Carnivore
by Leigh Clark

"THIS ISN'T GOING TO WORK OUT THE WAY YOU THINK!"

"There's something you haven't considered yet. If you speed up his maturation, 
and don't kill him in the process, you're going to have a full-grown 
Tyrannosaurus Rex on your hands. Do you know what that means? Anywhere from 
twelve to sixteen thousand pounds of fast-moving, predatory carnivore. It won't 
be like taking care of an elephant. Tyrannosaurs are hunters. When they 
flourished during the Late Cretaceous, no mammals grew much larger than a 
present-day rabbit. No mammal alive can compete with it now. We're mammals. Have 
you thought about that part of it?" 


Prologue: Transformation 
She had hidden the egg inside a deep valley with narrow walls, sheltered from 
large and small predators alike. 
Within a cleft of the rock wall, concealed by lush green ferns, the egg rested 
safely in its damp tropical world. 
And then, without warning, that world changed forever. 
It came suddenly, while she was out hunting one day. 
First, the flash of light, falling from the sky. Next, the darkening clouds, 
spreading like smoke across the horizon. Then, the cold winds blowing in from 
the sea, chilling the breath of life itself. And finally, the frozen wetness 
from the sky, raining down cold and unrelenting on the once tropical world. 
She tried to return to the valley, and the egg. But the cold winds slowed her 
down. The frozen wetness became a white blur, stinging her face and eyes, 
locking her great limbs into rigid paralysis. The white blur erased the features 
of the landscape. Her last thought, as death came to her, was of the egg. 
Inside the deep valley, the egg rested securely. Frozen wetness filled the rock 
cleft, turning first 
8 Leigh Clark
to snowpack, then to ice. Locked within the glacier's blue heart, the egg lay 
suspended in timedormant, yet alive, throughout the endless millennia, awaiting 
its final transformation.
9 First Phase: Awakening 
10 
11 10Chapter One Discovery 
Troy Darrow lowered the 10x50 binoculars, his hands inside heavy thermal 
mittens, eyes shielded from snow blindness by goggles with polarized lenses. He 
could hear the helicopter, even through the howling of the ice storm, but could 
not see it. 
He stood outside Deepcore Station on the Antarctic Peninsula, an arm of land 
reaching out from the vast continent itself, bordered by the Bransfield Strait 
on one side and the Weddell Sea on the other. 
Temperatures could reach minus-fifty degrees Fahrenheit on the Peninsula. In the 
interior, where the helicopter was coming from, they dropped so low Antarctic 
veterans commonly referred to the Peninsula as the Banana Belt. 
Troy raised his binoculars. This time he could see the helicopter, a big-bellied 
Sikorsky, dropping like a gray ghost through the ice storm. 
"Comin' in!" he shouted above the wind. 
The ground crew at Deepcore Station scrambled to clear the iced-over runway for 
a landing. The Sikorsky bucked as it came down, the pilot fighting to steady it 
against buffeting winds. 
The moment the helicopter touched down, a fuselage panel slid open and a man 
jumped out onto the tarmac, dressed in the same type of protective 
12 thermal suit the others were wearing. 
Troy walked up to him. "Sure you didn't make 
a mistake out there, Jack? It could be some kind 
of igneous rock." 
Jack Raines shook his head, his beard rimmed 
with ice frost. "It's no rock." 
"Rocks can look like a lot of different things
especially when they're frozen inside a glacier." 
"You're the geologist, Troy. You see rocks everywhere. But I know what I saw. 
This is no damn 
rock. It's an egg." 
His words seemed to ring in the air, even above the howling of the ice storm. 
Both men knew what 
this discovery could mean. 
Antarctica is a frozen desert. Its deep interior, covered by an ice shield two 
miles thick in places, 
is almost entirely lifeless-cold and sterile as the 
dark side of the moon. Nothing larger than lichens 
can survive in such an environment. 
"This thing's inside a glacier?" Troy asked. "Way the hell inside. Down deep." 
"Could we get it out, if we wanted to?" 
"Maybe. First we'd have to cut through all that 
ice. Then we'd have to take it out of the rock." 
"What rock?" 
"It's inside some sort of crevice in this rock wall. 
The glacier's grown up over that." "Did you get pictures?" "Video." 
"Does Burke know about this?" 
"We called him first, before we contacted you." 
"What about Tarosh?" 
"He knows everything before it happens. Him 
and that Russian name of his. What is he, anyway? 
Ex-KGB?" "I don't know what he is," Troy said. 
13 They could hear the sound of another helicopter 
then, coming through the ice storm. Deepcore Station had only one. 
"You expecting any surprise visitors?" Troy asked. 
"Kelly Sawyer, that hot little number who works for EPA." 
"How the hell did she find out about this?" "Hey, they monitor our radio bands 
all the time, Troy." 
"Son of a bitch." 
"She's a blond babe, man." "She's a pain in the ass." 
They could see the other copter now, rocking on the winds of the storm. After it 
landed, Kelly Sawyer was the first one out on the frozen tarmac. Loose strands 
of blond hair stuck out from beneath her thermal hood, stiff with ice frost. 
She walked over to Troy with a determined stride. 
"Were you present when they found the specimen, Darrow?" 
"No. But Jack was." 
She turned to him. "What sort of protective measures did you take? Did you 
notify other bases about this?" 
Jack raised his hands. "Whoa, Kelly! I'm just a field scout, okay? I don't make 
no calls on what we find out there." 
"I don't care what your job description says, Raines. You may have located the 
first hard evidence of preexisting life forms in Antarctica. It's your 
responsibility-" 
"Wait a minute," Troy cut her off. "This isn't the place to fight about it. 
Burke's holding a meeting inside. You can lodge your protests in there-Miss 
Sawyer." 
14 "Oh? I didn't know I was invited." 
"You're not. But since you crashed in here without an invitation, you might as 
well attend the 
meeting." 
Jack started to laugh. A look from Kelly stopped 
him. 
Dr. Lyle Burke, lantern-jawed veteran of several winter and summer Antarctic 
expeditions, sat at 
the head of the table in the Deepcore map room. 
The man next to him with the iron-gray mustache was Valentine Tarosh, senior 
political appointee to the Department of Energy and head of the top
secret operation known as Project Deepcore. The 
other people around the table included Troy, Jack, 
Mike McKelvey, logistics chief, Horst Zalman and 
Erik Agnor, two of Tarosh's men, and Kelly Sawyer, bio-consultant for the 
Environmental Protection Agency. 
"This is where the object was found." Burke pointed to a U.S. Geological Survey 
map. "Beyond 
the Ross Ice Shelf, in the vicinity of the Transantarctic Mountains, not far 
from the Axel Heiberg 
Glacier, the one Roald Amundsen and his men 
climbed on their way to the South Pole in 1911. 
Right, Jack?" 
He nodded. "About eighty-five degrees south." 
"About," Kelly mimicked them. "In the vicinity 
of. Why all the vagueness, Dr. Burke? Trying to 
keep this a secret?" 
"If it's what we think it is, Miss Sawyer, we don't 
want to broadcast it to the whole world." 
"If it's what I think it is, it belongs to the world." 
"And what is that, Miss Sawyer?" Valentine Tar
osh asked. 
"The egg of an extinct life form, possibly a di
nosaur. 
15 The other men around the table glanced at her, 
their faces betraying surprise. Tarosh merely smiled. 
"Interesting," he said. 
"It's premature to speculate at this point," Burke said. "It could be the 
fossilized egg of an emperor penguin. Or something that only looks like an egg. 
The next logical step is a second field examination of the object, to look into 
the feasibility of removing it from the ice for further study." 
The other men at the table nodded their agreement. 
"That's the last thing we want to do," Kelly said. Burke looked up at her. "Come 
again, Miss Sawyer?" 
"This is a landmark discovery, Dr. Burke, with profound implications for the 
international scientific community. You can't treat it like just another core 
sample." 
"What would you suggest?" 
"I agree that a second field examination is called for. But the egg should not 
be removed from its present location under any circumstances. It might be 
damaged, or destroyed." 
"How can you examine it inside a glacier?" Troy asked. 
"Several sensing methods are available, including ultrasound, to determine its 
biotic viability." "What do you want to do? Listen for its heartbeat?" 
She looked at Troy, then started to answer. Burke spoke first. "Whatever we 
decide, we need to send another field team out there now. Weather conditions are 
extremely volatile in the interior. Blowing snow could obscure the site, or bury 
it altogether. Jack Raines has volunteered to lead his group back to where they 
found the object. We 
16 
need at least one trained geologist to go with them. 
How about it, Troy?" 
"Fine with me. When do we leave?" 
Before Burke could answer, Kelly said, "I'm go
ing, too." 
A silence followed. The other men looked at 
Burke. 
"Miss Sawyer," he said at last, "we're talking 
about the deep interior. Conditions there are far 
more severe than anything you've ever experienced here on the Peninsula. You're 
also not a seasoned Antarctic hand. This is your first summer down here. 
Besides, there's no urgent reason for 
you to accompany this team." 
"I think there is, Dr. Burke. Article III of both the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 
and the Antarctic Declaration of 1984 specifically states that any discoveries 
made south of sixty degrees must be shared with the international scientific 
community. I want to be there to make sure that happens." 
"Miss Sawyer, any important information will be exchanged with the appropriate 
scientific authorities." 
"Sorry, Dr. Burke. I'm not convinced. Everyone knows that Deepcore Station is 
really some kind of top secret operation. That's why the EPA sent 
me down here to check it out." 
"Top secret," Valentine Tarosh said. "You make 
it sound like something from a spy novel, Miss Sawyer. The Cold War is over and, 
with it, the im
perative for military secrecy." 
"You're saying this isn't a classified operation?" 
"There are other reasons for caution, of course
such as the protection of vital U.S. economic in
terests." 
"Sorry, Mr. Tarosh. The right to scientific 
17 knowledge takes precedence over anybody's national interest. That's why I'm 
going to be part of your team, whether you like it or not." 
Troy said to Burke, "You mentioned her lack of experience with Antarctic 
conditions. What if something happens to her out there? It could force us to 
abort the expedition. We can't afford a. risk like that." 
Burke cleared his throat. "I do have the authority, Miss Sawyer, to refuse this 
request of yours." "Yes, Dr. Burke. And I have the option of going 
to the international news services, including CNN, with the story that a 
top-secret Department of Energy operation is sending a team to investigate the 
discovery of an unknown life-form somewhere near the Axel Heiberg Glacier." 
Angry murmurs rose from some of the men at the table. 
"If you try to stop me, Dr. Burke, I'll use that option." 
Troy glanced at Burke, who cleared his throat again. 
"In that case," Tarosh said, "we have no choice." He turned to Kelly, a thin 
smile on his lips. "Welcome, Miss Sawyer, to our second expedition." 
18 Retrieval 
The helicopter carried them into the heart of 
whiteness. 
The huge ice sheet of the interior lay spread out beneath them in all 
directions, marked here and 
there by patches of dense, low-lying fog. Straight ahead loomed the 
Transantarctic Mountains, cold 
and white, like jagged teeth in an open mouth. 
They sat inside the belly of the Sikorsky, 
cramped by supplies, sleds, panting sled dogs-all the precautions necessary for 
sustaining life in an 
alien, forbidding world. 
"Why can't we use snowmobiles instead of 
sleds?" Kelly asked, shouting over the steady 
pounding of the rotor blades. 
"Snowmobiles are just toys," Jack shouted back. 
"They're not reliable. Engines get clogged with 
snow and ice. Motor oil freezes up. Damn things 
stall out, and then you're dead. That don't happen 
with dogs." 
"Besides," Troy added, "if things get desperate 
enough, you can always eat the dogs." 
She stared at him as he sat chewing beef jerky. 
The helicopter took a sudden dip, jostling supply bundles and setting the sled 
dogs howling. 
Kelly grabbed hold of a nearby bundle. "What 
was that?" 
19 "Just the descent," Troy said. "We're going down."
"It didn't feel like that back at Deepcore Station!"
"This is the interior, Miss Sawyer. Landings are rough out here. If you come 
down in one piece, you're lucky."
They stood outside the helicopter, blades cutting through wind and snow as the 
last of the supplies were off-loaded.
"I'm freezing!" Kelly said, her mouth protected by a thermal mask. "How cold is 
it out here?" Troy checked a weather gauge. "About minussixty degrees 
Fahrenheit." "And with the wind chill?" "Anybody's guess."
"My suit must not be working. I can't stop shivering!"
"Your suit's fine. Shivering's a normal adaptation to extreme cold. You'll get 
used to it. Now you know why they call the Peninsula the Banana Belt."
Kelly frowned at him, but he had already turned to Jack.
"How far do we have to walk before we find this thing?" Troy asked.
"About two miles."
"That doesn't sound bad."
"You haven't walked it yet. First mile's uphill." Jack pointed to a windblown 
slope in the distance.
"Last mile's downhill, to the valley with the glacier," Jack said.
"So we get to climb both ways, going in and coming back?"
"You got it, man."
20 
Shivering in her thermal suit, Kelly came up be
side them. 
"What were you out there looking for in the first place?" she asked. "Mineral 
deposits? Oil re
serves?" 
Jack glanced at Troy, then said, "Ice samples, 
Kelly. We were back there collectin' ice samples." "Ice samples, right! Project 
Deepcore's nothing 
but a land grab by the Department of Energy. 
You're down here to look for oil reserves and min
eral deposits. You don't care that Article VII of the 
Antarctic Declaration of 1984 specifically prohib
its-" 
"Exploration for or exploitation of mineral resources," Troy finished her 
sentence for her. "I've read it, too, Miss Sawyer. Like Jack said, we're down 
here for the ice samples. Why don't you go 
on back to the helicopter and warm up inside for 
a few minutes before it takes off?" 
Her eyes widened behind the goggles. "It's leav
ing?" It'll come back and get us when we're finished," 
Jack said. "But it can't just sit there like a taxi with 
the engine running. Rotors would get clogged, 
same as the snowmobiles." 
She turned to Troy. "How long is this job going 
to take?" 
"That depends." "On what?" 
"What we find, once we get there." 
She looked at both men, then turned and ran 
back toward the helicopter, still shivering inside 
her thermal suit. 
Jack lowered his voice to Troy. "She'd go ballistic if she knew what Tarosh 
really has us looking. 
for." 
21 
"Keep your mouth shut and maybe she won't find out." 
As they began their descent into the valley, they entered a world of fog. It 
came over them like sudden blindness-cold, damp, impenetrable. Their progress 
slowed to a crawl. Walking became uncertain and dangerous, with every step a 
possible plunge into an unseen snow-covered crevasse, or off the edge of the 
narrow trail that wound its way down into the glaciated valley. 
They let the dogs go first, trusting their animal instinct. 
After hours of inching downward through the fog, Steve Oldham, the man in front 
with the dogs, called out, "This feels like the right place, Jack! Not that 
nobody could see nothin' with all this damn fog." 
"Let's break here," Jack said, "and wait for it to lift." 
"Ain't gonna lift no time soon, Jack." "Then we'll wait for it to clear some." 
Even as he spoke, the fog lifted slightly, revealing a deep valley filled by an 
immense blue-ice glacier. Tendrils of dense fog curled like smoke about the 
edges of thick blue ice. 
"Is that it?" Kelly asked. "Guess so," Jack said. 
"You guess? Didn't you mark it?" 
Jack looked away, but Troy said, "Marks don't keep very well out here in the 
interior, Miss Sawyer. The, wind blows them away, or rubs them out." 
Kelly squinted through her iced-over goggles at the blank glacier wall in front 
of them. "You couldn't see anything inside there anyway. That ice is filthy." 
22 
"It's just scarred by the wind," Troy said. "Once we polish it up a bit, we'll 
be able to see inside." She saw several team members begin to scour
the surface of the ice wall with what looked like portable buffing wheels. As 
they worked on it, the surface turned slowly from opaque white to a vision of 
crystalline clarity. The inside now stood revealed before them, as if the entire 
glacier had
been fashioned from cut glass.
Kelly raised her goggles and stared into the frozen world.
It was like looking inside a brilliantly clear ice
cube, magnified thousands of times. Blue-tinted
light rippled before her eyes. Giant air bubbles hung suspended in the ice like 
crystal globes floating through space.
"It's so clear," she whispered.
"Purest water on earth," Troy said, "just like they claim in those commercials. 
Except this is no
bull. It really is the purest water in the worldfrozen millions of years before 
there were cars, or
jumbo jets, or dirty humans to-" "There it is!"
Jack pointed to a spot deep within the ice, where an object about the size of a 
grapefruit rested inside a cleft of the rock wall. As the other team
members stared at it, wisps of fog drifted sinuously across the polished surface 
of the ice. "A rock," Troy said, "if ever I saw one." "Rock, hell!" Kelly said. 
"That's an egg!" "It's not big enough to be a dinosaur egg."
"They weren't that big. The largest dinosaur
eggs ever found aren't much bigger than cannonballs."
Troy turned to Jack. "How do we get inside
there?" "Guess we could always cut our way in."
23 "That might take us the rest of the summer." "You got a better idea?" 
"I say we blast." 
"This thing's a glacier, Troy. You could stir up more than you mean to. Get us 
all buried in an avalanche down here, so the next team comes out and finds us 
frozen in the ice, too, just like that goddamn egg." 
"It's the only way to get it out fast, Jack. Besides, even cutting could cause 
structural faults in the glacier and bring it down on top of us. Either we 
blast, or forget it." 
"What are you talking about?" Kelly asked. "Strategy, Miss Sawyer. How to get 
this precious egg of yours out of the ice before an Antarctic winter closes in." 

"I don't want the egg removed, or even touched! I thought we agreed on that back 
at Deepcore Station!" 
"The only thing we agreed on was to take you along on this fool's errand. And 
that wasn't agreement so much as blackmail. Even Tarosh is scared of CNN." 
"If you damage that egg, Darrow-" 
"Nobody's going to hurt it, Miss Sawyer. We're just going to blast out some of 
the ice, so we can get to it." 
"You want to set off explosives?" 
"That's the only way I know how to blast." Kelly's mouth dropped open. "I can't 
believe ... I've got ultrasound equipment here, Darrow! We can find out all we 
need to know about that egg without cutting away any of the ice!" 
"You go ahead and use your equipment now, Miss Sawyer, while we're getting the 
gelignite ready." 
"You son of a bitch! Who do you think you are? 
24 
You can't just start setting off explosives in Antarctica! That's in complete 
violation of every treaty ever written! I'm going to report you! And not just to 
the EPA! I'm going to report you to the U.N., and the World Court-"
"Whatever pleases you, Miss Sawyer. But you won't be able to file any reports 
until we get back to base camp. And by that time, I'll have the egg out of the 
ice."
"Why are you doing this, Darrow? You don't even care about the egg. You think 
it's some kind
of rock!"
"All I know is, Tarosh wants the egg, and Tarosh
runs Deepcore Station, and that's who I work for
right now."
"What does Tarosh want with a dinosaur egg?" "I have no idea, Miss Sawyer. Now 
if you'll excuse me, I've got some gelignite to prepare."
"You know what you're doing?" she called after
him. "You could be destroying a legacy from owe
sixty million years ago!"
But Troy was already unpacking the explosive
from one of the supply bundles, and he did not
stop to answer her.
When the gelignite was in place and the fuse set,
Kelly tried one last time to talk Troy out of it.
"You're making a terrible mistake. You know
that?" "It won't be the first time."
He ignited the fuse. Crouched down behind 
several large boulders, they all watched the narrow
plume of smoke rising in the frigid air as it raced
toward the explosive.
"I hope it blows us all to hell," Kelly said.
"If I packed it wrong, you just may get your
wish."
25 Jack laughed, but there was not much mirth to it. 
The fuse seemed to sputter out. "Must have got wet," Jack said. 
"Yeah," Troy agreed. "Should have tried an electronic-" 
The blast came then, with a force that seemed to tear the glacier asunder and 
shatter the foundation of the valley itself. 
The sound of the explosion assaulted them in shock waves, followed by huge 
chunks of ice as big as the boulders they crouched behind. The air of the 
valley, when they could hear again, rang with the sounds of splintering ice and 
falling rocks and rolling reverberations from the blast. Gelignite smoke filled 
their lungs, making them wheeze and cough. 
Ice splinters were still falling when Troy got to his feet and looked at the 
result of his handiwork. A large opening had been gouged into the surface of the 
glacier, like the gaping mouth of a deep cavern. Inside the newly formed ice 
cave, broken glacier shards littered the way toward the rock wall, and the cleft 
where the egg rested-freed from the ice at last. 
"You destroyed it!" Kelly shouted at him, brushing ice splinters from her 
thermal suit. "It's probably nothing but bits of eggshell and fossilized embryo 
by now!" 
Troy squinted through the shifting clouds of smoke. 
"Still looks the same to me. But there's only one way to find out for sure." 
He started forward, ice fragments crunching underfoot. 
Kelly grabbed him. "What do you think you're doing?" 
26 
"Seeing if there's enough left for a dinosaur omelette." "You're not going in 
there without me!" 
"I thought you didn't want to move it, or even 
touch it." 
"That was before you blew the hell out of everything! We've got to take the egg 
out now, to protect 
"Listen," Jack said, raising a hand. "Hear that?" 
They all strained to listen, ears still stunned by the force of the blast. They 
could hear cracking 
sounds in the distance, sharp and loud, like amplified rifle shots. 
"Whole damn mountainside's calving new miniglaciers," Jack said. "We could be 
caught in an avalanche any minute. Nobody ought to go inside 
that glacier right now." 
"We'll be careful," Troy promised. 
The temperature plunged suddenly as they stepped inside the ice cave, colder 
than anything 
Troy had ever experienced in all his time in Antarctica. Kelly started to shiver 
uncontrollably. 
"You ought to go back," he said, his own teeth 
chattering. "You go back, Darrow. I want that egg." 
Clouds of warm vapor billowed from their 
mouths as they spoke, moisture freezing on con
tact with their thermal masks. They made their 
way over the broken ice shards underfoot, slipping 
and stumbling toward the rock wall and the egg. 
A sharp crack sounded overhead. Troy looked up to see a thin fissure snake its 
way across the 
ceiling of the ice cave. 
"Whole thing's starting to come down. We 
should go back." 
"So go. I'm not leaving without the egg." 
He watched her for a few seconds, scrabbling 
27 over ice shards ahead of him, shivering from the cold, and from something 
more than the cold now. He hurried to catch up with her. 
They found the egg inside the cleft of the rock wall where it had first been 
placed, over sixty-five million years ago. It was still encased in a small block 
of ice, like a jewel in amber, frozen throughout worlds of time. Blue light 
filtered down through the ice walls of the glacier, making the egg look 
transitory and unreal, a vision from a fitful dream. 
Troy took an ice knife from the pocket of his thermal suit. 
"We can cut it out of that block in no time." "Keep your power tools to 
yourself, Darrow. This ice has protected it for sixty-five million years. We'll 
leave it just the way it is." 
"You can't drag a block of ice that heavy-" "If you'd shut up and help me-" 
As Kelly attempted to move the ice block, it slipped from her grasp. She gave a 
startled cry. Troy tried to catch it, but the block skidded down the rock wall 
and smashed against the cave floor in a spray of ice shards. The egg, undamaged, 
rolled across the slick surface of the cave floor, spinning sideways like a top. 

Kelly started after it, skidding on the ice as she ran. 
The egg rolled up to the edge of a fissure, and fell in. 
Kelly hesitated at the edge, then jumped in after it. 
"Kelly!" Troy shouted at her. 
He reached the opening in time to see her sliding down the jagged ice walls, the 
egg rolling on ahead of her. 
28 
Both came to a sudden stop at the bottom of the
fissure. "You okay?" he called down to her.
"Yeah," she answered, her voice echoing up
from inside. "How's the egg?"
Before she could answer, a loud crack broke
from the cave ceiling, followed by a shower of ice
chunks, some of them large as metal girders. Kelly
screamed inside the fissure.
Trov took out his ice knife. "Stay there. Don't
move." "What are you doing?" "Coming down to get you."
Using the ice knife as a piton, he worked his way
down the wall of the fissure. Another crack came
from the ceiling.
More ice chunks rained down on them. "It's going to bury us alive!" Kelly cried.
"Here." He reached out a hand. "Give me the
egg.
Kelly clutched it to her breast. "Nothing doing!
I fell all the way down here after it. I'm not letting-"
The crack this time seemed to shake the whole cave. Kelly yelped as a huge chunk 
of ice fell a few
feet away from them.
"All right," Troy said, "go ahead and be stubborn. Hang on to the egg with one 
hand. But hang
on to me with the other."
He scaled the side of the fissure wall, using the
ice knife to gain traction. The overhead cracks came at regular intervals now. 
The shower of ice
chunks fell nonstop.
After they reached the top of the fissure, they
ran through the falling ice, the entire cave fever
29 berating with the sounds of the glacier collapsing in on itself. 
Outside the cave mouth, Troy signaled to the others. 
"Run! Glacier's coming down!" 
"Whole goddamn valley's coming down," Jack said. 
The glacier burst apart at that moment. The team members scattered and ran for 
cover. Gigantic sheets of ice broke loose from the mass, falling through the air 
in slow motion. One of them landed on Steve Oldham and his dogs, crushing them 
beneath its frozen weight, their screams drowned by the roar of falling ice. 
When the avalanche finally stopped, the survivors dug themselves out to find the 
valley buried in snow and ice once again, reabsorbed into the harsh white 
landscape of Antarctica. 
30 
The debriefing took place in Lyle Burke's office. "Oldham was dead when you 
found him?" 
Burke asked Troy. 
"There was no way to move the ice sheet. He 
looked dead." 
"And the explosion you set off earlier-" 
"Weakened the glacier structurally, and caused 
the avalanche. I take full responsibility for that, 
sir. It was the only way to get the egg out." 
"Tarosh and his damned egg-which could still 
turn out to be a penguin egg, for all we know. Its 
already cost the life of one man, not to mention 
four sled dogs, plus equipment." "Where's the egg now?" Troy asked. "With Kelly 
Sawyer." 
"I thought she was supposed to fly back to the 
EPA base over on King George Island." 
"She and Tarosh are looking at the egg in stor: 
age. 
"The place where we keep the radioactive-was 
containers?" Burke looked up at him. "Yes." 
They walked from Burke's office to the storage depot down a narrow prefab 
corridor. While 
unheated, it gave some protection from the 
biting cold, and allowed them to wear anor.
31 aks and gloves instead of thermal suits. 
"Why is Tarosh so interested in this egg?" Troy asked. 
"Your guess is as good as mine. Whatever it is, I hope he gets over it, so we 
can carry on with our real work down here." 
Jack, walking with them, said, "That valley where we found the egg seemed like 
it might be a good place to store radioactive waste. But now that
"Yes," Burke said, "now that Troy's blown it up, we'll have to find someplace 
else. The Transantarctic Mountains are still our best bet for longterm storage 
of radioactive waste. Of course we have the EPA breathing down our necks now, in 
the form of that Sawyer girl. Why Tarosh is encouraging her to stay here with 
the egg is beyond me. 
"Maybe he thinks it could turn out to be valuable," Troy said, "if it really is 
a dinosaur egg." "If it's a dinosaur egg," Burke said, "I'll eat it." The 
storage depot, the largest building at Deep
core Station, stood back by itself, isolated from the rest of the compound. Dark 
and high ceilinged, it had shadows that concealed stacked rows of unlabeled 
radioactive-waste storage containers, mostly spent fuel from U.S. commercial 
nuclear reactors. The egg, its shell light brown and faintly speckled, sat 
inside a glass case on a long table, flanked by heat lamps and special 
monitoring devices. 
Kelly was reviewing data displayed on a computer screen while Valentine Tarosh 
looked over her shoulder. Farther back in the shadows stood two of his special 
security consultants, Horst Zalman and Erik Agnor. 
32 
"Well, Miss Sawyer," Burke said, as he and the 
others entered the storage depot and walked over 
to the table, "have you determined yet just what 
kind of egg this is?" 
Kelly did not look up from her screen. "A dinosaur egg, from the Late 
Cretaceous, about sixty
five million years ago." 
"Are you sure about that, or just guessing?" 
She looked up. "I never 'guess' at things, Dr. 
Burke. I'm a scientist, not a psychic. This egg 
wasn't produced by any known living species. It corresponds exactly to what we 
know about dinosaur eggs. Radiocarbon tests confirm its age." 
Troy smiled. "Better get out your knife and fork, 
boss." Burke said nothing, at a loss for words. 
Tarosh smiled at him. "Extraordinary, isn't it, 
alive? And to think that we should be the ones to 
find it!" 
"Yes. But is this ... fossilized embryo in good 
condition?" 
"It's not a fossil," Kelly said, turning to the 
screen. 
"What are you trying to say, Miss Sawyer?" 
"It's biotically viable. It's a living embryo." 
"That's impossible!" 
"The ultrasound tests are conclusive. It's alive." 
Burke stared at her, as if the words made no 
sense. 
"How did a dinosaur egg wind up in Antarctica?" Troy asked. 
"You should know the answer to that, Darrow." 
"What do you mean?" 
"You're supposed to be a geologist. Ever hear of 
the theory of Gondwanaland and continental 
drift?" 
"Sure. The idea that the outlines of the seven 
33 
continents sort of fit together because millions of years ago they were all part 
of one landmass, Gondwanaland. When it broke apart, continental drift carried 
the continents to their present locations. But after Antarctica started drifting 
toward the South Pole, its weather changed from semitropical to freezing. 
Wouldn't that have killed off any dinosaurs along for the ride?" 
"Probably. But if the Big Freeze came fast enough, it could have quick-frozen 
any nesting eggs. 
"Then it should have quick-frozen the bodies of dead dinosaurs too. Why haven't 
we found those buried in the ice?" 
"Maybe they're down there, if you dig deep enough." 
Troy thought about that, then said, "Now that it's been defrosted, how long 
before this egg of yours hatches?" 
"I hope not before we fly it back to an EPA lab." "Do our facilities displease 
you?" Tarosh asked. "They're okay, for temporary incubation. But 
this is the most important biological discovery ever made. We have to protect it 
with the full range of modern scientific technology." 
"Of course," Tarosh said. "Arrangements are being made for air transport to 
Santiago de Chile, and from there back to the U.S. But"-he shrugged-"such things 
take time." 
"Have you tried contacting the EPA Antarctic Station on King George Island 
again?" Kelly asked. 
"Of course. But the storm interferes with transmission." 
"I never had any trouble calling you guys from over there!" 
34 
"Weather conditions, Miss Sawyer, are beyond
our control."
Tarosh sounded sincere, but as he spoke he exchanged quick glances with Agnor 
and Zalman, who stood in the shadows.
"What happens if the storm doesn't lift," Troy asked, "and the egg hatches 
here?"
"Then we make the best of it," Kelly said. "But dinosaur eggs usually took 
several weeks to hatch, and this one seems to be in the early stages of 
incubation. So we should be okay-unless something happens to speed up the 
process." "What would cause that?"
"Nothing, really. Except maybe accidental irradiation. But background 
radiation's fairly low in Antarctica, because of the ice shield. We're safe
there."
Later that night, Troy stood talking with Mike McKelvey, the logistics chief, 
near the feeding station for the dogs. Huskies crowded the water troughs and 
food trays. Others burrowed into the snowpack for a night's sleep as the ice 
storm
howled around them.
"Dogs seem upset tonight," Troy said.
"Maybe because of the four that got killed earlier today."
"Or maybe because of the dinosaur egg."
"Could be. Dogs can sense lots of things."
"That one seems to be spooked worse than the
others."
Troy pointed to a dog with dark fur and yellow
eyes.
"That's Wolf," McKelvey said. "Mixed breed,
half husky, half timber wolf. His mother was one
of the four killed today." "Father was a timber wolf?"
35 "Yeah. He's a good dog. Miss your mom, don't you, boy?"
McKelvey tried to pet him, but Wolf, his natural mistrust of humans rekindled, 
pulled away, growling.
McKelvey looked out at the bursts of stormdriven snow.
"Windy out tonight," he said.
"So bad we couldn't take the copter up?" "What did you have in mind, Troy? Want 
to go back to that. valley in the interior again?"
"No. I was thinking more of the EPA base on King George."
"I don't see a problem with that."
"Then why won't Tarosh let us fly Kelly Sawyer back there?"
McKelvey turned and looked out at the storm again.
"Tarosh doesn't want us flying her anywhere." "Did he say why?"
"No." "Did you ask him?" "Are you crazy?"
The moon drifted out from behind storm-blown clouds. Several of the huskies 
started howling at
it.
"You think it has to do with the egg?" Troy asked.
"Who knows? I don't ask questions that aren't any of my business, and that way I 
don't get somebody else's trouble. You know what I mean?" "Sure, Mike."
At the other end of Deepcore Station, two men entered the correct security code 
in the door lock and stepped inside the shadowy storage depot. They wore 
protective clothing, but not the ordi35
36 
nary thermal suits used by station personnel. These were lead-lined suits, with 
special gloves and hoods designed to protect their wearers from
lethal doses of radiation.
They moved to the center of the building, where
the egg rested inside its glass case, lighted by the
infrared glow of heat lamps positioned above it
and on all sides.
Together they dragged one of the waste storage containers over to the table with 
the glass case and
the egg. Then they loosened the screw-down locks
on the container and opened its heavy metal lid. A faint blue light seemed to 
emanate from the radioactive waste inside.
Satisfied with their work, the two men in the
lead-lined suits left the room, closing the door behind them, and locking it.
Later, as the faint twilight of an Antarctic summer night began to give way to 
dawn, hairline
cracks appeared on the eggshell, barely visible to
the naked eye. The cracks grew wider, spreading
over the speckled surface of the shell in an intricate lacework pattern. 
Movement became apparent next, a kind of rocking motion, tipping the the
to one end of its spheroid length, then the other. A point bulged outward near 
the top of the shell.
A light cracking sound could be heard. Pieces of
shell broke loose and fell to the floor of the glass
case.
A small head, still glistening with membrane,
poked its way out of the shell, blinked its big eyes,
opened its formidable jaws, and let out a tiny
squawk, then stared in wonder at the bright lights
and dark background of its strange new world.
37 Second Phase: Man-Eater 
38 38
39 
Troy was eating breakfast in the commissaryscrambled powdered eggs, soybean 
sausagewhen the news came. 
Jack Raines burst into the room, panting for breath. 
"It's hatched!" "When?" "Don't know. It was already hatched when Kelly 
had us open the storage depot." "What's it look like?" 
"It's-You won't believe me. Come see for yourself!" 
Troy walked quickly down the narrow corridor, along with the other men who had 
been eating in the commissary. As they got closer to the storage depot, they 
began to run. 
Inside, they found Kelly and Tarosh and Burke, and most of the men of Deepcore 
Station, crowded around the long table in the center of the room, blocking the 
glass case and its inhabitant from view. Troy elbowed his way through the crowd. 

