The Lost World - Michael Crichton [128]
“Ian. There’s not much time. We have to do something.”
He raised his head, stared at her with blank eyes. Lightning flashed again. His lips moved. “Power,” he said.
“What about it?”
“Power is off.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about. Of course the power was off. Then she remembered: he had turned it off earlier. When the tyrannosaurs were approaching. The light had bothered them before, maybe it would bother them again.
“You want me to turn the power on?”
His head nodded fractionally. “Yes. Turn it on.”
“How, Ian?” She looked around in the darkness.
“There’s a panel.”
“Where?”
He didn’t answer her. She reached out, shook his shoulder. “Ian: where is the panel?”
He pointed downward.
She looked down, saw the loose wires from the panel. “I can’t. It’s broken.”
“Up . . .”
She could hardly hear him. Vaguely, she remembered that there was another control panel just inside the second trailer. If she could get in, she might be able to turn the power on. “Okay, Ian,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
She moved on, going higher. The floor of the trailer was now thirty feet below her. The tyrannosaurs roared, and kicked again. She swung in space. She moved on.
She intended to go through the accordion passage into the second trailer, but as she came closer to the top, she saw that it was not possible. In the harsh flare of lightning, she saw the accordion passage was twisted tightly shut.
She was trapped in the first trailer.
She heard the tyrannosaurs bellowing, and slamming the second trailer above. “Ian!”
She looked down. He wasn’t moving.
Hanging there, she realized with a sick feeling that she was defeated. Another kick, another two kicks, and it would be all over. They would fall. There was nothing they could do. There was no time left. She was hanging suspended in blackness, the power was out, and there was nothing—
Or was there? She heard an electrical hum, not far away in the darkness. Was there a panel up here, at this end of the trailer? Did they design it to have panels at both ends?
Hanging near the top of the trailer, her shoulders and forearms burning with strain, she looked around for a second power panel. She was up near the far end. If there was a panel, it should be nearby. But where? In the glare of lightning, she looked over one shoulder, then the other.
She saw no panel.
Her arms ached.
“Ian, please . . .”
No panel.
It wasn’t possible. She kept hearing that hum. There had to be a panel. She just wasn’t seeing it. There had to be a panel. She swung left and right, and lightning flashed again, casting crazy shadows, and then at last she saw it.
It was just six inches above her head. It was upside down, but she could see all the buttons and switches. They were dark now. If she could just figure out which was which—
The hell with it.
She released her right hand, and hanging from her left, pressed every button on the panel she could touch. Immediately, the trailer began to light up, every interior light coming on.
She kept pressing the buttons, one after another. Some shorted out; there were sparks and smoke.
She kept pressing more.
Suddenly the side monitor came on, just inches from her face, a streaky video blur. Then it came into focus. Although she was looking at it sideways, she could see the tyrannosaurs up on the clearing, standing over the second trailer, their forearms touching it, their powerful legs kicking and pushing at it. She pressed more buttons. The final one had a silver protective cover; she flipped the cover open, and pressed that button, too.
On the monitor she saw the tyrannosaurs disappear in a sudden flaring burst of incandescent sparks, and she heard them roar in rage. And then the video monitor went off, and there was a crackling explosion of sparks all around Harding, stinging her face and hands, and then everything in the trailer went off, and it was dark again.
There was silence for a long moment.
Then, inexorably, the pounding began again.
Thorne
The windshield wipers flicked back and forth. Thorne