History Revived

The next morning, they awoke early. When Race knocked on the door at 07.30, he found both Jonny and Jessie up, talking about how good it was not to be in school.

"Mornin', guys. Up and alert? Hammond's gonna take us on a tour 'round the island in half an hour. So get ready and get downstairs, alright?"

The two of them looked at each other with shining eyes as Race left.

"Awright! At last he's gonna show us whatever this whole thing is", Jonny said.

"Yeah, I can't wait to find out. Both Mr. Hammond and Dr. Quest have been so secretive about this. Wouldn't say a word about it last night at dinner, just saying that we would know in time. Sure hope it's time now."

"Hm, I hope he's not just gonna show us the beautiful nature here. Not that I wouldn't want to stay here for the rest of my life, instead of going back to school, but there's GOT to be something more to this, according to all the hush-hush."

Jessie went to her room to take a quick shower and Jonny got into the bathroom and washed off his face and trying to fix his hair that pointed in every direction.
After almost half an hour later, they all assembled in the lobby where Hammond awaited them.

"Maybe you would have preferred to get some more rest, but I imagined that you may be wondering why I brought you all here, and what it is that I am doing here."

The five of them nodded in unison, and Hammond continued. "Well, where should we start? I think we'll take a short ride in the cars. Please, this way."

He started walking to the exit, and they followed him. Benton tried to ask his friend something, but Hammond held up a hand.

"Patience, my friend, patience. In due course, all your questions will be answered."

He led them out of the building, where two jeeps were standing.

"These are the tour-vehicles. They are driven electrically through these tracks in the ground, monitored and controlled from the control-room. It is safer, easier and more in line to the environmental demands. Please, take your seats."

"Hey John. Giving them the big tour?", a voice said with a broad australian accent.

They turned and saw a man coming towards them. His stature almost matched Race's. He was tall and shoulder-broad and had the self-confident look of a man that knows that he can do almost anything, yet doesn't makes a lot of fuzz about it. He was wearing khaki-coloured pants and shirt and had a hat lightly put on his tanned face.

"Ah, Peter", Hammond said and turned to the others. "Peter Hunt is our... what shall we say... chief of the park. He make sure that there are no troubles with our little friends out there."

The park-chief nodded greetings to them. "Nice to meet ya' all."

"Yes", Hammond continued, "I'm going to show them our little 'back-yard'. They still don't know anything yet."

The australian smiled. "Hope you didn't forget the nitroglycerine pills. I know my heart skipped a few beats when I first saw them. By the way, mind if I come with you? I gotta check some of the fences and the spare powerplant."
He threw his arms out. "The computers are bugging again, there's something in your system that ain't right."

Meanwhile Hammond and Hunt were talking, Jonnys mind spinned. 'Our little friends?' 'Saw them?' What are THEM? What is it Hammond's got here?

He looked at Hadji and Jessie, and they seemed like they had the same thought. Well, no use asking, it looked as if they were right about to find out anyway.

They split up on the two cars. Hammond, Benton, Jonny and Hadji took one, and Race, Peter and Jessie got into the other. They saw that the cars were equipped with a speakersystem, and a small keybord to a screen inbedded in the front panels.

Hammonds voice was heard over the speakers. "Well then, here we go. Car 1 to MainControl, start the tour!"

The cars began to move forward.

The cars drove away from the base, following an asphalted road, that winded inwards the island. They passed through a gate, with a high fence.

"These electric fences has a voltage of about 10.000 volts", Hammond said.

The fences went on both sides of the road, on the other sides was forests and vegetation that looked like some tropical rainforest. They saw trees and plants they seldom had seen before, at least except for one of them.

"What's the deal?" Jessie said disappointedly to her father. "It's ordinary rainforest, like the ones i Venezuela. Nothing to make a big fuzz over."

Peter Hunt smiled and looked att her in the drivers mirror.

"You just wait, lady. There's not ONLY jungle here."

"Oh yeah? Well, what else is there?"

The park-chief laughed. "Hold on, hold on. If I told you, I'd spoil Hammond's surprise, and he would kick my butt for it."

"So, Peter" Race cut in. "How did you end up here? You're a good bit from ol' Australia."

"Yeah. John contacted me two years ago, when I was working at a game reserve in Kenya. I had done some big-game hunting there earlier."

"You're in for hunting huh?"

"You bet. There's no predator I haven't smelled the breath of. Ain't saying I go poaching extinction-threated animals or anything. My regular assignement was as a game-warden, keeping care of the animals, making studies on them and that kind of stuff. But now and then an animal went mad or something and had to be hunted down."

"I know what you mean. I've been doin' some hunting myself in my better days. There's nothing like the thrill of it. And I bet keeping care of animals can be just as challenging."

