws shut, and he would die. But the jaws never closed. Dodgson felt stabbing pain in his sides, but the jaws never closed.

    Still screaming, Dodgson felt himself carried back into the jungle. High branches of trees lashed his face, The hot breath of the animal whooshed in snorts over his body. Saliva dripped onto his torso. He thought he would pass out from terror.

    But the jaws never closed.

Inside the store, they stared at the tiny monitor as Dodgson was carried away in the jaws of the tyrannosaur. Over the radio, they heard his tinny distant screams.

    "You see?" Malcolm said. "There is a God."

    Levine was frowning. "The rex didn't kill him." He pointed to the screen. "Look, there, you can see his arms are still moving. Why didn't it kill him?"

Sarah Harding waited until the screams faded. She crawled out from beneath the car, standing up in the morning light. She opened the door and got behind the wheel. The key was in the ignition; she gripped it with muddy fingers. She twisted it.

    There was a chugging sound, and then a soft whine. All the dashboard lights came on. Then silence. Was the car working? She turned the wheel and it moved easily. So the power steering was on.

    "Doc."

    "Yes, Sarah."

    "The car's working. I'm coming back."

    "Okay," he said. "Hurrv."

    She put it in drive, and felt the transmission engage. The car was unusually quiet, almost silent. Which was why she was able to hear the faint thumping of a distant helicopter.

Daylight

She was driving beneath a thick canopy of trees, back toward the village. She heard the sound of the helicopter build in intensity. Then it roared overhead, unseen through the foliage above. She had the window down, and was listening. It seemed to move off to her right, toward the south.

    The radio clicked. "Sarah."

    "Yes, Doc."

    "Listen: we can't communicate with the helicopter."

    "Okay," she said. She understood what had to be done. "Where's the landing site?"

    "South. About a mile. There's a clearing. Take the ridge road."

    She was coming up to the fork. She saw the ridge road going off to the right. "Okay," she said. "I'm going."

    "Tell them to wait for us," Thorne said. "Then come back and get us."

    "Everybody okay?" she said.

    "Everybody's fine," Thorne said.

    She followed the road, hearing a change in the sound of the helicopter. She realized it must he landing. The rotors continued, a low whirr, which meant the pilot wasn't going to shut down.

    The road curved off to the left. The sound of the helicopter was now a muted thumping. She accelerated, driving fast, careening around the corner. The road was still wet from the rains the night before. She wasn't raising a cloud of dust behind her. There was nothing to tell anyone that she was here.

    "Doc. How long will they wait?"

    "I don't know," Thorne said, over the radio. "Can you see it?"

    "Not yet," she said.

Levine stared out the window. He looked at the lightening sky, through the trees. The streaks of red were gone. It was now a bright even blue. Daylight was definitely coming.

    Daylight...

    And then he put it together. He shivered as he realized. He went to the window on the opposite side, looked out toward the tennis court. He stared at the spot where the carnotauruses had been the night before. They were gone now.

    Just as he feared.

    "This is bad," he said.

    "It's only just now eight," Thorne said, glancing at his watch. "How long will it take her?" Levine said.

    "I don't know. Three or four minutes."

    "And then to get back?" Levine said.

    "Another five minutes."

    "I hope we make it that long." He was frowning unhappily.

    "Why?" Thorne said. "We're okay."

    "In a few minutes," Levine said, "we'll have direct sun shining down outside."

    "So what?" Thorne said.

    The radio clicked. "Doc," Sarah said. "I see it. I see the helicopter."

Sarah came around a final curve and saw the landing site off to her left. The helicopter was there, blades spinning. She saw another junction in the road, with a narrow road leading left down a hill, into jungle, and then out to the clearing, She drove down it, descending a series of switchbacks, forcing her to go slow. She was now back in the jungle, beneath the canopy of trees. The ground leveled out, she splashed across a narrow stream, and accelerated forward.

    Directly ahead there was a gap in the tree canopy, and sunlight on the clearing beyond. She saw the helicopter. Its rotors were beginning to spin faster - it was leaving! She saw the pilot behind the bubble, wearing dark glasses. The pilot checked his watch, shook his head to the copilot, and then began to lift off.

    Sarah honked her horn, and drove madly forward. But she knew they could not hear her. Her car bounced and jolted. Thorne was saying, "What is it? Sarah! What's happening?"

