Alien

XIII

'A robot. . a goddamn robot!' Parker muttered. The tracker hung limp and unbloodied in one hand.

Apparently there were audio sensors located in the torso as well as the skull, because the powerful form turned immediately at the sound of Parker's voice and began to advance on him. Raising the tracker, the engineer banged it down on Ash's shoulder, then again, and again. . to no effect. Groping arms swung close, embraced Parker in a hug that was anything but affectionate. The hands climbed upward, locked around his neck, and contracted with inhuman strength.

Ripley had recovered, now searched frantically until she spotted one of the old shock tubes they'd first planned to drive the alien with. She snatched it up, noting that it still carried a full charge.

Lambert was pulling at Ash's legs, trying to upend the rampaging machine. Naked wiring and contacts showed from the open neck. Ripley dug at them. Parker's eyes were glazing over, and faint wheezing sounds were coming from his constricted throat.

Finding a knot thick with circuitry, Ripley jabbed the prod inward and depressed the trigger. Ash's grip on the engineer appeared to weaken slightly. She withdrew the prod, aligned it differently, and stabbed downward a second time.

Blue sparks flew from the stump. She jabbed again, crying inside, holding the trigger down. There was a bright flash and the smell of burnt insulation.

Ash collapsed. Chest rising and falling as he struggled to regain his wind, Parker rolled over, coughed a couple of times, spat phlegm onto the deck.

He blinked a few times, glared at the motionless hulk of the machine. 'Damn you. Goddamn company machine.' He climbed to his feet, kicked at the metal. It did not react, lay supine and innocent on the deck.

Lambert looked uncertainly from Parker to Ripley. 'Will somebody please tell me what the hell's going on?'

'There's only one way to find out.' Ripley carefully set the shock tube aside, making certain it was within easy reach in case they needed it quickly, and approached the body.

'What's that?' Lambert asked.

Ripley looked over at Parker, who was massaging his throat. 'Wire the head back up. I think I burnt out the locomotor system in the torso, but the head and memory ought to be functional when powered up.

'He's been protecting the alien from the beginning. I tried to tell you.' She gestured at the corpse. It was hard to start thinking of fellow crew member Ash as just another piece of equipment. 'He let it on board, remember, against regulations.' Her expression twisted as she remembered.

'He was using Kane's life as an excuse, but he was never interested in Kane. He let that thing grow inside him, knew what was happening all the time. And he set off the emergency airlock Klaxon to save it.

'But why?' Lambert was struggling, still couldn't put it all together.

'I'm only guessing, but the only reason I can come up with for putting a robot crew member on board with the rest of us and not letting us know about it at the time is that someone wanted a slave observer to report developments back to them.' She glanced up at Lambert. 'Who assigns personnel to the ships, makes last-minute changes like trading science officers, and would be the only entity capable of secretly slipping a robot on board? For whatever purpose?'

Lambert no longer looked confused. 'The company.'

'Sure.' Ripley smiled humorlessly. 'The company's drone probes must have picked up the transmission from the derelict. The Nostromo happened to be the next Company vessel scheduled to pass through this spatial quadrant. They put Ash on board to monitor things for them and to make sure we followed something Mother calls Special Order 937.

'If the follow-up on the transmission turns out to be worthless, Ash can report that back to them without us ever knowing what was going on. If worthwhile, then the Company learns what it needs to know before it goes to the trouble of sending out an expensively equipped exploration team. Simple, matter of maximizing profit, minimizing loss. Their profit, our loss.'

'Great,' Parker snorted. 'You got it all figured out so far. Now tell me why we've got to put this sonofabitch back together.' He spat at Ash's body.

Ripley already had Ash's head set up on a counter, was running a power line from a wall outlet near the autochef back to the quiescent skull. 'We have to find out what else they might be holding back. Agreed?'

Parker nodded reluctantly. 'Agreed.' He started forward. 'Here, let me do that.'

The engineer fooled with the wires and the connections located in the back of Ash's head, beneath the artificial hair. When the science officer's eyelids began to flicker, Parker grunted in satisfaction and stepped clear. Ripley leaned close. 'Ash, can you hear me?' No response. She looked back to Parker.

