Alien

I

Seven dreamers.

You must understand that they were not professional dreamers. Professional dreamers are highly paid, respected, much sought-after talents. Like the majority of us, these seven dreamt without effort or discipline. Dreaming professionally, so that one's dreams can be recorded and played back for the entertainment of others, is a much more demanding proposition. It requires the ability to regulate semiconscious creative impulses and to stratify imagination, an extraordinarily, difficult combination to achieve. A professional dreamer is simultaneously the most organized of all artists and the most spontaneous. A subtle weaver of speculation, not straightforward and clumsy like you or I. Or these certain seven sleepers.

Of them all, Ripley came closest to possessing that special potential. She had a little ingrained dream talent and more flexibility of imagination than her companions. But she lacked real inspiration and the powerful maturity of thought characteristic of the prodreamer.

She was very good at organizing stores and cargo, at pigeonholing carton A in storage chamber B or matching up manifests. It was in the warehouse of the mind that her filing system went awry. Hopes and fears, speculations and half creations slipped haphazardly from compartment to compartment.

Warrant officer Ripley needed more self-control. The raw, rococo thoughts lay waiting to be tapped, just below the surface of realization. A little more effort, a greater intensity of self-recognition and she would have made a pretty good prodreamer. Or so she occasionally thought.

Captain Dallas now, he appeared lazy while being the best organized of all. Nor was he lacking in imagination. His beard was proof of that. Nobody took a beard into the freezers. Nobody except Dallas. It was a part of his personality, he'd explained to more than one curious shipmate. He'd no more part with the antique facial fuzz than he would with any other part of his anatomy. Captain of two ships Dallas was: the interstellar tug Nostromo, and his body. Both would remain intact in dreaming as well as when awake.

So he had the regulatory capability, and a modicum of imagination. But a professional dreamer requires a deal more than a modicum of the last, and that's a deficiency that can't be compensated for by a disproportionate quantity of the first. Dallas was no more realistic prodreamer material than Ripley.

Kane was less controlled in thought and action than was Dallas, and possessed far less imagination. He was a good executive officer. Never would he be a captain. That requires a certain drive coupled with the ability to command others, neither of which Kane had been blessed with. His dreams were translucent, formless shadows compared to those of Dallas, just as Kane was a thinner, less vibrant echo of the captain. That did not make him less likable. But prodreaming requires a certain extra energy, and Kane had barely enough for day-to-day living.

Parker's dreams were not offensive, but they were less pastoral than Kane's. There was little imagination in them at all. They were too specialized, and dealt only rarely with human things. One could expect nothing else from a ship's engineer.

Direct they were, and occasionally ugly. In wakefulness this deeply buried offal rarely showed itself, when the engineer became irritated or angry. Most of the ooze and contempt fermenting at the bottom of his soul's cistern were kept well hidden. His shipmates never saw beyond the distilled Parker floating on top, never had a glimpse of what was bubbling and brewing deep inside.

Lambert was more the inspiration of dreamers than dreamer herself. In hypersleep her restless musings were filled with intersystem plottings and load factors canceled out by fuel considerations. Occasionally imagination entered into such dream structures, but never in a fashion fit to stir the blood of others.

Parker and Brett often imagined their own systems interplotting with hers. They considered the question of load factors and spatial juxtapositions in a manner that would have infuriated Lambert had she been aware of them. Such unauthorized musings they kept to themselves, securely locked in daydreams and nightdreams, lest they make her mad. It would not do to upset Lambert. As the Nostromo's navigator she was the one primarily responsible for seeing them safely home, and that was the most exciting and desirable cojoining any man could imagine.

Brett was only listed as an engineering technician. That was a fancy way of saying he was just as smart and knowledgeable as Parker but lacked seniority. The two men formed an odd pair, unequal and utterly different to outsiders. Yet they coexisted and functioned together smoothly. In large part their success as both friends and coworkers was due to Brett never intruding on Parker's mental ground. The tech was as solemn and phlegmatic in outlook and speech as Parker was voluble and volatile. Parker could rant for hours over the failure of a microchip circuit, damning its ancestry back to the soil from which its rare earth constituents were first mined. Brett would patiently comment, 'right.'

For Brett, that single word was much more than a mere statement of opinion. It was an affirmation of self. For him, silence was the cleanest form of communication. In loquaciousness lay insanity.