    She drove forward, leaning out the window, yelling "Wait! Wait!" But the helicopter was already rising into the air, lifting up out of her view. The sound began to fade. By the time her car burst out of the jungle into the clearing, she saw the helicopter heading away, disappearing over the rocky rim of the island.

    And then it was gone.

Let's stay calm," Levine said, pacing the little store. "Tell her to get back right away. And let's stay calm." He seemed to be talking to himself. He walked from one wall to the next, pounding the wooden planks with his fist. He shook his head unhappily. "Just tell her to hurry. You think she can be back in five minutes?"

    "Yes," Thorne said. "Why? What is it, Richard?"

    Levine pointed out the window. "Daylight," he said. "We're trapped here in daylight."

    "We were trapped here all night, too," Thorne said. "We made it okay."

    "But daylight is different," Levine said.

    "Why?"

    "Because at night," he said, "this is carnotaurus territory. Other animals don't come in. We saw no other animals at all around here, last night. But once daylight comes, the carnotaurus can't hide any more. Not in open spaces, in direct sunlight. So they'll leave. And then this won't be their territory any more.

    "Which means?"

    Levine glanced at Kelly, over by the computer. He hesitated, then said, "Just take my word for it. We have to get out of here right away."

    "And go where?"

Sitting at the computer, Kelly listened to Thorne talking to Dr. Levine. She fingered the piece of paper with Arby's password on it. She felt very nervous. The way Dr. Levine was talking was making her nervous. She wished Sarah was back by now. She would feel better when Sarah was here,

    Kelly didn't like to think about their situation. She had been holding herself together, keeping up her spirits, until the helicopter came. But now the helicopter had come and gone. And she noticed neither of the men was talking about when it would come back. Maybe they knew something. Like it wasn't coming back.

    Dr. Levine was saying they had to get out of the store. Thorne was asking Dr. Levine where he wanted to go. Levine said, "I'd prefer to get off this island, but I don't see how we can. So I suppose we should make our way back to the trailer. It's the safest place now."

    Back to the trailer, she thought. Where she and Sarah had gone to get Malcolm. Kelly didn't want to go back to the trailer.

    She wanted to go home.

    Tensely, Kelly smoothed out the piece of damp paper, pressing it flat on the table beside her. Dr. Levine came over. "Stop fooling around," he said. "See if you can find Sarah."

    "I want to go home," Kelly said.

    Levine sighed. "I know, Kelly", he said. "We all want to go home." And he walked away again, moving quickly, tensely.

    Kelly pushed the paper away, turning it over, and sliding it under the keyboard, in case she should need the password again. As she did so, her eye was caught by some writing on the other side.

    She pulled the paper out again.

    She saw:

SITE B LEGENDS

EAST WING               WEST WING               LOADING BAY

LABORATORY        ASSEMBLY BAY            ENTRANCE

OUTLYING                MAIN CORE               GEO TURBINE

CONVENIENCE STORE WORKER VILLAGE          GEO CORE

GAS STATION       POOL/TENNIS       PUTTING GREENS

MGRS HOUSE        JOG PATH                GAS LINES

SECURITY ONE            SECURITY TWO            THERMAL LINES

RIVER DOCK        BOATHOUSE         SOLAR ONE

SWAMP ROAD        RIVER ROAD        RIDGE ROAD

MTN VIEW ROAD           CLIFF ROAD              HOLDING PENS

    She realized at once what it was: a screen shot from Levine's apartment. From the night when Arby had been recovering files from the computer. It seemed like a million years ago, another lifetime. But it had really been only...what? Two days ago.

    She remembered how proud Arby had been when he had recovered the data. She remembered how they had all tried to make sense of this list. Now, of course, all these names had meaning. They were all real places: the laboratory, the worker village, the convenience store, the gas station....

    She stared at the list.

    You're kidding, she thought.

    "Dr. Thorne," she said. "I think you better look at this."

Thorne stared as she pointed at the list. "You think so?" he said.

    "That's what it says: a boathouse."

    "Can you find it, Kelly?"

    "You mean, find it on the video?" She shrugged. "I can try."

    "Try," Thorne said. He glanced at Levine, who was across the room, pounding on the walls again. He picked up the radio.

    "Sarah? It's Doc."

    And the radio crackled. "Doc? I've had to stop for a minute"

    "Why?" Thorne said.

