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"Not so far"
"So, if those kids are in the aviary"
"They&039;re not," Arnold said "At least, I hope they&039;re not"
"Is that the lodge?" Lex said "What a dump"
Beneath the aviary do wooden pylons, in thewas unfinished and unpainted; the ere boarded up The trees and the lodge were splattered with broad white streaks
"I guess they didn&039;t finish it, for solanced at his watch "Coo back to the boat"
The sun ca more cheerful Grant looked at the latticework shadows on the ground froe were spattered with broad streaks of the sa And there was a distinctive, sour odor in theair
"Stinks here," Lex said "What&039;s all the white stuff?"
"Looks like reptile droppings Probably from the birds"
"How coe?"
"I don&039;t know"
They entered a clearing of low grass, dotted ild flowers They heard a long, lohistle Then an answering whistle, from across the forest
"What&039;s that?"
"I don&039;t know"
Then Grant saw the dark shadow of a cloud on the grassy field ahead The shadoasfast In moments, it had swept over the above the out the sun
"Yew!" Lex said "Is it a pterodactyl?"
"Yes," Tim said
Grant didn&039;t answer He was entranced by the sight of the huge flying creature In the sky above, the pterodactyl gave a lohistle and wheeled gracefully, turning back toward them
"How come they&039;re not on the tour?" Tim said
Grant ondering the saraceful as they h the air As Grant watched, he saw a second pterodactyl appear in the sky, and a third, and a fourth
"Maybe because they didn&039;t finish the lodge," Lex said
Grant was thinking these weren&039;t ordinary pterodactyls They were too large Theyreptiles froh, these looked like small airplanes When they caspans, furry bodies, and heads like crocodiles They ate fish, he remembered South America and Mexico
Lex shaded her eyes and looked up at the sky "Can they hurt us?"
"I don&039;t think so They eat fish"
One of the dactyls spiraled down, a flashing dark shadow that whooshed past the sour odor
"Wow!" Lex said "They&039;re really big" And then she said, "Are you sure they can&039;t hurt us?"
"Pretty sure"
A second dactyl swooped down,faster than the first It calimpse of its toothy beak and the furry body It looked like a huge bat, he thought But Grant was ie wingspans-the delicate pink membranes stretched across the reinforced the delicacy of the dactyls
"Ow!" Lex shouted, grabbing her hair "He bit me!"
"He what?" Grant said
"He bit me! He bit ers
Up in the sky, twointo sround They made a kind of scream as they hurtled doard
"Co their hands They ran across thehi the kids doith him, as the two dactyls whistled and squeaked past the his back
Then he was up, pulling Lex back onto her feet, and running with Tim a few feet forhile overhead twoAt the lastshadows flapped past
"Uck," Lex said, disgusted He saw that she was streaked hite droppings from the birds
Grant scrambled to his feet "Come on!"
He was about to run when Lex shrieked in terror He turned back and saw that one of the dactyls had grabbed her by the shoulders with its hind claws The aniht, flapped broadly on both sides of her The dactyl was trying to take off, but Lex was too heavy, and while it struggled it repeatedly jabbed at her head with its long pointed jaw
Lex was screa he could think to do He ran forward and juainst the body of the dactyl He knocked it onto its back on the ground, and fell on top of the furry body The animal screamed and snapped; Grant ducked his head away fros beat around his body It was like being in a tent In a windstorm He couldn&039;t see; he couldn&039;t hear; there was nothing but the flapping and shrieking and the leathery s scratched frantically at his chest Lex was screaibbered as it flapped its wings and struggled to turn over, to right itself Finally it pulled in its wings like a bat and rolled over, lifted itself up on its little wing claws, and began to walk that way He paused, astonished
It could walk on its wings! Lederer&039;s speculation was right! But then the other dactyls were diving down at them and Grant was dizzy, off balance, and in horror he saw Lex run away, her ars
The first of the and suddenly the dactyl whistled and climbed The other dactyls immediately climbed and chased the first into the sky The fourth dactyl flapped aardly into the air to join the others Grant looked upward, squinting to see what had happened The three dactyls chased the first, screarily
They were alone in the field
"What happened?" Grant said
"They got love," Lex said "My Darryl Strawberry special"
They started walking again Tiht?"
"Of course, stupid," she said, shaking him off She looked upward "I hope they choke and die," she said
"Yeah," Tim said "Me, too-"
Up ahead, they saw the boat on the shore Grant looked at his watch It was eight-thirty He now had two and a half hours to get back
Lex cheered as they drifted beyond the silver aviary dome Then the banks of the river closed in on both sides, the treesoverhead once more The river was narrower than ever, in some places only ten feet wide, and the current flowed very fast Lex reached up to touch the branches as they went past
Grant sat back in the raft and listened to the gurgle of the water through the war faster now, the branches overhead slipping by ave a little breeze in the hot confines of the overhanging branches And it et back that much sooner
Grant couldn&039;t guess how far they had come, but itwhere they had spent the night Perhaps four or five ht be only an hour&039;s walk from the hotel, once they left the raft But after the aviary, Grant was in no hurry to leave the river again For the ood time
"I wonder how Ralph is," Lex said "He&039;s probably dead or so"
"I&039;m sure he&039;s fine"
"I wonder if he&039;d let hed, sleepy in the sun "That would be fun, to ride Ralph"
Tiht?"
