Heat is the thirteenth chapter in the Fourth Configuration. Here, Harding regains consciousness and stares at a Stegosaurus and encounters a raptor pack kill.
Plot[]
This chapter shows Sarah Harding feeling a hot and wet surface touching her face and it feels like sandpaper. This feeling happens twice, something wet drops on her neck then she starts to smell a sweetish odor and starts to feel the scrapping again. Sarah opens her eyes and initially thinks the creature in front of her is a horse - it has a big, dull eye and soft eyelashes. The sensation she felt was pleasant after her near drowning until she realizes it was not horse licking her. The animal's was too narrow for a horse, it had a thick neck and heavy body. Her movement startled it and Harding saw a "small head, thick neck, huge lumbering body, with a double row of pentagonal plates running along the crest of the back. A dragging tail, with spikes in it." She immediately identifies it as a Stegosaurus.
Harding recalls her time back in Ian Malcolm's hospital room and how he mumbled the names of several dinosaurs. She always thought he was joking and even with the dinosaur in front of her, she thought it was just a trick of her eyes. On further examination, she found it had a seamless body and moved in a integrated, organic way. More importantly, it had a dark blue tongue, and she wondered if it was cold-blooded, blue from venous blood. Yet, the dinosaur moved like a warm-blooded creature. Furthermore, it was in a shady area and drinking to cool itself. Harding touch the dinosaur's spit and finally concluded it was warm-blooded. Further examination showed it had a pebbled-like skin, not scaly or hairless. Harding finally found the energy to stand up.
As she gets up, the Stegosaurus ignores her and looking at her watch, it is one-thirty in the afternoon. As she moves, she is thirsty yet previously trained herself in Africa to go without water for long periods. She soon finds herself on the top of a ridge then walking on a game trail. Within fifteen minutes, she heard dog-like sounds and quickly pulled herself on the branch of a low tree. Harding spotted a new dinosaur below her, with sharp-clawed feet, dark body, six feet tall, with reddish stripes like a tiger. A trio of them formed and she knew they were predators hunting in a pack. With her experience, she counted ten of the predators and despite the danger, she drops down to follow them.
They already killed a prey and she saw it was not like any kill from her time in Africa. In that region, animals would eat different parts of the carcass and in orderly fashion. Here the dinosaurs did it in frenzy, ripping off the body and others simultaneously hissing at it. The juvenile dinosaurs would not get close to the prey like the adults. She spotted scars on all the adult predators, another difference from African carnivores who would fight in display and a ritual aggression. The injured prey still fought back and she concluded this was definitely a different world.
Trivia[]
Harding most definitely spotted Dryosaurus killed by Velociraptors.
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