The Lost World

She bent to examine them more closely, and then she felt the earth vibrating, trembling beneath her hands. A large shadow fell over her and she looked up in astonishment at the leathery, pale underbelly of an enormous animal. She was too weak to react, even to raise her head.

The last thing she saw was a huge leathery foot landing beside her, shushing in the mud, and a soft snorting sound. And then suddenly, abruptly, exhaustion overtook her, and Sarah Harding collapsed, and fell onto her back. Her eyes rolled up into her head, and she lost consciousness.

Dodgson

A few yards up from the shore of the river, Lewis Dodgson climbed into the custom-made jeep Wrangler and slammed the door shut. Beside him in the passenger seat, Howard King was wringing his hands. He said, "How could you have done that to her?"

"Done what?" George Baselton said, from the back seat.

Dodgson did not reply. He turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled to life. He popped the four-wheel drive into gear and headed up the hill into the jungle, away from the boat at the shore.

"How could you?" King said again, agitated. "I mean, Jesus."

"What happened was an accident," Dodgson said.

"An accident? An accident?"

"That’s right, an accident," Dodgson said calmly. "She fell overboard."

"I didn’t see anything," Baselton said.

King was shaking his head. "Jesus, what if somebody comes to investigate and – "

"What if they do?" Dodgson said, interrupting him. "We were in rough seas, she was standing at the bow, a big wave hit us and she was washed overboard. She couldn’t swim very well. We circled and looked for her, but there was no hope. A very unfortunate accident. So what are you concerned about?"

"What am I concerned about?"

"Yes, Howard. Exactly what the fuck are you concerned about?"

"I saw it, for Christ’s sake – "

"No, you didn’t," Dodgson said.

"I didn’t see anything," Baselton said. "I was down below, the whole time."

"That’s fine for you," Howard King said. "But what if there’s an investigation?"

The Jeep bounced up the dirt track, moving deeper into the jungle. "There won’t be," Dodgson said. "She left Africa in a hurry, and she didn’t tell anybody where she was going."

"How do you know?" King whined.

"Because she told me, Howard. That’s how I know. Now get the map out and stop moaning. You knew the deal when you joined me."

"I didn’t know you were going to kill somebody, for Christ’s sake."

"Howard," Dodgson said, with a sigh. "Nothing’s going to happen. Get the map out."

"How do you know?" King said.

"Because I know what I’m doing," Dodgson said. "That’s why. Unlike Malcolm and Thorne, who are somewhere on this island, screwing around, doing fuck knows what in this damned jungle."

Mention of the others caused a new worry. Fretting, King said, "Maybe we’ll run into them…."

"No, Howard, we won’t. They’ll never even know we’re here. We’re only going to be on this island for four hours, remember? Land at one. Back on the boat by five. Back at the port by seven. Back in San Francisco by midnight. Bang. Done. Finito. And finally, after all these years, I’ll have what I should have had long ago."

"Dinosaur embryos," Baselton said.

"Embryos?" King asked, surprised.

"Oh, I’m not interested in embryos any more," Dodgson said. "Years ago, I tried to get frozen embryos, but there’s no reason to bother with embryos now. I want fertilized eggs. And in four hours, I’ll have them from every species on this island."

"How can you do that in four hours?"

"Because I already know the precise location of every dinosaur breeding site on the island. The map, Howard."

King opened the map. It was a large topographical chart of the island, two feet by three feet, showing terrain elevations in blue contours. At several places in lowland valleys, there were dense red concentric circles. In some places, clusters of circles. "What’s this?" King said.

"Why don’t you read what it says," Dodgson said.

King turned the map, and looked at the legend. "’Sigma data Landsat/Nordstat mixed spectra VSFR/FASLR/IFFVR.’ And then a bunch of numbers. No, wait. Dates."

"Correct," Dodgson said. "Dates."

"Pass dates? This is a summary chart, combining data from several satellite passes?"

"Correct."

King frowned. "And it looks like…visible spectrum, and false aparture radar, and…what?"

"Infrared. Broadband thermal VR." Dodgson smiled. "I did all this in about two hours. Downloaded all the satellite data summarized it, and had the answers I wanted."

"I get it," King said. "These red circles are infrared signatures!"

"Yes," Dodgson said. "Big animals leave big signatures. I got all the satellite flybys over this island for the last few years, and mapped the location of heat sources. And the locations overlapped from pass to pass, which is what makes these red concentric marks. Meaning that the animals tend to be located in these particular places. Why?" He turned to King. "Because these are the nesting sites."

"Yes. They must be," Baselton said.

"Maybe that’s where they eat," King said.

Dodgson shook his head irritably. "Obviously, those circles can’t be feeding sites."

"Why not?"

"Because these animals average twenty tons apiece, that’s why. You get a herd of twenty-ton dinos, and you’re talking a combined biomass of more than half a million pounds moving through the forest. That many big animals are going to eat a lot of plant matter in the course of a day. And the only way they can do that is by moving. Right?"