Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.16

These seemed to be offices: PARK WARDEN … GUEST SERVICES … GENERAL MANAGER … COMPTROLLER … They came to a glass partition marked with a sign: CLOSED AREAAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLYBEYOND THIS POINT There was a slot for a security card, but Tim just pushed the door open. “How come it opened?” “The power is out,” Tim said. “Why’re we going to the control room?” she asked. “To find a radio. We need to call somebody.” Beyond the glass door the hallway continued. Tim remembered this area; he had seen it earlier, during the tour. Lex trotted along at his side. In the distance, they heard the snarling of raptors. The animals seemed to be approaching. Then Tim heard them slamming against the glass downstairs. “They’re out there …” Lex whispered. “Don’t worry.” “What are they doing here?” Lex said. “Never mind now.” PARK SUPERVISOR … OPERATIONS … MAIN CONTROL … “Here,” Tim said. He pushed open the door. The main control room was as he had seen it before. In the center of the room was a console with four chairs and four computer monitors. The room was entirely dark except for the monitors, which all showed a series of colored rectangles. “So where’s a radio?” Lex said. But Tim had forgotten all about a radio. He moved forward, staring at the computer screens. The screens were on! That could only mean— “The power must be back on.…” “Ick,” Lex said, shifting her body. “What.” “I was standing on somebody’s ear,” she said. Tim hadn’t seen a body when they came in. He looked back and saw there was just an ear, lying on the floor. “That is really disgusting,” Lex said. “Never mind.” He turned to the monitors. “Where’s the rest of him?” she said. “Never mind that now.” He peered closely at the monitor. There were rows of colored labels on the screen: “You better not fool around with that, Timmy,” she said. “Don’t worry, I won’t.” He had seen complicated computers before, like the ones that were installed in the buildings his father worked on. Those computers controlled everything from the elevators and security to the heating and cooling systems. They looked basically like this—a lot of colored labels—but they were usually simpler to understand. And almost always there was a help label, if you needed to learn about the system. But he saw no help label here. He looked again, to be sure. But then he saw something else: numerals clicking in the upper left corner of the screen. They read 10:47:22. Then Tim realized it was the time. There were only thirteen minutes left for the boat—but he was more worried about the people in the lodge. There was a static crackle. He turned, and saw Lex holding a radio. She was twisting the knobs and dials. “How does it work?” she said. “I can’t make it work.” “Give me that!” “It’s mine!


Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.17

I found it!” “Give it to me, Lex!” “I get to use it first!” “Lex!” Suddenly, the radio crackled. “What the hell is going on!” said Muldoon’s voice. Surprised, Lex dropped the radio on the floor. Grant ducked back, crouching among the palm trees. Through the mist ahead he could see the raptors hopping and snarling and butting their heads against the glass of the visitor center. But, between snarls, they would fall silent and cock their heads, as if listening to something distant. And then they would make little whimpering sounds. “What’re they doing?” Gennaro said. “It looks like they’re trying to get into the cafeteria,” Grant said. “What’s in the cafeteria?” “I left the kids there …” Grant said. “Can they break through that glass?” “I don’t think so, no.” Grant watched, and now he heard the crackle of a distant radio, and the raptors began hopping in a more agitated way. One after another, they began jumping higher and higher, until finally he saw the first of them leap lightly onto the second-floor balcony, and from there move inside the second floor of the visitor center. In the control room on the second floor, Tim snatched up the radio which Lex had dropped. He pressed the button. “Hello? Hello?” “—s that you, Tim?” It was Muldoon’s voice. “It’s me, yes.” “Where are you?” “In the control room. The power is on!” “That’s great, Tim,” Muldoon said. “If someone will tell me how to turn the computer on, I’ll do it.” There was a silence. “Hello?” Tim said. “Did you hear me?” “Ah, we have a problem about that,” Muldoon said. “Nobody, ah, who is here knows how to do that. How to turn the computer on.” Tim said, “What, are you kidding? Nobody knows?” It seemed incredible. “No.” A pause. “I think it’s something about the main grid. Turning on the main grid … You know anything about computers, Tim?” Tim stared at the screen. Lex nudged him. “Tell him no, Timmy,” she said. “Yes, some. I know something,” Tim said. “Might as well try,” Muldoon said. “Nobody here knows what to do. And Grant doesn’t know about computers.” “Okay,” Tim said. “I’ll try.” He clicked off the radio and stared at the screen, studying it. “Timmy,” Lex said. “You don’t know what to do.” “Yes I do.” “If you know, then do it,” Lex said. “Just a minute.” As a way to get started, he pulled the chair close to the keyboard and pressed the cursor keys. Those were the keys that moved the cursor around on the screen. But nothing happened. Then he pushed other keys. The screen remained unchanged. “Well?” she said. “Something’s wrong,” Tim said, frowning. “You just don’t know, Timmy,” she said. He examined the computer again, looking at it carefully. The keyboard had a row of function keys at the top, just like a regular PC keyboard, and the monitor was big and in color.


Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.18

But the monitor housing was sort of unusual. Tim looked at the edges of the screen and saw lots of faint pinpoints of red light. Red light, all around the borders of the screen … What could that be? He moved his finger toward the light and saw the soft red glow on his skin. He touched the screen and heard a beep. A moment later, the message box disappeared, and the original screen flashed back up. “What happened?” Lex said. “What did you do? You touched something.” Of course! he thought. He had touched the screen. It was a touch screen! The red lights around the edges must be infrared sensors. Tim had never seen such a screen, but he’d read about them in magazines. He touched RESET/REVERT. Instantly the screen changed. He got a new message: THE COMPUTER IS NOW RESETMAKE YOUR SELECTION FROM THE MAIN SCREEN Over the radio, they heard the sound of raptors snarling. “I want to see,” Lex said. “You should try VIEW.” “No, Lex.” “Well, I want VIEW,” she said. And before he could grab her hand, she had pressed VIEW. The screen changed. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Lex, will you cut it out?” “Look!” she said. “It worked! Ha!” Around the room, the monitors showed quickly changing views of different parts of the park. Most of the images were misty gray, because of the exterior fog, but one showed the outside of the lodge, with a raptor on the roof, and then another switched to an image in bright sunlight, showing the bow of a ship, bright sunlight— “What was that?” Tim said, leaning forward. “What?” “That picture!” But the image had already changed, and now they were seeing the inside of the lodge, one room after another, and then he saw Malcolm, lying in a bed— “Stop it,” Lex said. “I see them!” Tim touched the screen in several places, and got submenus. Then more submenus. “Wait,” Lex said. “You’re confusing it.…” “Will you shut up! You don’t know anything about computers!” Now he had a list of monitors on the screen. One of them was marked Safari Lodge: LV2–4. Another was REMOTE: SHIPBOARD (VND). He pressed the screen several times. Video images came up on monitors around the room. One showed the bow of the supply ship, and the ocean ahead. In the distance, Tim saw land—buildings along a shore, and a harbor. He recognized the harbor because he had flown over it in the helicopter the day before. It was Puntarenas. The ship seemed to be just minutes from landing. But his attention was drawn by the next screen, which showed the roof of the safari lodge, in gray mist. The raptors were mostly hidden behind the pyramids, but their heads bobbed up and down, coming into view. And then, on the third monitor, he could see inside a room. Malcolm was lying in a bed, and Ellie stood next to him. They were both looking upward.


Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.19

As they watched, Muldoon walked into the room, and joined them, looking up with an expression of concern. “They see us,” Lex said. “I don’t think so.” The radio crackled. On the screen, Muldoon lifted the radio to his lips. “Hello, Tim?” “I’m here,” Tim said. “Ah, we haven’t got a whole lot of time,” Muldoon said, dully. “Better get that power grid on.” And then Tim heard the raptors snarl, and saw one of the long heads duck down through the glass, briefly entering the picture from the top, snapping its jaws. “Hurry, Timmy!” Lex said. “Get the power on!”


Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.1

Jurassic Park THE GRID Tim suddenly found himself lost in a tangled series of monitor control screens, as he tried to get back to the main screen. Most systems had a single button or a single command to return to the previous screen, or to the main menu. But this system did not—or at least he didn’t know it. Also, he was certain that help commands had been built into the system, but he couldn’t find them either, and Lex was jumping up and down and shouting in his ear, making him nervous. Finally he got the main screen back. He wasn’t sure what he had done, but it was back. He paused, looking for a command. “Do something, Timmy!” “Will you shut up? I’m trying to get help.” He pushed TEMPLATE-MAIN. The screen filled with a complicated diagram, with interconnecting boxes and arrows. No good. No good. He pushed COMMON INTERFACE. The screen shifted: “What’s that?” Lex said. “Why aren’t you turning on the power, Timmy?” He ignored her. Maybe help on this system was called “info.” He pushed INFO. “Tim-ee,” Lex wailed, but he had already pushed FIND. He got another useless window. He pushed GO BACK. On the radio, he heard Muldoon say, “How’s it coming, Tim?” He didn’t bother to answer. Frantic, he pushed buttons one after another. Suddenly, without warning, the main screen was back. He studied the screen. ELECTRICAL MAIN and SETGRIDS DNL both looked like they might have something to do with grids. He noticed that SAFETY/HEALTH and CRITICAL LOCKS might be important, too. He heard the growl of the raptors. He had to make a choice. He pressed SETGRIDS DNL, and groaned when he saw it: He didn’t know what to do. He pushed STANDARD PARAMETERS. Tim shook his head in frustration. It took him a moment to realize that he had just gotten valuable information. He now knew the grid coordinates for the lodge! He pushed grid F4. POWER GRID F4 (SAFARI LODGE) COMMAND CANNOT BE EXECUTED. ERROR-505 (Power Incompatible with Command Error. Ref Manual Pages 4.09–4.11) “It’s not working,” Lex said. “I know!” He pushed another button. The screen flashed again. POWER GRID F4 (SAFARI LODGE) COMMAND CANNOT BE EXECUTED. ERROR-505 (Power Incompatible with Command Error. Ref Manual Pages 4.09–4.11) Tim tried to stay calm, to think it through. For some reason he was getting a consistent error message whenever he tried to turn on a grid. It was saying the power was incompatible with the command he was giving. But what did that mean? Why was power in compatible? “Timmy …” Lex said, tugging at his arm. “Not now, Lex.” “Yes, now,” she said, and she pulled him away from the screen and the console. And then he heard the snarling of raptors. It was coming from the hallway. In the skylight above Malcolm’s bed, the raptors had almost bitten through the second metal bar.


Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.2

They could now poke their heads entirely through the shattered glass, and lunge and snarl at the people below. Then after a moment they would pull back, and resume chewing on the metal. Malcolm said, “It won’t be long now. Three, four minutes.” He pressed the button on the radio: “Tim, are you there? Tim?” There was no answer. Tim slipped out the door and saw the velociraptor, down at the far end of the corridor, standing by the balcony. He stared in astonishment. How had it gotten out of the freezer? Then, as he watched, a second raptor suddenly appeared on the balcony, and he understood. The raptor hadn’t come from the freezer at all. It had come from outside. It had jumped from the ground below. The second raptor landed silently, perfectly balanced on the railing. Tim couldn’t believe it. The big animal had jumped ten feet straight up. More than ten feet. Their legs must be incredibly powerful. Lex whispered, “I thought you said they couldn’t—” “Ssshh.” Tim was trying to think, but he watched with a kind of fascinated dread as the third raptor leapt to the balcony. The animals milled aimlessly in the corridor for a moment, and then they began to move forward in single file. Coming toward him and Lex. Quietly, Tim pushed against the door at his back, to re-enter the control room. But the door was stuck. He pushed harder. “We’re locked out,” Lex whispered. “Look.” She pointed to the slot for the security card alongside the door. A bright red dot glowed. Somehow the security doors had been activated. “You idiot, you locked us out!” Tim looked down the corridor. He saw several more doors, but each had a red light glowing alongside. That meant all the doors were locked. There was nowhere they could go. Then he saw a slumped shape on the floor at the far end of the corridor. It was a dead guard. A white security card was clipped to his belt. “Come on,” he whispered. They ran for the guard. Tim got the card, and turned back. But of course the raptors had seen them. They snarled, and blocked the way back to the control room. They began to spread apart, fanning out in the hallway to surround Tim and Lex. Their heads began to duck rhythmically. They were going to attack. Tim did the only thing he could do. Using the card, he opened the nearest door off the hallway and pushed Lex through. As the door began to close slowly behind them, the raptors hissed and charged.


Jurassic Park LODGE Ian Malcolm drew each breath as if it might be his last. He watched the raptors with dull eyes. Harding took his blood pressure, frowned, took it again. Ellie Sattler was wrapped in a blanket, shivering and cold. Muldoon sat on the floor, propped against the wall. Hammond was staring upward, not speaking. They all listened to the radio. “What happened to Tim?” Hammond said. “Still no word?” “I don’t know.” Malcolm said, “Ugly, aren’t they. Truly ugly.” Hammond shook his head. “Who could have imagined it would turn out this way.” Ellie said, “Apparently Malcolm did.” “I didn’t imagine it,” Malcolm said. “I calculated it.” Hammond sighed. “No more of this, please. He’s been saying ‘I told you so’ for hours. But nobody ever wanted this to happen.” “It isn’t a matter of wanting it or not,” Malcolm said, eyes closed. He spoke slowly, through the drugs. “It’s a matter of what you think you can accomplish. When the hunter goes out in the rain forest to seek food for his family, does he expect to control nature? No. He imagines that nature is beyond him. Beyond his understanding. Beyond his control. Maybe he prays to nature, to the fertility of the forest that provides for him. He prays because he knows he doesn’t control it. He’s at the mercy of it. “But you decide you won’t be at the mercy of nature. You decide you’ll control nature, and from that moment on you’re in deep trouble, because you can’t do it. Yet you have made systems that require you to do it. And you can’t do it—and you never have—and you never will. Don’t confuse things. You can make a boat, but you can’t make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can’t make the air. Your powers are much less than your dreams of reason would have you believe.” “He’s lost me,” Hammond said, with a sigh. “Where did Tim go? He seemed such a responsible boy.” “I’m sure he’s trying to get control of the situation,” Malcolm said. “Like everybody else.” “And Grant, too. What happened to Grant?” Grant reached the rear door to the visitor center, the same door he had left twenty minutes before. He tugged on the handle: it was locked. Then he saw the little red light. The security doors were reactivated! Damn! He ran around to the front of the building, and went through the shattered front doors into the main lobby, stopping by the guard desk where he had been earlier. He could hear the dry hiss of his radio. He went to the kitchen, looking for the kids, but the kitchen door was open, the kids gone. He went upstairs but came to the glass panel marked CLOSED AREA and the door was locked. He needed a security card to go farther. Grant couldn’t get in. From somewhere inside the hallway, he heard the raptors snarling.


The leathery reptile skin touched Tim’s face, the claws tore his shirt, and Tim fell onto his back, shrieking in fright. “Timmy!” Lex yelled. Tim scrambled to his feet again. The baby velociraptor perched on his shoulder, chirping and squeaking in panic. Tim and Lex were in the white nursery. There were toys on the floor: a rolling yellow ball, a doll, a plastic rattle. “It’s the baby raptor,” Lex said, pointing to the animal gripping Tim’s shoulder. The little raptor burrowed its head into Tim’s neck. The poor thing was probably starving, Tim thought. Lex came closer and the baby hopped onto her shoulder. It rubbed against her neck. “Why is it doing that?” she said. “Is it scared?” “I don’t know,” Tim said. She passed the raptor back to Tim. The baby was chirping and squeaking, and hopping up and down on his shoulder excitedly. It kept looking around, head moving quickly. No doubt about it, the little thing was worked up and— “Tim,” Lex whispered. The door to the hallway hadn’t closed behind them after they entered the nursery. Now the big velociraptors were coming through. First one, then a second one. Clearly agitated, the baby chirped and bounced on Tim’s shoulder. Tim knew he had to get away. Maybe the baby would distract them. After all, it was a baby raptor. He plucked the little animal from his shoulder and threw it across the room. The baby scurried between the legs of the adults. The first raptor lowered its snout, sniffed at the baby delicately. Tim took Lex’s hand, and pulled her deeper into the nursery. He had to find a door, a way to get out— There was a high piercing shriek. Tim looked back to see the baby in the jaws of the adult. A second velociraptor came forward and tore at the limbs of the infant, trying to pull it from the mouth of the first. The two raptors fought over the baby as it squealed. Blood splattered in large drops onto the floor. “They ate him,” Lex said. The raptors fought over the remains of the baby, rearing back and butting heads. Tim found a door—it was unlocked—and went through, pulling Lex after him. They were in another room, and from the deep green glow he realized it was the deserted DNA-extraction laboratory, the rows of stereo microscopes abandoned, the high-resolution screens showing frozen, giant black-and-white images of insects. The flies and gnats that had bitten dinosaurs millions of years ago, sucking the blood that now had been used to re-create dinosaurs in the park. They ran through the laboratory, and Tim could hear the snorts and snarls of the raptors, pursuing them, coming closer, and then he went to the back of the lab and through a door that must have had an alarm, because in the narrow corridor an intermittent siren sounded shrilly, and the lights overhead flashed on and off.


Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.3

Running down the corridor, Tim was plunged into darkness—then light again—then darkness. Over the sound of the alarm, he heard the raptors snort as they pursued him. Lex was whimpering and moaning. Tim saw another door ahead, with the blue biohazard sign, and he slammed into the door, and moved beyond it, and suddenly he collided with something big and Lex shrieked in terror. “Take it easy, kids,” a voice said. Tim blinked in disbelief. Standing above him was Dr. Grant. And next to him was Mr. Gennaro. Outside in the hallway, it had taken Grant nearly two minutes to realize that the dead guard down in the lobby probably had a security card. He’d gone back and gotten it, and entered the upper corridor, moving quickly down the hallway. He had followed the sound of the raptors and found them fighting in the nursery. He was sure the kids would have gone to the next room, and had immediately run to the extractions lab. And there he’d met the kids. Now the raptors were coming toward them. The animals seemed momentarily hesitant, surprised by the appearance of more people. Grant pushed the kids into Gennaro’s arms and said, “Take them back someplace safe.” “But—” “Through there,” Grant said, pointing over his shoulder to a far door. “Take them to the control room, if you can. You should all be safe there.” “What are you going to do?” Gennaro said. The raptors stood near the door. Grant noticed that they waited until all the animals were together, and then they moved forward, as a group. Pack hunters. He shivered. “I have a plan,” Grant said. “Now go on.” Gennaro led the kids away. The raptors continued slowly toward Grant, moving past the supercomputers, past the screens that still blinked endless sequences of computer-deciphered code. The raptors came forward without hesitation, sniffing the floor, repeatedly ducking their heads. Grant heard the door click behind him and glanced over his shoulder. Everybody was standing on the other side of the glass door, watching him. Gennaro shook his head. Grant knew what it meant. There was no door to the control room beyond. Gennaro and the kids were trapped in there. It was up to him now. Grant moved slowly, edging around the laboratory, leading the raptors away from Gennaro and the kids. He could see another door, nearer the front, which was marked TO LABORATORY. Whatever that meant. He had an idea, and he hoped he was right. The door had a blue biohazard sign. The raptors were coming closer. Grant turned and slammed into the door, and moved beyond it, into a deep, warm silence. He turned. Yes. He was where he wanted to be, in the hatchery: beneath infrared lights, long tables, with rows of eggs and a low clinging mist. The rockers on the tables clicked and whirred in a steady motion.


Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.4

The mist poured over the sides of the tables and drifted to the floor, where it disappeared, evaporated. Grant ran directly to the rear of the hatchery, into a glass-walled laboratory with ultraviolet light. His clothing glowed blue. He looked around at the glass reagents, beakers full of pipettes, glass dishes … all delicate laboratory equipment. The raptors entered the room, cautiously at first, sniffing the humid air, looking at the long rocking tables of eggs. The lead animal wiped its bloody jaws with the back of its forearm. Silently the raptors passed between the long tables. The animals moved through the room in a coordinated way, ducking from time to time to peer beneath the tables. They were looking for him. Grant crouched, and moved to the back of the laboratory, looked up, and saw the metal hood marked with a skull and crossbones. A sign said CAUTION BIOGENIC TOXINS A4 PRECAUTIONS REQUIRED. Grant remembered that Regis had said they were powerful poisons. Only a few molecules would kill instantaneously.… The hood lay flush against the surface of the lab table. Grant could not slip his hand under it. He tried to open it, but there was no door, no handle, no way that he could see.… Grant rose slowly, and glanced back at the main room. The raptors were still moving among the tables. He turned to the hood. He saw an odd metal fixture sunk into the surface of the table. It looked like an outdoor electrical outlet with a round cover. He flipped up the cover, saw a button, pressed it. With a soft hiss, the hood slid upward, to the ceiling. He saw glass shelves above him, and rows of bottles marked with a skull and crossbones. He peered at the labels: CCK-55 … TETRA-ALPHA SECRETIN … THYMOLEVIN X-1612…. The fluids glowed pale green in the ultraviolet light. Nearby he saw a glass dish with syringes in it. The syringes were small, each containing a tiny amount of green glowing fluid. Crouched in the blue darkness, Grant reached for the dish of syringes. The needles on the syringes were capped in plastic. He removed one cap, pulling it off with his teeth. He looked at the thin needle. He moved forward. Toward the raptors. He had devoted his whole life to studying dinosaurs. Now he would see how much he really knew. Velociraptors were small carnivorous dinosaurs, like oviraptors and dromaeosaurs, animals that were long thought to steal eggs. Just as certain modern birds ate the eggs of other birds, Grant had always assumed that velociraptors would eat dinosaur eggs if they could. He crept forward to the nearest egg table in the hatchery. Slowly he reached up into the mist and took a large egg from the rocking table. The egg was almost the size of a football, cream-colored with faint pink speckling. He held the egg carefully while he stuck the needle through the shell, and injected the contents of the syringe.


Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.5

The egg glowed faint blue. Grant bent down again. Beneath the table, he saw the legs of the raptors, and the mist pouring down from the tabletops. He rolled the glowing egg along the floor, toward the raptors. The raptors looked up, hearing the faint rumble as the egg rolled, and jerked their heads around. Then they resumed their slow stalking search. The egg stopped several yards from the nearest raptor. Damn! Grant did it all again: quietly reaching up for an egg, bringing it down, injecting it, and rolling it toward the raptors. This time, the egg came to rest by the foot of one velociraptor. It rocked gently, clicking against the big toe claw. The raptor looked down in surprise at this new gift. It bent over and sniffed the glowing egg. It rolled the egg with its snout along the floor for a moment. And ignored it. The velociraptor stood upright again, and slowly moved on, continuing to search. It wasn’t working. Grant reached for a third egg, and injected it with a fresh syringe. He held the glowing egg in his hands, and rolled it again. But he rolled this one fast, like a bowling ball. The egg rattled across the floor loudly. One of the animals heard the sound—ducked down—saw it coming—and instinctively chased the moving object, gliding swiftly among the tables to intercept the egg as it rolled. The big jaws snapped down and bit into it, crushing the shell. The raptor stood, pale albumen dripping from its jaws. It licked its lips noisily, and snorted. It bit again, and lapped the egg from the floor. But it didn’t seem to be in the least distressed. It bent over to eat again from the broken egg. Grant looked down to see what would happen.… From across the room, the raptor saw him. It was looking right at him. The velociraptor snarled menacingly. It moved toward Grant, crossing the room in long, incredibly swift strides. Grant was shocked to see it happening and froze in panic, when suddenly the animal made a gasping, gurgling sound and the big body pitched forward onto the ground. The heavy tail thumped the floor in spasms. The raptor continued to make choking sounds, punctuated by intermittent loud shrieks. Foam bubbled from its mouth. The head flopped back and forth. The tail slammed and thumped. That’s one, Grant thought. But it wasn’t dying very fast. It seemed to take forever to die. Grant reached up for another egg—and saw that the other raptors in the room were frozen in mid-action. They listened to the sound of the dying animal. One cocked its head, then another, and another. The first animal moved to look at the fallen raptor. The dying raptor was now twitching, the whole body shaking on the floor. It made pitiful moans. So much foam bubbled from its mouth that Grant could hardly see the head any more. It flopped on the floor and moaned again.


Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.6

The second raptor bent over the fallen animal, examining it. It appeared to be puzzled by these death throes. Cautiously, it looked at the foaming head, then moved down to the twitching neck, the heaving ribs, the legs.… And it took a bite from the hind leg. The dying animal snarled, and suddenly lifted its head and twisted, sinking its teeth into the neck of its attacker. That’s two, Grant thought. But the standing animal wrenched free. Blood flowed from its neck. It struck out with its hind claws, and with a single swift movement ripped open the belly of the fallen animal. Coils of intestine fell out like fat snakes. The screams of the dying raptor filled the room. The attacker turned away, as if fighting was suddenly too much trouble. It crossed the room, ducked down, and came up with a glowing egg! Grant watched as the raptor bit into it, the glowing material dripping down its chin. That makes two. The second raptor was stricken almost instantly, coughing and pitching forward. As it fell, it knocked over a table. Dozens of eggs rolled everywhere across the floor. Grant looked at them in dismay. There was still a third raptor left. Grant had one more syringe. With so many eggs rolling on the floor, he would have to do something else. He was trying to decide what to do when the last animal snorted irritably. Grant looked up—the raptor had spotted him. The final raptor did not move for a long time, it just stared. And then it slowly, quietly came forward. Stalking him. Bobbing up and down, looking first beneath the tables, then above them. It moved deliberately, cautiously, with none of the swiftness that it had displayed in a pack. A solitary animal now, it was careful. It never took its eyes off Grant. Grant looked around quickly. There was nowhere for him to hide. Nothing for him to do … Grant’s gaze was fixed on the raptor, moving slowly, laterally. Grant moved, too. He tried to keep as many tables as he could between himself and the advancing animal. Slowly … slowly … he moved to the left.… The raptor advanced in the dark red gloom of the hatchery. Its breath came in soft hisses, through flared nostrils. Grant felt eggs breaking beneath his feet, the yolk sticking to the soles of his shoes. He crouched down, felt the bulge of the radio in his pocket. The radio. He pulled it from his pocket and turned it on. “Hello. This is Grant.” “Alan?” Ellie’s voice. “Alan?” “Listen,” he said softly. “Just talk.” “Alan, is that you?” “Talk,” he said again, and he pushed the radio across the floor, away from him, toward the advancing raptor. He crouched behind a table leg, and waited. “Alan. Speak to me, please.” Then a crackle, and silence. The radio remained silent. The raptor advanced. Soft hissing breath. The radio was still silent. What was the matter with her!


Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.7

Didn’t she understand? In the darkness, the raptor came closer. “… Alan?” The tinny voice from the radio made the big animal pause. It sniffed the air, as if sensing someone else in the room. “Alan, it’s me. I don’t know if you can hear me.” The raptor now turned away from Grant, and moved toward the radio. “Alan … please …” Why hadn’t he pushed the radio farther away? The raptor was going toward it, but it was close. The big foot came down very near him. Grant could see the pebbled skin, the soft green glow. The streaks of dried blood on the curved claw. He could smell the strong reptile odor. “Alan, listen to me.… Alan?” The raptor bent over, poked at the radio on the floor, tentatively. Its body was turned away from Grant. The big tail was right above Grant’s head. Grant reached up and jabbed the syringe deep into the flesh of the tail, and injected the poison. The velociraptor snarled and jumped. With frightening speed it swung back toward Grant, jaws wide. It snapped, its jaws closing on the table leg, and jerked its head up. The table was knocked away, and Grant fell back, now completely exposed. The raptor loomed over him, rising up, its head banging into the infrared lights above, making them swing crazily. “Alan?” The raptor reared back, and lifted its clawed foot to kick. Grant rolled, and the foot slammed down, just missing him. He felt a searing sharp pain along his shoulder blades, the sudden warm flow of blood over his shirt. He rolled across the floor, crushing eggs, smearing his hands, his face. The raptor kicked again, smashing down on the radio, spattering sparks. It snarled in rage, and kicked a third time, and Grant came to the wall, nowhere else to go, and the animal raised its foot a final time. And toppled backward. The animal was wheezing. Foam came from its mouth. Gennaro and the kids came into the room. Grant signaled them to stay back. The girl looked at the dying animal and said softly, “Wow.” Gennaro helped Grant to his feet. They all turned, and ran for the control room.


Jurassic Park CONTROL Tim was astonished to find the screen in the control room was now flashing on and off. Lex said, “What happened?” Tim saw Dr. Grant staring at the screen, and gingerly moving his hand toward the keyboard. “I don’t know about computers,” Grant said, shaking his head. But Tim was already sliding into the seat. He touched the screen rapidly. On the video monitors, he could see the boat moving closer to Puntarenas. It was now only about two hundred yards from the dock. On the other monitor, he saw the lodge, with the raptors hanging down from the ceiling. On the radio, he heard their snarls. “Do something, Timmy,” Lex said. He pushed SETGRIDS DNL, even though it was flashing. The screen answered: WARNING: COMMAND EXECUTION ABORTED (AUX POWER LOW) “What does that mean?” Tim said. Gennaro snapped his fingers. “That happened before. It means auxiliary power is low. You have to turn on main power.” “I do?” He pushed ELECTRICAL MAIN. Tim groaned. “What are you doing now?” Grant said. The whole screen was starting to flash. Tim pushed MAIN. Nothing happened. The screen continued to flash. Tim pushed MAIN GRIP P. He felt sick to his stomach with fear. MAIN POWER GRID NOT ACTIVE/AUXILIARY POWER ONLY The screen was still flashing. He pushed MAIN SET 1. MAIN POWER ACTIVATED All the lights in the room came on. All the monitor screens stopped flashing. “Hey! All right!” Tim pressed RESET GRIDS. Nothing happened for a moment. He glanced at the video monitors, then back at the main screen. Grant said something that Tim didn’t hear, he only heard the tension in his voice. He was looking at Tim, worried. Tim felt his heart thumping in his chest. Lex was yelling at him. He didn’t want to look at the video monitor anymore. He could hear the sound of the bars bending in the lodge, and the raptors snarling. He heard Malcolm say, “Dear God …” He pushed LODGE. SPECIFY GRID NUMBER TO RESET. For a frozen interminable moment he couldn’t remember the number, but then he remembered F4, and he pressed that. ACTIVATING LODGE GRID F4 NOW. On the video monitor he saw an explosion of sparks, sputtering down from the ceiling of the hotel room. The monitor flared white. Lex shouted “What did you do!” but almost immediately the image came back and they could see that the raptors were caught between the bars, writhing and screaming in a hot cascade of sparks while Muldoon and the others cheered, their voices tinny over the radio. “That’s it,” Grant said, slapping Tim on the back. “That’s it! You did it!” They were all standing and jumping up and down when Lex said, “What about the ship?” “The what?” “The ship,” she said, and pointed to the screen. On the monitor, the buildings beyond the bow of the ship were much larger, and moving to the right, as the ship turned left and prepared to dock.