Sarah Harding was stopped on the ridge road. Fifty yards ahead, she saw the tyrannosaur, going down the road away from her. She could see that he had Dodgson in his month. And somehow, Dodgson was still alive. His body was still moving. She thought she could hear him scream.

    She was surprised to find she had no feeling about him at all. She watched dispassionately as the tyrannosaur left the road, and headed off down a slope, back into the jungle.

    Sarah started the car, and drove cautiously forward.

At the computer console, Kelly flicked through video images, one after another, until finally she found it: a wooden dock, enclosed inside a shed or a boathouse, open to the air at the far end. The interior of the boathouse looked in pretty good shape; there weren't a lot of vines and ferns growing over things. She saw a powerboat tied up, rocking against the dock. She saw three oil drums to one side. And out the back of the boathouse there was open water, and sunlight- it looked like a river.

    "What do you think?" she said to Thorne.

    "I think it's worth a try," he said, looking over her shoulder. "But where is it? Can you find a map?"

    "Maybe," she said. She flicked the keys and managed to get back to the main screen, with its perplexing icons.

    Arby awoke, yawned, and came over to look at what she was doing. "Nice graphics. You logged on, huh?"

    "Yeah," she said. "I did. But I'm having a little trouble figuring it out.

    Levine was pacing, staring out the windows. "This is all well and good," he said, "but it is getting brighter out there by the minute. Don't you understand? We need a way out of here. This building is single-wall construction. It's fine for the tropics, but it's basically a shack."

    "It'll do," Thorne said.

    "For three minutes, maybe. I mean, look at this," Levine said. He walked to the door, rapped it with his knuckles. "This door is just - "

    With a crash, the wood splintered around the lock, and the door swung open. Levine was thrown aside, landing hard on the floor.

    A raptor stood hissing in the doorway.

A Way Out

Sitting at the console, Kelly was frozen in terror. She watched as Thorne ran forward from the side, throwing the full weight of his body against the door, slamming it hard against the raptor. Startled, the animal was knocked back. The door closed on its clawed hand. Thorne leaned against the door. On the other side, the animal snarled and pounded.

    "Help me!" Thorne shouted. Levine scrambled to his feet and ran forward, adding his weight.

    "I told you!" Levine shouted.

    Suddenly there were raptors all around the store. Snarling, they threw themselves at the windows, denting the steel bars, pushing them in toward the glass. They slammed against the wooden walls, knocking down shelves, sending cans and bottles clattering to the floor. In several places, the wood began to splinter on the walls.

    Levine looked back at her: "Find a way out of here!"

    Kelly stared. The computer was forgotten.

    "Come on, Kel," Arby said, "Concentrate."

    She turned back to the screen, unsure what to do. She clicked on the cross in the left corner. Nothing happened. She clicked on the upper-left circle. Suddenly, icons began to print out rapidly, filling the screen.

    "Don't worry, there must be a key to explain it, Arby said. "We just need to know what - "

    But Kelly was not listening, she was pressing more buttons and moving the cursor, already trying to get something to happen, to get a help screen, something. Anvthing.

    Suddenly, the whole screen began to twist, to distort.

    "What did you do?" Arby said, in alarm.

    Kelly was sweating. "I don't know," she said. She pulled her hands away from the keyboard.

    It's worse," Arhy said. "You made it worse."

    The screen continued to squeeze together, the icons shifting, distorting slowly as they watched.

    "Come on, kids!" Levine shouted.

    "We're trying!" Kelly said.

    Arby said, "It's becoming a cube."

    Thorne pushed the big glass-walled refrigerator in front of the door. The raptor slammed against the metal, rattling the cans inside.

    "Where are the guns?" Levine said.

    "Sarah has three in her car."

    "Great." At the windows, some of the bars were now so deeply dented that they broke the glass. Along the right-hand wall, the wood was splintering, tearing open big gaps.

    "We have to get out of here," Levine shouted at Kelly. "We have to find a way!" He ran to the rear of the store, to the bathrooms. But a moment later he returned. "They're back there, too!"

    It was happening fast, all around them.

    On the screen, she now saw a rotatlng cube, turning in space. Kelly didn't know how to stop it.

    "Come on, Kel," Arby said, peering at her through swollen eyes. "You can do it. Concentrate. Come on."

Everyone in the room was shouting. Kelly stared at the cube on the screen, feeling hopeless and lost. She didn't know what she was doing any more. She didn't know why she was there. She didn't know what the point of anything was. Why wasn't Sarah here?