Peter smiled. "Yeah. And here, I got the biggest challenge of all..." he stopped short, "...but ya'll see it yourself soon enough."

The two adults started talking about hunting and animal-care. Jessie turned her attention out the window.
They kept driving on, and Jessie was beginning to feel itchy. It HAD to be something else, she had seen enough rainforest to last a lifetime. The woods seemed to clear out a bit, the thick dense forest grew thinner and gave way to lower vegetation. She was jerked out of her thoughts when the cars suddenly stopped, and Hammonds voice was heard.

* * * * *

In the other car, Hammond was giving a lecture.

"These trees are imported from the deepest of the tropical forests all over the world. They are ancient, originating from almost hundred million years ago. Of course I had to make the environment as natural as possible - spare no expence. That's why I chose this island in the first place. Here, life has been isolated for millions of years, and been saved from exploitation as well as exploration."

"Wow, look at those trees, Hadj! It looks just like I figure the earth looked when... when the dinosaurs lived here, you know - like in the movie yesterday?"

He saw Hammond looking at him in the driver's mirror with a smug smile. "Something like that, yes."

He looked forward. "And here we are." The car stopped and he turned and faced the others, turning on the speaker-system.

"So, my ladies and gentlemen. If you all point your attention forward, if you please."

They all stared forward, full of excitement, but saw nothing. Nothing except a few gigantic tree trunks, and a low vegetation on the ground.

Then, one of the tree trunks MOVED.

* * * * *

Jonny stared.

Jessie stared.

Hadji stared.

Benton and Race stared.

Peter and Hammond looked amused at their stunned guests.

In front of them, another tree trunk moved, and they saw a gigantic foot, with the shape of that of an elephant's, but much bigger. It wasn't a tree, it was a leg.

Slowly they raised their eyes, and followed the leg upward, and they saw... they saw... something so enormous, so fabulous and so unlikely that they first couldn't believe their eyes.

There before them stood an enormous creature. It had four legs, each of them far thicker than any elephants leg. The body was huge, covered with a brown-gray hide that slightly resembled of elephant-skin.
It had a incredibly long neck that streched up to the treetops, eating the leaves, and an almost as long tail. Although they couldn't believe it, there was no doubt what-so-ever what it was.

"My God!"Benton whispered.

"........" Jonny couldn't make a sound

"It... it... it is... is " Jessie stammered. "It... is... a..." she swallowed, "... a d..d..di..dino... ", she swallowed again and took a deep breath, "a DINOSAUR!"

"I don't believe this", Race said in disbelief. "Dinosaurs don't exist. They're extinct! EXTINCT!" The steel-tough former CIA-agent was clearly shaken. Give him maniacs or terrorists, catastrophes or presidential threats, and he wouldn't wince a nanometer. But dinosaurs, that was too much.

"How is it possible?" Hadji said, being the one who succeeded best in remaining relatively calm. He looked with uttermost respect at the dinosaur, who suddenly reared on its hind legs and gave out a trumpeting sound that cut through their ears. The thunder when the feet hit ground again made the earth tremble.

Hammond nonchalantly got out of the car and walked towards the gigantic animal.

"Come out, don't be afraid. She is completely harmless."

He laughed happily and looked affectionately at the dino. "Hello there girl. Enjoying your meal?"

"She is a Brachiosaurus", Hammond said, turning to the others who hesitantly exited the cars. "She's a herbivor, a vegetarian, she only eats leaves and fruits."

"That's right", Peter Hunt filled in, looking at the dino with his arms crossed. "A cute little devil, isn't she?"

"Llll..li..littlllle!" Jessie couldn't stop stamming.

"......." came from Jonny, who seemed to have lost his ability to speak all together. He walked towards the Brachiosaur until he was only a couple of feet away from the enormous leg.
He stood there awhile, stretching his neck backwards, seeing the head high above him.

"It doesn't even notice us", he said at last. "Man, this is big!"

"Sure is", said Benton and turned to Hammond. "Now, John. I think it's time we all sat down, and you told us the whole story. I had my suspicions when I got your letter, but I could never believe... THIS!"

The old man smiled gently. "Yes, my friend. I will tell you. NOW is the time. Come, let us go back to the base, we'll take the way through the park first."

They all got back into the cars and continued the tour. On their way, they saw more Brachiosaurs and a lot of other dinosaurs; Gallimimus, Triceratops, Stegosaur and many others. When they had come over the first shock, the youths (and the adults too) were enchanted by what they saw.
They had changed places, so the youngsters were in one car with Race, and Hammond, Benton and Peter shared the other. They dropped Peter off at the power plant, a bunkerlike building, and continued the tour.

