How would you show me that I’m wrong?” “Two ways,” Arnold said. “First of all, I can track individual movements against the other presumed compys. Compys are social animals, they move in a group. We have two compy groups in the park. So the individuals should be within either group A or group B.” “Yes, but—” “The other way is direct visual,” he said. He punched buttons and one of the monitors began to flick rapidly through images of compys, numbered from 1 to 49. “These pictures are …” “Current ID images. From within the last five minutes.” “So you can see all the animals, if you want to?” “Yes. I can visually review all the animals whenever I want.” “How about physical containment?” Gennaro said. “Can they get out of their enclosures?” “Absolutely not,” Arnold said. “These are expensive animals, Mr. Gennaro. We take very good care of them. We maintain multiple barriers. First, the moats.” He pressed a button, and the board lit up with a network of orange bars. “These moats are never less than twelve feet deep, and water-filled. For bigger animals the moats may be thirty feet deep. Next, the electrified fences.” Lines of bright red glowed on the board. “We have fifty miles of twelve-foot-high fencing, including twenty-two miles around the perimeter of the island. All the park fences carry ten thousand volts. The animals quickly learn not to go near them.” “But if one did get out?” Gennaro said. Arnold snorted, and stubbed out his cigarette. “Just hypothetically,” Gennaro said. “Supposing it happened?” Muldoon cleared his throat. “We’d go out and get the animal back,” he said. “We have lots of ways to do that—taser shock guns, electrified nets, tranquilizers. All nonlethal, because, as Mr. Arnold says, these are expensive animals.” Gennaro nodded: “And if one got off the island?” “It’d die in less than twenty-four hours,” Arnold said. “These are genetically engineered animals. They’re unable to survive in the real world.” “How about this control system itself?” Gennaro said. “Could anybody tamper with it?” Arnold was shaking his head. “The system is hardened. The computer is independent in every way. Independent power and independent backup power. The system does not communicate with the outside, so it cannot be influenced remotely by modem. The computer system is secure.” There was a pause. Arnold puffed his cigarette. “Hell of a system,” he said. “Hell of a goddamned system.” “Then I guess,” Malcolm said, “your system works so well, you don’t have any problems.” “We’ve got endless problems here,” Arnold said, raising an eyebrow. “But none of the things you worry about. I gather you’re worried that the animals will escape, and will get to the mainland and raise hell. We haven’t got any concern about that at all. We see these animals as fragile and delicate. They’ve been brought back after sixty-five million years to a world that’s very different from the one they left, the one they were adapted to.


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

We have a hell of a time caring for them. “You have to realize,” Arnold continued, “that men have been keeping mammals and reptiles in zoos for hundreds of years. So we know a lot about how to take care of an elephant or a croc. But nobody has ever tried to take care of a dinosaur before. They are new animals. And we just don’t know. Diseases in our animals are the biggest concern.” “Diseases?” Gennaro said, suddenly alarmed. “Is there any way that a visitor could get sick?” Arnold snorted again. “You ever catch a cold from a zoo alligator, Mr. Gennaro? Zoos don’t worry about that. Neither do we. What we do worry about is the animals’ dying from their own illnesses, or infecting other animals. But we have programs to monitor that, too. You want to see the big rex’s health file? His vaccination record? His dental record? That’s something—you ought to see the vets scrubbing those big fangs so he doesn’t get tooth decay.…” “Not just now,” Gennaro said. “What about your mechanical systems?” “You mean the rides?” Arnold said. Grant looked up sharply: rides? “None of the rides are running yet,” Arnold was saying. “We have the Jungle River Ride, where the boats follow tracks underwater, and we have the Aviary Lodge Ride, but none of it’s operational yet. The park’ll open with the basic dinosaur tour—the one that you’re about to take in a few minutes. The other rides will come on line six, twelve months after that.” “Wait a minute,” Grant said. “You’re going to have rides? Like an amusement park?” Arnold said, “This is a zoological park. We have tours of different areas, and we call them rides. That’s all.” Grant frowned. Again he felt troubled. He didn’t like the idea of dinosaurs being used for an amusement park. Malcolm continued his questions. “You can run the whole park from this control room?” “Yes,” Arnold said. “I can run it single-handed, if I have to. We’ve got that much automation built in. The computer by itself can track the animals, feed them, and fill their water troughs for forty-eight hours without supervision.” “This is the system Mr. Nedry designed?” Malcolm asked. Dennis Nedry was sitting at a terminal in the far corner of the room, eating a candy bar and typing. “Yes, that’s right,” Nedry said, not looking up from the keyboard. “It’s a hell of a system,” Arnold said proudly. “That’s right,” Nedry said absently. “Just one or two minor bugs to fix.” “Now,” Arnold said, “I see the tour is starting, so unless you have other questions …” “Actually, just one,” Malcolm said. “Just a research question. You showed us that you can track the procompsognathids and you can visually display them individually. Can you do any studies of them as a group? Measure them, or whatever? If I wanted to know height or weight, or …” Arnold was punching buttons. Another screen came up.


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

“We can do all of that, and very quickly,” Arnold said. “The computer takes measurement data in the course of reading the video screens, so it is translatable at once. You see here we have a normal Gaussian distribution for the animal population. It shows that most of the animals cluster around an average central value, and a few are either larger or smaller than the average, at the tails of the curve.” “You’d expect that kind of graph,” Malcolm said. “Yes. Any healthy biological population shows this kind of distribution. Now, then,” Arnold said, lighting another cigarette, “are there any other questions?” “No,” Malcolm said. “I’ve learned what I need to know.” As they were walking out, Gennaro said, “It looks like a pretty good system to me. I don’t see how any animals could get off this island.” “Don’t you?” Malcolm said. “I thought it was completely obvious.” “Wait a minute,” Gennaro said. “You think animals have gotten out?” “I know they have.” Gennaro said, “But how? You saw for yourself. They can count all the animals. They can look at all the animals. They know where all the animals are at all times. How can one possibly escape?” Malcolm smiled. “It’s quite obvious,” he said. “It’s just a matter of your assumptions.” “Your assumptions,” Gennaro repeated, frowning. “Yes,” Malcolm said. “Look here. The basic event that has occurred in Jurassic Park is that the scientists and technicians have tried to make a new, complete biological world. And the scientists in the control room expect to see a natural world. As in the graph they just showed us. Even though a moment’s thought reveals that nice, normal distribution is terribly worrisome on this island.” “It is?” “Yes. Based on what Dr. Wu told us earlier, one should never see a population graph like that.” “Why not?” Gennaro said. “Because that is a graph for a normal biological population. Which is precisely what Jurassic Park is not. Jurassic Park is not the real world. It is intended to be a controlled world that only imitates the natural world. In that sense, it’s a true park, rather like a Japanese formal garden. Nature manipulated to be more natural than the real thing, if you will.” “I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” Gennaro said, looking annoyed. “I’m sure the tour will make everything clear,” Malcolm said.


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

Jurassic Park THE TOUR “This way, everybody, this way,” Ed Regis said. By his side, a woman was passing out pith helmets with “Jurassic Park” labeled on the headband, and a little blue dinosaur logo. A line of Toyota Land Cruisers came out of an underground garage beneath the visitor center. Each car pulled up, driverless and silent. Two black men in safari uniforms were opening the doors for passengers. “Two to four passengers to a car, please, two to four passengers to a car,” a recorded voice was saying. “Children under ten must be accompanied by an adult. Two to four passengers to a car, please …” Tim watched as Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm got into the first Land Cruiser with the lawyer, Gennaro. Tim looked over at Lex, who was standing pounding her fist into her glove. Tim pointed to the first car and said, “Can I go with them?” “I’m afraid they have things to discuss,” Ed Regis said. “Technical things.” “I’m interested in technical things,” Tim said. “I’d rather go with them.” “Well, you’ll be able to hear what they’re saying,” Regis said. “We’ll have a radio open between the cars.” The second car came. Tim and Lex got in, and Ed Regis followed. “These are electric cars,” Regis said. “Guided by a cable in the roadway.” Tim was glad he was sitting in the front seat, because mounted in the dashboard were two computer screens and a box that looked to him like a CD-ROM; that was a laser disk player controlled by a computer. There was also a portable walkie-talkie and some kind of a radio transmitter. There were two antennas on the roof, and some odd goggles in the map pocket. The black men shut the doors of the Land Cruiser. The car started off with an electric hum. Up ahead, the three scientists and Gennaro were talking and pointing, clearly excited. Ed Regis said, “Let’s hear what they are saying.” An intercom clicked. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing here,” Gennaro said, over the intercom. He sounded very angry. “I know quite well why I’m here,” Malcolm said. “You’re here to advise me, not play goddamned mind games. I’ve got five percent of this company and a responsibility to make sure that Hammond has done his job responsibly. Now you goddamn come here—” Ed Regis pressed the intercom button and said, “In keeping with the nonpolluting policies of Jurassic Park, these lightweight electric Land Cruisers have been specially built for us by Toyota in Osaka. Eventually we hope to drive among the animals—just as they do in African game parks—but, for now, sit back and enjoy the self-guided tour.” He paused. “And, by the way, we can hear you back here.” “Oh Christ,” Gennaro said. “I have to be able to speak freely. I didn’t ask for these damned kids to come—” Ed Regis smiled blandly and pushed a button.


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

“We’ll just begin the show, shall we?” They heard a fanfare of trumpets, and the interior screens flashed WELCOME TO JURASSIC PARK. A sonorous voice said, “Welcome to Jurassic Park. You are now entering the lost world of the prehistoric past, a world of mighty creatures long gone from the face of the earth, which you are privileged to see for the first time.” “That’s Richard Kiley,” Ed Regis said. “We spared no expense.” The Land Cruiser passed through a grove of low, stumpy palm trees. Richard Kiley was saying, “Notice, first of all, the remarkable plant life that surrounds you. Those trees to your left and right are called cycads, the prehistoric predecessors of palm trees. Cycads were a favorite food of the dinosaurs. You can also see bennettitaleans, and ginkgoes. The world of the dinosaur included more modern plants, such as pine and fir trees, and swamp cypresses. You will see these as well.” The Land Cruiser moved slowly among the foliage. Tim noticed the fences and retaining walls were screened by greenery to heighten the illusion of moving through real jungle. “We imagine the world of the dinosaurs,” said Richard Kiley’s voice, “as a world of huge vegetarians, eating their way through the giant swampy forests of the Jurassic and Cretaceous world, a hundred million years ago. But most dinosaurs were not as large as people think. The smallest dinosaurs were no bigger than a house cat, and the average dinosaur was about as big as a pony. We are first going to visit one of these average-size animals, called hypsilophodonts. If you look to your left, you may catch a glimpse of them now.” They all looked to the left. The Land Cruiser stopped on a low rise, where a break in the foliage provided a view to the east. They could see a sloping forested area which opened into a field of yellow grass that was about three feet high. There were no dinosaurs. “Where are they?” Lex said. Tim looked at the dashboard. The transmitter lights blinked and the CD-ROM whirred. Obviously the disk was being accessed by some automatic system. He guessed that the same motion sensors that tracked the animals also controlled the screens in the Land Cruiser. The screens now showed pictures of hypsilophodonts, and printed out data about them. The voice said, “Hypsilophodontids are the gazelles of the dinosaur world: small, quick animals that once roamed everywhere in the world, from England to Central Asia to North America. We think these dinosaurs were so successful because they had better jaws and teeth for chewing plants than their contemporaries did. In fact, the name ‘hypsilophodontid’ means ‘high-ridge tooth,’ which refers to the characteristic self-sharpening teeth of these animals. You can see them in the plains directly ahead, and also perhaps in the branches of the trees.” “In the trees?” Lex said. “Dinosaurs in the trees?” Tim was scanning with binoculars, too. “To the right,” he said.


