Slowly, she opened her eyes and stared up into the face of a horse. The big, dull eye of the horse peered down at her, with soft eyelashes. The horse was licking her with its tongue. It was almost pleasant, she thought, almost reassuring. Lying on her back in the mud, with a horse –
It wasn’t a horse.
The head was too narrow, she suddenly saw, the snout too tapered, the proportions all wrong. She turned to look and saw that it was a small head, leading to a surprisingly thick neck, and a heavy body –
She jumped up, scrambling to her knees. “Oh my God!”
Her sudden movement startled the big animal, which snorted in alarm, and moved slowly away. It walked a few steps down the muddy shore and then turned back, looking at her reproachfully.
But she could see it now: small head, thick neck, huge lumbering body, with a double row of pentagonal plates running along the crest of the back. A dragging tail, with spikes in it.
Harding blinked.
It couldn’t be.
Confused and dazed, her brain fumbled for the name of this creature, and it came back to her, all the way from childhood.
Stegosaurus.
It was a God damn stegosaurus.
In her astonishment, her mind went back to the glaring white hospital room, when she had visited Ian Malcolm in his delirium, when he mumbled the names of several dinosaurs. She had always had her suspicions. But even now, confronted by a living stegosaur, her immediate reaction was that it must be some kind of a trick. Sarah squinted at the animal, looking for the seam in the costume, the mechanical joints beneath the skin. But the skin was seamless, and the animal moved in an integrated, organic way. The eyes blinked again, slowly. Then the stegosaurus turned away from her, moved to the water’s edge, and lapped it with its large rough tongue.
The tongue was dark blue.
How could that be? Dark blue from venous blood? Was it coldblooded? No. This animal moved much too smoothly; it had the assurance – and indifference – of a warm-blooded creature. Lizards and reptiles always seemed to be paying attention to the temperature of their surroundings. This creature didn’t behave that way at all. It stood in the shade, and lapped up the cold water, indifferent to it all.
She looked down at her shirt, saw the foamy spittle running down from her neck. It had drooled on her. She touched it with her fingers. It was warm.
It was warm-blooded, all right.
A stegosaurus.
She stared.
The stegosaurus’s skin had a pebbled texture, but it was not scaly, like a reptile’s. It was more like the skin of a rhino, she thought. Or of a warthog. Except it was entirely hairless, without the bristles of a pig.
The stegosaurus moved slowly. It had a peaceful, rather stupid air. And it probably was stupid, she thought, looking again at the head. The braincase was much smaller than that of a horse. Very small for the body weight.
She got to her feet, and groaned. Her body ached. Every limb and muscle was sore. Her legs trembled. She took a breath.
A few yards away, the stegosaurus paused, glanced at her, taking in her new upright appearance. When she did not move, it became indifferent once again, and returned to drinking from the river.
“I’ll be damned,” she said.
She looked at her watch. It was one-thirty in the afternoon, the sun still high overhead. She couldn’t use the sun to navigate, and the afternoon was very hot. She decided she had better start walking, and try and find Malcolm and Thorne. Barefooted, moving stiffly, her muscles aching, she headed into the jungle, away from the river.
After walking half an hour, she was very thirsty, but she had trained herself to go without water for long periods in the African savannah. She continued on, indifferent to her own discomfort. As she approached the top of a ridge, she came to a game trail, a wide muddy track through the jungle. It was easier walking along the trail, and she had been following it for about fifteen minutes when she heard an excited yelping from somewhere ahead. It reminded her of dogs, and she proceeded cautiously.