Microsoft word the com.., p.20
Microsoft Word - THE COMPLETE ALIEN OMNIBUS, page 20
had discovered such conditions on it. But nobody fooled with
such leaks on a ship like the Nostromo. The lubricants couldn’t
bother anyone important. What was a little rarely encountered
mess to a tug crew?
When they’d finished this run she promised herself she’d
request and hold out for a transfer to a liner or else get out of
the service. She knew she’d made the same promise twice a
dozen times before. This time she’d stick to it.
She pointed the tracker down the corridor. Nothing. When
she turned it to face up the corridor, the red light winked back
on. The illuminated needle registered a clear reading.
‘Okay, let’s go.’ She started off, having confidence in the little
needle because she knew Ash did solid work, because the
device had functioned well thus far, and because she had no
choice.
‘We’ll hit a split pretty soon,’ Brett cautioned her.
Several minutes passed. The corridor became two. She used
the tracker, started down the right-hand passage. The red light
began to fade. She turned, headed down the other corridor.
‘Back this way.’
The lights were still scarcer in this section of the ship. Deep
shadows pressed tightly around them, suffocating despite the
fact that no one trained to ship in deep space is subject to
claustrophobia. Their steps clanged on the metal decking, were
muffled only when they waded through slick pools of
accumulated fluid.
‘Dallas ought to demand an inspection,’ Parker muttered
disgustedly. ‘They’d condemn forty per cent of the ship and
then the Company would have to pay to clean it up.’
Ripley shook her head, threw the engineer a skeptical look.
‘Want to bet? Be cheaper and easier for the Company to buy
off the inspector.’
Parker fought to hide his disappointment. Another of his
seemingly brilliant ideas shot down. The worst part of it was,
Ripley’s logic was usually unassailable. His resentment and
admiration for her grew in proportion to one another.
‘Speaking of fixing and cleaning up,’ she continued, ‘what’s
wrong with the lights? I said I wasn’t familiar with this part of
the ship, but you can hardly see your own nose here. I thought
you guys fixed twelve module. We should have better
illumination than this, even down here.’
‘We did fix it,’ Brett protested.
Parker moved to squint at a nearby panel. ‘Delivery system
must be acting cautious. Some of the circuits haven’t been
receiving their usual steady current, you know. It was tough
enough to restore power without blowing every conductor on
the ship. When things get tricky, affected systems restrict their
acceptance of power to prevent overloads. This one’s
overdoing it, though. We can fix that.’
He touched a switch on the panel, cut in an override. The
light in the corridor grew brighter.
They travelled farther before Ripley abruptly halted and
threw up a cautionary hand. ‘Wait.’
Parker nearly fell in his haste to obey, and Brett almost
stumbled in the netting. Nobody laughed or came near to
doing so.
‘We’re close?’ Parker whispered the question, straining with
inadequate eyes to penetrate the blackness ahead.
Ripley checked the needle, matched it to Ash’s hand-
engraved scale etched into the metal alongside the illuminated
screen. ‘According to this, it’s within fifteen metres.’
Parker and Brett tightened their hold on the net without
being told to. Ripley hefted her tube, switched it on. She
moved slowly forward with the tube in her right hand and the
tracker in the other. It was hard, oh, impossibly hard, to
imagine any three people making less noise than Ripley,
Parker, and Brett were making in that corridor. Even the
previously steady pantings of their lungs were muted.
They covered five metres, then ten. A muscle in Ripley’s left
calf jumped like a grasshopper, hurting her. She ignored it.
They continued on, the distance as computed by the tracker
shrinking irrevocably.
Now she was walking in a half crouch, ready to spring
backward the instant any fragment of the darkness gave hint of
movement. The tracker, its beeper now intentionally turned
off, brought her to a halt at the end of fifteen point two metres.
The light here was still dim, but sufficient to show them that
nothing cowered in the malodorous corridor.
Slowly turning the tracker, she tried to watch both it and the
far end of the passage. The needle shifted minutely on the dial.
She raised her gaze, noticed a small hatch set into the corridor
wall. It was slightly ajar.
Parker and Brett noted where her attention was concen-
trated. They positioned themselves to cover as much of the
deck in front of the hatch as possible. Ripley nodded at them
when they were set, trying to shake some of the dripping
perspiration from her face. She took a deep breath and set the
tracker on the floor. With her free hand she grasped the hatch
handle. It was cold and clammy against her already damp
palm.
Raising the prod, she depressed the button on its handle
end, slammed herself against the corridor wall, and jammed
the metal tube inside the locker. A horrible squalling sounded
loudly in the corridor. A small creature that was all bulging
eyes and flashing claws exploded from the locker. It landed
neatly in the middle of the net as a frantic pair of engineers
fought to envelop it in as many layers of the tough strands as
possible.