He saw crewmen heading out to the bow, preparing to tie up. Tim scrambled back to his seat, and stared at the startup screen. He studied the screen. TeleCom VBB and TeleCom RSD both looked like they might have something to do with telephones. He pressed TELECOM RSD. YOU HAVE 23 WAITING CALLS AND/OR MESSAGES. DO YOU WISH TO RECEIVE THEM NOW? He pushed NO. “Maybe the ship was one of the waiting calls,” Lex said. “Maybe that way you could get the phone number!” He ignored her. ENTER THE NUMBER YOU WISH TO CALL OR PRESS F7 FOR DIRECTORY. He pushed F7 and suddenly names and numbers spilled over the screen, an enormous directory. It wasn’t alphabetical, and it took a while to scan it visually before he found what he was looking for: VSL ANNE B. (FREDDY) 708-3902 Now all he had to do was figure out how to dial. He pushed a row of buttons at the bottom of the screen: DIAL NOW OR DIAL LATER? He pushed DIAL NOW. WE’RE SORRY, YOUR CALL CANNOT BE COMPLETED AS DIALED. {ERROR-598} PLEASE TRY AGAIN He tried it again. He heard a dial tone, then the tone of the numbers being automatically dialed in rapid succession. “Is that it?” Grant said. “Pretty good, Timmy,” Lex said. “But they’re almost there.” On the screen, they could see the prow of the ship closing on the Puntarenas dock. They heard a high-pitched squeal, and then a voice said, “Ah, hello, John, this is Freddy. Do you read me, over?” Tim picked up a phone on the console but heard only a dial tone. “Ah, hello, John, this is Freddy, over?” “Answer it,” Lex said. Now they were all picking up phones, lifting every receiver in sight, but they heard only dial tones. Finally Tim saw a phone mounted on the side of the console with a blinking light. “Ah, hello, control. This is Freddy. Do you read me, over?” Tim grabbed the receiver. “Hello, this is Tim Murphy, and I need you to—” “Ah, say again, didn’t get that, John.” “Don’t land the boat! Do you hear me?” There was a pause. Then a puzzled voice said, “Sounds like some damn kid.” Tim said, “Don’t land the ship! Come back to the island!” The voices sounded distant and scratchy. “Did he—name was Murphy?” And another voice said, “I didn’t get—name.” Tim looked frantically at the others. Gennaro reached for the phone. “Let me do this. Can you get his name?” There was the sharp crackle of static. “—got to be a joke or else—a—frigging ham operator—omething.” Tim was working on the keyboard, there was probably some kind of a way to find out who Freddy was.… “Can you hear me?” Gennaro said, into the phone.


“If you can hear me, answer me now, over.” “Son,” came the drawled reply, “we don’t know who the hell you are, but you’re not funny, and we’re about to dock and we’ve got work to do. Now, identify yourself properly or get off this channel.” Tim watched as the screen printed out FARRELL, FREDERICK D. (CAPT.). “Try this for identification, Captain Farrell,” Gennaro said. “If you don’t turn that boat around and return to this island immediately, you will be found in violation of Section 509 of the Uniform Maritime Act, you will be subject to revocation of license, penalties in excess of fifty thousand dollars, and five years in jail. Do you hear that?” There was a silence. “Do you copy that, Captain Farrell?” And then, distantly, they heard a voice say, “I copy,” and another voice said, “All ahead stern.” The boat began to turn away from the dock. Lex began to cheer. Tim collapsed back in the chair, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Grant said, “What’s the Uniform Maritime Act?” “Who the hell knows?” Gennaro said. They all watched the screen in satisfaction. The boat was definitely heading away from the shore. “I guess the hard part’s finished,” Gennaro said. Grant shook his head. “The hard part,” he said, “is just beginning.”


Jurassic Park DESTROYING THE WORLD They moved Malcolm to another room in the lodge, to a clean bed. Hammond seemed to revive, and began bustling around, straightening up. “Well,” he said, “at least disaster is averted.” “What disaster is that?” Malcolm said, sighing. “Well,” Hammond said, “they didn’t get free and overrun the world.” Malcolm sat up on one elbow. “You were worried about that?” “Surely that’s what was at stake,” Hammond said. “These animals, lacking predators, might get out and destroy the planet.” “You egomaniacal idiot,” Malcolm said, in fury. “Do you have any idea what you are talking about? You think you can destroy the planet? My, what intoxicating power you must have.” Malcolm sank back on the bed. “You can’t destroy this planet. You can’t even come close.” “Most people believe,” Hammond said stiffly, “that the planet is in jeopardy.” “Well, it’s not,” Malcolm said. “All the experts agree that our planet is in trouble.” Malcolm sighed. “Let me tell you about our planet,” he said. “Our planet is four and a half billion years old. There has been life on this planet for nearly that long. Three point eight billion years. The first bacteria. And, later, the first multicellular animals, then the first complex creatures, in the sea, on the land. Then the great sweeping ages of animals—the amphibians, the dinosaurs, the mammals, each lasting millions upon millions of years. Great dynasties of creatures arising, flourishing, dying away. All this happening against a background of continuous and violent upheaval, mountain ranges thrust up and eroded away, cometary impacts, volcanic eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving … Endless, constant and violent change … Even today, the greatest geographical feature on the planet comes from two great continents colliding, buckling to make the Himalayan mountain range over millions of years. The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us.” Hammond frowned. “Just because it lasted a long time,” he said, “doesn’t mean it is permanent. If there was a radiation accident …” “Suppose there was,” Malcolm said. “Let’s say we had a bad one, and all the plants and animals died, and the earth was clicking hot for a hundred thousand years. Life would survive somewhere—under the soil, or perhaps frozen in Arctic ice. And after all those years, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would again spread over the planet. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. And of course it would be very different from what it is now. But the earth would survive our folly. Life would survive our folly. Only we,” Malcolm said, “think it wouldn’t.” Hammond said, “Well, if the ozone layer gets thinner—” “There will be more ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface. So what?” “Well. It’ll cause skin cancer.” Malcolm shook his head. “Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change.


Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation.” “And many others will die out,” Hammond said. Malcolm sighed. “You think this is the first time such a thing has happened? Don’t you know about oxygen?” “I know it’s necessary for life.” “It is now,” Malcolm said. “But oxygen is actually a metabolic poison. It’s a corrosive gas, like fluorine, which is used to etch glass. And when oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells—say, around three billion years ago—it created a crisis for all other life on our planet. Those plant cells were polluting the environment with a deadly poison. They were exhaling a lethal gas, and building up its concentration. A planet like Venus has less than one percent oxygen. On earth, the concentration of oxygen was going up rapidly—five, ten, eventually twenty-one percent! Earth had an atmosphere of pure poison! Incompatible with life!” Hammond looked irritated. “So what is your point? That modern pollutants will be incorporated, too?” “No,” Malcolm said. “My point is that life on earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago, we didn’t have cars and airplanes and computers and vaccines.… It was a whole different world. But to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.” “And we very well might be gone,” Hammond said, huffing. “Yes,” Malcolm said. “We might.” “So what are you saying? We shouldn’t care about the environment?” “No, of course not.” “Then what?” Malcolm coughed, and stared into the distance. “Let’s be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven’t got the power to destroy the planet—or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.”


Jurassic Park UNDER CONTROL Four hours had passed. It was afternoon; the sun was falling. The air conditioning was back on in the control room, and the computer was functioning properly. As near as they could determine, out of twenty-four people on the island, eight were dead and six more were missing. The visitor center and the Safari Lodge were both secure, and the northern perimeter seemed to be clear of dinosaurs. They had called authorities in San José for help. The Costa Rican National Guard was on its way, as well as an air ambulance to carry Malcolm to a hospital. But over the telephone, the Costa Rican guard had been distinctly cautious; undoubtedly calls would go back and forth between San José and Washington before help was finally sent to the island. And now it was growing late in the day; if the helicopters did not arrive soon, they would have to wait until morning. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but wait. The ship was returning; the crew had discovered three young raptors scampering about in one of the aft holds, and had killed the animals. On Isla Nublar, the immediate danger appeared to have passed; everyone was in either the visitor center or the lodge. Tim had gotten quite good with the computer, and he flashed up a new screen. “What the hell is it doing now?” Gennaro said. “Now it says there are fewer animals?” Grant nodded. “Probably.” Ellie said, “Jurassic Park is finally coming under control.” “Meaning what?” “Equilibrium.” Grant pointed to the monitors. On one of them, the hypsilophodonts leapt into the air as a pack of velociraptors entered the field from the west. “The fences have been down for hours,” Grant said. “The animals are mingling with each other. Populations reaching equilibrium—a true Jurassic equilibrium.” “I don’t think it was supposed to happen,” Gennaro said. “The animals were never supposed to mix.” “Well, they are.” On another monitor, Grant saw a pack of raptors racing at full speed across an open field toward a four-ton hadrosaur. The hadrosaur turned to flee, and one of the raptors jumped onto its back, biting into the long neck, while others raced forward, circled around it, nipped at its legs, leapt up to slash at the belly with their powerful claws. Within minutes, six raptors had brought down the larger animal. Grant stared, silently. Ellie said, “Is it the way you imagined?” “I don’t know what I imagined,” he said. He watched the monitor. “No, not exactly.” Muldoon said quietly, “You know, it appears all the adult raptors are out right now.” Grant didn’t pay much attention at first. He just watched the monitors, the interaction of the great animals. In the south, the stegosaur was swinging its spiked tail, warily circling the baby tyrannosaur, which watched it, bemused, and occasionally lunged forward to nip ineffectually at the spikes. In the western quadrant, the adult triceratopsians were fighting among themselves, charging and locking horns.