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

“Halfway up that big green trunk …” In the dappled shadows of the tree a motionless, dark green animal about the size of a baboon stood on a branch. It looked like a lizard standing on its hind legs. It balanced itself with a long drooping tail. “That’s an othnielia,” Tim said. “The small animals you see are called othnielia,” the voice said, “in honor of the nineteenth-century dinosaur hunter Othniel Marsh of Yale.” Tim spotted two more animals, on higher branches of the same tree. They were all about the same size. None of them were moving. “Pretty boring,” Lex said. “They’re not doing anything.” “The main herd of animals can be found in the grassy plain below you,” said the voice. “We can rouse them with a simple mating call.” A loudspeaker by the fence gave a long nasal call, like the honking of geese. From the field of grass directly to their left, six lizard heads poked up, one after another. The effect was comical, and Tim laughed. The heads disappeared. The loudspeaker gave the call again, and once again the heads poked up—in exactly the same way, one after another. The fixed repetition of the behavior was striking. “Hypsilophodonts are not especially bright animals,” the voice explained. “They have roughly the intelligence of a domestic cow.” The heads were dull green, with a mottling of dark browns and blacks that extended down the slender necks. Judging from the size of the heads, Tim guessed their bodies were four feet long, about as large as deer. Some of the hypsilophodonts were chewing, the jaws working. One reached up and scratched its head, with a five-fingered hand. The gesture gave the creature a pensive, thoughtful quality. “If you see them scratching, that is because they have skin problems. The veterinary scientists here at Jurassic Park think it may be a fungus, or an allergy. But they’re not sure yet. After all, these are the first dinosaurs in history ever to be studied alive.” The electric motor of the car started, and there was a grinding of gears. At the unexpected sound, the herd of hypsilophodonts suddenly leapt into the air and bounded above the grass like kangaroos, showing their full bodies with massive hind limbs and long tails in the afternoon sunlight. In a few leaps, they were gone. “Now that we’ve had a look at these fascinating herbivores, we will go on to some dinosaurs that are a little larger. Quite a bit larger, in fact.” The Land Cruisers continued onward, moving south through Jurassic Park.


Jurassic Park CONTROL “Gears are grinding,” John Arnold said, in the darkened control room. “Have maintenance check the electric clutches on vehicles BB4 and BB5 when they come back.” “Yes, Mr. Arnold,” replied the voice on the intercom. “A minor detail,” Hammond said, walking in the room. Looking out, he could see the two Land Cruisers moving south through the park. Muldoon stood in the corner, silently watching. Arnold pushed his chair back from the central console at the control panel. “There are no minor details, Mr. Hammond,” he said, and he lit another cigarette. Nervous at most times, Arnold was especially edgy now. He was only too aware that this was the first time visitors had actually toured the park. In fact, Arnold’s team didn’t often go into the park. Harding, the vet, sometimes did. The animal handlers went to the individual feeding houses. But otherwise they watched the park from the control room. And now, with visitors out there, he worried about a hundred details. John Arnold was a systems engineer who had worked on the Polaris submarine missile in the late 1960s, until he had his first child and the prospect of making weapons became too distasteful. Meanwhile, Disney had started to create amusement park rides of great technological sophistication, and they employed a lot of aerospace people. Arnold helped build Disney World in Orlando, and had gone on to implement major parks at Magic Mountain in California, Old Country in Virginia, and Astroworld in Houston. His continuous employment at parks had eventually given him a somewhat skewed view of reality. Arnold contended, only half jokingly, that the entire world was increasingly described by the metaphor of the theme park. “Paris is a theme park,” he once announced, after a vacation, “although it’s too expensive, and the park employees are unpleasant and sullen.” For the past two years, Arnold’s job had been to get Jurassic Park up and running. As an engineer, he was accustomed to long time schedules—he often referred to “the September opening,” by which he meant September of the following year—and as the September opening approached, he was unhappy with the progress that had been made. He knew from experience that it sometimes took years to work the bugs out of a single park ride—let alone get a whole park running properly. “You’re just a worrier,” Hammond said. “I don’t think so,” Arnold said. “You’ve got to realize that, from an engineering standpoint, Jurassic Park is by far the most ambitious theme park in history. Visitors will never think about it, but I do.” He ticked the points off on his fingers. “First, Jurassic Park has all the problems of any amusement park—ride maintenance, queue control, transportation, food handling, living accommodations, trash disposal, security. “Second, we have all the problems of a major zoo—care of the animals; health and welfare; feeding and cleanliness; protection from insects, pests, allergies, and illnesses; maintenance of barriers; and all the rest.


“And, finally, we have the unprecedented problems of caring for a population of animals that no one has ever tried to maintain before.” “Oh, it’s not as bad as all that,” Hammond said. “Yes, it is. You’re just not here to see it,” Arnold said. “The tyrannosaurs drink the lagoon water and sometimes get sick; we aren’t sure why. The triceratops females kill each other in fights for dominance and have to be separated into groups smaller than six. We don’t know why. The stegosaurs frequently get blisters on their tongues and diarrhea, for reasons no one yet understands, even though we’ve lost two. Hypsilophodonts get skin rashes. And the velociraptors—” “Let’s not start on the velociraptors,” Hammond said. “I’m sick of hearing about the velociraptors. How they’re the most vicious creatures anyone has ever seen.” “They are,” Muldoon said, in a low voice. “They should all be destroyed.” “You wanted to fit them with radio collars,” Hammond said. “And I agreed.” “Yes. And they promptly chewed the collars off. But even if the raptors never get free,” Arnold said, “I think we have to accept that Jurassic Park is inherently hazardous.” “Oh balls,” Hammond said. “Whose side are you on, anyway?” “We now have fifteen species of extinct animals, and most of them are dangerous,” Arnold said. “We’ve been forced to delay the Jungle River Ride because of the dilophosaurs; and the Pteratops Lodge in the aviary, because the pterodactyls are so unpredictable. These aren’t engineering delays, Mr. Hammond. They’re problems with control of the animals.” “You’ve had plenty of engineering delays,” Hammond said. “Don’t blame it on the animals.” “Yes, we have. In fact, it’s all we could do to get the main attraction, Park Drive, working correctly, to get the CD-ROMs inside the cars to be controlled by the motion sensors. It’s taken weeks of adjustment to get that working properly—and now the electric gearshifts on the cars are acting up! The gearshifts!” “Let’s keep it in perspective,” Hammond said. “You get the engineering correct and the animals will fall into place. After all, they’re trainable.” From the beginning, this had been one of the core beliefs of the planners. The animals, however exotic, would fundamentally behave like animals in zoos anywhere. They would learn the regularities of their care, and they would respond. “Meanwhile, how’s the computer?” Hammond said. He glanced at Dennis Nedry, who was working at a terminal in the corner of the room. “This damn computer has always been a headache.” “We’re getting there,” Nedry said. “If you had done it right in the first place,” Hammond began, but Arnold put a restraining hand on his arm. Arnold knew there was no point in antagonizing Nedry while he was working. “It’s a large system,” Arnold said. “There are bound to be glitches.” In fact, the bug list now ran to more than 130 items, and included many odd aspects.


For example: The animal-feeding program reset itself every twelve hours, not every twenty-four hours, and would not record feedings on Sundays. As a result, the staff could not accurately measure how much the animals were eating. The security system, which controlled all the security-card-operated doors, cut out whenever main power was lost, and did not come back on with auxiliary power. The security program only ran with main power. The physical conservation program, intended to dim lights after 10:00 p.m., only worked on alternate days of the week. The automated fecal analysis (called Auto Poop), designed to check for parasites in the animal stools, invariably recorded all specimens as having the parasite Phagostomum venulosum, although none did. The program then automatically dispensed medication into the animals’ food. If the handlers dumped the medicine out of the hoppers to prevent its being dispensed, an alarm sounded which could not be turned off. And so it went, page after page of errors. When he had arrived, Dennis Nedry had been under the impression that he could make all the fixes himself over the weekend. He had paled when he saw the full listing. Now he was calling his office in Cambridge, telling his staff programmers they were going to have to cancel their weekend plans and work overtime until Monday. And he had told John Arnold that he would need to use every telephone link between Isla Nublar and the mainland just to transfer program data back and forth to his programmers. While Nedry worked, Arnold punched up a new window in his own monitor. It allowed him to see what Nedry was doing at the corner console. Not that he didn’t trust Nedry. But Arnold just liked to know what was going on. He looked at the graphics display on his right-hand console, which showed the progress of the electric Land Cruisers. They were following the river, just north of the aviary, and the ornithischian paddock. “If you look to your left,” said the voice, “you will see the dome of the Jurassic Park aviary, which is not yet finished for visitors.” Tim saw sunlight glinting off aluminum struts in the distance. “And directly below is our Mesozoic jungle river—where, if you are lucky, you just may catch a glimpse of a very rare carnivore. Keep your eyes peeled, everyone!” Inside the Land Cruiser, the screens showed a bird-like head topped with a flaming red crest. But everyone in Tim’s car was looking out the windows. The car was driving along a high ridge, overlooking a fast-moving river below. The river was almost enclosed by dense foliage on both sides. “There they are now,” said the voice. “The animals you see are called dilophosaurs.” Despite what the recording said, Tim saw only one. The dilophosaur crouched on its hind legs by the river, drinking. It was built on the basic carnivore pattern, with a heavy tail, strong hind limbs, and a long neck.


