"Yeah," she said. "I did. But I'm having a little trouble figuring it out.
Levine was pacing, staring out the windows. "This is all well and good," he said, "but it is getting brighter out there by the minute. Don't you understand? We need a way out of here. This building is single-wall construction. It's fine for the tropics, but it's basically a shack."
"It'll do," Thorne said.
"For three minutes, maybe. I mean, look at this," Levine said. He walked to the door, rapped it with his knuckles. "This door is just - "
With a crash, the wood splintered around the lock, and the door swung open. Levine was thrown aside, landing hard on the floor.
A raptor stood hissing in the doorway.
A Way Out
Sitting at the console, Kelly was frozen in terror. She watched as Thorne ran forward from the side, throwing the full weight of his body against the door, slamming it hard against the raptor. Startled, the animal was knocked back. The door closed on its clawed hand. Thorne leaned against the door. On the other side, the animal snarled and pounded.
"Help me!" Thorne shouted. Levine scrambled to his feet and ran forward, adding his weight.
"I told you!" Levine shouted.
Suddenly there were raptors all around the store. Snarling, they threw themselves at the windows, denting the steel bars, pushing them in toward the glass. They slammed against the wooden walls, knocking down shelves, sending cans and bottles clattering to the floor. In several places, the wood began to splinter on the walls.
Levine looked back at her: "Find a way out of here!"
Kelly stared. The computer was forgotten.
"Come on, Kel," Arby said, "Concentrate."
She turned back to the screen, unsure what to do. She clicked on the cross in the left corner. Nothing happened. She clicked on the upper-left circle. Suddenly, icons began to print out rapidly, filling the screen.
"Don't worry, there must be a key to explain it, Arby said. "We just need to know what - "
But Kelly was not listening, she was pressing more buttons and moving the cursor, already trying to get something to happen, to get a help screen, something. Anvthing.
Suddenly, the whole screen began to twist, to distort.
"What did you do?" Arby said, in alarm.
Kelly was sweating. "I don't know," she said. She pulled her hands away from the keyboard.
It's worse," Arhy said. "You made it worse."
The screen continued to squeeze together, the icons shifting, distorting slowly as they watched.
"Come on, kids!" Levine shouted.
"We're trying!" Kelly said.
Arby said, "It's becoming a cube."
Thorne pushed the big glass-walled refrigerator in front of the door. The raptor slammed against the metal, rattling the cans inside.
"Where are the guns?" Levine said.
"Sarah has three in her car."
"Great." At the windows, some of the bars were now so deeply dented that they broke the glass. Along the right-hand wall, the wood was splintering, tearing open big gaps.
"We have to get out of here," Levine shouted at Kelly. "We have to find a way!" He ran to the rear of the store, to the bathrooms. But a moment later he returned. "They're back there, too!"
It was happening fast, all around them.
On the screen, she now saw a rotatlng cube, turning in space. Kelly didn't know how to stop it.
"Come on, Kel," Arby said, peering at her through swollen eyes. "You can do it. Concentrate. Come on."
Everyone in the room was shouting. Kelly stared at the cube on the screen, feeling hopeless and lost. She didn't know what she was doing any more. She didn't know why she was there. She didn't know what the point of anything was. Why wasn't Sarah here?
Standing beside her, Arby said, "Come on. Do the icons one at a time, Kel. You can do it. Come on. Stay with it. Focus."
But she couldn't focus. She couldn't click on the icons, they were rotating too fast on the screen. There must be parallel processors to handle all the graphics. She just stared at it. She found herself thinking of all sorts of things - thoughts that just came unbidden into her mind.
The cord under the desk.
Hard-wired.
Lots of graphics.
Sarah talking to her in the trailer.
"Come on, Kel. You have to do this now. Find a way out."
In the trailer, Sarah said: Most of what people tell you will be wrong"
It's important, Kel," Arby said. He was trembling as he stood beside her. She knew he concentrated on computers as a way to block things out. As a way to -
The wall splintered wide, an eight-inch plank cracking inward, and a raptor stuck his head through, snarling, snapping his jaws.
She kept thinking of the cord under the desk. The cord under the desk. Her legs had kicked the cord under the desk.
The cord under the desk.
Arby said, "It's important."
And then it hit her.
"No," she said to him, "It's not important," And she dropped off the seat, crawling down under the desk to look.