One animal already lay wounded and dying. Muldoon said, “We’ve got about an hour of good daylight left, Dr. Grant. If you want to try and find that nest.” “Right,” Grant said. “I do.” “I was thinking,” Muldoon said, “that, when the Costa Ricans come, they will probably imagine this island to be a military problem. Something to destroy as soon as possible.” “Damn right,” Gennaro said. “They’ll bomb it from the air,” Muldoon said. “Perhaps napalm, perhaps nerve gas as well. But from the air.” “I hope they do,” Gennaro said. “This island is too dangerous. Every animal on this island must be destroyed, and the sooner the better.” Grant said, “That’s not satisfactory.” He got to his feet. “Let’s get started.” “I don’t think you understand, Alan,” Gennaro said. “It’s my opinion that this island is too dangerous. It must be destroyed. Every animal on this island must be destroyed, and that’s what the Costa Rican guard will do. I think we should leave it in their capable hands. Do you understand what I’m saying?” “Perfectly,” Grant said again. “Then what’s your problem?” Gennaro said. “It’s a military operation. Let them do it.” Grant’s back ached, where the raptor had clawed him. “No,” he said. “We have to take care of it.” “Leave it to the experts,” Gennaro said. Grant remembered how he had found Gennaro, just six hours earlier, huddled and terrified in the cab of a truck in the maintenance building. And suddenly he lost his temper and slammed the lawyer up against the concrete wall. “Listen, you little bastard, you have a responsibility to this situation and you’re going to start living up to it.” “I am,” Gennaro said, coughing. “No, you’re not. You’ve shirked your responsibility all along, from the very beginning.” “The hell—” “You sold investors on an undertaking you didn’t fully understand. You were part owner of a business you failed to supervise. You did not check the activities of a man whom you knew from experience to be a liar, and you permitted that man to screw around with the most dangerous technology in human history. I’d say you shirked your responsibility.” Gennaro coughed again. “Well, now I’m taking responsibility.” “No,” Grant said. “You’re still shirking it. And you can’t do that any more.” He released Gennaro, who bent over, gasping for breath. Grant turned to Muldoon. “What have we got for weapons?” Muldoon said, “We’ve got some control nets, and shock prods.” “How good are these shock prods?” Grant said. “They’re like bang sticks for sharks. They have an explosive capacitor tip, delivers a shock on contact. High voltage, low amps. Not fatal, but it’s definitely incapacitating.” “That’s not going to do it,” Grant said. “Not in the nest.” “What nest?” Gennaro said, coughing. “The raptor nest,” Ellie said. “The raptor nest?” Grant was saying, “Have you got any radio collars?” “I’m sure we do,” Muldoon said. “Get one.


And is there anything else that can be used for defense?” Muldoon shook his head. “Well, get whatever you can.” Muldoon went away. Grant turned to Gennaro. “Your island is a mess, Mr. Gennaro. Your experiment is a mess. It has to be cleaned up. But you can’t do that until you know the extent of the mess. And that means finding the nests on the island. Especially the raptor nests. They’ll be hidden. We have to find them, and inspect them, and count the eggs. We have to account for every animal born on this island. Then we can burn it down. But first we have a little work to do.” Ellie was looking at the wall map, which now showed the animal ranges. Tim was working the keyboard. She pointed to the map. “The raptors are localized in the southern area, down where the volcanic steam fields are. Maybe they like the warmth.” “Is there any place to hide down there?” “Turns out there is,” she said. “There’s massive concrete waterworks, to control flooding in the southern flatlands. Big underground area. Water and shade.” Grant nodded. “Then that’s where they’ll be.” Ellie said, “I think there’s an entrance from the beach, too.” She turned to the consoles and said, “Tim, show us the cutaways on the waterworks.” Tim wasn’t listening. “Tim?” He was hunched over the keyboard. “Just a minute,” he said. “I found something.” “What is it?” “It’s an unmarked storage room. I don’t know what’s there.” “Then it might have weapons,” Grant said. They were all behind the maintenance building, unlocking a steel storm door, lifting it up into the sunlight, to reveal concrete steps going down into the earth. “Damned Arnold,” Muldoon said, as he hobbled down the steps. “He must have known this was here all along.” “Maybe not,” Grant said. “He didn’t try to go here.” “Well, then, Hammond knew. Somebody knew.” “Where is Hammond now?” “Still in the lodge.” They reached the bottom of the stairs, and came upon rows of gas masks hanging on the wall, in plastic containers. They shone their flashlights deeper into the room and saw several heavy glass cubes, two feet high, with steel caps. Grant could see small dark spheres inside the cubes. It was like being in a room full of giant pepper mills, he thought. Muldoon opened the cap of one, reached in, and withdrew a sphere. He turned it in the light, frowning. “I’ll be damned.” “What is it?” Grant said. “MORO-12,” Muldoon said. “It’s an inhalation nerve gas. These are grenades. Lots and lots of grenades.” “Let’s get started,” Grant said grimly. “It likes me,” Lex said, smiling. They were standing in the garage of the visitor center, by the little raptor that Grant had captured in the tunnel. She was petting the raptor through the cage bars. The animal rubbed up against her hand. “I’d be careful there,” Muldoon said. “They can give a nasty bite.” “He likes me,” Lex said.


“His name is Clarence.” “Clarence?” “Yes,” Lex said. Muldoon was holding the leather collar with the small metal box attached to it. Grant heard the high-pitched beeping in the headset. “Is it a problem putting the collar on the animal?” Lex was still petting the raptor, reaching through the cage. “I bet he’ll let me put it on him,” she said. “I wouldn’t try,” Muldoon said. “They’re unpredictable.” “I bet he’ll let me,” she said. So Muldoon gave Lex the collar, and she held it out so the raptor could smell it. Then she slowly slipped it around the animal’s neck. The raptor turned brighter green when Lex buckled it and closed the Velcro cover over the buckle. Then the animal relaxed, and turned paler again. “I’ll be damned,” Muldoon said. “It’s a chameleon,” Lex said. “The other raptors couldn’t do that,” Muldoon said, frowning. “This wild animal must be different. By the way,” he said, turning to Grant, “if they’re all born females, how do they breed? You never explained that bit about the frog DNA.” “It’s not frog DNA,” Grant said. “It’s amphibian DNA. But the phenomenon happens to be particularly well documented in frogs. Especially West African frogs, if I remember.” “What phenomenon is that?” “Gender transition,” Grant said. “Actually, it’s just plain changing sex.” Grant explained that a number of plants and animals were known to have the ability to change their sex during life—orchids, some fish and shrimp, and now frogs. Frogs that had been observed to lay eggs were able to change, over a period of months, into complete males. They first adopted the fighting stance of males, they developed the mating whistle of males, they stimulated the hormones and grew the gonads of males, and eventually they successfully mated with females. “You’re kidding,” Gennaro said. “And what makes it happen?” “Apparently the change is stimulated by an environment in which all the animals are of the same sex. In that situation, some of the amphibians will spontaneously begin to change sex from female to male.” “And you think that’s what happened to the dinosaurs?” “Until we have a better explanation, yes,” Grant said. “I think that’s what happened. Now, shall we find this nest?” They piled into the Jeep, and Lex lifted the raptor from the cage. The animal seemed quite calm, almost tame in her hands. She gave it a final pat on the head, and released it. The animal wouldn’t leave. “Go on, shoo!” Lex said. “Go home!” The raptor turned, and ran off into the foliage. Grant held the receiver and wore the headphones. Muldoon drove. The car bounced along the main road, going south. Gennaro turned to Grant and said, “What is it like, this nest?” “Nobody knows,” Grant said. “But I thought you’d dug them up.” “I’ve dug up fossil dinosaur nests,” Grant said. “But all fossils are distorted by the weight of millennia.


We’ve made some hypotheses, some suppositions, but nobody really knows what the nests were like.” Grant listened to the beeps, and signaled Muldoon to head farther west. It looked more and more as if Ellie had been correct: the nest was in the southern volcanic fields. Grant shook his head. “You have to realize: we don’t know all the details about the nesting behavior of living reptiles, like crocodiles and alligators. They’re difficult animals to study.” But it was known that in the case of American alligators, only the female guarded the nest, awaiting the time of hatching. The bull alligator spent days in early spring lying beside the female in a mating pair, blowing bubbles on her cheeks to bring her to receptivity, finally causing her to lift her tail and allow him to insert his penis. By the time the female built her nest, two months later, the male was long gone. The female guarded her cone-shaped, three-foot-high nest ferociously, and when the hatchlings began to squeak and emerge from their shells, she often helped break open the eggs, then nudged them toward the water, sometimes carrying them in her mouth. “So adult alligators protect the young?” “Yes,” Grant said. “And there is also a kind of group protection. Young alligators make a distinctive distress cry, and it brings any adult who hears it—parent or not—to their assistance with a full-fledged, violent attack. Not a threat display. A full-on attack.” “Oh.” Gennaro fell silent. “But dinos aren’t reptiles,” Muldoon said laconically. “Exactly. The dinosaur nesting pattern could be much more closely related to that of any of a variety of birds.” “So you actually mean you don’t know,” Gennaro said, getting annoyed. “You don’t know what the nest is like?” “No,” Grant said. “I don’t.” “Well,” Gennaro said. “So much for the damn experts.” Grant ignored him. Already he could smell the sulfur. And up ahead he saw the rising steam of the volcanic fields. The ground was hot, Gennaro thought, as he walked forward. It was actually hot. And here and there mud bubbled and spat up from the ground. And the reeking, sulfurous steam hissed in great shoulder-high plumes. He felt as if he were walking through hell. He looked at Grant, walking along with the headset on, listening to the beeps. Grant in his cowboy boots and his jeans and his Hawaiian shirt, apparently very cool. Gennaro didn’t feel cool. He was frightened to be in this stinking, hellish place, with the velociraptors somewhere around. He didn’t understand how Grant could be so calm about it. Or the woman. Sattler. She was walking along, too, just looking calmly around. “Doesn’t this bother you?” Gennaro said. “I mean, worry you?” “We’ve got to do it,” Grant said. He didn’t say anything else. They all walked forward, among the bubbling steam vents. Gennaro fingered the gas grenades that he had clipped to his belt. He turned to Ellie.