Its ten-foot-tall body was spotted yellow and black, like a leopard. But it was the head that held Tim’s attention. Two broad curving crests ran along the top of the head from the eyes to the nose. The crests met in the center, making a V shape above the dinosaur’s head. The crests had red and black stripes, reminiscent of a parrot or toucan. The animal gave a soft hooting cry, like an owl. “They’re pretty,” Lex said. “Dilophosaurus,” the tape said, “is one of the earliest carnivorous dinosaurs. Scientists thought their jaw muscles were too weak to kill prey, and imagined they were primarily scavengers. But now we know they are poisonous.” “Hey.” Tim grinned. “All right.” Again the distinctive hooting call of the dilophosaur drifted across the afternoon air toward them. Lex shifted uneasily in her seat. “Are they really poisonous, Mr. Regis?” “Don’t worry about it,” Ed Regis said. “But are they?” “Well, yes, Lex.” “Along with such living reptiles as Gila monsters and rattlesnakes, Dilophosaurus secretes a hematotoxin from glands in its mouth. Unconsciousness follows within minutes of a bite. The dinosaur will then finish the victim off at its leisure—making Dilophosaurus a beautiful but deadly addition to the animals you see here at Jurassic Park.” The Land Cruiser turned a corner, leaving the river behind. Tim looked back, hoping for a last glimpse of the dilophosaur. This was amazing! Poisonous dinosaurs! He wished he could stop the car, but everything was automatic. He bet Dr. Grant wanted to stop the car, too. “If you look on the bluff to the right, you’ll see Les Gigantes, the site of our superb three-star dining room. Chef Alain Richard hails from the world-famous Le Beaumanière in France. Make your reservations by dialing four from your hotel rooms.” Tim looked up on the bluff, and saw nothing. “Not for a while, though,” Ed Regis said. “The restaurant won’t even start construction until November.” “Continuing on our prehistoric safari, we come next to the herbivores of the ornithischian group. If you look to your right, you can probably see them now.” Tim saw two animals, standing motionless in the shade of a large tree. Triceratops: the size and gray color of an elephant, with the truculent stance of a rhino. The horns above each eye curved five feet into the air, looking almost like inverted elephant tusks. A third, rhino-like horn was located near the nose. And they had the beaky snout of a rhino. “Unlike other dinosaurs,” the voice said, “Triceratops serratus can’t see well. They’re nearsighted, like the rhinos of today, and they tend to be surprised by moving objects. They’d charge our car if they were close enough to see it! But relax, folks—we’re safe enough here. “Triceratops have a fan-shaped crest behind their heads. It’s made of solid bone, and it’s very strong. These animals weigh about seven tons each. Despite their appearance, they are actually quite docile.


They know their handlers, and they’ll allow themselves to be petted. They particularly like to be scratched in the hindquarters.” “Why don’t they move?” Lex said. She rolled down her window. “Hey! Stupid dinosaur! Move!” “Don’t bother the animals, Lex,” Ed Regis said. “Why? It’s stupid. They just sit there like a picture in a book,” Lex said. The voice was saying, “—easygoing monsters from a bygone world stand in sharp contrast to what we will see next. The most famous predator in the history of the world: the mighty tyrant lizard, known as Tyrannosaurus rex.” “Good, Tyrannosaurus rex,” Tim said. “I hope he’s better than these bozos,” Lex said, turning away from the triceratops. The Land Cruiser rumbled forward.


Jurassic Park BIG REX “The mighty tyrannosaurs arose late in dinosaur history. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a hundred and twenty million years, but there were tyrannosaurs for only the last fifteen million years of that period.” The Land Cruisers had stopped at the rise of a hill. They overlooked a forested area sloping down to the edge of the lagoon. The sun was falling to the west, sinking into a misty horizon. The whole landscape of Jurassic Park was bathed in soft light, with lengthening shadows. The surface of the lagoon rippled in pink crescents. Farther south, they saw the graceful necks of the apatosaurs, standing at the water’s edge, their bodies mirrored in the moving surface. It was quiet, except for the soft drone of cicadas. As they stared out at that landscape, it was possible to believe that they had really been transported millions of years back in time to a vanished world. “It works, doesn’t it?” they heard Ed Regis say, over the intercom. “I like to come here sometimes, in the evening. And just sit.” Grant was unimpressed. “Where is T-rex?” “Good question. You often see the little one down in the lagoon. The lagoon’s stocked, so we have fish in there. The little one has learned to catch the fish. Interesting how he does it. He doesn’t use his hands, but he ducks his whole head under the water. Like a bird.” “The little one?” “The little T-rex. He’s a juvenile, two years old, and about a third grown now. Stands eight feet high, weighs a ton and a half. The other one’s a full-grown tyrannosaur. But I don’t see him at the moment.” “Maybe he’s down hunting the apatosaurs,” Grant said. Regis laughed, his voice tinny over the radio. “He would if he could, believe me. Sometimes he stands by the lagoon and stares at those animals, and wiggles those little forearms of his in frustration. But the T-rex territory is completely enclosed with trenches and fences. They’re disguised from view, but believe me, he can’t go anywhere.” “Then where is he?” “Hiding,” Regis said. “He’s a little shy.” “Shy?” Malcolm said. “Tyrannosaurus rex is shy?” “Well, he conceals himself as a general rule. You almost never see him out in the open, especially in daylight.” “Why is that?” “We think it’s because he has sensitive skin and sunburns easily.” Malcolm began to laugh. Grant sighed. “You’re destroying a lot of illusions.” “I don’t think you’ll be disappointed,” Regis said. “Just wait.” They heard a soft bleating sound. In the center of a field, a small cage rose up into view, lifted on hydraulics from underground. The cage bars slid down, and the goat remained tethered in the center of the field, bleating plaintively. “Any minute now,” Regis said again. They stared out the window. “Look at them,” Hammond said, watching the control room monitor. “Leaning out of the windows, so eager. They can’t wait to see it.


They have come for the danger.” “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Muldoon said. He twirled the keys on his finger and watched the Land Cruisers tensely. This was the first time that visitors had toured Jurassic Park, and Muldoon shared Arnold’s apprehension. Robert Muldoon was a big man, fifty years old, with a steel-gray mustache and deep blue eyes. Raised in Kenya, he had spent most of his life as a guide for African big-game hunters, as had his father before him. But since 1980, he had worked principally for conservation groups and zoo designers as a wildlife consultant. He had become well known; an article in the London Sunday Times had said, “What Robert Trent Jones is to golf courses, Robert Muldoon is to zoos: a designer of unsurpassed knowledge and skill.” In 1986, he had done some work for a San Francisco company that was building a private wildlife park on an island in North America. Muldoon had laid out the boundaries for different animals, defining space and habitat requirements for lions, elephants, zebras, and hippos. Identifying which animals could be kept together, and which had to be separated. At the time, it had been a fairly routine job. He had been more interested in an Indian park called Tiger World in southern Kashmir. Then, a year ago, he was offered a job as game warden of Jurassic Park. It coincided with a desire to leave Africa; the salary was excellent; Muldoon had taken it on for a year. He was astonished to discover the park was really a collection of genetically engineered prehistoric animals. It was of course interesting work, but during his years in Africa, Muldoon had developed an unblinking view of animals—an unromantic view—that frequently set him at odds with the Jurassic Park management in California, particularly the little martinet standing beside him in the control room. In Muldoon’s opinion, cloning dinosaurs in a laboratory was one thing. Maintaining them in the wild was quite another. It was Muldoon’s view that some dinosaurs were too dangerous to be kept in a park setting. In part, the danger existed because they still knew so little about the animals. For example, nobody even suspected the dilophosaurs were poisonous until they were observed hunting indigenous rats on the island—biting the rodents and then stepping back, to wait for them to die. And even then nobody suspected the dilophosaurs could spit until one of the handlers was almost blinded by spitting venom. After that, Hammond had agreed to study dilophosaur venom, which was found to contain seven different toxic enzymes. It was also discovered that the dilophosaurs could spit a distance of fifty feet. Since this raised the possibility that a guest in a car might be blinded, management decided to remove the poison sacs. The vets had tried twice, on two different animals, without success. No one knew where the poison was being secreted.


And no one would ever know until an autopsy was performed on a dilophosaur—and management would not allow one to be killed. Muldoon worried even more about the velociraptors. They were instinctive hunters, and they never passed up prey. They killed even when they weren’t hungry. They killed for the pleasure of killing. They were swift: strong runners and astonishing jumpers. They had lethal claws on all four limbs; one swipe of a forearm would disembowel a man, spilling his guts out. And they had powerful tearing jaws that ripped flesh instead of biting it. They were far more intelligent than the other dinosaurs, and they seemed to be natural cage-breakers. Every zoo expert knew that certain animals were especially likely to get free of their cages. Some, like monkeys and elephants, could undo cage doors. Others, like wild pigs, were unusually intelligent and could lift gate fasteners with their snouts. But who would suspect that the giant armadillo was a notorious cage-breaker? Or the moose? Yet a moose was almost as skillful with its snout as an elephant with its trunk. Moose were always getting free; they had a talent for it. And so did velociraptors. Raptors were at least as intelligent as chimpanzees. And, like chimpanzees, they had agile hands that enabled them to open doors and manipulate objects. They could escape with ease. And when, as Muldoon had feared, one of them finally escaped, it killed two construction workers and maimed a third before being recaptured. After that episode, the visitor lodge had been reworked with heavy barred gates, a high perimeter fence, and tempered-glass windows. And the raptor holding pen was rebuilt with electronic sensors to warn of another impending escape. Muldoon wanted guns as well. And he wanted shoulder-mounted LAW-missile launchers. Hunters knew how difficult it was to bring down a four-ton African elephant—and some of the dinosaurs weighed ten times as much. Management was horrified, insisting there be no guns anywhere on the island. When Muldoon threatened to quit, and to take his story to the press, a compromise was reached. In the end, two specially built laser-guided missile launchers were kept in a locked room in the basement. Only Muldoon had keys to the room. Those were the keys Muldoon was twirling now. “I’m going downstairs,” he said. Arnold, watching the control screens, nodded. The two Land Cruisers sat at the top of the hill, waiting for the T-rex to appear. “Hey,” Dennis Nedry called, from the far console. “As long as you’re up, get me a Coke, okay?” Grant waited in the car, watching quietly. The bleating of the goat became louder, more insistent. The goat tugged frantically at its tether, racing back and forth. Over the radio, Grant heard Lex say in alarm, “What’s going to happen to the goat? Is she going to eat the goat?” “I think so,” someone said to her, and then Ellie turned the radio down.


