Michael Crichton - Jurassic Park

He started the computer search program, knowing it would take two or three minutes to run. He got up and walked around the lab, checking instruments out of long-standing habit. He noted the recorder outside the freezer door, which tracked the freezer temperature. He saw there was a spike in the graph. That was odd, he thought. It meant somebody had been in the freezer. Recently, too-witbin the last half-hour. But who would go in there at night?

The computer beeped, signaling that the first of the data searches was complete. Wu went over to see what it had found, and when he saw the screen, he forgot all about the freezer and the graph spike.

LEITZKE DNA SEARCH ALGORITHM

DNA: Version Search Criteria: RANA (all, fragment len» 0)

DNA Incorporating RANA Fragments Versions

Maiasaurs 2.1-2.9

Procompsognathids 3.0-3.7

Othnielia 3.1-3.3

Velociraptors 1.0-3.0

Hypsilopbodontids 2.4-2.7

The result was clear: all breeding dinosaurs incorporated rana, or frog, DNA. None of the other animals did. Wu still did not understand why this had caused them to breed. But he could no longer deny that Grant was right. The dinosaurs were breeding.

He hurried up to the control room.

She was curled up inside a big one-meter drainage pipe that ran under the road. She had her baseball glove in her mouth and she was rocking back and forth, banging her head repeatedly against the back of the pipe. It was dark in there, but he could see her clearly with his goggles. She seemed unhurt, and he felt a great burst of relief.

"Lex, it's me. Tim."

She didn't answer. She continued to bang her head on the pipe. "Come on out."

She shook her head no. He could see she was badly frightened.

"Lex," he said, "if you come out, I'll let you wear these night goggles."

She just shook her head.

"Look what I have," he said, holding up his band. She stared uncomprehendingly. It was probably too dark for her to see. "It's your ball, Lex. I found your ball."

"So what."

He tried another approach. "It must be uncomfortable in there. Cold, too. Wouldn't you like to come out?"

She resumed banging her head against the pipe.

"Why not?"

"There's aminals out there."

That threw him for a moment. She hadn't said "aminals" for years.

"The aminals are gone," he said.

"There's a big one. A Tyrannosaurus rex."

"He's gone."

"Where did he go?"

"I don't know, but he's not around here now," Tim said, hoping it was true.

Lex didn't move. He heard her hanging again. Tim sat down in the grass outside the pipe, where she could see him. The ground was wet where he sat. He hugged his knees and waited. He couldn't think of anything else to do. "I'm just going to sit here," he said. "And rest."

"Is Daddy out there?"

"No," he said, feeling strange. "He's back at home, Lex."

"Is Mommy?"

"No, Lex."

"Are there any grownups out there?" Lex said.

"Not yet. But I'm sure they'll come soon. They're probably on their way right now."

Then he heard her moving inside the pipe, and she came out. Shivering with cold, and with dried blood on her forehead, but otherwise all right.

She looked around in surprise and said, "Where's Dr. Grant?"

"I don't know."

"Well, he was here before."

"He was? When?"

"Before," Lex said. "I saw him when I was in the pipe."

"Where'd he go?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Lex said, wrinkling her nose. She began to shout: "Hellooo. Hell-oooo! Dr. Grant? Dr. Grant!"

Tim was uneasy at the noise she was making-it might bring back the tyrannosaur-but a moment later he heard an answering shout. It was coming from the right, over toward the Land Cruiser that Tim had left a few minutes before. With his goggles, Tim saw with relief that Dr. Grant was walking toward them, He had a big tear in his shirt at the shoulder, but otherwise he looked okay.

"Thank God," he said. "I've been looking for you."

Shivering, Ed Regis got to his feet, and wiped the cold mud off his face and hands. He had spent a very had half hour, wedged among big boulders on the slope of a hill below the road. He knew it wasn't much of a hiding place, but he was panicked and he wasn't thinking clearly. He had lain in this muddy cold place and he had tried to get hold of himself, but he kept seeing that dinosaur in his mind. That dinosaur coming toward him. Toward the car.

Ed Regis didn't remember exactly what had happened after that. He remembered that Lex had said something but he hadn't stopped, he couldn't stop, he had just kept running and running. Beyond the road he had lost his footing and tumbled down the hill and come to rest by some boulders, and it had seemed to him that he could crawl in among the boulders, and hide, there was enough room, so that was what he had done. Gasping and terrified, thinking of nothing except to get away from the tyrannosaur. And, finally, when he was wedged in there like a rat between the boulders, he had calmed down a little, and he had been overcome with horror and shame because he'd abandoned those kids, he had just run away, he had just saved himself. He knew he should go back up to the road, he should try to rescue them, because he had always imagined himself as brave and cool under pressure, but whenever he tried to get control of himself, to make himself go back up there-somehow he just couldn't. He started to feel panicky, and he had trouble breathing, and he didn't move.

He told himself it was hopeless, anyway. If the kids were still up there on the road they could never survive, and certainly there was nothing Ed Regis could do for them, and he might as well stay where he was. No one was going to know what had happened except him. And there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could have done. And so Regis had remained among the boulders for half an hour, fighting off panic, carefully not thinking about whether the kids had died, or about what Hammond would have to say when he found out.

What finally made him move was the peculiar sensation he noticed in his mouth. The side of his mouth felt funny, kind of numb and tingling, and he wondered if he had hurt it during the fall. Regis touched his face and felt swollen flesh on the side of his mouth. It was funny, but it didn't hurt at all. Then he realized the swollen flesh was a leech growing fat as it sucked his lips. It was practically in his mouth. Shivering with nausea, Regis pulled the leech away, feeling it tear from the flesh of his lips, feeling the gush of warm blood in his mouth. He spat, and flung it with disgust into the forest. He saw another leech on his forearm, and pulled it off, leaving a dark bloody streak behind. Jesus, he was probably covered with them. That fall down the hillside. These jungle hills were full of leeches. So were the dark rocky crevices. What did the workmen say? The leeches crawled up your underwear. They liked dark warm places. They liked to crawl right up your-

"Hellooo!"

He stopped. It was a voice, carried by the wind.

"Helloo! Dr. Grant!"

Jesus, that was the little girl.

Ed Regis listened to the tone of her voice. She didn't sound frightened, or in pain. She was just calling in her insistent way. And it slowly dawned on him that something else must have happened, that the tyrannosaur must have gone away-or at least hadn't attacked-and that the other people might still be alive. Grant and Malcolm. Everybody might be alive. An the realization made him pull himself together in an instant, the way you got sober in an instant when the cops pulled you over, and he felt better, because now he knew what he had to do. And as he crawled out from the boulders he was already formulating the next step, already figuring out what he would say, how to handle things from this point.