“Why isn’t he worried about it?” “Maybe he is,” she said. “But he’s also thought about this for his whole life.” Gennaro nodded, and wondered what that would be like. Whether there was anything he had waited his whole life for. He decided there wasn’t anything. Grant squinted in the sunlight. Ahead, through veils of steam, an animal crouched, looking at them. Then it scampered away. “Was that the raptor?” Ellie said. “I think so. Or another one. Juvenile, anyway.” She said, “Leading us on?” “Maybe.” Ellie had told him how the raptors had played at the fence to keep her attention while another climbed onto the roof. If true, such behavior implied a mental capacity that was beyond nearly all forms of life on earth. Classically, the ability to invent and execute plans was believed to be limited to only three species: chimpanzees, gorillas, and human beings. Now there was the possibility that a dinosaur might be able to do such a thing, too. The raptor appeared again, darting into the light, then jumping away with a squeak. It really did seem to be leading them on. Gennaro frowned. “How smart are they?” he said. “If you think of them as birds,” Grant said, “then you have to wonder. Some new studies show the gray parrot has as much symbolic intelligence as a chimpanzee. And chimpanzees can definitely use language. Now researchers are finding that parrots have the emotional development of a three-year-old child, but their intelligence is unquestioned. Parrots can definitely reason symbolically.” “But I’ve never heard of anybody killed by a parrot,” Gennaro grumbled. Distantly, they could hear the sound of the surf on the island shore. The volcanic fields were behind them now, and they faced a field of boulders. The little raptor climbed up onto one rock, and then abruptly disappeared. “Where’d it go?” Ellie said. Grant was listening to the earphones. The beeping stopped. “He’s gone.” They hurried forward, and found in the midst of the rocks a small hole, like a rabbit hole. It was perhaps two feet in diameter. As they watched, the juvenile raptor reappeared, blinking in the light. Then it scampered away. “No way,” Gennaro said. “No way I’m going down there.” Grant said nothing. He and Ellie began to plug in equipment. Soon he had a small video camera attached to a hand-held monitor. He tied the camera to a rope, turned it on, and lowered it down the hole. “You can’t see anything that way,” Gennaro said. “Let it adjust,” Grant said. There was enough light along the upper tunnel for them to see smooth dirt walls, and then the tunnel opened out suddenly, abruptly. Over the microphone, they heard a squeaking sound. Then a lower, trumpeting sound. More noises, coming from many animals. “Sounds like the nest, all right,” Ellie said. “But you can’t see anything,” Gennaro said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “No,” Grant said.


“But I can hear.” He listened for a while longer, and then hauled the camera out, and set it on the ground. “Let’s get started.” He climbed up toward the hole. Ellie went to get a flashlight and a shock stick. Grant pulled the gas mask on over his face, and crouched down awkwardly, extending his legs backward. “You can’t be serious about going down there,” Gennaro said. Grant nodded. “It doesn’t thrill me. I’ll go first, then Ellie, then you come after.” “Now, wait a minute,” Gennaro said, in sudden alarm. “Why don’t we drop these nerve-gas grenades down the hole, then go down afterward? Doesn’t that make more sense?” “Ellie, you got the flashlight?” She handed the flashlight to Grant. “What about it?” Gennaro said. “What do you say?” “I’d like nothing better,” Grant said. He backed down toward the hole. “You ever seen anything die from poison gas?” “No …” “It generally causes convulsions. Bad convulsions.” “Well, I’m sorry if it’s unpleasant, but—” “Look,” Grant said. “We’re going into this nest to find out how many animals have hatched. If you kill the animals first, and some of them fall on the nests in their spasms, that will ruin our ability to see what was there. So we can’t do that.” “But—” “You made these animals, Mr. Gennaro.” “I didn’t.” “Your money did. Your efforts did. You helped create them. They’re your creation. And you can’t just kill them because you feel a little nervous now.” “I’m not a little nervous,” Gennaro said. “I’m scared shi—” “Follow me,” Grant said. Ellie handed him a shock stick. He pushed backward through the hole, and grunted. “Tight fit.” Grant exhaled, and extended his arms forward in front of him, and there was a kind of whoosh, and he was gone. The hole gaped, empty and black. “What happened to him?” Gennaro said, alarmed. Ellie stepped forward and leaned close to the hole, listening at the opening. She clicked the radio, said softly, “Alan?” There was a long silence. Then they heard faintly: “I’m here.” “Is everything all right, Alan?” Another long silence. When Grant finally spoke, his voice sounded distinctly odd, almost awestruck. “Everything’s fine,” he said.


Jurassic Park ALMOST PARADIGM In the lodge, John Hammond paced back and forth in Malcolm’s room. Hammond was impatient and uncomfortable. Since marshaling the effort for his last outburst, Malcolm had slipped into a coma, and now it appeared to Hammond that he might actually die. Of course a helicopter had been sent for, but God knows when it would arrive. The thought that Malcolm might die in the meantime filled Hammond with anxiety and dread. And, paradoxically, Hammond found it all much worse because he disliked the mathematician so much. It was worse than if the man were his friend. Hammond felt that Malcolm’s death, should it occur, would be the final rebuke, and that was more than Hammond could bear. In any case, the smell in the room was quite ghastly. Quite ghastly. The rotten decay of human flesh. “Everything … parad …” Malcolm said, tossing on the pillow. “Is he waking up?” Hammond said. Harding shook his head. “What did he say? Something about paradise?” “I didn’t catch it,” Harding said. Hammond paced some more. He pushed the window wider, trying to get some fresh air. Finally, when he couldn’t stand it, he said, “Is there any problem about going outside?” “I don’t think so, no,” Harding said. “I think this area is all right.” “Well, look, I’m going outside for a bit.” “All right,” Harding said. He adjusted the flow on the intravenous antibiotics. “I’ll be back soon.” “All right.” Hammond left, stepping out into the daylight, wondering why he had bothered to justify himself to Harding. After all, the man was his employee. Hammond had no need to explain himself. He went through the gates of the fence, looking around the park. It was late afternoon, the time when the blowing mist was thinned, and the sun sometimes came out. The sun was out now, and Hammond took it as an omen. Say what they would, he knew that his park had promise. And even if that impetuous fool Gennaro decided to burn it to the ground, it would not make much difference. Hammond knew that in two separate vaults at InGen headquarters in Palo Alto were dozens of frozen embryos. It would not be a problem to grow them again, on another island, elsewhere in the world. And if there had been problems here, then the next time they would solve those problems. That was how progress occurred. By solving problems. As he thought about it, he concluded that Wu had not really been the man for the job. Wu had obviously been sloppy, too casual with his great undertaking. And Wu had been too preoccupied with the idea of making improvements. Instead of making dinosaurs, he had wanted to improve on them. Hammond suspected darkly that was the reason for the downfall of the park. Wu was the reason. Also, he had to admit that John Arnold was ill suited for the job of chief engineer.


Arnold had impressive credentials, but at this point in his career he was tired, and he was a fretful worrier. He hadn’t been organized, and he had missed things. Important things. In truth, neither Wu nor Arnold had had the most important characteristic, Hammond decided. The characteristic of vision. That great sweeping act of imagination which evoked a marvelous park, where children pressed against the fences, wondering at the extraordinary creatures, come alive from their storybooks. Real vision. The ability to see the future. The ability to marshal resources to make that future vision a reality. No, neither Wu nor Arnold was suited to that task. And, for that matter, Ed Regis had been a poor choice, too. Harding was at best an indifferent choice. Muldoon was a drunk.… Hammond shook his head. He would do better next time. Lost in his thoughts, he headed toward his bungalow, following the little path that ran north from the visitor center. He passed one of the workmen, who nodded curtly. Hammond did not return the nod. He found the Tican workmen to be uniformly insolent. To tell the truth, the choice of this island off Costa Rica had also been unwise. He would not make such obvious mistakes again— When it came, the roar of the dinosaur seemed frighteningly close. Hammond spun so quickly he fell on the path, and when he looked back he thought he saw the shadow of the juvenile T-rex, moving in the foliage beside the flagstone path, moving toward him. What was the T-rex doing here? Why was it outside the fences? Hammond felt a flash of rage: and then he saw the Tican workman, running for his life, and Hammond took the moment to get to his feet and dash blindly into the forest on the opposite side of the path. He was plunged in darkness; he stumbled and fell, his face mashed into wet leaves and damp earth, and he staggered back up to his feet, ran onward, fell again, and then ran once more. Now he was moving down a steep hillside, and he couldn’t keep his balance. He tumbled helplessly, rolling and spinning over the soft ground, before finally coming to a stop at the foot of the hill. His face splashed into shallow tepid water, which gurgled around him and ran up his nose. He was lying face down in a little stream. He had panicked! What a fool! He should have gone to his bungalow! Hammond cursed himself. As he got to his feet, he felt a sharp pain in his right ankle that brought tears to his eyes. He tested it gingerly: it might be broken. He forced himself to put his full weight on it, gritting his teeth. Yes. Almost certainly broken. In the control room, Lex said to Tim, “I wish they had taken us with them to the nest.” “It’s too dangerous for us, Lex,” Tim said. “We have to stay here.


Hey, listen to this one.” He pressed another button, and a recorded tyrannosaur roar echoed over the loudspeakers in the park. “That’s neat,” Lex said. “That’s better than the other one.” “You can do it, too,” Tim said. “And if you push this, you get reverb.” “Let me try,” Lex said. She pushed the button. The tyrannosaur roared again. “Can we make it last longer?” she said. “Sure,” Tim said. “We just twist this thing here.…” Lying at the bottom of the hill, Hammond heard the tyrannosaur roar, bellowing through the jungle. Jesus. He shivered, hearing that sound. It was terrifying, a scream from some other world. He waited to see what would happen. What would the tyrannosaur do? Had it already gotten that workman? Hammond waited, hearing only the buzz of the jungle cicadas, until he realized he was holding his breath, and let out a long sigh. With his injured ankle, he couldn’t climb the hill. He would have to wait at the bottom of the ravine. After the tyrannosaur had gone, he would call for help. Meanwhile, he was in no danger here. Then he heard an amplified voice say, “Come on, Timmy, I get to try it too. Come on. Let me make the noise.” The kids! The tyrannosaur roared again, but this time it had distinct musical overtones, and a kind of echo, persisting afterward. “Neat one,” said the little girl. “Do it again.” Those damned kids! He should never have brought those kids. They had been nothing but trouble from the beginning. Nobody wanted them around. Hammond had only brought them because he thought it would stop Gennaro from destroying the resort, but Gennaro was going to do it anyway. And the kids had obviously gotten into the control room and started fooling around—now, who had allowed that? He felt his heart begin to race, and felt an uneasy shortness of breath. He forced himself to relax. There was nothing wrong. Although he could not climb the hill, he could not be more than a hundred yards from his own bungalow, and the visitor center. Hammond sat down in the damp earth, listening to the sounds in the jungle around him. And then, after a while, he began to shout for help. Malcolm’s voice was no louder than a whisper. “Everything … looks different … on the other side,” he said. Harding leaned close to him. “On the other side?” He thought that Malcolm was talking about dying. “When … shifts,” Malcolm said. “Shifts?” Malcolm didn’t answer. His dry lips moved. “Paradigm,” he said finally. “Paradigm shifts?” Harding said. He knew about paradigm shifts. For the last two decades, they had been the fashionable way to talk about scientific change. “Paradigm” was just another word for a model, but as scientists used it the term meant something more, a world view. A larger way of seeing the world.