Then they smelled the odor, a garbage stench of putrefaction and decay that drifted up the hillside toward them. Grant whispered, “He’s here.” “She,” Malcolm said. The goat was tethered in the center of the field, thirty yards from the nearest trees. The dinosaur must be somewhere among the trees, but for a moment Grant could see nothing at all. Then he realized he was looking too low: the animal’s head stood twenty feet above the ground, half concealed among the upper branches of the palm trees. Malcolm whispered, “Oh, my God.… She’s as large as a bloody building.…” Grant stared at the enormous square head, five feet long, mottled reddish brown, with huge jaws and fangs. The tyrannosaur’s jaws worked once, opening and closing. But the huge animal did not emerge from hiding. Malcolm whispered: “How long will it wait?” “Maybe three or four minutes. Maybe—” The tyrannosaur sprang silently forward, fully revealing her enormous body. In four bounding steps she covered the distance to the goat, bent down, and bit it through the neck. The bleating stopped. There was silence. Poised over her kill, the tyrannosaur became suddenly hesitant. Her massive head turned on the muscular neck, looking in all directions. She stared fixedly at the Land Cruiser, high above on the hill. Malcolm whispered, “Can she see us?” “Oh yes,” Regis said, on the intercom. “Let’s see if she’s going to eat here in front of us, or if she’s going to drag the prey away.” The tyrannosaur bent down, and sniffed the carcass of the goat. A bird chirped: her head snapped up, alert, watchful. She looked back and forth, scanning in small jerking shifts. “Like a bird,” Ellie said. Still the tyrannosaur hesitated. “What is she afraid of?” Malcolm whispered. “Probably another tyrannosaur,” Grant whispered. Big carnivores like lions and tigers often became cautious after a kill, behaving as if suddenly exposed. Nineteenth-century zoologists imagined the animals felt guilty for what they had done. But contemporary scientists documented the effort behind a kill—hours of patient stalking before the final lunge—as well as the frequency of failure. The idea of “nature, red in tooth and claw” was wrong; most often the prey got away. When a carnivore finally brought down an animal, it was watchful for another predator, who might attack it and steal its prize. Thus this tyrannosaur was probably fearful of another tyrannosaur. The huge animal bent over the goat again. One great hind limb held the carcass in place as the jaws began to tear the flesh. “She’s going to stay,” Regis whispered. “Excellent.” The tyrannosaur lifted her head again, ragged chunks of bleeding flesh in her jaws. She stared at the Land Cruiser. She began to chew. They heard the sickening crunch of bones. “Ewww,” Lex said, over the intercom.


“That’s disgusting.” And then, as if caution had finally gotten the better of her, the tyrannosaur lifted the remains of the goat in her jaws and carried them silently back among the trees. “Ladies and gentlemen, Tyrannosaurus rex,” the tape said. The Land Cruisers started up, and moved silently off, through the foliage. Malcolm sat back in his seat. “Fantastic,” he said. Gennaro wiped his forehead. He looked pale.


Jurassic Park CONTROL Henry Wu came into the control room to find everyone sitting in the dark, listening to the voices on the radio. “—Jesus, if an animal like that gets out,” Gennaro was saying, his voice tinny on the speaker, “there’d be no stopping it.” “No stopping it, no …” “Huge, with no natural enemies …” “My God, think of it …” In the control room, Hammond said, “Damn those people. They are so negative.” Wu said, “They’re still going on about an animal escaping? I don’t understand. They must have seen by now that we have everything under control. We’ve engineered the animals and engineered the resort.…” He shrugged. It was Wu’s deepest perception that the park was fundamentally sound, as he believed his paleo-DNA was fundamentally sound. Whatever problems might arise in the DNA were essentially point-problems in the code, causing a specific problem in the phenotype: an enzyme that didn’t switch on, or a protein that didn’t fold. Whatever the difficulty, it was always solved with a relatively minor adjustment in the next version. Similarly, he knew that Jurassic Park’s problems were not fundamental problems. They were not control problems. Nothing as basic, or as serious, as the possibility of an animal escaping. Wu found it offensive to think that anyone would believe him capable of contributing to a system where such a thing could happen. “It’s that Malcolm,” Hammond said darkly. “He’s behind it all. He was against us from the start, you know. He’s got his theory that complex systems can’t be controlled and nature can’t be imitated. I don’t know what his problem is. Hell, we’re just making a zoo here. World’s full of ’em, and they all work fine. But he’s going to prove his theory or die trying. I just hope he doesn’t panic Gennaro into trying to shut the park down.” Wu said, “Can he do that?” “No,” Hammond said. “But he can try. He can try and frighten the Japanese investors, and get them to withdraw funds. Or he can make a stink with the San José government. He can make trouble.” Arnold stubbed out his cigarette. “Let’s wait and see what happens,” he said. “We believe in the park. Let’s see how it plays out.” Muldoon got off the elevator, nodded to the ground-floor guard, and went downstairs to the basement. He flicked on the lights. The basement was filled with two dozen Land Cruisers, arranged in neat rows. These were the electric cars that would eventually form an endless loop, touring the park, returning to the visitor center. In the corner was a Jeep with a red stripe, one of two gasoline-powered vehicles—Harding, the vet, had taken the other that morning—which could go anywhere in the park, even among the animals. The Jeeps were painted with a diagonal red stripe because for some reason it discouraged the triceratops from charging the car. Muldoon moved past the Jeep, toward the back.


The steel door to the armaments room was unmarked. He unlocked it with his key, and swung the heavy door wide. Gun racks lined the interior. He pulled out a Randler Shoulder Launcher and a case of canisters. He tucked two gray rockets under his other arm. After locking the door behind him, he put the gun into the back seat of the Jeep. As he left the garage, he heard the distant rumble of thunder. “Looks like rain,” Ed Regis said, glancing up at the sky. The Land Cruisers had stopped again, near the sauropod swamp. A large herd of apatosaurs was grazing at the edge of the lagoon, eating the leaves of the upper branches of the palm trees. In the same area were several duckbilled hadrosaurs, which in comparison looked much smaller. Of course, Tim knew the hadrosaurs weren’t really small. It was only that the apatosaurs were so much larger. Their tiny heads reached fifty feet into the air, extending out on their long necks. “The big animals you see are commonly called Brontosaurus,” the recording said, “but they are actually Apatosaurus. They weigh more than thirty tons. That means a single animal is as big as a whole herd of modern elephants. And you may notice that their preferred area, alongside the lagoon, is not swampy. Despite what the books say, brontosaurs avoid swamps. They prefer dry land.” “Brontosaurus is the biggest dinosaur, Lex,” Ed Regis said. Tim didn’t bother to contradict him. Actually, Brachiosaurus was three times as large. And some people thought Ultrasaurus and Seismosaurus were even larger than Brachiosaurus. Seismosaurus might have weighed a hundred tons! Alongside the apatosaurs, the smaller hadrosaurs stood on their hind legs to get at foliage. They moved gracefully for such large creatures. Several infant hadrosaurs scampered around the adults, eating the leaves that dropped from the mouths of the larger animals. “The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park don’t breed,” the recording said. “The young animals you see were introduced a few months ago, already hatched. But the adults nurture them anyway.” There was the rolling growl of thunder. The sky was darker, lower, and menacing. “Yeah, looks like rain, all right,” Ed Regis said. The car started forward, and Tim looked back at the hadrosaurs. Suddenly, off to one side, he saw a pale yellow animal moving quickly. There were brownish stripes on its back. He recognized it instantly. “Hey!” he shouted. “Stop the car!” “What is it?” Ed Regis said. “Quick! Stop the car!” “We move on now to see the last of our great prehistoric animals, the stegosaurs,” the recorded voice said. “What’s the matter, Tim?’ ” “I saw one! I saw one in the field out there!” “Saw what?” “A raptor! In that field!” “The stegosaurs are a mid-Jurassic animal, evolving about a hundred and seventy million years ago,” the recording said. “Several of these remarkable herbivores live here at Jurassic Park.” “Oh, I don’t think so, Tim,” Ed Regis said.


“Not a raptor.” “I did! Stop the car!” There was a babble on the intercom, as the news was relayed to Grant and Malcolm. “Tim says he saw a raptor.” “Where?” “Back at the field.” “Let’s go back and look.” “We can’t go back,” Ed Regis said. “We can only go forward. The cars are programmed.” “We can’t go back?” Grant said. “No,” Regis said. “Sorry. You see, it’s kind of a ride—” “Tim, this is Professor Malcolm,” said a voice cutting in on the intercom. “I have just one question for you about this raptor. How old would you say it was?” “Older than the baby we saw today,” Tim said. “And younger than the big adults in the pen. The adults were six feet tall. This one was about half that size.” “That’s fine,” Malcolm said. “I only saw it for a second,” Tim said. “I’m sure it wasn’t a raptor,” Ed Regis said. “It couldn’t possibly be a raptor. Must have been one of the othys. They’re always jumping their fences. We have a hell of a time with them.” “I know I saw a raptor,” Tim said. “I’m hungry,” Lex said. She was starting to whine. In the control room, Arnold turned to Wu. “What do you think the kid saw?” “I think it must have been an othy.” Arnold nodded. “We have trouble tracking othys, because they spend so much time in the trees.” The othys were an exception to the usual minute-to-minute control they maintained over the animals. The computers were constantly losing and picking up the othys, as they went into the trees and then came down again. “What burns me,” Hammond said, “is that we have made this wonderful park, this fantastic park, and our very first visitors are going through it like accountants, just looking for problems. They aren’t experiencing the wonder of it at all.” “That’s their problem,” Arnold said. “We can’t make them experience wonder.” The intercom clicked, and Arnold heard a voice drawl, “Ah, John, this is the Anne B over at the dock. We haven’t finished offloading, but I’m looking at that storm pattern south of us. I’d rather not be tied up here if this chop gets any worse.” Arnold turned to the monitor showing the cargo vessel, which was moored at the dock on the east side of the island. He pressed the radio button. “How much left to do, Jim?” “Just the three final equipment containers. I haven’t checked the manifest, but I assume you can wait another two weeks for it. We’re not well berthed here, you know, and we are one hundred miles offshore.” “You requesting permission to leave?” “Yes, John.” “I want that equipment,” Hammond said. “That’s equipment for the labs. We need it.” “Yes,” Arnold said. “But you didn’t want to put money into a storm barrier to protect the pier. So we don’t have a good harbor.