Hammond talked over the speaker and taught them the names and attributes of each specie.

"Look Jess! There're more of those Gallimimuses", Jonny said. "Look at them, they look like big ostriches!"

"That's right" Hammond said. "They act as birds too, moving in flocks. You should see them when they are trying to escape a predator."

"A... a predator?" Jessie said with a shiver in her voice.

"Yes. Of course we have predators here as well as herbivors. But don't worry, the Tyrannosaur and the Velociraptors are kept in special high-security areas."

Now Benton interrupted him. "Tyrannosaur? John, you've got a Tyrannosaur here?"

The scientist nodded. "Certainly. She is the main attraction. The park wouldn't be much without her."

"But Tyrannosaur was... is... the most dangerous dinosaur that ever existed! What if it gets loose?"

"My dear Benton. As I said, she is in a safe area, there is no way that she can get out of there, unless she doesn't mind being electrified by 10.000 volts! Besides", Hammond continued in an off-hand way, "the Velociraptors are much worse!"

Jonny swallowed. "Velociraptors? What are they like?"

"Oh, they are really devils in dinosaur-shapes - if you excuse my choice of words. They are fast, cruel and the most effective killers that exist. And they are frighteningly intelligent. They hunt together, one catches the prey's attention and then others attack from the sides. Anyway, we got them in a special-designed bunker just outside the fence back at the base. We can take a look at it later."

Jonny shook his head. "Whew, I'm not sure I can handle all this. Are you really going to make this a kind of zoologic park? Man, people's gonna give everything they own to see this. You're gonna make a fortune!" 

Hammond nodded. "That might be. But the important thing is that I have given these great beings a chance to live again. They deserves it as much as we do. And everyone deserves to see them."

"John." Benton said gravely. "I'm not sure I like this. And I think there's a reason why they got extinct. Dinosaur and Man aren't supposed to live together."

"Oh, come Benton. That is semi-scientific rubbish! 'Aren't supposed to?' Whom by? God? Or by Man? By Man's own conceptions, that we blame God for, thats what!"

Benton opened his mouth, thought better of it and sat silent. In short they were back at the base.

"Well, folks", said Hammond. "Now I think it's time for a little tour down in the labs."

They got out of the cars, all a bit shaky. Jonny walked on with an absent look on his face, Jessie was a lot more quiet than usual, Race looked as if he was sleepwalking, which certainly wasn't normal for the attentive and always ready-for-action bodyguard.
But both Benton and Hadji looked a little bit worried, although they too were totally stunned by what they had witnessed.

Jonny and Jessie walked slowly through the door into the buildning looking straight ahead at nothing.

"I'm still not sure I really saw that", she said after a while, looking straight ahead at nothing. "Is it really possible?"

"I don't know." Jonny swallowed. "But they were real alright. That I know. But how it is possible, I can't even begin to figure out."

Behind them came Race. He looked disturbed, as if something just violently had taken his general opinion of the world and smashed it to ruins.
Race had always been a very practical man. He didn't like things that wasn't supposed to be. Like dinosaurs, extinct for millions of years, now living and breathing and walking the earth beside himself.

Hammond led them to the elevators, and they went down to the level which Jonny, Hadji and Jessie had enterred earlier. He drew a magnet-card through the slit, hit a series of numbers and lay his hand on the display.

A metallic voice sounded. "Welcome... John... Hammond... You..have..been..granted..access..to..level..three. Please..secure..when..enter.
The door swung open, and they went inside. Behind them the door shut and the locks clicked into position.

Before them lay a white corridor, right to the left was a dressing-room with white laboratory-coats hanging on the wall, and sandals and gloves on a bench.

They went on and enterred another room, which was a big lab. The room was filled with scientific machines and equipment, robots doing elaborate work, and a lot of machines with blinking lights and beeping sounds.

"This," said Hammond proudly, "is the core of my work. This is the cloning-laboratory.

"Cloning?" Benton sounded sceptical. "But where do you get the target-DNA? There's no DNA left in fossils..."

"Absolutely right. Hammond put up a finger. "But there were once mosquitos, just as there are now, and those mosquitos sucked blood from various animals, included dinosaurs. Every now and then, the mosquitos got stuck in the resin on trees, and were thereby preserved. That resin, as the millions of years past, turned into amber, and can be found on a special level in the ground. It's no match for a geologist to find the right depth, then you just have to dig it up."