And then there was Ash. Ash was the science officer, but that wasn't what made his dreams so funny. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. His dreams were the most professionally organized of all the crew's. Of them all, his came nearest to matching his awakened self. Ash's dreams held absolutely no delusions.

That wasn't surprising if you really knew Ash. None of his six crewmates did, though. Ash knew himself well. If asked, he could have told you why he could never become a prodreamer. None ever thought to ask, despite the fact that the science officer clearly found pro dreaming more fascinating than any of them.

Oh, and there was the cat. Name of Jones. A very ordinary housecat, or, in this instance, shipcat. Jones was a large yellow tom of uncertain parentage and independent mien, long accustomed to the vagaries of ship travel and the idiosyncrasies of humans who travelled through space. It too slept the cold sleep, and dreamt simple dreams of warm, dark places and gravity-bound mice.

Of all the dreamers on board he was the only contented one, though he could not be called an innocent.

It was a shame none of them were qualified as pro dreamers, since each had more time to dream in the course of their work than any dozen professionals, despite the slowing of their dream pace by the cold sleep. Necessity made dreaming their principal avocation. A deep-space crew can't do anything in the freezers but sleep and dream. They might remain forever amateurs, but they had long ago become very competent ones.

Seven of them there were. Seven quiet dreamers in search of a nightmare.

While it possessed a consciousness of a sort, the Nostromo did not dream. It did not need to, anymore than it needed the preserving effect of the freezers. If it did dream, such musings must have been brief and fleeting, since it never slept. It worked, and maintained, and made certain its hibernating human complement stayed always a step ahead of ever ready death, which followed the cold sleep like a vast grey shark behind a ship at sea.

Evidence of the Nostromo's unceasing mechanical vigilance was everywhere on the quiet ship, in soft hums and lights that formed the breath of instrumental sentience. It permeated the very fabric of the vessel, extended sensors to check every circuit and strut. It had sensors outside too, monitoring the pulse of the cosmos. Those sensors had fastened onto an electromagnetic anomaly.

One portion of the Nostromo's brain was particularly adept at distilling sense out of anomalies. It had thoroughly chewed this one up, found the flavor puzzling, examined the results of analysis, and reached a decision. Slumbering instrumentalities were activated, dormant circuits again regulated the flow of electrons. In celebration of this decision, banks of brilliant lights winked on, life signs of stirring mechanical breath.

A distinctive beeping sounded, though as yet there were only artificial tympanums present to hear and acknowledge. It was a sound not heard on the Nostromo for some time, and it signified an infrequent happening.

Within this awakening bottle of clicks and flashes, of devices conversing with each other, lay a special room. Within this room of white metal lay seven cocoons of snow-coloured metal and plastic.

A new noise filled this chamber, an explosive exhalation that filled it with freshly scrubbed, breathable atmosphere. Mankind had willingly placed himself in this position, trusting in little tin gods like the Nostromo to provide him with the breath of life when he could not do so for himself.

Extensions of that half-sentient electronic being now tested the newly exuded air and pronounced it satisfactory for sustaining life in puny organics such as men. Additional lights flared, more linkages closed. Without fanfare, the lids on the seven chrysalises opened, and the caterpillar shapes within began to emerge once more into the light.

Seen shorn of their dreams, the seven members of the Nostromo's crew were even less impressive than they'd been in hypersleep. For one thing, they were dripping wet from the preservative cryosleep fluid that had filled and surrounded their bodies. However analeptic, slime of any sort is not becoming.

For another, they were naked, and the liquid was a poor substitute for the slimming and shaping effects of the artificial skins called clothes.

'Jesus,' muttered Lambert, disgustedly wiping fluid from her shoulders and sides, 'am I cold!' She stepped out of the coffin that preserved life instead of death, began fumbling in a nearby compartment. Using the towel she found there, she commenced wiping the transparent syrup from her legs.

'Why the hell can't Mother warm the ship before breaking us out of storage?' She was working on her feet now, trying to remember where she'd dumped her clothes.

'You know why.' Parker was too busy with his own sticky, tired self to bother staring at the nude navigator. 'Company policy. Energy conservation, which translates as Company cheap. Why waste excess power warming the freezer section until the last possible second? Besides, it's always cold coming out of hypersleep. You know what the freezer takes your internal temperature down to.'

'Yeah, I know. But it's still cold.' She mumbled it, knowing Parker was perfectly correct but resenting having to admit it. She'd never cared much for the engineer.

Damn it, Mother, she thought, seeing the goosebumps on her forearm, let's have some heat!