"Yes"
"How co DNA?"
"Because of the breeding," Grant said "They can&039;t explain why the dinosaurs are breeding, since they irradiate them, and since they&039;re all feht"
"Well, irradiation is notoriously unreliable and probably doesn&039;t work I think that&039;ll eventually be shown here But there is still the proble female How can they breed when they&039;re all feht," Tim said
"Well, across the anidom, sexual reproduction exists in extraordinary variety"
"Tim&039;s very interested in sex," Lex said
They both ignored her "For example," Grant said, " ould call sex The male releases a spermatophore, which contains the sperm, and the fee does not require quite as much physical differentiation between male and female as we usually think exists Male and female are s"
Tis?"
Grant heard sudden shrieks from the trees above, as thethe branches The big head of the tyrannosaur lunged through the foliage fro at the raft Lex howled in terror, and Grant paddled away toward the opposite bank, but the river here was only ten feet wide The tyrannosaur was caught in the heavy growth- it butted and twisted its head, and roared Then it pulled its head back
Through the trees that lined the riverbank, they saw the huge dark forap in the trees that lined the bank The one to the opposite bank, where they shrieked and scampered and jumped up and down In the raft, Grant, Tim, and Lex stared helplessly as the tyrannosaur tried to break through again, But the trees were too dense along the banks of the river The tyrannosaur againthe branches furiously
But again it failed
Then itfarther downstream
"I hate him," Lex said
Grant sat back in the boat, badly shaken If the tyrannosaur had broken through, there was nothing be could have done to save them The river was so narrow that it was hardly wider than the raft It was like being in a tunnel The rubber gunwales often scraped on theby the swift current
He glanced at his watch Almost nine The raft continued downstream
"Hey," Lex said, "listen!"
He heard snarling, interspersed by a repeated hooting cry The cries were co from beyond a curve, farther downriver He listened, and heard the hooting again
"What is it?" Lex said
"I don&039;t know," Grant said "But there&039;s more than one of therabbed a branch to stop the raft The snarling was repeated Then
"It sounds like a bunch of owls," Tiroaned "Isn&039;t it time for more morphine yet?"
"Not yet," Ellie said
Malcolot here?"
"I don&039;t know There&039;s plenty of running water from the tap-"
"No, I mean, how much stored? Any?"
Ellie shrugged "None"
"Go into the rooms on this floor," Malcolm said, "and fill the bathtubs ater"
Ellie frowned
"Also," Malcolhts? Matches? Sterno stoves? Things like that?"
"I&039;ll look around You planning for an earthquake?"
"So like that," Malcoles"
"But Arnold says all the syste perfectly"
"That&039;s when it happens," Malcolm said
Ellie said, "You don&039;t think much of Arnold, do you?"
"He&039;s all right He&039;s an engineer Wu&039;s the same They&039;re both technicians They don&039;t have intelligence They have what I call &039;thintelligence&039; They see the immediate situation They think narrowly and they call it &039;being focused&039; They don&039;t see the surround They don&039;t see the consequences That&039;s how you get an island like this Fro Because you cannot make an animal and not expect it to act alive To be unpredictable To escape But they don&039;t see that"
"Don&039;t you think it&039;s just human nature?" Ellie said
"God, no," Malcols and bacon for breakfast is hu of the sort It&039;s uniquely Western training, and ht of it" He winced in pain "Theme philosophical"
"You want some water?"
"No I&039;ll tell you the probleineers and scientists Scientists have an elaborate line of bullshit about how they are seeking to know the truth about nature Which is true, but that&039;s not what drives the truth&039;
"Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplish They never stop to ask if they should do so They conveniently define such considerations as pointless If they don&039;t do it, someone else will Discovery, they believe, is inevitable So they just try to do it first That&039;s the garessive, penetrative act It takes big equipes the world afterward Particle accelerators sear the land, and leave radioactive byproducts Astronauts leave trash on the moon There is always so their discoveries Discovery is always a rape of the natural world Always
"The scientists want it that way They have to stick their instruments in They have to leave their mark They can&039;t just watch They can&039;t just appreciate They can&039;t just fit into the natural order They have tounnatural happen That is the scientist&039;s job, and noe have whole societies that try to be scientific" He sighed, and sank back
Ellie said, "Don&039;t you think you&039;re overstating-"
"What does one of your excavations look like a year later?"
"Pretty had," she admitted