If the storm gets worse, the ship will be pounded against the dock. I’ve seen ships lost that way. Then you’ve got all the other expenses, replacement of the vessel plus salvage to clear your dock … and you can’t use your dock until you do.…” Hammond gave a dismissing wave. “Get them out of there.” “Permission to leave, Anne B,” Arnold said, into the radio. “See you in two weeks,” the voice said. On the video monitor, they saw the crew on the decks, casting off the lines. Arnold turned back to the main console bank. He saw the Land Cruisers moving through fields of steam. “Where are they now?” Hammond said. “It looks like the south fields,” Arnold said. The southern end of the island had more volcanic activity than the north. “That means they should be almost to the stegos. I’m sure they’ll stop and see what Harding is doing.”


Jurassic Park STEGOSAUR As the Land Cruiser came to a stop, Ellie Sattler stared through the plumes of steam at the stegosaurus. It was standing quietly, not moving. A Jeep with a red stripe was parked alongside it. “I have to admit, that’s a funny-looking animal,” Malcolm said. The stegosaurus was twenty feet long, with a huge bulky body and vertical armor plates along its back. The tail had dangerous-looking three-foot spikes. But the neck tapered to an absurdly small head with a stupid gaze, like a very dumb horse. As they watched, a man walked around from behind the animal. “That’s our vet, Dr. Harding,” Regis said, over the radio. “He’s anesthetized the stego, which is why it’s not moving. It’s sick.” Grant was already getting out of the car, hurrying toward the motionless stegosaur. Ellie got out and looked back as the second Land Cruiser pulled up and the two kids jumped out. “What’s he sick with?” Tim said. “They’re not sure,” Ellie said. The great leathery plates along the stegosaur’s spine drooped slightly. It breathed slowly, laboriously, making a wet sound with each breath. “Is it contagious?” Lex said. They walked toward the tiny head of the animal, where Grant and the vet were on their knees, peering into the stegosaur’s mouth. Lex wrinkled her nose. “This thing sure is big,” she said. “And smelly.” “Yes, it is.” Ellie had already noticed the stegosaur had a peculiar odor, like rotting fish. It reminded her of something she knew, but couldn’t quite place. In any case, she had never smelled a stegosaur before. Maybe this was its characteristic odor. But she had her doubts. Most herbivores did not have a strong smell. Nor did their droppings. It was reserved for the meat-eaters to develop a real stink. “Is that because it’s sick?” Lex asked. “Maybe. And don’t forget the vet’s tranquilized it.” “Ellie, have a look at this tongue,” Grant said. The dark purple tongue drooped limply from the animal’s mouth. The vet shone a light on it so she could see the very fine silvery blisters. “Microvesicles,” Ellie said. “Interesting.” “We’ve had a difficult time with these stegos,” the vet said. “They’re always getting sick.” “What are the symptoms?” Ellie asked. She scratched the tongue with her fingernail. A clear liquid exuded from the broken blisters. “Ugh,” Lex said. “Imbalance, disorientation, labored breathing, and massive diarrhea,” Harding said. “Seems to happen about once every six weeks or so.” “They feed continuously?” “Oh yes,” Harding said. “Animal this size has to take in a minimum of five or six hundred pounds of plant matter daily just to keep going. They’re constant foragers.” “Then it’s not likely to be poisoning from a plant,” Ellie said. Constant browsers would be constantly sick if they were eating a toxic plant. Not every six weeks. “Exactly,” the vet said. “May I?” Ellie asked. She took the flashlight from the vet.


“You have pupillary effects from the tranquilizer?” she said, shining the light in the stegosaur’s eye. “Yes. There’s a miotic effect, pupils are constricted.” “But these pupils are dilated,” she said. Harding looked. There was no question: the stegosaur’s pupil was dilated, and did not contract when light shone on it. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “That’s a pharmacological effect.” “Yes.” Ellie got back on her feet and looked around. “What is the animal’s range?” “About five square miles.” “In this general area?” she asked. They were in an open meadow, with scattered rocky outcrops, and intermittent plumes of steam rising from the ground. It was late afternoon, and the sky was pink beneath the lowering gray clouds. “Their range is mostly north and east of here,” Harding said. “But when they get sick, they’re usually somewhere around this particular area.” It was an interesting puzzle, she thought. How to explain the periodicity of the poisoning? She pointed across the field. “You see those low, delicate-looking bushes?” “West Indian lilac.” Harding nodded. “We know it’s toxic. The animals don’t eat it.” “You’re sure?” “Yes. We monitor them on video, and I’ve checked droppings just to be certain. The stegos never eat the lilac bushes.” Melia azedarach, called chinaberry or West Indian lilac, contained a number of toxic alkaloids. The Chinese used the plant as a fish poison. “They don’t eat it,” the vet said. “Interesting,” Ellie said. “Because otherwise I would have said that this animal shows all the classic signs of Melia toxicity: stupor, blistering of the mucous membranes, and pupillary dilatation.” She set off toward the field to examine the plants more closely, her body bent over the ground. “You’re right,” she said. “Plants are healthy, no sign of being eaten. None at all.” “And there’s the six-week interval,” the vet reminded her. “The stegosaurs come here how often?” “About once a week,” he said. “Stegos make a slow loop through their home-range territory, feeding as they go. They complete the loop in about a week.” “But they’re only sick once every six weeks.” “Correct,” Harding said. “This is boring,” Lex said. “Ssshh,” Tim said. “Dr. Sattler’s trying to think.” “Unsuccessfully,” Ellie said, walking farther out into the field. Behind her, she heard Lex saying, “Anybody want to play a little pickle?” Ellie stared at the ground. The field was rocky in many places. She could hear the sound of the surf, somewhere to the left. There were berries among the rocks. Perhaps the animals were just eating berries. But that didn’t make sense. West Indian lilac berries were terribly bitter. “Finding anything?” Grant said, coming up to join her. Ellie sighed. “Just rocks,” she said. “We must be near the beach, because all these rocks are smooth. And they’re in funny little piles.” “Funny little piles?” Grant said. “All over. There’s one pile right there.” She pointed. As soon as she did, she realized what she was looking at.


The rocks were worn, but it had nothing to do with the ocean. These rocks were heaped in small piles, almost as if they had been thrown down that way. They were piles of gizzard stones. Many birds and crocodiles swallowed small stones, which collected in a muscular pouch in the digestive tract, called the gizzard. Squeezed by the muscles of the gizzard, the stones helped crush tough plant food before it reached the stomach, and thus aided digestion. Some scientists thought dinosaurs also had gizzard stones. For one thing, dinosaur teeth were too small, and too little worn, to have been used for chewing food. It was presumed that dinosaurs swallowed their food whole and let the gizzard stones break down the plant fibers. And some skeletons had been found with an associated pile of small stones in the abdominal area. But it had never been verified, and— “Gizzard stones,” Grant said. “I think so, yes. They swallow these stones, and after a few weeks the stones are worn smooth, so they regurgitate them, leaving this little pile, and swallow fresh stones. And when they do, they swallow berries as well. And get sick.” “I’ll be damned,” Grant said. “I’m sure you’re right.” He looked at the pile of stones, brushing through them with his hand, following the instinct of a paleontologist. Then he stopped. “Ellie,” he said. “Take a look at this.” “Put it there, babe! Right in the old mitt!” Lex cried, and Gennaro threw the ball to her. She threw it back so hard that his hand stung. “Take it easy! I don’t have a glove!” “You wimp!” she said contemptuously. Annoyed, he fired the ball at her, and heard it smack! in the leather. “Now that’s more like it,” she said. Standing by the dinosaur, Gennaro continued to play catch as he talked to Malcolm. “How does this sick dinosaur fit into your theory?” “It’s predicted,” Malcolm said. Gennaro shook his head. “Is anything not predicted by your theory?” “Look,” Malcolm said. “It’s nothing to do with me. It’s chaos theory. But I notice nobody is willing to listen to the consequences of the mathematics. Because they imply very large consequences for human life. Much larger than Heisenberg’s principle or Gödel’s theorem, which everybody rattles on about. Those are actually rather academic considerations. Philosophical considerations. But chaos theory concerns everyday life. Do you know why computers were first built?” “No,” Gennaro said. “Burn it in there,” Lex yelled. “Computers were built in the late 1940s because mathematicians like John von Neumann thought that if you had a computer—a machine to handle a lot of variables simultaneously—you would be able to predict the weather. Weather would finally fall to human understanding. And men believed that dream for the next forty years. They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything.


That’s been a cherished scientific belief since Newton.” “And?” “Chaos theory throws it right out the window. It says that you can never predict certain phenomena at all. You can never predict the weather more than a few days away. All the money that has been spent on long-range forecasting—about half a billion dollars in the last few decades—is money wasted. It’s a fool’s errand. It’s as pointless as trying to turn lead into gold. We look back at the alchemists and laugh at what they were trying to do, but future generations will laugh at us the same way. We’ve tried the impossible—and spent a lot of money doing it. Because in fact there are great categories of phenomena that are inherently unpredictable.” “Chaos says that?” “Yes, and it is astonishing how few people care to hear it,” Malcolm said. “I gave all this information to Hammond long before he broke ground on this place. You’re going to engineer a bunch of prehistoric animals and set them on an island? Fine. A lovely dream. Charming. But it won’t go as planned. It is inherently unpredictable, just as the weather is.” “You told him this?” Gennaro said. “Yes. I also told him where the deviations would occur. Obviously the fitness of the animals to the environment was one area. This stegosaur is a hundred million years old. It isn’t adapted to our world. The air is different, the solar radiation is different, the land is different, the insects are different, the sounds are different, the vegetation is different. Everything is different. The oxygen content is decreased. This poor animal’s like a human being at ten thousand feet altitude. Listen to him wheezing.” “And the other areas?” “Broadly speaking, the ability of the park to control the spread of life-forms. Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.” Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t mean to be philosophical, but there it is.” Gennaro looked over. Ellie and Grant were across the field, waving their arms and shouting. “Did you get my Coke?” Dennis Nedry asked, as Muldoon came back into the control room. Muldoon didn’t bother to answer. He went directly to the monitor and looked at what was happening. Over the radio he heard Harding’s voice saying, “—the stego—finally—handle on—now—” “What’s that about?” Muldoon said. “They’re down by the south point,” Arnold said. “That’s why they’re breaking up a little. I’ll switch them to another channel. But they found out what’s wrong with the stegos. Eating some kind of berry.” Hammond nodded. “I knew we’d solve that sooner or later,” he said. “It’s not very impressive,” Gennaro said. He held the white fragment, no larger than a postage stamp, up on his fingertip in the fading light. “You sure about this, Alan?” “Absolutely sure,” Grant said. “What gives it away is the patterning on the interior surface, the interior curve.