Dallas was toweling himself off, dry-sponging away the last of the cryosleep gunk, and trying not to stare at something the others could not see. He'd noticed it even before rising from his freezer. The ship had arranged it so that he would.

'Work'll warm us all up fast enough.' Lambert muttered something unintelligible. 'Everybody to your stations. I assume you all remember what you're getting paid for. Besides sleeping away your troubles.'

No one smiled or bothered to comment. Parker glanced across to where his partner was sitting up in his freezer. 'Morning. Still with us, Brett?'

'Yo.'

'Lucky us.' That came from Ripley. She stretched, turning it into a more aesthetic movement' than any of the others. 'Nice to know our prime conversationalist is as garrulous as ever.'

Brett just smiled, said nothing. He was as verbal as the machines he serviced, which was to say not at all, and it was a running joke within the septuple crew family. They were laughing with him at such times, not at him.

Dallas was doing side twists, elbows parallel to the floor, hands together in front of his sternum. He fancied he could hear his long-unused muscles squeak. The flashing yellow light, eloquent as any voice, monopolized his thoughts. That devilish little sunhued cyclops was the ship's way of telling them they'd been awakened for something other than the end of their journey. He was already wondering why.

Ash sat up, looked around expressionlessly. For all the animation in his face, he might as well still have been in hypersleep. 'I feel dead.' He was watching Kane. The executive officer was yawning, still not fully awake. It was Ash's professional opinion that the exec actually enjoyed hypersleep and would spend his whole life as ВЈnarcoleptic if so permitted.

Unaware of the science officers opinion, Parker glanced over at him, spoke pleasantly. 'You look dead.' He was aware that his own features probably looked no better. Hypersleep tired the skin as well as the muscles. His attention turned to Kane's coffin. The exec was finally sitting up.

'Nice to be back.' He blinked.

'Couldn't tell it to any of us, not by the time it takes you to wake up.'

Kane looked hurt. 'That's a damn slander, Parker. I'm just slower than the rest of you, that's all.'

'Yeah.' The engineer didn't press the point, turned to the captain, who was absorbed in studying something out of the engineer's view. 'Before we dock, maybe we'd better go over the bonus situation again.'

Brett showed faint signs of enthusiasm, his first since awakening. 'Yeah.'

Parker continued, slipping on his boots. 'Brett and I think we deserve a full share. Full bonus for successful completion plus salary and interest.'

At least he knew deep sleep hadn't harmed his engineering staff, Dallas mused tiredly. Barely conscious for a couple of minutes, they were complaining already.

'You two will get what you contracted for. No more and no less. Just like everybody else.'

'Everybody gets more than us,' said Brett softly. For him, that constituted a major speech. It had no effect on the captain, however. Dallas had no time now for trivialities or half-serious wordplay. That blinking light commanded his full attention, and choreographed his thoughts to the exclusion of all else.

'Everybody else deserves more than you two. Complain to the Company disburser if you want. Now get below.'

'Complain to the Company.' Parker was muttering unhappily as he watched Brett swing out of his coffin, commence drying his legs. 'Might as well try complaining directly to God.'

'Same thing.' Brett was checking a weak service light on his own freezer compartment. Barely conscious, naked and dripping with liquid, he was already hard at work. He was the sort of person who could walk for days on a broken leg but was unable to ignore a malfunctioning toilet.

Dallas started for the central computer room, called back over a shoulder. 'One of you jokers get the cat.'

It was Ripley who lifted a limp yellowish form from one of the freezers. She wore a hurt expression. 'You needn't be so indifferent about it.' She stroked the soaked animal affectionately. 'It's not a piece of equipment. Jones is a member of the crew as much as any of us.'

'More than some.' Dallas was watching Parker and Brett, fully dressed now, receding in the direction of engineering. 'He doesn't fill my few on-board waking hours with complaints about salary or bonuses.'

Ripley departed, the cat enveloped in a thick dry towel. Jones was purring unsteadily, licking himself with great dignity. It was not his first time out of hypersleep. For the present, he would tolerate the ignominy of being carried.

Dallas had finished drying himself. Now he touched a button set into the base of his coffin. A drawer slid silently outward on nearly frictionless bearings. It contained his clothing and a few personal effects.

As he was dressing, Ash ambled over to stand nearby. The science officer kept his voice low, spoke as he finished seaming his clean shirt.

