Alien

X

He was studying the remaining oxygen for the last time, hoping some unnoticed miracle would have added another zero to the remorseless number on the gauge. As he watched the counter conclude its work, the last digit in line blinked from nine to eight. There was a thumping sound from the entryway and he spun, relaxed when he saw it was Parker and Brett.

Parker dumped an armload of metal tubes onto the floor. Each was about twice the diametre of a man's thumb. They clattered hollowly, sounding and looking very little like weapons. Brett untangled himself from several metres of netting, looked pleased with himself.

'Here's the stuff. All tested and ready to go.'

Dallas nodded. 'I'll call the others.' He sounded general call to bridge, passed the time waiting for the rest of the crew to arrive in inspecting the collection of tubes doubtfully. Ash was the last to arrive, having the farthest to come.

'We're going to try to coerce that thing with those?' Lambert was pointing at the tubes, her tone leaving little doubt as to her opinion of their effectiveness.

'Give them a chance,' Dallas said. 'Everybody take one.' They lined up and Brett passed out the units. Each was about a metre and a half long. One end bulged with compact instrumentation and formed a crude handhold. Dallas swung the tube around like a sabre, getting the feel of it. It wasn't heavy, which made him feel better about it. He wanted something he could get between himself and the alien in a hurry, acidic expectorations or other unimaginable forms of defence notwithstanding. There is something illogical and primitive, but very comforting, about the feel of a club.

'I put oh-three-three portable chargers in each of these,' Brett said. 'The batteries will deliver a pretty substantial jolt. They won't require recharging unless you hold the discharge button down for a long time, and I mean a long time.' He indicated the handle of his own tube. 'So don't be afraid to use 'em.

'They're fully insulated up here at the grip and partway down the tube. Touching the tube will make you drop it quick if you've got it switched on, but there's another tube inside that's supercool conductive. That's where most of the charge will be carried. It'll deliver almost 100 per cent of the discharged power to the far tip. So be goddamn careful not to get your hand on the end.'

'How about a demonstration?' asked Ripley.

'Yeah, sure.' The engineering tech touched the end of his tube to a conduit running across the nearest wall. A blue spark leaped from tube to duct, there was a satisfyingly loud crack, and a faint smell of ozone. Brett smiled.

'Yours have all been tested. They all work. You've got plenty of juice in those tubes.'

'Any way to modulate the voltage?' Dallas wondered.

Parker shook his head. 'We tried to approximate something punishing but not lethal. We don't know anything about this variety of the creature, and we didn't have time for installing niceties like current regulators, anyway. Each tube generates a single, unvariable charge. We're not miracle workers, you know.'

'First time I ever heard you admit it,' said Ripley. Parker threw her a sour look.

'It won't damage the little bastard unless its nervous system is a lot more sensitive than ours,' Brett told them. 'We're as sure of that as we can be. Its parent was smaller and plenty tough.' He hefted the tube, looking like an ancient gladiator about to enter the arena. 'This'll just give it a little incentive. Of course, it won't break my heart if we succeed in electrocuting the little darling.'

'Maybe it will work,' Lambert conceded. 'So that's our possible solution to problem one. What about problem number two: finding it?'

'I've taken care of that.' Everyone turned in surprise to see Ash holding a small, communicator-sized device. Ash was watching only Dallas, however. Unable to meet the science officer's eyes, Dallas kept his attention single-mindedly focused on the tiny device.

'Since it's imperative to locate the creature as soon as possible, I've done some tinkering of my own. Brett and Parker have done an admirable job in concocting a means for manipulating the creature. Here is the means for finding it.'

'A portable tracker?' Ripley admired the compact instrument. It looked as if it had been assembled in a factory, instead of something hastily cobbled together in a commercial tug's science lab.

Ash nodded once. 'You set it to search for a moving object. It hasn't much range, but when you get within a certain distance it starts beeping, and the volume increases proportionate to decreasing distance from the target.'

Ripley took the tracker from the science officer's hand, turned it over, and examined it with a professional eye. 'What does it key on? How do we tell alien from fellow bitcher?'

'Two ways,' Ash explained proudly. 'As I mentioned, its range is short. That could be considered a shortcoming, but in this instance it works to our advantage, since it permits two parties to search close by one another without the tracker picking up the other group.

'More importantly, it incorporates a sensitive air-density monitor. any moving object will affect that. You can tell from the reading which direction the object is moving. Just keep it pointed ahead of you.

'It's not nearly as sophisticated an instrument as I wished to have, but it's the best I could come up with in the limited time available.'

'You did great, Ash,' Dallas had to admit. He took the proffered tracker from Ripley. 'This should be more than sufficient. How many did you make up?' By way of reply, Ash produced one duplicate of the device in the captain's palm.

'That means we can work two teams. Good. I don't have anything fancy to offer as far as instructions. You all know what to do as well as I. Whoever finds it first nets it, somehow gets it into the lock, and blows it toward Rigel as fast as the hatches will function. I don't care if you feel like using the explosive bolts on the outer door. We'll walk out in our suits if we have to.'

He started for the corridor, paused to look around the cramped, instrument-packed room. It seemed impossible that anything could have slipped in there without being noticed, but if they were going to make a thorough search, they'd do well not to make exceptions.