    Standing beside her, Arby said, "Come on. Do the icons one at a time, Kel. You can do it. Come on. Stay with it. Focus."

    But she couldn't focus. She couldn't click on the icons, they were rotating too fast on the screen. There must be parallel processors to handle all the graphics. She just stared at it. She found herself thinking of all sorts of things - thoughts that just came unbidden into her mind.

    The cord under the desk.

    Hard-wired.

    Lots of graphics.

    Sarah talking to her in the trailer.

    "Come on, Kel. You have to do this now. Find a way out."

    In the trailer, Sarah said: Most of what people tell you will be wrong"

    It's important, Kel," Arby said. He was trembling as he stood beside her. She knew he concentrated on computers as a way to block things out. As a way to -

    The wall splintered wide, an eight-inch plank cracking inward, and a raptor stuck his head through, snarling, snapping his jaws.

    She kept thinking of the cord under the desk. The cord under the desk. Her legs had kicked the cord under the desk.

    The cord under the desk.

    Arby said, "It's important."

    And then it hit her.

    "No," she said to him, "It's not important," And she dropped off the seat, crawling down under the desk to look.

    "What are you doing?" Arby screamed.

    But already Kelly had her answer. She saw the cable from the computer going down into the floor, through a neat hole. She saw a seam in the wood. Her fingers scrabbled at the floor, pulling at it. And suddenly the panel came away in her hands. She looked down. Darkness.

    Yes.

    There was a crawlspace. No, more. A tunnel.

    She shouted, "Here!"

The refrigerator fell forward. The raptors crashed through the front door. From the sides, other animals tore through the walls, knocking over the display cases. The raptors sprang into the room, snarling and ducking. They found the bundle of Arby's wet clothes and snapped at them, ripping them apart in fury.

    They moved quickly, hunting.

    But the people were gone.

Escape

Kelly was in the lead, holding a flashlight. They moved, single file, along damp concrete walls. They were in a tunnel four feet square, with flat metal racks of cables along the left side. Water and gas pipes ran near the ceiling. The tunnel smelled moldy. She heard the squeak of rats.

    They came to a Y-junction. She looked both ways. To the right was a long straight passageway, going into darkness. It probably led to the laboratory, she thought. To the left was a much shorter section of tunnel, with stairs at the end.

    She went left.

    She crawled up through a narrow concrete shaft, and pushed open a wooden trapdoor at the top. She found herself in a small utility building, surrounded by cables and rusted pipes. Sunlight streamed in through broken windows. The others climbed up beside her.

    She looked out the window, and saw Sarah Harding driving down the hill toward them.

Harding drove the Explorer along the edge of the river. Kelly was sitting beside her in the front seat. They saw a wooden sign for the boathouse up ahead.

    "So it was the graphics that gave you the clue, Kelly?" Harding said, admiringly.

    Kelly nodded. "I just suddenly realized, it didn't matter what was actually on the screen. What mattered was there was a lot of data being manipulated, millions of pixels spinning there, and that meant there had to be a cable. And if there was a cable there must be a space for it. And enough space that workmen could repair it, all of that."

    "So you looked under the desk."

    "Yes," she said.

    "That's very good," Harding said. "I think these people owe you their lives."

    "Not really," Kelly said, with a little shrug.

    Sarah shot her a look. "All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don't you take it away from yourself."

    The road was muddy alongside the river, and heavily overgrown with plants. They heard the distant cries of the dinosaurs, somewhere behind them. Harding maneuvered around a fallen tree, and then they saw the boathouse ahead.

    "Uh-oh," Levine said. "I have a bad feeling."

    From the outside, the building was in ruins, and heavily overgrown with vines. The roof had caved in in several places. No one spoke as Harding pulled the Explorer up in front of a pair of broad double doors scaled with a rusted padlock. They climbed out of the car and walked forward in inkle-deep mud.

    "You really think there's a boat in there?" Arby said doubtfully.

    Malcolm leaned on Harding, while Thorne threw his weight against the door. Rotten timbers creaked, then splintered. The padlock fell to the ground. Harding said, "Here, hold him," and Put Malcolm's arm over Thorne's shoulder. Then she kicked a hole in the door wide enough to crawl through. Immediately she went inside, into darkness. Kelly hurried in after her.