'Mother wants to talk to you.' As he whispered, he nodded in the direction of the yellow light flashing steadily on the suspended console nearby.

'I saw it right off.' Dallas slipped arms into a shirt. 'Hard yellow. Security one, not warning. Don't tell the others. If anything's seriously wrong, they'll find out soon enough.' He slipped into an impressed brown jacket, left it hanging open,

'It can't be too bad, whatever it is.' Ash sounded hopeful, gestured again at the steadily winking light. 'It's only yellow, not red.'

'For the moment.' Dallas was no optimist. 'I'd have preferred waking up to a nice, foresty green.' He shrugged, tried to sound as hopeful as Ash. 'Maybe the autochef's on the blink. That might be a blessing, considering what it calls food.'

He attempted a smile, failed. The Nostromo was not human. It did not play practical jokes on its crew, and it would not have awakened them from hypersleep with a yellow warning light without a perfectly good reason. A malfunctioning autochef did not qualify as a candidate for the latter.

Oh well. After several months of doing nothing but sleeping, he had no right to complain if a few hours' honest sweat was now required of him. .

The central computer room was little different from the other awake rooms aboard the Nostromo. A disarming kaleidoscope of lights and screens, readouts and gauges, it conveyed the impression of a wild party inhabited by a dozen drunken Christmas trees.

Settling himself into a thickly padded contour seat, Dallas considered how to proceed. Ash took the seat opposite the Mind Bank, manipulated controls with more speed and ease than a man just out of hypersleep ought to have. The science officer's ability to handle machines was unmatched.

It was a special rapport Dallas often wished he possessed. Still groggy from the after-effects of hypersleep, he punched out a primary request. Distortion patterns chased each other across the screen, settled down to form recognizable words. Dallas checked his wording, found it standard.

ALERT OVERMONITORING FUNCTION FOR MATRIX DISPLAY AND INQUIRY.

The ship found it acceptable also, and Mother's reply was immediate. OVERMONITOR ADDRESS MATRIX. Columns of informational categorizations lined up for inspection beneath this terse legend.

Dallas examined the long list of fine print, located the section he wanted, and typed in, COMMAND PRIORITY ALERT.

OVERMONITOR FUNCTION READY FOR INQUIRY, Mother responded. Computer minds were not programmed for verbosity. Mother was no exception to the rule.

Which was fine with Dallas. He wasn't in a talkative mood. He typed briefly, WHAT'S THE STORY, MOTHER? and waited. .

You couldn't say that the bridge of the Nostromo was spacious. Rather, it was somewhat less claustrophobic than the ship's other rooms and chambers, but not by much. Five contour seats awaited their respective occupants. Lights flashed patiently on and off at multiple consoles, while numerous screens of varying shapes and sizes also awaited the arrival of humans who were prepared to tell them what to display. A large bridge would have been an expensive frivolity, since the crew spent most of its flight time motionless in the freezers. It was designed strictly for work, not for relaxation or entertainment. The people who worked there knew this as thoroughly as did the machines.

A seal door slid silently into a wall. Kane entered, followed closely by Ripley, Lambert, and Ash. They made their way to their respective stations, settled behind consoles with the ease and familiarity of old friends greeting one another after a long time apart.

A fifth seat remained empty, would continue unoccupied until Dallas returned from his tГЄte-a-tГЄte with Mother, the Nostromo's Mind Bank computer. The nickname was an accurate one, not given in jest. People grow very serious when speaking about the machinery responsible for keeping them alive. For its part, the machine accepted the designation with equal solemnity, if not the emotional overtones.

Their clothing was as relaxed as their bodies, casual travesties of crew-member uniforms. Each reflected the personality of the wearer. Shirts and slacks, all were rumpled and worn after years of storage. So were the bodies they encased.

The first sounds spoken on the bridge in many years summed up the feelings of all present, even though they couldn't understand them. Jones was meowing when Ripley set him on the deck. He changed that to a purr, sliding sensuously around her ankles as she snuggled herself into the high-backed seat.

'Plug us in.' Kane was checking out his own console, caressing the automatics with his eyes, hunting for contrasts and uncertainties as Ripley and Lambert commenced throwing necessary switches and thumbing requisite controls.

There was a flurry of visual excitement as new lights and colours migrated across readout panels and screens. It gave the feeling that the instruments were pleased by the reappearance of their organic counterparts and were anxious to display their talents at first opportunity.

