"We have tranquilizer guns that shoot a twenty-cc dart," Muldoon said. "Fine for an animal that weighs four or five hundred pounds. That tyrannosaur weighs eight tons. It wouldn't even feel it."
"You ordered a larger weapon. . . ."
"I ordered three larger weapons, Mr. Hammond, but you cut the requisition, so we got only one. And it's gone. Nedry took it when he left."
"That was pretty stupid. Who let that happen?"
"Nedry's not my problem, Mr. Hammond," Muldoon said.
"You're saying," Hammond said, "that, as of this moment, there is no way to stop the tyrannosaur?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying," Muldoon said.
"That's ridiculous," Hammond said.
"It's your park, Mr. Hammond. You didn't want anybody to be able to injure your precious dinosaurs. Well, now you've got a rex in with the sauropods, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it." He left the room.
"Just a minute," Hammond said, hurrying after him. Gennaro stared at the screens, and listened to the shouted argument in the hallway outside, He said to Arnold, "I guess you don't have control of the park yet, after all."
"Don't kid yourself," Arnold said, lighting another cigarette. "We have the park. It'll be dawn in a couple of hours. We may lose a couple of dinos before we get the rex out of there, but, believe me, we have the park."
Dawn
Grant was awakened by a loud grinding sound, followed by a mechanical clanking. He opened his eyes and saw a bale of bay rolling past him on a conveyor belt, up toward the ceiling. Two more bales followed it. Then the clanking stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and the concrete building was silent again.
Grant yawned. He stretched sleepily, winced in pain, and sat up.
Soft yellow light came through the side windows. It was morning: he had slept the whole night! He looked quickly at his watch: 5:00 a.m. Still almost six hours to go before the boat had to be recalled. He rolled onto his back, groaning. His head throbbed, and his body ached as if he had been beaten up. From around the corner, he heard a squeaking sound, like a rusty wheel. And then Lex giggling.
Grant stood slowly, and looked at the building. Now that it was daylight, he could see it was some kind of a maintenance building, with stacks of hay and supplies. On the wall he saw a gray metal box and a stenciled sign: SAUROPOD MAINTENANCE BLDG (04). This must be the sauropod paddock, as he had thought. He opened the box and saw a telephone, but when he lifted the receiver he heard only hissing static. Apparently the phones weren't working yet.
"Chew your food," Lex was saying. "Don't be a piggy, Ralph."
Grant walked around the corner and found Lex by the bars, holding out handfuls of bay to an animal outside that looked like a large pink pig and was making the squeaking sounds Grant had heard. It was actually an infant triceratops, about the size of a pony. The infant didn't have horns on its head yet, just a curved bony frill behind big soft eyes. It poked its snout through the bars toward Lex, its eyes watching her as she fed it more hay.
"That's better," Lex said. "There's plenty of hay, don't worry." She patted the baby on the head. "You like hay, don't you, Ralph?"
Lex turned back and saw him.
"This is Ralph," Lex said. "He's my friend. He likes hay."
Grant took a step and stopped, wincing.
"You look pretty bad," Lex said.
"I feel pretty bad."
"Tim, too. His nose is all swollen up."
"Where is Tim?"
"Peeing," she said. "You want to help me feed Ralph?"
The baby triceratops looked at Grant. Hay stuck out of both sides of its mouth, dropping on the floor as it chewed.
"He's a very messy eater," Lex said, "And he's very hungry."
The baby finished chewing and licked its lips. It opened its mouth, waiting for more. Grant could see the slender sharp teeth, and the beaky upper jaw, like a parrot.
"Okay, just a minute," Lex said, scooping up more straw from the concrete floor, "Honestly, Ralph," she said, "You'd think your mother never fed you."
"Why is his name Ralph?"
"Because he looks like Ralph. At school."
Grant came closer and touched the skin of the neck gently.
"It's okay, you can pet him," Lex said. "He likes it when you pet him, don't you, Ralph?"
The skin felt dry and warm, with the pebbled texture of a football. Ralph gave a little squeak as Grant petted it. Outside the bars, its thick tail swung back and forth with pleasure.
