Return
Grant and the children return in an electric cart to the garage
in front of the visitor center. They go to the lobby, but find
it has been devastated by a raptor attack. On the radio, Muldoon
says there are two raptors on top of the roof of the lodge and
are biting through the bars of the skylight. Ellie agrees to
go outside and create a distraction, which will enable Grant
to reach the maintenance shed and turn on the generator. The
three raptors attack her, but she manages to get away. Grant
reaches the maintenance shed. He gets instructions from Wu about
how to switch on the generator. Meanwhile, in the kitchen at
the visitor center, Lex and Tim are attacked by a raptor. Tim
grabs some cold steaks from the refrigerator which he hopes
will lead the raptor away from them, into the refrigerator.
After some scary moments, the ploy succeeds. Tim locks the animal
in the refrigerator. In the meantime, Gennaro helps Grant escape
from the maintenance shed. Back at the lodge, a raptor attacks
and kills Wu, and three raptors head for the visitor center.
Ellie climbs to the roof of the lodge, trying to escape two
raptors. They follow her. She leaps into a swimming pool. Harding
opens the roof door and the raptors attack him. Tim and Lex
head for the control room to find a radio and call someone.
Once inside, Muldoon’s voice comes through on the radio
and tells Tim to try to figure out how to turn the computers
on, since no one knows how to do it. Tim manages to get the
computers to show different images of the park, but he still
needs to work out how to get the power grid on.
The Grid
Tim struggles by trial and error to switch the power on, as
he hears the snarling of raptors in the hallway. Tim goes outside
and sees three raptors heading towards him. Tim and Lex cannot
get back into the control room because the door has locked behind
them. Tim grabs a security card from a dead guard and uses it
get himself and Lex into another room.
Lodge
Malcolm’s condition deteriorates; the children find themselves
in the dinosaur nursery. At first there is only a baby raptor
there, but soon two adult raptors arrive. They fight over the
baby, and Tim and Lex escape into the next room and then run
down a corridor. They enter a room with a blue hazard sign,
where they meet up again with Grant and Gennaro. The raptors
are advancing on them. Grant leads them away from Gennaro and
the children and enters the hatchery. As the raptors prowl around,
he seizes a syringe filled with a poisonous chemical. He sticks
the needle into one of the dinosaur eggs and rolls the poisoned
egg in the direction of the raptors. One of them bites into
the third egg he rolls, and is fatally poisoned. A second raptor
bites the dying one, and so infects itself. Grant manages to
inject the last raptor with the syringe. As the raptor dies,
Grant, Gennaro and the children run for the control room.
Control
After more trial and error, Tim manages to switch the main power
back on. He then resets the grids for the lodge, and the raptors
are electrocuted by the bars above the ceiling. On the monitor,
Tim and the others see that the supply ship is about to dock
on the mainland. Just in time, they manage to establish telephone
contact with the ship and order it not to dock but to return
to the island.
Analysis
In the
midst of more helter-skelter action, the Sixth Iteration builds
on the statement made by Grant in the Fifth Iteration, that
the raptors are intelligent. For example, Wu gives this point
triple emphasis: “Raptors were intelligent, and intelligent
animals got bored quickly. Intelligent animals also formed plans,
and—” (p. 334). This helps to build the suspense,
since it ensures that the reader is kept guessing about just
how much these intelligent adversaries may be able to accomplish.
The desperate attempt to contact the ship before it docks in
the mainland provides some extra drama by adding a new element
to the story: a race against time. However, the effect is somewhat
undercut by the excitement generated by the various attacks
by the animals. It is also redundant, since the reader knows
that some animals have already escaped to the mainland (the
animals that bit Tina and the other children in the First Iteration).
And as the Seventh Iteration will show, the raptors have made
it to the mainland anyway, which makes the turning back of the
ship with the baby raptors on board irrelevant.
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