"Let the guy who helped find it take a look, okay?" 
"Helped find it," Kelly said, "and almost blew it P. 
40 
"You never would have got it out with ultrasound."
A man in front moved aside and let Troy see the hatchling.
It stood almost seven inches high and walked erect on two clawed feet that 
looked like bird talons. It carried its long prehensile tale, almost half
its body length, straight out behind it, the way a cardinal or robin holds its 
feathered tail. Its head
seemed huge in proportion to its tiny body, all
jaws and teeth and big blinking eyes. Its forelegs
appeared stunted, two small, shriveled arms held
close to its chest.
"My God," Troy said, "it looks just like a baby Trex!"
"That's what it is," Kelly said. "An infant Tyrannosaurus rex, largest and 
fiercest of the land-based
predators of the Late Cretaceous. Extinct for
sixty-five million years, but now, thanks to the
miracle of the ice, alive once more to walk the
"Nicely put, Miss Sawyer." Tarosh smiled at her.
"You have the soul of a poet." "Anybody feed it yet?" Troy asked.
"Some fresh leopard-seal meat is being prepared right now," Kelly said.
"Seal meat? I thought the EPA-"
"Killing seals for any reason is forbidden by every Antarctic treaty or 
declaration ever signed
Just the thought of doing it makes me sick. But
this is an exception."
"Oh, I get it. The articles of the treaties and declarations must never be 
broken-except for apexception." "Don't be a wiseass, Darrow."
"Hatched a bit sooner than you expected, didn't
he?"
41 Kelly frowned. "That part of it worries me. 
There's no reason he should have hatched this soon. It's been less than eighteen 
hours since we thawed the egg out of deep-frozen suspended animation. And he 
seems to have practically burst his way loose from the shell, as if he'd grown 
too big for it all of a sudden, or it was late in the hatching cycle, instead of 
early. As if his growth had been dramatically accelerated somehow. It doesn't 
make sense." 
"Another exception?" Troy asked. 
"Life," Tarosh said, "is full of exceptions." 
The fresh seal meat was brought into the room on a platter by Pete Mendoza, head 
cook for Deepcore Station. 
"I chopped it up just like you said, miss. In little bite-size pieces, so he can 
swallow 'em whole." He offered her the platter. Kelly shook her head. "You go 
ahead and do the honors." 
Mendoza took up one of the red pieces of seal meat. Blood dripped from it as he 
held it in the air above the glass case. Kelly opened the lid. The baby 
tyrannosaur, seeing the bloody meat, held its head back and opened its jaws 
wide, tiny teeth sharp and shining beneath the heat lamps, like miniature 
knives. Its long tail twitched in eager anticipation. 
"Make him beg for it, Pete!" Tom Callahan called out. 
"Yeah, Pete!" cried Sal Vanetti. "Make him do tricks!" 
"Hey, you shut up, you dickheads! This ain't no Disneyland show. This thing's a 
real dinosaur. Show some respect, okay?" 
Mendoza lowered the piece of meat cautiously toward the small gaping mouth. The 
tyrannosaur twitched its tail. 
42 
"Just let it drop," Kelly said. "He can catch it." Mendoza hesitated.
The baby T-rex leaped suddenly, springing off the floor of the glass case and 
snatching the meat from Mendoza's fingers. The startled cook pulled back his 
hand.
"Watch out there, Pete!"
"He almost ate you alive, man!"
"Ah, shut up, you bums." He turned back to the dinosaur and smiled. "Got a real 
good bounce to him, don't he?"
"Paleontologists have speculated that T-rex must have been quite a jumper," 
Kelly said. "Now we know for sure."
Mendoza fed the infant tyrannosaur another piece of seal meat, then another. It 
swallowed each piece whole, then opened and closed its jaws, as if licking its 
chops for more.
"Way to go, Pete!"
"Just like feedin' a squirrel, ain't it?" "Glad you don't feed us like that, 
Pete!"
As the tyrannosaur reached for more food, Mendoza pulled back the piece of meat 
quickly. The creature jumped for it, letting out an indignant little squawk as 
it missed.
"Whoa, Pete! Watch out there! You went and made it mad!"
"It's gonna come after the whole platter now!" Mendoza lowered the meat, then 
pulled it away quickly, then lowered it again, and pulled it away.
"It's not a good idea to tease him," Kelly said. The baby tyrannosaur cocked its 
head sideways, like a bird, and stared at the hand hovering above it, beyond 
reach.
Mendoza laughed, then lowered his hand again. The tyrannosaur leaped. This time 
it did nvt
miss.
43 
Its tiny razor-sharp teeth bit into the piece of meat, and the flesh of 
Mendoza's thick forefinger, cutting through skin and fat and muscle, and finally 
bone. 
Mendoza screamed and pulled back his hand. The first joint of his forefinger had 
been amputated, leaving a stump fringed by ragged flesh, white bone sticking up 
in the middle. Blood pulsed unevenly from the stump, spattering the glass case. 
"Goddamn little pendejo!" Mendoza cried, voice shaking. "Bit off the end of my 
goddamn finger!" "Jesus, Pete!" 
"Tie it up to stop the bleeding!" "Somebody get the medic!" 
"Dave," Burke ordered, "take care of him." Dave Richter, the station doctor, 
went over to Mendoza, pushing his way past the other men. 
"Goddamn little pendejo," Mendoza muttered. He reached down with his good hand, 
clenched into a fist. 
The tyrannosaur opened its jaws and hissed at him, tail twitching again, but 
ominously this time, with a slow, sinuous movement to it, like the slithering of 
a snake. 
"No!" Kelly cried, grabbing the cook's hand. "Let go!" Mendoza shouted, as he 
tried to pull free. "I teach that little pendejo a lesson!" 
"Easy," Richter said, and moved Mendoza's hand away from the glass case. "Let's 
take a look at this finger, okay?" 
"Goddamn little-" 
The tyrannosaur opened and closed its tiny jaws several times, as if smacking 
its lips over Mendoza's flesh and blood. 
Kelly shut the lid of the blood-spattered glass case, then turned to the men 
crowded around it. 
44 
"Get out of here! All of you! This isn't some freak show for your amusement. 
He's scared. He overreacted, but he was being teased. He's frightened now. So 
why don't you just get the hell out of here and leave him alone?"
"Listen, Miss Bitch-"
"None of that, Callahan," Burke snapped. "All right, clear it out. Everyone 
except senior personnel. On the double."
Troy started to leave with the others.
"Hold on, Troy," Burke said. "I didn't mean you.
"I'm not senior personnel."
"I want you to stay. That's an order." "Yes, sir."
When the others had left, only Burke, Tarosh, Kelly, and Troy remained. Agnor 
and Zalman stepped out from the shadows, their faces blank and impassive as they 
stared at the bloodstained case.
"That was a mess," Burke said.
'Unfortunate," Tarosh agreed, "but it was his own fault."
"We're going to have to move this out of here. Fly the animal and Miss Sawyer 
back to the base on King George. Let EPA worry about getting her back to the 
U.S. If we keep it here, it's going to prove a distraction to the men. Besides, 
interesting as it may be, it has nothing to do with our 11
mission. "I disagree," Tarosh said. "An event of this magnitude supersedes any 
set priorities. It becomes our new mission."
"You think DOE back in Washington will buy that?"
Before Tarosh could answer, Kelly said, "Ex' cuse me. I was told we couldn't 
even make radio
45 contact with King George because of the storm. Now you want to fly me back 
over there. What's the real story, anyway?" 
"It's almost always stormy south of sixty degrees," Burke said. "Once in- a 
while it gets bad enough to ground all flights. But that's not the case today. 
We can fly you out, Miss Sawyer." 
She turned to Tarosh. "That's not what you told me. What the hell's going on 
around here?" Tarosh looked at her and said nothing. "Obviously," Burke said, 
"there's been a mis
understanding of some sort. We'll get a few men to help you load up the animal 
and his cage. They'll have to be nonexcitable types who can keep their mouths 
shut. Troy, I want you to select-" 
"She's not leaving," Tarosh said, with a note of finality. 
Burke frowned. "Come again?" 
"Miss Sawyer, and the creature, will remain with us." 
"Wait just a minute, Tarosh. You don't-" 
"I am the head of this operation, appointed by the Secretary of the Interior, 
through the Commissioner of the Department of Energy. I have the authority to 
change our priorities. That's what I'm doing. Miss Sawyer will not leave." 
"Tarosh, this is ridiculous! We're down here to investigate storage sites, not 
raise baby dinosaurs!" 
"What?" Kelly turned from Tarosh to Burke. "You're down here to investigate 
what?" 
Burke looked away, unable to meet her stare. "A most unfortunate slip of the 
tongue, Lyle," Tarosh said. "But since she's going to be part of our little 
family from now on, perhaps it will do no harm to tell her the truth." 
"You're looking for storage sites?" Kelly 
46 
demanded of Burke. "Nuclear-waste storage sites?" Burke cleared his throat.
She turned to Troy. "That's what Jack Raines and his men were looking for when 
they found the egg, wasn't it? Possible locations for nuclear-waste storage 
sites!"
"It's our job, Miss Sawyer."
"Job, my ass! Project Deepcore turns out to be nothing more than a dirty little 
scheme to pollute the last untouched wilderness on earth with highlevel 
radioactive waste!"
"You make it sound like illegal dumping," Troy said.
"That's exactly what it is!"
"Not quite. The ice shield forms a type of natural seal around the waste 
deposits, helping to isolate them-"
"Until your containers start to leak, and you poison the entire Antarctic ice 
shield. And then the Southern Ocean itself, the feeding ground for all the 
oceans of the world! You guys are a bunch of dirty rotten bastards, and I do 
mean dirty!"
She turned back to Burke. "I want to be taken to your radio operator. Right now. 
I'm reporting this immediately. Then I'm flying back to King George, with the 
hatchling. Today. And once I get there, I'm closing down this whole illegal 
operation!"
"Miss Sawyer," Tarosh said.
"You," she glanced at him, "can take your authority, and your orders, and stuff 
them up your own secret storage site!"
"Miss Sawyer," Tarosh said again.
"Don't anybody mess with him until I get back," she said, pointing to the glass 
case with the baby tyrannosaur.
She turned and headed for the door.
47 Tarosh nodded to his men. Zalman stepped for
ward and grabbed Kelly by both arms, jerking her to a halt. 
"Hey!" she cried. "What the hell? Let me go!" "Let her go," Troy said, moving 
toward Zalman. Agnor stepped between them, arms raised for defense. 
Troy slowed down, and stopped. 
"All right, Tarosh," Burke said. This has gone far enough. I don't care if you 
were handpicked by the President of the United States himself. Nobody runs an 
Antarctic operation with Gestapo tactics like these. You've just been relieved 
of your command. Tell your goons over there to let her go." "I'm afraid I can't 
do that, Lyle." 
"Then you can go to hell, buddy. I'll find the radio operator, and get hold of 
EPA on King George, and the Department of Energy back in Washington, while I'm 
at it." 
Burke started for the door. 
"Lyle," Tarosh said, "stop right where you are." Burke kept walking. 
Tarosh reached into his anorak pocket and drew out an automatic pistol, a 1980s 
Soviet-issue Makarov. 
"This is a direct order, Lyle. I command you to stop." 
Burke was almost to the door. Tarosh fired. 
The sound of the gunshot exploded inside the storage depot, ringing off the 
steel waste containers stacked along the walls. 
The nine-millimeter slug took Burke in the center of his back, throwing him 
against the door. He slid down the length of it, hands clawing at metal. He 
managed to turn around, a look of pain and astonishment on his face. 
48 
Tarosh shot him again, twice. His body bucked against the door with the first 
shot, and the second. Then he lay still.
Kelly stood watching in horror, Zalman holding her arms.
"No!" she whispered.
Troy started over to where Burke lay by the door.
"No, Troy," Tarosh said. "He doesn't need your help now."
Troy stopped, glancing back at Tarosh. "What are you going to do? Shoot me, 
too?" "Troy, no one wants to shoot anyone. Trust me on that."
"Why did you shoot him?"
"He disobeyed a direct order. Twice. You saw that."
Troy looked at Burke's dead body, then at Tarosh again.
Kelly found her voice. "You can't get away with something like this! My people 
at EPA will start asking about me if I don't report back! Someone from the 
Department of Energy will be asking about him before long, too. Then they'll 
send someone over here to check things out. And when they do, they're going to 
arrest you for murder!"
"Miss Sawyer," Tarosh said, "you've indulged yourself in enough histrionics for 
one morning, don't you think? No one from EPA will ask about you. They have 
already been informed that you met with a fatal accident on your journey to the 
interior. They were not pleased by the news, of course. But when we told them 
where to look for your body, trapped under tons of snow and ice, in an obscure 
valley somewhere near the Axel Heiberg Glacier, they did not seem anxious to fly 
over and investigate."
49 
"You bastard-" 
"As for poor Burke, the Department of Energy already knew that he was unstable 
and unreliable. That's why they assigned me as his supervisor. When they 
learn-as they will, shortly-that he took his own life in a fit of despair, I'm 
sure they'll record that fact in their official records, then forget about it." 
Kelly looked at Burke's body, blood pooling beneath it. 
"No one will be coming here anytime soon," Tarosh said. 
The silence that followed his words was broken by the sound of claws scraping 
against glass. They all turned in the direction of the bloodstained case, where 
the baby tyrannosaur paced anxiously back and forth, as if looking for a way 
out. 
"What are you going to do about him?" Kelly asked. "Shoot him, too? Then stuff 
him and sell him to the highest bidder?" 
"At last," Tarosh said, putting away the Makarov, "we get to a serious subject. 
This creature has now become our number-one priority here at Deepcore Station. 
Its care and feeding are of utmost importance." 
"Then you're going to have to fly him back to the U.S.," Kelly said, "because we 
can't give him the care he needs here." 
"You're right, Miss Sawyer. We can't. But you can." 
"What if I refuse?" 
Tarosh glanced at Burke's dead body, lying in a pool of blood against the door, 
and shrugged. That would be unfortunate. But I'm sure we could find someone else 
to feed the creature. Someone with all ten fingers still intact." 
50 
Kelly glared at him, but beneath her anger she turned pale.
"However," Tarosh said, "I don't think that will prove necessary. I'm offering 
you the chance of a lifetime, Miss Sawyer. The opportunity to watch a dinosaur 
grow from infancy to full maturity. How can you, as a biologist, possibly 
refuse?"
"Dinosaur maturation usually took about five years, as far as we know. That's a 
long time to wait, Tarosh. Somebody might come over here to check things out 
before then."
"Perhaps it won't be necessary to wait that long."
"If you think you can somehow-"
She seemed to notice the waste storage containers then for the first time-dark 
forms, within dark shadows, stacked against the far wall like cenotaphs.
"What the hell are those?" she asked, pointing to them.
But before anyone could answer, she understood.
"Nuclear-waste containers," she whispered. "Good God."
She turned to Tarosh, her voice rising with every word.
"You're storing the nuclear waste here? You're exposing all of us to potentially 
lethal doses of high-level radiation?"
"Miss Sawyer, the containers are quite secure. They pose no immediate health 
risks to anyone." She looked at the baby tyrannosaur, stalking
back and forth inside the blood-spattered glass case.
"What did you do, Tarosh? Expose the egg to high-level radiation, to make it 
hatch sooner?" She looked up at him. "That's how you plan to
51 speed up his maturation, isn't it? Continue with the high-level doses. Reduce 
five years to five weeks, or five days. Maybe five hours." 
"Time is money, Miss Sawyer." 
"You son of a bitch! You're endangering the survival of a scientific miracle. 
Why? So you can sell him as an exclusive to CNN? `Live Dinosaur Found in 
Antarctica.' That's it, isn't it? You think he'll bring you more money full 
grown? Look more impressive on the cover of People? Some top-level consultant to 
the Department of Energy you are! You're nothing but a cleaned-up version of a 
backalley drug dealer!" 
Tarosh sighed, then turned to Zalman and Agnor. 
"Escort Miss Sawyer to the quarters we have arranged for her, would you, please? 
And see that Troy gets back to work." 
"What about that?" Zalman asked, nodding at Burke's corpse. 
"Dispose of it, and clean up the spillage." 
As they led Troy and Kelly off, Zalman gripping her right arm, she stopped 
before they reached the door and looked back. 
"This isn't going to work out the way you think, Tarosh. There's something you 
haven't considered yet. If you speed up his maturation, and don't kill him in 
the process, you're going to have a fullgrown Tyrannosaurus rex on your hands. 
Do you know what that means? Anywhere from twelve to sixteen thousand pounds of 
hot-blooded, fastmoving predatory . It won't be like taking care of an elephant. 
Tyrannosaurs are hunters. When they flourished during the Late Cretaceous, no 
mammals grew much larger than a present-day rabbit. No mammal back then could 
compete with something as large and ferocious as a full-grown, 
52 sixteen-thousand-pound tyrannosaur. No mammal alive can compete with it now. 
We're mammals. Have you thought about that part of it, Tarosh?" 
Zalman pulled her outside, and the door slammed shut behind them. 
Tarosh turned and looked at the bloodstained glass case. 
The tyrannosaur no longer paced back and forth. 
It stood staring at him, like a predator stalking prey. 
53 
The next morning Troy walked over to the storage depot again to check on the 
baby dinosaur, and Kelly. 
He found her working with the tyrannosaur inside a large cage that Mike McKelvey 
had constructed according to her estimation of the creature's eventual size and 
strength. The cage stood thirty feet high by eighty feet long, made of the same 
chain-link fence material that had been used to build the sled-dog compound, but 
double reinforced and electrified. 
The prefab metal floor was strewn with fresh straw, also from the dog compound. 
The long table where the glass case sat the day before had been moved inside the 
cage. It now held only electrical monitoring devices and feeding trays. The 
tyrannosaur paced up and down the length of the table, clawed feet clicking 
against metal, electrode patches with trailing wires attached to its scaly skin, 
making it look like a monster walking on a treadmill. It now stood over a foot 
high, having almost doubled in height since the morning of the day before. 
"Permission to come inside?" Troy asked. Kelly glanced up from her work, not 
especially happy to see him just then. 
"The door's unlocked. But close it behind you." 
54 
He stepped inside the cage and came over to the table.
"Don't you have some work of your own to do, Darrow?"
"Not really. Tarosh has suspended all exploration until further notice, because 
of your little pet there, and because of Burke's `suicide'-quote, unquote."
"Keep your voice down," she said, nodding at the shadows near the cage, where 
Horst Zalman stood silent guard duty.
Troy shrugged. "His spies can tell him what they want. He knows what I think of 
him. Shooting Burke down like a dog."
"So what are you supposed to be doing? Now that you can't hunt for places to 
dump your radioactive waste-"
"We've all been assigned busywork of one kind or another. I'm supposed to help 
Jack feed the sled dogs. But I've also got this little project of my own.
"What?" He leaned in close to her and lowered his voice. "Trying to find a way 
out of this concentration camp."
"That shouldn't be too easy," she said, her own voice low, "unless you can steal 
the helicopter, and learn how to fly it."
"I can't. But there's got to be another way. When I find it, I'll let you know."
The tyrannosaur opened its mouth and hissed at him. The teeth and jaws looked 
much larger than they had the day before.
Troy stepped back.
"Doesn't like anyone getting too close to me," Kelly said.
"He's growing like a weed, isn't he?"
55 "Yeah. All the goddamn radiation they're exposing him to." 
"Are the containers leaking in here?" 
"No. They don't seem to be. I checked out some of them early this morning with a 
Geiger counter. But the table and the glass case are hot as a firecracker. 
Tarosh's men must be sneaking the radioactive waste in at night." 
"Has it caused any side effects?" Troy asked. "Other than accelerating his 
maturation like crazy, no. 
"What are the wires for?" 
"To measure blood pressure, respiration, heartbeat." 
"So, are dinosaurs really warn-blooded?" 
"Yes. They also have a much higher metabolic rate than we find in most living 
mammals-about the same rate as birds, which is pretty much what the newer 
studies assumed." 
"How does it feel to be the first to examine a live one?" 
She looked up at him and smiled. "Great." 
The tyrannosaur closed its eyes and rubbed its snout against her hand in a kind 
of nuzzling motion. 
"Hev," Troy said, ""I think he likes you." "Maybe." Kelly stroked the creature's 
bony head. "But it's not like playing with a puppy or a kitten. Even though he's 
warm-blooded, he's still an alien life form to mammals like us. We may think we 
understand him, but we don't. I keep trying to tell myself that. And still, I 
find myself bonding with him." 
"Who's feeding him now? Not Pete Mendoza, I'll bet." 
"Don Bradshaw, that young geology grad student." 
56 
"Is T-rex eating twice as much? He's twice as big."
"More than twice as much." She frowned. "That part worries me, too. This 
animal's a hunter. He's genetically programmed to track down his food in the 
wild and take it live. It won't be safe to keep feeding him by hand as he grows 
larger."
Instinctively, she took her own hand away from the small tyrannosaur, who went 
back to pacing up and down the table.
"How much bigger will he get, anyway?"
"A lot. At full adult maturity, he should stand about nineteen feet high, and 
weigh around six to eight tons."
"That's one big dinosaur. When will he reach maturity?"
"With all this random radioactive exposure, who knows?"
"Well, at least your cage should hold him."
"I hope so. If you throw that switch over there, a current of ten-thousand volts 
runs through the chain-link material."
"Thanks for telling me that before I opened the door."
"It's not turned on now. But I don't know if it's going to hold him when he 
reaches full size." "Suppose it doesn't?"
Kelly looked at the tyrannosaur as it paced back and forth.
"If it doesn't," she said, "then someone's going to die."
The first death occurred almost a week later. Kelly stood outside the cage, 
entering data into
a laptop computer, as Don Bradshaw approached carrying a platter piled high with 
bloody seal meat.
57 He set it down near the cage door with a stifled groan. 
"This gets heavier each time I feed him. Have to start bringing it in on a 
forklift. Power off to the cage?" 
"Yes," Kelly said. 
Bradshaw smiled ruefully as he arranged the seal meat. 
"Not only does this crap get heavier, it gets harder- to walk it by the sled 
dogs. Huskies go crazy when they smell all the fresh blood. And those things can 
bite, you know." 
"So can he," Kelly said, nodding to the tyrannosaur, almost six feet high now, 
standing pressed against the inside of the cage door, pale eyes staring intently 
at the platter of seal meat and at the young man crouched beside it. 
Bradshaw stood up to open the cage door, and hesitated. 
"Gotten awful big awful fast, hasn't he?" 
"He's only reached about a third of his full adult height," Kelly said, "but 
he's big enough to do serious damage. Please be careful, Don." 
"I don't know if I like the way he's crowding that door." 
"Then don't open it! Tell Tarosh you need someone else to help you feed him." 
"Not much chance of that. He has to eat, Kelly. I'll just wait until he moves 
back from the door." Bradshaw crossed his arms and waited. The ty
rannosaur stood behind the cage door like a statue for almost'five minutes 
before moving back to the far side of the cage, where it continued to stare at 
the food and the human feeder. It held its large head cocked slightly sideways, 
like a bird's. 
"See? Let him get hungry enough, he'll cooperate." 
58 
Bradshaw opened the cage door partway and lifted the heavy platter, muscling it 
in through the narrow opening.
The tyrannosaur stood on the far side of the cage, motionless, except for a 
sudden twitching of its tail.
One hand bracing the platter against his thigh, Bradshaw reached hack with the 
other and closed the cage door behind him.
"I know you're hungry, boy, but here it is. All you have to do is come and-"
A roar shattered the stillness of the storage depot, louder and more savage than 
anything Kelly would have thought the tyrannosaur capable of at this stage of 
its development.
She looked up from her laptop in confusion, then horror.
And started screaming.
Troy was in the map room examining navigation charts, to see if there was any 
chance of escaping from Deepcore Station by boat and crossing the Bransfield 
Strait to King George Island.
Paul West came into the room, a grim look on his face.
"Well, it finally happened." "What?"
"That thing attacked Don Bradshaw." Troy got up from his chair. "When?"
"Just now, a few minutes ago, at the storage depot."
"How bad is he hurt?"
"Pretty goddamn bad, from what I hear." "Is Kelly okay?"
"Far as I-Hey! Where do you think you're going?"
59 "To see for myself." 
"Tarosh isn't letting anybody inside." "The hell with Tarosh." 
When Troy reached the front door to the storage depot, he found it blocked by 
Erik Agnor. 
"Go back to work," Agnor said. "Nothing to see here." 
"I helped find the egg. I want to check on my babv." 
"Get lost, Darrow, before you piss me off, okay?" The door opened behind Agnor. 
Zalman poked his head out. 
"Let him in." "Says who?" "Tarosh." A small crowd had gathered before the 
tyrannosaur's cage. 
The creature, standing erect, stunted forearms held out in front of it, watched 
them through the electrified chain-link fence, tail twitching slowly, jaws 
smeared with blood. The straw on the cage floor was streaked with blood, large 
splotches of it, dark red and drying beneath the overhead lights. 
Kelly's own face was flecked with blood as she stared at Bradshaw's body outside 
the cage, where Dave Richter, the camp medic, leaned over to examine it. 
Troy came up to her. "You okay?" She nodded slowly. 
"You sure? There's blood on your face." 
She reached up and touched the blood with her hand, then stared at it, as if 
disoriented. 
"I was so close to the cage-" "How did it happen?" 
"Don was feeding him, the way he always does, 
60 
putting down the tray of fresh seal meat, then stepping back. But this time, the 
tyrannosaur went after Don, instead of the seal meat." Kelly closed her eyes.
Troy looked down at Bradshaw's body.
Most of the flesh had been ripped from his face, leaving a grinning skull in its 
place, with twitching muscles and one lidless eye staring up at the overhead 
lights. His right arm had been torn off above the elbow, his torso, slashed open 
from chest to crotch. His intestines lay piled in glistening ropes beside his 
body.
"How long did it take to do all that?" Troy asked. "Seconds. It was over before 
it started. I've never seen an animal move that fast before in my life. Ever."
"What kept him from finishing the job?" "Tarosh's men."
Kelly looked at Zalman, who stood near the cage now, Makarov automatic in one 
hand.
"They fired into the cage. I don't know if they wounded him. They haven't let me 
check. But it scared him, for a few minutes. He drew back into a corner. That 
gave them time to drag Don's body out of the cage. Right after they locked the 
door, he threw himself against the fence. The high voltage shocked the hell out 
of him and drove him back. But he kept throwing himself at the fence, again and 
again."
She started to cry. "We've got to get him out of here!"
"We will." Troy slipped an aim around her. "Somehow."
She was crying so hard she didn't notice. But the tyrannosaur did.
The creature let out a roar then, louder than any sound Troy had ever heard it 
make before. It
61 charged at the spot where he stood with his arm around Kelly. But for the 
electrified chain-link fence, the almost-six-foot-high tyrannosaur would have 
been on top of them. Instead it hit the fence, bouncing back in a shower of blue 
sparks. The men near the cage drew back with cries of alarm. The tyrannosaur 
rushed the fence again, sending out another burst of sparks. Some of them landed 
on the straw and set it smoking. 
Kelly pushed Troy away from her. "Don't!" "T-rex getting a little jealous?" 
"He's already upset. Don't make it worse." Dave Richter stepped back from 
Bradshaw's body. 
Someone else drew a blanket over the mutilated face. 
"We lost him," Richter said, staring down at the corpse. "Shock. Lacerations. 
Massive hemorrhaging."' looked up at Tarosh. "That's a bad death-toaccident 
ratio, one to one. We can't afford many mistakes like this." 
"It was a freak occurrence," Tarosh said. 
"It's going to happen again," Kelly said, her voice cutting through the 
muttering of onlookers. "And it's going to get worse, if you keep feeding him 
this way." 
"We'll take more precautions in the future, Miss Sawyer. " 
"That won't make any difference, Tarosh. Don't you understand? This animal is a 
predatory . He was born to hunt live prey. The fact that he's been deep-frozen 
and brought back to life sixty-five million years after the last of his kind 
became extinct doesn't change anything! You can't domesticate him like a house 
cat by feeding him meat!" 
62 
"Most predators scavenge from time to time, don't they, Miss Sawyer? Even in the 
wild?" "Sure. But why should he bother to scavenge
when he has his meat brought to him every day by live prey?"
The others glanced down again at Bradshaw's mutilated body, which was hidden 
from view now by the bloodstained blanket.
"Perhaps," Tarosh said, "we could arrange for live seals to be brought into the 
creature's cage. Would that satisfy his desire for the hunt, Miss Sawyer?"
"For a while. But he keeps growing every day. It's going to take more than seals 
to keep him fed." "Yes, his size is becoming a problem."
"You're the one who wanted to do it this way, Tarosh. Forcing his growth rate 
with high-level radiation-"
"Things will work out, Miss Sawyer. The ice storm seems to be abating. We can 
gather more seals."
"Except it's still against the law. If your men start capturing too many seals 
out in the open, EPA may come over from King George to check up on you after 
all."
"Let's hope not, Miss Sawyer. If we're forced to abandon this project because of 
outside interference, we'll have to dispose of anyone connected with it-yourself 
included."
He turned to Zalman. "Clear the room at once." "Everyone?"
"Except Miss Sawyer."
"I want to stay," Troy said, "to help her." Zalman raised his Makarov. "You 
heard him. Get out."
Troy started for the door, along with the other men.
63 "Don't let your boys lose those guns," he said to Tarosh.
As the crowd departed, Kelly stepped up to the fence.
The tyrannosaur had drawn back into the cage, fearful / of the electrified chain 
links, which hummed now in the sudden silence.
"Shut off the power," Kelly said to Zalman. "I have my orders"
`7'm giving you orders! Shut it off?"
Zalman threw a switch. The humming stopped. The tyrannosaur, still wary of the 
chain-link fence, came up to it cautiously, its large head thrust forward, 
sniffing. After it touched the fence without receiving a shock-once, and then 
againit looked up at Kelly, opening and closing its formidable blood-smeared 
jaws.
She sighed. "Well, which is it? Are you happy to see me? Or do you just want to 
feed on someone else now?"
The tyrannosaur opened its jaws and gave out a high-pitched squeak, like the 
chirping of a gigantic bird.
Kelly's eyes misted over. "Damn," she whispered.
64 Escape 
Five days later a new storm began to blow in, covering the Peninsula with 
howling winds and stinging snow and ice. 
Because Antarctica is a frozen desert, it experiences little true snowfall. But 
the great storms, along with fierce katabatic winds from the interior, displace 
the snow already there, whipping it through the air at speeds that can reach up 
to 200 miles per hour. 
The timing of the storm was especially bad because of the cargo transport 
scheduled to arrive later that day. 
Troy found out about this from Jack Raines. They had been feeding the huskies at 
the sleddog compound. 
"Won't be easy for that plane to land," Jack said. Troy looked up from where he 
was petting the dog Wolf. 
"What plane?" 
"C-130 that's supposed to come in today and take Kelly's dinosaur back to the 
States." 
"This is the first I heard about it." 
"Then forget I told you. Must be another Tarosh secret." 
"How do they plan to load the tyrannosaur on the plane?" 
"Knock him out with something, I guess." 
65 "Have you seen that beast lately? He stands almost twenty feet tall! And he 
must be twice that long."
"Yeah, well, that's Tarosh's problem."
The C-130 came in three hours later, a heavy four-prop cargo transport, flying 
low through the storm. The unpredictable wind shear almost turned it into a 
crash landing. The ground crew had tried to deice the short runway as much as 
possible, but the plane still went into a skid on touchdown, veering 180 degrees 
to the right. The pilot had to run it into a snowbank to keep from skidding off 
the runway into the Bransfield Strait.
The pilot, Buford C. "Buzz" Calhoun, climbed down from the cockpit with a cigar 
between his teeth and waved to Troy.
"Long time since I seen you last, Troy." "You brought 'er down good, Buzz."
"Always try to. Hear you got some big cargo for us.
Several of Calhoun's crew members walked past carrying stacks of sealed white 
boxes.
"What are those?" Troy asked.
"Large animal tranquilizer. Same stuff zoos use to knock out elephants and 
lions."
"So that's how Tarosh thinks he can do it." "Do what?"
"Immobilize the creature."
"Just what is it they want me to fly outta here, Troy?"
"Let's go to the storage depot. See for yourself." They found Kelly with Tarosh 
and some other men, among them Gregor Koznan, a security consultant whom Troy 
had seen only on rare occasions at Deepcore Station. One of the small
66 
tractors used for hauling construction materials had been brought inside the 
depot.
Kelly seemed upset about something.
She kept glancing at the cage, where the tyrannosaur stood crouched over in one 
corner, head slumped forward, eyes closed, like a great bird of prey at rest.
"The first step is to sedate the creature," Tarosh said. "Gregor Koznan has 
volunteered to perform this task for us."
Koznan held a tranquilizer gun about the size of a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
"The creature has been fed a large number of live seals this morning," Tarosh 
continued. "As a result, he is in a kind of torpor now-either fast asleep, or 
close to it. This should be the ideal time to sedate him. Once Gregor has 
finished that job, Mike McKelvey and his assistants will remove one side of the 
cage, along with the front wall of the storage depot. We will then attach cables 
to the creature's body and drag it to the C-130 transport, where Captain Calhoun 
and his crew will load it on board using special ramps."
Tarosh turned to him. "Correct, Captain?" "Just make sure the goddamn son of a 
bitch is out cold."
"Don't worry," Tarosh said.
"What if the dart can't penetrate his skin?" Kelly asked.
"Miss Sawyer, tranquilizer guns like this are used to sedate animals the size of 
elephants. We should have no problems with the tyrannosaur." "What if we do?"
"Then we turn to backup measures. We have a steel-mesh net for containing the 
creature." Tarosh pointed to it, hanging from the metal beams of the storage 
depot, directly above the cage. "And,
67 if all else fails, Captain Calhoun has brought us two .460 Weatherby 
bolt-action rifles." 
He glanced at Zalman, who stood cradling one of the .460s, then at Agnor, who 
held the other. "You're going to kill him? After all our work?" "It would not be 
my first choice, Miss Sawyer. 
But we will get him on board the plane, one way or another." 
Koznan raised his tranquilizer gun. "Ready when you are." 
Tarosh nodded. "Proceed, Gregor." 
Someone shut off the electric power to the cage fencing and opened the door. 
Koznan stepped through it, the tranquilizer gun gripped tight in both hands. The 
cage door closed behind him and the power was turned back on. Loose straw 
crackled beneath his feet. He moved toward the tyrannosaur, crouched over in the 
corner. 
Troy glanced at Kelly. She raised a hand to her throat. 
Koznan came up to the tyrannosaur slowly. The great beast seemed unaware of the 
man's presence. Its head still drooped forward, eyes closed, as if its neck had 
been broken. 
Koznan stopped about fifty feet from his target. He steadied the gun on his 
shoulder and took careful aim. 
The tyrannosaur inhaled suddenly, the deep breath expanding its flank, 
stretching the skin taut, providing a perfect target. 
Koznan sighted on the stretched skin and fired. The tyrannosaur sprang into 
action, head snapping up, yellow eyes popping open. It roared at the small dart, 
fixed like a stinging insect in its tough, leathery hide. Then it twisted its 
head sideways in an effort to nip the offending piece of metal with its jaws. 
Unable to do so, it shook its great body 
68 furiously, trying to dislodge the dart. 
Then it turned on Koznan. 
Tarosh's man stepped back, raising the tranquilizer gun. 
The tyrannosaur roared again. Radioactivewaste storage containers stacked along 
the back wall vibrated with the sound. The creature lowered its head and opened 
its huge jaws, revealing teeth the size and sharpness of cavalry sabers. 
"Gregor!" Tarosh called to him. "Get out of there!" 
Koznan took another step back, eyes fixed on the monster as he edged his way 
toward the cage door. 
The tyrannosaur closed the distance between them with one sudden leap, the 
movement so fast it seemed an optical illusion. One minute the beast was in the 
corner, the next on top of Koznan. The great jaws came down over Koznan's upper 
body, puncturing his flesh, breaking his bones, muffling his horrible screams, 
lifting him high in the air. The tyrannosaur shook its head from side to side, 
like a terrier attacking a rat, huge curved teeth shredding Koznan's flesh like 
tissue paper. Blood spilled out over the teeth and slopped onto the 
straw-covered floor below. 
Tarosh turned to Zalman and Agnor beside him. "Begin firing." 
"Shoot to kill?" Zalman asked. 
"Only warning shots, at first. But if he doesn't release Gregor's body, bring 
him down." 
Zalman nodded. He and Agnor raised their Weatherby rifles, big-game guns with 
heavy, killing-weight .460 cartridges. 
"No!" Kelly cried. 
Zalman sighted near the tyrannosaur's huge head, still swinging from side to 
side, sharp teeth 
69 ripping the flesh from Koznan's body. He steadied his aim, and squeezed the 
trigger. 
Kelly's hand struck the gun barrel, spoiling Zalman's aim. 
The shot went wide of the mark, ricocheting off a metal waste storage container 
at the back of the storage depot. 
The tyrannosaur roared at the report of the rifle shot and turned to the men 
gathered outside its cage, Koznan's body still dangling from its jaws like a 
piece of limp, bloody, but not-quite-dead meat. 
"You stupid bitch!" Zalman grabbed Kelly's wrist, twisting it hard until sharp 
pains shot up her arm. 
"Stop it! You're hurting-" 
"Let her go, Zalman," Troy warned. 
The tyrannosaur roared, the sound exploding inside the storage depot, rattling 
the very walls of the building. The creature opened its jaws wide. letting 
Koznan's body drop to the straw-covered floor, trailing blood as it fell. The 
creature turned to where Zalman stood over Kelly, twisting her arm. 
It roared again, then hurled its massive body against the cage wall, stretching 
the chain links almost to their breaking point. Blue sparks crackled across the 
metal fence and over the tyrannosaur's huge frame, outlining it like an 
electrical display. Showers of sparks burst from the cage, driving the men back. 
The creature roared in pain and rage. 
"Let the girl go," Tarosh ordered Zalman. "Then shoot. him." 
Zalman dropped Kelly's wrist and shoved her aside. 
The tyrannosaur roared again, hitting the metal 
70 
fence with such force that the whole cage almost toppled over. Blue sparks shot 
out in all directions. Men scattered before the buckling cage as the smell of 
singed dinosaur skin filled the air.
"Stand your ground!" Tarosh cried. "The cage will hold!"
Zalman and Agnor raised their .460s and fired. Simultaneous shots rang out, 
drowned by the roaring of the tyrannosaur. No blood appeared on the beast's 
great body, no signs that it had even been hit. But it turned with renewed fury 
on its attackers, butting its head against the electrified fence like a maddened 
bull, throwing all its weight and strength into each charge, insensible to the 
high voltage that coursed through its body, crackling across the expanse of the 
cage.
Zalman and Agnor fired two more rounds. The tyrannosaur's efforts rose to a 
frenzy as it smashed into the fence again and again. The fence began to topple 
sideways. Then it simply gave way, ripping loose from the floor and springing 
forward with the momentum of sudden release. The fence snapped out across the 
storage depot, striking one of the men who had scattered earlier, hitting him 
with the full force of 10,000 volts. His body twitched and jolted, and screams 
filled the air, along with the stench of burning human flesh.
"The power!" Tarosh cried. "Shut off the power!" Zalman, who had narrowly 
escaped the electrified fence himself, ran to the generator and threw the switch 
to the off position.
In that instant, the tyrannosaur made good its escape.
Sensing immediately that the terrible burning had stopped, the great beast tore 
its way through what remained of the fence, tossing aside the wreckage of chain 
links like dead branches.
71 Zalman threw the switch on again in an attempt 
to stop the creature's escape, but it was too late for that now. 
If the men had scattered before, they fled now in terror for their lives. The 
tyrannosaur, who had seemed huge inside the cage, appeared monstrous as it 
stalked them out in the open space of the storage depot, a moving mountain, 
great jaws gaping wide like the mouth of annihilation itself. 
"Clear the central area!" Tarosh shouted above the mounting chaos, the cries of 
frightened men. "Move the tractors out! Horst! Erik! Close the exit door! Lock 
the beast inside!" 
"Goddamn," Calhoun muttered, throwing down his cigar. 
The old pilot began to run for it, belly flopping loose above his belt buckle, 
face bright red as he looked back to gauge the distance between himself and the 
stalking tyrannosaur. 
"Kelly!" Troy called to her, glancing at the tyrannosaur that towered above 
them. "Get out of here!" 
She stared up at the huge creature, unable to move. 
"He's scared," she said. "We can't leave him like this." 
"He's not twelve inches high anymore, Kelly! Run!" 
The tyrannosaur paused for an instant, tail twitching ominously, head cocked to 
one side, short arms curled up close to its powerful chest as it watched the 
humans scurrying down below like frightened woodland creatures. 
Then it leaned over with a sudden twisting movement and lunged straight at 
Calhoun as the pilot jogged across the storage depot, aiming for the exit 
doorway. Calhoun felt the hot breath on 
72 
his back and looked up in time to see the gaping mouth descend on him. He let 
out a piercing shriek as the terrible jaws closed over him and the curved teeth 
sank into his body, puncturing lungs and stomach, muscle and bone. The 
tyrannosaur shook its head from side to side, slicing the flesh in thick, ragged 
layers from Calhoun's writhing body.
Then the jaws clamped down with a loud, crunching sound and enough pounds of 
pressure per square inch to cut Calhoun jaggedly in half. His lower trunk and 
legs fell from the tyrannosaur's mouth, twisting through the air in attenuated 
slow motion, large swirls of blood following the body parts down to the floor. 
The creature devoured the rest of Calhoun's body, swallowing the flesh and bones 
whole, lifting its huge head back as it bolted the food with hot-blooded hunger.
Kelly stood watching it feed, still unable to move.
Troy grabbed her arm. "Run, Kelly!"
The tyrannosaur turned and roared at them, jaws opening wide, hot breath blowing 
down on them, rank with the smell of Calhoun's flesh and blood, bits and pieces 
of him still clinging to the large curved teeth.
"Mike!" Troy shouted at McKelvey, who was trying to move one of the tractors out 
of the storage depot, no easy job because of the men pushing and clawing their 
way through the open exit door, glancing back at the tyrannosaur with terrified 
eyes.
McKelvey looked up at Troy's shout. "The net, Mike! Drop the net on it!"
McKelvey looked at the large steel-mesh net hanging from the metal ceiling 
supports above the tyrannosaur, then at the control switch on the
73 back wall of the storage depot, not far from where he sat. fie jumped off the 
tractor and started running for the switch, shoving his way through the crowd of 
frightened men who fought to be among the first to reach the open exit door. 
The tyrannosaur roared at Troy and Kelly again, and took a sudden step toward 
them, quick and birdlike, incongruously graceful for a creature of such 
overwhelming size. 
"Let go of me!" Kelly whispered. "He doesn't like it!" 
Troy released her arm, but remained standing beside her, watching as the 
tyrannosaur came even closer toward them, 
A fleeing man knocked McKelvey out of the way, throwing him back against the 
wall, away from the switch. 
The tyrannosaur leaned down toward Kelly, bringing its massive jaws in close to 
her, yellow eyes glittering cold and nonmammalian, with no sign of recognition 
or remembrance. 
Troy glanced at the back wall, where McKelvey had at last made it to the switch 
that controlled the net. 
"Now!" Troy shouted to him. "Drop it now!" McKelvey threw the switch. Gears 
creaked loudly overhead. 
Troy grabbed Kelly and yanked her back from the tyrannosaur, who roared in 
anger, huge muscles tensing as if in preparation for a sudden attack. 
The steel-mesh net dropped down over the great beast, falling like a curtain 
across the depot floor. The tyrannosaur lunged at the net with its powerful 
jaws, but could not bite through the steel mesh. It roared in frustration, 
becoming more 
74 
trapped and entangled with every violent, thrusting move.
Troy and Kelly ran for the exit door, Kelly glancing back at the monster in the 
net, Troy dragging her forward.
Tarosh, watching the tyrannosaur struggle inside the net, turned to Zalman and 
Agnor, who stood near him at the exit door, their Weatherby .460s raised for 
firing.
"We may still have a chance to recapture him," Tarosh said. "Horst, stop the men 
from leaving. Order McKelvey- to start removing the front wall and stand by with 
a tractor. Erik, leave your rifle with me. Then go tell the helicopter to take 
off and hover over this area, with the other net ready todrop."
"The pilot won't want to go up in a storm like this."
"Tell him it's an order, Erik. If he refuses, shoot him. Then have the copilot 
take you up."
Agnor nodded and left, clearing a quick path through the jammed exit with the 
Weatherby, then tossing the rifle back to Zalman from outside.
Troy and Kelly reached the exit at that moment, breathless from their flight, 
the tyrannosaur thrashing wildly behind them, trapped in the meshes of the steel 
net.
Zalman stepped in front of them, blocking their way, the Weatherby thrust 
forward like a halberd. "No one's leaving here. Tarosh's orders."
"You tell Tarosh-" Troy began. "We're going to try to bring it down." Troy 
stared at him. "What?"
"McKelvey!" Zalman called to him. "Tell your men to pull down the front wall."
"You just lose your mind?" McKelvey shouted
75 back. "That thing's comin' after us as soon as it gets out of the net!" 
Troy shoved Zalman away from the door. 
"He won't find us waiting for him. Come on, Kelly!" 
Zalman grabbed Troy's right arm. Troy turned and led with his left fist, 
smashing it into Zalman's face. Tarosh's man staggered back against the wall, 
clutching his face with one hand, the other still gripping the Weatherby. 
Troy felt a blunt object poke into his ribs. 
He moved his eyes down slowly, and to the right. 
Tarosh stood with the Makarov in his hand, barrel pressed hard against Troy's 
ribs. 
"Everyone gets a sucker punch, Troy, once in his life. You just had yours. Don't 
force me to draw this again. Because if I do, I'll kill you. Understand?" 
"Sure, Tarosh." 
"I wouldn't want you to think-" 
The tyrannosaur's roar cut him short. 
It was the howl of a beast driven beyond the limit of frustration. Maddened by 
rage, the creature began to spin around beneath the steel mesh, sweeping in 
wide, erratic circles across the floor of the storage depot, great tail lashing 
out inside the net, crushing one man within reach, flinging his body like a rag 
doll across the floor, knocking aside the small tractor that McKelvey had 
brought out as if it were nothing but a child's toy. 
The men at the door began shoving through it desperately, trying to get out in 
time before the whirling behemoth reached them. 
Zalman, blood leaking from his nose, eyes hard with hate, raised the big-game 
rifle and worked the bolt action, pointing the barrel at Troy's chest. 
76 
"Want me to make sure he doesn't leave?" he asked Tarosh.
As the beast came toward them, spinning faster and faster beneath the net, 
Tarosh simply shook his head.
Zalman lowered the rifle. "You're lucky, Dar„
row. "You, too, Zalman."
He turned with Kelly for the exit door. But there was no way they could get 
through it in time. Men had thrown themselves into the opening, scrambling up 
onto the shoulders of those already pushing their way through, kicking and 
shoving and striking, but still unable to escape.
Troy looked back to see the tyrannosaur almost upon them. The tail, or one of 
the great taloned feet, would catch them within seconds.
He grabbed Kelly, pulling her back from the door, along the wall toward the far 
end, as far from the exit as he could possibly get in the few seconds remaining 
to them.
The tyrannosaur, whirling like a dervish inside the net, crashed into the front 
wall, which shuddered beneath the impact, the tremor traveling like a seismic 
shock wave across the floor of the storage depot.
The men in the doorway began to scream and cry for help, trapped in a squirming 
mass, unable to run or move.
The creature rebounded from the wall, stunned, not sure at first what it had 
hit. But there was no terrible burning, so it hit the wall again, with even 
greater force this time, throwing its head and shoulders into the charge.
The prefab metal of the wall cracked with a high-pitched squealing sound, then 
burst apart, shattering like a pane of glass. The rest of the stor76
77 age depot held together. The roof sagged and the remaining walls buckled, but 
the front wall was gone. The tyrannosaur crashed through into the outside world; 
pieces of shattered wall falling about it onto ice-covered ground. Still 
entangled in the steel-mesh net, and carried by the momentum of its own charge, 
the creature pitched forward and fell to the ground, crushing most of the men in 
the doorway beneath its great bulk, their screams drowned out by the howling of 
the storm and the roaring of the tyrannosaur as it struggled within the net, 
huge taloned feet kicking in frustration, heavy tail lashing out in all 
directions, catching some of the lucky men who had somehow escaped the doorway. 
Troy and Kelly made their own exit through the damaged front wall, steering 
clear of flailing limbs and tail as the tyrannosaur roared and twisted beneath 
the net. 
Kelly stopped to watch its struggle with the net. "Come on." Troy tugged at her 
arm. "We can't do anything for him. Let's get out of here before he breaks loose 
again." 
"He is loose. All he has to do is run away." 
She leaned forward, as if still talking to a hatchling. 
"Come on, T-rex baby!" she called to it. "Run!" Zalman and Tarosh appeared 
outside, each bearing a .460. 
"We can take him," Zalman said, "now that he's down." 
Tarosh shook his head. "The bullets didn't even break his skin, Horst. Wait for 
the helicopter to drop the second net." 
With a sudden lurch, the tyrannosaur sprang up from the ground and regained its 
footing, still caught within the steel mesh. It roared in fury, 
78 
trying to free itself, starting to spin in circles once again, enraged by the 
subtle treachery of the net. Then it stopped, head cocked to one side, as if 
listening.
From above came the sound of the helicopter cutting through the storm, rotor 
blades beating against windblown snow and ice.
79 Destruction
Chuck Grabow, the Sikorsky's pilot, looked down at the tyrannosaur as it stared 
up at the helicopter.
"Sweet Jesus!" Grabow said, popping his gum. "Take a look at the size of that 
thing, would you? Last I saw of him, he was just a little guy, no more'n six 
inches high."
"He's grown some," Agnor said.
"He's already caught in one net. Why do they want us to drop another one on 
him?"
"Tarosh's orders."
"Well, then, you better go back there and get ready to drop the mother,'cause 
this is as low as I'm takin' it."
"Bring it lower. I don't want the net to blow off target."
"Tell you what, of buddy. You want it lower? Fly it yourself. If we happen to 
hit a wind shear" Agnor drew out his Makarov and flipped off the safety.
Grabow looked at the gun muzzle pointing in his face, then at the tyrannosaur 
staring up at them from, below.
He let out a deep breath. "Okay. Down we go." As the Sikorsky began to descend, 
the tyrannosaur roared at it through the meshes of the steel net. A sudden 
katabatic wind blew in from the interior, dropping the frigid air temperature 
even
80 
lower, rattling loose metal debris from the shattered front wall of the storage 
depot, and lifting up the edges of the net. As it sensed the shift in the net's 
weight, the tyrannosaur twisted its huge body with surprising agility, ducking 
underneath the edge and throwing back its head in one smooth movement that 
tossed off the net, freeing itself at last.
"Erik." Tarosh's voice crackled from the walkietalkie clipped to Agnor's belt. 
"Drop the second net. Now."
Agnor turned and shouted, "Can't you bring this thing closer to him?"
"We go any lower," Grabow called back, "we'll be lookin' straight down his 
goddamn throat." Agnor raised the walkie-talkie and pressed transmit.
"We're dropping it."
He grabbed a lever and pulled, releasing the net. The tyrannosaur, looking up at 
the helicopter hovering overhead, saw the net as it began to fall.
The creature leaped back, jumping clear of the steel mesh with the same kind of 
swift reflex movement that a wild songbird might use to escape the lunge of a 
backyard cat.
Another burst of katabatic wind swept through the air in front of the storage 
depot, rustling the net like a fine lace curtain, blowing it off to one side, 
and catching the Sikorsky in a deadly, downward-drafting wind shear, causing it 
to veer out of control.
As the helicopter swooped low overhead, the tyrannosaur leaped at it with 
wide-open jaws. The Sikorsky turned just in time, narrowly escaping the beast's 
lunge.
Inside the cockpit, Grabow wrestled with the controls to gain altitude. But 
another katabatic
81 blast wiped out what little progress he had made, pushing the helicopter down 
toward the tyrannosaur once again. 
"Sweet Jesus," Grabow muttered as they dropped. 
The tyrannosaur leaped at the helicopter again, taloned feet springing off the 
ice. This time it caught one of the rear runners in its mighty jaws and pulled 
down with all its great strength. The Sikorsky plummeted earthward. 
In a last effort to restabilize, Grabow tried to turn the copter away from the 
tyrannosaur. As a result, it pitched sideways instead of straight down, crashing 
into the building that housed all of Deepcore Station's radio transmitting 
equipment. 
The Sikorsky burst into flames, first a bright white flash, then a rapidly 
blossoming orange fireball. 
"There goes the radio," Troy said, "and the outside world." 
"Don't you have any other radio equipment?" Kelly asked. 
"Sure. On board the helicopter." 
The tyrannosaur raised its head and roared in triumph, the sound cutting through 
the howling winds like an echo from the primeval tropical world that had lain 
buried for the last sixty-five million years beneath the Antarctic ice cap. 
As Tarosh observed the beast at a distance and the havoc it had wreaked, his 
face grew dark with anger. 
"Want us to try and put the fire out?" Zalman asked. 
"No," Tarosh said. "Take cover. Immediately." The tyrannosaur turned and roared 
at the men who stood watching outside the shattered front 
82 
wall of the storage depot. They started to run, crowding toward the enclosed 
corridor that led from the depot to the central complex of Deepcore Station.
The tyrannosaur roared again, and came after them.
Cries of terror filled the air. Men shoved those ahead of them as they ran. Some 
slipped on the ice and were trampled beneath the feet of those who continued to 
run.
"Not that way!" Troy shouted to Kelly as they ran, too, at first part of the 
stampeding herd. "We don't want to be anywhere near that corridor right now.
"We can't stay outside! I'm freezing to death!" "You can get over frostbite. 
This way."
He pulled her away from the crowd and they began to run toward the far side of 
the central complex, their progress slow and awkward over the icy ground.
A man at the rear of the running crowd slipped and fell, skidding on the ice as 
he scrambled to regain his footing.
The tyrannosaur pounced on him like a bird on an insect. The doomed man raised 
his arms and screamed, but the huge jaws seized him and lifted him high in the 
air-kicking, struggling, spurting blood-an appalling spectacle for the others 
trying to escape.
The tyrannosaur savaged the twitching body with its merciless fangs, flaying the 
man before swallowing him whole. Then the beast went after the others.
Those who reached the corridor first crowded inside the narrow walkway, filling 
it from wall to wall. Once inside they began to slow down, reacting to the 
comparative warmth and sense of safety
83 surrounding them. Gridlock resulted, with a large crowd pushing and shoving 
at the entrance to the narrow corridor, while the men already packed inside had 
nowhere else to go.
The tyrannosaur appeared on the scene then. It began picking off stragglers from 
the rear of the crowd outside, bolting bodies down whole, the grinding of its 
huge teeth audible even above the howling storm as it crunched through flesh and 
bone, the men's screams lost amid the hideous mastication.
Blind panic seized those still outside the corridor. Men attacked others in 
front of them, knocking them down, stepping over their bodies, trying to carve a 
path into the sanctuary of the corridor.
The tyrannosaur continued to lunge at random stragglers, their screams ringing 
through the icy winds. A feeding frenzy came over the great beast. It grabbed 
another man before it had finished devouring the first, then a third, a fourth, 
blood and severed limbs and body parts dropping from the massive jaws as they 
snapped at new victims, tearing, rending, eviscerating. The snow-frosted earth 
below turned bright red, then pink, as blood splashed onto the ground and soaked 
into the snow.
Some of the stragglers broke free and began to run away from the corridor 
entrance, realizing that it was certain death to remain. They ran screaming out 
into the windblown snow and ice, looking back in horror at the rampaging 
tyrannosaur as it feasted on friends and coworkers.
Troy and Kelly, farther out from the corridor, stopped running through the storm 
to witness the massacre.
"This never would have happened," Kelly said, gasping for breath, "if Tarosh had 
only"
84 
"Well, he didn't and it did. Come on! Keep moving. He's got the taste of human 
blood in his mouth now. We don't want him to find us out here after he's 
finished with the others."
Kelly stared at the distant horror, breath pluming in the frigid air, the 
screams of the dying and the terrified rising like a lost chorus on the 
katabatic winds.
"Can't we do anything for them?"
"We can try to get help-if we're still alive. Come on.
Chaos continued to rule the icy grounds outside the corridor. Men screamed as 
blood and body parts rained down on them from above, followed by the sudden 
apparition of gaping jaws and dripping fangs, hot breath billowing like smoke 
from hell. Some crawled blindly through severed limbs and pools of hot blood 
steaming on the snow and ice. Others staggered in erratic circles, until they 
followed their friends into the lunging, tearing jaws of the tyrannosaur.
When those outside had either fled or been devoured, the tyrannosaur's attention 
turned toward the corridor itself.
The men inside recognized their peril now and tried to run down the corridor to 
the safety of the central complex.
But it was impossible. Packed like sardines in a can, they could only push and 
scream at the men ahead of them, surging forward slowly in a frenzied, immobile 
mob. Glancing out through the corridor's narrow slits of windows, they could see 
the snow and ice littered with body parts and stained with blood, and the scaly, 
heavily muscled legs of the tyrannosaur, massive as tree trunks, shifting nimbly 
as the creature pounced on yet another fleeing straggler.
85 And then, nothing. 
The legs disappeared from view. The tyrannosaur's roars stopped abruptly, 
replaced by the howling of the storm winds. 
The sudden lull turned the screams of those trapped inside into hushed murmurs 
as they glanced fearfully and cautiously out the narrow corridor windows. 
"He still out there?" "Not that I can see." "He's gotta be there!" "Maybe he's 
gone!" 
"Yeah, right. Maybe he flew away." "That's it! He's gone!" 
"Just shut up, why don't you?" "Thank you, Jesus! He's gone!" 
An enormous eye appeared in one of the windows then, pale yellow and nonhuman, a 
cold black pupil in its center, surrounded by dark scaly skin. 
The panic came back with a vengeance. Men began screaming and clawing their way 
forward. Some tried to turn back toward the outside entrance. Others slipped and 
fell beneath the churning crowd, trampled to death in the madness. One man broke 
through the glass of a corridor window, slicing open both arms, severed veins 
spraying blood over the doomed crowd inside. 
Part of the corridor roof caved in then with a sound like thunder, followed by 
the killing weight of the tyrannosaur's huge taloned foot. Men screamed in 
terror as it pushed them down to the floor, crushing them into bloodred pulp. 
The second foot smashed through another part of the roof, bringing down death 
and destruction in its wake. 
Some men tried to climb up through openings 
86 
in the broken roof and escape into the howling storm, only to find themselves 
impaled by the tyrannosaur's curved fangs and devoured alive, whole or 
piecemeal. Others tried to hide themselves beneath debris and dead bodies. But 
the tyrannosaur began stamping down the whole corridor, systematically 
flattening the entire length from storage depot to central complex, pulverizing 
the dead and the living alike.
When it had finished destroying the corridor, and all those inside, the beast 
Lifted its great head and gave out a roar of triumph that reverberated 
throughout Deepcore Station.
Then it turned its attention toward the central complex.
Troy and Kelly were still about seventy-five yards from the front door of the 
first building when the creature's roar brought them to a skidding halt. They 
saw it looming above a nearby building, the corridor flattened behind it like a 
trail of torn cards. The tyrannosaur saw them, too, tiny figures amid the 
windblown snow and ice, clearly visible against the whiteness of the storm.
It roared at them, hot vapor billowing from its open mouth, blood dripping from 
its jaws.
Kelly shook her head, panting for breath. "I can't run!"
Her knees gave way. Troy caught her before she fell.
The tyrannosaur roared again, and started after them.
Troy picked up Kelly, slinging her across his shoulder.
"Darrow! What the hell are you doing? Put me down!"
"I can still run."
He started for the distant door, steps heavy and
87 awkward, pounding across the snow and ice, driving desperately for the 
salvation of the central complex. 
The tyrannosaur roared and accelerated its pace, starting to hop like a bird 
now, covering great distances with each leap, coming up fast on the tiny, 
slow-moving figure struggling vainly to outdistance his pursuer. 
Troy began to stagger, his legs leaden and wobbly, Kelly's weight dragging him 
down, the relatively short distance between them and the central complex 
becoming impossibly long, stretching out like an endless ice-covered highway. 
The beast was almost on top of them, only one more great birdlike leap necessary 
to bridge the remaining distance, when a new sound caught the creature's 
attention. 
The grinding roar of a cold engine kicking into life was followed by the heavy, 
regular chuffing of airplane propellers revolving against the winds of the 
storm. 
The C-130 transport plane was preparing for takeoff. 
The tyrannosaur roared and moved away from Troy and Kelly, turning all its 
attention toward the plane. 
Clive Mason, copilot to the late Buzz Calhoun, sat at the controls of the C-130 
with one thought in mind: takeoff. 
Mason had been inside the storage depot when the tyrannosaur grabbed Calhoun and 
bit his body in half. He 'had no wish to share his former captain's fate. The 
C-130 was not supposed to take off without permission from Tarosh and an okay 
from the radio operator. But the way Mason saw it, Calhoun was dead, the radio 
shack was history, and all bets were off. 
88 
"Ready?" he called to his former navigator, now copilot.
"I'm not finished with the checklist." "Dump the checklist. We're lifting off." 
"The windscreen isn't fully deiced."
"The hell with the windscreen, and the ice." Mason pushed the throttle forward. 
The C-130 started to taxi down the short iced-over runway of Deepcore Station.
"We need more power," the navigator said. Mason adjusted the thrust and flap 
levers. The C-130 increased its speed, skidding on the slippery runway. Fierce 
storm winds rocked the wings.
"Nice and easy," Mason whispered, increasing the speed.
The tyrannosaur leaped onto the runway then, directly in front of the oncoming 
plane. It had sprinted from the central complex to the runway in record time, 
long legs covering the distance like those of a gigantic roadrunner. It now 
stood before the C-130, jaws open, tail twitching, ready to meet the metal 
monster head-on.
"Holy Christ!" Mason said. "Turn it!" the navigator cried. "I'm turning!"
Mason jerked the aircraft to the left, trying to cut around the tyrannosaur. The 
two propellers on the right wing swung toward the beast, but it sidestepped the 
wing with one quick move, then turned and mounted the plane from the rear, 
scrambling across the wing toward the fuselage. "He's on our wing!" the 
navigator cried.
Mason pushed the throttle and thrust lever all the way in.
The C-130 started to take off. But burdened as it was by the weight of a 
tyrannosaur on one wing, it did not get very far off the ground.
89 
In the process of becoming airborne, the plane started to tip precariously to 
the right. Mason tried to adjust for it by increasing the power even more. 
"Mayday!" he shouted into his microphone. "Mayday!" 
Troy finally reached the first building of the central complex, huffing vapor 
plumes into the subzero air. 
"Put me down!" Kelly demanded. 
He slipped her off his shoulder, then started pounding on the locked door in a 
frantic attempt to attract the attention of someone, anyone who might be inside. 