    "What do you see?" Levine said, pulling planks away to widen the hole. A furry spider scurried up the boards, jumping away.

    "There's a boat here, all right," Harding said. "And it looks okay."

    Levine pushed his head through the hole.

    "I'll be damned," he said. "We just might get out of here, after all."

Exit

Lewis Dodgson fell.

    Tumbling through the air he dropped from the month of the tyrannosaur, and landed hard on an earthen slope. The breath was knocked out of him, his head slammed down, and he was dizzy for a moment. He opened his eyes, and saw a sloping bank of dried mud. He smelled a sour odor of decay. And then he heard a sound that chilled him: it was a high-pitched squeaking.

    He got up on one elbow, and saw he was in the tyrannosaur nest. The sloping mound of dried mud was all around him. Now there were three infants here, including one with a piece of aluminum wrapped around its leg. The infants were squeaking with excitement as they toddled to-ward him.

    Dodgson scrambled to his feet, unsure of what to do. The other adult tyrannosaur was on the far side of the nest, purring and snorting. The one that had brought him was standing over him.

    Dodgson watched the babies moving toward him, with their downy necks and their sharp little jaws. And then he turned to run. In an instant, the big adult brought his head down, knocking Dodgson over. Then the tyrannosaur raised its head again, and waited. Watching.

    What the hell is going on? Dodgson thought. Cautiously, he got to his feet again. And again, he was knocked down. The infants squeaked and came closer. He saw that their bodies were covered in bits of flesh and excrement. He could smell them. He got up on all fours, and began crawling away.

    Something grabbed his leg, holding him. He looked back and saw that his leg was in the jaws of the tyrannosaur. The big animal held it gently for a moment. Then it bit down decisively. The bones snapped and crunched.

    Dodgson screamed in pain. He could no longer move. He could no longer do anything but scream. The babies toddled forward eagerly. For a few seconds they kept their distance, heads darting forward to take quick bites. But then, when Dodgson did not move away, one hopped up on his leg, and began to bite at the bleeding flesh. The second jumped on his crotch, and pecked with razor-sharp jaws at his waist.

    The third came right alongside his face, and with a single snap bit into his cheek. Dodgson howled. He saw the baby eating the flesh of his own face. His blood was dripping down its jaws. The baby threw its head back and swallowed the cheek, and then turned, opened its jaws again, and closed over Dodgson's neck.

SEVENTH CONFIGURATION

"Partial restabilization may occur after eliminating

destructive elements. Survival partly determined by chance events."

IAN MALCOLM

Departure

The boat left the jungle river behind, and moved into darkness. The walls of the cave echoed the throb of the engines as Thorne steered the boat through the swift tidal current. To their left, a waterfall splashed down, a ray of light on cascading water. And then they burst out, moving beyond the high cliff wall and the crashing surf, into the open ocean. Kelly gave a cheer, and threw her arms around Arby, who winced and smiled.

    Levine looked back at the Island. "I have to admit, I never thought we''d make it. But with our cameras in place, and the uplink working, I we expect we can continue to gather the data, until we finally get our answer about extinction."

    Sarah Harding stared at him. "Maybe we will, and maybe we won't."

    "Why not? It's a perfect Lost World."

    She stared at him in disbelief. "It's nothing of the sort," she said. "Too many predators, remember?"

    "Well, so it may appear, but we don't know - "

    "Richard," she said. "Ian and I checked the records. They made a mistake on that island, many years ago. Back when the lab was still in production."

    "What mistake?"

    "They were manufacturing infant dinosaurs, and they didn't know what to feed them. For a while they gave them goat's milk, which was fine. It's very hypoallergenic. But as the carnivores grew, they fed them a special animal-protein extract. And the extract was made from ground-up sheep."

    Levine said, "So? What's wrong with that?"

    "In a zoo, they never use sheep extract," she said. "Because of the danger of infection."

    "Infection," Levine repeated, in a low voice. "What kind of infection?"

    "Prions," Malcolm said, from the other side of the boat.

    Levine looked blank.

    "Prions," Harding said are the simplest disease-causing entities known, even simpler than viruses. They're just protein fragments. They're so simple, they can't even invade a body - they have to be passively ingested. But once eaten, they cause disease: scrapie, in sheep; mad-cow disease; and kuru, a brain disease in human beings. And the dinosaurs developed a prion-disease called DX, from a bad batch of sheep protein extract. The lab battled it for years, trying to get rid of it,"

    "You're saying they didn't?"

