The Lost World

They were silent a while, listening.

They heard a soft buzzing, and then Eddie pulled up alongside them, in the motorcycle. "I thought you might need help. Are you going to go down?"

Malcolm shook his head. "No, absolutely not. It’s too dangerous – we don’t know where they are."

Sarah Harding said, "Why did Dodgson just stand there like that? That’s not the way to act around predators. You get caught around lions, you make a lot of noise, wave your hands, throw things at them. Try to scare them off. You don’t just stand there."

"He probably read the wrong research paper," Malcolm said, shaking his head. "There’s been a theory going around that tyrannosaurs can only see movement. A guy named Roxton made casts of rex braincases, and concluded that tyrannosaurs had the brain of a frog."

The radio clicked. Levine said, "Roxton is an idiot. He doesn’t know enough anatomy to have sex with his wife. His paper was a joke."

"What paper?" Thorne said.

The radio clicked again. "Roxton," Levine said, "believed that tyrannosaurs had a visual system like an amphibian: like a frog. A frog sees motion but doesn’t see stillness. But it is quite impossible that a predator such as a tyrannosaur would have a visual system that worked that way. Quite impossible. Because the most common defense of prey animals is to freeze. A deer or something like that, it senses danger, and it freezes. A predator has to be able to see them anyway. And of course a tyrannosaur could."

Over the radio, Levine snorted with disgust. "It’s just like the other idiotic theory put forth by Grant a few years back that a tyrannosaur could be confused by a driving rainstorm, because it was not adapted to wet climates. That’s equally absurd. The Cretaceous wasn’t particularly dry. And in any case, tyrannosaurs are North American animals they’ve only been found in the U.S. or Canada. Tyrannosaurs lived on the shores of the great inland sea, east of the Rocky Mountains. There are lots of thunderstorms on mountain slopes. I’m quite sure tyrannosaurs saw plenty of rain, and they evolved to deal with it."

"So is there any reason why a tyrannosaur might not attack somebody?" Malcolm said.

"Yes, Of Course. The most obvious one," Levine said.

"Which is?"

"If it wasn’t hungry. If it had just eaten another animal. Anything larger than a goat would take care of its hunger for hours to come. No, no. The tyrannosaur sees fine, moving or still."

They listened to the roaring, coming up from the valley below. They saw thrashing in the underbrush, about half a mile away, to the north. More bellowing. The two rexes seemed to be answering each other.

Sarah Harding said, "What are we carrying?"

Thorne said, "Three Lindstradts. Fully loaded."

"Okay," she said. "Let’s go."

The radio crackled. "I’m not there," Levine said, over the radio. "But I’d certainly advise waiting."

"The hell with waiting," Malcolm said. "Sarah’s right. Let’s go down there and see how bad it is."

"Your funeral," Levine said.

Arby came back to the monitor, wiping his chin. He still looked a little green. "What are they doing now?"

"Dr. Malcolm and the others are going to the nest."

"Are you kidding?" he said, alarmed.

"Don’t worry," Kelly said. "Sarah can handle it."

"You hope," Arby said.

Nest

Just beyond the clearing, they parked the Explorer. Eddie pulled up in the motorcycle, and leaned it against the trunk of a tree and waited while the others climbed out of the Explorer.

Sarah Harding smelled the familiar sour odor of rotting flesh and excrement that always marked a carnivore nesting site. In the afternoon heat, it was faintly nauseating. Flies buzzed in the still air. Harding took one of the rifles, slung it over her shoulder. She looked at the three men. They were all standing very still, tense, not moving. Malcolm’s face was pale, particularly around the lips. It reminded her of the time that Coffmann, her old professor, had visited her in Africa. Coffmann was one of those hard-drinking Hemingway types, with lots of affairs at home, and lots of tales of his adventures with the orangs in Sumatra, the ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar. So she took him with her to a kill site in the savannah. And he promptly passed out. He weighed more than two hundred pounds, and she had to drag him out by the collar while the lions circled and snarled at her. It had been a good lesson for her.

Now she leaned close to the three men and whispered, "If you’ve got any qualms about this, don’t go. Just wait here. I don’t want to worry about you. I can do this myself" She started off.

"Are you sure – "

"Yes. Now keep quiet." She moved directly toward the clearing. Malcolm and the others hurried to catch up with her. She pushed aside the palm fronds, and stepped out into the open. The tyrannosaurs were gone, and the mud cone was deserted. Over to the right, she saw a shoe, with a bit of torn flesh sticking out above the ragged sock. That was all there was left of Baselton.

From within the nest, she heard a plaintive, high-pitched squeal. Harding climbed up the mud bank, with Malcolm struggling to follow. She saw two infant tyrannosaurs there, mewling. Nearby were three large eggs. They saw heavy footprints all around, in the mud.

"They took one of the eggs," Malcolm said. "Damn."

"You didn’t want anything to disrupt your little ecosystem?"

Malcolm smiled crookedly. "Yeah. I was hoping."

"Too bad," she said, and moved quickly around the edge of the pit.

She bent over, looking at the baby tyrannosaurs. One of the babies was cowering, its downy neck pulled into its body. But the second one behaved very differently. It did not move as they approached, but remained lying sprawled on its side, breathing shallowly, eyes glazed.