Kelly noticed the C-130 then, tilted to one side, with the tyrannosaur perched 
like a huge gremlin on the right wing. 
"Oh, my God!" She pointed. "Look!" 
Troy turned in time to see the plane's nose pitch downward. 
The door in front of them opened suddenly to reveal the cook, Pete Mendoza, 
blinking into the fierce wind, a large bandage still wrapped around the end of 
his index finger, where the first joint had been taken off by the tyrannosaur 
when it was only a seven-inch hatchling. 
"Jesus Christ!" Mendoza shouted, pointing with his bandaged hand. "You see it 
climb up on that goddamn wing, man?" 
"Yeah," Troy said, still watching the plane, "we see it." 
The C-130's right wing dipped down beneath the tyrannosaur's great weight and 
hit the icy runway. The creature leaped off with astonishing agility, jumping 
clear of the crashing plane, which began to cartwheel, spinning end over end 
down the runway. 
When the aircraft hit the snowbank at the end 
90 
of the runway, it flipped over backward, airborne again but upside down now. It 
flew that way for several hundred yards before losing altitude suddenly and 
dropping like a stone into the near freezing waters of the Bransfield Strait.
The plane exploded on contact, gas tanks overfull in anticipation of flying back 
an extra-heavy cargo. A series of bright orange explosions lit up the Antarctic 
sky, billowing out above the dark blue water. Reverberations from the explosions 
echoed like shock waves along the coast of the Peninsula, causing icebergs out 
in the Bransfield Strait to calve with muffled cracking sounds.
Troy and Kelly stood with Pete Mendoza outside the open door, surveying the 
wreckage. Distant fires burned on the water, while closer at hand, clouds of 
thick black smoke rose from what was left of the Deepcore radio communications 
center.
The tyrannosaur, standing like a colossus in the middle of the runway, whipped 
by blowing snow and ice, opened its great jaws and let out a resounding roar of 
triumph.
91 
Night falls late in the Antarctic summer, and when it comes, it looks more like 
twilight than true darkness. 
Twilight dimmed the sky as Tarosh called a general meeting in the Deepcore 
Station commissary, which had now become a triage center for victims of the 
tyrannosaur's rampage. 
Wounded men lay moaning or screaming beneath thermal blankets, stained dark red 
with blood, their injuries too severe to be treated with the limited medical 
supplies and personnel at hand. Men suffering from shock and exposure hunched 
over bowls of cold soup, staring into space, and jumping every time they heard a 
loud or unusual sound. 
Around a long dining table sat what remained of Tarosh's senior staff, along 
with Troy, Kelly, Mike McKelvey, who had survived with a broken arm, set in a 
sling, and Jack Raines, who looked bruised and battered, but alive. Horst Zalman 
sat beside two of Tarosh's senior staff members, Vladimir Belin and Dmitri 
Prozkov, each man, in his quiet way, looking far more dangerous than Zalman. As 
for Zalman, the side of his face had been scraped raw by metal debris from when 
the tyrannosaur had shattered the front wall of the storage depot, and he could 
barely conceal his 
92 contempt whenever he glanced at Kelly. 
"Why isn't someone taking care of these wounded men?" she asked Tarosh, pointing 
to the bodies beneath the blankets. 
"We lost Dave Richter, our camp doctor," Tarosh said, "when the creature 
destroyed the corridor." 
"You sure he's dead, and not just missing?" "Quite sure. No one got out of the 
corridor alive. But feel free to go check for yourself, Miss Sawyer. 
Kelly bristled. "Listen, Tarosh. What happened out there wasn't my fault!" 
"It was no one's fault-merely a series of unexpected and unfortunate 
developments." "Unexpected? If had you listened to me, that egg 
would be on its way back to the U. S. by now, where it could've hatched under 
normal conditions, without the use of radioactive waste to speed up its growth 
process. And the only dinosaur born on this planet in the last sixty-five 
million years wouldn't be out in subzero temperatures right now, probably 
freezing to death!" 
"You smug bitch." The hatred in Zalman's voice made the other men at the table 
look up. 
Troy leaned forward. "Listen, Zalman-" "Shut up!" he snapped, then turned back 
to Kelly. "Your pet lizard killed a friend of mine. Burned alive when the copter 
went down. I'm sorry that egg was ever found. If I knew then what I know now, I 
would have made sure that somebody shoved it right up your-" 
Troy threw hot coffee into Zalman's face. Zalman screamed as scalding liquid 
burned his scraped skin. 
He jumped to his feet, drawing his Makarov in 
93 
the same movement, and stood there, hot coffee dripping from his face, the 
automatic pointed at Troy's chest. 
"Horst," Tarosh said quietly, "put it away." Zalman remained standing, the 
Makarov resting on Troy. 
"Horst, don't make me repeat myself." "You saw what he-" 
"In a time of crisis, it would be nice to think that we could all get along 
without fighting among ourselves. Troy, another childish action like that, and I 
will be forced to shoot you. Horst, sit down." 
Zalman put the gun away and sat down slowly, eyes on Troy. 
"I know that you were good friends with Erik, Horst. We're sorry he went down 
with the Sikorsky. But Miss Sawyer had nothing to do with that. This is not the 
time for parceling out blame. What we need is damage assessment. Billy?" 
Billy Ballard, a former administrative assistant who had been moved up fast 
because of the deaths of Koznan and others, took out a sheet of paper and placed 
it in front of him. 
"We lost everything when the copter hit the communications center. Transmitters. 
Receivers. The only radios we have left are four walkietalkies people were 
carrying with them. Now that the copter's gone we have no means of local 
transportation except for the dog sleds and two seventeen-foot motor launches." 
"That C-130 would have come in handy," McKelvey said. 
Ballard nodded. "Especially the radio equipment on board. But that's history, 
too. We have adequate food supplies for the next two weeks, although restocking 
is going to be a real problem. Medical supplies are even worse. We had enough 
94 
for normal medical emergencies. After a major disaster like this, how long the 
supplies will hold out now is anybody's guess. Mine would be less than one 
week."
"Generators are functioning, aren't they?" McKelvey asked.
"So far." Ballard knocked on the wooden tabletop.
"What about fuel to keep them running?" "That part's not so rosy. We were 
planning to send the copter over to King George to restock our fuel supply."
"So how much have we got, Billy?"
"Depends on how much we use. Maybe a week. Maybe less."
McKelvey sighed. "Great."
"About those motor boats-" Kelly began. "The launches?" Ballard asked.
"Yeah. Could we use them to get over to King George?"
"Not in this weather," Ballard said. "The launches are used for coastal 
navigation only. You wouldn't want to sail one across the Bransfield Strait-not 
unless it was a matter of life and death."
Kelly's mouth dropped. "What do you think we're talking about? You say we have 
two weeks' supply of food, one week's worth of medicine, less than that for the 
electric generators. If we just sit here, we'll freeze to death! Or starve, 
whichever comes first!"
"You exaggerate, Miss Sawyer," Tarosh said. "By practicing strict conservation, 
we can easily double the limits of our existing supplies. Long before we exhaust 
those, someone will have come over from another base to check on us."
"How do you know?"
95 "Because before today, Deepcore Station had 
been sending out radio transmissions on a daily basis. Someone will notice that 
the transmissions have stopped." 
"That doesn't mean they'll do anything about it," Troy said. "Most likely 
they'll just assume we had some kind of transmission trouble from the storm. 
They might come over to check us out after a really long silence-maybe by next 
spring." 
No one challenged him on this statement, because everyone sitting at the table 
knew it was true. 
"We're beginning to take an unduly pessimistic view of our situation," Tarosh 
said. "The picture's not that bleak. The camp has remained intact, more or less. 
We have sufficient supplies, if we're careful. And-" 
Here Tarosh paused, took a sip of coffee, put the cup down. 
"The most valuable scientific discovery of all time is wandering loose out 
there, as Miss Sawyer said. We don't have the luxury to sit here and worry about 
our own troubles. We have to plan instead how we're going to get him back." 
Troy raised his eyebrows. "You're kidding, right?" 
"Not at all. I'm entirely serious." "Then you must be out of your head." "In 
what sense, Troy?" 
"Sure we survived the first attack, barely-except a lot of us didn't. And that 
was starting out with him in a cage, inside the storage depot, with a 
helicopter, nets, and a tranquilizer gun on our side. Now you're talking about 
going after him out in the open, at night, unarmed, with the element of surprise 
on his side, not to mention his speed and strength." 
96 
"And size," Jack added. "Don't forget that." Tarosh nodded, as if considering 
these things. "It's true we encountered difficulties in our first
confrontation. But we also learned something valuable."
"What?" Troy asked. "How to run for our lives?" "We learned that there is no 
safety in numbers. The large group of personnel inside the storage depot merely 
made things easier for the creature."
"Personnel," Troy repeated the word. "You make them sound like statistics 
instead of men." "We also learned," Tarosh continued, "that
large-scale equipment is no guarantee of success. One man with a tranquilizer 
gun, Gregor Koznan, came closer to subduing the beast than a Sikorsky helicopter 
with a steel net."
"Closer? Koznan hit him dead-on with the tranquilizer dart! You could see it 
sticking out of his damn hide! But a lot of good that did Koznan, or the rest of 
us."
"Another dart," Tarosh said, "would have finished the job."
"You're overlooking something," Kelly said. "Just because tranquilizer darts 
work with elephants and grizzly bears, you think they'll work with a 
tyrannosaur-if you up the dosage enough. But there's a problem. Until now, we've 
never known what dinosaur skin was actually like. Paleontologists have made 
guesses, based on fossil remains. But you can't tell much about skin from a set 
of bones. Now we know from this T-rex that dinosaur hide is tough, similar to 
crocodile skin, but much harder to penetrate. It also almost certainly has 
insulating properties, to conserve heat in a warm-blooded animal-something a 
crocodile doesn't have to worry about. I don't think it was an accident that 
Koznan's dart didn't have any
97 effect. It wouldn't have mattered if he shot another one, or ten more." 
"You're speculating, Miss Sawyer," Tarosh said. "I am not! I examined his skin 
carefully when he was a hatchling. I know what I'm talking about, Tarosh!" 
"The .460 rifles didn't have any effect either," Troy said. 
"Exactly," Kelly added, "and for the same reason!" 
Tarosh turned to Zalman. "Did they wound him at all?" 
"Not from what I could see. But Erik and I didn't have a chance to hit him with 
repeated rounds." "It wouldn't have made any difference," Kelly said. 
Zalman turned on her. "Who asked you to-" "Nevertheless," Tarosh cut him off, 
"we must recover the tranquilizer gun, as soon as possible." 
"Wasn't it destroyed when Koznan was attacked?" Troy asked. 
"No. Gregor dropped the gun, somewhere inside the cage." 
"Then T-rex probably trampled on it afterward." "Not necessarily. It should 
still be there inside the storage depot, somewhere. And it still remains, 
without doubt, our last best hope for recapturing the beast. Someone must return 
to the storage depot and recover it." 
"That is probably the stupidest idea I've heard yet," Kelly said, "not to 
mention the most dangerous." 
"There's risk in any course of action, Miss Sawyer. 
"We're talking about a sixteen-thousand-pound ! He needs to eat a lot. Assuming 
that he's surviving at all in this cold environment, he'll 
98 
need to eat even more. There's not much food in Antarctica for an animal his 
size."
"The seals-"
"Not for long. He'll go after any seals he sees in the coastal areas. But seals 
aren't that dumb. After the first massacre, they'll swim away. The tyrannosaur 
can swim, too, but he probably won't want to, not in near freezing water. So 
what does he eat next?"
"Penguins?" "A few, maybe, before they swim away. An unlucky albatross or two. 
But we're talking snacks for an animal that size! When he gets really hungry, 
he'll come back to scavenge off the dead bodies lying outside the storage 
depot-and any live ones stupid enough to be poking around inside."
An uncomfortable silence settled over the table as they all thought of the 
half-eaten bodies outside, unburied and slowly freezing solid in the dim 
Antarctic twilight.
"He may come back to the storage depot anyway," Kelly continued, "even if he's 
not hungry, for protection from the cold. Also, the depot is where he was 
hatched and raised. I'm sure it has all sorts of traumatic associations for him 
now, but it's still his home."
"We can't avoid all possible risks, Miss Sawyer. But the chance of recovering 
the tranquilizer gun makes running them extremely worthwhile." "Why?"
"Because with the tranquilizer gun, we can recapture him."
"No," Kelly said. "I don't mean that. You're the one who lost him. Why is it so 
important to you to get him back?"
"I don't have to explain my reasons, Miss Sawyer."
99 "Is it just a money thing?" 
Sudden anger flashed in Tarosh's eyes, unlike anything she had seen before. And 
then, just as suddenly, it was gone, fading like the echo of a gunshot. 
"Every valuable object carries a price tag, Miss Sawyer. We have already 
invested a great deal of time and money in this project. It would prove a very 
poor investment if we were to abandon it now, while recovery is still possible." 