    "For a while, it seemed as if they did. The dinosaurs were flourishing. But then something happened. The disease began to spread. The prions are excreted in feces, so it is possible - "

    "Excreted in feces?" Levine said. "The compys were eating feces..."

    "Yes, the compys are all infected. The compys are scavengers; they spread the protein over carcasses, and other scavengers became infected. Eventually, all the raptors were infected. Raptors attack healthy animals, not always successfully. One bite, and the animal becomes infected. And so, bit by bit, the infection spread through the island again. That's why the animals die early. And the rapid die-off supports a much larger predator population than you would expect - "

    Levine was visibly anxious. "You know," he said, "one of the compys bit me."

    "I wouldn't worry," Harding said. "There may be a mild encephalitis, but it's usually just a headache. We'll get you to a doctor in San José."

    Levine began to sweat. He wiped his forehead with his hand. "Actually, I don't feel very good at all."

    "It takes a week, Richard," she said. "I'm sure you'll be fine."

    Levine sank back in his seat unhappily.

    "But the point," she said, "is that I doubt this island will be able to tell you very much about extinction."

    Malcolm stared back at the dark cliffs for a moment, and then began to speak. "Maybe that's the way it should be," he said. "Because extinction has always been a great mystery. It's happened five major times on this planet, and not always because of an asteroid. Everyone's interested in the Cretaceous die-out that killed the dinosaurs, but there were die-outs at the end of the Jurassic and the Triassic as well. They were severe, but they were nothing compared to the Permian extinction, which killed eighty percent of all life on the planet, on the seas and on the land. No one knows why that catastrophe happened. But I wonder if we are the cause of the next one."

    "How is that?" Kelly said.

    "Human beings are so destructive," Malcolm said. "I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase."

    Kelly shook her head. She turned away from Malcolm and moved lip the boat, to sit alongside Thorne.

    "Are you listening to all that?" Thorne said. "I wouldn't take any of it too seriously. It's jist theories. Human beings can't help making them, but the fact is that theories are just fantasies. And they change. When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogiston. You know what that is? No? Well, it doesn't matter, because it wasn't real anyway. They also believed that four humors controlled behavior. And they believed that the earth was only a few thousand years old. Now we believe the earth is four billion years old, and we believe in photons and electrons, and we think human behavior is controlled by things like ego and self-esteem. We think those beliefs are more scientific and better."

    "Aren't they?

    Thorne shrugged. "They're still just fantasies. They're not real. Have you ever seen a self-esteem? Can you bring me one on a plate? How about a photon? Can you bring me one of those?"

    Kelly shook her head. "No, but..."

    "And you never will, because those things don't exist. No matter how seriously people take them," Thorne said. "A hundred years from now, people will look back at us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies." Thorne shook his head. "And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. You see all of us together? That's real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else. Now look at that compass, and tell me where south is. I want to go to Puerto Cortés. It's time for us all to go home."

Acknowledgments

This novel is entirely fiction, but in writing it, I have drawn on the work of researchers in many different fields. I am especially indebted to the Work, and the speculations, of John Alexander, Mark Boguski, Edwin Colbert, John Conway, Philip Currie, Peter Dodson, Niles Eldredge, Stephen Jay Gould, Donald Griffin, John Holland, John Horner, Fred Hoyle, Stuart Kauffman, Christopher Langton, Ernst Mayr, Mary Midgley, John Ostrom, Norman Packard, David Raup, Jeffrey Schank, Manfred Schroeder, George Gaylord Simpson, Bruce Weber, John Wheeler, and David Weishampel.

    It remains only to say that the views expressed in this novel are mine, not theirs, and to remind the reader that a century and a half after Darwin, nearly all positions on evolution remain strongly contended, and fiercely debated.

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

The text of this book was set in Electra, a typeface designed by W. A. Dwiggins (1880-1956). This face cannot be classified as either modern or old style. It is not based on any historical model, nor does it echo any particular period or style. It avoids tile extreme contrasts between thick and thin elements that mark most modern faces, and it attempts to give a feeling of fluidity, Power, and speed.

Computer graphics by David Nakabayashi

Dinosaur illustrations on endpapers by Gregory Wenzel

Endpaper map by David Cain

Designed by Virginia Tan