Paradigm shifts were said to occur whenever science made a major change in its view of the world. Such changes were relatively rare, occurring about once a century. Darwinian evolution had forced a paradigm shift. Quantum mechanics had forced a smaller shift. “No,” Malcolm said. “Not … paradigm … beyond …” “Beyond paradigm?” Harding said. “Don’t care about … what … anymore …” Harding sighed. Despite all efforts, Malcolm was rapidly slipping into a terminal delirium. His fever was higher, and they were almost out of his antibiotics. “What don’t you care about?” “Anything,” Malcolm said. “Because … everything looks different … on the other side.” And he smiled.


Jurassic Park DESCENT “You’re crazy,” Gennaro said to Ellie Sattler, watching as she squeezed backward into the rabbit hole, stretching her arms forward. “You’re crazy to do that!” She smiled. “Probably,” she said. She reached forward with her outstretched hands, and pushed backward against the sides of the hole. And suddenly she was gone. The hole gaped black. Gennaro began to sweat. He turned to Muldoon, who was standing by the Jeep. “I’m not doing this,” he said. “Yes, you are.” “I can’t do this. I can’t.” “They’re waiting for you,” Muldoon said. “You have to.” “Christ only knows what’s down there,” Gennaro said. “I’m telling you, I can’t do it.” “You have to.” Gennaro turned away, looked at the hole, looked back. “I can’t. You can’t make me.” “I suppose not,” Muldoon said. He held up the stainless-steel prod. “Ever felt a shock stick?” “No.” “Doesn’t do much,” Muldoon said. “Almost never fatal. Generally knocks you flat. Perhaps loosens your bowels. But it doesn’t usually have any permanent effect. At least, not on dinos. But, then, people are much smaller.” Gennaro looked at the stick. “You wouldn’t.” “I think you’d better go down and count those animals,” Muldoon said. “And you better hurry.” Gennaro looked back at the hole, at the black opening, a mouth in the earth. Then he looked at Muldoon, standing there, large and impassive. Gennaro was sweating and light-headed. He started walking toward the hole. From a distance it appeared small, but as he came closer it seemed to grow larger. “That’s it,” Muldoon said. Gennaro climbed backward into the hole, but he began to feel too frightened to continue that way—the idea of backing into the unknown filled him with dread—so at the last minute he turned around and climbed head first into the hole, extending his arms forward and kicking his feet, because at least he would see where he was going. He pulled the gas mask over his face. And suddenly he was rushing forward, sliding into blackness, seeing the dirt walls disappear into darkness before him, and then the walls became narrower—much narrower—terrifyingly narrow—and he was lost in the pain of a squeezing compression that became steadily worse and worse, that crushed the air out of his lungs, and he was only dimly aware that the tunnel tilted slightly upward, along the path, shifting his body, leaving him gasping and seeing spots before his eyes, and the pain was extreme. And then suddenly the tunnel tilted downward again, and it became wider, and Gennaro felt rough surfaces, concrete, and cold air. His body was suddenly free, and bouncing, tumbling on concrete. And then he fell. Voices in the darkness. Fingers touching him, reaching forward from the whispered voices. The air was cold, like a cave. “—okay?” “He looks okay, yes.” “He’s breathing.…” “Fine.” A female hand caressing his face. It was Ellie. “Can you hear?” she whispered. “Why is everybody whispering?” he said. “Because.” She pointed.


Gennaro turned, rolled, got slowly to his feet. He stared as his vision grew accustomed to the darkness. But the first thing that he saw, gleaming in the darkness, was eyes. Glowing green eyes. Dozens of eyes. All around him. He was on a concrete ledge, a kind of embankment, about seven feet above the floor. Large steel junction boxes provided a makeshift hiding place, protecting them from the view of the two full-size velociraptors that stood directly before them, not five feet away. The animals were dark green with brownish tiger stripes. They stood upright, balancing on their stiff extended tails. They were totally silent, looking around watchfully with large dark eyes. At the feet of the adults, baby velociraptors skittered and chirped. Farther back, in the darkness, juveniles tumbled and played, giving short snarls and growls. Gennaro did not dare to breathe. Two raptors! Crouched on the ledge, he was only a foot or two above the animals’ head height. The raptors were edgy, their heads jerking nervously up and down. From time to time they snorted impatiently. Then they moved off, turning back toward the main group. As his eyes adjusted, Gennaro could now see that they were in some kind of an enormous underground structure, but it was man-made—there were seams of poured concrete, and the nubs of protruding steel rods. And within this vast echoing space were many animals: Gennaro guessed at least thirty raptors. Perhaps more. “It’s a colony,” Grant said, whispering. “Four or six adults. The rest juveniles and infants. At least two hatchings. One last year and one this year. These babies look about four months old. Probably hatched in April.” One of the babies, curious, scampered up on the ledge, and came toward them, squeaking. It was now only ten feet away. “Oh Jesus,” Gennaro said. But immediately one of the adults came forward, raised its head, and gently nudged the baby to turn back. The baby chittered a protest, then hopped up to stand on the snout of the adult. The adult moved slowly, allowing the baby to climb over its head, down its neck, onto its back. From that protected spot, the infant turned, and chirped noisily at the three intruders. The adults still did not seem to notice them at all. “I don’t get it,” Gennaro whispered. “Why aren’t they attacking?” Grant shook his head. “They must not see us. And there aren’t any eggs at the moment.… Makes them more relaxed.” “Relaxed?” Gennaro said. “How long do we have to stay here?” “Long enough to do the count,” Grant said. As Grant saw it, there were three nests, attended by three sets of parents. The division of territory was centered roughly around the nests, although the offspring seemed to overlap, and run into different territories. The adults were benign with the young ones, and tougher with the juveniles, occasionally snapping at the older animals when their play got too rough.


At that moment, a juvenile raptor came up to Ellie and rubbed his head against her leg. She looked down and saw the leather collar with the black box. It was damp in one place. And it had chafed the skin of the young animal’s neck. The juvenile whimpered. In the big room below, one of the adults turned curiously toward the sound. “You think I can take it off ?” she asked. “Just do it quickly.” “Oo-kay,” she said, squatting beside the small animal. It whimpered again. The adults snorted, bobbed their heads. Ellie petted the little juvenile, trying to soothe it, to silence its whimpering. She moved her hands toward the leather collar, lifted back the Velcro tab with a tearing sound. The adults jerked their heads. Then one began to walk toward her. “Oh shit,” Gennaro said, under his breath. “Don’t move,” Grant said. “Stay calm.” The adult walked past them, its long curved toes clicking on the concrete. The animal paused in front of Ellie, who stayed crouched by the juvenile, behind a steel box. The juvenile was exposed, and Ellie’s hand was still on the collar. The adult raised its head, and sniffed the air. The adult’s big head was very close to her hand, but it could not see her because of the junction box. A tongue flicked out, tentatively. Grant reached for a gas grenade, plucked it from his belt, held his thumb on the pin. Gennaro put out a restraining hand, shook his head, nodded to Ellie. She wasn’t wearing her mask. Grant set the grenade down, reached for the shock prod. The adult was still very close to Ellie. Ellie eased the leather strap off. The metal of the buckle clinked on concrete. The adult’s head jerked fractionally, and then cocked to one side, curious. It was moving forward again to investigate, when the little juvenile squeaked happily and scampered away. The adult remained by Ellie. Then finally it turned, and walked back to the center of the nest. Gennaro gave a long exhalation. “Jesus. Can we leave?” “No,” Grant said. “But I think we can get some work done now.” In the phosphorescent green glow of the night-vision goggles, Grant peered down into the room from the ledge, looking at the first nest. It was made of mud and straw, formed into a broad, shallow basket shape. He counted the remains of fourteen eggs. Of course he couldn’t count the actual shells from this distance, and in any case they were long since broken and scattered over the floor, but he was able to count the indentations in the mud. Apparently the raptors made their nests shortly before the eggs were laid, and the eggs left a permanent impression in the mud. He also saw evidence that at least one had broken. He credited thirteen animals. The second nest had broken in half. But Grant estimated it had contained nine eggshells.


The third nest had fifteen eggs, but it appeared that three eggs had been broken early. “What’s that total?” Gennaro said. “Thirty-four born,” Grant said. “And how many do you see?” Grant shook his head. The animals were running all over the cavernous interior space, darting in and out of the light. “I’ve been watching,” Ellie said, shining her light down at her notepad. “You’d have to take photos to be sure, but the snout markings of the infants are all different. My count is thirty-three.” “And juveniles?” “Twenty-two. But, Alan—do you notice anything funny about them?” “Like what?” Grant whispered. “How they arrange themselves spatially. They’re falling into some kind of a pattern or arrangement in the room.” Grant frowned. He said, “It’s pretty dark.…” “No, look. Look for yourself. Watch the little ones. When they are playing, they tumble and run every which way. But in between, when the babies are standing around, notice how they orient their bodies. They face either that wall, or the opposite wall. It’s like they line up.” “I don’t know, Ellie. You think there’s a colony metastructure? Like bees?” “No, not exactly,” she said. “It’s more subtle than that. It’s just a tendency.” “And the babies do it?” “No. They all do it. The adults do it, too. Watch them. I’m telling you, they line up.” Grant frowned. It seemed as if she was right. The animals engaged in all sorts of behavior, but during pauses, moments when they were watching or relaxing, they seemed to orient themselves in particular ways, almost as if there were invisible lines on the floor. “Beats me,” Grant said. “Maybe there’s a breeze.…” “I don’t feel one, Alan.” “What are they doing? Some kind of social organization expressed as spatial structure?” “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Because they all do it.” Gennaro flipped up his watch. “I knew this thing would come in handy one day.” Beneath the watch face was a compass. Grant said, “You have much use for that in court?” “No.” Gennaro shook his head. “My wife gave it to me,” he explained, “for my birthday.” He peered at the compass. “Well,” he said, “they’re not lined up according to anything.… I guess they’re sort of northeast-southwest, something like that.” Ellie said, “Maybe they’re hearing something, turning their heads so they can hear.…” Grant frowned. “Or maybe it’s just ritual behavior,” she said, “species-specific behavior that serves to identify them to one another. But maybe it doesn’t have any broader meaning.” Ellie sighed. “Or maybe they’re weird. Maybe dinosaurs are weird. Or maybe it’s a kind of communication.” Grant was thinking the same thing. Bees could communicate spatially, by doing a kind of dance. Perhaps dinosaurs could do the same thing. Gennaro watched them and said, “Why don’t they go outside?” “They’re nocturnal.” “Yes, but it almost seems like they’re hiding.” Grant shrugged. In the next moment, the infants began to squeak and hop excitedly. The adults watched curiously for a moment.