"The only thing is," Troy said, "who's crazy enough to go out there and get the 
tranquilizer gun?" 
"Interesting that you should put it that way, Troy, when I was just thinking how 
you might be the perfect man for the job." 
"Forget it, Tarosh. Count me out." "Consider it an order, Troy." 
"What happens if I refuse? Do I get shot, like Burke?" 
"If you leave me no choice-" 
"Then go ahead and get your gun out. I'd rather be killed by a bullet than eaten 
alive by a T-rex." "Think carefully, Troy. Tough talk is cheap. 
There's someone here at this table right now who would be happy to kill you, if 
I just gave him the word." 
Zalman, in anticipation of the word, began to reach inside his coat for the 
Makarov. 
"Not yet, Horst." Tarosh turned back to Troy, smiling with, his mouth only. "If 
you force my hand, I will give the word just to provide an example for the 
others sitting here with us." 
Zalman waited impatiently, his hand on the Makarov. 
Troy let out a deep breath. "Who goes with me?" 
100 
"You may select your own men-subject to my approval."
"You're wasting your time, Tarosh," Kelly said. "Thank you for your insight, 
Miss Sawyer. But I think we've heard enough from you for one evening."
"You don't have to go looking for the tranquilizer gun, or the tyrannosaur. Just 
wait around. Sooner or later, he'll come looking for us."
"What are you trying to say, Miss Sawyer?" "He's a predator, Tarosh, genetically 
programmed to hunt down his food. He's not going to scavenge from a bunch of 
half-eaten corpsesnot when he's got a whole base camp full of live, slow-moving 
mammals here to feed on."
"Don't be absurd. There's no way he could possibly breach these walls or attack 
us inside these buildings."
"Just like there was no way he could escape from the cage?"
Tarosh did not have an answer for that.
101 
Jack Raines was the only one who volunteered. Troy chose the other three against 
their will. 
Two of the men, Paul West and Frank Kearn, accepted their fate with something 
like stoic resignation. 
"We'll have to fight the son of a bitch again one of these days," West said. 
"Might as well have the tranquilizer gun with us when we do." 
Only the third man, Blake Anderson, offered any serious resistance. 
"I ain't goin' out there to get killed," he said. "Neither am I," Troy said. 
"The idea is to find the gun and then bring it back here." 
"What if he finds us first?" 
"Then all bets are off. It's every man for himself." 
When the five men stepped outside, the storm winds had died down, leaving the 
world still and unnaturally silent. 
The muffled crack of calving icebergs drifted in from the distant sea, sharp 
against the silence. Snow crunched underfoot as the men ventured 
out across the frozen landscape. Sled dogs howled from somewhere behind them in 
the dim twilight of an Antarctic summer night. 
They had brought one of the dogs with them, 
102 
Wolf, the mixed half wolf, half husky. He walked next to Troy, yellow eyes 
luminescent in the murky twilight.
The men carried no weapons, no special equipment of any kind, other than 
backpacks and portable lights. Troy had a small blowtorch with him, in case the 
tranquilizer gun, if they found it, happened to be wedged in ice, or locked in 
the death grip of a frozen corpse.
Paul West stopped walking and held up a hand. "Listen! You hear that?"
Ice crunched somewhere in the half-light ahead of them.
Jack listened carefully, then shook his head. "It's nothing. Just some ice 
breaking off from the side of a building. That's all."
"Sounds like something stepping on ice to me." "If it was anything alive, old 
Wolf here would be howling his damn head off. That's why we brought him with 
us."
"Keep it down," Troy said. "Voices carry."
A sharp crack broke the night stillness, followed by the sound of something 
heavy dropping down onto frozen snow.
They all turned in that direction, hearts beating faster.
"More snow, falling off the roof." Jack pointed to the side of a nearby 
building, where a large mound of snow lay shadowed by an overhanging eave.
"Damn!" Blake Anderson whispered. "I wish Tarosh would've let us bring some 
guns!"
"You think that bastard trusts us?" Frank Kearn asked. "He don't want us 
shootin' his precious dinosaur by accident."
"Or him," Troy said.
Because the corridor had been destroyed, the
103 five men had to make their way toward the storage depot across open ground. 
They moved as quickly as the terrain would allow, dark figures against a muted 
white landscape, passing through the twilight of a subzero Antarctic night.
Wolf trotted alongside them, body tensed, ears alert.
Anderson glanced around uneasily. "I don't like it, being' out here in the open 
like this."
"We can see him coming this way," Troy said. "If I see him comin', I'm outta 
here."
As they passed the part of the central complex where the radio communications 
building once stood, West raised his hand again, bringing the party to a 
halt"Look!! You see that?"
He pointed to a taller building, also burned by the Sikorsky's explosion. It 
rose beside the blackened ruins of the station's radio shack, casting them into 
deep shadow.
"It's nothing, Paul."
"Something's back there, Troy! I saw it move!" The other men could see nothing 
in the dark shadows, no movement of any kind. Nevertheless a chill passed 
through them, more penetrating than the frozen night air.
"He's back there," West insisted, "watching us." "If he was," Jack said, "Wolf 
would be raising hell."
The dog stared at the shadows in silence. "I tell you, he's back there!"
"Okay, Paul," Troy said. "We'll watch our rear. Now let's keep heading for the 
storage depot."
As they moved away from the former communications center, Troy glanced back at 
its fireburned ruins.
He thought he saw something move then,
104 
within the shadows, something that had been keeping very still up to that moment 
by a deliberate exercise of the will. He focused his eyes more sharply, muscles 
tightening.
But this time he saw nothing, except shadows. The ground out in front of the 
storage depot looked like a battlefield left behind by a retreating army, strewn 
with dead bodies and debris. Several small tractors sat abandoned, one of them 
leaning sideways and slightly twisted, as if the tyrannosaur had stepped on it 
during the rampage. Crushed and half-eaten corpses lay sprawled in various 
surreal positions. Pools of blood gleamed black in the dim twilight, frozen 
solid on the surface of the ice.
"Jesus!" West muttered, surveying the carnage. The others stopped to look at the 
mutilated remains of men they had once lived and worked with. Then they turned 
to the storage depot itself, the entire front wall ripped out where the 
tyrannosaur had broken through it, dark and ominous now as the entrance to an 
ancient tomb.
"This is it," Troy said, looking into the darkness. "Take out your lights," Jack 
instructed the others. "Once we're inside, try to spread out and cover as much 
ground as possible. This gun we're looking for could be anywhere."
Anderson stopped at the threshold to the darkness.
"What's wrong, Blake?" Kearn asked.
"I don't like walkin' into a goddamn one-way trap."
"Hell, Blake. Nobody likes it."
They moved forward, into the storage depot, portable lights cutting through the 
darkness, making long shadows that shifted across the floor and
105 ceiling, and the radioactive-waste storage containers stacked high against 
the back wall. 
"What happened to the goddamn lights?" Kearn asked. 
"Dinosaur must have knocked out the power when he busted through the wall," Jack 
said. "Since then, nobody's exactly had a chance to-" 
"Bingo!" West called out from up ahead. "Found it!" 
The others came over to where he and Troy stood, outside what was left of the 
tyrannosaur's cage. Their lights shone down on Gregor Koznan's dead body, black 
blood frozen atop pale bone where the creature had ripped flesh and muscles 
loose. The face, while contorted, was essentially undamaged. It lay staring at 
them, mouth open, eyes still and unblinking, wide with horror. 
About five feet away from the body lay the tranquilizer gun, a light film of 
frost coating its plastic barrel and grip. 
"Look over there." Jack pointed with his light to a small white box on the 
straw-littered metal floor. "Tranquilizer darts," Troy said. "Good work. 
This is what we came for. Now let's get the hell out of here." 
He bent over to pick up the gun and the box of darts. 
Wolf growled, deep in his throat-a low, menacing growl. 
"What is it?" Anderson asked, his own voice dropping to a frightened whisper. 
He swept his light over the inside of the storage depot. 
Shadows danced crazily across the floor and back wall, expanding and 
contracting, but the light revealed nothing that had not been there all along. 
106 
Troy leaned down close to Wolf. "What's the matter, boy? You hear something 
funny?"
The mixed breed growled again, lowering his head.
"Smells something, more likely," Jack said. "Tyrannosaur," Kearn suggested.
"Shut up!" West turned to him. "Just shut yourTroy raised a hand. "Listen."
From outside the storage depot came a chuffing sound, like something blowing 
hard into the frigid night air-something large and heavy, with enormous lung 
capacity.
"Goddamn," Anderson whispered, fear taking hold of him.
"That bastard Tarosh," West said. "Probably planned it like this. Knew we'd have 
to use the tranquilizer gun just about the minute we found it, so that either he 
gets us or we get him. Son of a bitch!"
Wolf growled again, louder this time, and sprang forward.
Troy grabbed him by the collar.
"Easy, boy," he whispered, holding him back. The chuffing sound came again, 
along with the sharp crunch of ice breaking loose underfoot-a large quantity of 
ice, shattered by a foot of monstrous dimensions.
"Shut off the lights!" Troy ordered.
"He's already heard us," West said. "He knows we're here."
"We don't know how well he hears, or sees. So keep your mouths shut, and stand 
still."
With the lights turned off, the dim twilight outside seemed unusually bright, 
framed by the jagged outline of the shattered front wall: a dark
107 border delineating the image of some safer, brighter world beyond it. 
The four men stood in the darkness, watching and waiting. 
Wolf growled again, more urgently than ever, claws scraping against the metal 
floor as he tried to move forward, held back only by Troy's grip on his collar. 
"Can't someone shut that goddamn dog up?" Anderson asked. 
Troy stroked Wolf's taut neck. "Easy, boy." The chuffing sound came again, 
almost a snort this time, loud and angry. More ice crunched sharply outside. 
Wolf, restrained by Troy, raised his head and barked-a series of sharp, sudden 
warning barks. The ice crunched again outside. 
Then, silence. 
The silence lasted for a full minute, and beyond. Sled dogs started howling in 
the distance. "They must have heard Wolf," Jack said. 
"Is it gone?" Anderson whispered. "Is it gone vet?" 
"Let's go outside," Troy said. "Be careful. Keep your lights turned off. But 
watch your step. There's twisted metal all over the ground." 
"Who's taking the tranquilizer gun?" West asked. 
"I am," Troy said. 
"We might need that out there, Troy." "If we need it, we'll use it. Let's go." 
The five men moved across the darkened storage depot, heading for the dim 
twilight outside. As they passed through the broken front wall 
and out into the pale Antarctic night, Anderson hung back behind the others. He 
stood there, waiting, just inside the depot, as he watched them 
108 
move out across the open ground, frozen snow crunching beneath their insulated 
boots.
Wolf paused, waiting with him. Anderson looked at the dog.
"You don't want to be the first to run into him either, huh? You and me both, 
boy."
Anderson continued to wait until the others had walked almost fifty yards out 
from the storage depot. No chuffing sounds could be heard now. No large shadows 
fell suddenly across the snow.
Wolf whined softly and licked his chops. Taking a deep breath, and tightening 
the grip on his portable light, Anderson stepped out from the storage depot to 
follow the others back to the central complex.
Wolf barked, loud and sharp, another warning bark.
Anderson felt the warmth then, sensed it before he completely understood what 
was happening at that moment. Reacting from instinct, he turned toward the 
warmth.
The terrible jaws gaped wide, only a few feet away.
Hot breath, fetid with the stench of rotting flesh, wafted out from the gaping 
jaws in billowing steam clouds. Anderson could feel the putrid breath condensing 
in droplets on his face. He could see the curved teeth, large and sharp as 
machetes, pieces of decayed meat stuck between them-everything in vivid, 
intricate, close-up detail.
He screamed and stumbled back, dropping his light, almost losing his balance but 
regaining it again at the last possible moment. He moved back farther into the 
storage depot, dodging from side to side now with quick, nimble footwork.
The tyrannosaur mirrored his movements,
109 shifting its huge head from side to side like a cat playing with a mouse. 
Anderson had no breath to scream again just then, no time to think, dodging from 
side to side, dancing for his life. 
When the game had gone on long enough, the tyrannosaur lunged at him, jaws 
gaping for the kill. 
Anderson screamed then and leaped to one side, so that the razor-sharp teeth 
closed around his legs, lifting him high into the pale night sky, the upper half 
of his body protruding from the great grinning jaws. His arms twitched 
frantically, then fell still, hanging loose as if broken. Blood slopped down 
from the tyrannosaur's jaws onto the frozen snow below. 
The others turned back at the sounds of Wolf's barking and Anderson's dying 
screams and saw the atrocity outlined against the twilight sky. 
"Well, I'll be damned," Kern said softly. "It was right there beside us the 
whole time." 
The tyrannosaur bolted down Anderson's body, the crunch of snapping bones loud 
and clear in the cold night air. 
Then it turned on the other four. 
"Shine your lights in his eyes!" Troy shouted. "That'll draw him right to us!" 
"Just do it, Paul." 
The four lights came on simultaneously, reflecting off the creature's deep-set, 
nonmammalian eyes. It roared at them and blinked into the bright lights, turning 
its head slightly to one side to escape the glare, squinting against it. 
"Hold them steady on his eyes!" Troy ordered. The tyrannosaur seemed unable to 
move, caught in the beams of the four portable lights. It let out a bellow of 
rage and frustration, but did not turn or move, or attack. 
110 
Kearn dropped his light then. It skidded across the frozen snow, settling slowly 
to a stop, its beam now angled slantwise up at the creature's massive left leg.
Kearn started to run for the central complex. "Frank!" Troy called after him. 
"Get back here!" Kearn ran fast. A tall man, with long legs, he had
lettered in track and field at Kansas State. He covered the frozen ground with a 
smooth, loping stride.
But the tyrannosaur ran even faster, going after Kearn with eager, birdlike 
steps, huge taloned feet scratching across the ice and snow, long tail held out 
erect behind it. Kearn looked back to check how much distance he had made and 
saw the beast almost on top of him, jaws open for the kill. Kearn redoubled his 
speed, sprinting forward in a final valiant effort. But he must have known it 
was hopeless. Perhaps that was why he stumbled, arms pinwheeling frantically to 
keep from falling.
His body never hit the ice. The tyrannosaur snatched him up nimbly in its jaws 
like a lizard nipping a butterfly on the wing. Kearn's horrible screams echoed 
across the frozen landscape as he writhed in the creature's grip. One of his 
long legs, severed from the rest of his body, dropped earthward trailing blood, 
revolving slowly in the dim twilight.
Kearn's blood still dripping from its jaws, the tyrannosaur hissed out a cloud 
of vapor into the frozen night air and turned toward the remaining three men.
"Keep the lights on him!" Troy ordered.
The creature blinked into the portable lights, yellow eyes squinting against 
their painful brightness.
It roared in frustration and went for the lights,
111 its huge head lowered, hot breath hissing and steaming in the night air. 
"The lights aren't holding him anymore!" West cried. 
"Just keep them-" 
"I said they're not working!" 
West threw down his light and seized the tranquilizer gun from Troy's backpack, 
along with the box of tranquilizer darts. 
"Paul!" Troy grabbed for the gun. "No!" 
"Go to hell." West loaded a tranquilizer dart, then cocked the gun, raised it 
for firing. 
"You can't stop him that way, Paul!" "Watch me." 
West took aim at the approaching tyrannosaur, hands steady as he sighted on the 
lowered head and gaping jaws. 
"Get back!" Troy called to Jack. 
They both moved as far away from West as possible, still keeping their lights 
aimed straight into the tvrannosaur's eyes. But the creature did not seem to 
mind the lights as much now. All its attention was fixed on the small figure 
standing before it with the tranquilizer gun. 
The tyrannosaur approached West not with the quick birdlike steps it had used to 
catch Kearn, but slowly and deliberately, as if it remembered the time Koznan 
had used the tranquilizer gun against it and could still recall vividly the 
stinging sensation of the dart fixed in its flesh. 
The creature paused about ten yards back from West, its great head lowered, its 
body tensed for a sudden spring. 
West fired. A soft whoosh came from the gun. Whether because of West's 
inexperience, or nervousness, or because of a strong gust of wind that blew in 
at the last moment, the dart sailed 
112 
through the air low and to one side, completely missing its target.
The tyrannosaur, however, did not miss.
West saw the terrible jaws coming down on him and reacted instinctively, 
throwing away the tranquilizer gun and raising his arms above his head, as if he 
could somehow stop the juggernaut's descent. The huge jaws closed shut, chopping 
off West's arms. Blood burst from the stumps that remained, shooting up into the 
cold night air. West lurched forward in a stumbling dance of death. The 
tyrannosaur lunged again. The curved fangs impaled West's body front and back 
like meat hooks. His screams turned into high-pitched, piercing shrieks as the 
tyrannosaur devoured him alive.
West's shrieks rang in Troy's ears as he fumbled for the control knob of the 
blowtorch, found it frozen solid, and forced it until the knob's grooved metal 
cut into his fingers and made them bleed, and still it would not turn.
Overhead, the tyrannosaur bolted down what remained of West's body, belching 
loudly on the last bits of flesh and bone.
The knob gave. Troy twisted it, blood trickling down his wrist. A blue flame 
burst from the nozzle with a sharp hiss. He twisted the knob more. The flame 
grew in length, a flickering orange-blue rod against the pale Antarctic 
twilight.
The tyrannosaur roared, twisting its head down toward Troy, blood and bits of 
West's flesh falling from its jaws.
Troy raised the torch and opened the knob all the way.
The flame leaped out toward the tyrannosaur, almost kissing its massive snout. 
The creature pulled back with a startled roar, unsure of what
113 this was, or how to deal with it. 
"Jack!" Troy called, his eyes on the tyrannosaur, torch raised in front of him. 
"You still there?" "Right beside you, Troy." 
"Go on over and get the tranquilizer gun, would you? While I still have his 
attention here." 
"Are you crazy? That worthless piece of-" "Three men have died for it tonight. 
We're not going back without it, Jack." 
The tyrannosaur roared, and lunged at Troy. He raised the blowtorch higher. The 
creature pulled back at the last second, growling deep in its great throat, jaws 
snapping in rage and bitter frustration. 
Troy could hear Jack muttering somewhere off to the side. 
"You got that yet, Jack? I can't hold him off forever!" 
"I'm lookin' for the mother, okay? There's blood and pieces of meat all over 
the-Here! Here it is!" As he reached down for the tranquilizer gun, the 
tyrannosaur suddenly cracked its tail like a gigantic whip. The huge tail 
slammed into Jack with such force that it shattered his right leg. Troy tried to 
jump out of the way, but the tail still struck him a glancing blow to his back, 
throwing him at least ten feet forward, knocking the blowtorch from his hands. 
It flew end over end through the air, landing precariously on the seat of a 
small tractor, one of those brought to the storage depot earlier that day to 
drag the sedated tyrannosaur over to the cargo transport. The torch's flame came 
into direct contact with the tractor's instrument panel. 
The tyrannosaur turned to Jack, who groaned as he tried to drag himself across 
the frozen snow, 
114 
his shattered leg trailing limp and useless behind him.
The tyrannosaur roared, hot breath pluming in the cold air.
Jack looked up as the huge jaws came toward him_
"Troy!" he called out. "Help me!"
Troy ran to the tractor, its instrument panel on fire now. His back throbbed as 
he ran from the blow of the tyrannosaur's tail. He snatched the torch from the 
tractor seat and rushed at the creature.
But there was no way he could get there in time to save Jack.
A volley of fierce barks split the frigid night air. Wolf leaped out in front of 
the tyrannosaur, head raised and lips curled back as he barked up at the 
enormous creature towering above him.
The tyrannosaur turned from Jack to the dog, roaring savagely at Wolf, as if to 
frighten him off. But Wolf planted all four feet firmly on the snowcovered ice 
and stood his ground.
The tyrannosaur prepared to lunge at the barking dog.
Then, from the corner of its yellow saurian eye, the beast saw the man running 
toward it with the burning light in his hands. The tyrannosaur hissed irritably 
and turned to meet this new attacker head-on.
Troy stopped a few feet from the tyrannosaur's huge head, thrusting the torch 
toward it. The creature could have grabbed him in its powerful jaws and suffered 
little damage from the torch, but it did not understand this vet.
It drew back, hissing like an enraged serpent. "Get the hell out of here!" Jack 
said, gasping for breath on the frozen ground. "My leg's broke bad.
115 1 can't walk no more. But you can still make it back-" 
"Shut up." Troy squatted down beside him, keeping the flame raised toward the 
tyrannosaur. "Put your arm around me. You still got that tranquilizer gun?" 
Jack nodded. "Never dropped the ... son of a bitch." 
"Up we go. Hang on." 
Jack gasped through gritted teeth as Troy rose to a full standing position. The 
weight fell on his left leg and Troy's shoulder, Jack's shattered right leg 
hanging loose in his thermal suit. 
"Think you can make it back like this?" 
Jack nodded, eyes squeezed shut against the pain. 
Wolf carne up beside them, sniffing at the wounded leg. 
The tyrannosaur lunged at all three of them. Troy thrust out the blowtorch. 
The creature drew back again, hissing more fiercely than ever, its huge tail 
whipping back and forth in agitated frustration. 
Behind it, the tractor's gas tank exploded in a burst of bright orange flames, 
lighting up the cold Antarctic night. 
The tyrannosaur turned and roared at the blazing tractor. 
The two men began to make their way back toward the central complex, Wolf 
trailing behind them. Troy walked slowly as Jack hobbled to keep up, every step 
an agony for him, while the tractor burned like a beacon in the distance. 
116 116
117 Third Phase: Assault 
118 118
119 Amputation 
Jack was delirious by the time they got him into the commissary, put him up on 
one of the tables, and cut open the leg to his thermal suit. 
Tim Sullivan, who had once worked as an assistant to Dave Richter, Deepcore 
Station's late medic, looked at the shattered leg and shook his head. 
"Has to come off." 
"What do you mean?" Troy said. "It's just a broken leg!" 
"It's broken in several places, with at least one compound fracture that I can 
see. If we had an experienced physician in attendance, maybe we could try to set 
it and hope for the best. But all we've got right now is me." 
"You can't just cut off his leg!" 
"Troy, we don't have the supplies or the facilities to play a waiting game with 
something like this." "We can wait until tomorrow and see how it is then!" 
Kelly, who had come up to the table, looked at the leg. 
She put a hand on Troy's shoulder. "It looks bad." 
"It's already infected," Sullivan said. "If we wait, it could gangrene, and then 
he'll die." 
120 
Troy let out a deep breath. "Okay. Do what you have to."
Tarosh, who had just walked into the room, glanced briefly at Jack, then asked 
Troy, "Did you get the tranquilizer gun?"
"He's going to lose his leg, Tarosh."
"I'm sorry about that, Troy. But you were sent out there to do a job."
"Yeah. We got the damn gun. You happy now?" "What about the tranquilizer darts?"
"We got those, too. Jack was the one who found them."
The delirium lifted for a moment and Jack groaned, shifting his weight. He tried 
to sit up on the table.
Troy put a hand on his shoulder. "Easy, buddy." "My leg! Hurts like hell."
"They're going to have to take it off, Jack." "No!" He grabbed Troy's arm. 
"Don't let'em take my leg!"
"Jack, it's the only way."
"No! Nobody's takin' off my goddamn leg!"
He tried to get off the table. Several men moved in to hold down the field 
scout. Troy stepped back,' the pain visible on his own face.
"Bring in the anesthetic!" Sullivan called. Jack reached out a hand.
"Troy! Don't let 'em do it to me, man!" Troy looked at him, then walked away.
Kelly watched as much of the operation as she could stand.
She left while it was still in progress to go find Troy.
She found him alone in the map room, a bottle of cheap whiskey on the table in 
front of him, half empty. He sat there staring out a narrow window
121 at what was left of the night. 
"Mind if I sit down?" she asked, pulling out a chair. 
He glanced at her. "Friendly tonight, aren't Von?" 
"I'm sorry about what happened. Jack's a nice guy. 
"A hell of a field scout, too. With one leg, from now on. 
A hoarse scream echoed from the commissary down the hall. 
"Christ!" Troy poured himself another drink. "What are they doing to him in 
there?" 
"He just came out of the anesthetic temporarily. They'll put him back under." 
"Nice of them." 
"You brought back that tranquilizer gun, despite everything. That took a lot of 
guts." 
"It took nothing. Tarosh threatened to shoot me if I didn't bring it back." 
Kelly leaned across the table. "Howe did he look?" 
"Tarosh?" "The T-rex!" 
"Big, mean, and lethal-same as always." "Did he seem to be suffering from the 
cold?" "Not that I could see. Hasn't affected his appe
tite any. He swallowed three of the men I brought with me. He would have added 
Jack and me to the buffet, if it wasn't for Wolf." 
"Did Wolf make it back okay?" "Wolf's fine." 
Kelly looked hard into his eyes. 
"I don't think Tarosh is fit to run this camp." "No kidding? When did you first 
figure that out?" 
"I'm serious." 
122 
"So am I. It's a little late in the game to wonder if he ought to be running 
things. He is."
"That doesn't make it right."
"Right has nothing to do with it, Kelly. We're talking about power. Firepower. 
He has the guns. We don't."
"Do you really believe it's that simple? Or are you just trying to avoid a 
confrontation with him?" Troy put down his glass and stared at her.
Zalman poked his head in from the corridor outside.
"Don't get too drunk, Darrow. We're almost ready to knock out that overgrown 
iguana. We'll need your help."
"Bring along some extra darts, Zalman, in case you miss."
"I never miss."
After Zalman left, Kelly said, "You told me a while back you were trying to find 
a way out of here."
"I was-before we lost the copter and all radio contact. Only way out of here now 
is by dogsled or boat. Tarosh's men could shoot us down before we even got 
started."
"So you're giving up?"
"If you want to call it that, yes. I'm giving up." She rose from the table.
"You saved my life yesterday, after the T-rex broke loose. You saved Jack's life 
tonight, when most men would have run to save their own. I thought you might be 
willing to take a risk, instead of just waiting here until Tarosh starves us, or 
freezes us to death. I guess I was wrong."
He watched her as she walked out of the room.
After the leg had been amputated, Danny Chen, one of Sullivan's assistants, took 
it back to the
123 kitchen, wrapped in a plastic bag. 
"Why you bring that in here, man?" Pete Mendoza asked him. "Want me to use it in 
the soup?" Mendoza laughed at his own joke, but Chen said, "I need to throw it 
away." 
"Trash can's out back. Just make sure you put the lid on tight. I don't want no 
old body parts stinkin' up this place." 
"Like the end of your finger, huh?" 
Mendoza raised the knife he was using. "Shut your mouth'" 
Outside the back door to the kitchen, Chen opened the trash can sitting on one 
side of the narrow metal porch. It was almost completely full. After what 
happened at the storage depot that morning, no one had volunteered to take the 
trash out to the compactor. Chen had to stuff the leg down inside the can to 
make it fit and then had to lean on the lid, pushing hard, to make it close 
tight. 
He was still working with the lid, plastic stiff and intractable in the freezing 
night air, when he first heard the sound, somewhere above him. 
He looked up, expecting to see a low-flying coastal bird, an albatross perhaps, 
or a stormy petrel. 
He saw the tyrannosaur instead. 
Its teeth gleamed beneath the kitchen's back lights, dark chunks of flesh and 
blood clotted between large curved fangs. 
The yellow saurian eyes seemed to glow, as if lit by pale fires from within. Its 
hot breath plumed in the cold night air, steam wreathing the gaping jaws. 
Chen cried out in terror and turned for the kitchen's back door, clutching 
frantically at the 
124 
handle, metal ice-cold and slippery beneath his grip.
The tyrannosaur lunged, huge head darting forward.
Chen turned back around and snatched up the plastic lid from the trash can, 
holding it in front of him like some kind of shield. The trash can itself 
toppled forward, spilling Jack's amputated leg, along with other litter, out 
across the snowcovered ice. The tyrannosaur paused and lowered its huge head, 
sniffing noisily at the spilled garbage, steam puffing out from its narrow side 
nostrils.
Chen, seizing the moment, turned once again for the door.
The terrible head rose slowly and stared at Chen as he grappled with the 
ice-slick door handle, glancing back at the horror behind him with terrified 
eyes. The tyrannosaur watched curiously as Chen tried to escape him. Then it 
struck like a lightning bolt, moving in a blur of action, snatching him off the 
back porch, chewing him alive inside the terrible maw, fangs plunging like 
hammered spikes into Chen's body.
Pete Mendoza, hearing the hideous screams, opened the back door to see Chen's 
mangled body inside the tyrannosaur's mouth, revealed in flashes as the great 
jaws opened and shut with savage, lacerating intensity.
Mendoza let out a terrified whoop, then slammed the door, locking it and turning 
the deadbolt with trembling hands.
"Jesus Christ!" he yelled to his kitchen assistants. "That thing's out there! 
Somebody go get help!"
They stared at him, not quite sure what to do.
125 "Don't just stand there, you buttheads! Get help! Now!" 
The tyrannosaur hit the back door. 
The massive head ripped the metal loose from its frame, then tore out the frame 
itself, letting in a blast of cold Antarctic air from the twilit summer night 
outside. 
Mendoza, who had been standing in front of the door, threw himself forward onto 
a long table covered with pans and mixing bowls. The table overturned with his 
weight, dumping him and the cooking equipment onto the floor. The kitchen 
assistants dropped their own bowls and utensils and began screaming in terror. 
Some of them turned and ran for it. Others cowered in different parts of the 
kitchen, too frightened to move. 
The tyrannosaur opened its great jaws and roared, the sound deafening inside the 
close confines of the kitchen. It moved its head slowly from side to side, 
surveying the cramped room. 
Then it darted suddenly, grabbing a young Filipino assistant who crouched 
terrified beneath a table. He shrieked as the jaws caught hold of him and 
dragged him out from underneath the table, devouring him in sections, body 
disappearing bit by bit-legs first, then torso, head, and helpless waving arms. 
The other men in the kitchen froze, mesmerized by the sight of their coworker's 
body being sucked alive into the tyrannosaur's gnashing jaws like a strip of 
human jerky. 
They were still watching, paralyzed with shock, when the huge head turned to 
them, jaws dripping blood. 
They ran for it, jamming the narrow kitchen door that led to the safety of the 
central complex. The tyrannosaur seized one of the stragglers at the 
126 
rear, ripping his body in half, and carried him out into the night.
Two of Tarosh's men arrived then, Zalman and a man named Sanchez. They pushed 
their way in through the crowded doorway, each man armed with a .460 Weatherby 
rifle.
The tyrannosaur, body parts dropping from its bloodstained jaws, turned its 
attention to them. Sanchez took aim and fired. The rifle's report
exploded inside the kitchen. The large-caliber bullet bounced off the creature's 
bony skull, then ricocheted off pots and pans before embedding itself in the 
wall near the doorway.
"Aim lower," Zalman said, "at the mouth, or throat."
Sanchez nodded and prepared to fire again. But the tyrannosaur struck first, 
lunging forward, shoving its jaws beneath a table, flipping it up and on top of 
the men crowded into the doorway. Screams of fear turned to howls of pain as the 
heavy table dropped on them, crushing bones and skulls. Sanchez thrust out 
the.460 Weatherby to protect himself, but the end of the table caught him hard, 
knocking him down to the floor. The rifle flew from his hands.
Zalman fired up at the bloodstained jaws. The shot went wide, blowing out a 
ceiling light. The tyrannosaur roared and tried to force the rest of its massive 
body into the kitchen through the shattered back door.
The rear wall began to crack and split apart. The creature straightened up 
suddenly. Its huge head crashed into the ceiling lights. Broken glass and 
plaster rained down on the men below. The kitchen lights went out. Narrow shafts 
of dim twilight cast distorted shadows over the chaos inside.
The tyrannosaur lunged at Sanchez, who lay
127 stunned on the floor, right shoulder broken where the table had hit it. 
Sanchez screamed as he saw the head descending, and tried to crawl away, 
wriggling like a snake across the floor. 
He almost made it to the doorway, clawing his way through the tangle of legs in 
front of him. The great jaws seized hold of Sanchez's left leg 
and lifted him up, shrieking wildly, arms flailing at the air. 
The tyrannosaur retreated to the outside with Sanchez still gripped in its jaws. 
Then it flipped him high in the air and caught him as he fell back clown to 
earth, like a dog snatching a biscuit on the fly. 
As the creature swallowed Sanchez whole, its head held back, huge jaws open 
wide, Zalman, who had made his way to the shattered back door, aimed at the 
exposed neck and fired. 
A bright red fist-size hole appeared suddenly in the scaly skin. Blood trickled 
down the heavily muscled neck. 
The tyrannosaur roared in pain and turned toward the ruined kitchen door, the 
place where the burning pain had come from. Its pale eyes narrowed as it saw 
smoke rising from the barrel of Zalman's rifle. It roared again and came after 
him. 
Zalman turned and ran for the other doorway, which was hopelessly jammed with 
men trying to escape. 
"Let me through!" he demanded. 
The others refused to give way, their normal fear of Tarosh's men yielding 
before an even greater fear. 
The tyrannosaur's vengeful roar rattled the kitchen as it shoved its huge head 
inside again, along with as much of the rest of its body as the shattered 
doorway could accommodate. 
128 
Zalman raised his.460 Weatherby and slammed the stock into the back of a man 
directly in front of him. The man screamed and fell to one side. Zalman brought 
the steel barrel down across the heads of other men blocking the doorway. 
Suddenly, a path opened before him. He leaped through the doorway and out into 
the safety of the hall, just as the tyrannosaur was stretching across the 
kitchen to seize him.
The enraged beast turned on the men still in the doorway, snatching up several 
at once in its powerful jaws.
Inside the map room, Kelly shook Troy awake, where he had fallen asleep across 
the table, next to an empty whiskey bottle.
"Get up!" she cried. "The T-rex is in the kitchen!" Troy blinked at her, still 
stunned by sleep and drink.
"What the hell?"
"He broke in through the back wall! They need everyone's help to keep him from 
getting farther inside!"
Troy jumped to his feet and started running down the corridor that led from the 
central complex to the kitchen.
Kelly tried to follow him. They both came to a halt outside the entrance to the 
commissary. Men filled the corridor, shouting to one another.
The crowd parted to make way for two men carrying a wounded man into the 
commissary. One of the man's arms dangled loose from the stretcher, barely 
attached to the body. His face was awash with blood where the skin had been 
ripped loose from it.
Tarosh stood to one side of the corridor, a hard
129 look in his eyes as he took stock of this new disaster.
"Tarosh!" Troy called to him. "Has the tyrannosaur got out of the kitchen yet?"
"We have him contained, for now. Where were you when we needed your help, Troy?"
"Asleep." "He means drunk," Zalman said, coming up to them, .460 Weatherby in 
his grip. "Blind drunk."
"I didn't see you volunteering to get the tranquilizer gun, Zalman. Too had. You 
could have been digested by now."
Zalman's hands tightened on the rifle.
"Get inside the commissary," Tarosh ordered, "both of you."
The commissary, more an infirmary than a dining hall by now, echoed with the 
groans of the dying, and the frightened babble of those still trying to save 
them.
Troy went over to where Jack lay beneath a thermal blanket.
"How is he?" Troy asked the man attending him. "Coming out of sedation."
Troy knelt down next to Jack's pale, drawn face. The field scout shifted 
uneasily and opened his eyes.
"Troy?" He put a hand on Jack's shoulder. "Right here, buddy."
The noise level kept rising inside the commissary as more men entered, talking 
in loud voices about the latest attack.
Zalman walked out into the middle of the crowded room, the Weatherby raised 
before him. "Shut up!" he shouted. "All of you! Shut up!" Jack looked up with 
eyes still-blurred by anesthetic.
130 "Did they take it off, Troy?" 
"Don't worry, Jack. You'll be walking again in no time." 
The noise continued to rise inside the commissary. 
Zalman pointed the .460 up at the ceiling and fired. 
The rifle's roar displaced every other sound in the room. 
Bits of broken plaster rained down onto the tables and the chairs and the men 
standing there, looking shocked. 
Zalman stared at them, as if daring anyone to talk. 
"When I say shut up, I mean shut up!" 
"Thank you, Horst." Tarosh stepped into the center of the room. "As you know, we 
have suffered another attack, in the kitchen this time. Some men were lost, 
others badly injured. Why he chose the kitchen, we don't know. Perhaps he was 
drawn by the smell of food. Whatever the reason, it was an unlucky choice for 
us. It has changed things. Billy?" 
Ballard looked up from the papers spread out before him. 
"We had the main food supplies stored there. After Horst shot him, he went crazy 
and trashed the place. We lost most of the supplies. We don't know how much 
exactly, because we can't get in right now to do a damage assessment." 
"So," Tarosh said, "the amount of time we can remain here is now more limited 
than ever-unless we can receive additional supplies soon, no longer an option 
because of the downed radio communications. Our very survival is therefore at 
stake. It may be time to cast scientific knowledge aside and simply destroy the 
creature." 
131 The last statement met with cries of support
from the men assembled inside the commissary. "He's just doing what he was born 
to do!" Kelly called out above the cheering. "Hunting by instinct, attacking to 
survive. You want to kill him for that?"
The men turned toward her, muttering angrily. "Miss Sawyer," Tarosh said, anger 
in his own voice, "we've heard enough of your apologies for the creature's 
behavior. The choice is simple now. Either he dies, or we do."
"How do you plan to kill him?" Troy asked from where he knelt beside Jack. 
"Nothing we've got can stop him."
"The tranquilizer gun-"
"Worthless. I saw Paul West fire it point-blank in that monster's face. He 
missed. And he only got one shot."
"And Zalman shot him with the rifle," one of the bolder men added. "You could 
see where it hit him, right on the side of his neck. But all it did was drive 
him crazy, like Billy said."
"I'm not willing to rule out any weapons at this point," Tarosh said, "but there 
still is another option we haven't considered yet. Billy?"
"We could take the gelignite we use for blasting core samples," Ballard said, 
"and set it up somewhere. Bury it in the snow, with an electronic timer fuse 
attached. Then we could use a kind of decoy to lure him where we wanted-"
"Where's the blast site going to be?" Troy asked. "The far end of the 
Peninsula?"
"We could set it a little closer to the base camp-"
"Then you'll blow up a hell of a lot more than the T-rex."
"That depends. Not if we"
132 
A heavy thump hit the wall near the table where Ballard was sitting, as if a 
truck had backed into the side of the building.
Ballard looked up from his papers in astonishment.
The thump came again, louder this time, rattling the wall.
Men began to mutter fearfully among themselves. Those standing near the wall 
moved back. Ballard sat behind the table, blinking up at the wall through 
thick-lensed glasses.
"Better clear out of there, Billy," Troy warned. Men started for the commissary 
exit, glancing back at the wall behind the table where Ballard was sitting.
"Stay where you are!" Tarosh ordered the men. Zalman raised the .460 and took 
aim at some. The rush for the exit slowed down, then stopped.
"Impossible," Tarosh said quietly, talking to himself.
Ballard started to get up from the table.
The wall burst open behind him, sending pieces of metal and plaster flying 
across the room. The tyrannosaur thrust its head inside the commissary, huge 
jaws gaping wide, hot breath scattering Baliard's papers across the conference 
table.
Ballard tried to run, but his chair slipped under the table and got tangled up 
with his feet, throwing him to the floor. He crawled beneath the table on his 
hands and knees. The tyrannosaur opened its jaws wide and roared at him.
Most of the men in the room started running for the exit again, ignoring Zalman 
and his rifle.
At a nod from Tarosh, Zalman raised the Weatherby and fired into the fleeing 
crowd.
The .460 cartridge took a man in the back,
133 blowing his guts out through his chest, splattering those in front of him. 
The others stopped running and looked back at Zalman. 
The tyrannosaur roared again at Ballard underneath the table. Then the creature 
shoved its nose beneath the table and tossed it up into the air, revealing 
Ballard on his knees, hands covering his head. He got to his feet and started 
running for the cover of another table nearby. The tyrannosaur, stretching its 
neck out from the hole in the wall, snapped at the running man, tearing off his 
left arm and most of the flesh from the left side of his torso. Ballard managed 
to run a few more feet before the shock hit him. He fell facedown and lay there, 
growing pale as the blood pumped out of his left side. 
The tyrannosaur stretched its neck farther inside the commissary and clamped 
hold of Ballard's legs, dragging his limp body back across the floor. 
Zalman, aiming the Weatherby at the beast's left eye, squeezed the trigger with 
a slow, even pull. A gout of blood burst beneath the eye. 
The tyrannosaur, in the act of devouring Ballard, roared in pain. Ballard's head 
dropped out of the gaping jaws and onto the commissary floor, where it rolled 
almost halfway across the room before coming to a stop. The beast saw smoke 
rising from the Weatherby rifle and the man backing off now, the same one who 
had hurt it in the kitchen. The tyrannosaur let out a vengeful roar and began 
shouldering its way inside the commissary, breaking down the rest of the wall 
with its massive bulk. 
The men stampeded for the exit. 
134 
Tarosh, seeing Zalman back off, called sharply to him.
"Horst! Fire again! Shoot to kill."
Zalman nodded, face pale. He raised the .460 and took aim again, hands trembling 
now as he did so.
The tyrannosaur, almost entirely inside the commissary, lunged at Zalman with a 
great distance-spanning leap.
Zalman screamed and dropped the rifle and ran for his life.
The rifle skidded across the floor. The tyrannosaur snatched it up, chomping 
down on the barrel with huge curved fangs, shattering the stock, spitting out 
the debris.
The beast roared in triumph and started lunging indiscriminately at tables and 
chairs, splintering them, tossing fragments into the air. Part of one table fell 
on a row of wounded men lying on the floor, their screams lost amid the cries of 
other men pushing their way out the exit.
"Light something on fire!" Troy shouted above the panic, but no one was 
listening.
He grabbed George Benson, who was running for the exit.
"George! You got your lighter on you?" Without stopping, Benson tossed him a 
butane lighter.
The tyrannosaur, its full length inside the commissary now, turned and snatched 
a wounded man two beds down from Jack.
The man, one of Pete Mendoza's assistants, had been attacked earlier in the 
kitchen by the tyrannosaur and savagely mauled. Now he could only lie there, 
immobile and helpless, watching the creature come for him again, like a monster 
from his worst nightmare. His feeble screams were cut
135 short as the curved fangs finished the destruction of his damaged body.
Troy grabbed a blanket from beside the wall and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. He 
doused the blanket with alcohol, then set it on fire, hurling it at the 
tyrannosaur.
The beast drew back from the flaming blanket and roared in irritation, pieces of 
the wounded man falling from its mouth.
Troy poured another bottle of alcohol over a roll of bandaging and tossed that 
out onto the burning blanket. The fire flared up, blazing more brightly than 
before.
The tyrannosaur hissed at Troy through the flames, unwilling to break through 
the burning barrier.
Kelly came up beside Troy.
"Get the hell out of here!" he shouted at her. "I want to help you."
"Get back before he attacks again!"
"He's not going to hurt me," she said, glancing at the huge beast held in check 
by the small fire. The tyrannosaur cocked its head to one side and
stared at her, faint remembrance illuminating its yellow eyes.
"If you leave with me, he's not going to hurt you either."
"I can't leave! I've got to keep this burning until everyone else gets out of 
here."
"Then I'm staying, too."
"No, you're not. You're leaving and taking Jack with you."
Troy tossed another alcohol-soaked blanket onto the bonfire, which burned 
brighter than ever, flames leaping high. The creature drew back, hissing at the 
fire.
Troy helped Jack to his feet, steadying him.
136 
"I can't walk, man. I've only got one leg." "That's all you need. Just lean 
on'Kelly. She'll walk you on out of here, one step at a time."
Kelly slipped her shoulder under his right arm. "Pretend I'm a crutch," she 
said.
Jack walked with her haltingly across the commissary, heading for the crowded 
exit.
The tyrannosaur watched them carefully, but made no move to attack them.
Some men took advantage of the temporary truce to help other wounded men out of 
harm's way. When Jack and Kelly reached the exit, the crowd parted to let them 
through.
After they left, the tyrannosaur turned on Troy. But by this time, he had 
already managed to build' the bonfire into a miniature inferno. The creature 
roared in frustration and lashed out at one of the stragglers heading for the 
exit, biting into his body with spiteful ferocity, sending blood shooting out in 
streams, hissing into the flames.
Troy was careful to keep the bonfire going between himself and the tyrannosaur, 
feeding the flames more medical supplies and bedding materials whenever they 
threatened to burn low.
As the last man made it through the exit, Troy set fire to an alcohol-drenched 
pillow and ran with it.
The tyrannosaur darted at him.
Troy raised the pillow like a blazing torch, waving it back and forth as he ran.
The creature drew back, hissing, its tail twitching ominously.
Troy threw the burning pillow into the gaping
jaws, where it caught on one of the huge curved fangs.
The tyrannosaur roared in pain and shook its massive head from side to side, 
dislodging the pil136
137 low in a shower of sparks. 
Troy made it through the exit and out into the corridor, where he locked and 
bolted the metal door to the commissary, 
The tyrannosaur withdrew through the massive hole it had made in the rear wall, 
roaring again at the bonfire of blankets and medical supplies that still burned 
at one end of the room. 
The roars could be heard in the corridor outside the commissary, filled with 
frightened men, as the great beast retreated gradually into the pale twilight of 
the cold Antarctic night. 
138 
Later that night, having fallen asleep in the map room, with Troy standing watch 
at the door, Kelly found herself being shaken awake after what felt like only a 
few minutes. 
"Come on," Troy said, "get up." 
"Go 'way!" She buried her head under the pillow, nestling deeper into the 
blankets spread out on the floor. 
"Get up. We have to talk about something important." 
"What?" She sat up, blond hair falling in her eyes. 
"Still interested in breaking out of this place?" She pushed the strands of hair 
back from her face. 
"What do you mean?" "Here. Take a look at this." 
Troy spread out a map of the Peninsula on a small table. 
Kelly got up from the floor, wincing at her stiffness. 
"Here's where we are." He pointed to the map. "The nearest base is over here." 
He drew his finger across to the Nordenskjold Coast, bordered by the Larsen Ice 
Shelf. "That's one long haul, across the coastal mountains and over to the other 
side." 
"How many miles is it?" 
139 "About one hundred twenty, give or take ten.
But those are rough, slow miles. We'd have to use a dogsled to haul our 
supplies, even though we might wind up carrying the damn thing if we get hit by 
heavy rains."
"It actually rains in this deep freeze?"
"In the summer months, sure. Sometimes it rains so much you'd think you were in 
Northern California during a bad winter."
"Is that where you're from? Northern California?"
"No. Southern California. Lotusland." "Hey, me, too!"
"Good. We can compare L.A. restaurants while we march."
"Are you serious about this, Troy?" "Aren't you?"
"Sure. But we need supplies, and now that-" "We can still get some, if we move 
fast. They haven't had time to do damage-control inventory in the kitchen yet. 
They won't notice if a few supplies turn up missing."
"What about the dogsled, and the dogs to pull it?"
"Helping feed the huskies is part of my job now. I should be able to cut a good 
team out of the pack. along with a sled, if I'm careful about it."
"When do we start?" "Now.„
She seemed to hesitate.
"Having second thoughts?" he asked.
"No. I just ... I'm sorry for what I said to you last night, about giving up. 
Guess was pretty hard on you."
"No harder than you are on yourself." She stared at him. "Is it that obvious?" 
"Most of the time, yeah."
140 
It was later the next day when the howling began.
A new storm had started to blow in, not as fierce as the last one, but building 
in intensity. The howling carried across the storm winds like the mournful cries 
of a distant wolf pack.
Troy was in the ruined kitchen, pretending to help with the damage-control 
inventory, but secretly making his own private survey of available supplies, 
when he heard the howling.
Jack, outfitted with a crutch, heard it, too. "Something's wrong with the dogs," 
he said. "What could it be?" Troy asked. "They've been fed."
The other men in the kitchen stopped work and listened.
The howling changed abruptly to sharp barks and yelps of alarm, then to cries of 
pain and terror. "Tyrannosaur!"
"Son of a bitch!" "That's him, all right."
"Let's see if we can still save the dogs!"
Troy grabbed the blowtorch-the one that had saved him and Jack outside the 
storage depot, the one that he carried with him at all times now, having learned 
a hard lesson from what happened in the commissary last night.
"Hold on, Darrow." A Makarov appeared suddenly in Zalman's right hand. "What's 
your hurry?"
"The tyrannosaur's attacking the huskies!" "So? No one's planning a sled trip 
right now." "They're part of our base resources, Zalman." "They're extra mouths 
to feed. Let the monster eat them."
"We could eat them, after our food supplies run
141 out-which could be any day now. Ever think about that, Zalman?" 
Zalman frowned, lowering the Makarov slowly. "Okay, Darrow. Go check it out." 
Other men in the kitchen turned to leave with him. 
"Stop!" Zalman raised the Makarov. "Just Darrow, and two more. No crowd scenes, 
in case the monster's still hungry, even after gorging itself on the dogs." 
"Let me go with you, Troy!" George Benson said. Jack stepped forward. "Me, too." 

Troy tried not to look at the crutch. "You haven't had much practice walking 
with that thing yet, Jack." 
"I have to learn sometime, don't I?" 
When they reached the husky compound, the tyrannosaur had gone, leaving in its 
wake sections of torn-up chain-link fencing, scattered straw, overturned food 
and water troughs, and bloodstained dog carcasses, intestines steaming in the 
snow. 
"Jesus," Benson said, "he works fast, don't he?" Troy stared at the mangled 
carcasses. "Yeah." "One of 'em looks like he might still be alive," 
Jack said, limping up on his crutch. "Over there." He pointed to something 
moving toward them from a distance. The dog was covered with blood and limping 
slowly, as if on its last legs. 
"Hey! That looks like-" Troy squinted through his snow goggles. "It is! It's 
Wolf!" 
He started running to meet the bloody, slow-moving shape. 
Picking up the dog in his arms, he carried him back to where the other two men 
waited. 
142 
"Should you move him when he's hurt like that?" Jack asked.
"I don't think he's hurt as badly as he looks." Troy set the dog down in front 
of them.
He scooped up handfuls of snow and used them to wash the blood off the mixed 
breed's dark coat. Wolf whimpered softly.
"I think the blood came from the other dogs, not him."
"That's one tough hound," Jack said.
Troy parted the thick hair in Wolf's coat to examine his skin. Wolf whimpered 
again, and tried to pull away.
"The T-rex might have caught him with that big mothering tail of his. Bruised 
him a little. Maybe even cracked some ribs. We'll have Kelly look at him when we 
get inside."
"Kelly?" Jack smiled. "So, you two are best buddies now?"
"She's not all that bad."
"I remember when she was, to quote, `a pain in the ass."'
"Yeah, well, things have changed."
Troy looked at the half-eaten dog carcasses in the snow.
"We were planning to do something together." "I'll bet," Jack said.
"It's not what you think." "Right, Troy."
The yawning hole made by the tyrannosaur in the commissary wall the night before 
had been patched over with plastic sheeting, which did something to keep out the 
subzero Antarctic winds, but not much.
The few surviving casualties had been transferred into the corridor outside the 
commissary.
143 Those who ate inside had to wear anoraks and
mittens, and caps with earflaps, because of the cold blowing in through the 
plastic sheeting over the hole in the rear wall.
"Might as well be eatin' outside," Chuck Kingsley said, "in some goddamn pup 
tent!"
"You go on out and pitch your tent, Chuck," Ben Morris said. "We'll save a place 
for you in here." "Aw, screw you," Kingsley said through a mouthful of chili.
George Benson looked up at the plastic sheeting rattling under the force of a 
katabatic wind. "If that monster was to come back right now, all that plastic 
wouldn't be nothin' more than toilet paper to him."
"Remember what he did to the wall last night?" McKelvey said. "The whole complex 
is nothing but toilet paper."
Pete Mendoza stood in the kitchen doorway that led out into the corridor, 
supervising the few assistants working at the stove, and glancing up now and 
then at the plastic sheeting that covered what had once been the back wall of 
the kitchen.
"Hey, Pete!" Mark Covicci called from the stove. "Is this stew spiced right?"
"Taste it yourself."
"What are you? The head cook? Or somebody's mother? Come on over here and tell 
me if this crap tastes right!"
"I ain't gettin' nowhere near that stove," Mendoza said, eyeing the plastic 
sheeting. "If that pendejo comes back here, he ain't findin' nze bent over low 
with my goddamn butt stickin' out in the wind."
"Don't worry, Pete. One bite of your butt would be enough, even for him."
144 
In the map room, Kelly felt Wolfs ribs. The mixed breed yelped and tried to pull 
away from her. 
"Easy, boy," she said. "He may have cracked a rib or two. But I don't think any 
are broken." She patted Wolf on the head. "You're a good 
dog, aren't you, boy? A brave one, too." 
"It's a miracle he survived," Troy said. "You should have seen what T-rex did to 
those other dogs. A hell of a massacre." 
"He was feeding the only way he knows how. He's a warm-blooded . He has to burn 
a lot of calories just to stay alive in weather like-" 
"I know, Kelly. He's just doing what comes naturally." 
Wolf padded over to a corner of the room and lay down, watching Troy and Kelly 
with his pale lupine eyes. 
"So what are we going to do," she asked, "now that all the other dogs are dead?" 

"Forget about using a dogsled, for one thing." "Could we carry the supplies 
ourselves, with backpacks?" 
"Not really." "Why not?" 
"Antarctica's a dangerous place for travelers on foot. Dogs can make the 
difference between life and death. Back in 1911, when Scott and Amundsen were 
racing each other to be the first to reach the South Pole, Amundsen used dogs 
and Scott didn't. Amundsen reached the South Pole first, at the end of 1911. 
Scott reached it over a month later, in 1912, and died on his way back, along 
with all the men in his party." 
"So you're saying we can't leave on foot?" 
145 "We may have to. We can't stay here much longer."
"How much food is left for the whole station?" "Less than a week, if we all eat 
light-and if Trex doesn't decide to raid the kitchen again. But we can't carry 
heavy food supplies without a dogsled. We'll have to rely on freeze-dried 
provisions from the outfitting room."
Kelly looked over at Wolf lying in the corner. "Could one dog haul the sled by 
himself?" she asked.
"No. But we'll still want to take him with us." "Why?"
"After what happened to him today, I think he'll be able to smell tyrannosaur 
ten miles off."
Late that evening, something hit the side of the main corridor with enough force 
to rattle walls and floors from the commissary to the sleeping quarters. Men 
stumbled out of the commissary and into the corridor, expecting to see the 
tyrannosaur crash through the plastic sheeting. Men in the dormitory jumped from 
their bunks half asleep and fell on top of other men crawling along the floor in 
the darkness, groping for the exit.
Troy awoke with a start in the map room, where he had fallen asleep over a 
navigational chart of the Bransfield Strait. He looked over and saw Kelly shift 
fitfully in her sleep, lying on the floor beside Wolf.
Without waiting for her, he ran out into the corridor.
Whatever had hit the building moments before hit it again, so hard this time 
that Troy could feel the floor vibrate beneath his feet with the force of 
impact.
Farther down the corridor, Mike McKelvey tried
146 \
to make his way through the group of panicked men crowding out from the narrow 
dormitory exit.
"Where's he attacking now?" Troy called to McKelvey.
"Don't know. Sounds like the commissary again."
"Let's check it out."
On their way there, they ran into Tarosh.
"We already have men watching the commissary," he said.
"He hasn't broken through the plastic?" Troy asked.
"He hasn't been anywhere near it-so far." "What about the kitchen?"
"Someone's watching that, too. What I want you and Mike to do is check the 
outlying sections of the main building. The emergency storage area. The 
outfitting room-"
"What about the generator?" McKelvey asked. Tarosh hesitated.
"If he hits that," Troy said, "we're screwed." "It's an unlikely target."
"He seems to be drawn to large rooms with lots of noise and heat. Why shouldn't 
he go for the generator?"
Tarosh did not answer.
"We better check that one out first, then," McKelvey said.
He and Troy turned to leave. "Listen!" Tarosh raised a hand.
The frightened babble in the corridor quieted down.
The night was silent, except for the howling of the storm.
"He's gone," Tarosh announced.
This was greeted by cheers and applause from
147 the men inside the corridor, as if Tarosh had proclaimed their deliverance.
"But the generator-" McKelvey began.
"Get some sleep," Tarosh said. "Or, if you have the extra energy, we need help 
in the kitchen with the inventory of food and water supplies."
"The generator-"
"The generator is housed in a structure built of corrugated iron. He won't be 
able to break through that quite as easily. Besides, Ed Connors is working his 
shift there right now. Connors is a reliable man. He'll keep an eye on things. 
We don't want to exaggerate our danger. This creature is nothing but an animal. 
It's not as if he could think."
"Then why did he attack the kitchen?" Troy asked. "And the commissary? Places 
where we store food and medical supplies. Two necessities out of three. Only the 
generator's left. If that's not thinking, what is it?"
Tarosh turned away without answering.
Troy did not get back to sleep that night. He returned to the map room to check 
on Kelly and Wolf, sleeping peacefully on the floor once again. He went back out 
into the corridor, where he saw other men standing, unable to sleep, waiting for 
the tvrannosaur's next move.
Back inside the map room, he looked out the window at the pale twilight of the 
Antarctic summer night, snow and ice driven past by fierce katabatic winds 
blowing in all the way from the great mountains of the interior, out into the 
freezing waters of the Bransfield Strait.
After watching the storm for a while, and hearing nothing but the howling of the 
winds, he sat down at the table and took up the book of 147
148 
navigational charts again, trying to find a way to get a small boat safely 
across the Bransfield Strait and over to King George Island, away from Tarosh, 
and the tyrannosaur.
He was plotting compass points when the sound came again.
Something hit the main building-he could not tell where-with shattering force. 
Timbers creaked overhead. The map room rocked from side to side. Kelly tossed in 
her sleep. Wolf woke up and whimpered, licking his chops anxiously.
By the time Troy reached the corridor, the sound came a second time, deep and 
booming. Frightened men milled about in the corridor, calling to one another. 
Troy stopped and waited for the sound to come again. Seconds passed, then 
minutes. The shouting in the corridor subsided to fearful murmurs.
Troy listened so intently that he became aware of his own heavy breathing, and 
the rapid beating of his heart.
He took a deep breath to calm himself, then turned back toward the map room.
The sound came again, shuddering through the central complex with an echoing, 
tearing reverberation.
"Get it over with!" screamed a voice from the far end of the corridor. "Just get 
it the hell over with!" Other voices tried to calm the man who had cried out.
The tearing sound came again, followed by a gigantic thump that rocked the 
entire complex.
"I can't take it no more! Get it over with
Other voices began to shout out in fear and desperation, filling the corridor 
with despair.
Troy strained to listen for other sounds, beyond the frightened babble. But he 
could hear nothing
149 except the wind, howling like a banshee in the Antarctic summer night. 
After almost five minutes had passed, with no Further sounds, Troy began to 
massage his forehead, suddenly aware of the late hour and his own exhaustion. 
"He knows what he's doing to us!" screamed the voice from the far end of the 
corridor. "He knows!" Other voices yelled at him to shut up, followed 
by sounds of a blow, a cry of pain, a body falling to the corridor floor. 
"Troy!" He looked up to see Mike McKelvey coming toward him. 
"You thinking what I'm thinking?" McKelvey asked. 
"About what?" 
"That it sounds like maybe he's trying to tear off the back wall of the 
generator room?" 
"Now that you mention it, I guess it does sound like that." 
"Want to go check it out with me?" 
Troy sighed, massaging his forehead again. "No, not really, but I will." 
"Still got that pint-size flamethrower on you?" "The blowtorch? It's back in the 
map room." "Don't forget to bring that with you. It's the one 
thing in the world he seems to be afraid of." 
150 Conflagration 
As they made their way down the corridor toward the generator room, the overhead 
lights flickered once, twice. 
"What the hell?" Troy looked up. 
The lights flickered again, grew dim, threatened to go out. 
"Something's wrong with the generator," McKelvey said. 
"What is it?" 
"Who knows? We'll find out soon enough." The lights flickered again, then came 
back to full power. 
When they reached the generator room, they found the door standing halfway open. 