Fresh numbers and words appeared on readouts in front of him. Kane correlated them with well-remembered ones imprinted in his mind. 'Looks okay so far. Give us something to stare at.'

Lambert's fingers danced an arpeggio on a tightly clustered rank of controls. Viewscreens came alive all over the bridge, most suspended from the ceiling for easier inspection. The navigator examined the square eyes closest to her seat, frowned immediately. Much that she saw was expected. Too much was not. The most important thing, the anticipated shape that should be dominating their vision, was absent. So important was it that it negated the normality of everything else.

'Where's Earth?'

Examining his own screen carefully, Kane discerned blackness speckled with stars and little else. Granting the possibility that they'd emerged from hyperspace too soon, the home system at least should be clear on the screen. But Sol was as invisible as the expected Earth.

'You're the navigator, Lambert. You tell me.'

There was a central sun fixed squarely in the middle of the multiple screens. But it wasn't Sol. The colour was wrong, and computer-enhanced dots orbiting it were worse than wrong. They were impossible, improper of shape, of size, of number.

'That's not our system,' Ripley observed numbly, giving voice to the obvious.

'Maybe the trouble's just our orientation, not that of the stars.' Kane didn't sound very convincing, even to himself. 'Ships have been known to come out of hyperspace ass-backward to their intended destinations. That could be Centauri, at top amplification. Sol might be behind us. Let's take a scan before we do any panicking.' He did not add that the system visible on the screens resembled that of Centauri about as much as it did that of Sol.

Sealed cameras on the battered skin of the Nostromo began to move silently in the vacuum of space, hunting through infinity for hints of a warm Earth. Secondary cameras on the Nostromo's cargo, a monstrous aggregation of bulky forms and metal shapes, contributed their own line of sight. Inhabitants of an earlier age would have been astonished to learn that the Nostromo was towing a considerable quantity of crude oil through the void between the stars, encased in its own automatic, steadily functioning refinery.

That oil would be finished petrochemicals by the time the Nostromo arrived in orbit around Earth. Such methods were necessary. While mankind had long since developed marvellous, efficient substitutes for powering their civilization, they had done so only after greedy individuals had sucked the last drop of petroleum from a drained Earth.

Fusion and solar power ran all of man's machines. But they couldn't substitute for petrochemicals. A fusion engine could not produce plastics, for example. The modern worlds could exist without power sooner than they could without plastics. Hence the presence of the Nostromo's commercially viable, if historically incongruous, cargo of machinery and the noisome black liquid it patiently processed.

The only system the cameras picked up was the one set neatly in the centre of the various screens, the one with the improper necklace of planets circling an off-colour star. There was no doubt now in Kane's mind and less than that in Lambert's that the Nostromo's intended that system to be their immediate destination.

Still, it could be an error in time and not in space. Sol could be the system located in the distance just to this star's left or right. There was a sure way to find out

'Contact traffic control.' Kane was chewing his lower lip. 'If we can pick up anything from them, we'll know we're in the right quadrant. If Sol's anywhere nearby, we'll receive a reply from one of the outsystem relay stations.'

Lambert's fingers nicked different controls. 'This is the deep-space commercial tug Nostromo, registration number one eight zero, two four six, en route to Earth with bulk cargo crude petroleum and appropriate refinery. Calling Antarctica traffic control. Do you read me? Over.'

Only the faint, steady hiss of distant suns replied over the speakers. Near Ripley's feet, Jones the cat purred in harmony with the stars.

Lambert tried again. 'Deepspace commercial tug Nostromo calling Sol/Antarctica traffic control. We are experiencing navigation-fix difficulties. This is a priority call; please respond.' Still only the nervous stellar sizzle-pop. Lambert looked worried. 'Mayday, mayday. Tug Nostromo calling Sol traffic control or any other vessel in listening range. Mayday. Respond.'

The unjustified distress call (Lambert knew they were not in any immediate danger) went unanswered and unchallenged. Discouraged, she shut off the transmitter, but left the receiver on all-channels open in case another broadcasting ship happened to pass close by.

'I knew we couldn't be near our system,' Ripley mumbled. 'I know the area.' She nodded toward the screen hanging above her own station. 'That's nowhere near Sol, and neither are we.'

'Keep trying,' Kane ordered her. He turned back to face Lambert. 'So then where are we? You got a reading yet?'

'Give me a minute, will you? This isn't easy. We're way out in the boondocks.'

'Keep trying.'

'Working on it.'

