The reason Grant was astonished was that he had a proprietary feeling about this animal: it was probably a maiasaur, from the late Cretaceous in Montana. With John Horner, Grant had been the first to describe the species. Maiasaurs had an upcurved lip, which gave them the appearance of smiling. The name meant "good mother lizard"; maiasaurs were thought to protect their eggs until the babies were born and could take care of themselves.
Grant heard an insistent chirping, and the big head swung down. He moved just enough to see the baby hadrosaur scampering around the feet of the adult. The baby was dark beige with black spots. The adult bent her head low to the ground and waited, unmoving, while the baby stood up on its hind legs, resting its front legs on the mother's jaw, and ate the branches that protruded from the side of the mother's mouth.
The mother waited patiently until the baby had finished eating, and dropped back down to all fours again. Then the big head came back up toward Grant.
The hadrosaur continued to eat just a few feet from him. Grant looked at the two elongated airholes on top of the flat upper bill. Apparently the dinosaur couldn't smell Grant. And even though the left eye was looking right at him, for some reason the hadrosaur didn't react to him.
He remembered how the tyrannosaur had failed to see him, the previous night. Grant decided on an experiment.
He coughed.
Instantly the hadrosaur froze, the big head suddenly still, the jaws no longer chewing. Only the eye moved, looking for the source of the sound. Then, after a moment, when there seemed to be no danger, the animal resumed chewing.
Amazing, Grant thought.
Sitting in his arms, Lex opened her eyes and said, "Hey, what's that?"
The hadrosaur trumpeted in alarm, a loud resonant bonk that so startled Lex that she nearly fell out of the tree. The hadrosaur pulled its head away from the branch and trumpeted again.
"Don't make her mad," Tim said, from the branch above.
The baby chirped and scurried beneath the mother's legs as the hadrosaur stepped away from the tree. The mother cocked her head and peered inquisitively at the branch where Grant and Lex were sitting. With its upturned smiling lips, the dinosaur had a comical appearance.
"Is it dumb?" Lex said.
"No," Grant said. "You just surprised her."
"Well," Lex said, "is she going to let us get down, or what?"
The hadrosaur had backed ten feet away from the tree. She bonked again. Grant had the impression she was trying to frighten them away. But the dinosaur didn't really seem to know what to do. She acted confused and uneasy. They waited in silence, and after a minute the hadrosaur approached the branch again, jaws moving in anticipation. She was clearly going to resume eating.
"Forget it," Lex said. "I'm not staying here." She started to climb down the branches. At her movement, the hadrosaur trumpeted in fresh alarm.
Grant was amazed. He thought, It really can't see us when we don't move. And after a minute it literally forgets that we're here. This was just like the tyrannosaur-another classic example of an amphibian visual cortex. Studies of frogs had shown that amphibians only saw moving things, like insects. If something didn't move, they literally didn't see it. The same thing seemed to be true of dinosaurs.
In any case, the maiasaur now seemed to find these strange creatures climbing down the tree too upsetting. With a final honk, she nudged her baby, and lumbered slowly away. She paused once, and looked back at them, then continued on.
They reached the ground. Lex shook herself off. Both children were covered in a layer of fine dust. All around them, the grass had been flattened. There were streaks of blood, and a sour smell.
Grant looked at his watch. "We better get going, kids," he said.
"Not me," Lex said. "I'm not walking out there any more."
"We have to."
"Why?"
"Because," Grant said, "we have to tell them about the boat. Since they can't seem to see us on the motion sensors, we have to go all the way back ourselves. It's the only way."
"Why can't we take the raft?" Tim said.
"What raft?"
Tim pointed to the low concrete maintenance building with the bars, where they had spent the night. It was twenty yards away, across the field. "I saw a raft back there," he said.
Grant immediately understood the advantages. It was now seven o'clock in the morning. They had at least eight miles to go. If they could take a raft along the river, they would make much faster progress than going overland. "Let's do it," Grant said.
Arnold punched the visual search mode and watched as the monitors began to scan throughout the park, the images changing every two seconds. It was tiring to watch, but it was the fastest way to find Nedry's Jeep, and Muldoon had been adamant about that. He had gone out with Gennaro to look at the stampede, but now that it was daylight, he wanted the car found. He wanted the weapons.