"Ed must have forgotten to close it," McKelvey said. "He's bad with details, but 
he knows how to keep a generator running." 
Troy pushed the door the rest of the way open, closing it behind them after they 
stepped inside. A blast of cold air blew down on them, mixed with stinging 
particles of snow and ice. 
They looked up and saw that part of the corrugated-iron wall had been peeled 
back like the lid to a sardine can, revealing the pale twilight of an Antarctic 
summer evening sky. 
"Christ," McKelvey whispered. "Look at that." 
151 "He's been here all right," Troy said. "Ed!" 
No one answered inside the high metal room, which was silent except for the 
steady throbbing of the generator and the howling of storm winds outside. 
Troy called out again, McKelvey joining in with him. 
When they stopped, their voices came back to them as echoes from the 
corrugated-iron walls. "Where can he be?" McKelvey asked. 
Troy mounted the ladder to the catwalk that adjoined the turbine-driven 
generator. Almost fifteen feet high and fueled by propane, the generator 
consisted of separate parts that had been flown in to Deepcore Station and 
assembled on-site by McKelvey and his assistants. 
Troy's footsteps rang off the metal rungs of the ladder as he climbed up to the 
catwalk. Now that he was closer, he could hear an irregular pinging sound within 
the turbine's steady, drumlike throbbing. 
"You got something busted up here, Mike. Must be what's causing those 
brownouts." 
As if in response, the overhead lights flickered again. 
"Don't worry," Mike called, metal rungs clanging as he ascended the ladder. 
"I'll get it up and running again. But where the hell's Ed?" 
Troy moved forward on the catwalk to the point where it crossed behind the 
backside of the generator, right against the rear wall. He looked up at the 
corrugated iron, torn open by the savage force of the tyrannosaur. 
When he looked down, he saw what had happened to Connors. 
Sprawled on the catwalk lay a man's lower 
152 
trunk and legs, still clad in thermal pants, severed raggedly above the hips.
Troy heard McKelvey come up behind him, then stop.
"Christ," McKelvey muttered.
Pieces of bone poked above the top of Connors' pants.
Blood leaked through the metal grating of the catwalk, dripping down onto the 
metal floor below.
McKelvey stared quietly at the mutilated remains.
"Why didn't he at least try to run for it?" "No time. The beast moves too fast."
They both looked up at the peeled-back corrugated iron.
"We better keep our own eyes open. Something tells me he's coming back. Still 
want to work on the generator, Mike?"
"Long as you keep me covered with that oversize Zippo."
"Will do."
As McKelvey examined the turbine and its gears with a flashlight, Troy watched 
the pale night sky glowing through the shattered wall.
He heard the storm winds howling across the Peninsula, and out into the 
Bransfield Strait, and felt the snow and ice sting his face, and he was reminded 
once again of what every Antarctic veteran knew, deep in his heart: Antarctica, 
the loneliest, most desolate continent on earth, is no place
for human beings.
It had supported life, once, millions of years ago. Troy thought of that life, 
the tyrannosaur and others of its kind, and realized that Antarctica had always 
belonged to them-the nonhumans, the s.
153 It still belonged to them, and it always would. "Here's our problem," 
McKelvey said. 
Troy turned to look. "What?" 
"One of the drive belts is slipping." McKelvey took out a pocket wrench. "Bolt's 
almost ready to come off. All I have to do is tighten 'er up some-He reached out 
with the wrench. 
Troy looked up at the ragged opening in the back wall. 
Flurries of snow and ice whirled across the night sky, hammering at the iron 
wall with a fierce, irregular rhythm. 
A clinking sound came from the catwalk beneath his feet. 
"Goddamn," McKelvey said. "Stupid bolt fell off while I was trying to tighten 
it. Get that for me, would you, Troy?" 
As he leaned over to pick it up, Troy heard the chuffing sound overhead, coming 
in through the shattered wall. 
He looked up instantly, raising the blowtorch in one hand. 
But by then McKelvey was already screaming. The tyrannosaur grinned like a 
living death'shead through the ragged hole in the iron wall, terrible jaws 
gaping wide as the mouth of hell, curved teeth clotted with drying blood and 
rotting flesh. 
McKelvey hurled his wrench at the tyrannosaur, but the small tool merely bounced 
off the huge snout like a peanut shell. The creature hissed at the cowering 
figure on the catwalk as steam billowed from its deadly jaws. 
Troy reached for the knob to activate the blowtorch's flame, but his hand moved 
with the stiffness of a mechanical claw. The knob would not turn. The flame 
would not light. 
McKelvey tried to back away from the horror 
154 
grinning down at him. He tripped on the catwalk and started to fall backward 
over the top rail. The tyrannosaur snatched him in midair, terrible fangs 
clamping down on his body, blood splattering the catwalk and the generator. With 
McKelvey's body still twitching in its jaws, the creature withdrew slowly 
through the shattered iron wall, into the Antarctic night.
Troy stood there on the catwalk, stunned by the suddenness of the attack, still 
trying to turn the knob on the blowtorch with a clumsy mechanical hand.
The tyrannosaur's head reappeared suddenly, thrusting through the iron wall, 
jaws dripping with fresh blood. Troy continued to react in slow motion, as if in 
a dream, thinking that the creature could not have come back so fast, that it 
must have dropped McKelvey's body somewhere outside, without trying to eat even 
part of it.
The huge jaws lunged at him.
He jumped back, blowtorch raised in front of him, still unlighted, and fell over 
the catwalk railing.
The tyrannosaur snapped at him as he fell, and missed.
He heard the creature roaring with frustration as he fell, the sound deafening 
inside the iron confines of that room.
He tried to turn, knowing that if he kept falling backward, and hit the floor 
without turning around, he would die.
He hit the wall instead, taking most of the impact on his shoulder. Pain shot 
down his entire right side. He bounced off the wall, clawing desperately for 
purchase, fingernails scraping across metal, and continued to fall.
155 The metal floor rushed up at him as he hurtled through space. 
He threw himself into a roll as he hit. Overhead, the tyrannosaur roared again, 
bellowing inside the iron room like thunder at the world's end. 
Troy flipped forward, head over heels, until he lay on his back, dust rising 
around him. He stared up at the tyrannosaur as it reached down toward him, its 
huge head and the upper part of its body stretching in through the Shattered 
wall. 
He began crawling toward a corner, crippled by the pain in his right side, 
dragging his body across the metal floor. 
The corner seemed impossibly distant, far beyond his reach. 
He could feel the hot, fetid breath descending from above. 
Still at least ten feet from the corner, he collapsed on the metal floor, 
covering his head with his hands, waiting in abject terror for the killing jaws 
of the tyrannosaur. 
The roar that followed made his bones vibrate as he lay there on the metal 
floor, awaiting the end. 
When nothing happened, he raised his head and looked up. 
He had collapsed at precisely that point where the catwalk came between himself 
and the tyrannosaur, forming an effective barrier that made it impossible for 
the beast to reach him. 
The creature roared with rage, yellow eyes narrowing to hard demonic slits. It 
smashed its huge head into the catwalk. 
The metal structure groaned and shifted, but did not fall. 
Troy crawled toward the corner again, dragging 
156 
his wounded right side like so much dead weight. The tyrannosaur swung its 
enormous head from side to side in an attempt to batter down the catwalk by 
brute force. One of the swings caught the generator, rocking the structure to 
its foundation. Sparks burst from the turbine engine. The lights flickered and 
dimmed overhead, and threatened this time to go out for good.
Troy reached the corner and collapsed. When he could lift his head again, he 
began looking for the blowtorch. It lay on the floor nearby. But in his present 
condition, it might as well have been on the other side of the Bransfield 
Strait.
The tyrannosaur lunged down at him again, jaws open wide, held back only by the 
weakened catwalk, which groaned now beneath the beast's great weight.
The creature hissed at him. McKelvey's blood, mixed with saliva, dripped down 
onto the floor. Some fell on Troy.
He stared up at the huge curved fangs, bloodstained, crusted with pieces of 
human flesh along the gum line, like a photograph he had seen once of a great 
white shark, jaws gaping wide into the camera lens: savage, mindless, devouring.
The tyrannosaur withdrew from its position and started battering the catwalk 
again. More sparks burst from the turbine. The lights flickered and grew dim. A 
high-pitched whining began to rise above the throbbing of the generator, no 
longer steady now, but off and on, like a stalling car trying to make it up a 
steep hill.
The creature roared in rage and frustration and threw its great weight against 
the catwalk with renewed fury.
The door to the room banged open.
Men entered cautiously, among them Zalman,
157 staring up in frightened awe at the spectacle overhead. 
Zalman raised the last .460 Weatherby, the one that had been fired by two dead 
men now, Agnor and Sanchez. He moved the rifle back and forth, trying to get a 
fix on the massive head as it continued to batter the catwalk. 
"Don't shoot that off in here!" Troy called to him. "It could hit the generator 
and set it on fire!" Zalman ignored him, and squeezed the trigger. The piercing 
recoil bounced off corrugated-iron walls. 
The heavy bullet missed the tyrannosaur but struck the turbine, sending out a 
whirl of sparks. The tyrannosaur turned and roared at the men 
in front of the open door. When it saw smoke rising from the Weatherby, it 
roared even louder, and lunged down at them, slamming into the catwalk, which 
began to buckle under the impact. 
The men at the door did not stand in the same relation to the catwalk as Troy. 
It was an obstacle to the tyrannosaur's reaching them, but not an absolute 
barrier. The creature leaned against the metal structure and stretched, aiming 
at Zalman, and the hated Weatherby rifle. It snatched a man next to him, lifting 
him up in the air, shaking and shredding the body until blood and flesh fell 
like rain. Zalman stumbled back into the corridor, sucking the creature's hot 
breath inside his own lungs. 
Troy, taking advantage of the beast's momentary distraction, crawled forward in 
an attempt to recover the blowtorch, his right side burning with pain, his 
movements clumsy and halting. More blood from the tyrannosaur's latest victim 
rained down on him from above, warm and pungent. 
"Troy!" Jack called from out in the corridor, di
158 
rectly in front of the open door. "Get the hell out of there, man!"
"I need ... the torch." He reached for it, his hand trembling.
"Forget the goddamn torch!"
The tyrannosaur roared and stretched down toward him, able to reach him easily 
now that he had crawled out of the corner, away from the catwalk's protection.
Troy fumbled for the knob that turned on the flame, his fingers thick and 
unresponsive, those of a stroke victim.
He turned it on just as the jaws were about to reach him.
The creature pulled back instantly, its yellow eyes widening in shock as the 
small flame shot forth, causing heat and pain.
The yellow eyes narrowed again-cold, merciless, enraged.
The tyrannosaur threw itself against the catwalk like a maddened thing, seizing 
the structure in its powerful jaws, tearing at the metal with manic force.
The catwalk broke apart, disintegrating under the assault.
The creature roared in triumph, letting the metal drop from its jaws, battering 
the generator
once more in exultation.
The generator exploded. The turbine flew off, rising through the hole in the 
back wall like a whirling wheel of fire.
The force of the explosion threw Troy against the room's front wall, slamming 
the back of his head into corrugated iron.
He slid down the side of the wall, his body limp and sprawling.
Flames burst from the generator overhead.
159 The tyrannosaur withdrew through the shat
tered wall into the night sky, roaring at the bright burning metal below. 
The lights above began to fade, along with Troy's vision. 
He thought it would be nice if Mike could fix everything the way he usually did, 
but he knew it couldn't happen that way now, because the T-rex had killed Mike, 
and the generator was
"Troy!" Jack hobbled toward him, leaning awkwardly on the crutch. 
Troy saw Jack's hand begin to blur as he reached for him. 
Then the hand and the whole world went dark. 
160 
161 160Fourth Phase: Recapture 
162 162 
163 Decoy 
When the darkness lifted at last, he could see the boat. 
A small motor launch, about seventeen feet in length, it floated in less than 
ten feet of water off the Deepcore dock, moored by a short hawser, bobbing up 
and down with the rhythm of the incoming waves. 
Kelly sat in the bow, waiting for him. She had loaded the boat with the supplies 
they would need for crossing the Bransfield Strait. She wore her thermal suit 
and snow goggles. She seemed excited, but unafraid. 
He glanced back over his shoulder one more time, looking for Tarosh's men. Then 
he slipped the hawser from its mooring and leaped down into the boat, landing 
lightly. He went back to the stern and started the heavy-duty Johnson. 
The launch moved out into the near freezing waters of the small bay, deep blue 
in their depths but almost transparent for the first hundred feet or so because 
of the intense cold. 
Looking down, they saw an abundant variety of marine life. 
Kelly pointed to the leopard seals darting back and forth beneath them. A pod of 
humpback whales glided past the cavorting seals with grace
164 
ful dignity, long pectoral fins trailing beside them like angels' wings.
Kelly smiled and reached out her hand for his. He caught it and returned the 
smile.
The boat sailed across the pellucid waters of the bay, while in the background, 
pale blue walls of drifting icebergs gleamed like the ramparts of an alien 
world.
A sudden commotion in the water caught their notice.
The water turned dark, then frothy white, bubbling furiously like a cauldron 
filled with witches' brew. The roiling water swelled upward and burst, splashing 
them with liquid so cold it seemed to burn the flesh from their bones.
The tyrannosaur's head emerged above the waves, dripping with gelid water, like 
a dark god rising from the deep.
Kelly screamed.
But it sounded all wrong, like the howling of storm winds.
The launch listed hard to starboard, tipping them over toward the tyrannosaur. 
Supply bundles rolled across the deck and into the near freezing water.
He grabbed on to the gunwale with one hand and reached out for Kelly with the 
other. But she slipped away from him, down toward the water, and what lay within 
it. He stretched out his arm until it ached, trying to grab her before she fell 
into the water.
The great jaws opened wide, revealing the creature's deep yawning throat. Cold 
water cascaded from the large curved fangs, and impaled on each fang, like meat 
on a spit, was a head from one of
the dead of Deepcore Station.
165 Bradshaw. Koznan. West, Chen. Ballard. McKelvey. 
Wedged between two curving fangs lay Jack's amputated leg. 
Kelly tumbled into the water, down into the devouring jaws. 
Troy screamed, but what came out was a sound like dying. 
The launch tipped all the way over, plunging him into water as cold as death. He 
felt a burning pain down his right side as the terrible jaws grabbed hold of 
him, severing bones and muscles, crushing him into nothingness. 
He screamed again, a real scream this time-loud, hoarse. 
He woke from the dream in a cold sweat, sitting up suddenly, throwing off the 
blanket that had been pulled over him on the floor of the map room. Searing pain 
sliced into his head and his right side seemed on fire once again. He clutched 
his head with both hands, sucking air through clenched teeth. 
Kelly put a hand on his chest and pushed him down gently. 
Her face was dark with deep shadows cast by the only illumination in the room, a 
flashlight resting on a low table. 
"Easy," she said. "You're okay. Bad dream?" He tried to nod, but the pain 
stopped him. "Head hurt?" 
"Yes," he said, moving his jaw as little as possible. "Feels like it's ... 
coming off at the back." "You're lucky. It could be worse. If you hit it any 
harder, you would have crushed it. How's the right side?" 
"Hurts like hell." 
"No wonder. What did you do to it?" 
166 
"Hit the wall on my way down, when I fell off the catwalk."
"I don't think you broke anything. But you sure bruised the hell out of 
yourself."
"The last thing I remember was when the generator blew, and I got thrown back 
into the wall. Who dragged me out of there?"
"Jack." "Jack? With one leg?" "All by himself."
Troy sighed. "I owe him one."
"The way he sees it, he was paying back one he owes you.
Troy glanced at the dark room and the flashlight.
"I guess nothing could be done with the generator?"
"Burned to scrap metal. The room would have burned, too, if the walls hadn't 
been made of iron. We're on candle and flashlight power permanently. That's why 
it's so cold in here."
Troy started to get to his feet, wincing with the pain.
Kelly pushed him back down. "Stay where you are."
She took the flashlight and brought it in close to him.
He shut his eyes. "What are you doing?" "Open your eyes." She raised a finger. 
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Come on, Kelly." "How many fingers?" "One."
She held up a second finger. "How many now?" "Two. You have very pretty fingers. 
You know that?"
"You don't have much of a concussion, if you
167 can recycle worn-out lines like that with a straight face." 
"Why am I supposed to have a concussion?" "Most people would, after hitting an 
iron wall that hard-unless they happened to have an iron head." 
"I'm lucky that way. How long was I out?" "About fourteen hours." 
"Fourteen---" He sat up abruptly, teeth clenched against the pain. 
"You've got to learn to quit that. It must hurt." "It does." 
He lay back down again, lowering his head gently. 
"It's night again, isn't it?" "Almost." 
"Why isn't Tarosh holding another meeting?" "He is." 
"Why aren't you there?" 
"He wanted to make sure you came out of this coma okay." 
"I'rn touched." 
"I don't think it's deeply personal or anything like that. He sees you as a kind 
of lucky charm. You're the one who faced down T-rex by yourself, twice, and 
lived to talk about it." 
"Yeah, I'm a real superhero." "Well, you're my kind of hero." 
He lifted his head, carefully. "You mean that?" "I never joke with concussion 
victims." 
He threw off the blanket and sat up. "I better go out there and see what he's up 
to. I'm doing it slowly, okay?" 
Kelly blocked his way for the third time. "You're not going anywhere until you 
feel better." 
168 
"Tarosh is a nervous guy. If I don't show my face out there soon, he'll come 
back here to find me." "The hell with Tarosh. You think he matters?
What can he do? My only hope for survival now is you, Troy Darrow. You're going 
to have to get well again, so we can leave this place like we planned, along 
with Wolf."
"Where is Wolf, anyway?" "Over there, in the corner."
Troy looked into the darkness and saw two luminescent eyes staring back at him, 
pale yellow like the tyrannosaur's, but with a comforting mammalian warmth to 
them.
"Sorry," he said, standing up slowly, "I've got to be there."
Tarosh's meeting took place in what was left of the commissary, by candlelight, 
attended by the key people who had survived: Zalman, his face scarred by near 
misses; Jack, crutch propped against the side of his chair; Troy, head bandaged; 
and Kelly, sitting in shadows farther back from the light.
The many empty chairs around the table drew attention to those who could not 
attend. The two unfamiliar faces belonged to Dmitri Prozkov and Vladimir Belin, 
the last, along with Zalman, of Tarosh's security consultants.
"Our situation has grown worse," Tarosh said "I think that much is obvious. What 
can we do about it? The answer to that, I think, is also obvious."
"Get the hell out of here?" Troy suggested. Several heads turned in his 
direction. Kelly gave him a sharp frown.
"Are you serious, Troy?" Tarosh asked slowly.
"No. Just a bad joke."
169 "Very bad. As I was saying-" 
"It's not such a crazy idea," Jack said, "when you look at what's already 
happened. Most of our food and medicine gone, all our electricity and heat. What 
more can we lose by trying to make a run for it?" 
"Our lives," Tarosh said. "We have nowhere to go and no means to get there. 
Taking a motor launch across the Bransfield Strait in this weather would be 
suicide." 
"We could cross the mountains," Jack said, and get over to that Russian base on 
the other side of the Peninsula." 
Kelly glanced at Troy again. 
"Maybe," Tarosh said, "and maybe not. A party trying to reach the Vladivostok 
Station would have to travel on foot, without sled dogs, crossing difficult 
terrain, and probably under blizzard or near blizzard conditions. And, of 
course, there would still be the tyrannosaur to deal with. I would give such a 
party a one in one hundred chance of making it to the Vladivostok Station alive, 
and those are optimistic odds." 
"So what should we do?" Troy asked. "Go up against T-rex one last time with the 
invincible tranquilizer gun?" 
Tarosh forced a bleak smile. "Obviously, we can't outfight the beast, not with 
such weapons as we possess. And not when he has the element of surprise entirely 
on his side. Instead, we must surprise him." 
"How?" "By luring him into a trap, and putting him in a position where at least 
some of the odds are in our favor for a change." 
"What do we bait the trap with?" Jack asked. We don't have enough food left for 
ourselves." 
170 
"I wasn't thinking of luring him with freezedried stew."
"What were you planning to use?" Kelly asked. "Strange that you should ask, Miss 
Sawyer." Tarosh turned to her in the shadows. "As you have pointed out to us on 
several occasions, this creature is a hunter, designed by nature to feed on 
living prey. I suggest we give him what he wants."
"A human sacrifice? You've got to be kidding!" "Not a sacrifice, Miss Sawyer. A 
decoy, something to lure him as close as possible-until we spring the trap 
shut."
"I already sacrificed one leg to him," Jack said. "You got anyone who's willing 
to go the whole way?"
"I'm sure we can find the right person, Jack." "How do you convince him of 
that?"
"There are ways."
Zalman and Prozkov exchanged quick, unpleasant glances.
"Even if you tie some poor bastard to a stake as bait," Troy said, "you still 
have to take care of Trex. And like you said, we haven't got the weapons for 
it."
"We have the tranquilizer gun."
"Come on, Tarosh! You know that damn thing doesn't work. Your boy Koznan tried 
it. Paul West tried it-"
"No one has ever tried it with the element of strategy on his side. The whole 
point of using a decoy is that it will give the man with the tranquilizer gun 
time to take accurate aim at the target-time to fire more than once."
"And you really think that's going to bring him down?"
"At this point, it's our only chance. If we do nothing, he will attack again. 
Perhaps tonight
171 Surely within the next twenty-four hours. Is there anyone here who doubts 
that?" 
Tarosh looked around the table. 
"I have a question," Kelly said. "Suppose you're able to knock him out for a 
little while. What then? Leave him there in the snow and hope he catches 
pneumonia and dies?" 
"We have one more steel-mesh net at our disposal." 
"Of course," Troy said. "The famous steel-mesh net. Remember how well that 
worked last time?" "You're making a bad joke again, Troy. The net 
"Al be used this time to secure the beast after he is sedated." 
"What happens when he wakes up?" 
"We have enough tranquilizer darts to keep him sedated for as long as 
necessary." 
"You have some kind of backup for this plan?" "We have enough gelignite left to 
use as a last resort. But I don't think explosives will prove necessary." 
Jack, who had been listening carefully, gave a faint shrug. 
"You never know," he said. "It could work." "Where is this going to take place?" 
Troy asked. "Far away from here, obviously. We can't with
stand another direct assault. We want to make sure he goes for the decoy, not 
the central complex." 
"He's pretty unpredictable. What if he decides to go for the complex, anyway, 
just for the hell of it?" 
"I don't think that will happen. To make sure it doesn't, we intend to use 
flares to attract his attention." 
"Flares? What time of day are talking about?" "Tonight, as soon as possible." 
172 
"You've got this all worked out, haven't you, Tarosh?"
"I believe so, yes."
"Except for one small detail." "What's that, Troy?"
"The bait. How are you going to force this poor bastard, whoever he is, to go 
along with your little scheme?"
"I don't think it's a matter of forcing anyone. But since you bring it up, why 
don't we ask her?" Kelly drew back in shock. "Me?"
"You son of a bitch." Troy rose to his feet, his voice rising with him. "You 
dirty goddamn son of a bitch!"
"I am going to pretend you didn't say that, Troy. Or at least that I didn't hear 
it. My decision-" "Then I'll say it again. You dirty son of a bitch!" "I would 
be more careful, if I were you, Troy,
about what I said. Perhaps this is only another of your had jokes. But how can I 
know for sure?" Zalnt tn, who already had his Makarov out, aimed it at Troy.
"It's no joke, Tarosh." "I'm sorry to hear that."
"What are you going to do about it?" "Troy," Kelly said to him. "Sit down."
"That's good advice, Troy. Why don't you follow it?"
"Why don't you see if you can make me?" Tarosh glanced over to where Zalman sat 
on the other side of the table, pointing the Makarov at Troy. Zalman shifted his 
eyes slightly to meet Tarosh's glance.
Troy grabbed the candlestick sitting in front of him and threw it across the 
table into Zalman's
face, burning end first.
The flame caught him in the left eye.
173 Zalman screamed and grabbed at the eye with his free hand. 
Troy leaned across the table, his right side burning with pain, and grabbed hold 
of Zalman's gun hand, pulling it back until the Makarov pointed up at the 
ceiling. 
Zalman jerked the trigger three times in quick succession. The gunshots exploded 
inside the commissary. Chunks of plaster and dust rained down from the ceiling. 
Troy, grappling for the gun with both hands, rammed his elbow into Zalman's 
burned eye. 
Zalman screamed in pain, but did not let go of the gun. 
Prozkov and Belin were in the act of drawing their own guns when Troy kicked out 
at Prozkov, catching him in the face, knocking him out of his chair and down to 
the floor. Prozkov, a heavy man, fell hard and took Belin down with him. 
Troy leaned his elbow into Zalman's throat, closing off the man's windpipe. 
Zalman began to gasp for air. 
Troy felt cold steel pressing into the side of his head. 
He let go of Zalman's gun hand. Zalman collapsed back into his chair, clutching 
at his throat while making gagging sounds. 
Troy glanced up at Tarosh, his face hard in the candlelight. 
The muzzle of his Makarov rested against Troy's temple. 
"I told you once before, Troy,, that if I had to draw this again, I would shoot 
you." 
Several long seconds passed. 
A candle flame on the other side of the table flickered under Prozkov's heavy 
breathing as he 
174 
drew himself painfully to his feet and leaned on the arm of his chair.
"What's holding you back, Tarosh?"
Tarosh shoved the gun barrel forward, causing a sharp pain to radiate from 
Troy's temple to the back of his head.
"Don't play games with me, Troy. I need you for the decoy operation. I need you 
to make it work." Troy's eyes moved over to where Kelly sat by
herself, farther down the table, alone in the shadows.
"Look at me when I talk to you," Tarosh ordered.
Troy glanced back at him.
"I need you to work with us, Troy. But if you're going to fight us, I'll have to 
kill you now."
Troy could feel the cold metal barrel resting against his skin and smell the 
acrid odor of gun oil.
Zalman took his hands away from his face to watch. Thick liquid oozed from his 
burned eye. "Well, Troy?" Tarosh asked. "Are you with us, or not?"
"Let me be the decoy." "That's not an option, Troy."
"You need her here. Tim Sullivan was killed in the commissary last night. You 
need her as a temporary medic."
"I've made my decision, Troy. Now I must make one more. You can help me make it, 
simply by telling me. Yes? Or no?"
Troy glanced again at Kelly in the shadows. Tarosh thumbed back the hammer to 
the Makarov.
The sharp click sounded loud to Troy, so close to his ear.
He swallowed hard, then said, "Okay."
175 
As they moved out beneath the dim twilight of a subzero Antarctic summer night, 
Troy walked next to Kelly. 
He looked away from her, but spoke softly, hoping he would not be overheard by 
Zalman, who walked ahead of them, the tranquilizer gun gripped in both hands, or 
by Prozkov or Belin, who walked on either side of them, their Makarovs drawn and 
ready. 
"If this blows up-and it will-I want you to run like hell. Don't stop for me, or 
for anyone. Get back to the base. Find Jack. Even with only one leg, he's the 
best field scout in Antarctica. Tell him about our escape plan. Then you two get 
the hell out of there before Tarosh catches on." 
"And what will you be doing? Dancing with Trex?" 
"I think I'm beginning to figure him out." "Is that so?" 
"I'll stand a better chance against him than you will. That's for damn sure." 
"I don't think so. I raised him, Troy. He bonded with me. He's not going to hurt 
me now." "You're not his mom anymore, Kelly. He's-" "What are you two talking 
about back there?" Zalman stopped walking and turned around to 
stare at them. A patch covered his burned eye. 
176 
"The weather," Troy said, his own head still bandaged. "We were just discussing 
how the storm seems to be letting up a little. The winds aren't blowing quite 
as-"
"Shut up!"
Zalman stared at them with his one good eye, then turned back around and 
continued walking. Several minutes passed before Troy spoke again.
"You sure you're the man to bring T-rex down, Zalman? With just one eye, you 
don't have much depth perception."
Prozkov grabbed Troy and shoved the muzzle of the Makarov into his neck, into 
the fleshy part below the jawbone.
"He say to shut up. So, you shut up. No?" When they had walked more than a mile 
from Deepcore Station, far enough to feel the full numbing effect of the cold, 
the other men with them-Chuck Kingsley, Ben Morris, George Benson-helped Troy 
set up the flares in a large square pattern while Zalman and Kelly watched, and 
Prozkov and Belin stood guard.
After they finished, Zalman turned to Kelly. "Go stand in the middle of the 
square." "There?" She pointed.
"You heard what I said." "Where will the rest of you be?" "Outside the square."
Kelly shivered inside her thermal suit.
"I'm freezing to death! I can't stand out there!"
"You won't have long to wait."
"I can't wait another thirty seconds!" "Do as you're told, stupid bitch."
"Who the hell do you think you are, Zalman?
You have no right to talk to me like that!"
177 He struck her across the mouth with the back of his hand. 
The sound carried like a gunshot in the cold night air as she staggered, then 
fell back onto the frozen ground. 
Troy stepped forward, but Prozkov shoved the Makarov into his neck again and he 
moved no farther. 
"Get up," Zalman said to her, "and get out there. 
Kelly rose awkwardly to her feet; her thermal suit was dusted with snow. Blood 
trickled down from her mouth, freezing to a dark red line that glistened in the 
frigid air. She tried to spit a mouthful at Zalman, but it froze solid before 
reaching him and crackled into ice shards. 
He raised his hand, as if to strike her again. She flinched, lowering her head. 
Then she walked out slowly toward the middle of the square. 
Zalman turned to the others. "Outside the square! Move!" 
As the rest of them moved back, Troy held his ground, his eyes fixed on Zalrnan. 

"What are you looking at, Darrow?" "Human garbage." 
Zalman walked up to him, gripping the tranquilizer gun hard, his one good eye 
glittering in the light from the flares. 
"Tarosh thinks you're useful. I don't. Remember that." 
He slammed the butt of the gun into Troy's groin. 
The pain made him double over, grabbing at his crotch. He looked up to see 
Zalman grinning at him, one eye bright with malice, while Prozkov 
178 
and Belin stood on either side, their Makarovs pointed straight at him.
Troy turned from them and limped after the others, who were standing now in the 
darkness beyond the flares, waiting.
Kelly stood shivering by herself inside the square, orange-pink light casting 
her long shadow across the snow and ice, smoke rising from flares into the pale 
night sky.
A sound came from the darkness, beyond the square, the sound of something large 
and heavy, breaking through ice.
They all turned in that direction.
The sound came again, carried on a blast of storm wind.
"That could be him, by God," Chuck Kingsley whispered.
"Or ice givin' way somewheres," George Benson said. "Hard to tell, with all this 
wind."
"Shut up!" Zalman snapped at them. "We need to keep silent. Have you never 
hunted before?" "Not anything that could hunt me back," Kingsley said.
Time passed with excruciating slowness, the minutes dragging by like hours. The 
subzero cold, intense to begin with, cut deeper because of the men's immobility. 
Any attempt to stamp their feet met with sharp glances from Zalman or the two 
guards. The men began to shiver with every blast of wind.
"My feet are numb," Morris said. "Can't even feel em.
"Probably frostbite settin' in," Benson said. "Well," Kingsley announced, 
"there's one part of
me that still ain't completely froze solid yet." "If you don't shut up-" Zalman 
warned him.
179 "Friend," Kingsley said, "I got to take me a piss, okay?" 
"Go over there and do it." Zalman point to a spot about twenty yards away. "Then 
come back when You're finished." 
Kingsley walked off stiff legged, mumbling to himself. 
"Goddamn buncha hard asses. Man can't even take a piss...." 
When he was far enough, he unzipped his pants gritting his teeth at a sudden 
blast of katabatic wind. 
"Jesus Christ!" he cried. "It is cold out here! I'm about set to freeze my 
goddamn weenie off!" "Shut up!" Zalman called, voice distorted by the wind. 
Kingsley let out a hot stream that blew right back on him. 
"Goddamn!" He shifted his position, adjusting for the fierce wind. 
Another gust blew over him, somewhat warmer this time, and stinking slightly of 
rotten meat. 
He looked up into gaping jaws and pale eyes. The tyrannosaur roared at him, hot 
breath issuing from its mouth in a rolling cloud of steam that enveloped 
Kingsley and his limp, dribbling member. 
Kingsley screamed and tried to stuff it back in his pants. 
The tyrannosaur, whether drawn by the motion or perhaps by the smell, lunged 
straight at Kingsley's groin, ripping it loose from the rest of his body so that 
what was left of him fell to the snowcovered ice in two different directions, 
head and torso to one side, severed legs to the other. 
His dying screams carried on the wind to the 
180 
other men, who stood watching as the beast devoured him with an eager appetite, 
snatching up loose body parts from the frozen earth.
"Get back!" Zalman cried, running with the tranquilizer gun in his hands. 
"Withdraw to the other side of the square, behind where the girl is standing!"
The others began to run with him, skidding on the ice.
The creature swallowed the last of Kingsley's body, savoring the taste of hot 
blood. Then it came after them, bounding across the ice with great birdlike 
leaps.
Troy reached out to Kelly as he ran past her. "Come on!"
"Darrow!" He looked up to see Zalman glaring at him with one hate-filled eye and 
Prozkov and Belin brandishing their Makarovs.
"Keep running, Darrow!" Zalman ordered. "I'll be okay," Kelly said.
He cast another glance back at her as he continued to run.
The tyrannosaur leaped into the square, its huge body tinted a garish pink 
orange by the unearthly light of the smoking flares, great jaws dripping with 
Kingsley's blood.
It stopped and stared at Kelly, its hot breath pluming in the air, its long tail 
twitching ominously.
She shivered, but not from the cold this time. It leaned down close to her, huge 
head cocked. to one side, as if examining her closely. Then it roared at her.
Hot breath rolled over her, foul with the odor of half-digested flesh. It 
smelled bad, but not much worse than the breath of killer whales, which she
181 had smelled often enough while working with orcas on a project near San 
Diego. 
She looked up with what she hoped was a nonthreatening expression-as if anyone 
knew what a dinosaur found threatening. 
"She's a goner," Morris said, breathing hard. Belin turned to him, Makarov in 
hand. Morris fell silent. 
As Kelly and the tyrannosaur faced off against each other, Zalman moved in close 
to the edge of the square, aiming the tranquilizer gun carefully, sighting on 
the yellow eye at the side of the creature's massive head. 
The tyrannosaur leaned down closer to Kelly, sniffing at her, puffs of hot 
breath rising from its nostrils. 
Then it gave out a high-pitched, birdlike chirp, a ludicrous sound from a 
creature of such size and ferocity. 
Kelly felt her eyes mist over behind the snow goggles. 
"Hey, baby!" she cried. "You remember me, don't you?" 
Zalman squeezed the trigger. 
The tranquilizer dart missed the eye itself, but landed in the folded leathery 
skin at the corner of the eye. 
The tyrannosaur snapped its head back and roared. 
The sound echoed across the freezing night air. Zalnn n reloaded quickly and 
fired again. This time the dart lodged in the creature's neck. Zalman fired 
again, but too quickly. The dart fell short of its target, narrowly missing 
Kelly's face. 
Zalman was reloading again when Troy yanked the tranquilizer gun from his hands 
and threw it to the ground. 
182 
"You almost hit her, you damn fool! The wind's kicking up again. It's throwing 
off your aim!" Mouth open, breath pluming, Zalman stared at him.
"You," he said, "have been warned enough." He drew his Makarov and turned it on 
Troy, holding the automatic with both hands as he took deadly aim.
Troy stood there, arms hanging loose at his sides.
Zalman started to squeeze the trigger.
The tyrannosaur reached him first, biting down on his outstretched arms, 
severing them cleanly and decisively as the descending blade of a guillotine.
A hoarse cry burst from Zalman's open mouth. 14c staggered forward, his arms 
still held out in front of him, but cut off above the elbows now, blood spurting 
from them in long, dark ropes.
The tyrannosaur hit him again, lifting him up in the air and tearing at his 
flesh with large saberlike teeth. Zalman's severed head fell from the terrible 
jaws and landed upside down on the frozen ground, steaming in the snow.
Troy reached down for the tranquilizer gun, lying on the patch of ice where 
Zalman had thrown it.
The other men started running toward Deepcore Station.
The tyrannosaur gave chase, pouncing on Morris, who ran slower than the rest.
Troy came up close to the gigantic creature as it stooped to devour Morris's 
body; he moved quickly underneath it. He aimed the tranquilizer gun straight tip 
at the exposed area between the two enormous, tree-size legs, then fired.
The tyrannosaur let out a roar of pain and
183 looked down. Parts of Morris's body fell from its open jaws. When it saw 
Troy, it roared again and tried to crush him with a sharp-taloned foot. Troy 
threw himself out and away from the descending foot, which hit the frozen earth 
with the force of a pile driver, sending up bursts of snow and chunks of 
shattered ice. 
Troy, running for his life now, slipped on the snow-covered ice and fell belly 
first. He slid across the ice for over fifteen yards, the roar of the 
tyrannosaur ringing in his ears as the enraged beast spotted him. 
He saw a flare burning less than ten feet away. He got back to his feet, 
somehow, and ran for it, not even bothering to look back, knowing that the 
beast, with its great speed, would be on top of him within seconds. 
The hot breath blew over him as he neared the flare, leaned over, grabbed at it. 
He fell forward, kept falling, and turned, bringing the flare up in front of him 
just as the huge jaws came down. 
Burning heat singed the tip of the tyrannosaur's snout. 
The enraged creature drew back, roaring at the pain, and lunged at Troy again, 
but less steadily this time, as if drunk, or neurologically impaired somehow. 
Troy scrambled on the ice, getting back to his feet, the flare raised before him 
like a sword. 
The tyrannosaur lunged for him and missed again, striking him with its snout 
instead of grabbing him in its jaws. The blow knocked Troy backward through the 
air, the flare flying loose from his hand. 
He hit the snow-covered ice on his already injured right side and skidded for 
another ten yards before coming to a stop. When he did, he lay there, 
184 
staring up at the beast, unable to move. "Troy!" Kelly screamed at him. "Run!"
He pushed himself to his feet using his left hand, more in response to Kelly's 
cry than any volition of his own. His right arm and hand hung numb and listless, 
swinging from his shoulder.
He began to run again, knowing he could never make it.
The tyrannosaur came after him, but not with its usual surefooted, birdlike 
quickness. The creature lurched forward drunkenly, tipping crazily to one side, 
then the other. It roared with rage, but not even that sounded right-hesitant 
and warbling, slightly off-key.
Troy staggered aimlessly for several more yards across the ice, his right arm 
flopping at his side, before he pitched forward and fell facedown on the frozen 
ground, breathing hard, puffs of snow spurting up from beside his open mouth.
Close by, he could hear the beast lumbering toward him.
Then a roar of rage split the night sky, mixed with something like fear this 
time, and even helplessness.
The roar continued, but seemed to be dropping, as if the creature had fallen 
into a bottomless chasm.
The tyrannosaur hit the frozen ground with an impact that made the ice shudder 
beneath Troy as he lay there. Chunks of snow and ice flew up into the air and 
rained down again, like debris from a minor avalanche.
Several seconds passed before he could lift his head and look back at the 
tyrannosaur lying behind him, stretched out to its full forty-foot length, eyes 
closed, great jaws still open, only inches short of having seized him.
185 
Before the tyrannosaur fell, while it was still after Troy, looking as if it 
might get him, Tarosh stood outside Deepcore Station, watching the distant 
spectacle through binoculars, ready to give the signal to set off the gelignite 
planted halfway between the base and the rampaging creature. 
As the creature made its last lunge at Troy, Tarosh raised his hand. 
"Now?" Sal Vanetti asked, crouched next to the detonator. 
"Wait!" Tarosh said. 
He put his hand back on the casing and adjusted the focus. 
The sound of the tyrannosaur hitting the ground resonated like thunder above the 
storm winds. Tarosh lowered the binoculars. "He's down." Prozkov, Belin, and 
Benson arrived at that moment, out of breath from having run almost a mile 
across ice-covered terrain. 
Prozkov looked back over his shoulder, breathing hard. 
"Slava Bogu!" he muttered. 
"Yes, Dmitri," Tarosh said. "Thank God. The job is done-no thanks to you, 
however, or the cowards who ran with you." 
Prozkov turned to him. "I am no coward!" 
186 
"Perhaps not, Dmitri. But you'll have to prove it to me."
Tarosh pointed to the steel-mesh net, lying on the ice.
"I want you to take that out there and cover the beast with it. Then secure the 
net firmly with stakes. Understand?"
"Yes, Colonel."
"We don't use that title anymore, Dmitri." "Forgive me-sir."
"It's vital that the netting be done quickly and correctly. We don't know how 
soon he might reawaken. When he does, there must be no possibility of a second 
escape. Do you think you and your fellow cowards can handle that, Dmitri?"
Prozkov's dark eyes narrowed, but he said nothing, turning instead with the 
others toward the steel-mesh net.
Kelly brushed snow from Troy's face.
"My God," she said, "I thought you were dead!" "I nearly was. The tranquilizer 
kicked in just in time."
"Where did you shoot him with it? I couldn't see.
"Right up the crotch."
She winced. "Ouch! Poor T-rex."
"It had to hurt. I thought maybe he carried a little less armor plating there. 
Guess I was right." Kelly looked over at the tyrannosaur, its huge
jaws open, its eyes closed, sleeping like a baby on the ice.
"I hope he's okay," she said.
"I don't think the tranquilizer hurt him much.
Or the fall. In fact, he may be coming out of it any second now."
"And he may not." Kelly frowned. "That 186
187 tranquilizer was designed for large mammals, not dinosaurs. I'd feel better 
if I waited until I knew he was going to be okay." 
"Go ahead and play nursemaid. I'm clearing out of here. Now that Tarosh has what 
he wants, he's not going to waste any time getting rid of us." "Zalman's dead." 
"Yeah, but those two other goons are still alive. Not that Tarosh would have any 
problem killing us himself. Which reminds me-" 
He struggled to his feet, teeth gritted against the pain. 
She helped him. "You landed on your right side again." 
"Yeah, I'm. getting good at that." "Does it hurt a lot?" 
"It's numb. I can't feel it, or even move it." 
She felt the arm for him. "It doesn't seem to be broken." 
He leaned over to examine the blood-streaked snow and ice. 
"What are you looking for?" "Zalman's Makarov." "Didn't the T-rex-" 
"Yeah, he chomped off Zalman's arms, but he doesn't swallow everything he grabs 
hold of." Troy nodded at Zalman's head, which lay upside down in the snow. 
Kelly looked away. 
Distant voices reached them through the storm winds. 
They both looked up to see Prozkov and the others dragging the steel-mesh net 
toward them. "Goddamn it!" Troy muttered, turning back to 
his search for the Makarov. "It has to be here somewhere!" 
188 
"You can't fight Tarosh and his men with one handgun."
The voices of the men with the net sounded closer now.
"I'm not trying to fight them. I'm planning to run like hell. I just want 
something to even--Yes!" He reached down and picked up the Makarov. Kelly stared 
at the gun, which was caked with snow and frozen blood.
"Will it still shoot, in that condition?"
"Sure. The Makarov's one tough little gun. Red Army and KGB used it for years, 
along with thousands of terrorists."
He slipped the gun into the pocket of his thermal suit.
The men with the steel-mesh net had almost reached them.
Prozkov pointed to the unconscious body of the tyrannosaur.
"We'll have to play along with them," Troy said, lowering his voice, "and help 
net the T-rex. When we get back to base, we'll go straight to the outfitting 
room and start packing our supplies. We have to leave here tonight."
"What if someone tries to stop us?"
He patted his pocket, the one with the Makarov. "That's what this is for."
Tarosh stood and observed the netted tyrannosaur beneath the glare of portable 
lights, still Unconscious, a great saurian Gulliver staked down by Lilliputians.
"Well done, Dmitri."
"Thank you, my-sir. He does not escape now." "Let's hope not. Where are Darrow 
and the girl?" "They are-" Prozkov turned and looked
around.
189 "They went back inside," Belin said, "after we finished." 
"Go check on them, would you, please, Vladimir? I don't want them unattended-not 
right now. 
Belin nodded, then headed back toward Deepcore Station. 
Inside the outfitting room, Troy dropped a large coiled length of nylon rope 
into an insulated backpack. He worked under the beam of a single flashlight, 
which left the rest of the room in deep shadow. 
"Why so much rope?" Kelly asked. 
"We're going to be climbing steep mountains." "Great. How steep?" 
"Not as tall as the Transantarctic Mountains of the interior, but they're not 
foothills either. Grab one of those things for me, would you?" 
He pointed to a row of butane cylinders. "We need this much stuff?" 
"We need more. We just don't have the room to carry it." 
"We're already taking food, water, extra clothing, thermal blankets, sleeping 
bags, rope-now this. Butane gas. What do we need that for? Cooking?" 
"Heating. You're the one who's always freezing whenever you step outside. How do 
you think you're going to feel after we've been out there for twelve hours?" 
"Will it take that long?" 
"Three times that long-if we're very lucky." "Where do you plan to use the 
butane gas? You can't just start a fire out in the open, can you?" 
No. But you can set up a stove behind a pile of rocks. Also, there are caves up 
in the mountains." 
190 
"Caves? You said we'd only need to sleep for a few hours at a time!"
"True. But Tarosh's men will come looking for us. You can bet on that. We might 
need someplace to lie low for awhile."
Kelly tried to lift her backpack. "How much do these things weigh?"
"Yours? About forty pounds. Mine's over sixty." "I don't know how far I can walk 
carrying forty pounds!"
"You'll get to find out soon. Hand me one of those."
He pointed to a rack of ice axes against the wall. She passed one over to him. 
"Why do we need these?"
"We'll be walking over ice. Slippery stuff. Get an ax for yourself, Kelly. And a 
pair of those crampons, too.'
A thought we were going to be wearing snowshoes."
"For the deep drifts in the valleys, maybe. For the icy walls, we'll need 
crampons and axes." Kelly sat down beside her backpack. "It seems to me--"
"Darrow!" called a voice from behind the door. "Sawyer!"
Kelly looked up at the locked door to the outfitting room.
"If you're in there," the voice continued, "answer me!"
Kelly's eyes widened in alarm.
Troy raised a finger to his lips and shut off the light.
The locked door rattled loudly in the sudden darkness.
"I know you're in there!" the voice insisted "Open this door at once! Or I'll 
break it down!"
191 "Troy?" Kelly whispered.
He put a hand on her arm. "Right here." "Who is that?"
"Sounds like Belin." "What are we-"
"Don't worry. We've got a few seconds left." Outside in the corridor, Belin 
turned to Tom Callahan, who had been ordered to accompany him.
"Where is the key to this door?" Callahan shrugged. "Hell, you got me." "There 
must be a key."
"Probably a key for every damn door in the whole place. But who knows where it 
is? Nobody locks doors around here."
"Someone locked this door, from the inside." "Maybe it just locked itself by 
accident." "Impossible. If there is no key, I must shoot the lock."
"I'm sure if we look for it"
Belin drew his Makarov and pointed it at the lock.
"Shine your light on it, so I can see."
"Jesus!" Callahan raised his flashlight, wincing. Belin fired four times, 
gunshots ringing in the corridor.
Inside the outfitting room, Kelly started to scream.
Troy clamped a hand over her mouth.
The nine-millimeter bullets from the Makarov punched holes in the metal door. 
When Belin stopped firing, the lock and handle hung lopsidedly against the 
frame. He grabbed hold of the handle and jerked it loose, then shouldered open 
the door.
Cordite fumes drifted into the outfitting room. Belin pressed the spring catch 
on the bottom of
192 
the Makarov's crosshatched grip. He removed an almost empty magazine from the 
gun and inserted another fully loaded, locking it into place with the heel of 
his hand.
"Darrow!" he called out. "Sawyer! Are you in here?"
Back behind a rack of hanging thermal suits, Troy and Kelly crouched next to 
bundles of blankets and sleeping bags.
Troy took his hand from her mouth and whispered in her ear.
"Not a word. No matter how close he gets." She nodded, eyes wide in the 
darkness. "Darrow! Sawyer! I know you're here! Answer me!"
Behn's voice rang off the walls of the outfitting room.
Callahan cleared his throat. "Maybe they-" "Shine your light around the room," 
Belin ordered him.
Callahan moved his flashlight over the stackedup supplies.
Long shadows danced across the room as the beam fell on ice axes, and butane 
cylinders, and a rack of thermal suits, hanging like ski clothes at a winter 
clearance sale.
"Guess they ain't in here after all," Callahan
said. "Give me that light."
Belin took it from him and moved forward, flashlight in one hand, Makarov in the 
other. He began to go over the outfitting room carefully, examining it section 
by section.
"I know they're in here," he said quietly to himself.
He stopped in front of a pile of blankets and shone the light down on it, then 
kicked at the pile,
193 scattering blankets across the outfitting room.
As Kelly drew closer to Troy, her foot scraped the floor.
Belin looked up at the sound, moving the light v. I The hire until the beam fell 
on the rack of thermal suits.
He walked over to it, slowly, and reached out with the Makarov, touching the 
first thermal suit on the rack. Using the gun barrel, he pulled the suit toward 
him. The hanger squeaked as it slid along the rack, the sound unnaturally loud 
in the shadows and half-lights of the room.
Troy felt Kelly start to tremble beside him. He squeezed her arm to reassure 
her, but it did not stop the trembling.
Belie reached out and drew another thermal suit toward him.
The hanger squealed across the rack.
Troy took out Zalman's Makarov, newly cleaned and oiled, and gripped it with 
both hands, sighting on the light that shone through the thermal suits hanging 
in front of them.
Belin drew another suit toward him.
Troy took a deep breath, steadied the Makarov in his hands.
Belin reached out for another suit.
Beyond that hung two more. If he pulled back this suit, he should be able to see 
them, hiding behind the other two.
If he pulled back the next suit after that, he could not possibly miss them.
Belin drew the next suit toward him. Troy rested his finger on the trigger.
"Belin!" cried a distant voice from outside the room and farther down the 
corridor.
The suit squealed the rest of the way across the rack.
194 
"Belin!" the voice called, coming closer. "Where are you?"
"In here," he muttered, reaching for the next-tolast suit.
"Belin!" Prozkov burst into the outfitting room, gasping for breath.
"Report outside at once! On the runway! Tarosh's orders!"
The barrel of the Makarov rested on the next-tolast suit.
"Can't you see that I'm busy?"
"These are orders, comrade! Report outside! Srazu!"
Belin struck the hanger with the barrel of his Makarov.
Then he turned and walked toward Prozkov in the doorway.
The suit swung wildly on the rack, like an out-of-control pendulum, as Belin 
left the room, taking the light with him.
Several minutes earlier, while Belin was busy shooting the lock off the 
outfitting room door, Tarosh had been standing in the map room, warming his 
hands in front of a butane stove.
"Do you think it's possible," he asked Prozkov, "to cross the Bransfield Strait 
in a launch, in weather like this?"
"I will do as you order, sir."
"Yes, Dmitri. I know that. What I want to know is whether it's even possible to 
attempt a crossing right now. You've had naval experience off the Taymyr 
Peninsula in the Laptev Sea. What's your
opinion?" ''My opinion, sir"Signals'"
195 Benson rushed into the room, a walkie-talkie in one hand. 
"We got signals comin' through! Loud and clear!" 
Tarosh turned to him. "George, you're interr-upting-" 
"Listen!" He turned up the volume. 
The signals, neither loud nor clear, could barely be heard over the crackling 
static of the walkietalkie. 
An aircraft was requesting permission to land. "George, ask him to give you his 
position." Benson spoke into the walkie-talkie. Static crackled back. 
He looked up again, a grin breaking across his face. 
"He's right over us! Requesting permission to touch down!" 
"What's the condition of our runway?" Tarosh asked. 
Benson's grin disappeared. "Not good. All iced up. 
"Get every available man to help clear it." Benson nodded and started for the 
door of the map room. 
"Dmitri, go get Vladimir. At once. And George?" Benson stopped. "Sir?" 
"Give the plane permission to land." 
196 Jeff Lymon, copilot of the four-propeller Hercules LC-130 cargo transport, 
listened to the end of the transmission from Deepcore Station, then turned to 
his pilot, Stanley Griggs. 
"Somebody's down there after all. Just gave us permission to land. But. they 
want to clear the ice off the runway first." 
"Bugger the ice," Griggs said. "This bird's got skis." 
As the LC- 130 started to descend, they could see the beams of portable lights 
cutting across the 
runway. "Must have lost their power," Lymfon said. "It's the sodding weather 
they get down here." Griggs banked for a landing, taking them over 
the sedated tyrannosaur, stretched out on the ice beneath the steel-mesh net, 
illuminated by porta
ble lights and orange flares. 
"What's that?" Lymon asked, pointing. "Some kind of bloody whale." "Doesn't look 
like a whale." 
"What else could it bloody well be? Big as it is." 
"It's got one hell of a long tail." 
"What of that? There's whales with long tails. 
You ever hunted whales? Pulled 'em up, looked 
'em right in the eye?" 
197 "No." "Then it's a whale, mate." 
Jimmy Fuget, standing watch near the sedated tyrannosaur, heard the engines and 
looked up at the plane circling overhead. 
"An LC-130!" he said. 
Sal Vanetti squinted up at it. "Yeah. So what?" "So what? It could fly us outta 
this stinkin' rat hole!" 
"Forget it, man. It's probably just some survey flyover from the navy base. It 
ain't landin' here." The plane shifted gears then, and continued its descent. 
"See?" Fuget pointed. "Look at that!" "So?" 
"So, I'm outta here, man!" 
"In your dreams. Ain't nobody leavin' this place no time soon, except maybe for 
him." 
Vanetti nodded at the sedated tyrannosaur, motionless beneath the steel-mesh 
net, except for puffs of vapor rising from its nostrils at slow, even intervals. 