Several minutes of intense searching and computer-cooperation produced a tight grin of satisfaction on her face. 'Found it. . and us. We're just short of Zeta II Reticuli. We haven't even reached the outer populated ring yet. Too deep to grab onto a navigation beacon, let alone a Sol traffic relay.'

'So what the hell are we doing here?' Kane wondered aloud. 'If there's nothing wrong with the ship and we're not home, why did Mother defrost us?'

It was only coincidence and not a direct response to the exec's musing, but an attention-to-station horn began its loud and imperative beeping. .

Near the stern of the Nostromo was a vast chamber mostly filled with complex, powerful machinery. The ship's heart lived there, the extensive propulsion system that enabled the vessel to distort space, ignore time, and thumb its metallic nose at Einstein. . and only incidentally power the devices that kept her fragile human crew alive.

At the fore end of this massive, humming complex was a glass cubicle, a transparent pimple on the tip of the hyperdrive iceberg. Within, settled in contour seats, rested two men. They were responsible for the health and well-being of the ship's drive, a situation both were content with. They took care of it and it took care of them.

Most of the time it took perfectly good care of itself, which enabled them to spend their time on more enlightening, worthwhile projects such as drinking beer and swapping dirty stories. At the moment it was Parker's turn to ramble. He was reciting for the hundredth time the tale of the engineering apprentice and the free-fall cathouse. It was a good story, one that never failed to elicit a knowing snigger or two from the silent Brett and a belly laugh from the storyteller himself.

'. . and so the madam busts in on me, all worried and mad at the same time,' the engineer was saying, 'and insists we come and rescue this poor sap. Guess he didn't know what he was getting into.' As usual, he roared at the pun.

'You remember that place. All four walls, floor and ceiling perfectly mirrored, with no bed. Just a velvet net suspended in the centre of the room to confine your activities and keep you from bouncing off the walls, and zero-gee.' He shook his head in disapproving remembrance.

'That's no place for amateurs to fool around, no sir! Guess this kid got embarrassed or cajoled into trying it by his crewmates.'

'From what the girl involved told me later, as she was cleaning herself up, they got started off fine. But then they started to spin, and he panicked. Couldn't stop their tumbling. She tried, but it takes two to stop as well as start in free-fall. What with the mirrors messing up his sense of position and all, plus the free tumbling, he couldn't stop throwing up.' Parker downed another mouthful of beer. 'Never saw such a mess in your natural life. Bet they're still working on those mirrors.'

'Yeah.' Brett smiled appreciatively.

Parker sat still, letting the last vestiges of the memory fade from his mind. They left a pleasantly lascivious residue behind. Absently, he flipped a key switch over his console. A gratifyingly green light appeared above it, held steady.

'How's your light?'

'Green,' admitted Brett, after repeating the switch-andcheck procedure with his own instrumentation.

'Mine too.' Parker studied the bubbles within the beer. Several hours out of hypersleep and he was bored already. The engine room ran itself with quiet efficiency, wasted no time making him feel extraneous. There was no one to argue with except Brett, and you couldn't work up a really invigorating debate with a man who spoke in monosyllables and for whom a complete sentence constituted an exhausting ordeal.

'I still think Dallas is deliberately ignoring our complaints,' he ventured. 'Maybe he can't direct that we receive full bonuses, but he is the captain. If he wanted to, he could put in a request, or at least a decent word for the two of us. That'd be a big help.' He studied a readout. It displayed numbers marching off plus or minus to right and left. The fluorescent red line running down its centre rested precisely on zero, splitting the desired indication of neutrality neatly in two.

Parker would have continued his rambling, alternating stories and complaints had not the beeper above them abruptly commenced its monotonous call

'Christ. What is it now? Can't let a guy get comfortable before somebody starts farting around!'

'Right.' Brett leaned forward to hear better as the speaker cleared a distant throat.

It was Ripley's voice. 'Report to the mess.'

'Can't be lunch, isn't supper.' Parker was confused. 'Either we're standing by to offload cargo, or. .' He glanced questioningly at his companion.

'Find out soon,' said Brett.

As they made their way toward the mess, Parker surveyed the less than antiseptically clean walls of 'C' corridor with distaste. 'I'd like to know why they never come down here. This is where the real work is.'

'Same reason we have half a share to their one. Our time is their time. That's the way they see it.'

'Well, I'll tell you something. It stinks.' Parker's tone left no doubt he was referring to something other than the odour the corridor walls were impregnated with. .