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.
Our Networks