"And if he goes, there ain't no room for nobody else." 
"Aw, the hell with him! I hope he dies." 
Fuget shivered, and glared at the unconscious tyrannosaur. 
One pale eye opened suddenly then and seemed to stare back at Fuget with cold, 
clear-sighted malice. 
"Hey!" Fuget cried, turning to Vanetti. "Look at that!" 
"Yeah, I know. Plane's cumin' in." "Forget the plane! Look at him!" 
As suddenly as it had opened, the eye closed shut. 
198 
Vanetti glanced at the sedated tyrannosaur, still as death.
"What about him?"
"He opened his eye just now! He looked at me!" "Your head's gettin' messed up 
with all this cold, Jimmy."
"Up yours! I know what I saw. He opened his eye!"
"Yeah, well, tell you what. He does it again, you let me know, okay? Then I take 
this"--Vanetti raised the tranquilizer gun-"and knock the mother out cold."
As Fuget turned to look at the gun, the tyrannosaur opened its eye again, a 
narrow slit this time, watching them.
Inside the outfitting room, Kelly was still trembling. "Hold that flashlight a 
little steadier, please?"
"He came so close-"
"Don't let it get to you. It's over."
"Why did Tarosh want him out on the runway?"
"Who knows? Maybe they think-"
The LC-130 droned overhead, dropping down
for a landing.
Troy looked up from where he was checking
their backpacks. "Son of a bitch-"
"That's why they wanted him out there!" Kelly
said. She turned and started for the door. Troy put a hand on her shoulder.
"What's wrong? Don't you want to see who it is?
It could be bringing food and medical supplies! It
could-"
"Sure, Kelly. It could be salvation, with prop
lers and wings attached. But Tarosh is stl11 10
199 charge of Deepcore Station. We still need these backpacks and this gear." 
"You don't think the plane's good news?" "I don't know what it is. Neither do 
you." Outside on the runway, the LC-130 skidded 
across the ice-covered ground on its skis, then taxied to a full stop. 
Tarosh walked up to greet Griggs and Lymon as they climbed down from the 
cockpit, propellers still turning in the cold air. 
"Welcome to Deepcore Station. I'm Valentine Tarosh." 
"Pleased to meet you, mate. Stan Griggs. Jeff Lymon. We thought you was out of 
order down here, lights off and all." 
"We had a power failure a while back." 
"That's what they thought, over on King George." 
Other men came up to the plane, talking in excited voices, laughing and 
shouting, pointing eagerly at the fuselage. 
Griggs waved to them. "Jolly sods, ain't they?" "They're pleased to see you," 
Tarosh said. "You couldn't have come at a better time. We're almost out of 
supplies, and we have a special cargo that needs to be delivered immediately." 
"What kind of cargo would that be, mate?" Tarosh hesitated. "A large animal." 
The excited voices died down. "How large?" Griggs asked. 
"About twenty feet in length, forty with the tail." "That's a bloody large 
animal, mate. Big as a whale, eh?" 
"Yes," Tarosh said, "you might say that." Griggs nudged Lymon. "What did I tell 
you?" Lymon said nothing, his attention drawn to the 
200 
appearance of the men near the plane, looking like wasted combat veterans. He 
noticed the frightened expressions that came over their faces when Tarosh 
mentioned the large animal.
"Would it be fair to assume," Griggs asked, "that this animal is all trussed up, 
proper-like, and ready for shipment?"
"Yes. The actual loading should be a simple matter of-"
A shattering roar sounded above the buildings of the central complex, 
accompanied by screams in the distance.
Griggs and Lymon turned in that direction, staring.
The roar came again, cutting through the storm winds.
The men near the plane began to scatter across the runway.
The roar sounded again, closer now, as if approaching them.
"What the bloody hell is that?" Griggs asked. "Your whale," Lymon said.
As the LC-130 was coming in for its landing, Sal Vanetti showed Jimmy Fuget how 
to work the tranquilizer gun.
"You just drop the dart in-like that. See? Then you close it up and, hey! You're 
loaded for dino, man.
"How many of those things does it take to knock him out?"
"Just one or two. You heard how easy it was the last time."
"That thing killed Zalman and Morris before they managed to get him down."
"Yeah, well, they just screwed up, okay? They
lost it."
201 A chuffing sound broke the air, like exhaust
erupting from a massive tailpipe.
"Hey!" Fuget turned around. "Look! He's wakin' lip!"
"So? We just put him back to sleep. Watch." Vanetti stepped forward, raising the 
tranquilizer gun.
The tyrannosaur lay motionless beneath the steel-mesh net, puffs of vapor rising 
from its nostrils.
"Relax, Jimmy. He just groaned in his sleep. That's all."
Varietti steadied the tranquilizer gun and took careful aim.
The tyrannosaur came to life with a thundering roar.
The great beast rose to its full height at once, pulling up the stakes that held 
down the steelmesh net, ripping them loose from the frozen earth with a staccato 
ratcheting sound, like the stutter of distant machine-gun fire.
Vanetti squeezed the trigger of the tranquilizer gun, but the dart did no good, 
whether deflected by the steel mesh of the net, or by the tough hide of the 
tyrannosaur itself.
The creature staggered, still somewhat unsteady after its drug-induced sleep. It 
shook itself furiously beneath the net.
"You missed him!" Fuget cried, vapor and spit flying from his mouth. "Reload the 
goddamn gun and shoot it!"
"That's what I'm trying' to do, dickhead," Vanetti muttered, fingers clumsy as 
he reloaded in subzero cold, eyes glancing back and forth between the breech of 
the tranquilizer gun and the tyrannosaur shaking itself into full consciousness.
With a deep, rumbling roar, the tyrannosaur
202 
tossed off the net, even more expertly than it had done on the last occasion 
outside the storage depot.
The steel mesh rattled in the freezing air, coming down like a lead curtain on 
top of Fuget, knocking him to the ground.
Fuget screamed as he fell, his arm raised inside the net.
Vanetti jumped back in time to avoid the net, still holding the tranquilizer gun 
in his hands as he stared up at the enraged beast above him.
"Holy Mother of God," Vanetti whispered.
The tyrannosaur stared back at him for several long seconds, yellow eyes cold 
and unblinking. Then it pounced on him, swift and terrible,
great jaws coming down like the wrath of God. Vanetti's screams echoed across 
the frozen landscape, striking terror into the hearts of men closer to the 
central complex, men who had already started running, glancing back at the sight 
of the tyrannosaur, framed by smoking flares, as it tore into Vanetti's body, 
blood squirting out in dark streams against the pale Antarctic night.
The tyrannosaur swallowed the last of Vanetti, smacking its jaws on the blood, 
then looked down at Fuget, who scrambled desperately beneath the steel mesh like 
a rat in a trap, trying to find some way out from under the net.
It roared at him, hot breath billowing into the cold air.
Fuget screamed and raised his hands again beneath the net, as if offering 
surrender, or begging for mercy.
The tyrannosaur turned then and began sniffing the frozen earth, huge body bent 
low to the ground, long tail held out erect behind it. When it spied the 
tranquilizer gun lying on the ice, the
203 beast let out an angry roar and snatched up the gun in its powerful jaws, 
grinding the weapon to pieces, shattering the plastic housing, spitting out the 
fragments, snorting at them as they fell down onto the ice. 
Then it turned back to Fuget, who shrieked in fear and began to crawl on his 
hands and knees, Irving to burrow his way out from underneath the net. 
The tyrannosaur did not even bother to lift the net, but merely stamped on Fuget 
beneath the steel mesh, bringing its taloned foot down three times in rapid, 
pulverizing succession. 
After letting out an echoing roar of triumph, the creature bounded across the 
snow and ice with the exhilaration of being free once again and headed straight 
for Deepcore Station, dark vengeance burning in its ancient heart. 
When the tyrannosaur's roar sounded above the central complex, and men began to 
scatter across the iced-over runway, Troy turned to Kelly, both of them carrying 
backpacks and ice axes, standing near an outside entrance, the mixed breed Wolf 
at their side. 
"This is it," he said. "Stay back here at first, clear of the T-rex. He's going 
to be starving after his sedation, and he's got a banquet laid out for him on 
that runway." 
"What if he sees us?" 
"He shouldn't. not with all the easy pickings out there. But if he does, follow 
me. Well have to duck back inside until he goes away. I couldn't find another 
blowtorch. Tarosh must have taken the last one. It's the only defense that 
works." 
"What if Tarosh or one of his men sees us?" "Don't worry," Troy said, touching 
the Makarov. 
204 "Look out!" Kelly screamed. 
A huge taloned foot came down over the top of the building then, crashing onto 
the frozen runway ahead of them, sending up chunks of shattered ice high into 
the air. 
Troy fell back into the recessed exterior entrance, taking Kelly with him. 
The tyrannosaur's second foot came down on the runway, making the earth tremble. 
Then it moved forward with lithe, birdlike steps, stalking the mere on the 
runway. 
Troy pushed Kelly flat to the ground, falling with her. 
"Ow!" she cried, knees hitting hard ice. "What's the-" 
"His tail." 
The massive appendage cracked through the subzero air like a gargantuan whip, 
catching several men as they ran toward the outside entrance, crushing their 
bones, stripping flesh from their bodies, spilling them bleeding across the ice. 

Griggs and Lymon stood next to Tarosh beneath the LC-130, propellers still 
turning. 
"Bloody hell!" Griggs cried. 
"Let's take off," Lymon said, glancing up at the cockpit. 
"Yes," Tarosh agreed, "at once!" 
Griggs frowned. "And leave all them poor sods to die?" 
"We'll manage as best we can. But you must get the plane into the air! The last 
time we had a cargo transport on the ground like this, the creature destroyed it 
on takeoff." 
Lymon sprang up the steps to the cockpit, not bothering to turn and see if the 
captain was following him. 
"Look here, mate," Griggs said, "if I take off 
205 now, I ain't necessarily comin' back, see? And as for your giant crocodile, 
I ain't flyin' him nowhere when he's in a mood like this." 
"Just get the plane in the air!" Tarosh said. "Then circle overhead. We'll 
signal you when it's safe to land again." 
"I don't know, mate-" 
"For God's sake!" Lymon screamed down from the cockpit. "Argue with him about it 
in the air, okay?" 
The tyrannosaur's roar cut through their conversation like mortar fire. A man 
screamed as the terrible jaws lifted him off the runway and began to devour him 
alive. The beast caught sight then of the men next to the plane and roared at 
them, pieces of half-eaten humans dropping from its mouth. 
"Right," Griggs said, and hurried up the cockpit steps. 
The tyrannosaur started for the plane, head lowered. 
"Dmitri!" Tarosh called. "The blowtorch!" Prozkov lumbered across the runway 
toward him. 
Be] in, who had grabbed the last .460 rifle before coming outside, lifted the 
heavy gun and sighted on the tyrannosaur. 
"Vladimir!" Tarosh shouted at him. "Stop! Don't Shoot!" 
Belie, steadied his aim, finger on the trigger. "Put down that rifle!" Tarosh 
ordered, still shouting. "It has no effect! It will only enrage him!" 
The propellers of the LC-130 increased to maximum revolutions per minute as the 
plane prepared to take off. 
206 
"Vladimir!" Tarosh's scream was drowned by prop noise.
Belin squeezed the trigger. The .460 bucked in his hands.
The report echoed across the runway, cutting through the propellers' drone, 
catching the attention of the tyrannosaur.
The great beast roared in irritation and turned to Belin.
He worked the bolt of the .460 and fired again, but the heavy cartridge had no 
more impact than the last one. The creature roared again and increased its pace, 
coming toward Belin with a terrible, measured swiftness.
Belin's nerve broke. He threw down the rifle and ran.
The tyrannosaur bellowed in excitement and gave chase.
The LC-130 began to taxi down the runway. "What if that thing tries to block 
us?" Lymon asked.
"He's just a lizard, mate. He's not that bloody smart."
Belin took cover behind Prozkov, who had the blowtorch turned on by now and 
raised it before the advancing tyrannosaur.
The creature slowed its pace at first sight of the fire, and hissed at it 
irritably.
Prozkov turned the flame up to maximum strength.
The tyrannosaur hissed again, tail twitching ominously.
It lashed out with its tail, striking at Prozkov and Belin.
Prozkov saw it coming and ducked. Belie jumped back.
The tyrannosaur moved its great head in fro1
207 the other side with a swiftness that had to be seen to be believed. It 
caught Prozkov with the front end of its snout and knocked him up in the air and 
across the ice for a distance of over twenty yards. 
The blowtorch skidded across the ice, flame still burning. 
The tyrannosaur stamped on it, crushing it into flaming bits of scrap metal. 
Belin slipped and fell, then got to his feet, and ran. 
The tyrannosaur roared and came after him. Belin ran across the ice-covered 
runway, feet skidding beneath him, and threw himself behind one of the skis of 
the LC-130, still taxiing slowly in the initial phase of takeoff. 
"Fool," Tarosh muttered to himself. 
Then, shouting, "Vladimir! Get out from behind ," 
there: Belin paid no attention, but jogged sideways behind the ski, keeping the 
LC-130 between himself and the tyrannosaur, increasing his speed along with that 
of the plane. 
The tyrannosaur crouched low, trying to see beneath the underbelly of the 
LC-130, hissing in frustration. 
Tarosh took out his Makarov, aimed, and fired at Belin. 
The nine-millimeter bullet ricocheted off the ski strut. 
Belin ducked lower, but kept running behind the ski. 
Another man joined him in his desperate attempt, using the moving plane as a 
shield. 
The tyrannosaur kept up easily with the plane's increasing speed, hissing at the 
men on the other side of the underbelly. 
We got a bloody balls-up out there," Griggs 
208 
said, glancing down from the cockpit. "Lizard on one side, maniacs on the other. 
Increase the bleeding speed, mate!"
Lemon pushed the throttle all the way in.
The men started running faster to keep up with the plane.
The other man slipped and fell beneath the ski. The full weight of the LC-130 
rolled over him, breaking his back, crushing his internal organs. He screamed 
once, then lay still as blood spilled from his mouth, forming patterns on the 
ice.
Belin kept running as the plane increased its speed.
The tyrannosaur hissed at him from beneath the plane, hot breath rolling across 
the metal underbelly.
Belin grabbed hold of the ski strut and hung on. "No more bloody effing around," 
Griggs said. "Lift off!"
He pulled back on the controls, bringing the nose up.
The ski, with Belin hanging onto it, began to rise into the air along with the 
LC- 130. Belin screamed and let go, dropping ten feet to the ice below, skidding 
as he hit, left far behind by the slowly ascending plane.
The tyrannosaur looked up and roared in frustrated rage at the plane passing 
directly overhead. "We're off," Lymon said, breathing a sigh of relief.
"Not one bloody minute too soon, mate."
The windscreen shattered as the tyrannosaur's massive jaws burst into the 
cockpit. Flying glass lacerated the hands and faces of the men at the controls. 
Subzero winds whipped through the cramped interior, blinding them. Griggs clawed 
at
his microphone, got it free.
209 "Mayday!" he screamed into it. "Bleedin', effin' Mayday!" 
The great jaws grabbed him and pulled him out of the cockpit, taking the seat he 
was belted into along with him. 
Lvmon tried to fly it alone, blinded by howling vc,ind, what was left of the 
windscreen smeared with streaks of Griggs's blood and his own, 
lie pulled hack on the controls with all his strength. 
The plane pitched down instead, nose forward, striking the runway at a 
ninety-degree angle. The gas tanks beneath the fuselage blew, exploding in 
orange clouds of flame. 
The tyrannosaur fell back from the crashing plane, Griggs's body and the pilot's 
seat in its jaws. The great beast hit the ice and rolled over several times, 
moving away from the fire. 
Then it got to its feet and roared in vindictive triumph at the burning wreck, 
Griggs's body and the pilot's seat dropping from its jaws and bouncing off the 
ice below. 
Another explosion shook the LC-130, wrapping the entire plane in sheets of 
flames. The cockpit door burst open and Lymon jumped out, falling straight down 
to the ice-covered runway, blazing like a human torch. 
He began to run across the ice, screaming in agony, strong Antarctic winds 
whipping his flames into a frenzy. 
The tyrannosaur roared at the burning copilot and crushed him down into the ice 
with one huge taloned foot, stamping on the body again and again until Lvmon Iay 
still on the ice, a smoldering corpse, flames extinguished at last. 
210 
The great beast directed one more roar of triumph at the burning wreck of the 
LC-130, then turned back down the runway, toward the last survivors of Deepcore 
Station.
211 Seventeen Breakout
As the tyrannosaur went after the LC-130-and Belin-Troy turned to Kelly. "Now!"
He started jogging down the runway, away from the central complex, out toward 
the mountains of the Peninsula.
The mixed breed Wolf trotted at his side. Kelly straggled behind, bringing up 
the rear. "Troy! Wait up!"
"We have to run for it." "I can't run that fast!"
He slowed down the pace, backpack bouncing in its frame.
"Besides," she said, coming up alongside him, panting for breath, "won't we 
attract attention if we run?"
"They'll think we're just trying to escape from Trex."
"Slow down, goddamn it!" He cut it back to a fast walk.
She adjusted her backpack, glancing at the LC130 as it attempted to take off.
"Don't waste time looking back," Troy said. "We'll hear T-rex if he comes after 
us."
"Look! What's he doing to that plane?" "Probably the same thing he did to the 
other one. He seems to hate planes. Or maybe he just likes to play with them."
212 "He could get killed!" 
"Good. Then we'd only have Tarosh to worry about." 
"Hey! I care what happens to that T-rex! And not just because I raised him. He's 
still the most important scientific experiment-" 
"An experiment totally out of control, Kelly. You're going to have to write him 
off." 
"You never did like him!" 
"No, to be honest, I never did." 
They passed a group running back to the central complex. 
"Troy!" one of them called. "You're going the wrong way!" 
Troy said nothing and the other man kept running. 
"They think we're up to something," Kelly said. "They don't have time to think." 

"Troy!" another voice called from farther down the runway. 
"Don't look back," he warned Kelly. "Sounds like this one's serious. Pretend you 
don't hear 
him." "Troy!" the voice called again, more urgently this time. 
They kept walking. 
The explosion of the LC-130 made them turn 
around. 
As they looked at the cargo transport in flames 
against the pale night sky, they saw someone hobbling down the runway after 
them, his crutch slipping on the iced-over surface. "It's Jack," Kelly said. 
She saw the hesitation in Troy's eyes. 
"We are going to wait for him, aren't we?" she 
asked. 
213 He hesitated a few seconds longer, then said, "Sure." 
But as he said it, he looked out at the distant, ice--covered mountains of the 
Peninsula. 
"Saw you guys leaving," Jack said, catching up with them, laboring for breath. 
"Which way you headed?" 
"The Russian base, Vladivostok Station." "That's what I thought. Straight up 
over the mountains. The only way to go." 
Silence fell over them, punctuated by the distant screams of frightened men and 
the roars of the tyrannosaur, 
"Let me go with you, Troy." 
Kelly looked at Troy. He said nothing. 
"It's all over here, man! .If I stay, I'm dead, too." Troy remained silent. 
"I know what you're thinking. It's the leg, isn't it? But I can still pull my 
own weight. Maybe I can't handle a backpack too good. But I can help with the 
camp work. And nobody knows Antarctic terrain better than me!" 
"I know that, Jack." 
He tried not to look at the amputated leg. "Come on, Troy! Please!" 
Troy took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. I won't slow you guys down. 
Honest! And even in deep snow, or on ice, this crutch won't hold me back that 
much. I can always use it--" 
"Okay, Jack." 
He stopped. "Huh?" 
"I said okay. You're coming with us." "Thanks, man. Thanks a lot!" 
Kelly touched Troy's arm. He turned to her. She smiled at him-, a real smile. 
"Guess there's no time to load my own pack," Jack said. 
214 
"You can share mine," Troy offered. "I packed heavy."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. But let's get out of here. We want to make as much headway as possible 
while Tarosh still has his hands full."
They started down the runway, Wolf alongside them. Jack struggled hard to keep 
up and almost managed to match their pace, even though Kelly could see that Troy 
was deliberately keeping it slow.
"Stop!" called a distant voice. Jack started to look back.
"Don't," Troy said. "Just keep going."
"Halt!" the voice ordered. "Darrow! Sawyer! Raines!"
"Sounds like one of Tarosh's boys," Jack said. "Keep walking," Troy said.
He heard the hissing in the air then, as it passed close to him, followed by the 
heavy echo of the gunshot, rolling like a clap of thunder across the runway.
Troy turned around this time. So did the other two.
Belin stood several hundred yards away, the .460 Weatherby in his hands, aimed 
straight at them.
As Tarosh watched the LC-130 crash and burst into flames, and with it his last 
hope of transporting the tyrannosaur, his frustration became visible.
"No," he said, drawing his Makarov in a reflex gesture, holding it impotently at 
his side. "No!" Belin walked up to him, still breathing hard
from the close call with the tyrannosaur, his face scraped and bleeding where he 
had cut it dropping
215 
from the plane's ski. 
He had retrieved the .460 Weatherby and held it in the crook of one arm, barrel 
pointing out. He looked at the tyrannosaur, roaring in tri
umph above the burning wreckage of the LC- 130. "He has more lives than a cat." 
"Yes, Vladimir," Tarosh said. "Especially when we. make the mistake of trying to 
kill the cat with useless weapons." 
"This rifle-" 
"And then compound that mistake by hiding behind a valuable cargo transport in 
an attempt to save our own wretched life!" 
"I had no choice-" 
Tarosh struck him with the Makarov and sent him sprawling onto the ice-covered 
runway. The .460 dropped from Belin's hand, clattering on the ice. 
"You are a fool!" Tarosh said, voice barely under control. "You have destroyed 
our last possible hope of realizing any profit from this creature. You will be 
dealt with later." 
"Sir," Prozkov said. 
Tarosh turned to him, face rigid with fury. "What, Dmitri?" 
"They are escaping." 
He pointed to Troy, Kelly, and Jack in the distance, the dog beside them as they 
fled down the runway. 
Tarosh stared at the retreating figures. 
"Do we stop them, sir? They have no use to us now." 
"Stop them anyway, Dmitri." 
Prozkov called for them to halt, as Tarosh stood at his side, Makarov still 
gripped in one hand. 
216 
When they failed to stop, Prozkov turned to Tarosh.
"Do I fire a warning shot, sir?"
"No. They must be beyond pistol range at this point."
"I can fire your warning shot."
They turned to see Belin, who stood beside them now, the .460 Weatherby back in 
his hands, face marbled with blood from the gash made by Tarosh's Makarov.
"Go ahead," Tarosh said.
Belin raised the rifle, took careful aim, and fired. The loud report kicked back 
at them from nearby buildings.
A hard smile came across Tarosh's face as the three distant figures stopped and 
turned around. "Very good, Vladimir. Now"
Belin fired again.
The second bullet took Jack in the middle of his chest, blowing a fist-size hole 
out his back. Blood sprayed from his ruptured lungs and heart. He fell back 
slowly, crutch skidding in circles across the ice.
Wolf barked in alarm. "Jack!" Kelly screamed.
She tried to catch him as he fell.
Troy pushed her down onto the ice-covered runway.
Then he dropped to one knee and drew Zalman's Makarov from the pocket of his 
thermal suit, gripping it in both hands.
Kelly looked up at him, goggles knocked off by her fall.
"Troy! Are you crazy? You can't hit them from
here!" He fired four times, in rapid succession, 
217 squeezing off each shot smoothly, trying to hold down the pistol's recoil. 
The first bullet passed close to Tarosh, who jumped back. 
The second and third cut by Belin. 
He steadied the .460 and sighted on Troy. 
The fourth bullet hit the back of Belin's right hand, shattering the metacarpal 
bones. He screamed as his hand blew apart. Fragments of bone flew up into his 
right eye. 
He dropped the Weatherby and bent over, cradling his ruined hand, screaming in 
pain. 
"Get the rifle, Dmitri," Tarosh said. 
As Prozkov bent down to pick up the Weatherby. still skidding across the ice, 
Belin shoved in front of him and grabbed for the rifle with his one 
good hand. 
"Let him have the weapon, Vladimir," Tarosh 
said. Belin pulled it away from Prozkov, blood on his 
hands and face, a crazed look in his one undamaged eye. 
"I can still shoot!" Belin cried. "I can still kill!" He raised the rifle 
defiantly in his good hand, holding it above him like a spear, backing away from 
Prozkov, blood dripping from his shattered right hand, spotting the runway ice. 
"Shoot him," Tarosh said quietly to Prozkov. He nodded and drew his own Makarov. 

The sudden roar of the tyrannosaur made them all look up. 
The beast stood over them like a malignant guardian spirit, hot breath pluming 
from its gaping, bloodstained jaws, massive chest heaving in and out, winded by 
the exertion of hunting down men on the runway. 
218 
The three men below it stood paralyzed by the sight.
The tyrannosaur watched them closely for several long, timeless seconds, then 
pounced on Belin with a quickness that defied perception.
Belin, too terrified to scream, tried to fire the .460 like a pistol with his 
one good hand. But the rifle kicked out of his grip and the shot. went wild. The 
tyrannosaur, enraged by the sight of the weapon, snapped viciously at it, 
missing the rifle as it clattered to the ice but tearing off Belin's left arm at 
the shoulder.
Now Belin began to scream, his voice turning hoarse in the Antarctic wind as 
blood sprayed from his shoulder across the iced-over runway. He tried to run but 
fell after two stumbling steps, rolling over onto his back where he lay 
twitching like a landed fish, blood spurting from his severed arm.
He screamed again as the terrible jaws came down on him and seized his body, 
head sticking out one side, legs the other, and lifted him high in the air, 
where the tyrannosaur began to gnaw on him fiercely, curved fangs impaling his 
body with the force of machine-driven spikes.
Tarosh and Prozkov ran from the carnage, Belin's blood and body parts 
splattering down behind them onto the ice.
Farther down the runway, Kelly seemed rooted to where she stood, unable to move 
or even turn her head from the violent spectacle of Belin's savage death.
When she finally looked away, she saw Jack's body, lying sprawled on the ice 
like something dropped and broken, blood pooling slowly beneath it in sluggish 
contrast to the absolute sWl'
ness of the body itself.
219 Wolf sniffed at the corpse and whimpered. Kelly reached down a hand toward 
it.
"Come on, Kelly. There's nothing we can do for him now."
"We can't just leave him here"
"T-rex could come after us next. Come on!"
As Tarosh and Prozkov continued to flee down the ice-covered runway, the 
tyrannosaur roared at them, hot breath billowing from its jaws, and gave chase.
Prozkov, who had grabbed the .460 after it slipped from Belin's grasp, raised 
the rifle, breaking his stride, and turned to fire on the tyrannosaur.
"No, Dmitri."
"But, my Colonel, he attacks!"
The tyrannosaur roared again as it came after them, moving across the ice with 
quick, birdlike leaps at a speed that would have overtaken the two men within 
seconds, had not another explosion burst from the burning wreck of the LC-130 
just then, shaking the runway with its reverberations.
Clouds of flame rolled across the skeleton of the plane.
The tyrannosaur turned in that direction and gave out a curious roar, half 
startled, half triumphant.
Tarosh slipped on the ice then, wrenching his leg.
He cried out as he fell and grabbed at the injured leg,
"My Colonel!"
Prozkov slung the .460 over his shoulder, then bent down and scooped Tarosh up 
in his arms and ran with the him the rest of the way across the ice, toward the 
nearest building of the central complex, while the tyrannosaur continued to 
stare
220 
with pride and fascination at the burning LC-130. Prozkov set Tarosh down inside 
the entrance to the building, closing the heavy weather-proof door behind them, 
glancing back at the great beast outside.
Tarosh grabbed his arm. "The gelignite, Dmitri." "My-sir?"
"The explosive we planned to use against him tonight, in case the tranquilizer 
and the net failed to hold him. Sal Vanetti was the one in charge of
setting it off."
"Vanetti is dead, my Colonel, killed by the monster."
"That doesn't matter. The gelignite was never detonated. It must still be out 
there, in back of the complex. Go look for it, Dmitri. Find it and bring it back 
here."
"But, my Colonel, this would kill-"
"Yes, Drnitri. It will probably destroy him." "But you want-"
"When some hope still remained of transporting him out of here, yes. At this 
point I just want him stopped."
"Yes, my Colonel."
Prozkov bowed stiffly and turned to leave. Tarosh struggled to his feet, 
massaging his injured leg, and looked through the narrow glass window in the 
door at the two distant figures and the dog walking away from the runway, toward
the mountains of the Peninsula.
"You think you can escape so easily, do you?"
he said, as if speaking to himself.
"You called, my Colonel?" Prozkov asked, pausing. "No, Dmitri. Get the 
gelignite. Hurry."
221 Kelly turned around and looked back down the runway. 
"We're not going to make it if you keep stopping. Kelly." 
"I don't want to get shot in the back!" 
"They're not shooting anymore. They've got other things to worry about right 
now." 
The tyrannosaur gave one last roar at the fiery wreck of the LC-130, then turned 
toward the central complex. 
In so doing, it seemed to pause, as if catching sight of Troy and Kelly, pale 
figures in the dim Antarctic twilight. 
it lowered its massive head and let out a roar that echoed down the runway 
toward them. 
"He sees us!" Kelly said. "Great." 
There was nowhere to run, no place to hide. They stood separated from the 
tyrannosaur by nothing more than a long ice-covered stretch of runway. The 
nearest building of the central complex lay hundreds of yards away, their access 
to it blocked by the beast. 
The creature roared at them again and moved forward, its great head lowered. 
Just then Wolf began rushing down the runway toward the tyrannosaur, filling the 
frozen night air with his loud, defiant barks. 
"Wolf!" Kelly called after him. "Come back!" But the mixed breed kept after the 
tyrannosaur, which stopped to confront the four-legged mammal running up to it. 
"Troy? Call him back! He'll get killed!" 
Troy unstrapped his backpack and laid it down on the ice. 
"What are you doing?" she asked. 
222 
He began unfastening the tie-downs that held the top flap.
"Taking out something I brought with us just in case-"
"What ?"
A new roar echoed down the runway, sharper, more angry than the ones preceding 
it, underscored by Wolf's defiant barks.
They both looked up in that direction.
The tyrannosaur opened its huge jaws and hissed at Wolf, then took a menacing 
step forward.
Wolf stood his ground, barking at the huge beast above him.
Kelly grabbed Troy's arm.
The tyrannosaur turned away suddenly, all its attention shifting from the 
barking dog to the central complex.
"What does he see?" Kelly asked.
Troy took out his binoculars and adjusted the focus.
The creature leaned down low, as if snapping at something.
"I hope they're not trying to shoot him with any more tranquilizers," Kelly 
said. "Because another dose this soon, after the last one they knocked him out 
with, could-"
She never got to finish.
An explosion rocked the central complex that made the crash of the LC-130 seem 
like a firecracker on the Fourth of July.
The pale Antarctic summer night flashed white, then orange, as the fireball 
burst and grew. Debris shot up into the air and rained down onto the run way 
ice, rattling faintly beneath extended fever berations from the blast.
They were far enough back to avoid injury, but
223 they could still feel the heat of the explosion pushing against them, 
displacing cold winds with warm. 
The tyrannosaur flipped backward up into the air and fell down hard on the 
runway, shattering ice, rolling end over end several times before coming to a 
dead stop. 
"They killed him!" Kelly cried. 
"I doubt it. He's not that easy to kill." "They blew him up! The dirty 
bastards!" 
"They tried to. But something went wrong. That explosion detonated too damn 
close to the central complex-maybe even right inside it. I can't tell for sure. 
T-rex probably caught some of the initial shock wave, but that's about it." 
Troy put away the binoculars and closed the backpack, then slipped it onto his 
shoulders again. She stared at him, suddenly curious. 
"What was it you were going to use against him?" 
"We don't need it now." "What was it, Troy?" 
"Let's worry about that when the time comes, okay?" 
Another explosion shook the complex, rumbling through the runway beneath them, 
buckling the ground, cracking the ice. 
Kelly shaded her eyes. "The whole place is on fire!" 
The tyrannosaur suddenly scrambled back to its feet, where, swaying slightly, it 
let out a defiant roar. 
"See?" Troy said. "Good as new. Let's get out of here." 
"What about Wolf?" 
"I'm sure he's okay, too." 
"How do you know? I can't see him anywhere!" 
224 
"We don't have time to wait for~hirn, Kelly." She glanced back once more, the 
tyrannosaur silhouetted against the inferno like a creature from another world.
There was no sign of Wolf.
She turned then, and followed Troy into the night.
When Prozkov came back with the gelignite, a timer fuse had already been 
attached to the gelatinized nitroglycerine.
"This is the long fuse," he said, "so we light it from far away, so when the 
monster-"
"There's no time for that," Tarosh interrupted him. "Set a short fuse, then 
throw it out as far as possible. Make sure it lands somewhere near him
on the ice." "But-" "What, Dmitri?"
"What if he sees the bomb and he runs?" "He's not human, Dmitri. He's a 
primitive beast, with an undersized, primitive brain. He can't understand 
anything."
Prozkov hesitated, then nodded. "Yes, my Colonel."
Tarosh watched through the narrow glass window of the front door as Prozkov 
stepped outside, the gelignite in one hand.
The door squeaked shut behind him in the cold night air.
The tyrannosaur turned in that direction.
On catching sight of him, it let out a challenging
roar.
Prozkov pitched the gelignite underhand, drop'
ping it a good ten yards out onto the ice-coverd
runway, where it skidded across the remaini4
distance, coming to rest close to the tyrannos
225 timer fuse set for exactly fifteen seconds. 
Prozkov stepped back inside immediately and closed the door after him, watching, 
with Tarosh, through the narrow window. 
"Move back from the glass, my Colonel. The blast will-" 
"I'm aware of the concussive aftershock, Dmitri." 
Tarosh watched through the glass as the tyrannosaur leaned down and sniffed at 
the gelignite, as if inspecting it. 
"He does not like it," Prozkov said. 
"There's nothing for him to like or dislike, Dmitri. He has no idea what it is." 

At that moment the tyrannosaur butted the gelignite with its huge snout and sent 
it sliding across the ice like a curling stone, back toward the central complex. 

Prozkov's eyes grew wide behind the glass. "Bozhyeh fnoy!" 
He pulled Tarosh back from the door. 
The blast blew them both down the entryway and up against the corridor wall. 
Burning heat swept over them, along with clouds of choking, blinding smoke. 
When the smoke cleared somewhat and Prozkov could see again, the whole world 
seemed on fire. 
Blood covered half of Tarosh's face, spilling from a deep gash in his head made 
by a jagged piece of flying glass. 
"My Colonel!" Prozkov cried, unable to hear his own voice or any other sound in 
the deafness following the explosion. 
He lifted Tarosh up off the floor and carried him past dazed and wounded and 
dying men, all seeking shelter from the fury of the flames and the wrath of the 
tyrannosaur. 
226 226
227 Final Phase: Survival 
228 228
229 Eighteen Pursuit 
As soon as the tyrannosaur had recovered from the effects of the explosion, it 
began to attack the burning central complex with relentless ferocity. 
Warv of the flames but driven by a hatred far stronger than its fear, it knocked 
down walls into whirlwinds of fiery debris, crushing wounded men beneath heavy 
taloned feet, dragging others out into the freezing winds to devour them alive. 
By early morning little remained except the smoking metal skeleton of the 
complex, and beyond it bloodstained snow, frozen to crystalline perfection, 
littered with the remains of burned and half-eaten corpses. 
Tarosh and Prozkov and a handful of others had sought shelter inside the 
outfitting room. The fire had burned through the corridor and turned the room 
into a roasting oven, but the metal walls protected them in the end from both 
the rage of the tyrannosaur and the all-consuming fury of the flames. 
That morning, when they turned on their flashlights for the first time since 
entering the room the night before, they could see to some extent the nature of 
the damage done to the central complex, and to themselves. 
Every one of them had sustained an injury of some kind from the explosion. The 
blood from 
230 
Tarosh's scalp laceration had coagulated, and he still wore a half mask of dried 
blood as he sat on the floor, a blanket draped like a shawl across his head.
"You should lie down, sir," Prozkov said to him. "It's only a flesh wound, 
Dmitri."
Tarosh pushed back the blanket, flakes of black blood cracking loose from his 
face.
"How many are left, Dmitri?"
Prozkov swept the room slowly with his flashlight.
"Six, sir, including us."
"Identify yourselves," Tarosh ordered the men. "First name, then last."
"Pete Mendoza."
The cook raised a hand wearily, face blistered by burns.
"Mark Covicci."
Pete's young assistant blinked into the flashlight beam.
An exhausted man raised a hand. "George Benson here."
A man with cuts to his face from flying debris
looked up through one hard eye, the other swollen
shut. "Tom Callahan."
Tarosh nodded, confirming the count for himself. "Six. Very good, Dmitri."
"What do we do now?" Benson asked.
"Yeah," Callahan said, "what the hell do we do
now?"
Tarosh smiled, an unsettling effect with the
black blood.
"Two members of Deepcore Station, Troy Darrow and Kelly Sawyer, have taken 
advantage of
this recent disaster to desert."
Callahan snorted. "So? Who gives a rat's ass?"
231 Tarosh drew his Makarov, movements quick 
and sure despite his recent injury. He pointed it almost casually at Callahan, 
whose one unswollen eye grew wide. 
"Two desertions are bad enough," Tarosh said. "I can't afford any more. Are you 
with us, Tom? Or against us?" 
"With you. Hell, you know that!" "I had to be sure, Tom." 
He put away the Makarov and turned to the other three men. 
Prozkov moved the flashlight with him. 
"I want to go after those two deserters," Tarosh said, "and punish them for what 
they've done." "What do you mean by `punish'?" Benson asked. "Kill 'em?" 
"Darrow, yes. It was a weakness on my part not to have killed him sooner. The 
girl"-Tarosh hesitated-"the girl, I'm not sure about. I may have further use for 
her." 
"Still trying to catch that thing, using her as bait?" 
"If the opportunity were to present itself, I would welcome one last chance to 
bring the beast back under my control. It would make all this seem ... 
worthwhile, somehow." 
He gestured toward the outfitting room and, by extension, to the ruined central 
complex beyond it. 
Callahan snorted. "We know how to bring the son of a bitch down easy enough. We 
just can't keep him down." 
"You're right, Tom. Perhaps the girl can help us there." 
"What are we supposed to eat," Mendoza asked, when we go out there lookin' for 
them two?" "What you mean is," Callahan said, "how do we 
232 make sure he don't eat us." 
Covicci and Benson laughed at that. 
Mendoza frowned. "Hey, man! I'm serious. We don't got no kitchen no more. It 
burned down last night." 
"True," Tarosh said. "But the kitchen supplies wouldn't have worked for us 
anyway. We don't need perishables. We want light, portable 
foodstuffs-freeze-dried items, concentrates." 
He gestured to the supplies in the outfitting room. 
"All those things are here. Darrow and the girl took some with them. But we have 
more than enough left for our needs." 
"Do we start packing stuff now?" Covicci asked. "Or try and get some sleep 
first?" 
Tarosh turned to him, along with Prozkov's light. 
"Sleep. One hour's worth. Then we will load our backpacks individually, and 
begin the pursuit." Covicci shielded his eyes from the bright light. "How do you 
plan to find Darrow and the girl?" 
Callahan asked. "They got a hell of a head start on us. 
"We have a sled dog," Tarosh said, "a good tracker." 
"Sled dog?" Benson looked up. "That thing killed off all our dogs, except for 
one mixed breed. And he left with Troy." 
"Yes, George, but another dog survived." "How?" 
Tarosh smiled enigmatically. 
"We kept him apart from the others, so that he wasn't present at the dog 
compound when tic creature attacked." I_
"Why did you hold him back?" Callahan asked„"Security purposes. We gave him 
special 
233 training. He has developed a somewhat aggressive attitude as a result. Some 
might even call him ... vicious. 
Tarosh smiled again at the men inside the room. "That's what makes him such a 
good tracker." Fay away from the outfitting room, where the 
other four men lay deep in nightmare-troubled slumber, Prozkov, walking beside 
Tarosh down the twisted, blackened ruins of the central corridor, turned to his 
commander. 
"Darrow has Zalman's pistol with him, my Colonel" 
"Yes, Dmitri. But you have that." 
He pointed to the Weatherby, crusted with Belin's blood. 
"Not many cartridges left," Prozkov said. 
"How many will you need, with a caliber that size?" 
"Only one, my Colonel." 
"Good. Let us check on the dog Grushka, to see if he survived the beast's 
attack, and the burning." As they continued through the charred remains 
of what had once been the central complex, Prozkov said, "The monster before 
this, he is always afraid of fire." 
"He still is. But last night, he was angry. The explosion enraged him. What he 
did here was an act of vengeance." 
But, my Colonel, you say he does not-" "Think? Yes, I did say that. Perhaps I 
was mistaken." 
Tarosh looked out over the ruins of the complex. "Perhaps he can think-the way a 
cunning peasant thinks." 
They passed the remains of the map roomashes covering burned chairs, shattered 
tables
234 
and came at last to a metal door with a heavy handle and a card-activated 
security lock.
Tarosh took out his I.D. card and inserted it in the slot.
A buzzer should have sounded, if all the wiring had not been burned in last 
night's fire. But the card still unlocked the door. Tarosh opened it, then 
stepped inside.
A growl came from the darkness within, low and feral.
Tarosh smiled into that darkness with its animal stench.
"Ah, Grushka," he said. "You are hungry, aren't you?"
The growl became a series of sharp, savage barks.
Tarosh turned to Prozkov. "Shine your light on him."
"Yes, my Colonel."
The flashlight beam revealed a small room with a narrow cage, and inside that, a 
large black-andwhite husky, coat matted and filthy, lips drawn back over his 
teeth as he snarled at the two men, dark eyes glittering with hatred.
"You will find them for us, won't you, Grushka?" Kelly and Troy fled across a 
white wilderness of ice and snow, the Peninsula mountains looming ahead of them, 
in the distant background the blackened remains of Deepcore Station.
The dark smoke from the burning had been swept away by the fierce katabatic 
winds of the
interior, which whistled across the open expanse of snow and ice now, dropping 
temperatures deep into the subzero range, chilling the two fugitives to the 
bone.
Despite Troy's efforts to keep them moving, they
235 had slowed to a plodding march. Kelly walked with shoulders bent forward and 
head down, struggling against the katabatic winds. 
Her ice ax dragged from one hand while her other hand tugged listlessly at a 
backpack strap. As they crossed a new stretch of ice, she slipped and fell. 
She went down with a cry, the ax dropping from her hand and clattering onto the 
ice. Although she caught herself with both hands, she fell face forNvard, 
striking her chin on the ice. 
Troy turned around and bent down to help her. "You okay?" 
She put a mittened hand to her mouth. "Yeah." "Here. Give me your-" 
"I'm fine. I can get up by myself." 
She took the mitten away from her mouth. 
A thin line of blood began to trickle down her lower lip. 
She spit out a mouthful of blood into the howling wind. 
It froze almost instantly in the subzero air, a long, dark red streamer, 
snapping with a sharp cracking sound as it hit the ice-covered ground. She 
stared at it. "Christ." 
"Spit always freezes when it gets down to minus-fifty degrees and below." 
"I thought it was supposed to be warmer on the Peninsula." 
"The katabatic winds are blowing today, bringing in colder temperatures from the 
interior." "Where are your famous Antarctic summer rains?" 
"They could start falling anytime now. Summer weather's very unpredictable down 
here." "Everything's unpredictable down-Ow!" 
She winced with pain, limping on her left foot. 
236 "Twist your ankle?"
"No! It's okay."
"Let me take a look." He reached down for the ankle.
She jerked it back from him, hopping awkwardly on one foot.
"I'm not trying to hurt you, Kelly." "I said it's okay, okay?"
"Can you walk on it?"
"Yes, I can walk on it! What do you think I am? A little old lady with 
osteoporosis?"
"A twisted ankle's no big deal back in civilization. Out here it can mean a 
delay of several days, or worse.
"The ankle isn't twisted, Troy, okay?" "Then why are you limping on it?"
"Because I pulled a leg muscle in my thigh and it hurts! You happy? Or you want 
me to take down my pants and show you?"
"Not here. Too cold. Maybe later, where it's warm."
She snorted and started to walk across the frozen ground again, limping 
slightly, leaning on her ice ax.
"We can rest for a few minutes, Kelly." "I don't want to rest."
"We've got a long way to go." "I know that."
"No point getting worn out at the beginning." "I'm not worn out yet. Are you?"
They walked for the next hundred yards or so in silence.
Kelly tensed her body as the cold wind from the deep interior whipped over them, 
chilling the air
inside their lungs.
She stopped and looked back at the blinding
white snowscape behind them.
237 "What's wrong, Kelly?" 
"I'm worried about Wolf. Where can he be?" "He'll show up." 
"He got killed by that explosion, or by the T-rex." "I doubt it. He's one tough 
dog. Don't forget that he survived T-rex's attack on the sled-dog compound." 
"Then where is he?" 
"Maybe he went off to catch himself a penguin or a seal. We haven't had much 
food ourselves for the past few days. I'm sure he's had even less." 
"That was one horrible explosion!" "Yeah, had a real kick to it." 
"Why did Tarosh blow up the complex like that? Did they set it off on purpose?" 
"Probably not. I think they just pitched the gelignite down the ice to T-rex and 
he knocked it back to them." 
"You think he understood what the explosive device was?" 
"Technically? No, but I think he sensed it, somehow." 
"So do I. Dinosaurs were probably a lot smarter than we assume. They weren't 
just big dumb lizards. After all, they ruled the earth for almost one hundred 
fifty million years." 
"That was a whole society of them. This T-rex is all by himself, and he already 
rules the Antarctic." They both looked out at the white void surrounding them, 
suddenly conscious of their own vulnerability. 
"Come on," Troy said. "Let's get going again before he figures out how to track 
us through this blizzard." 
"I'm not sure even the T-rex could do that." "Wolf could." 
238 
"Yeah," she said, moving forward, "if Wolf's still alive."
Tarosh and his five men stood outside the charred remains of Deepcore Station. 
They all wore thermal suits and goggles, and carried heavily loaded backpacks 
and ice axes.
Prozkov, .460 Weatherby slung over one shoulder, held Grushka on a short leash. 
The husky wore a heavy leather harness and muzzle. He growled at the other men, 
saliva freezing on his barred fangs.
"I don't trust that dog," Covicci said. "He's a killer."
"Just don't try to pet him," Tarosh advised.
He turned to Benson. "What do you see between here and the mountains, George?"
Benson scanned the frozen plain before them, then lowered his ten-by-fifty 
binoculars.
"Not a damn thing."
"They can't have made the mountains yet. We still should be able to see some 
sign of them." "Here. Take a look for yourself."
Tarosh raised the binoculars and adjusted the focus.
He looked for several minutes before lowering them.
"They must have stopped to rest."
"Or maybe that thing ate them," Benson said. "No. Darrow's too clever for that."
"He don't have a blowtorch with him no more, Mendoza said.
"Yes, Pete. But he still has taken some kind of precaution. You can be sure of 
that."
"If he's so goddamn smart," Callahan asked, "what do you want him killed for?"
239 "Because he's not with me, Tom. He's against me. 
Callahan started to say something, then decided not to. 
"What if that thing comes after us?" Benson asked. 
"I doubt if he will," Tarosh said. "Even after the explosion and fire, Deepcore 
Station is still his home. He will most likely return here first to scavenge for 
food, or simply to take shelter in familiar surroundings." 
"You sound just like that girl scientist," Callahan said. 
"She does know certain things, Tom. She knows a great deal about the creature. 
And she seems to have an intuitive sympathy with him. That's why I want her 
back." 
"But what if this thing follows us anyway," Benson insisted, "even if he's not 
supposed to? What then?" 
Tarosh nodded at the .460 slung over Prozkov's shoulder. 
"Dmitri has the rifle-" 
"Might as well use a slingshot, for all the good it'll do!" 
"But, George-" 
"Zalman used that worthless rifle. Belin used it." "But you haven't see Dmitri 
use it, have you, George?" 
"No, I guess not." 
"Dmitri has the best eye and stoutest heart of any man among us. He might not be 
able to destroy the creature single-handedly. But he will be able to prevent him 
from attacking us. Right, Dmitri?" 
"Yes, mv-sir." 
The dog Grushka growled savagely at them, 
240 
dark eyes glittering with intense hatred, as if all he wanted was to tear the 
throats out of the men standing before him.
"Do we have to take him with us?" Covicci asked.
"Grushka will walk ahead," Tarosh said, "so that he can lead us to the 
deserters, wherever they might be."
"Have you given him something handled by Darrow or the girl," Callahan asked, 
"so he can pick up their scent?"
"He doesn't need that, Tom."
Tarosh looked out at the forbidding white landscape.
"All he needs is the scent of human fear."
Troy set up camp behind a pile of boulders that provided shelter from the 
katabatic winds and concealed them from the sight of anyone looking across the 
plain toward the mountains.
The tent they used was a by-product of space exploration technology, designed by 
NASA for the Department of Energy in a rare example of interagency cooperation. 
It consisted of doublereinforced Mylar inflated by an automatic hand pump. 
Lighter and stronger than a geodesic-dome camping tent, it had the added 
advantage of double insulation against the Antarctic cold.
They sat inside the cramped interior face-toface, the outside of the tent 
buffeted by hurricaneforce winds. Although their body heat provided some warmth 
in that confined space, they still wore their thermal suits, but without goggles 
or mittens, and sat wrapped in lightweight thermal blankets.
They ate some of their freeze-dried rations, re
241 constituted with unheated water into a dark, cold paste. 
"Couldn't we at least warm up this crap?" Kelly asked, staring at a spoonful of 
it. 
"We can't build a fire inside a Mylar tent." "What about starting one outside? 
We each brought along a butane cylinder." 
"We don't want to use them up just now. We might need them later on." 
"For what? Scaring off the T-rex?" 
"I'm not sure he's afraid of fire anymore." "Because of what happened last 
night?" "Partly that. He's seen a lot of fire by now." "You think he knows it's 
not that dangerous for him?" 
"I don't think he knows anything, except how to hunt and kill. He's like 
something from another planet. But he's a quick take. He figures things out 
fast." 
"He's probably not anywhere near us right now, you know." 
"Maybe not." 
"So why can't we risk a little fire?" 
"For one thing, Tarosh might see it. Or one of his men." 
"How many of them could have survived that explosion last night, Troy? And think 
what must have happened to them afterward, with the T-rex on the loose." 
"I know. But I still wouldn't count Tarosh out until I saw his dead body lying 
on the groundand even then, not until I went over and checked it to make sure he 
was really dead." 
"Okay, fine. Assuming that Tarosh and some of his men did survive, how could 
they catch up with us this soon?" 
"They couldn't. But you can see a hell of a long 
242 
way with a pair of high-power binoculars."
"Why did we even bother to bring the butane cylinders if all we're going to do 
is sit here and freeze to death?"
"We won't freeze, Kelly. We just won't be very warm.
She hugged herself and shivered.
"You don't give a damn about anybody except yourself!"
"We'll start climbing into the mountains tomorrow. We should be able to find a 
cave up there, somewhere. When we do, we can light a fire and see if this tastes 
any better when it's cooked than it does raw."
She looked up at him. "Climbing? Tomorrow?" He nodded and took another spoonful 
of freezedried food.
"Troy, I can't climb anywhere right now! I could barely take another step when 
you finally decided to stop here!"
"You're just tired, and cold." "I am totally exhausted!" "You'll feel better 
tomorrow."
"I'll probably feel like hell! My leg still hurts from when I fell on it. And if 
I start climbing mountains-"
"If you can climb tomorrow, fine. If you can't, I'll carry you. Don't worry. 
Either way, we'll make it."
After he finished eating his food, Troy leaned back against the inflated tent 
wall and closed his eyes.
"Might as well try and get some sleep," he said.
"We didn't get much last night."
Kelly sat and stared at her own food as it coag+
ulated on her plastic plate.
243 A distant roar came to them across the howling wind. 
She looked up. "Did you hear that?" 
Troy shifted against the tent wall, eyes still closed. 
"Yeah. Sort of sounds like T-rex, doesn't it?" "You think we should go outside 
and check?" "No." 
The roar came again, louder this time, cutting through the winds of the storm. 
"He sounds frightened," Kelly said. "He must be starving!" 
Troy stretched again. "Poor baby. Probably hasn't had a thing to eat since 
finishing off Belin, and anyone else who couldn't get out of the way last 
night." 
"He happens to be a very large animal. He requires a lot of food to stay alive 
and keep warm." "Yeah, and all he's got now is us, and maybe Tarosh, and a few 
of his men for snacks." 
"It's no joke, Troy. He could die out there!" "That's a nice thought to sleep 
on." 
"The hell with you! I'm going out there to check." 
She started to get to her feet. "I wouldn't," he said. 
"Why not?" 
"`For one thing, he might see you." "So? I'm not afraid of him." 
"I know. You're like his stepmom, because you raised him." 
"Make fun of it all you want. He's not going to hurt me." 
"You don't know that, Kelly. He's hungry and desperate. He might not want to 
hurt you. But I'll bet his survival instinct's a lot stronger than his natural 
affection right now." 
244 
She sat back down and watched Troy as he leaned against the tent wall, breathing 
slowly and evenly.
The roar came again, but it sounded weaker this time, as if the creature that 
made it was moving farther away, or weakening.
"How can you sleep at a time like this?" "Easy. Just close your eyes."
245 
He awakened her early the next morning. "Let go!" she cried, kicking out at him. 