'For starters, let's make sure the bridge is clean.'

Parker held one of the trackers. He turned it on, swept it around the bridge, keeping his attention on the crudely marked gauge set into the unit's face.

'Six displacements,' he announced when the sweep had been completed. 'All positioned approximately where each of us is standing. We seem to be clean in here. . if this damn thing works.'

Ash spoke without taking offence. 'It works. As you've just demonstrated.'

Additional equipment was passed around. Dallas surveyed the waiting men and women. 'Everybody ready?' There were a couple of whispered, sullen 'no's', and everyone smiled. Kane's grisly passing had already faded somewhat from their memories. This time they were prepared for the alien and, hopefully, armed with the right tools for the task.

'Channels are open on all decks.' Dallas started purposefully for the corridor. 'We'll keep in constant touch. Ash and I will go with Lambert and one tracker. Brett and Parker will make up the second team. Ripley, you take charge of it and the other tracker.

'At the first sign of the creature, your priority is to capture it and get it to the lock. Notifying the other team is a secondary consideration. Let's do it'

They filed out of the bridge.

The corridors on A level had never seemed quite so long or so dark before. They were as familiar to Dallas as the back of his hand, yet the knowledge that something deadly might be hiding back in the corners and storage chambers caused him to tread softly where he would otherwise have walked confidently with his eyes closed.

The lights were on, all of them. That did not brighten the corridor. They were service lights, for occasional use only. Why waste power to light up every corner of a working vessel like the Nostromo when its crew spent so little time awake? Enough light to see by during departure and arrival and during an occasional in-flight emergency had been provided. Dallas was grateful for the lumens he had, but that didn't keep him from lamenting the floodlights that weren't.

Lambert held the other side of the net, across from Dallas. The web stretched from one side of the corridor to the other. He clenched his own end a bit tighter and gave a sharp pull. Her head turned toward him, wide-eyed. Then she relaxed, nodded at him, and turned her attention back down the corridor. She'd been dreaming, sinking into a sort of self-hypnosis, her mind so full of awful possibilities she'd forgotten completely the business at hand. She should be hunting through corners and niches of the ship, not her imagination. The alert look returned to her face, and Dallas turned his own full attention back to the nearing bend in the corridor.

Ash followed close behind them, his eyes on the tracker screen. In his hands it moved slowly from side to side, scanning from wall to wall. The instrument was silent, except when the science officer swung it a bit too far to left or right and it detected Lambert or Dallas. Then it beeped querulously until Ash touched a control and silenced it.

They paused by a down-spiraling companionway. Lambert leaned over, called out. 'Anything down there? We're as clean as your mother's reputation up here.'

Brett and Parker reset their grips on the net while Ripley paused ahead of them, took her gaze from the tracker, and shouted upward. 'Nothing here either.'

Above, Lambert and Dallas moved on, Ash following. Their attention was completely on the approaching turn in the corridor. They didn't like those bends. They provided places of concealment. Turning one and discovering only empty corridor stretching bleakly beyond was to Lambert like finding the Holy Grail.

The tracker was growing heavy in Ripley's hands when a tiny light suddenly winked red below the main screen. She saw the gauge needle quiver. She was certain it was in the needle, not her hands. Then the needle gave a definite twitch, moved just a hair away from the zero end of the indicator scale.

She made sure the tracker wasn't picking up either Parker or Brett before saying anything. 'Hold it. I've got something.' She moved a few paces ahead.

The needle jumped clear across the scale and the red light came on and stayed on. She stood watching it, but it showed no sign of movement save for slight changes in its chosen location. The red light remained strong.

Brett and Parker were staring down the corridor, inspecting walls, roof, and floor. Everyone remembered how the first alien, though dead, had dropped onto Ripley. No one was willing to take the chance that this version couldn't also climb. So they kept their eyes constantly on ceiling as well as deck.

'Where's it coming from?' Brett asked quietly.

Ripley was frowning at the tracker. The indicator needle had suddenly commenced bouncing all over the scale. Unless the creature was travelling through solid walls, the needle's behavior didn't square with the movements of anything living. She shook it firmly. It continued its bizarre behavior. And the red light remained on.

'I don't know. The machine's screwed up. Needle's spinning all over the scale.'

Brett kicked at the net, cursed. 'Goddamn. We can't afford any malfunctions. I'll wring Ash's. .'

'Hang on,' she urged him. She'd turned the device on its end. The needle stabilized immediately. 'It's working properly. It's just confused. Or rather, I was. The signal's coming from below us.' They looked down at their feet. Nothing erupted through the decking to attack them.

'That's C level,' Parker grumbled. 'Strictly maintenance. It's going to be a messy place to search.'

'Want to ignore it?'

He glared at her, but with no real anger this time. 'That's not funny.'

'No. No, it's not.' She spoke contritely. 'Lead on. You two know that level better than I.'

Parker and Brett, carefully holding the net ready between them, preceded her down the little-used companionway. C level was poorly illuminated even by the Nostromo's sparse standards. They paused at the base of the companionway to let their eyes adjust to the near darkness.

Ripley touched a wall accidentally, pulled her hand away in disgust. It was coated with a thick, viscous slime. Old lubricants, she mused. A liner would've been shut down if an inspector 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 handengraved 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 concentrated. 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. .