His intercom clicked. "Mr. Arnold, may I have a word with you, please?"
It was Hammond. He sounded like the voice of God.
"You want to come here, Mr. Hammond?"
"No, Mr. Arnold," Hammond said. "Come to me. I'm in the genetics lab with Dr. Wu. We'll be waiting for you."
Arnold sighed, and stepped away from the screens.
Grant stumbled deep in the gloomy recesses of the building. He pushed past five-gallon containers of herbicide, tree-pruning equipment, spare tires for a Jeep, coils of cyclone fencing, hundred-pound fertilizer bags, stacks of brown ceramic insulators, empty motor-oil cans, work lights and cables.
"I don't see any raft."
"Keep going."
Bags of cement, lengths of copper pipe, green mesb . . . and two plastic oars bung on clips on the concrete wall.
"Okay," he said, "but where's the raft?"
"It must be here somewhere," Tim said.
"You never saw a raft?"
"No, I just assumed it was here."
Poking among the junk, Grant found no raft. But he did find a set of plans, rolled up and speckled with mold from humidity, stuck back in a metal cabinet on the wall. He spread the plans on the floor, brushing away a big spider. He looked at them for a long time.
"I'm hungry. . . ."
"Just a minute."
They were detailed topographical charts for the main area of the island, where they now were. According to this, the lagoon narrowed into the river they had seen earlier, which twisted northward . . . right through the aviary . . . and on to within a half-mile of the visitor lodge.
He flipped back through the pages. How to get to the lagoon? According to the plans, there should be a door at the back of the building they were in. Grant looked up, and saw it, recessed back in the concrete wall. The door was wide enough for a car. Opening it, he saw a paved road running straight down toward the lagoon. The road was dug below ground level, so it couldn't be seen from above. It must be another service road. And it led to a dock at the edge of the lagoon. And clearly stenciled on the dock was RAFT STORAGE.
Chapter 18
"Hey," Tim said, "look at this." He held out a metal case to Grant.
Opening it, Grant found a compressed-air pistol and a cloth belt that held darts. There were six darts in all, each as thick as his finger. Labeled MORO-709.
"Good Work, Tim." He slung the belt around his shoulder, and stuck the gun in his trousers.
"Is it a tranquilizer gun?"
"I'd say so."
"What about the boat?" Lex said.
"I think it's on the dock," Grant said. They started down the road. Grant carried the oars on his shoulder. "I hope it's a big raft," Lex said, "because I can't swim."
"Don't worry," he said.
"Maybe we can catch some fish," she said.
They walked down the road with the sloping embankment rising up on both sides of them. They heard a deep rhythmic snorting sound, but Grant could not see where it was coming from.
"Are you sure there's a raft down here?" Lex said, wrinkling her nose.
"Probably," Grant said.
The rhythmic snorting became louder as they walked, but they also heard a steady droning, buzzing sound. When they reached the end of the road, at the edge of the small concrete dock, Grant froze in shock.
The tyrannosaur was right there.
It was sitting upright in the shade of a tree, its hind legs stretched out in front. Its eyes were open but it was not moving, except for its head, which lifted and fell gently with each snorting sound. The buzzing came from the clouds of flies that surrounded it, crawling over its face and slack jaws, its bloody fangs, and the red haunch of a killed hadrosaur that lay on its side behind the tyrannosaur.
The tyrannosaur was only twenty yards away. Grant felt sure it must have seen him, but the big animal did not respond. It just sat there. It took him a moment to realize: the tyrannosaur was asleep. Sitting up, but asleep.
He signaled to Tim and Lex to stay where they were. Grant walked slowly forward onto the dock, in full view of the tyrannosaur. The big animal continued to sleep, snoring softly.
Near the end of the dock, a wooden shed was painted green to blend with the foliage. Grant quietly unlatched the door and looked inside. He saw a half-dozen orange life vests hanging on the wall, several rolls of wire-mesh fencing, some coils of rope, and twob ig rubber cubes sitting on the floor. The cubes were strapped tight with flat rubber belts.