He snatched the thermal blanket from her. 
She sat up and grabbed it back, her eyes open and angry, but still asleep. "Give 
it here!" 
"Come on, Kelly. Time to start climbing up that mountain." 
"Go to hell!" She covered her head with the thermal blanket, snuggling deep 
beneath it. 
She heard a sharp hissing sound and looked up. The tent began to deflate around 
her. 
She sat up and pushed at the collapsing Mylar walls. 
"Hey! What the hell?" 
She struggled out of the deflating tent, and found herself standing next to a 
ten-foot-high snowdrift that had blown in during last night's storm. 
She saw Troy arranging ice axes and crampons near the tent. 
"Goddamn you!" she said. "I haven't had breakfast yet!" 
"We have to start climbing this mountain before it gets much later or we can 
forget about it for today." 
She dove back under the walls of the collapsed tent, looking for her extra 
clothing and gear. 
246 
"What is this, anyway?" she called from underneath the tent. "A race to the 
top?"
"Tarosh might see it that way."
"The hell with him! Let him come here and find us!"
"If we don't start climbing, you may get your wish."
She shook off one wall of the deflated tent. "What does he want with us, 
anyway?" Troy looked up from what he was doing. "I'm not sure, but I think he 
wants to kill us." "Why? We're not a threat to him! We're not even
useful anymore! Why does he care what happens to us?"
"I don't think it's a question of practicality. It has more to do with 
retribution. Payback. Revenge. Tarosh is a man with a long memory. KGB training 
dies hard."
"Tarosh was part of the KGB?"
"Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, maybe. The guys at Deepcore disagreed 
about that. Burke used to insist Tarosh wasn't ever part of the KGB. I think he 
was."
Troy went back to arranging their equipment. Kelly came over and squatted down 
beside him. "How many men do you think he has with him?" she asked.
"Who knows? Maybe only two or three-or as many as ten."
"You still have that gun with you?" "Never leave home without it." "How many 
bullets does it have?"
"A full Makarov clip carries eight. It held a full
clip when I found it. Now it has four bullets." "What happened to the other 
four?"
"I wasted them trying to hit Belin. Remember? "Oh, yeah."
247 "I'm not much of a shot." "You hit him."
"I wasted bullets doing it. I'm not wasting any more.
She picked up one of the crampons and looked at it.
"Do we have to wear these damn things?" "We'll hit lots more ice when we start 
the climb. We'll need those to give us traction."
She stared at the mountains looming above them.
"I can't climb up there, Troy."
"Then you'll have to stay down here, and wait for Tarosh."
She looked at the crampon in her hand again. "How do I put these things on my 
boots?"
"I'll show you."
The climb turned quickly into a holding contest. It came down to where they 
could hold on, and for how long.
They had brought only a few pitons with them that could be pounded into the icy 
walls of the mountainside, for rappelling during their descent. On the sheer or 
sharply angled walls, Troy had to cut handholds and toeholds for them using his 
ice ax. On the paths and less severe inclines, they walked slowly, trusting to 
their crampons for traction, and using the ice axes to help them maintain 
balance.
When all else failed, Troy went up ahead, making his own way across the ice, 
then using the nylon rope to haul Kelly up behind him once he had reached a 
ledge. Their progress became painfully slow and tedious. Hours passed, with 
little gain in elevation.
At one point, holding on to a narrow ledge with
248 
both hands, Kelly looked back behind her at the progress they had made.
"There has got to be an easier way to do this!" she said.
"Not unless we learn to fly." "This could take days!"
"If we're lucky."
"I can't keep this up, Troy."
"Sure you can. Just keep taking it one step at a time."
"Could we at least stop and rest for a few minutes?"
"Later, when we're off this main wall. Tarosh and his men can see us now with no 
problem." "So what? They have to climb up the mountain
the same damn slow way we do!"
"Yeah, but they have guns. Unless T-rex ate it, they still have that .460 
Weatherby, a very effective long-range rifle, if you know how to use it-and I'll 
bet Prozkov does."
She nodded wearily. "Okay. Let's keep going." They were crossing a fairly wide, 
moderately inclined ledge when Kelly lost her footing and began to fall.
She flailed for traction with her ice ax, swinging it wildly at the ice and 
missing, slipping down to one knee, then to her side, then rolling over onto
her stomach.
She began sliding down the icy incline, slowly,
at first, then faster, gaining speed with every second. "Troy!"
She reached out a hand as she slid down the
incline.
He turned and tried to grab her, but it was too'
late.
249 "Use your ice ax to stop!" he shouted after her. She slid faster than ever 
now, like a hurtling 
hockey puck, ice crystals scattering around her, displaced by the friction of 
her slide. 
The incline down which she was rapidly sliding ended in a sheer drop to the base 
of the mountainside, more than 500 feet below. If she hit the drop-off at her 
present rate of speed, she would shoot off the edge like a ski jumper, falling 
out in a long arc down to the Peninsula plain. 
"Use the ice ax!" Troy shouted at her again. She could barely hear him above the 
wind whipping at her face and the sound of her own body sliding rapidly down the 
ice. 
She reached out with the ax and tried to force it into the ice that was slipping 
away beneath her. The spike end bit the ice and bounced out, the force of impact 
almost tearing the ax loose from her hands. 
She tried again, pushing it down beneath her, leaning on it with all her weight. 
The spike cut into the ice, digging a deep furrow behind it. Ice crystals flew 
up into her face, blinding her, filling her lungs with stinging cold. 
As the ice ax began to gain purchase, she felt the shaft buck in her hand and 
had to hold tight to keep from losing it. 
The ax caught and slipped, caught again, and finally held. 
She came to a sudden stop, arms jerking on the ax handle. 
Her legs hung out over the drop-off. Ice crystals kicked loose by her slide fell 
past her and over the edge, where they were caught up by fierce winds howling 
across the mountainside. 
Afraid to look down, she glanced up instead and saw Troy inching his way down 
the incline toward 
250 
her, using his crampons for traction and the spike on the head of his ax.
She felt her grip on her own ice ax start to weaken.
"Troy!" she called to him. "Help me!" "Just hang on-"
Her hands slipped again, and her legs dangled out even farther over the 
drop-off.
"Troy!" He threw down a length of nylon rope.
The end fell beside her, within catching distance.
"Grab on to that, Kelly, and I'll pull you up." "I can't reach it!"
"Try!" She took a hand off the ax shaft and grabbed for the rope. Her other hand 
slipped down the shaft and off the end. She gave a frightened whimper as she 
felt herself sliding the rest of the way off the ledge. She dug her mittened 
hands into the ice, but it slipped away beneath her. Her legs hung straight down 
as she started to drop.
Troy, sliding down the incline in a flurry of ice crystals, grabbed her wrist 
with one hand and with the other planted his ice ax solidly behind him, bringing 
his slide to a sudden stop as he hung on to Kelly, who dangled in midair.
A frightened sob broke from her.
"Grab hold of me with your other hand!" he said.
"I can't-"
"Yes, you can. Just reach up and hang on to me, like I'm some kind of tow rope."
She caught hold of his upper arm with her free hand and hung there, legs jerking 
back and forth over the chasm below.
"Quit kicking your legs." He gritted his teeth
251 against the pressure on both arms. "Just stay still. I'll pull you up." 
"You'll drop me," she said. 
"I'll drop you on purpose if you don't keep still." He pulled her up slowly, 
straining with the effort, beads of sweat popping out on his face, freezing 
instantly to ice crystals in the howling wind. 
When he got her safely all the way back up on the incline, he collapsed facedown 
on the ice and lay there, breathing hard. 
She started to turn and look down. "Don't!" he said. 
"If we slip-" 
"We won't. Just stay where you are and don't move,,, 
She settled back down on the ice and stared at him. 
"Thanks, by the way." "For what?" 
"Saving my life." "Anytime." Tarosh lowered his binoculars. "A very dramatic 
rescue." 
He stood with his men at the foot of the mountain. 
Prozkov glanced at him, the .460 Weatherby slung over one shoulder, both hands 
holding the leash that restrained Grushka. 
"Do I shoot to kill, sir?" 
"Not yet, Dmitri. They're too far away. A shot would only alert them to our 
presence and force then to take cover. We will wait for a more favorable 
opportunity." 
"How do we get up that ice wall?" Benson asked, tilting his head back to stare 
at the sheer white mountainside. 
252 
Grushka snarled fiercely, eyes dark with bloodlust.
Tarosh looked down at the savage husky and smiled.
"We will let Grushka lead us."
"How?" Callahan asked. "Have him go up ahead, dragging Dmitri behind him like 
deadweight?" "No, Tom. For this, we will take Grushka off the leash."
"Hey!" Covicci stepped back. "I don't want to be
nowhere near that dog when it gets unleashed!" "He won't be tracking us, Mark," 
Tarosh explained patiently. "He can smell the scent of Darrow and the girl now, 
on the ground ahead of him. They're the ones he's after."
Covicci looked unconvinced.
"Grushka is a surefooted animal, and a determined one. He will find the 
quickest, safest way to our two deserters."
Tarosh leaned over. "Isn't that right, little Grushka?"
The husky snarled, and lunged at him.
Had it not been for the leather muzzle, and the leash held firmly by Prozkov, 
the dog would have torn out Tarosh's throat.
Tarosh straightened up, a new caution in his
eyes.
"Dmitri will take him up ahead of us, then unleash him."
Prozkov went forward, Grushka straining at the
leash.
"Dog's gonna be the first one up," Mendoza said.
"In that case," Tarosh said, "he will do our work
for us."
When Prozkov reached a point about fifteen
yards up the rocky, ice-covered trail, he stop
and turned back to Tarosh.
I
253 
"Now, sir?"
"Yes, Dmitri. Unleash him, and remove the muzzle."
After Prozkov unsnapped the leash and muzzle, the husky turned on him, snarling. 
Prozkov drew his Makarov calmly and held it on the dog, without moving back or 
showing any fear.
Grushka crouched low, as if preparing to spring. Prozkov stood over him, 
waiting.
The husky snarled once more, then turned and began sniffing the ground with loud 
snorts, clouds of vapor bursting from his nostrils. As soon as he caught the 
scent, he moved forward, nose low to the ground, starting to climb as he 
followed the track of the fugitives' ascent.
Prozkov climbed after him, holstering the Makarov for now.
"Let's go," Tarosh said to the other men.
"This don't look good," Mendoza said, eyeing the icy trail and sheer mountain 
walls, whipped by hurricane-force winds.
"Something wrong, Pete?"
"Goddamn wrong, you bet. What if that monster climbs up here after us? Huh? What 
then?" "Don't worry, Pete. The tyrannosaur is a land
beast, big and bulky. He can't possibly climb mountains."
"You sure about that?"
"Yes. The greatest danger to be found in these mountains right now is Grushka."
Tarosh paused and smiled-a cold, hard smile. "Danger enough, don't you think?"
"Come on, Kelly. Just one more. Up and easy, then over."
He helped her gain a foothold and climb up onto the next narrow ledge above 
them.
254 
They both stood there, bent over, leaning on their axes, spikes planted in the 
ice, trying to catch their breath.
After working their way back up the incline where Kelly almost slid down to her 
death, they had continued their ascent, gaining elevation by slow and arduous 
degrees. They could see the peak of the mountain they were climbing now, 
snow-blurred in the distance above them.
Troy pointed to it. "We're getting closer to the top. We should start seeing 
some caves soon." "Thank God," Kelly gasped, still bent over her ice ax.
They stood on the narrow ledge, barely wide enough for walking single file, a 
dizzying drop-off on one side, a sheer ice wall on the other.
"I know we're both exhausted. But if we stop here, we may not get going again 
until tomorrow
morning. This isn't a good place to pitch a tent, even if-"
She put a hand on his arm. "Listen!"
She cocked her head to one side, straining to hear above the powerful winds that 
howled across the mountain's face.
"What is it now?" he asked. "T-rex again?" She shook her head. "Can't you hear?"
He listened carefully and heard it then: a dog barking into the wind, somewhere 
down below, not far away.
"Wolf!" she said, a smile breaking over her face. She cupped her hands to her 
mouth and began
calling to him.
"Here, boy! Here-"
Troy clamped a mittened hand across her
mouth.
She grabbed his wrist and jerked the hand aside.
"What's the big idea?"
255 "Keep your voice down. That's not Wolf." "How do you-" 
"Listen." She could hear the barking more clearly now, mixed with savage 
snarls-the sounds of an animal hungering for a kill. 
She looked up at Troy. "Who is it?" 
"I don't know. Sounds like a husky, a mean one. But T-rex got all the huskies we 
had at Deepcore, except for Wolf." 
The snarls sounded closer now, as if the animal had begun climbing more rapidly, 
in anticipation of finding prey. 
"Come on," Troy said. "Let's get a little higher up, so we can be looking down 
on him, whoever he is, before he sees us." 
They moved up the narrow ledge, using the ax handles to maintain their balance, 
glancing back at the blind corner below them where the trail took a sharp turn 
downward. 
Kelly stumbled slightly, catching herself with the ice ax. 
Troy reached for her. "Careful!" "I'm okay." 
The snarls drew closer, cutting through the storm winds. 
Trov took off one of his mittens. "What are you doing?" she asked. 
He drew the Makarov from a side pocket of his thermal suit. 
"I need my fingers to shoot." 
"You're going to freeze them off that way." 
He placed the mitten on top of the gun hand, giving it some protection, but 
still leaving the fingers free. 
The snarls increased in volume and ferocity, accompanied by new sounds now: the 
rapid scratch
256 
ing of claws on ice, the heavy breathing of a husky climbing a steep incline.
Troy flipped off the Makarov's safety catch. "Move back," he said to Kelly. "But 
watch your step."
Grushka sprang into view then, powerful body filling the narrow ledge, frozen 
strands of saliva dripping from his jaws like ice fangs.
The dog snarled at them, eyes dark and hateful.
Almost five hundred feet below, Tarosh studied
the confrontation on the narrow ledge through his
binoculars.
"Now?" Prozkov asked, .460 raised shoulder
high for firing.
"Yes, Dmitri. Now."
Prozkov sighted on Troy with great care, then
fired.
At that same moment, on the ledge above,
Grushka sprang.
Troy dropped to one knee and raised the Makarov.
The heavy.460 cartridge slammed into the wall
above him, ice bursting free from the rock face,
falling in shattered fragments down the mountainside.
Troy fired at the dog hurtling through the air
toward him.
The nine-millimeter bullet missed its mark,
striking the rock wall and knocking loose another
shower of ice. The pistol's report joined that of the
.460, echoing up from below.
Grushka lost his momentum and dropped to the
ledge, falling short of his own goal by at least four
yards, momentarily disoriented by the gunshots
and the exploding ice.
Troy fired again and hit the wall a second tithe,
257 sending more loose ice shattering down on top of the husky. 
Grushka flattened his ears and snarled, readying himself to spring at Troy once 
again. 
Down below, Prozkov worked the bolt on the Weatherby and adjusted his aim to 
fire at his target for the last time. 
Troy fired first. The bullet hit the trail directly in front of the husky, 
spraying him with ice splinters and ricocheting off the rock beneath the ice 
with a sharp whine. 
Grushka snarled at the ice, but with a defensive edge now, as if suddenly 
fearful of the man with the gun. 
"I will not miss this time, my Colonel," Prozkov promised. 
He started to squeeze the trigger of the .460. "Dinitri, stop!" 
Prozkov lowered the rifle and stared at Tarosh, who had a hand raised for 
silence, or attention, or both. 
A new sound could be heard then, above the echoes of the gunshots: a low, 
rumbling sound, like thunder rolling in the distance, building in intensity with 
every second that passed. 
"Avalanche!" Benson cried. 
He pointed up at a mass of snow and ice cascading down the mountainside like an 
enormous white tidal wave. 
"Jesus Christ," Mendoza breathed. 
"Take cover!" Tarosh shouted to his men. 
They scrambled for protection as the roar of the descending avalanche filled the 
air, drowning out the howling of the storm winds and the sounds of their own 
frightened cries. 
On the ledge above, Troy began to push Kelly backward, forcing her higher up the 
incline. 
258 "Stop it! You'll make me fall-" 
Grushka growled at them, but did not attack, sensing with animal instinct that 
self-preservation was his first duty now. 
Troy kept pushing Kelly back, half lifting her now, until he had them both 
positioned beneath a solid rock overhang that curved out above the ledge like a 
distended stone lip. He threw her down onto the ice, sheltering her body with 
his. 
The avalanche hit seconds later, with a force like the detonation of a bomb. The 
ground shook beneath them, rocking violently, as if the mountainside had begun 
to split apart. 
Tons of snow and ice fell past them with the deafening roar of a jet at low 
altitude. It fell, and continued to fall, as if the fury of the avalanche had no 
beginning and no end. 
The shaking of the ledge beneath them became so severe that Kelly felt she would 
have been swept over the edge and carried off with the avalanche, if Troy had 
not been holding her down. 
The roaring white violence continued to engulf them for what seemed like an 
eternity, burying them in its wrath. 
Then, slowly, it began to dissipate. 
The cataract of snow and ice dwindled into small streams. 
Their hearing came back to them graduallythe sounds of their own breathing, the 
scrapingof their bodies against the ice, the shifting of loose snow as they got 
up to a sitting position, carefully, then rose to their feet and looked around. 
There was no sign of Grushka. "Wait here," Troy said. 
He moved forward up the ledge, climbing over the mounds of snow and ice that had 
just fall. 
259 some of them giving way beneath his feet, most of them holding. 
Kelly watched him from underneath the overhang. 
He straightened up suddenly and pointed to something. 
She leaned forward, trying to see what it was. "Kelly!" he called back to her. 
"A cave!" 
260 
Just before the avalanche dumped its massive load of snow and ice at the foot of 
the mountain, Proz. kov spotted a narrow fissure that opened into the base of 
the rock wall. 
"My Colonel!" he called to Tarosh. "This way!" He reached back and grabbed 
Tarosh by the shoulders, throwing him inside the fissure, then diving in after 
him. 
Covicci, Callahan, and Benson all managed to make it inside as the first huge 
chunks of ice began to fall around them. 
Mendoza, the last one in, got caught outside the fissure by an ice chunk the 
size of a boulder. It struck him on his left side and rolled off, but not before 
shattering his legs and hipbone. He fell down screaming into the snow and would 
have died there if Benson had not gone out and dragged him back inside the 
fissure along with the others. 
The roar of the avalanche drowned out all other sounds-even Mendoza's 
high-pitched, piercing screams of agony. 
When the fury of the avalanche finally ceased, the fissure entrance was blocked 
to chest level b fallen snow and ice. 
As the other men began to dig their way of 
Mendoza lay moaning on the ice-covered floor of the fissure. 
261 "Madre de dios!" he groaned. "Mother of God, pray for me!" 
Callahan, wheezing for breath as he helped clear the entrance, stopped what he 
was doing and turned to Mendoza. 
"Shut up!" he shouted at him. "Quit whining, goddamn it!" 
"He's in great pain," Tarosh said. "Show some sympathy." 
When they finished clearing the entrance and stepped outside, they found that 
the avalanche had dumped most of its debris out across the plain at the base of 
the mountain, forming a gradually descending slope, like a new section of 
foothill. 
The trail up the mountain, while littered with fallen snow and ice, remained 
passable for the most part. 
"Good," Tarosh said, nodding with satisfaction. "We can still climb up the way 
that Grushka has gone." 
Piercing screams burst from Mendoza again as Callahan and Benson came out of the 
fissure, carrying his broken body between them, shattered legs trailing 
uselessly across the snow. 
Covicci winced at the sound of Mendoza's screams. 
"Sure you guys should be moving him like that?" he asked. 
"What the hell you want us to do?" Callahan said, breathing hard as they set 
down the body. "Leave him in there to just goddamn die?" 
The other men walked over to where Mendoza lay on the snow, his screams 
subsiding gradually to guttural moans. 
Blood had begun to seep through the legs of his thermal suit, staining the snow 
beneath them bright red. 
262 
"He's hurt bad," Benson said, trying to catch his breath.
"Yes," Tarosh agreed.
"My legs!" Mendoza gritted his teeth. "Madre de dios!"
"His legs are all smashed up," Benson said. "What the hell do we do with him 
now?" Callahan asked. "We don't even have a goddamn stretcher to carry him back 
to Deepcore. Not that there's anything there to go back to."
"Yes," Tarosh said. "And if we were to let two men try to evacuate him, that 
would leave only three of us to follow the trail of the deserters."
"So what do we do with him?" Callahan asked again.
Tarosh nodded to Prozkov, who took out his Makarov and fired two shots into the 
back of Mendoza's head.
Blood and brains spattered the recently fallen snow.
His body jerked once, then shuddered, then lay still.
"Jesus!" Covicci muttered, stepping back. Callahan, visibly shaken, turned to 
Tarosh. "What the hell you do that for?"
"He wasn't useful to us, Tom. He couldn't walk. He needed medical attention. 
Useless things must be cast aside."
Benson swallowed. "At least he's out of his pain now.
"Yes, George. Exactly. He's no longer suffering" Tarosh turned away from the 
broken body.
"Don't we at least want to bury him?" Callahan asked.
"If you feel so inclined, Tom, there's plenty of snowThe deafening roar cut him 
short, bouncing o
263 the base of the mountain, carrying with it gusts of warm, fetid breath. 
All five men looked up to see the tyrannosaur towering above them, standing high 
on a mound of fallen snow and ice, clouds of hot vapor billowing from its huge, 
lethal jaws. 
"Holy Jesus," Benson whispered. 
"Back inside the fissure!" Tarosh ordered his men. 
As they scrambled for the opening in the rock wall, casting terrified glances 
behind them, the tyrannosaur leaped down from the mound with the agility of a 
great hunting bird, huge talons scattering loose snow and ice before it. 
Covicci slipped outside the fissure and fell to his knees. 
The tyrannosaur moved down toward him, jaws gaping wide. 
Covicci covered his head with his hands and screamed. 
The creature snapped up Mendoza's dead body, seizing it in its massive jaws and 
bolting it down whole. 
Covicci remained on his knees, head covered, screaming. 
"Inside, you fool!" Tarosh shouted. "While there's time!" 
Covicci, still stunned, lowered his hands. 
The tyrannosaur twisted its head and lunged at him. 
Covicci screamed again and began crawling toward the fissure on his hands and 
knees, scrambling over snow and ice. 
He made it inside just before the great jaws reached him. 
The tyrannosaur slammed its head into the fissure entrance, knocking the men 
inside off their 
264 
feet, filling the narrow opening with the hot stench of recently swallowed human 
flesh. It roared in angry frustration, the noise deafening inside the narrow, 
rock-walled enclosure.
It snapped its powerful jaws open and shut, large curved fangs grinding together 
with the brute clashing sound of tremendous steel spikes driven hard, one 
against the other.
The five men crawled all the way back to the end of the dark fissure, where they 
cowered like rats in a trap.
"Bozhveh inoy!" Prozkov crossed himself. "God save me!"
Tarosh pressed his back flat against the icy fissure wall.
Covicci whimpered, hiding his head in his hands again.
Benson and Callahan sat motionless, mute with terror.
After one last great roar of frustration that rattled the bones of the men 
inside the fissure, the tyrannosaur withdrew its huge jaws from the entrance and 
moved off, hot breath chuffing noisily into the frigid Antarctic air.
Several seconds passed while the beast snorted outside.
Inside, the five men sat motionless, not daring even to stand up, let alone walk 
to the entrance and look out.
After more time had passed, the chuffing sounds seemed to withdraw into the 
distance, followed by a trumpeting roar that echoed back from the icebound face 
of the mountainside.
Prozkov moved forward cautiously, keeping low to the floor of the fissure. 
Reaching the entrance, he peered outside.
A startled look crossed his face as he watched
265 the tyrannosaur leaping nimbly up the snow-filled trail above them like a 
gigantic roadrunner, long tail held erect, powerful muscles rippling beneath 
taut, leathery skin. 
"My Colonel!" Prozkov cried, turning back to him. "The monster climbs the trail 
of Grushka and the deserters!" 
Tarosh nodded, blood flowing down his face from the newly reopened scalp wound. 
"Yes, Dmitri." 
"But, sir," Prozkov continued, returning to the end of the fissure, still 
crouching because of the logy ceiling, "you say that something that big could 
not possibly climb-" 
"Not now, Dmitri. I'm trying to think." Prozkov nodded and fell silent, taking a 
seat beside him. 
No noise could be heard within the dark fissure now, except for the distant 
howling of the wind outside, and the labored, anxious breathing of the five 
frightened men. 
Callahan broke the silence first. 
"What do we do now? Stay in here till we starve to death?" 
"Shut up, Tom," Tarosh said. 
"No, you shut up! Some leader you are! If you think-" 
Prozkov reached inside his thermal suit, where he carried his Makarov in a 
shoulder holster. He pulled out the gun and pointed it at Callahan's head. 
"I'm sure you want to apologize, Tom," Tarosh said. 
Callahan drew back, keeping silent. Prozkov cocked the hammer of the gun. "Okay! 
I'm sorry." 
"Apology accepted," Tarosh said, then nodded 
266 
to Prozkov, who uncocked the Makarov and put it away.
"Now then," Tarosh continued, "we obviously cannot remain here very long. Nor 
can we go back. The creature's reappearance has complicated things, admittedly. 
But it might still work to our advantage."
"How?" Benson asked.
Tarosh smiled, bloody face glistening in the dim light.
"The creature is still quite valuable, dead or alive. Our means of recapturing 
him at present are severely limited, of course. But we have the girl, and 
perhaps-"
He turned to Prozkov. "Dmitri?" "Sir?"
"Save the remaining Weatherby cartridges for the creature. We can take care of 
barrow with the Makarovs. How much rifle ammunition do you have left?"
"An extra full clip, sir."
"You can't kill that damn thing with a rifle," Callahan said, then quickly 
added, "sir."
"Perhaps not, Tom. But other contingencies could come into play. Another 
avalanche, started deliberately this time, might prove highly effective as a 
means of immobilizing the creature, or even killing him."
"Or us. We barely survived this last one." "Yes, Tom. But the point is, we did 
survive. The creature might not be so lucky. And even if fewerof us survived a 
second avalanche, deliberately started-even if only one of us survived, that man 
would win a prize worth many times the risk."
"Suicide," Callahan muttered under his breath. Benson and Covicci both appeared 
to agree with
him.
267 But the sight of Prozkov reaching inside his
thermal suit again and simply resting his hand on the Makarov seemed to make 
them suddenly unwilling to share their opinions.
it took a great deal of time and effort for Troy and Kelly to clear away the 
recently fallen snow and ice from the cave entrance, and even after they had 
finished, much debris from the avalanche still remained inside the cave itself.
But the labor involved in the cleanup seemed worthwhile. The cave was large for 
a naturally occ1erring one, with a ceiling that allowed them to stand without 
stooping. Tiny crevices farther back from the entrance let in small amounts of 
wind and snow, along with fresh air, but the interior seemed warm overall, 
compared to the Antarctic landscape outside, and reasonably dry. Because no 
animals live in the mountains of the Peninsula, except for seabirds nesting on 
peaks, the cave was free of bones or droppings left behind by former occupants.
Once inside, Troy unstrapped his backpack and set it on the cave floor, where he 
began taking out wads of waste paper and placing them on top of a compact butane 
stove.
"What's that for?" Kelly asked. "Fire."
"Why don't you use the butane cylinders? Isn't that what we brought them for?"
"Yeah, but I want to save those." "For what?"
"You never know."
After Troy got the fire started, Kelly took off her mittens and warmed her hands 
above the flames. "God, that feels good!" she said. "I thought I'd
268 
never get warm again. How long can we stay here, Troy?"
"This is just temporary, like spending a night .in a motel."
"I could stay here for weeks!"
"I'm sure you could. But by then we'd be out of food and starving. There's 
nothing to kill and eat up here."
"Except for that horrible dog!"
She shivered, and drew closer to the flames.
"I think he'd be hard to kill," Troy said. "Besides, we only have one bullet 
left."
"Where did he come from? I thought you said that the T-rex killed all the 
huskies at Deepcore Station."
"He did, far as I know. But Tarosh must have kept one separate from the rest, 
trained as an attack dog."
"It looks like he starved him to death!"
"He probably did. Huskies aren't normally vicious by nature, but they can be 
made that way." Kelly looked up at the cave entrance.
"You think that dog's still around here?"
"I don't know. But wherever he is, Tarosh and his men can't be far behind."
"Unless they got caught in the avalanche." "Wishful thinking, Kelly."
She studied her hands in front of the flames. "If you only have one bullet left, 
what happens if they catch up with us?"
"One bullet's still one bullet. Besides, they don't know how many we have left. 
And we also have this-"
He picked up his ice ax, with its curved pick on one side of the ax head and 
sharp spike on the other.
`These axes might turn out to be more useful
269 than the gun-which mainly seems good for starting avalanches." 
Kelly shivered again, remembering. "That was close." 
She got up from the fire and moved over to her backpack. 
"What do you need?" Troy asked. 
"Food," she said, digging through the backpack. "I want to see if we can heat up 
some of that freeze-dried powder and make it taste almost edible." 
"You think you're that good a cook, huh?" "Damn good." 
"Great. I'll just sit here and watch." 
"Like hell! You can be my assistant. Catch!" She tossed him a lightweight 
aluminum bowl. "Go get some snow so we can melt it over the 
fire. This package says if you just add water, it turns into soup." 
Troy got up and walked over to the cave entrance, where he leaned down and 
scooped up a bowlful of snow and ice from the avalanche debris that still 
remained outside. 
He felt the breath, hot with the stench of decaying flesh, even before he heard 
the ear-shattering roar. 
The bowl of snow and ice dropped from his hand. 
He looked up to see the tyrannosaur lunging at him, jaws open wide, fangs large 
and sharp and murderous. 
He could hear Kelly scream as he fell backward, sprawling across the cave floor, 
scrambling around behind the fire. 
The tyrannosaur thrust its huge head inside the cave, stopping short of the fire 
that burned near the entrance. 
270 
The great beast roared at the flames, scattering wads of burning paper across 
the icy rock floor. Troy grabbed an ice ax and used the spike to
spear one of the burning wads. Then he held it out in front of him like a torch 
and thrust it into the tyrannosaur's gaping jaws.
The beast pulled back as it felt the heat inside its mouth.
It roared in rage, but kept its distance.
Troy moved forward and thrust again with the burning ax.
Hissing clouds of vapor, the beast withdrew from the cave.
Troy stood there with the ax handle raised in front of him as he watched the 
tyrannosaur move back from the cave and over a huge pile of avalanche debris, 
making its way toward another part of the mountainside.
The wad of burning paper broke loose from the spike and fell in a shower of 
glowing embers down to the cave floor.
Kelly came up beside him and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Looks like you just lost your fire," she said. "Yeah. I better get some more, 
in case he comes back."
He poked at the dying embers on top of the stove.
"So much for our home-cooked meal," Kelly said.
"Don't worry. I've got more paper. I'll get another one started in a few 
minutes."
"How do you think he got all the way up here?" "Climbed, like everybody else."
"He didn't seem to recognize me this-"
He heard her voice catch and looked up to see a tear trickling slowly down her 
cheek.
271 "Come on, Kelly. All babies grow up-even baby dinosaurs." 
"I still don't want to see him get hurt!" 
"I wasn't trying to hurt him. But I don't want him coming inside the cave and 
eating me-or you." 
"He must be starved. He doesn't have any food up here." 
"There's always Tarosh." "Troy! I'm serious!" 
"So am I. If T-rex made a snack out of Tarosh and his boys, that would be the 
best break that ever happened to us. We'd still have T-rex himself to worry 
about, after he got hungry again, but we could deal with that, somehow." 
A menacing growl sounded from outside the cave, followed by the loud, aggressive 
barking of a husky. 
Troy looked up. 
Kelly's fingers tightened on his arm. 
"It's that killer dog!" she said. "He's come back!" Troy reached into the side 
pocket of his thermal suit and drew out the Makarov. He took off the safety and 
raised the automatic, gripping it with both hands. 
"Get back behind me," he said to Kelly. 
Then, as if to himself, he whispered, "One bullet left." 
Kelly, stepping back, stared out the cave entrance at the blinding white 
landscape of the mountainside, expecting any second to see Grushka appear in all 
his malevolence. 
The dog leaped out suddenly from behind a mound of snow and ice and came rushing 
at them, his coat matted and filthy, clouds of vapor puffing from his open jaws. 

Kelly started to draw back instinctively. Then a smile broke across her face. 
"Wolf!" 
272 
Troy got another fire going, moving the stove up even closer to the cave 
entrance this time, but by nightfall it had almost burned itself out. 
He sat and watched the flames sink lower on top of the stove, while outside the 
snow-covered landscape seemed to glow beneath the pale twilight of an Antarctic 
summer night. 
Farther back inside the cave, Kelly tried to comb out Wolf's matted, dirty coat, 
snipping off the impossible tangles with a pair of small scissors she had 
brought in her backpack. 
"You're a real mess, Wolf," she said. "You know that?" 
The mixed breed looked up at her and whined. "But I guess we're lucky to have 
you back, aren't 
we?" "The mutt's a survivor," Troy said. "How did he ever follow us this far?" 
"Same way that attack dog did. Huskies have a keen sense of smell. They can 
track people a long way. And Wolf's only half husky. The other half's pure 
timber wolf. Wolves have an incredible sense of smell." 
"You think he met up with that other husky on the way?" 
"No. When those two meet, only one's going to 
walk away." 
273 "You think they'll fight?" "To the death." 
"Then we'll just make sure they never meet. Right, Wolf?" 
The dog whined again and licked his chops. Troy poked at the dying flames with 
the spiked ax head. 
"Your fire's getting low," Kelly said. "It's almost out." 
"Don't you have any more paper?" 
"Not much. Enough for another few hours, maybe. Then we'll have to start using 
the butane." He got up and went over to his backpack, where 
he took out the last of the wadded paper and a butane cylinder. 
"You don't have to use it now, Troy. I'm not that cold anymore. You can save it, 
if you want to." "For what? We're almost at the peak. This is our 
first and last night on the mountain. It won't take us nearly as long to descend 
the other side. When we hit level ground again, we won't be building many more 
fires. When we reach Vladivostok Station, we won't have to." 
He threw more paper on the fire, watching the flames rise. 
Kelly looked up from where she was working on Wolf. 
"How are we going to climb down in so much less time than it took us to climb up 
here?" 
"By rappelling." 
"Which means what, exactly?" 
"Tying a long rope to a piton, then sliding down the face of the mountain while 
using your feet to bounce off the rock face whenever necessary." 
"That's the way professional mountain climbers do it!" 
"Pretty much." 
274 
"Troy, I can't do something like that!"
"You'd be surprised what you can do when you have to."
She put down the scissors and stared at him. "You really don't care how other 
people feel, do you?"
"In an emergency like this one? Not a whole lot, no.
She went back to combing Wolf's coat, a frown on her face.
He got up from the fire and walked over to her. She looked up. "What's this? 
Have you come to apologize? Or do you just need me to do something for you?"
"I want you to do something." "I thought so."
He took out the Makarov and handed it to her. "I'm not that angry, Troy."
"This isn't a joke."
She reached up and took the Makarov from him.
"What's going on?"
"We have to wait here until it gets light. It's not smart to try rappelling in 
the dark-not even in this kind of half-ass, half-twilight darkness."
"So we'll wait. Everyone's comfortable now." "It's not that simple, Kelly. While 
we sit here and relax, Tarosh and his men are climbing. They could already be at 
this elevation by now, or ready to reach it soon."
"But they don't know where we are."
"Their attack dog does. They just have to follow him."
She remembered Grushka and said nothing.
"I have to go out and find them before they find us.
"You're crazy, Troy! The T-rex is still out there
275 somewhere! You'll get killed!" 
"This cave is good protection against T-rex. But for Tarosh and his men it could 
work like a shooting gallery, with only one way in and no way out." 
"You're really going to go after them alone?" "I don't see any other option." 
"Then here." 
She handed the Makarov back to him. "You're the one who's going to need this." 
"You'll be here by yourself, Kelly." "Wolf's with me!" 
"Wolf could have problems of his own when that attack dog shows up, along with 
Tarosh and his men. I don't want them to find you here unarmed." 
"This gun only has one bullet left, Troy." 
"They don't know that. If anyone tries to enter the cave, hold the gun on them 
and tell them you'll shoot." 
"And if they don't stop?" 
"Shoot. Just make sure you aim first." 
He showed her how to work the safety on the Makarov. 
"It's on now. If you want to take it off safety, you push this down. Make sure 
you do that before you try to fire it." 
"I still think this is a stupid plan. You don't even know where they are right 
now!" 
"I have a pretty good idea." "And if you run into the T-rex?" 
"I'll worry about that when it happens." "What are you going to use for a 
weapon?" "This," he said, raising the ice ax. 
He turned to leave, moving past the fire. "Troy!" 
He stopped at the entrance. 
276 
"You better not get yourself killed." "I'll try not to."
About one hundred feet below the cave, the trail passed beside a fairly level 
open area that had been filled with large boulders before the avalanche. Now it 
was spotted with irregular mounds of fallen snow and ice, burying some boulders 
completely, leaving others partially exposed.
"Dmitri!" Tarosh called to Prozkov, climbing up the trail ahead of them. "Stop. 
We'll rest here a moment."
Prozkov turned and came back down the trail toward Tarosh and the other three 
men.
"We can't make camp here," Callahan said, laboring to catch his breath. "Too 
much goddamn snow, and rocks under the snow."
"Yes, Tom," Tarosh said. "But we all need a short rest-especially Mark. He 
almost slipped off the trail a while back."
Covicci nodded, still shivering from his near miss.
"That's right," he said. "I could use a break." "Make us a bunch of goddamn 
sitting ducks for that monster," Callahan muttered, "stopping here like this."
"We haven't seen any sign of the beast since we resumed climbing, Tom," Tarosh 
said. "Perhaps he suffered a mishap and fell off the trail."
"More likely he's hiding somewhere, waiting for us.
"Hey, Tom," Benson said. "Don't make it worse than it is."
"Up yours, buddy. It can't get no worse."
As the other three men walked off the trail into the open area, looking for 
boulders to sit on, Tarosh came up to Prozkov.
277 
"Keep your rifle at the ready, Dmitri," he said. Prozkov unslung the .460 
Weatherby. "Yes, my Colonel." 
"If the beast appears, shoot for the eyes or throat. And make every shot count." 