And then, with hoots and cries that echoed in the dark cavernous space, all the dinosaurs wheeled and ran, heading down the concrete tunnel, into the darkness beyond.


Jurassic Park HAMMOND John Hammond sat down heavily in the damp earth of the hillside and tried to catch his breath. Dear God, it was hot, he thought. Hot and humid. He felt as if he were breathing through a sponge. He looked down at the streambed, now forty feet below. It seemed like hours since he had left the trickling water and begun to climb the hill. His ankle was now swollen and dark purple. He couldn’t put any weight on it at all. He was forced to hop up the hill on his other leg, which now burned with pain from the exertion. And he was thirsty. Before leaving the stream behind, he had drunk from it, even though he knew this was unwise. Now he felt dizzy, and the world sometimes swirled around him. He was having trouble with his balance. But he knew he had to climb the hill, and get back to the path above. Hammond thought he had heard footsteps on the path several times during the previous hour, and each time he had shouted for help. But somehow his voice hadn’t carried far enough; he hadn’t been rescued. And so, as the afternoon wore on, he began to realize that he would have to climb the hillside, injured leg or not. And that was what he was doing now. Those damned kids. Hammond shook his head, trying to clear it. He had been climbing for more than an hour, and he had gone only a third of the distance up the hill. And he was tired, panting like an old dog. His leg throbbed. He was dizzy. Of course, he knew perfectly well that he was in no danger—he was almost within sight of his bungalow, for God’s sake—but he had to admit he was tired. Sitting on the hillside, he found he didn’t really want to move any more. And why shouldn’t he be tired? he thought. He was seventy-six years old. That was no age to be climbing around hillsides. Even though Hammond was in peak condition for a man his age. Personally, he expected to live to be a hundred. It was just a matter of taking care of yourself, of taking care of things as they came up. Certainly he had plenty of reasons to live. Other parks to build. Other wonders to create— He heard a squeaking, then a chittering sound. Some kind of small birds, hopping in the undergrowth. He’d been hearing small animals all afternoon. There were all kinds of things out here: rats, possums, snakes. The squeaking got louder, and small bits of earth rolled down the hillside past him. Something was coming. Then he saw a dark green animal hopping down the hill toward him—and another—and another. Compys, he thought with a chill. Scavengers. The compys didn’t look dangerous. They were about as big as chickens, and they moved up and down with little nervous jerks, like chickens. But he knew they were poisonous.


Their bites had a slow-acting poison that they used to kill crippled animals. Crippled animals, he thought, frowning. The first of the compys perched on the hillside, staring at him. It stayed about five feet away, beyond his reach, and just watched him. Others came down soon after, and they stood in a row. Watching. They hopped up and down and chittered and waved their little clawed hands. “Shoo! Get out!” he said, and threw a rock. The compys backed away, but only a foot or two. They weren’t afraid. They seemed to know he couldn’t hurt them. Angrily, Hammond tore a branch from a tree and swiped at them with it. The compys dodged, nipped at the leaves, squeaked happily. They seemed to think he was playing a game. He thought again about the poison. He remembered that one of the animal handlers had been bitten by a compy in a cage. The handler had said the poison was like a narcotic—peaceful, dreamy. No pain. You just wanted to go to sleep. The hell with that, he thought. Hammond picked up a rock, aimed carefully, and threw it, striking one compy flat in the chest. The little animal shrieked in alarm as it was knocked backward, and rolled over its tail. The other animals immediately backed away. Better. Hammond turned away, and started to climb the hill once more. Holding branches in both hands, he hopped on his left leg, feeling the ache in his thigh. He had not gone more than ten feet when one of the compys jumped onto his back. He flung his arms wildly, knocking the animal away, but lost his balance and slid back down the hillside. As he came to a stop, a second compy sprang forward, and took a tiny nip from his hand. He looked with horror, seeing the blood flow over his fingers. He turned and began to scramble up the hillside again. Another compy jumped onto his shoulder, and he felt a brief pain as it bit the back of his neck. He shrieked and smacked the animal away. He turned to face the animals, breathing hard, and they stood all around him, hopping up and down and cocking their heads, watching him. From the bite on his neck, he felt warmth flow through his shoulders, down his spine. Lying on his back on the hillside, he began to feel strangely relaxed, detached from himself. But he realized that nothing was wrong. No error had been made. Malcolm was quite incorrect in his analysis. Hammond lay very still, as still as a child in its crib, and he felt wonderfully peaceful. When the next compy came up and bit his ankle, he made only a halfhearted effort to kick it away. The little animals edged closer. Soon they were chittering all around him, like excited birds. He raised his head as another compy jumped onto his chest, the animal surprisingly light and delicate.


Hammond felt only a slight pain, very slight, as the compy bent to chew his neck.


Jurassic Park THE BEACH Chasing the dinosaurs, following the curves and slopes of concrete, Grant suddenly burst out through a cavernous opening, and found himself standing on the beach, looking at the Pacific Ocean. All around him, the young velociraptors were scampering and kicking in the sand. But, one by one, the animals moved back into the shade of the palm trees at the edge of the mangrove swamp, and there they stood, lined up in their peculiar fashion, watching the ocean. They stared fixedly to the south. “I don’t get it,” Gennaro said. “I don’t, either.” Grant said, “except that they clearly don’t like the sun.” It wasn’t very sunny on the beach; a light mist blew, and the ocean was hazy. But why had they suddenly left the nest? What had brought the entire colony to the beach? Gennaro flipped up the dial on his watch, and looked at the way the animals were standing. “Northeast-southwest. Same as before.” Behind the beach, deeper in the woods, they heard the hum of the electric fence. “At least we know how they get outside the fence,” Ellie said. Then they heard the throb of marine diesels, and through the mist they saw a ship appearing in the south. A large freighter, it slowly moved north. “So that’s why they came out?” Gennaro said. Grant nodded. “They must have heard it coming.” As the freighter passed, all the animals watched it, standing silent except for the occasional chirp or squeak. Grant was struck by the coordination of their behavior, the way they moved and acted as a group. But perhaps it was not really so mysterious. In his mind, he reviewed the sequence of events that had begun in the cave. First the infants had been agitated. Then the adults had noticed. And finally all the animals had stampeded to the beach. That sequence seemed to imply that the younger animals, with keener hearing, had detected the boat first. Then the adults had led the troop out onto the beach. And as Grant looked, he saw that the adults were in charge now. There was a clear spatial organization along the beach, and as the animals settled down, it was not loose and shifting, the way it had been inside. Rather, it was quite regular, almost regimented. The adults were spaced every ten yards or so, each adult surrounded by a cluster of infants. The juveniles were positioned between, and slightly ahead of, the adults. But Grant also saw that all the adults were not equal. There was a female with a distinctive stripe along her head, and she was in the very center of the group as it ranged along the beach. That same female had stayed in the center of the nesting area, too. He guessed that, like certain monkey troops, the raptors were organized around a matriarchal pecking order, and that this striped animal was the alpha female of the colony.


The males, he saw, were arranged defensively at the perimeter of the group. But unlike monkeys, which were loosely and flexibly organized, the dinosaurs settled into a rigid arrangement—almost a military formation, it seemed. Then, too, there was the oddity of the northeast-southwest spatial orientation. That was beyond Grant. But, in another sense, he was not surprised. Paleontologists had been digging up bones for so long that they had forgotten how little information could be gleaned from a skeleton. Bones might tell you something about the gross appearance of an animal, its height and weight. They might tell you something about how the muscles attached, and therefore something about the crude behavior of the animal during life. They might give you clues to the few diseases that affected bone. But a skeleton was a poor thing, really, from which to try and deduce the total behavior of an organism. Since bones were all the paleontologists had, bones were what they used. Like other paleontologists, Grant had become very expert at working with bones. And somewhere along the way, he had started to forget the unprovable possibilities—that the dinosaurs might be truly different animals, that they might possess behavior and social life organized along lines that were utterly mysterious to their later, mammalian descendants. That, since the dinosaurs were fundamentally birds— “Oh, my God,” Grant said. He stared at the raptors, ranged along the beach in a rigid formation, silently watching the boat. And he suddenly understood what he was looking at. “Those animals,” Gennaro said, shaking his head, “they sure are desperate to escape from here.” “No,” Grant said. “They don’t want to escape at all.” “They don’t?” “No,” Grant said. “They want to migrate.”


Jurassic Park APPROACHING DARK “Migrating!” Ellie said. “That’s fantastic!” “Yes,” Grant said. He was grinning. Ellie said, “Where do you suppose they want to go?” “I don’t know,” Grant said, and then the big helicopters burst through the fog, thundering and wheeling over the landscape, their underbellies heavy with armament. The raptors scattered in alarm as one of the helicopters circled back, following the line of the surf, and then moved in to land on the beach. A door was flung open and soldiers in olive uniforms came running toward them. Grant heard the rapid babble of voices in Spanish and saw that Muldoon was already aboard with the kids. One of the soldiers said in English, “Please, you will come with us. Please, there is no time here.” Grant looked back at the beach where the raptors had been, but they were gone. All the animals had vanished. It was as if they had never existed. The soldiers were tugging at him, and he allowed himself to be led beneath the thumping blades and climbed up through the big door. Muldoon leaned over and shouted in Grant’s ear, “They want us out of here now. They’re going to do it now!” The soldiers pushed Grant and Ellie and Gennaro into seats, and helped them clip on the harnesses. Tim and Lex waved to him and he suddenly saw how young they were, and how exhausted. Lex was yawning, leaning against her brother’s shoulder. An officer came toward Grant and shouted, “Senor: are you in charge?” “No,” Grant said. “I’m not in charge.” “Who is in charge, please?” “I don’t know.” The officer went on to Gennaro, and asked the same question: “Are you in charge?” “No,” Gennaro said. The officer looked at Ellie, but said nothing to her. The door was left open as the helicopter lifted away from the beach, and Grant leaned out to see if he could catch a last look at the raptors, but then the helicopter was above the palm trees, moving north over the island. Grant leaned to Muldoon, and shouted: “What about the others?” Muldoon shouted, “They’ve already taken off Harding and some workmen. Hammond had an accident. Found him on the hill near his bungalow. Must have fallen.” “Is he all right?” Grant said. “No. Compys got him.” “What about Malcolm?” Grant said. Muldoon shook his head. Grant was too tired to feel much of anything. He turned away, and looked back out the door. It was getting dark now, and in the fading light he could barely see the little rex, with bloody jaws, crouched over a hadrosaur by the edge of the lagoon and looking up at the helicopter and roaring as it passed by.