"Then there might still be time," Levine said.
There was static hiss from the radio, and they heard Harding say, "Okay, I'm above the car."
"You're where?"
"I'm above the car," she said. "In a tree."
Harding climbed out on the branch, moving farther from the trunk, feeling it bend under her weight. The branch seemed supple. She was now ten feet above the car, swinging lower. Few of the animals below had looked up at her, but the herd seemed to be restless. Animals sitting in the mud got up, and began to turn and mill. She saw their tails flicking back and forth anxiously.
She moved farther out, and the branch bent lower. It was slippery from the night's rain. She tried to gauge her position above the car. It looked pretty good, she thought.
Suddenly, one of the animals charged the trunk of the tree she was in, butting it hard. The impact was surprisingly forceful. The tree swayed, her branch swinging up and down, while she struggled to hold on.
Oh shit, she thought.
She rose up into the air, came down again, and then she lost her grip. Her hands slipped on wet leaves and wet bark, and she fell free. At the last moment, she saw that she would miss the car entirely. Then she hit the ground, landing hard in muddy earth.
Right beside the animals.
The radio crackled. "Sarah?" Thorne said.
There was no answer.
"What's she doing now?" Levine began to pace nervously. "I wish we could see what she's doing."
In the corner of the room, Kelly got up, rubbing her eyes. "Why don't you use the video?"
Thorne said, "What video?"
Kelly pointed to the cash register. "'That's a computer."
"It is?"
"Yeah. I think so."
Kelly yawned as she sat in the chair facing the cash register. It looked like a dumb terminal, which meant it probably didn't have access to much, but it was worth a try anyway. She turned it on. Nothing happened. She flicked the power switch back and forth. Nothing.
Idly, she swung her legs, and kicked a wire beneath the table. She bent over and saw that the terminal was unplugged. So she plugged it in.
The screen glowed, and a single word appeared:
LOGIN:
To proceed further, she knew she needed a password. Arby had a password. She glanced over and saw that he was still asleep. She didn't want to wake him up. She remembered that he had written it down on a piece of paper and stuck it in his pocket. Maybe it was still in his clothes she thought. She crossed the room, found the bundle of his wet, muddy clothes, and began going through the pockets. She found his wallet, the keys to his house, and some other stuff. Finally she found a piece of paper in his back pocket. It was damp, and streaked with mud. The ink had smeared, but she could still read his writing:
VIG/&*849/
Kelly took the paper and went back to the computer. She typed in all the characters carefully, and pressed the return key. The screen went blank, and then a new screen came up. She was surprised. It was different from the screen she had seen earlier, in the trailer.
She was in the system. But the whole thing looked different. Maybe because this wasn't the radionet, she thought. She must be logged into the actual laboratory system. It had more graphics because the terminal was hard-wired. Maybe they even ran optical pipe out here.
Across the room, Levine said, "Kelly? How about it?"
"I'm working on it," she said,
Cautiously, she began to type. Rows of icons appeared rapidly across the screen, one after another.
She knew she was looking at a graphic interface of some kind, but the meaning of the images wasn't obvious to her, and there were no explanations. The people who had used this system were probably trained to know what the images meant. But Kelly didn't know. She wanted to get into the video system, yet none of the pictures suggested anything to do with video. She moved the cursor around, wondering what to do.
She decided she'd have to guess. She picked the diamond-shaped icon on the lower left, and clicked on it.
"Uh-oh," she said, alarmed.
Levine looked over. "Something wrong?"
"No," she said. "It's fine." She quickly clicked on the header, and got back to the previous screen. This time she tried one of the triangularshaped icons.
The screen changed again:
That's it, she thought. Immediately the image popped off, and the actual video images began to flash up on the screen. On this little cash register monitor, the pictures were tiny, but now she was in familiar territory, and she moved around quickly, moving the cursor, manipulating the images.
"What are you looking for?" she said.
"The Explorer," Thorne said.
She clicked the screen. The image zoomed up. "Got it," she said.
Levine said, "You do?" He sounded surprised.
Kelly looked at him and said, "Yeah, I do."
The two men came and stared at the screen over her shoulder. They could see the Explorer, on a shaded road. They could see the pachycephalosaurs, lots of them, milling around the car. The animals were poking at the tires and the front fender.
But they didn't see Sarah anywhere. "Where is she?" Thorne said.
Sarah Harding was underneath the car, lying on her face in the mud.
She had crawled there after she fell - it was the only place to go - and now she was staring out at the animals' feet milling all around her. She said, "Doc. Are you there? Doc? Doc." But the damned radio wasn't working again. The pachys were stamping and snorting, trying to get at her tinder the car.
Then she remembered that Thorne had said something about screwing down the battery pack. She reached behind her back, and found the pack, and twisted the cover shut tight.