"You see them now?" Lex said.
"I see them," he said.
"What are they?"
"They're raptors," Grant said, "At least two. Maybe more. Juveniles."
"Jesus, " Ed Regis said. "That boat's going to the mainland."
Malcolm shrugged. "Don't get excited. Just call the control room and tell them to recall the boat."
Ed Regis reached in and grabbed the radio from the dashboard. They heard hissing static, and clicks as he rapidly changed channels. "There's something wrong with this one," he said. "It's not working."
He ran off to the first Land Cruiser. They saw him duck into it. Then he looked back at them. "There's something wrong with both the radios," he said. "I can't raise the control room."
"Then let's get going," Grant said.
In the control room, Muldoon stood before the big windows that overlooked the park. At seven o'clock, the quartz floodlights came on all over the island, turning the landscape into a glowing jewel stretching away to the south. This was his favorite moment of the day. He heard the crackle of static from the radios.
"The Land Cruisers have started again," Arnold said. "They're on their way home."
"But why did they stop?" Hammond said. "And why can't we talk to them?"
"I don't know," Arnold said. "Maybe they turned off the radios in the cars.
"Probably the storm," Muldoon said. "Interference from the storm."
"They'll be here in twenty minutes," Hammond said. "You better call down and make sure the dining room is ready for them. Those kids are going to be hungry."
Arnold picked up the phone and heard a steady monotonous hiss. "What's this? What's going on?"
"Jesus, hang that up," Nedry said. "You'll screw up the data stream."
"You've taken all the phone lines? Even the internal ones?"
"I've taken all the lines that communicate outside," Nedry said. "But your internal lines should still work."
Arnold punched console buttons one after another. He heard nothing but hissing on all the lines.
"Looks like you've got 'em all."
"Sorry about that," Nedry said. "I'll clear a couple for you at the end of the next transmission, in about fifteen minutes." He yawned. "Looks like a long weekend for me. I guess I'll go get that Coke now." He picked up his shoulder bag and headed for the door. "Don't touch my console, okay?"
The door closed.
"What a slob," Hammond said.
"Yeah," Arnold said. "But I guess he knows what he's doing."
Along the side of the road, clouds of volcanic steam misted rainbows in the bright quartz lights. Grant said into the radio, "How long does it take the ship to reach the mainland?"
"Eighteen hours," Ed Regis said. "More or less. It's pretty reliable." He glanced at his watch. "It should arrive around eleven tomorrow morning."
Grant frowned. "You still can't talk to the control room?"
"Not so far."
"How about Harding? Can you reach him?"
"No, I've tried. He may have his radio turned off."
Malcolm was shaking his head. "So we're the only ones who know about the animals on the ship."
"I'm trying to raise somebody," Ed Regis said. "I mean, Christ, we don't want those animals on the mainland."
"How long until we get back to the base?"
"From here, another sixteen, seventeen minutes," Ed Regis said.
At night, the whole road was illuminated by big floodlights. It felt to Grant as if they were driving through a bright green tunnel of leaves. Large raindrops spattered the windshield.
Grant felt the Land Cruiser slow, then stop. "Now what?"
Lex said, "I don't want to stop. Why did we stop?"
And then, suddenly, all the floodlights went out. The road was plunged into darkness, Lex said, "Hey!"
"Probably just a power outage or something," Ed Regis said. "I'm sure the lights'll be on in a minute."
"What the hell?" Arnold said, staring at his monitors.
"What happened?" Muldoon said. "You lose power?"
"Yeah, but only power on the perimeter. Everything in this building's working fine. But outside, in the park, the power is gone. Lights, TV cameras, everything." His remote video monitors had gone black.
"What about the two Land Cruisers?"
"Stopped somewhere around the tyrannosaur paddock."
"Well," Muldoon said, "call Maintenance and let's get the power back on.
Arnold picked up one of his phones and heard hissing: Nedry's computers talking to each other. "No phones. That damn Nedry. Nedry! Where the hell is he?"
Dennis Nedry pushed open the door marked FERTILIZATION, With the perimeter power out, all the security-card locks were disarmed. Every door in the building opened with a touch.