Turn it over and you will notice a faint pattern of raised lines, making roughly triangular shapes.” “Yes, I see them.” “Well, I’ve dug out two eggs with patterns like that at my site in Montana.” “You’re saying this is a piece of dinosaur eggshell?” “Absolutely,” Grant said. Harding shook his head. “These dinosaurs can’t breed.” “Evidently they can,” Gennaro said. “That must be a bird egg,” Harding said. “We have literally dozens of species on the island.” Grant shook his head. “Look at the curvature. The shell is almost flat. That’s from a very big egg. And notice the thickness of the shell. Unless you have ostriches on this island, it’s a dinosaur egg.” “But they can’t possibly breed,” Harding insisted. “All the animals are female.” “All I know,” Grant said, “is that this is a dinosaur egg.” Malcolm said, “Can you tell the species?” “Yes,” Grant said. “It’s a velociraptor egg.”


Jurassic Park CONTROL “Absolutely absurd,” Hammond said in the control room, listening to the report over the radio. “It must be a bird egg. That’s all it can be.” The radio crackled. He heard Malcolm’s voice. “Let’s do a little test, shall we? Ask Mr. Arnold to run one of his computer tallies.” “Now?” “Yes, right now. I understand you can transmit it to the screen in Dr. Harding’s car. Do that, too, will you?” “No problem,” Arnold said. A moment later, the screen in the control room printed out: “I hope you’re satisfied,” Hammond said. “Are you receiving it down there on your screen?” “We see it,” Malcolm said. “Everything accounted for, as always.” He couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of his voice. “Now then,” Malcolm said. “Can you have the computer search for a different number of animals?” “Like what?” Arnold said. “Try two hundred thirty-nine.” “Just a minute,” Arnold said, frowning. A moment later the screen printed: Hammond sat forward. “What the hell is that?” “We picked up another compy.” “From where?” “I don’t know!” The radio crackled. “Now, then: can you ask the computer to search for, let us say, three hundred animals?” “What is he talking about?” Hammond said, his voice rising. “Three hundred animals? What’s he talking about?” “Just a minute,” Arnold said. “That’ll take a few minutes.” He punched buttons on the screen. The first line of the totals appeared: Total Animals 239 “I don’t understand what he’s driving at,” Hammond said. “I’m afraid I do,” Arnold said. He watched the screen. The numbers on the first line were clicking: Total Animals 244 “Two hundred forty-four?” Hammond said. “What’s going on?” “The computer is counting the animals in the park,” Wu said. “All the animals.” “I thought that’s what it always did.” He spun. “Nedry! Have you screwed up again?” “No,” Nedry said, looking up from his console. “Computer allows the operator to enter an expected number of animals, in order to make the counting process faster. But it’s a convenience, not a flaw.” “He’s right,” Arnold said. “We just always used the base count of two hundred thirty-eight because we assumed there couldn’t be more.” Total Animals 262 “Wait a minute,” Hammond said. “These animals can’t breed. The computer must be counting field mice or something.” “I think so, too,” Arnold said. “It’s almost certainly an error in the visual tracking. But we’ll know soon enough.” Hammond turned to Wu. “They can’t breed, can they?” “No,” Wu said. Total Animals 270 “Where are they coming from?” Arnold said. “Damned if I know,” Wu said. They watched the numbers climb. Total Animals 283 Over the radio, they heard Gennaro say, “Holy shit, how much more?” And they heard the girl say, “I’m getting hungry. When are we going home?” “Pretty soon, Lex.” On the screen, there was a flashing error message: ERROR: Search Params: 300 Animals Not Found “An error,” Hammond said, nodding. “I thought so.


I had the feeling all along there must be an error.” But a moment later the screen printed: The radio crackled. “Now you see the flaw in your procedures,” Malcolm said. “You only tracked the expected number of dinosaurs. You were worried about losing animals, and your procedures were designed to advise you instantly if you had less than the expected number. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was, you had more than the expected number.” “Christ,” Arnold said. “There can’t be more,” Wu said. “We know how many we’ve released. There can’t be more than that.” “Afraid so, Henry,” Malcolm said. “They’re breeding.” “No.” “Even if you don’t accept Grant’s eggshell, you can prove it with your own data. Take a look at the compy height graph. Arnold will put it up for you.” “Notice anything about it?” Malcolm said. “It’s a Gaussian distribution,” Wu said. “Normal curve.” “But didn’t you say you introduced the compys in three batches? At six-month intervals?” “Yes …” “Then you should get a graph with peaks for each of the three separate batches that were introduced,” Malcolm said, tapping the keyboard. “Like this.” “But you didn’t get this graph,” Malcolm said. “The graph you actually got is a graph of a breeding population. Your compys are breeding.” Wu shook his head. “I don’t see how.” “They’re breeding, and so are the othnielia, the maiasaurs, the hypsys—and the velociraptors.” “Christ,” Muldoon said. “There are raptors free in the park.” “Well, it’s not that bad,” Hammond said, looking at the screen. “We have increases in just three categories—well, five categories. Very small increases in two of them …” “What are you talking about?” Wu said, loudly. “Don’t you know what this means?” “Of course I know what this means, Henry,” Hammond said. “It means you screwed up.” “Absolutely not.” “You’ve got breeding dinosaurs out there, Henry.” “But they’re all female,” Wu said. “It’s impossible. There must be a mistake. And look at the numbers. A small increase in the big animals, the maiasaurs and the hypsys. And big increases in the number of small animals. It just doesn’t make sense. It must be a mistake.” The radio clicked. “Actually not,” Grant said. “I think these numbers confirm that breeding is taking place. In seven different sites around the island.”


Jurassic Park BREEDING SITES The sky was growing darker. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Grant and the others leaned in the doors of the Jeep, staring at the screen on the dashboard. “Breeding sites?” Wu said, over the radio. “Nests,” Grant said. “Assuming the average clutch is eight to twelve hatching eggs, these data would indicate the compys have two nests. The raptors have two nests. The othys have one nest. And the hypsys and the maias have one nest each.” “Where are these nests?” “We’ll have to find them,” Grant said. “Dinosaurs build their nests in secluded places.” “But why are there so few big animals?” Wu said. “If there is a maia nest of eight to twelve eggs, there should be eight to twelve new maias. Not just one.” “That’s right,” Grant said. “Except that the raptors and the compys that are loose in the park are probably eating the eggs of the bigger animals—and perhaps eating the newly hatched young, as well.” “But we’ve never seen that,” Arnold said, over the radio. “Raptors are nocturnal,” he said. “Is anyone watching the park at night?” There was a long silence. “I didn’t think so,” Grant said. “It still doesn’t make sense,” Wu said. “You can’t support fifty additional animals on a couple of nests of eggs.” “No,” Grant said. “I assume they are eating something else as well. Perhaps small rodents. Mice and rats?” There was another silence. “Let me guess,” Grant said. “When you first came to the island, you had a problem with rats. But as time passed, the problem faded away.” “Yes. That’s true.…” “And you never thought to investigate why.” “Well, we just assumed …” Arnold said. “Look,” Wu said, “the fact remains, all the animals are female. They can’t breed.” Grant had been thinking about that. He had recently learned of an intriguing West German study that he suspected held the answer. “When you made your dinosaur DNA,” Grant said, “you were working with fragmentary pieces, is that right?” “Yes,” Wu said. “In order to make a complete strand, were you ever required to include DNA fragments from other species?” “Occasionally, yes,” Wu said. “It’s the only way to accomplish the job. Sometimes we included avian DNA, from a variety of birds, and sometimes reptilian DNA.” “Any amphibian DNA? Specifically, frog DNA?” “Possibly. I’d have to check.” “Check,” Grant said. “I think you’ll find that holds the answer.” Malcolm said, “Frog DNA? Why frog DNA?” Gennaro said impatiently, “Listen, this is all very intriguing, but we’re forgetting the main question: have any animals gotten off the island?” Grant said, “We can’t tell from these data.” “Then how are we going to find out?” “There’s only one way I know,” Grant said. “We’ll have to find the individual dinosaur nests, inspect them, and count the remaining egg fragments. From that we may be able to determine how many animals were originally hatched.


And we can begin to assess whether any are missing.” Malcolm said, “Even so, you won’t know if the missing animals are killed, or dead from natural causes, or whether they have left the island.” “No,” Grant said, “but it’s a start. And I think we can get more information from an intensive look at the population graphs.” “How are we going to find these nests?” “Actually,” Grant said, “I think the computer will be able to help us with that.” “Can we go back now?” Lex said. “I’m hungry.” “Yes, let’s go,” Grant said, smiling at her. “You’ve been very patient.” “You’ll be able to eat in about twenty minutes,” Ed Regis said, starting toward the two Land Cruisers. “I’ll stay for a while,” Ellie said, “and get photos of the stego with Dr. Harding’s camera. Those vesicles in the mouth will have cleared up by tomorrow.” “I want to get back,” Grant said. “I’ll go with the kids.” “I will, too,” Malcolm said. “I think I’ll stay,” Gennaro said, “and go back with Harding in his Jeep, with Dr. Sattler.” “Fine, let’s go.” They started walking. Malcolm said, “Why exactly is our lawyer staying?” Grant shrugged. “I think it might have something to do with Dr. Sattler.” “Really? The shorts, you think?” “It’s happened before,” Grant said. When they came to the Land Cruisers, Tim said, “I want to ride in the front one this time, with Dr. Grant.” Malcolm said, “Unfortunately, Dr. Grant and I need to talk.” “I’ll just sit and listen. I won’t say anything,” Tim said. “It’s a private conversation,” Malcolm said. “Tell you what, Tim,” Ed Regis said. “Let them sit in the rear car by themselves. We’ll sit in the front car, and you can use the night-vision goggles. Have you ever used night-vision goggles, Tim? They’re goggles with very sensitive CCDs that allow you to see in the dark.” “Neat,” he said, and moved toward the first car. “Hey!” Lex said. “I want to use it, too.” “No,” Tim said. “No fair! No fair! You get to do everything, Timmy!” Ed Regis watched them go and said to Grant, “I can see what the ride back is going to be like.” Grant and Malcolm climbed into the second car. A few raindrops spattered the windshield. “Let’s get going,” Ed Regis said. “I’m about ready for dinner. And I could do with a nice banana daiquiri. What do you say, folks? Daiquiri sound good?” He pounded the metal panel of the car. “See you back at camp,” he said, and he started running toward the first car, and climbed aboard. A red light on the dashboard blinked. With a soft electric whirr, the Land Cruisers started off. Driving back in the fading light, Malcolm seemed oddly subdued. Grant said, “You must feel vindicated. About your theory.” “As a matter of fact, I’m feeling a bit of dread.


