Alien

  She didn't notice the faint red light on the tracker lying nearby.

  'Gotcha!' An indignant Jones resisted, but Ripley had him firmly by the nape of the neck. Nor did bracing his feet keep him from being shoved unceremoniously into his pressurized travelling case.

  Ripley switched it on. 'There. Breathe your own recycled smell for a while.'

  The two flamethrowers were lying outside the food locker. Parker knelt carefully and tried to pick up his. He overbalanced and a fair portion of the neatly aligned boxes tumbled from his arms.

  'Goddamn.'

  Lambert stopped her rearranging, tried to see around the locker doors.

  'What's the matter?'

  'Nothing. I was trying to carry too much at once, that's all. Just hurry it up.'

  'I'm coming. Keep your head on.'

  The red light on the tracker suddenly turned bright crimson, the beeper chirping simultaneously. Parker dropped his packages, stared at it, and picked up his flamethrower. He called back in to Lambert.

  'Let's get out of here.'

  She'd heard the noise too. 'Right now.'

  Something made a different sound behind her. She turned, screamed as the hand clutched at her. The alien was still unfolding its bulk from the airshaft.

  Ripley heard the shriek over the open 'com speaker on the bridge and froze.

  Parker looked back into the locker, went a little crazy when he saw what the alien was doing. Parker couldn't use the flamethrower without hitting Lambert. Swinging the incinerator like a club, he charged into the locker.

  'Goddamn you!'

  The alien dropped Lambert. She fell motionless to the deck as Parker landed a solid blow with the flamethrower. It had no effect on the alien. The engineer might as well have been trying to fracture the wall.

  He tried to duck, failed. The single blow broke his neck, killing him instantly. The alien turned its attention back to Lambert.

  Ripley still hadn't moved. Faint shrieks reached her over the 'com. The screams were Lambert's and they faded with merciful speed. Then it was quiet again.

  She spoke toward the pickup. 'Parker . . . Lambert?'

  She waited for a response, expecting none. Her expectations were fulfilled. The import of the continuing silence took only a moment to settle in.

  She was alone. There were probably three living things left on the ship: the alien, Jones, and herself. But she had to be sure.

  It meant leaving Jones behind. She didn't want to, but the cat had heard the screams and was meowing frantically. He was making too much noise.

  She reached B deck unopposed, her flamethrower held tightly in both hands. The food locker lay just ahead. There was an outside chance the alien had left someone behind, being unable to maneuver itself and two bodies through the narrow ducts. A chance that someone might still be alive.

  She peered around the jamb of the locker entrance. What remained showed her how the alien had succeeded in squeezing both victims into the airshaft.

  Then she was running, running. Blindly, a little madly, neither thinking or caring. Walls reached out to stun her and slow her down, but nothing halted her crazed flight. She ran until her lungs hurt. They reminded her of Kane and the creature that had matured inside him, next to his lungs. That in turn reminded her of the alien.

  All that thinking brought her back to her senses. Gulping for breath, she slowed and took stock of her surroundings. She'd run the length of the ship. Now she found herself standing alone in the middle of the engine room.

  She heard something and stopped breathing. It was repeated, and she let out a cautious sigh. The sound was familiar, human. It was the sound of weeping.

  Still cradling the flamethrower, she walked slowly around the room until the source of the noise lay directly below her. She found she was standing on a companionway cover, a round metal disc. Keeping half her attention on the well-lit chamber surrounding her, she knelt and removed the disc. A ladder descended into the near darkness.

  She felt her way down the ladder until she reached solid footing. Then she activated her lightbar. She was in a small maintenance chamber. The light picked out plastic crates, rarely used tools. It also fell on bones with shreds of flesh still attached. Her skin crawled as the light moved over fragments of clothing, dried blood, a ruined boot. Bizarre extrusions lined the walls.

  Something moved fitfully in the darkness. She spun, raising the nozzle of the flamethrower as her light sought out the cause of the movement.

  A huge cocoon hung from the ceiling, off to her right. It looked like an enclosed, translucent hammock, woven from fine white silky material. It twitched.

  Her finger tense on the trigger of the flamethrower, she walked nearer. The beam from her lightbar made the cocoon slightly transparent. There was a body inside . . . Dallas.

  Quite unexpectedly the eyes opened and focused on Ripley. Lips parted, moved to form words. She moved closer, simultaneously fascinated and repelled.

  'Kill me,' the whisperer pleaded with her.

  'What . . . what did it do to you?'

  Dallas tried to speak again, failed. His head turned a little to the right. Ripley swung her light, turned it upward slightly. A second cocoon hung there, different in texture and colour from the first. It was smaller and darker, the silk having formed a hard, shining shell. It looked, although Ripley couldn't know it, like the broken, empty urn on the derelict ship.

  'That was Brett.' Her light turned back to focus on the speaker again.

  'I'll get you out of here.' She was crying. 'We'll crank up the autodoc, get you . . .'