"He's pretty tame." Ralph looked from Lex to Grant as it ate, and showed no sign of fear. It reminded Grant that the dinosaurs didn't have ordinary responses to people. "Maybe I can ride him," Lex said.
"Let's not."
"I bet he'd let me," Lex said. "It'd be fun to ride a dinosaur."
Grant looked out the bars past the animal, to the open fields of the sauropod compound. It was growing lighter every minute. He should go outside, he thought, and set off one of the motion sensors on the field above. After all, it might take the people in the control room an hour to get out here to him. And he didn't like the idea that the phones were still down. . . .
He heard a deep snorting sound, like the snort of a very large horse, and suddenly the baby became agitated. It tried to pull its head back through the bars, but got caught on the edge of its frill, and it squeaked in fright.
Tle snorting came again. It was closer this time.
Ralph reared up on its hind legs, frantic to get out from between the bars, It wriggled its head back and forth, rubbing against the bars.
"Ralph, take it easy," Lex said.
"Push him out," Grant said. He reached up to Ralph's head and leaned against it, pushing the animal sideways and backward. The frill popped free and the baby fell outside the bars, losing its balance and flopping on its side. Then the baby was covered in shadow, and a huge leg came into view, thicker than a tree trunk. The foot had five curved toenails, like an elephant's.
Ralph looked up and squeaked. A head came down into view: six feet long, with three long white horns, one above each of the large brown eyes and a smaller horn at the tip of the nose. It was a full-grown triceratops. The big animal peered at Lex and Grant, blinking slowly, and then turned its attention to Ralph. A tongue came out and licked the baby. Ralph squeaked and rubbed up against the big leg happily.
"Is that his mom?" Lex said.
"Looks like it," Grant said.
"Should we feed the mom, too?" Lex said.
But the big triceratops was already nudging Ralph with her snout, pushing the baby away from the bars.
"Guess not."
The infant turned away from the bars and walked off. From time to time, the big mother nudged her baby, guiding it away, as they both walked out into the fields.
"Goodbye, Ralph," Lex said, waving. Tim came out of the shadows of the building.
"Tell you what," Grant said. "I'm going up on the hill to set off the motion sensors, so they'll know to come get us. You two stay here and wait for me."
"No," Lex said.
"Why? Stay here. It's safe here."
"You're not leaving us," she said. "Right, Timmy?"
"Right," Tim said.
"Okay," Grant said.
They crawled through the bars, stepping outside.
It was just before dawn.
The air was warm and humid, the sky soft pink and purple. A white mist clung low to the ground. Some distance away, they saw the mother triceratops and the baby moving away toward a herd of large duckbilled hadrosaurs, eating foliage from trees at the edge of the lagoon.
Some of the hadrosaurs stood knee-deep in the water. They drank, lowering their flat heads, meeting their own reflections in the still water. Then they looked up again, their heads swiveling. At the water's edge, one of the babies ventured out, squeaked, and scrambled back while the adults watched indulgently.
Farther South, other hadrosaurs were eating the lower vegetation. Sometimes they reared up on their hind legs, resting their forelegs on the tree trunks, so they could reach the leaves on higher branches. And in the far distance, a giant apatosaur stood above the trees, the tiny head swiveling on the long neck. The scene was so peaceful Grant found it bard to imagine any danger.
"Yew!" Lex shouted, ducking. Two giant red dragonflies with six-foot wingspans bummed past them. "What was that?"
"Dragonflies," he said. "The Jurassic was a time of huge insects."
"Do they bite?" Lex said.
"I don't think so," Grant said.
Tim held out his band. One of the dragonflies lighted on it. He could feel the weight of the huge insect.
"He's going to bite you," Lex warned.
But the dragonfly just slowly flapped its red-veined transparent wings, and then, when Tim moved his arm, flew off again,
"Which way do we go?" Lex said.
"There."
They started walking across the field. They reached a black box mounted on a heavy metal tripod, the first of the motion sensors. Grant stopped and waved his band in front of it back and forth, but nothing happened. If the phones didn't work, perhaps the sensors didn't work, either. "We'll try another one," he said, pointing across the field. Somewhere in the distance, they heard the roar of a large animal.