I suspect we are at a very dangerous point.” “Why?” “Intuition.” “Do mathematicians believe in intuition?” “Absolutely. Very important, intuition. Actually, I was thinking of fractals,” Malcolm said. “You know about fractals?” Grant shook his head. “Not really, no.” “Fractals are a kind of geometry, associated with a man named Mandelbrot. Unlike ordinary Euclidean geometry that everybody learns in school—squares and cubes and spheres—fractal geometry appears to describe real objects in the natural world. Mountains and clouds are fractal shapes. So fractals are probably related to reality. Somehow. “Well, Mandelbrot found a remarkable thing with his geometric tools. He found that things looked almost identical at different scales.” “At different scales?” Grant said. “For example,” Malcolm said, “a big mountain, seen from far away, has a certain rugged mountain shape. If you get closer, and examine a small peak of the big mountain, it will have the same mountain shape. In fact, you can go all the way down the scale to a tiny speck of rock, seen under a microscope—it will have the same basic fractal shape as the big mountain.” “I don’t really see why this is worrying you,” Grant said. He yawned. He smelled the sulfur fumes of the volcanic steam. They were coming now to the section of road that ran near the coastline, overlooking the beach and the ocean. “It’s a way of looking at things,” Malcolm said. “Mandelbrot found a sameness from the smallest to the largest. And this sameness of scale also occurs for events.” “Events?” “Consider cotton prices,” Malcolm said. “There are good records of cotton prices going back more than a hundred years. When you study fluctuations in cotton prices, you find that the graph of price fluctuations in the course of a day looks basically like the graph for a week, which looks basically like the graph for a year, or for ten years. And that’s how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there.… And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.” “I guess it’s one way to look at things,” Grant said. “No,” Malcolm said. “It’s the only way to look at things. At least, the only way that is true to reality. You see, the fractal idea of sameness carries within it an aspect of recursion, a kind of doubling back on itself, which means that events are unpredictable. That they can change suddenly, and without warning.” “Okay …” “But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is.


And chaos theory teaches us,” Malcolm said, “that straight linearity, which we have come to take for granted in everything from physics to fiction, simply does not exist. Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world. Real life isn’t a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way.” Malcolm sat back in his seat, looking toward the other Land Cruiser, a few yards ahead. “That’s a deep truth about the structure of our universe. But, for some reason, we insist on behaving as if it were not true.” At that moment, the cars jolted to a stop. “What’s happened?” Grant said. Up ahead, they saw the kids in the car, pointing toward the ocean. Offshore, beneath lowering clouds, Grant saw the dark outline of the supply boat making its way back toward Puntarenas. “Why have we stopped?” Malcolm said. Grant turned on the radio and heard the girl saying excitedly, “Look there, Timmy! You see it, it’s there!” Malcolm squinted at the boat. “They talking about the boat?” “Apparently.” Ed Regis climbed out of the front car and came running back to their window. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but the kids are all worked up. Do you have binoculars here?” “For what?” “The little girl says she sees something on the boat. Some kind of animal,” Regis said. Grant grabbed the binoculars and rested his elbows on the window ledge of the Land Cruiser. He scanned the long shape of the supply ship. It was so dark it was almost a silhouette; as he watched, the ship’s running lights came on, brilliant in the dark purple twilight. “Do you see anything?” Regis said. “No,” Grant said. “They’re low down,” Lex said, over the radio. “Look low down.” Grant tilted the binoculars down, scanning the hull just above the waterline. The supply ship was broad-beamed, with a splash flange that ran the length of the ship. But it was quite dark now, and he could hardly make out details. “No, nothing …” “I can see them,” Lex said impatiently. “Near the back. Look near the back!” “How can she see anything in this light?” Malcolm said. “Kids can see,” Grant said. “They’ve got visual acuity we forgot we ever had.” He swung the binoculars toward the stern, moving them slowly, and suddenly he saw the animals. They were playing, darting among the silhouetted stern structures. He could see them only briefly, but even in the fading light he could tell that they were upright animals, about two feet tall, standing with stiff balancing tails. “You see them now?” Lex said. “I see them,” he said. “What are they?” “They’re raptors,” Grant said. “At least two. Maybe more. Juveniles.” “Jesus,” Ed Regis said. “That boat’s going to the mainland.” Malcolm shrugged. “Don’t get excited.


Just call the control room and tell them to recall the boat.” Ed Regis reached in and grabbed the radio from the dashboard. They heard hissing static, and clicks as he rapidly changed channels. “There’s something wrong with this one,” he said. “It’s not working.” He ran off to the first Land Cruiser. They saw him duck into it. Then he looked back at them. “There’s something wrong with both the radios,” he said. “I can’t raise the control room.” “Then let’s get going,” Grant said. In the control room, Muldoon stood before the big windows that overlooked the park. At seven o’clock, the quartz floodlights came on all over the island, turning the landscape into a glowing jewel stretching away to the south. This was his favorite moment of the day. He heard the crackle of static from the radios. “The Land Cruisers have started again,” Arnold said. “They’re on their way home.” “But why did they stop?” Hammond said. “And why can’t we talk to them?” “I don’t know,” Arnold said. “Maybe they turned off the radios in the cars.” “Probably the storm,” Muldoon said. “Interference from the storm.” “They’ll be here in twenty minutes,” Hammond said. “You better call down and make sure the dining room is ready for them. Those kids are going to be hungry.” Arnold picked up the phone and heard a steady monotonous hiss. “What’s this? What’s going on?” “Jesus, hang that up,” Nedry said. “You’ll screw up the data stream.” “You’ve taken all the phone lines? Even the internal ones?” “I’ve taken all the lines that communicate outside,” Nedry said. “But your internal lines should still work.” Arnold punched console buttons one after another. He heard nothing but hissing on all the lines. “Looks like you’ve got ’em all.” “Sorry about that,” Nedry said. “I’ll clear a couple for you at the end of the next transmission, in about fifteen minutes.” He yawned. “Looks like a long weekend for me. I guess I’ll go get that Coke now.” He picked up his shoulder bag and headed for the door. “Don’t touch my console, okay?” The door closed. “What a slob,” Hammond said. “Yeah,” Arnold said. “But I guess he knows what he’s doing.” Along the side of the road, clouds of volcanic steam misted rainbows in the bright quartz lights. Grant said into the radio, “How long does it take the ship to reach the mainland?” “Eighteen hours,” Ed Regis said. “More or less. It’s pretty reliable.” He glanced at his watch. “It should arrive around eleven tomorrow morning.” Grant frowned. “You still can’t talk to the control room?” “Not so far.” “How about Harding? Can you reach him?” “No, I’ve tried. He may have his radio turned off.” Malcolm was shaking his head. “So we’re the only ones who know about the animals on the ship.” “I’m trying to raise somebody,” Ed Regis said.


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

“I mean, Christ, we don’t want those animals on the mainland.” “How long until we get back to the base?” “From here, another sixteen, seventeen minutes,” Ed Regis said. At night, the whole road was illuminated by big floodlights. It felt to Grant as if they were driving through a bright green tunnel of leaves. Large raindrops spattered the windshield. Grant felt the Land Cruiser slow, then stop. “Now what?” Lex said, “I don’t want to stop. Why did we stop?” And then, suddenly, all the floodlights went out. The road was plunged into darkness. Lex said, “Hey!” “Probably just a power outage or something,” Ed Regis said. “I’m sure the lights’ll be on in a minute.” “What the hell?” Arnold said, staring at his monitors. “What happened?” Muldoon said. “You lose power?” “Yeah, but only power on the perimeter. Everything in this building’s working fine. But outside, in the park, the power is gone. Lights, TV cameras, everything.” His remote video monitors had gone black. “What about the two Land Cruisers?” “Stopped somewhere around the tyrannosaur paddock.” “Well,” Muldoon said, “call Maintenance and let’s get the power back on.” Arnold picked up one of his phones and heard hissing: Nedry’s computers talking to each other. “No phones. That damn Nedry. Nedry! Where the hell is he?” Dennis Nedry pushed open the door marked FERTILIZATION. With the perimeter power out, all the security-card locks were disarmed. Every door in the building opened with a touch. The problems with the security system were high on Jurassic Park’s bug list. Nedry wondered if anybody ever imagined that it wasn’t a bug—that Nedry had programmed it that way. He had built in a classic trap door. Few programmers of large computer systems could resist the temptation to leave themselves a secret entrance. Partly it was common sense: if inept users locked up the system—and then called you for help—you always had a way to get in and repair the mess. And partly it was a kind of signature: Kilroy was here. And partly it was insurance for the future. Nedry was annoyed with the Jurassic Park project; late in the schedule, InGen had demanded extensive modifications to the system but hadn’t been willing to pay for them, arguing they should be included under the original contract. Lawsuits were threatened; letters were written to Nedry’s other clients, implying that Nedry was unreliable. It was blackmail, and in the end Nedry had been forced to eat his overages on Jurassic Park and to make the changes that Hammond wanted. But later, when he was approached by Lewis Dodgson at Biosyn, Nedry was ready to listen. And able to say that he could indeed get past Jurassic Park security. He could get into any room, any system, anywhere in the park. Because he had programmed it that way. Just in case. He entered the fertilization room. The lab was deserted; as he had anticipated, all the staff was at dinner.


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

Nedry unzipped his shoulder bag and removed the can of Gillette shaving cream. He unscrewed the base, and saw the interior was divided into a series of cylindrical slots. He pulled on a pair of heavy insulated gloves and opened the walk-in freezer marked CONTENTS VIABLE BIOLOGICAL MAINTAIN — 10°C MINIMUM. The freezer was the size of a small closet, with shelves from floor to ceiling. Most of the shelves contained reagents and liquids in plastic sacs. To one side he saw a smaller nitrogen cold box with a heavy ceramic door. He opened it, and a rack of small tubes slid out, in a cloud of white liquid-nitrogen smoke. The embryos were arranged by species: Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Hadrosaurus, Tyrannosaurus. Each embryo in a thin glass container, wrapped in silver foil, stoppered with polylene. Nedry quickly took two of each, slipping them into the shaving cream can. Then he screwed the base of the can shut and twisted the top. There was a hiss of releasing gas inside, and the can frosted in his hands. Dodgson had said there was enough coolant to last thirty-six hours. More than enough time to get back to San José. Nedry left the freezer, returned to the main lab. He dropped the can back in his bag, zipped it shut. He went back into the hallway. The theft had taken less than two minutes. He could imagine the consternation upstairs in the control room, as they began to realize what had happened. All their security codes were scrambled, and all their phone lines were jammed. Without his help, it would take hours to untangle the mess—but in just a few minutes Nedry would be back in the control room, setting things right. And no one would ever suspect what he had done. Grinning, Dennis Nedry walked down to the ground floor, nodded to the guard, and continued downstairs to the basement. Passing the neat lines of electric Land Cruisers, he went to the gasoline-powered Jeep parked against the wall. He climbed into it, noticing some odd gray tubing on the passenger seat. It looked almost like a rocket launcher, he thought, as he turned the ignition key and started the Jeep. Nedry glanced at his watch. From here, into the park, and three minutes straight to the east dock. Three minutes from there back to the control room. Piece of cake. “Damn it!” Arnold said, punching buttons on the console. “It’s all screwed up.” Muldoon was standing at the windows, looking out at the park. The lights had gone out all over the island, except in the immediate area around the main buildings. He saw a few staff personnel hurrying to get out of the rain, but no one seemed to realize anything was wrong. Muldoon looked over at the visitor lodge, where the lights burned brightly. “Uh-oh,” Arnold said. “We have real trouble.” “What’s that?” Muldoon said.


