“On!” Harding shouted, looking out the window.
He flicked the lights on, and started to head back to the window.
Hastily, he went back and turned them off.
“On!”
He turned them on again.
She got up from the window, and crossed the room. ,They didn t like that,” she said. “It bothered them.”
“Well, there’s probably a refractory period – ”
“Yeah, I think so. Here. Open these.” She scooped up a handful of flashlights from one of the shelves, handed them to him, then went and got batteries from an adjacent wire rack. “I hope these still work.”
“What are you going to do?” Levine said.
“We,” she said, grimly. “We.”
Thorne stood in the darkness of the shed, staring outward through the open doors. Someone had been turning the lights on and off inside the store. Then, for a while they remained on. But now suddenly they went off again. The area in front of the shed was lit only by moonlight.
He heard movement, a soft rustling. He heard the breathing again. And then he saw the two dinosaurs, walking upright with stiff tails. Their skin patterns seemed to shift as they walked, and it was difficult to follow them, but they were moving toward the shed.
They arrived at the entrance, their bodies silhouetted against the moonlight beyond, their outlines finally clear. They looked like small tyrannosaurs, except they had protuberances above the eyes, and they had very small, stubby forelimbs. The carnivores ducked their squarish heads down, and looked into the shed cautiously. Snorting, sniffing. Their tails swinging slowly behind them.
They were really too big to come inside, and for a moment he hoped that they would not. Then the first of them lowered its head, growled, and stepped through the entrance.
Thorne held his breath. He was trying to think what to do, but he couldn’t think of anything at all. The animals were methodical, the first one moving aside so the second could enter as well,
Suddenly, from along the side of the store, a half-dozen glaring lights shone out in bright beams. The lights moved, splashed on the dinosaurs’ bodies. The beams began to move back and forth in slow, erratic patterns, like searchlights.
The dinosaurs were clearly visible, and they didn’t like it. They growled and tried to step away from the lights, but the beams moved continuously, searching them out, crisscrossing over their bodies. As the lights passed over their torsos, the skin paled in response, reproducing the movement of the beams, after the lights had moved on. Their bodies streaking white, fading to dark, streaking white again.
The lights never stopped moving, except when they shone into the faces of the dinosaurs, and into their eyes. The big eyes blinked beneath their hooded wings; the animals twitched their heads and ducked away, as if annoyed by flies.
The dinosaurs became agitated. They turned, backing out of the shed, and bellowed loudly at the moving lights.
Still the lights moved, relentlessly swinging back and forth in the night. The pattern of movement was complex, confusing. The dinosaurs bellowed again, and took a menacing step toward the lights. But it was half-hearted. They clearly didn’t like being around these moving sources. After a moment, they shuffled off, the lights following them, driving them away past the tennis courts.
Thorne moved forward.
He heard Harding say, “Doc? Better get out of there, before they decide to come back.”
Thorne moved quickly toward the lights. He found himself standing beside Levine and Harding. They were swinging fistfuls of flashlights back and forth.
They all went back to the store.
Inside, Levine slammed the door shut, and sagged back against it. “I was never so frightened in my entire life.”
“Richard,” Harding said coldly. “Get a grip on yourself.” She crossed the room, and placed the flashlights on the counter.
“Going out there was insane,” Levine said, wiping his forehead. He was drenched in sweat, his shirt stained dark.
“Actually, it was a slam dunk,” Harding said. She turned to Thorne. “You could see they had a refractory period for skin response. It’s fast compared to, say, an octopus, but it’s still there. My assumption was that those dinosaurs were like all animals that rely on camouflage. They’re basically ambushers. They’re not particularly fast or active. They stand motionless for hours in an unchanging environment, disappearing into the background, and they wait until some unsuspecting meal comes along. But if they have to keep adjusting to new light conditions, they know they can’t hide. They get anxious. And if they get anxious enough, they finally just run away. Which is what happened.”