  She broke off, unable to talk. She was remembering Ash's analogy of the spider, the wasp. The live young feeding on the paralyzed body of the spider, growing, the spider aware of what was happening but . . .

  Somehow she managed to shut off that horrid line of thought. Madness lay that way. 'What can I do?'

  The same agonized whisper. 'Kill me.'

  She stared at him. Mercifully, his eyes had closed. But his lips were trembling, as if he were readying a scream. She didn't think she could stand to hear that scream.

  The nozzle of the flamethrower rose and she convulsively depressed the trigger. A molten blast enveloped the cocoon and the thing that had been Dallas. It and he burned without a sound. Then she swung the fire around the lair. The entire compartment burst into flames. She was already scrambling back up the ladder, heat licking at her legs.

  She stuck her head out into the engine room. It was still deserted. Smoke curled up around her, making her cough. She climbed out, kicked the disc back into place, leaving enough of a gap for air to reach the fire. Then she strode resolutely toward the engine-room control cubicle.

  Gauges and controls functioned patiently within, waiting to be told what to do. There was one particular board whose switches were outlined in red. She studied it a moment, recalling sequences, then began to close the switches one at a time.

  One double switch lay protected beneath a locked cover. She pried at it a moment, then stepped back and hammered it loose with the butt end of the flamethrower, moved up, and threw the dual control.

  She waited an eternity. Sirens began to wail. A voice called from the intercom and she jumped, startled, until she recognized it as Mothers.

  'Attention. Attention. The cooling units for the hyperdrive engines are not functioning. Overrides are not functioning. Engines will overload in four minutes, fifty seconds: four minutes, fifty seconds.'

  She was halfway down B corridor when she remembered Jones.

  She found him meowing steadily through the speaker, but undisturbed, alone in his pressurized box leading from the bridge to B level. Then his case was banging against her legs as she ran for the shuttle, the flamethrower tucked securely under her other arm.

  They turned the last bend leading toward the shuttle. Jones suddenly hissed within the box, his back fur arching. Ripley came to a halt, stared dazedly at the open lock. Thrashing sounds drifted back to her.

  The
alien was inside the shuttle.

  Leaving Jones safe on the B level companionway, she sprinted back toward the engine room. The cat protested mightily at being abandoned again.

  As she dashed for the engine cubicle a patient, unconcerned voice filled the room. 'Attention. Engines will overload in three minutes, twenty seconds.'

  A wall of heat hit her when she entered the cubicle. Smoke made it difficult to see. Machinery was whining, complaining loudly around her as she pushed at the perspiration beading on her face. Somehow she located the control board through the smoke, forced herself to remember proper sequencing as she reclosed the switches she'd opened only moments ago. The sirens continued their steady lament.

  'Attention. Engines will overload in three minutes. Engines will overload in three minutes.'

  Gasping for breath, she leaned against the hot wall as she jabbed a button. 'Mother, I've turned all the cooling units back on full!'

  'Too late for remedial action. The drive core has begun to melt. Reaction irreversible at this point. Implosion incipient, followed by uncontainable overload and subsequent detonation. Engines will overload in two minutes, fifty-five seconds.'

  Mother had always sounded comforting to Ripley. Now the computer voice was devoid of anthropomorphisms, remorseless as the time it was marking off.

  Choking, her throat burning, she stumbled from the cubicle, the sirens giggling hysterically in her brain. 'Attention. Engines will overload in two minutes,' Mother announced via a wall speaker.

  Jones was waiting for her on the companionway. He was quiet now, meowed out. She staggered back down toward the shuttle, half dragging the catbox, somehow keeping the flamethrower ready. Once she thought a shadow moved behind her and she whirled, but this time it was a shadow and nothing more.

  She hesitated in the corridor, undecided what to do and desperately tired. A voice refused to let her rest. 'Attention. Engines will explode in ninety seconds.'

  Putting down Jones' box, she gripped the flamethrower in both hands and rushed the shuttle lock.

  It was empty.

  She spun, charged back into the corridor, and grabbed at the catbox. Nothing materialized to challenge her.

  'Attention. The engines will explode in sixty seconds,' said Mother calmly.

  An unlucky Jones found himself dumped near the main console as Ripley threw herself into the pilot's seat. There was no time to plot niceties like trajectory or angle of release. She concentrated on hitting a single button that had one red word engraved beneath it.

  LAUNCH.

  Retainer bolts blew away with tiny, comical explosions. There was a blast of secondary engines as the shuttle fell away from the Nostromo.

  G-forces tore at Ripley as she fought to strap herself in. The G-force would fade soon, the result of the shuttle leaving the Nostromo's hyperdrive field and slanting off on its own path through space.

  She finished strapping herself down, then allowed herself to breathe deeply of the shuttle's clean air. Howling sounds penetrated her exhausted brain. From her position she could just reach the catbox. Her head bent over the container and tears squeezed from her smoke-reddened eyes as she hugged it to her chest.