Jurassic Park _ A Novel -- Crichton, Michael -- Jurassic Park 1, 2012 -- Random House Publishing Group -- 9780307763051 -- 3de76fc510cf7aa828af34881aaf1176 -- Anna’s Archive.8

He turned away from the window, and so he didn’t see the Jeep drive out of the underground garage and head east along the maintenance road into the park. “That idiot Nedry turned off the security systems,” Arnold said. “The whole building’s opened up. None of the doors are locked any more.” “I’ll notify the guards,” Muldoon said. “That’s the least of it,” Arnold said. “When you turn off the security, you turn off all the peripheral fences as well.” “The fences?” Muldoon said. “The electrical fences,” Arnold said. “They’re off, all over the island.” “You mean …” “That’s right,” Arnold said. “The animals can get out now.” Arnold lit a cigarette. “Probably nothing will happen, but you never know.…” Muldoon started toward the door. “I better drive out and bring in the people in those two Land Cruisers,” he said. “Just in case.” Muldoon quickly went downstairs to the garage. He wasn’t really worried about the fences’ going down. Most of the dinosaurs had been in their paddocks for nine months or more, and they had brushed up against the fences more than once, with notable results. Muldoon knew how quickly animals learned to avoid shock stimuli. You could train a laboratory pigeon with just two or three stimulation events. So it was unlikely the dinosaurs would now approach the fences. Muldoon was more concerned about what the people in the cars would do. He didn’t want them getting out of the Land Cruisers, because once the power came back on, the cars would start moving again, whether the people were inside them or not. They might be left behind. Of course, in the rain it was unlikely they would leave the cars. But, still… you never knew.… He reached the garage and hurried toward the Jeep. It was lucky, he thought, that he had had the foresight to put the launcher in it. He could start right out, and be out there in— It was gone! “What the hell?” Muldoon stared at the empty parking space, astonished. The Jeep was gone! What the hell was happening?


Jurassic Park THE MAIN ROAD Rain drummed loudly on the roof of the Land Cruiser. Tim felt the night-vision goggles pressing heavily on his forehead. He reached for the knob near his ear and adjusted the intensity. There was a brief phosphorescent flare, and then, in shades of electronic green and black, he could see the Land Cruiser behind, with Dr. Grant and Dr. Malcolm inside. Neat! Dr. Grant was staring out the front windshield toward him. Tim saw him pick up the radio from the dash. There was a burst of static, and then he heard Dr. Grant’s voice: “Can you see us back here?” Tim picked up the radio from Ed Regis. “I see you.” “Everything all right?” “We’re fine, Dr. Grant.” “Stay in the car.” “We will. Don’t worry.” He clicked the radio off. Ed Regis snorted. “It’s pouring down rain. Of course we’ll stay in the car,” he muttered. Tim turned to look at the foliage at the side of the road. Through the goggles, the foliage was a bright electronic green, and beyond he could see sections of the green grid pattern of the fence. The Land Cruisers were stopped on the downslope of a hill, which must mean they were someplace near the tyrannosaur area. It would be amazing to see a tyrannosaur with these night-vision goggles. A real thrill. Maybe the tyrannosaur would come to the fence and look over at them. Tim wondered if its eyes would glow in the dark when he saw them. That would be neat. But he didn’t see anything, and eventually he stopped looking. Everyone in the cars fell silent. The rain thrummed on the roof of the car. Sheets of water streamed down over the sides of the windows. It was hard for Tim to see out, even with the goggles. “How long have we been sitting here?” Malcolm asked. “I don’t know. Four or five minutes.” “I wonder what the problem is.” “Maybe a short circuit from the rain.” “But it happened before the rain really started.” There was another silence. In a tense voice, Lex said, “But there’s no lightning, right?” She had always been afraid of lightning, and she now sat nervously squeezing her leather mitt in her hands. Dr. Grant said, “What was that? We didn’t quite read that.” “Just my sister talking.” “Oh.” Tim again scanned the foliage, but saw nothing. Certainly nothing as big as a tyrannosaur. He began to wonder if the tyrannosaurs came out at night. Were they nocturnal animals? Tim wasn’t sure if he had ever read that. He had the feeling that tyrannosaurs were all-weather, day or night animals. The time of day didn’t matter to a tyrannosaur. The rain continued to pour. “Hell of a rain,” Ed Regis said. “It’s really coming down.” Lex said, “I’m hungry.” “I know that, Lex,” Regis said, “but we’re stuck here, sweetie.


The cars run on electricity in buried cables in the road.” “Stuck for how long?” “Until they fix the electricity.” Listening to the sound of the rain, Tim felt himself growing sleepy. He yawned, and turned to look at the palm trees on the left side of the road, and was startled by a sudden thump as the ground shook. He swung back just in time to catch a glimpse of a dark shape as it swiftly crossed the road between the two cars. “Jesus!” “What was it?” “It was huge, it was big as the car—” “Tim! Are you there?” He picked up the radio. “Yes, I’m here.” “Did you see it, Tim?” “No,” Tim said. “I missed it.” “What the hell was it?” Malcolm said. “Are you wearing the night-vision goggles, Tim?” “Yes. I’ll watch,” Tim said. “Was it the tyrannosaur?” Ed Regis asked. “I don’t think so. It was in the road.” “But you didn’t see it?” Ed Regis said. “No.” Tim felt bad that he had missed seeing the animal, whatever it was. There was a sudden white crack of lightning, and his night goggles flared bright green. He blinked his eyes and started counting. “One one thousand … two one thousand …” The thunder crashed, deafeningly loud and very close. Lex began to cry. “Oh, no…” “Take it easy, honey,” Ed Regis said. “It’s just lightning.” Tim scanned the side of the road. The rain was coming down hard now, shaking the leaves with hammering drops. It made everything move. Everything seemed alive. He scanned the leaves.… He stopped. There was something beyond the leaves. Tim looked up, higher. Behind the foliage, beyond the fence, he saw a thick body with a pebbled, grainy surface like the bark of a tree. But it wasn’t a tree.… He continued to look higher, sweeping the goggles upward— He saw the huge head of the tyrannosaurus. Just standing there, looking over the fence at the two Land Cruisers. The lightning flashed again, and the big animal rolled its head and bellowed in the glaring light. Then darkness, and silence again, and the pounding rain. “Tim?” “Yes, Dr. Grant.” “You see what it is?” “Yes, Dr. Grant.” Tim had the sense that Dr. Grant was trying to talk in a way that wouldn’t upset his sister. “What’s going on right now?” “Nothing,” Tim said, watching the tyrannosaur through his night goggles. “Just standing on the other side of the fence.” “I can’t see much from here, Tim.” “I can see fine, Dr. Grant. It’s just standing there.” “Okay.” Lex continued to cry, snuffling. There was another pause. Tim watched the tyrannosaur. The head was huge! The animal looked from one vehicle to another. Then back again. It seemed to stare right at Tim. In the goggles, the eyes glowed bright green. Tim felt a chill, but then, as he looked down the animal’s body, moving down from the massive head and jaws, he saw the smaller, muscular forelimb.


It waved in the air and then it gripped the fence. “Jesus Christ,” Ed Regis said, staring out the window. The greatest predator the world has ever known. The most fearsome attack in human history. Somewhere in the back of his publicist’s brain, Ed Regis was still writing copy. But he could feel his knees begin to shake uncontrollably, his trousers flapping like flags. Jesus, he was frightened. He didn’t want to be here. Alone among all the people in the two cars, Ed Regis knew what a dinosaur attack was like. He knew what happened to people. He had seen the mangled bodies that resulted from a raptor attack. He could picture it in his mind. And this was a rex! Much, much bigger! The greatest meat-eater that ever walked the earth! Jesus. When the tyrannosaur roared it was terrifying, a scream from some other world. Ed Regis felt the spreading warmth in his trousers. He’d peed in his pants. He was simultaneously embarrassed and terrified. But he knew he had to do something. He couldn’t just stay here. He had to do something. Something. His hands were shaking, trembling against the dash. “Jesus Christ,” he said again. “Bad language,” Lex said, wagging her finger at him. Tim heard the sound of a door opening, and he swung his head away from the tyrannosaur—the night-vision goggles streaked laterally—in time to see Ed Regis stepping out through the open door, ducking his head in the rain. “Hey,” Lex said, “where are you going?” Ed Regis just turned and ran in the opposite direction from the tyrannosaur, disappearing into the woods. The door to the Land Cruiser hung open; the paneling was getting wet. “He left!” Lex said. “Where did he go? He left us alone!” “Shut the door,” Tim said, but she had started to scream, “He left us! He left us!” “Tim, what’s going on?” It was Dr. Grant, on the radio. “Tim?” Tim leaned forward and tried to shut the door. From the backseat, he couldn’t reach the handle. He looked back at the tyrannosaur as lightning flashed again, momentarily silhouetting the huge black shape against the white-flaring sky. “Tim, what’s happening?” “He left us, he left us!” Tim blinked to recover his vision. When he looked again, the tyrannosaur was standing there, exactly as before, motionless and huge. Rain dripped from its jaws. The forelimb gripped the fence.… And then Tim realized: the tyrannosaur was holding on to the fence! The fence wasn’t electrified any more! “Lex, close the door!” The radio crackled. “Tim!” “I’m here, Dr. Grant.” “What’s going on?” “Regis ran away,” Tim said. “He what?” “He ran away. I think he saw that the fence isn’t electrified,” Tim said. “The fence isn’t electrified?” Malcolm said, over the radio.