He looked at them with a shiny face. "Ahem, anyway. With delicate methods, we can extract the blood that the mosquito sucked, and from that point, the rest is easy. Well, everything is relative, of course. We amplify the DNA in a regular PCR-machine, and fill in the gaps in the DNA-spiral with DNA from frogs, which we believe is very similar to that of the dinosaurs. We put the DNA into ostrich egg-cells, and let them go through mitosis, cell-division. Then in a few months, the eggs are ready to hatch, and a little dinosaur is ready to meet his new world and life."

He cleared his throat. "Well, that's about it, in short."

The others was stunned.

"But how do you control it?" Benton asked. "What about the ones born in the park?"

"Oh, they can't breed by themselves. It's a security matter."

"How's that?"

"They are all females. But I can't really explain the details." Hammond looked around and spotted someone. "Hello Robbie, come over here, there are some people I want you to meet."

A young man in a white labcoat and plastic gloves came up to them. He couldn't have been a day over twenty-five. He was blond, with glasses and a high brow, and behind the glasses, his blue eyes shone of kindness and of intelligence.

"This is Robbie Nordberg, he is in charge of the Genetic Department."

The young scientist nodded at them, smiling. "How do you do?" He spoke with a strange accent.

"Robbie, this is Dr. Benton Quest, and these are his family and friends."

"Dr. Quest, it's a real honor to meet you. I have heard a lot about you, and I really admire your work."

"Thank you, Mr. Nordberg. Um, pardon my asking, but your accent... Scandinavian?"

Nordberg smiled. "That's right. Swedish to be precise. Finished my Ph.D. in Genetics in San Francisco last year, and Mr. Hammond picked me up right after that."

"He was the brightest student in his age group", Hammond cut in. "He managed to do his Ph.D. in three years - for others it usually takes four or five."

"You exaggerate, Mr. Hammond. It's not that difficult really, genetics, you just..."

He was just about to throw himself into a comment of genetic cloning in today's research, but Hammond tactfully cut him off. "Dr. Quest was just asking how we make sure that only females are born."

Nordberg jumped to the new subject without the slightest hesitation. "Well, it's simple. All embryos are female at first, but if a certain protein is present, it will inhibit a gene that would continue the female development, and it will be a male instead. We just make sure that that protein isn't expressed in the cells."

Hammond raised his eye-brows. "Um, well, there you have it. Thank you Robbie."

Robbie Nordberg smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "Anytime, Mr. Hammond. By the way, one of the eggs will hatch any time now, I thought you wanted to know."

"Good, excellent!" Hammond turned to the others. "I want to be present at every birth. The little ones are printed on the first thing they see, so they all know me. Come, it's in the next room."

He showed them into another room, just as white and sterile as the first. In the middle of it was a table on which a big nest had been made. In it lay several big grey-white eggs. A man that was standing by the table looked up when they enterred.

"Mr. Hammond, perfect timing. One of them is about to hatch any minute, come and see."

"Great, Martin, wonderful." Hammond hurried up to the table, motioning to the rest to follow him.

One of the eggs shook, and then shooked again, a little more violent this time. Then a crack was visible, and then more, and then a piece of the shell flew away, and a tiny little head on a long thin neck stuck out from the egg. It was as big as a chicken, had it not been for the long neck and tail.

"Wow", said Jessie, "it's a baby Brachiosaur!"

"Yes." Hammond shone all over his face. "Isn't she adorable?"

"Yeah, right" Jonny snickered. "Ouch! Don't elbow me Jessie."

Jessie withdrew her elbow, which had made an impact on Jonny's solar plexus. "I think she's cute", she said. "How fast do they grow?"

"Oh, this little one will grow fast. In just a couple of months, she'll weight a couple of tons, and measure a good hundred feet from tip to tail."

They all stood and looked amazed at the little dinosaur. Jessie scratched it on its belly, and it gave a sound of pleasure and stretched it's neck towards Jessie's hand, rubbing its head against it. Jessie giggled delighted and kept pet the dinosaur.

Jonny leaned towards Hadji and whispered. "I'll betcha she's gonna try talking dad into taking that lil' thing with us back to Maine."

Hadji looked absently at Jessie and the baby-dino. "I wouldn't bet against you on that. Still, I don't think it would be such a good idea."

* * * * *

Meanwhile, somewhere in the building, a telephone-call was made...

"Hi, it's me. Listen, you got to be ready for me tomorrow by 4 pm, at the harbour.... Of course I'll have the embryos.... yeah, all the major species.... What? Yeah, they're gonna have their hands full by then... Yeah, too bad for them, ain't it? And your people better have the money.... don't try that on me, the deal is 50.000 bucks a piece and you better pay me... Look, don't argue with me, alright? I've got the embryos, I make the deal. If you want those things, you better be at the harbour tomorrow at 4 sharp, got it?"

The reciever was thrown back on the hanger, cutting the connection off.

* * * * *