  Her gaze rose to the rear-facing screen. A small point of light silently turned into a majestic, expanding fireball sending out tentacles of torn metal and shredded plastic. It faded, was followed by a much larger fireball as the refinery went up. Two billion tons of gas and vaporized machinery filled the cosmos, obscured her vision until it, too, began to fade.

  The shock struck the shuttlecraft soon after as the expanding superheated gas raced past. When the craft had settled she unstrapped, walked to the back of the little cabin, and looked out a rear port. Her face was bathed in orange light as the last of the boiling fire globe vanished.

  She finally turned away. The Nostromo, her shipmates, all had ceased to exist. They Were No More. It hit her harder in that quiet, isolated moment than she'd thought it would. It was the utter finality of it that was so difficult to accept, the knowledge that they no longer existed as components, however insignificant, of a greater universe. Not even as corpses. They simply had become not.

  She did not see the massive hand reaching out for her from the concealment of deep shadow. But Jones did. He yowled.

  Ripley spun, found herself facing the creature. It had been in the shuttle all the time.

  Her first thought was for the flamethrower. It lay on the deck next to the crouching alien. She hunted wildly for a place to retreat to. There was a small locker nearby. Its door had popped open from the shock of the expanding gas. She started to edge toward it.

  The creature started to rise as soon as she began to move. She leaped for the locker and threw herself inside, one hand diving for the handle. As she fell in, her weight pulled the door shut behind her with a slam.

  There was a port in the upper part of the door. Ripley found herself practically nose-up against it in the shallow locker. Outside, the alien put its own head up next to the window, peered in at her almost curiously, as though she were an exhibit in a cage. She tried to scream and couldn't. It died in her throat. All she could do was stare wide-eyed at the apparition glaring back at her.

  The locker was not airtight. A distinctive moaning reached her from outside. Distracted, the alien left the port to inspect the source of the strange noise. It bent, lifted the sealed catbox, causing Jones to howl more loudly.

  Ripley knocked on the glass, trying to draw the creature's attention away from the helpless animal. It worked. The alien was back at the glass in a second. She froze, and it returned to its leisurely inspection of the catbox.

  Ripley began a frantic search of the confined chamber. There was little inside except the single pressure suit. Working rapidly despite her inability to keep her hands from trembling, she slipped into it.

  Outside, the alien was shaking the catbox experimentally. Jones yowled through the box diaphragm. Ripley was halfway into the pressure suit when the alien threw the box down. It bounced but did not break open. Picking it up again, the alien hammered it against a wall. Jones was beyond sense, screamed steadily. The alien jammed the box into a crevice between two exposed conduits, began pounding the container into the opening while Jones fought to escape, hissing and spitting.

  Pulling on the helmet, Ripley latched it tight. There was no one around to double-check for her. If the seals were improperly set she'd find out soon enough. A touch activated the respirator and the suit filled with bottled life.

  She struggled to make a last search of the locker. There was nothing like a laser, which she couldn't have used in any case. But a long metal rod revealed a sharp tip when its protective rubber end was removed. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it gave her a little confidence, which was more important

  Taking a deep breath, she slowly unlatched the door, then kicked it open.

  The alien turned to face the locker, caught the steel shaft through its midsection. Ripley had run with all her weight behind it, and it penetrated deeply. The alien grabbed at the shaft as yellow fluid began to spill outward, hissing violently where it contacted the metal.

  Ripley fell back, grabbed a strut support while her other hand flailed at and contacted an emergency release. That blew the rear hatch. Instantly, all the air in the shuttle and anything not secured by bolt or strap or arm was sucked out into space. The alien shot past her. With inhuman reflexes it reached out an appendage . . . and caught hold of her trailing leg just above the ankle.

  She found herself dangling partway out the hatch as she kicked desperately at the limb locked around her leg. It wouldn't let go. There was a lever next to the emergency release and she threw it over. The hatch slammed shut, closing her in, leaving the alien outside.

  Acid began to foam along the hatch lining, leaking from the crushed member once wrapped around her ankle. Stumbling forward, she scanned the console, found the switches that activated the secondary engines. She pressed several of the buttons.

  Near t
he stern of the shuttle, colourless energy belched outward. Incinerated, the alien fell away from the ship. The moment it was cut free, the acid stopped flowing.

  She watched nervously as it continued to bubble, but there had been little bleeding. It finally stopped. She punched the small computer keyboard, waited dumbly for the readout.

  REAR HATCH DAMAGE: QUERY.

  ANALYSIS: MINOR REDUCTION OF HULL.

  SHIP INTEGRITY NOT COMPROMISED. ATMOSPHERIC HOLDING CAPACITY UNIMPAIRED. SUFFICIENT SEALANT TO COMPENSATE

  OBSERVATION: REPAIR DAMAGED SECTION AS SOON AS DESTINATION ACHIEVED. PRESENT HULL WILL FAIL INSPECTION.