MICHAEL CRICHTON

“Twenty-four hours!” Ross said, moving around the compartment.Elliot said, “Where is she?”“They took her,” Munro said. “They opened the rear door, inflated thepneumatic slide, and were gone before anyone realized what happened. Wefound this next to you.”Munro gave him a small glass vial with Japanese markings. The sides of thevial were scratched and scored; at one end was a rubber plunger, at the otherend a broken needle.Elliot sat up.“Easy there,” the doctor said.“I feel fine,” Elliot said, although his head was throbbing. He turned the vialover in his hand. “There was frost on it when you found it?”Munro nodded. “Very cold.”“CO 2 ,” Elliot said. It was a dart from a gas gun. He shook his head. “Theybroke the needle off in her.” He could imagine Amy’s screams of outrage. Shewas unaccustomed to anything but the tenderest treatment. Perhaps that wasone of the shortcomings of his work with her; he had not prepared her wellenough for the real world. He sniffed the vial, smelled a pungent odor. “Lobaxin.Fast-acting soporific, onset within fifteen seconds. It’s what they’d use.” Elliot wasangry. Lobaxin was not often used on animals because it caused liver damage.And they had broken the needle— He got to his feet and leaned on Munro, whoput his armaround him. The doctor protested.“I’m fine,” Elliot said.Across the room, there was another squeal, this one loud and prolonged. Rosswas moving her wand over the medicine cabinet, past the bottles of pills andsupplies. The sound seemed to embarrass her; quickly she moved away,shutting the cabinet.She crossed the passenger compartment, and a squeal was heard again.Ross removed a small black device from the underside of one seat. “Look at this.They must have brought an extra person just to plant the bugs. It’ll take hours tosterilize the plane. We can’t wait~”She went immediately to the computer console and began typing.Elliot said, “Where are they now? The consortium?”97