‘Hang on, hang on!’ Parker was shouting triumphantly. ‘We
got the little bastard, we . . .!’
Ripley was peering into the net. A great surge of
disappointment went through her. She turned off the tube,
picked up the tracker again.
‘Goddamn it,’ she muttered tiredly. ‘Relax, you two. Look at
it.’
Parker let go of the net at the same time as Brett. Both had
seen what they’d caught and were mumbling angrily. A very
annoyed cat shot out of the entangling webwork, ran hissing
and spitting back up the corridor before Ripley could protest.
‘No, no.’ She tried, too late, to instruct them. ‘Don’t let it get
away.’
A faint flicker of orange fur vanished into the distance.
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ agreed Parker. ‘We should have killed it.
Now we might pick it up on the tracker again.’
Ripley glanced sharply at him, said nothing. Then she
turned her attention to the less homicidally inclined Brett. ‘You
go get him. We can debate what to do with him later, but it
would be a good idea to keep him around or penned up in his
box so he can’t confuse the machine . . . or us.’
Brett nodded. ‘Right.’
He turned and trotted back up the passageway after the cat.
Ripley and Parker continued slowly in the opposite direction,
Ripley trying to handle tracker and tube and help Parker with
the net at the same time.
An open door led into a large equipment maintenance bay.
Brett took a last look up and down the corridor, saw no sign of
the cat. On the other hand, the loosely stocked chamber was
full of ideal cat hiding places. If the cat wasn’t inside, he’d
rejoin the others, he decided. It could be anywhere on the ship
by now. But the equipment bay was a logical place for it to take
refuge.
There was light inside, though no brighter than in the
corridor. Brett ignored the rows of stacked instrument pods,
the carelessly bundled containers of solid-state replacement
modules and dirty tools. Luminescent panels identified
contents.
It occurred to him that by now his two companions were
probably out of earshot. The thought made him jittery. The
sooner he got his hands on that damned cat, the better.
‘Jones . . . here, kitty, kitty. Jones cat. Come to Brett, kitty,
kitty.’ He bent to peer into a dark crevice between two huge
crates. The slit was deserted. Rising, he wiped sweat from his
eyes, first the left, then the right. ‘Goddamn it, Jones,’ he
muttered softly, ‘where the hell are you hiding?’
Scratching noises, deeper in the bay. They were followed by
an uncertain but reassuring yowl that was unmistakably feline
in origin. He let out a relieved breath and started for the
source of the cry.
Ripley halted, looked tiredly at the tracker screen. The red
light had gone out, the needle again rested on zero, and the
beeper hadn’t sounded in a long time. As she stared, the needle
quivered once, then lay still.
‘Nothing here,’ she told her remaining retiarius, ‘If there
ever was anything here besides us and Jones.’ She looked at
Parker. ‘I’m open to suggestions.’
‘Let’s go back. The least we can do is help Brett run down
that friggin’ cat.’
‘Don’t pick on Jones.’ Ripley automatically defended the
animal. ‘He’s as frightened as the rest of us.’
They turned and headed back up the stinking corridor.
Ripley left the tracker on, just in case.
Brett had worked his way behind stacks of equipment.
He couldn’t go much farther. Struts and supports for the
upper superstructure of the Nostromo formed an intricate
criss-cross of metal around him.
He was getting discouraged all over again when another
familiar yowl reached him. Turning a metal pylon, he saw two
small yellow eyes shining in the dark. For an instant he
hesitated. Jones was about the size of the thing that had burst
from poor Kane’s chest. Another meow made him feel better.
Only an ordinary tomcat would produce a noise like that.
As he worked his way nearer he bent to clear a beam and had
a glimpse of fur and whiskers: Jones.
‘Here kitty . . . good to see you, you furry little bastard.’ He
reached for the cat. It hissed threateningly at him and backed
farther into its corner. ‘Come on, Jones. Come to Brett. No
time to fool around now.’
Something not quite as thick as the beam the engineering
tech had just passed under reached downward. It descended in
utter silence and conveyed a feeling of tremendous power held
in check. Fingers spread, clutched, wrapped completely
around the engineer’s throat and crossed over themselves.
Brett shrieked, both hands going reflexively to his neck. For all
the effect his hands had on them, those gripping fingers might
as well have been welded together. He went up in that hand,
legs dancing in empty air. Jones bolted beneath him.
The cat shot past Ripley and Parker, who’d just arrived.