"Yes, my Colonel." 
Covicci went farther into the open area than the other two men, scrambling up 
over a huge boulder in his way. 
"Hey, Mark!" Benson called to him. "Tryin' to get lost?" 
"I don't want to he near that trail if he comes back!" 
"Which one you talkin' about? The dinosaur or the dog?" 
"Either one!" 
Covicci started moving down the other side of the boulder. 
He stopped and stared at a snowdrift near the bottom. 
A dark object, about three feet long, lay half buried in the snow and ice. If he 
had been anywhere else in the world, like back home in Michigan, he might have 
thought it was a dead animal, a wolverine or something. 
But he knew that nothing like that lived in the Antarctic. 
He climbed down the rest of the way off the boulder, feet crunching on the snow, 
and leaned over to touch the dark object. 
With a fierce snarl, Grnshka burst from beneath the light cover of ice and snow 
concealing him and leaped at the horrified cook's assistant. Covicci raised his 
arms in front of his face. 
Grushka seized hold of one arm, clamping down on it with sharp teeth and 
powerful jaws, snarling deep in his throat. 
278 
Covicci fell down screaming against the boulder, the weight of the large husky 
pushing him back into the rock.
The other men came running across the snowfield.
"Grushka!" Prozkov called in a deep voice. "Stoi!"
The husky continued to attack Covicci's arm, shaking it back and forth viciously 
as blood flew out across the snow.
"Grushka, stoi!"
Prozkov brought down the barrel of the .460 on the back of Grushka's neck. The 
husky yelped, but continued to hang on to Covicci's arm. Prozkov hit him again. 
The animal let go of the arm and backed off several feet, snarling, its mouth 
full of blood.
Covicci rolled off the boulder, cradling his wounded arm.
"Jesus!" Covicci gasped. "My arm!"
"See to him," Tarosh ordered Benson and Callahan.
He turned to Prozkov. "Put Grushka on the leash, Dmitri."
Prozkov nodded. He took the leash from his backpack, then leaned over to snap it 
on the husky's collar.
Grushka snarled at him, baring bloodstained
teeth. "If you try to bite me, stupid cur," Prozkov said,
speaking to the dog quietly in Russian, "I'll slit your belly open and eat your 
guts raw. Understand?"
The husky snarled again, but let Prozkov leash
him.
On the flat surface of a nearby boulder, Benson
279 examined Covicci's wounded arm while Callahan looked on. 
"My arm!" Covicci cried, his voice trembling. "Hey, Mark," Benson said, "it 
ain't that bad, kid. He tore you up a bit, but it don't look like major damage. 
I'll just get some Polysporin and some of them bandages out of the first-aid kit 
in my backpack." 
"Need help with anything?" Callahan asked. "Not really, Tom." 
"Good. I need to go take a leak." 
Callahan walked over behind another boulder about ten yards off and stood facing 
away from it. "Don't move," whispered a voice next to him. Callahan jerked 
toward the voice, wetting his thermal suit. 
"Jesus Christ! Darrow!" 
"Keep your voice down, Tom." 
Callahan turned toward Tarosh and Prozkov, who stood at the edge of the trail 
with Grushka on a leash between them. 
"Hey!" he shouted to the two Russians. "It's-" Troy tapped him on the side of 
his head with the flat end of the ice ax, a bit harder than necessary. 
Callahan crumpled onto the snow in back of the boulder. 
Troy ducked down out of sight, dropping with the body. 
Tarosh turned toward the sound. "Hear that, Dmitri?" 
"No my
George!" Tarosh called to Benson. "Where's Tom?" 
"He went back behind that rock over there to take a leak." Benson pointed with 
the Polysporin 
280 
tube. "Maybe he felt the urge to do more than that."
"See if he's all right, George."
"Hey, Tom!" Benson called. "Everything comin' out okay?"
Wind howled through the boulders, scattering loose snow.
"Stay here with Grushka, Dmitri." Tarosh drew his own Makarov, flipped off the 
safety. "I'll see what's happening."
Behind the boulder, Troy could hear Tarosh's footsteps crunching across snow and 
ice. He gripped the ice ax harder.
The footsteps came to a stop.
"Tom?" Tarosh called. "Are you back there? Answer me!"
His voice echoed off the rock wall of the mountainside.
Troy began crossing behind the backside of the boulder, keeping down low so that 
he could not be seen.
"If anyone else is there," Tarosh said, "I have a gun."
Troy's foot crunched on loose ice. He stopped moving.
"Troy?" Tarosh raised his Makarov. "Is that you?"
Troy looked up at the boulder's edge above him. A mound of avalanche debris 
balanced precariously on top.
He reached up and swung at it with his ice ax, breaking loose a sudden burst of 
snow and ice. Tarosh turned with his Makarov and fired. More snow and ice 
exploded from the top of the boulder.
The reverberations from the pistol shot
bounced like mortar fire against the rock wall. The
281 nine-millimeter bullet ricocheted off the boulder with a metallic whine. 
The instant Tarosh fired, Troy ran for the next boulder, throwing himself across 
the open space between the two. 
Tarosh stood and watched as more snow and ice showered down from the top of the 
boulder he had fired on. 
"A good trick, Troy," he called out, his voice echoing off the rock wall. "But 
you only get to play it once. Come out now and I'll overlook this." 
Troy crouched behind the new boulder, trying to control his heavy breathing, ice 
ax raised in his hand. 
"You're quick, Troy," Tarosh said, "and you're smart. You can try to play this 
game all night, running from boulder to boulder. But I don't have time for it. 
I'll give you one last chance. Come out now and there won't be any hard feelings 
between us. 
Troy flattened himself against the back of the boulder. 
Tarosh signaled to Prozkov, standing beside the trail. 
"Bring Grushka over here, Dmitri." 
The husky moved into the boulder field, snarling fiercely, straining hard at the 
leash. 
"This is it, Troy. Come out from behind there. Now." 
Troy looked at the next boulder, but there was too much open space and Tarosh 
was ready for him this time. 
Tarosh nodded to Prozkov. "Release him, Dmitri." 
Prozkov unsnapped the leash from Grushka's collar. 
The savage husky rushed toward the back of the 
282 
boulder, catching Troy's scent immediately and locking in on it.
Behind the boulder Troy could hear the sound of Grushka's snarling and the rapid 
crunching of four legs over ice and snow.
He raised the ice ax, ready to swing it at the dog's head as he came around the 
side of the boulder.
Grushka came over the top of the boulder instead, dropping down on Troy just as 
he looked up to see what was happening.
The husky lunged for his throat but Troy managed to turn fast enough that 
Grushka's jaws closed on his right shoulder. He fell to the snowcovered ground 
with the dog on top of him, tearing viciously at his shoulder. The ice ax 
dropped from his hand when he fell, landing at least three yards away, sinking 
into the snow. He tried to reach for it.
Grushka bit deeper into his shoulder, making him cry out.
He rolled over with the dog still on top of him and then over once again, trying 
to get close enough to grab the ice ax. Grushka hung on to him and continued to 
tear at his shoulder.
Blood flecked his own face and the dog's fur. Grushka went for his neck again, 
jaws stained with Troy's blood. He held up his left hand to block the dog and 
Grushka sank his sharp teeth into Troy's wrist.
They wrestled on the ground, blood spattering the snow, rolling over again, out 
from behind the boulder and into the open, Grushka snarling deep in his throat 
and Troy using all his strength to try and break loose from the ferocious 
animal.
They rolled over again, bringing Troy within reach of the ice ax. He stretched 
out his right arm,
283 grabbed the ax, and got ready to plunge the spike end into Grushka's side. 
The barrel of the .460 Weatherby dropped down on the back of Grushka's neck with 
enough force to make the husky shudder. 
"Grushka!" Prozkov ordered. "Stoi!" 
He grabbed the husky by the collar and jerked him loose from Troy. Blood spilled 
from Grushka's mouth, along with frustrated snarls. Prozkov threw him to one 
side. The husky hit the frozen earth and rolled back onto his feet, teeth bared. 

Prozkov raised the .460 in a threatening way. Grushka backed down, snarling, 
streaked with Troy's blood. 
Troy lay stunned on the snow, blood flowing from his right shoulder and left 
wrist, a deep gash in his right cheek where Grushka had tried to go for the 
eyes. 
Prozkov slung the .460 back over his shoulder and drew his Makarov. He flipped 
off the safety and pointed the gun at Troy, preparing to finish what Grushka had 
begun. 
Troy tried to leap to his feet, but the pain stopped him. 
He grabbed at his shoulder and fell back onto the snow. 
"You were useful to us once, Troy," Tarosh said, standing beside Prozkov and 
looking down at him. "Too bad you couldn't have stayed that way." 
Prozkov cocked the gun, then squeezed the trigger. 
The shot echoed off the boulders with a resounding crack. 
Troy's body jerked in reaction to the sound. But the impact from the 
nine-millimeter bullet never carne. 
284 
He looked up and saw Prozkov standing over him, wavering slightly, Makarov' 
still gripped in his hand, a stunned, unbelieving look in his eyes. The hand 
that held the Makarov began to tremble, then shake. The gun dropped.
Prozkov pitched forward, falling facedown onto the blood-spattered snow. Blood 
welled up from the place where the bullet had entered his back, spreading across 
his thermal suit like an oozing red oil slick.
Several yards away, Kelly stood with Zalman's empty Makarov gripped in both 
hands, breath steaming in the frozen night air.
Covicci, seated on a nearby boulder, his mauled arm forgotten for the moment, 
looked on with astonishment. Benson, bandages and Polysporin in hand, seemed 
equally stunned.
"Troy?" she called, coming toward him, lowering the gun.
"Kelly!" He tried to sit up. "Get out of here! Run!"
She hesitated. Tarosh turned suddenly and struck her with the barrel of his 
Makarov. She staggered back, the empty gun dropping from her hand as she 
clutched at her forehead. Blood leaked through her fingers.
"Kelly!" Troy tried to get to his feet.
Tarosh grabbed her hard by one arm, shoving the muzzle of the Makarov into her 
face.
"Very clever," he said. "But now you've upset me. You don't want to do that-Miss 
Sawyer." He struck her again with the gun barrel, cutting
open a new wound. She cried out in pain and would have fallen had he not been 
gripping her arm.
"You've made me very upset, Miss Sawyer." His breath came out in harsh gusts, 
pluming in the
285 cold air. "I don't like women who try to act like men. Because then they 
have to be treated like men. And that's not very pleasant, is it?" 
He raised the Makarov to strike her again. Troy, having finally made it to his 
feet, stumbled forward. 
Grushka leaped snarling, blood dripping from his jaws. 
Tarosh stopped, Makarov held in midair, and watched as the fierce husky attacked 
Troy again, clamping down on the right shoulder, dragging him down to the snow. 
"Here." He jerked Kelly around so that she was forced to watch. "Look at this, 
Miss Sawyer. Take a good look. And don't close your eyes, or I'll hit you 
again." 
Blinking through the blood that ran down her face, she watched the husky tear 
mercilessly at. Troy's shoulder. 
A dark shape came out of nowhere and hit Grushka with the force of a speeding 
truck, knocking him away from Troy and up into the air. The husky fell to his 
side on the frozen snow and rolled over several times before getting back to his 
feet and shaking his head vigorously, trying to see what hit him. 
Wolf hit him again, tearing into Grushka's throat with his powerful lupine jaws. 
They rolled across the snow and ice in a welter of flying blood and savage 
snarls. 
Tarosh raised his Makarov and tried to aim at Wolf, but the whirling, snarling 
bodies seemed inextricably interlocked, like different parts of the same animal. 

A strangled howl broke from Grushka. The husky's body stiffened, then went limp. 
Wolf got to his feet and stood above it, a chunk of bloody 
286 
flesh and muscle dangling from his jaws.
Blood spilled out of Grushka's lacerated throat, forming a dark red puddle on 
top of the snow. Wolf raised his head and let out a howl that echoed across the 
frozen Antarctic landscape. Tarosh pointed his Makarov at the mixed breed. Wolf 
turned and growled at him.
"Go ahead and growl, yolk! You've made your last kill."
With his other hand, Tarosh gripped Kelly's shoulder until she cried out in 
pain.
"Both of you have killed your last tonight," he said. "The only killing left now 
belongs to me." He fixed the dog clearly in his sights and fired. The roar 
exploding behind him caused his hand
to jerk and spoiled his aim. The bullet cut harmlessly above Wolf's head.
Tarosh turned to see the tyrannosaur towering above them in the dim Antarctic 
summer night, hot breath billowing from open jaws, rage in its cold eyes.
It pounced first on Covicci, who barely had time to scream before the creature 
snatched/him from the surface of the boulder, only a dark smear of blood left 
behind to indicate that he had ever been there at all.
As the tyrannosaur greedily devoured Covicci, ripping his body to pieces with 
huge curved fangs, Benson crawled into a narrow cleft formed by two adjacent 
boulders, putting him temporarily beyond the creature's deadly reach.
The tyrannosaur roared at Benson in the cleft, clouds of vapor rolling across 
the boulder top, hot
blood from Covicci's half-eaten body dripping
down onto the icy stone surface.
Then it turned and went after the others.
Tarosh disengaged the .460 Weatherby from
287 Prozkov's rigid corpse, raising the rifle to shoulder level, working the 
bolt to bring a new cartridge into the chamber. 
The beast noticed Callahan's body, facedown in the snow. 
It stopped and leaned down to examine him more closely, chuffing noisily as it 
sniffed in the cold night air. 
Callahan, coming slowly back to consciousness, groaned and rolled over, raising 
his hand to where Troy had hit him. 
He winced at the pain in the side of his head. Then he heard the low roar, like 
a rumble of distant thunder overhead, and looked up to see the pale eyes peering 
down at him, terrible jaws gaping wide, curved fangs clotted with fresh flesh 
and new blood, huge tail twitching back and forth in patient but eager 
anticipation. 
"Jesus God," Callahan whispered, then started to scream. 
He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his head, and began to run, still 
screaming. He staggered through deep snow drifts between the boulders, glancing 
back over his shoulder at the great beast standing ready to attack but 
motionless except for the patient twitching of its huge tail. 
Callahan threw himself behind another snowcovered boulder, gasping for breath, 
snot running from his nose and freezing on his upper lip in the subzero 
Antarctic summer night. 
"Prozkov!" he cried. "Tarosh! For God's sake, help me!" 
His cries echoed off the ice-covered mountainside and drifted like lost sounds 
across the Peninsula plain. 
He leaned over to one side of the boulder, peer
288 
ing out fearfully, ready to jump back at once. The tyrannosaur leaned down 
toward him, hissing clouds of billowing vapor from its deadly jaws.
Callahan screamed and moved back behind the boulder, moving too far, in his 
terror, all the way over to the other side.
The tyrannosaur moved with him, shifting its huge head to roar at him from that 
side, terrible jaws agape.
This cat-and-mouse game went on for several more seconds, with Callahan and the 
tyrannosaur shifting from one side of the boulder to the other, until the great 
beast, tiring of the game, stretched its neck up over the boulder and down, 
seizing Callahan in its monstrous jaws and lifting him high into the frozen 
night air, legs kicking wildly inside the creature's maw, silhouetted against a 
pale Antarctic summer moon.
Callahan's screams echoed inside the merciless jaws, punctuated by the distinct 
breaking and grinding of bones.
A rifle shot rang out, echoing off boulders and rock wall.
A dark red line appeared suddenly above the tyrannosaur's right eye as the heavy 
.460 Weatherby cartridge tore out a chunk of tough, scaly skin.
The tyrannosaur roared in pain and rage, turning immediately to where the shot 
had come from, Callahan's half-eaten body dropping loose from its jaws.
Tarosh worked the bolt on the .460 again, charn bered a new cartridge, took aim 
at the beast over head, fired another round.
The Weatherby bucked in his hands, slammit*, back into his shoulder, its report 
submerged the tvrannosaurIs roar.
289 The second bullet seemed to have no impact whatsoever. 
Blood spilling down the side of its huge head from the first hit, the 
tyrannosaur roared again and lunged at Tarosh with a sudden, darting motion. 
Tarosh reacted quickly. He threw down the.460 and dove headfirst toward a nearby 
boulder that might have provided some protection from the tyrannosaur's 
attack--if only he had been able to move even faster. 
The tyrannosaur caught him in midair, huge jaws clamping shut over his legs, 
cutting him off from the waist down. 
Tarosh dropped screaming to the snow, a legless torso, and began to claw his way 
across the ground with his arms, leaving a trail of blood behind him like the 
glistening track of a snail. 
The tyrannosaur, still swallowing Tarosh's legs, stamped down on his wriggling 
upper body with one formidable taloned foot, shattering his spine and driving 
him straight through the snow cover into the frozen, ice-bound earth. 
Blood burst from Tarosh's mouth. The tyrannosaur brought down its huge foot 
again and again, smashing what remained of Tarosh's body into a shapeless, dark 
red mass. 
Hissing at the remains, the beast turned to the others. 
Kelly had helped Troy across the snowfield, away from the tyrannosaur's battle 
with Tarosh, pulling him inside a narrow passageway formed by two adjacent 
boulders, similar to the cleft where Benson had hidden. 
Troy leaned back against the icy interior surface of the boulders, gasping for 
breath, eyes closed, 
290 
blood staining his face and the right shoulder of his thermal suit.
"You'll be okay," she said, breathing hard herself. "Just don't move and you'll 
be-"
Overhead the tyrannosaur let out a roar that made the boulders vibrate. It 
seemed to be directly above them. Kelly covered her ears as the creature roared 
again, a frightened look on her face as she watched Troy leaning back against 
the rock surface, face deathly pale, eyes closed.
The tyrannosaur chuffed angrily at the boulders, knowing that the two humans 
were somewhere inside the cleft, but not sure how to get to them. It leaned 
down, hissing at the stone impediments, peering into one side of the cleft, then 
the other.
Kelly happened to look up at that moment and see a large yellow eye staring in 
at her, cold and unblinking, with nothing about it that seemed even remotely 
part of this earth.
She screamed despite herself and started to back away-until she realized there 
was nowhere to go.
The tyrannosaur roared again, the sound deafening inside the cleft, and butted 
the boulders with its massive head, reacting instinctively to rage and 
frustration.
The top boulder gave a little, rocking on its foundation.
Encouraged by this, the beast lowered its head and butted the top boulder again, 
more systematically this time, trying to roll it away from the bob tom one.
Kelly began to scream in earnest now.
The tyrannosaur hit the boulder again, bellosw ing from the effort of its labor, 
slamming into to rock surface with its skull, the crack of bo
291 against stone echoing in the night air. 
The top boulder shifted its weight, rolling back slowly to reveal Kelly cowering 
against the bottom one, Troy resting motionless beside her. 
She threw her own body across his, screaming as the tyrannosaur leaned down 
toward them. Troy opened his eyes and tried to push her off. "Get away from me!" 

"Troy, no!" 
"He wants me, not you! Get away from me! Save yourself!" 
"No ,., 
The creature hissed at them, hot breath enclosing them like exhalations from a 
charnel house. The hideous jaws hovered over them, dripping with the blood of 
others who had gone before. 
Suddenly the beast jerked its massive head upright, scattering blood across the 
surface of the boulder and the bodies of the two people below it. The 
tyrannosaur turned sideways with a roar of angry impatience, twisting around 
until it could see what tiny but bothersome thing was daring to attack it. 
Wolf had crawled up onto the creature's gigantic right leg and was busy tearing 
at the tough, leathery skin with his powerful jaws. He had broken the skin, 
ripping loose large chunks-minor damage to an animal the size of the 
tyrannosaur, but irritating, like the bite of a horsefly to a human. 
Kelly leaned forward, unable to believe what she saw. 
"Wolf!" The tyrannosaur lunged at the dog clinging to its leg. 
Wolf let go and dropped to the ground, moving back just in time to escape the 
deadly jaws. 
292 
He barked up at the beast looming above him. The tyrannosaur turned all the way 
around until it faced its insignificant adversary, huge tail twitching slowly.
It hissed irritably at the dog, then went for him with almost supernatural 
speed.
Wolf scrambled back out of the way, once more evading the murderous jaws, but by 
mere seconds and inches this time.
Clouds of hot vapor rolled over the dog as the beast hissed at him again and 
lunged for the third time.
Wolf leaped for his life. The huge jaws snapped at the frozen ground where he 
had been standing moments before, tearing loose great bursts of snow and ice. 
Wolf ran like the wind across the boulder field and up to the edge, where it 
dropped down to the base of the mountainside far below.
The tyrannosaur closed the distance between them in seconds with quick, birdlike 
steps, sprinting across the snow with the agility of an animal many times 
smaller than itself.
Crouched at the edge of the drop-off, hind legs scrambling for purchase, Wolf 
barked defiantly at the tyrannosaur.
The beast roared at him, as if to trumpet its superiority before delivering the 
final killing blow. "Wolf!" Kelly screamed at the dog. "Run!"
But Wolf did not run, choosing to stand his ground instead.
The tyrannosaur lunged at the dog-and staggered suddenly.
The ice-bound drop-off gave way beneath the great taloned feet with a loud 
cracking soundWolf and the tyrannosaur dropped along with it, rolling down the 
side of the mountain in a minor avalanche of rocks and frozen earth and tumblir
293 ice and snow. The roars of the enraged beast echoed like explosions from the 
chasm below as it fell, and kept on falling. 
"wolf! °
Kelly ran toward the drop-off. 
Troy staggered after her, steps awkward and erratic as he limped across the 
boulder field. 
He stopped at the section where the drop-off had given way beneath the weight of 
the tyrannosaur, leaving in its place a gaping, jagged indentation in the ice. 
He stood beside Kelly and looked out over the edge. 
Showers of snow still spilled down the mountainside, along with small boulders 
and shards of broken ice sheets. Everything looked white and clear under the 
pale twilight of an Antarctic summer night, but it was impossible to see all the 
way down to the base of the mountain, or any sign of the tyrannosaur's great 
body, stretched out on the plain below. 
294 Ice 
Benson helped Kelly carry Troy back to the cave, where they applied disinfectant 
to his wounds, then let him sleep until late the next morning, when he woke with 
a start. 
"What-" It came back to him, slowly. 
He stared at the bandages on his left arm and shoulder, and raised his right 
hand to touch the bandage on his face. 
"You're lucky," Kelly said, leaning over him, her own face bandaged where Tarosh 
had hit her with the Makarov. "Grushka didn't puncture any veins, 
or sever any tendons." "Who's Grushka?" 
"That attack dog, the one that almost killed you. 
"How did you find out its name?" "George told me." 
He looked over at Benson, who sat several yards away. 
"I helped patch you up some, Troy," he said "But Kelly here was the one who did 
most of the work." 
"Thanks, George." He turned back to Kelly. 
"You, too." 
"Just repaying old debts. How do you feel?" 
295 "Like every bone in my body's broken. Otherwise, great." 
"What you need is some soup." She handed him a bowl. 
"Thanks." He raised himself, wincing, and took a sip. 
Benson cleared his throat, as if trying to say something. 
Troy glanced at him. "What is it, George?" 
"I hope you don't think that me and Tom and Pete-" 
"Pete Mendoza was with you guys? I didn't see him." 
"Tarosh had him executed," Kelly said. "That figures." Troy sipped at the soup. 
"Anyways," Benson continued, "I hope you don't 
think that me and the others sided with Tarosh because we-you know-because we 
wanted to, or anything like that." 
"I don't." 
"Sure lucky for me you came along when you did, Troy. Saved me from gettin' shot 
by Tarosh." "Kelly was the one who saved us both." 
Troy looked up at her. "Even though she was out of her mind to take a risk like 
that." 
"Are you sorry I did?" 
He swallowed some more soup. "No." 
"I couldn't just sit here and let you go down there by yourself! Besides-" 
Her voice seemed to catch. "If I hadn't taken Wolf with me, none of us would be 
here now." "By God, that's true!" Benson said. 
"He was one hell of a dog," Troy agreed. 
Kelly looked up. "You think he survived the fall?" 
"I'm not sure even T-rex survived it, and he's 
296 
tough as hell. But Wolf died a brave death, defending us to the last."
She lowered her head again.
Troy put down the soup bowl and started to get up, wincing at the pain in his 
arm and shoulder. "Where do you think you're going?" she asked. "Outside."
"Like hell you are! Lie back down there!"
He stood up and flexed his shoulder carefully. Kelly got up beside him. "The 
T-rex is dead, Troy! You've been hurt. You need to rest. What's the rush?"
"The weather, for one thing. The winds seem to have let up a bit during the past 
fourteen hours, but a bad storm could blow in anytime and lock us in here for 
days, maybe weeks. We don't have enough food to sit it out that long."
"What about your famous summer rains? Couldn't they blow in all of a sudden, 
too? Thaw this place out a little?"
"The rains come when they come. You can't count on them."
"But we have enough food to wait a few more days."
"Not if we want to reach Vladivostok Station alive."
They made it up to the summit and crossed over to the other side of the mountain 
without running into any bad weather worse than strong winds at the peak. But by 
the time they found a ledge from which it would be safe to rappel, dark storm 
clouds had filled the sky above them.
"Somethin' sure looks set to blow in," Benson said.
Troy nodded, and continued to pound a piton
297 into the rock surface of the ledge, using his ice ax as a hammer. 
"How do you know that thing's going to hold?" Kelly asked. 
"Because the ledge is solid rock and the piton is steel and the rope is good 
heavyweight nylon." He struck some more blows, then paused to catch his breath. 
"Also, you just have to trust these things." "That's what I was afraid of," 
Kelly said. 
When Troy finished hammering the piton into the rock, he tied one end of a rope 
coil around it, then started to knot all the coils they had brought with them 
together until they formed one single continuous length. 
"Are those knots going to hold?" she asked. "They better." 
"Is the rope long enough to get us all the way down?" 
"This side of the mountain's shorter than the other. The plain slopes up more 
sharply to meet it. 
"How do you know that?" 
"I'm a geologist. I'm supposed to know these things." 
After the coils had been knotted together, Troy pulled on the length at 
different points, testing its tensile strength. 
"Everything check out okay, Troy?" Benson asked. 
"Yep. It's now or never." They both looked at Kelly. 
If you think I'm going down there first-" 
It would be a bad idea to have you go last," Troy said, "and it won't make it 
any easier if you're in the middle." 
"Look, why don't I just start walking down while 
298 
you guys use the rope? It may take me a little longer, but you can inflate the 
tent and get some rest while you're waiting for me."
"I've got a better idea," Troy said.
He got up and put on his backpack again, wincing as the straps cut into his 
wounded shoulder. "I'll go down first, and you can go along with me."
Kelly stared at him. "What are you talking about?"
"I'll worry about the rappelling. You just hang on to me."
"How? Put my arms around your neck and choke you?"
"We've got some extra rope. We can make a kind of harness out of it, strap you 
across my back, just like a backpack."
"What about your shoulder?" "The shoulder can stand it."
it took him a few more minutes to rig up the harness.
"See?" he said. "Simple. Just put your arms through here, and hold on tight to 
these ropes, then down you go."
"Troy, no! I'm not doing this, okay?"
"You don't have any choice. You can't stay up here, and you can't walk down by 
yourself. So get ready to drop."
As she adjusted herself in the makeshift harness behind his back, Troy tossed 
the extended length of rope off the ledge and watched it float down toward the 
sloping plain below.
"Okay," she said, "I'm closing my eyes. That means if you happen to slip, or the 
rope breaks, I'll never know about it until we hit bottom." "Sounds good."
He grabbed hold of the rope with both hands,
299 then backed up to the point where the ledge dropped off into nothingness.
"All set to burn a pair of thermal mittens?" Benson asked.
"Yeah. Sorry you have to be the last one down, George."
"No problem, Troy. You ready?"
"Now or never. How about you, Kelly?" "Just do it."
He took a deep breath-and jumped off the ledge.
They slid more than fifty feet down the rope, his thermal mittens smoking with 
friction, before Troy tightened his grip and swung into the icecovered rock face 
of the mountainside, bouncing off it with his feet, using his legs as springs.
"Oh, Jesus," Kelly gasped. "I'm going to throw up!"
"Then turn your head, and don't do it on me." They rappelled down several 
hundred more feet.
Troy laughed as they hit the rock face again, and swung out on the rope in a 
wide, spinning arc. "Once you get used to this, it's fun!"
"I'll kill you when we get down," she said, her eyes shut.
The roar from above made her open them. They both looked up, twirling around 
with the rope, to see the tyrannosaur standing on the ledge, enormous even at 
that distance, leaning down as it threatened Benson with gaping jaws.
"My God!" Kelly cried. "George!"
Benson went over the ledge, grabbing on to the rope, and started to climb down 
it hand over hand. Troy loosened his own grip on the rope, letting
them drop so far and fast that it felt like free fall. Kelly screamed as the 
wind whipped at her face.
300 
The rock face rushed past them in a stroboscopic blur.
They fell hundreds of feet in a matter of seconds.
Troy bounced off the rock face again, with jolting impact this time, only to 
drop even faster, and farther.
"What are you doing?" she screamed at him. Up above them, Benson made it only a 
few feet down the rope before the tyrannosaur lunged at him, picking hint off 
like a piece of live meat on a string. As the terrible jaws closed over him, 
ripping his hands loose from their grip, the resulting shudder traveled down the 
entire length of the rope, coursing through Troy's mittened hands like an 
electric shock.
He loosened his own grip more, dropping them even faster.
Up above, the beast made short work of Benson, devouring his struggling body 
quickly and hungrily, swallowing it whole.
When it finished, it peered closely at the piton and the taut, trembling rope 
attached to it, then at the two tiny figures dropping rapidly into the distance 
below.
It chuffed irritably once or twice, as if trying to figure out the connection 
between the rope, the figures, and the piton.
Then it seemed to understand, and snapped viciously at the piton, tearing it 
loose from the rock ledge and dropping it and the rope into the chasm below, 
roaring at them triumphantly as they drifted down toward the distant sloping 
plain.
Troy felt the rope start to give when the tyrannosaur bit into it, and he slid 
the rest of the way down, friction burning through his mittens like fire.
301 They were twenty feet off the ground when the 
rope went completely slack and they started to drop in true free fall. 
"Roll when you hit the ground!" he shouted to Kelly. 
It seemed farther away than twenty feet. They fell, and kept falling, but could 
not hit the ground. Then it came rushing up at them suddenly, with 
all the shattering impact of a head-on collision. Troy hit the ground and 
started rolling, sending up showers of snow and ice around him as he skidded 
down the slope. 
Kelly hit at an angle, flipping head over heels first, then plowing through the 
snow on her back. Neither one of them came to a stop until both 
had slid far down the incline, away from the foothills of the Peninsula 
mountains and out onto the coastal plain. 
Kelly stopped first, half buried in snow from her descent. 
Troy rolled even farther before slowing down enough to stop himself by using the 
ice ax strapped to his side. 
When he got to his feet, he limped over to Kelly. Blood trickled from her lip 
where she had cut it, and from the wounds made by Tarosh's Makarov. Her goggles 
had gotten knocked off and the hood to her thermal suit had fallen back, 
exposing her blond hair to the wind and snow. 
"God," she muttered, "my head's still spinning!" He reached down to help her up. 

"Sorry I dropped us so fast. But I knew it wouldn't be long before T-rex hit 
that rope." 
"Did George make it?" "No." 
The trumpeting roar from above interrupted him. 
302 
They looked up and saw the tyrannosaur peering down from the rock ledge far 
above, bellowing at them, tail twitching with furious impatience.
"At least he's all the way up there," Kelly said. No sooner had the words left 
her mouth than the tyrannosaur moved away from the ledge and over to a steep 
slope whose descent paralleled the sheer cliff Troy and Kelly had used for their 
rappelling. The beast began to climb down the slope, using its great taloned 
feet as crampons, half sliding and ~alf leaping as it descended the 
mountainside.
At one point, it lost its footing and rolled for hundreds of yards. When it came 
to a stop, it regained purchase and continued its rapid, surefooted descent.
"I can't believe it!" Kelly said.
"Now we know why the fall didn't kill him. Come on!"
He grabbed her arm and started to pull her forward, away from the foothills of 
the Peninsula mountains, out toward the frozen Weddell Sea, shining dark blue in 
the distance, filled with vast ice sheets and floating mountains of ice.
"Troy, no!" She dug her feet into the snow. "What's wrong?"
"We can't outrun him! And there's no place to run."
"Trust me. I've got an idea."
She shook her head wearily, at the end of her strength.
"There's no way out this time, Troy." "It's risky. But it can work."
"What?" He unstrapped his backpack and spilled its contents onto the 
snow-covered ice. He picked up one item, then another.
303 "What do you think you're doing?" 
The tyrannosaur roared with a sound like doomsday as it came sliding down the 
mountainside toward them, snow and ice cracking beneath its heavy taloned feet. 
"Here." Troy handed her a butane cylinder and kept the other item for himself-a 
small, palm-size package wrapped in white paper, with wires and a metal switch 
box attached to it. 
He started to pull off her backpack. "Hey! What are you-" 
"You won't need this now. We can come back for it later." 
"What's that?" She pointed to the small, wrapped package. 
"Something for slowing down T-rex." "What is it?" 
"Gelignite." Her mouth dropped open. "Good God, Troy! Are you crazy? Did you see 
what that stuff did to Deepcore Station?" 
"This isn't quite as much as they used. Besides, I know what I'm doing. They 
didn't." 
The tyrannosaur roared again-still distant, but closer. 
They looked up and saw it coming down the mountainside like a gigantic snowplow, 
kicking up cascades of snow and ice. 
"Come on, Kelly. Let's move." 
He pointed to the rocky ice-bound coast of the Weddell Sea. 
"You run along the beach, that way. If T-rex comes after you, turn the butane 
cylinder on. Point the flame at him. He still doesn't like fire. It won't scare 
him off, but it should discourage him. Besides, if this works right, he won't 
even look at 
304 you. He'll be coming after me." 
"Then where are you going to"Out there." 
He pointed to an ice shelf extending into the Weddell Sea. 
"That's nothing but ice over water! What are you going to do when you reach the 
end of it?" "Trust me. I have it all worked out." 
He got back to his feet, the wrapped gel, ignite in one hand. 
They both started running toward the sea, the sound of the descending 
tyrannosaur crashing down behind them. 
The foothills on that side of the Peninsula lay much closer to the Weddell Sea 
than those on the other side did to the Bransfield Strait. As a result, Troy and 
Kelly quickly crossed more than half the distance separating them from the 
shoreline. 
"Quit running with me!" he shouted at her, as she sprinted alongside him. "Run 
that way!" He pointed to the rocky beach again. "Away from me, okay?" 
"But-" "Don't argue with me! Run! Get the hell out of here!" 
She split off from him, looking over her shoulder to see the tyrannosaur leap 
down from the foothills and onto the plain. 
The sight made her stumble, and almost fall. But she caught herself in time and 
kept running-down the beach, away from Troy, parallel to the water's edge. 
The tyrannosaur gave a vengeful roar and went after Troy, who ran at top speed 
across the shoreline and out onto the ice shelf itself, extending like a pier 
into the Weddell Sea. 
The ice ax flopped at his side. The gelignite rode 
305 
like disaster in the palm of his hand. 
The tyrannosaur bridged the gap between them in a series of short, birdlike 
hops, moving with a swiftness and agility out of all proportion to its great 
size. 
It caught up first to Kelly, who ran slowly along the water's edge, struggling 
to run at all in subzero air that cut her lungs like knives. 
The tyrannosaur leaped in front of her suddenly, blocking her way with all the 
finality of a landslide. 
She came to a stop, ice spraying up from beneath her boots. 
The tyrannosaur's scaly, resistant hide was scarred with fresh scrapes and 
lacerations the color of dried blood. It had suffered obvious damage from the 
fall down the mountainside, but seemed no less fierce for its injuries. 
It lowered its great head and hissed at her ominously. 
Kelly shrank back, a tiny figure before the enraged beast. 
Out on the ice shelf, Troy worked quickly. Dropping to his knees, he took his ax 
and began to cut a furrow into the surface of the shelf, chopping out large 
chunks of ice to make it wide and deep. 
The tyrannosaur hissed again and moved in close to Kelly. 
Once he had the furrow cut large enough, Troy placed the wrapped gelignite down 
in it and set the electronic timing fuse. 
Then he covered up everything with loose ice. Looking up, he saw the 
tyrannosaur-and Kelly. 
"Hey, T-rex!" he shouted at the creature. "Over here!" 
306 
The tyrannosaur ignored him, all its attention on Kelly.
It cocked its head to one side, then lowered it again, and came in even closer 
to her, its great head forward.
She stepped back, fearful that it might be trying to ram her with its huge, bony 
skull.
Then she understood.
"You want your head petted, don't you?" she asked, voice lost in the howling of 
sudden katabatic winds from the interior.
She remembered the newly hatched tyrannosaur then, an infant of not quite seven 
inches, nuzzling its head happily against her hand as she petted it.
She looked at it now, leaning toward her, a beast of monstrous dimensions, 
savage and uncontrollable as the ice-bound world of Antarctica itself.
The tears froze on her cheeks as she shook her head.
"No, baby," she said softly. "I can't do that anymore.
Sensing her rejection, the tyrannosaur withdrew suddenly, uttering a muted roar 
of pain and resentment.
Then it turned toward Troy, standing on the ice shelf, and let out another roar, 
loud and defiant this time-a war cry aimed at the man who seemed to have kept it 
apart, time and again, from the only human being it had ever learned to trust.
The creature reached the ice shelf in several broad leaps.
Troy stood facing it, nothing in his hand but the ice ax.
The tyrannosaur roared at him again, hot breath billowing in the frozen air, 
heavy with the stench of dead flesh.
307 Troy moved back slowly-very slowly, making 
a gradual, hardly noticeable ninety-degree turn, the creature turning with him, 
until he stood on the landward side of the shelf, the tyrannosaur on the far 
side, its back toward the sea, the buried gelignite between them, ticking like a 
hidden time bomb in the ice. 
Troy kept constant eye contact with the creature, as it watched him with its own 
unblinking eyes. 
He glanced only once at where he had buried the gelignite. 
But that was enough. 
Following the line of his sight, the tyrannosaur looked down, too, noticing for 
the first time the irregular pattern made by the cut and reburied ice. It leaned 
forward, chuffing noisily, as if determined to investigate this discrepancy. 
Remembering what the creature had done to the gelignite they tried to use 
against it at Deepcore Station, Troy moved forward suddenly, waving his arms to 
distract its attention. 
"Hey!" he called to him. "Look at me! Come on! Look'" 
But the tyrannosaur ignored him completely, leaning down to examine the ice with 
singleminded devotion. 
"Look at me! You goddamn overgrown son of a bitch!" 
He hurled the ice ax, aiming for the creature's eyes. 
It missed, and bounced off the bony ridge above the right eye with a loud, 
hollow sound. 
The creature raised its head, hissing menacingly, clouds of vapor wreathing the 
deadly jaws. It lunged at Troy with a quick lateral movement 
308 
that would have taken him off the ice shelf in the blink of an eye.
But the buried gelignite went off first.
It burst from the ice with the force of an erupting volcano, throwing huge 
chunks of ice up into the air, blasting a jagged line through the shelf, cutting 
it loose from the coast.
The force of the blast blew them in different directions.
Troy went flying toward the ice-covered coast, where he hit the ground, bounced, 
rolled over twice, came to a lifeless stop on his side, and did not move again.
The tyrannosaur skidded across the ice shelf toward the sea, digging its taloned 
feet into the ice as it tried to stop before hitting the water. It fell in with 
a monumental splash and sank beneath the waves, the bone-chilling water churning 
white and frothy from the explosion.
As Kelly ran toward Troy's motionless body, her own steps clumsy and halting, 
the strong katabatic winds seemed to abate all at once. The air grew suddenly 
warmer and she noticed what felt like raindrops on her face.
She looked up and saw them coming down, falling into her eyes and open mouth.
The summer rains, come at last.
She found Troy lying on his side, motionless as before.
She knelt down to touch him. "Troy?" She shook him, hard. "Troy!"
He remained on his side, without moving, still as the frozen corpses out in 
front of the storage depot at Deepcore Station the day the tyrannosaur first 
escaped.
She turned him over on his back, his limbs flopping loose on the ice. The blast 
had torn off his
309 goggles and burned his face, and singed his hair and eyebrows. 
"Troy r„
She leaned over him, the rains of the Antarctic summer falling on them both as 
she shook his shoulders repeatedly, her face only inches from his. 
She kissed him hard on his burned lips, a sob breaking from her as she felt them 
cold and unresponsive. 
His eyes opened then, blinking slowly at her. She pulled back, astonished. 
"Don't ever do that to me again!" 
"The gelignite-" he said. "Did it ... work?" "Yes," she said, looking out. at 
the churning water and the empty ice shelf, now an ice floe, feeling a pang of 
remorse at the thought that the tyrannosaur had disappeared forever. 
"It worked just fine." 
At that moment, the great beast's head burst from the white water, followed by 
the entire length of its massive body, streams of near freezing water cascading 
down its leathery skin. 
Kelly grabbed hold of Troy as the tyrannosaur rose from the frigid water like an 
ancient god of the deep. 
The creature scrambled back up onto the ice floe, vapor pluming from its jaws, 
vengeance burning in its yellow eyes. 
Troy tried to sit up but could not. 
The tyrannosaur moved across the ice floe toward the edge that faced the shore 
where Troy and Kelly watched. Trembling visibly from its freezing plunge into 
the Weddell Sea, it roared at them, the harsh sound carrying across the water, 
echoing off the icebergs that floated nearby. 
"It's all over," Troy said. "He could probably 
310 
swim back to shore if he wanted to. But he doesn't. So he won't."
The tyrannosaur stood on the ice floe as it drifted farther out into the Weddell 
Sea, roaring at them.
Another sound reached their ears, a different animal's cry.
The barking of a dog.
Kelly looked up in that direction. "Wolf!"
The mixed breed limped toward them, badly damaged by his fall down the 
mountainside, but alive.
Kelly rose to her feet, laughing with delight. "WOO"
Troy tried to get up alongside her, but fell back onto the ice instead, 
clutching at his right leg. She turned to him at once. "Troy! What's wrong?"
"Don't worry."
She knelt down and felt his leg. "My God! It's broken!"
"I'll be okay, Kelly."
Collapsing to her knees, she shook her head hopelessly.
"What are we going to do now?" she whispered, more to herself than Troy.
The Vladivostok Station still lay a long march away. She didn't know if she 
could make it by herself, and Troy couldn't walk anywhere. The break was 
bad-just how bad she wouldn't be able to tell for sure until she cut away the 
leg to his thermal suit and examined it, something she couldn't do until she set 
up the tent to provide shelter against the katabatic winds that could start 
blowing again at any time, summer rains or no.
And then what? Sit inside the tent and wait until
311 their food ran out, or Troy's leg gangrened, or they froze to death? 
She looked at Troy, lying on the ice, eyes closed once again, and at Wolf, 
limping painfully toward them, thick coated matted with dark blood, his own 
blood this time. 
In the distance, the tyrannosaur roared on its ice floe. 
She heard it then, cutting above the diminishing roars. 
She looked up and saw the helicopter as it circled above them in the rain, a 
reconnaissance Huey from the EPA base on King George, or the Vladivostok 
Station, or somewhere, anywhere. 
She jumped to her feet and raised her arms and waved to it. 
The pilot saw her and began his descent. 
A smile broke over her face and she started to cry, tears of relief and 
exhaustion. 
She kept waving to the helicopter, smiling up at it into the rain, cold water 
mixing with warm tears. 
A distant bellow cut through the descending rotor blades. 
She stopped and looked out at the tyrannosaur, roaring forlornly on its ice 
floe, moving ever farther from land. 
She kept watching through the rain, even after the Huey had landed, until she 
could barely make out the distant figure on its ice floe, adrift in the vastness 
of the Weddell Sea.