The problems with the security system were high on Jurassic Park's bug list. Nedry wondered if anybody ever imagined that it wasn't a bug-tbat Nedry had programmed it that way. He had built in a classic trap door. Few programmers of large computer systems could resist the temptation to leave themselves a secret entrance. Partly it was common sense: if inept users locked up the system-and then called you for help-you always had a way to get in and repair the mess. And partly it was a kind of signature: Kilroy was here.
And partly it was insurance for the future. Nedry was annoyed with the Jurassic Park project; late in the schedule, InGen had demanded extensive modifications to the system but hadn't been willing to pay for them, arguing they should be included under the original contract. Lawsuits were threatened; letters were written to Nedry's other clients, implying that Nedry was unreliable. It was blackmail, and in the end Nedry had been forced to eat his overages on Jurassic Park and to make the changes that Hammond wanted.
But later, when he was approached by Lewis Dodgson at Biosyn, Nedry was ready to listen. And able to say that he could indeed get past Jurassic Park security. He could get into any room, any system, anywhere in the park. Because he had programmed it that way. Just in case.
He entered the fertilization room. The lab was deserted; as he had anticipated, all the staff was at dinner. Nedry unzipped his shoulder bag and removed the can of Gillette shaving cream. He unscrewed the base, and saw the interior was divided into a series of cylindrical slots.
He pulled on a pair of heavy insulated gloves and opened the walk-in freezer marked CONTENTS VIABLE BIOLOGICAL MAINTAIN -10C MINIMUM. The freezer was the size of a small closet, with shelves from floor to ceiling. Most of the shelves contained reagents and liquids in plastic sacs. To one side he saw a smaller nitrogen cold box with a heavy ceramic door. He opened it, and a rack of small tubes slid out, in a cloud of white liquid-nitrogen smoke.
The embryos were arranged by species: Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Hadrosaurus, Tyrannosaurus. Each embryo in a thin glass container, wrapped in silver foil, stoppered with polylene. Nedry quickly took two of each, slipping them into the shaving cream can.
Then he screwed the base of the can shut and twisted the top. There was a hiss of releasing gas inside, and the can frosted in his hands. Dodgson had said there was enough coolant to last thirty-six hours. More than enough time to get back to San Jose.
Nedry left the freezer, returned to the main lab. He dropped the can back in his bag, zipped it shut.
He went back into the hallway. The theft had taken less than two minutes. He could imagine the consternation upstairs in the control room, as they began to realize what had happened. All their security codes were scrambled, and all their phone lines were jammed. Without his help, it would take hours to untangle the mess-but in just a few minutes Nedry would he back in the control room, setting things right.
And no one would ever suspect what he had done.
Grinning, Dennis Nedry walked down to the ground floor, nodded to the guard, and continued downstairs to the basement. Passing the neat lines of electric Land Cruisers, he went to the gasoline-powered Jeep parked against the wall. He climbed into it, noticing some odd gray tubing on the passenger seat. It looked almost like a rocket launcher, he thought, as he turned the ignition key and started the Jeep.
Nedry glanced at his watch. From here, into the park, and three minutes straight to the east dock. Three minutes from there back to the control room.
Piece of cake.
"Damn it!" Arnold said, punching buttons on the console. "It's all screwed up.
Muldoon was standing at the windows, looking out at the park. The lights had gone out all over the island, except in the immediate area around the main buildings. He saw a few staff personnel hurrying to get out of the rain, but no one seemed to realize anything was wrong. Muldoon looked over at the visitor lodge, where the lights burned brightly.
"Uh-oh," Arnold said. "We have real trouble."
"What's that?" Muldoon said. He turned away from the window, and so he didn't see the Jeep drive out of the underground garage and head east along the maintenance road into the park.
"That idiot Nedry turned off the security systems," Arnold said. "The whole building's opened up. None of the doors are locked any more."
"I'll notify the guards," Muldoon said.
"That's the least of it," Arnold said. "When you turn off the security, you turn off all the peripheral fences as well."