They plunged unthinking into the equipment bay. Soon they
were standing where they’d seen Brett’s legs flailing moments
before. Staring up into blackness, they had a last brief glimpse
of dangling feet and twisting torso receding upward. Above
the helpless figure of the engineer was a faint outline,
something man-shaped but definitely not a man. Something
huge and malevolent. There was a split second’s sight of light
reflecting off eyes far too big for even a huge head. Then both
alien and engineer had vanished into the upper reaches of the
Nostromo.
‘Jesus,’ Parker whispered.
‘It grew.’ Ripley looked blankly at her shock tube, considered
it in relation to the hulking mass far above. ‘It grew fast. All the
time we were hunting for something Jones’ size, it had turned
into that.’ She suddenly grew aware of their restricted space, of
the darkness and massive crates pressing tight around them, of
the numerous passages between crates and thick metal
supports.
‘What are we doing standing here? It may come back.’ She
hefted the toy-like tube, aware of how little effect it would be
likely to have on a creature that size.
They hurried from the bay. Try as they would, the memory
of that last fading scream stayed with them, glued to their
minds. Parker had known Brett a long time, but that final
shriek induced him to run as fast as Ripley. . . .
XI
There was less confidence in the faces of those assembled in
the mess room than last time. No one tried to hide it, least of all
Parker and Ripley. Having seen what they were now
confronted by, they retained very little in the way of
confidence at all.
Dallas was examining a recently printed schematic of the
Nostromo. Parker stood by the door, occasionally glancing
nervously down the corridor.
‘Whatever it was,’ the engineer said into the silence, ‘it was
big. Swung down on him like a giant fucking bat.’
Dallas looked up from the layout. ‘You’re absolutely sure it
dragged Brett into a vent.’
‘It disappeared into one of the cooling ducts.’ Ripley was
scratching the back of one hand with the other. ‘I’m sure I saw
it go in. Anyway, there was nowhere else for it to go.’
‘No question about it,’ Parker added. ‘It’s using the air shafts
to move around. That’s why we never ran it down with the
tracker.’
‘The air shafts.’ Dallas looked convinced. ‘Makes sense. Jones
does the same thing.’
Lambert played with her coffee, stirring the dark liquid with
an idle finger. ‘Brett could still be alive.’
‘Not a chance.’ Ripley wasn’t being fatalistic, only logical. ‘It
snapped him up like a rag doll.’
‘What does it want him for, anyway?’ Lambert wanted to
know. ‘Why take him instead of killing him on the spot?’
‘Perhaps it requires an incubator, the way the first form used
Kane,’ Ash suggested.
‘Or food,’ said Ripley tightly. She shivered.
Lambert put down her coffee. ‘Either way, it’s two down and
five to go, from the alien’s standpoint.’
Parker had been turning his shock tube over and over in his
hands. Now he turned and threw it hard against a wall. It bent,
fell to the deck, and crackled a couple of times before lying still.
‘I say we blast the rotten bastard with a laser and take our
chances.’
Dallas tried to sound sympathetic. ‘I know how you feel,
Parker. We all liked Brett. But we’ve got to keep our heads. If
the creature’s now as big as you say, it’s holding enough acid to
burn a hole in the ship as big as this room. Not to mention what
it would do to circuitry and controls running through the
decks. No way can we chance that. Not yet’
‘Not yet?’ Parker’s sense of helplessness canceled out much
of his fury. ‘How many have to die besides Brett before you can
see that’s the way to handle that thing?’
‘It wouldn’t work anyway, Parker.’
The engineer turned to face Ash, frowned at him. ‘What do
you mean?’
‘I mean you’d have to hit a vital organ with a laser on your
first shot. From your description of the creature it’s now
extremely fast as well as large and powerful. I think it’s
reasonable to assume it retains the same capacity for rapid
regeneration as its first “hand” form. That means you’d have to
kill it instantly or it would be all over you.’
‘Not only would that be difficult to do if your opponent were
a mere man, it’s also virtually impossible to do with this alien
because we have no idea where its vital point is. We don’t even
know that it has a vital point. Don’t you see?’ He was trying to
be understanding, like Dallas had been. Everyone knew how
close the two engineers had been.
‘Can’t you envision what would happen? Let’s say a couple of
us succeeded in confronting the creature in an open area
where we can get a clear shot at it, which is by no means a
certainty. We laser it, oh, half a dozen times before it tears us
all to pieces. All six wounds heal fast enough to preserve the
alien’s life, but not before it’s bled enough acid to eat numerous
holes in the ship. Maybe some of the stuff burns through the
circuitry monitoring our air supply, or cuts the power to the
ship’s lights.
‘I don’t consider that an unreasonable scenario, given what
we know about the creature.?And what’s the result? We’ve lost
two or more people and shipwise we’re worse off than we were
before we confronted it.’
Parker didn’t reply, looked sullen. Finally he mumbled,
