“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.
“This one’s been hurt,” she said.
Levine was standing in the high hide. He pressed the headset to his ear, and spoke into the microphone near his cheek. “I need a description,” he said.
Thorne said, “There’s two of them, roughly two feet long, weighing maybe forty pounds. About the size of small cassowary birds. Large eyes. Short snouts. Pale-brown color. And there’s a ring of down around the necks.”