'The hookup's clean. Power level is self-adjusting. Unless some critical circuits were interrupted when the head hit the deck, he ought to reply. Memory cells and verbal-visual components are packed pretty tight in these sophisticated models. I'd expect it to talk.'

She tried again. 'Can you hear me, Ash?'

A familiar voice, not distant at all, sounded in the mess. 'Yes, I can hear you.'

It was hard for her to address the disembodied head, for all that she knew it was only part of a machine, like the shock tube or the tracker. She'd served too many hours with Ash.

'What. . what was Special Order 937?'

'That's against regulations and my internal programming. You know I can't tell you.'

She stood back. 'Then there's no point in talking. Parker, pull the plug.'

The engineer reached for the wires and Ash reacted with sufficient speed to show that his cognitive circuits were indeed intact. 'In essence, my orders were as follows.' Parker's hand hovered threateningly over the power line.

'I was directed to reroute the Nostromo or make sure that this crew rerouted it from its assigned course so that it would pick up the signal, program Mother to bring you out of hypersleep, and program her memory to feed you the story about the emergency call. Company specialists already knew that the transmission was a warning and not a distress signal.'

Parker's hands clenched into fists.

'At the source of the signal,' Ash continued, 'we were to investigate a life form, almost certainly hostile according to what the Company experts distilled from the transmission, and bring it back for observation and Company evaluation of any potential commercial applications. Using discretion, of course.'

'Of course,' agreed Ripley, mimicking the machine's indifferent tone. 'That explains a lot about why we were chosen, beyond the expense of sending a valuable exploration team in first.' She looked coldly pleased at having traced the reasoning behind Ash's words.

'Importation to any inhabited world, let alone Earth, of a dangerous alien life form is strictly prohibited. By making it look like we simple tug jockeys had accidentally stumbled onto it, the Company had a way of seeing it arrive at Earth "unintentionally". While we maybe got ourselves thrown in jail, something would have to be done with the creature. Naturally, Company specialists would magnanimously be standing ready to take this dangerous arrival off the hands of the customs officers, with a few judicious bribes prepaid just to smooth the transition.

'And if we were lucky, the Company would bail us out and take proper care of us as soon as the authorities determined we were honestly as stupid as we appeared. Which we've been.'

'Why?' Lambert wanted to know. 'Why didn't you warn us? Why couldn't we have been told what we were getting ourselves into?'

'Because you might not have gone along,' Ash explained with cold logic. 'Company policy required your unknowing co-operation. What Ripley said about your honest ignorance fooling customs was quite correct.'

'You and the damn Company,' Parker growled. 'What about our lives, man?'

'Not man.' Ash made the correction without anger. 'As to your lives, I'm afraid the Company considered them expendable. It was the alien life form they were principally concerned with. It was hoped you could contain it and survive to collect your shares, but that was, I must admit, a secondary consideration. It wasn't personal on the Company's part. Just the luck of the draw.'

'How comforting,' sneered Ripley. She thought a moment, said, 'You've already told us that our purpose in being sent to that world was to "investigate a life form, almost certainly hostile". And that Company experts knew all along the transmission was a warning and not a distress signal.'

'Yes,' Ash replied. 'It was much too late, according to what the translators determined, for a distress signal to do the senders any good. The signal itself was frighteningly specific, very detailed.

'The derelict spacecraft we found had landed on the planet, apparently in the course of normal exploration. Like Kane, they encountered one or more of the alien spore pods. The transmission did not say whether the explorers had time to determine if the spores originated on that particular world or if they had migrated there from somewhere else.

'Before they all were overcome, they managed to set up the warning, to keep the inhabitants of other ships that might consider setting down on that world from suffering the same fate. Wherever they came from, they were a noble people. Hopefully mankind will encounter them again, under more pleasant circumstances.'

'They were a better people than some I can think of,' Ripley said tightly. 'The alien that's aboard: How do we kill it?'

'The explorers who crewed the derelict ship were larger and possibly more intelligent than humankind. I don't think that you can kill it. But I might be able to. As I'm not organic in composition, the alien does not regard me as a potential danger. Nor as a source of food. I am considerably stronger than any of you. I might be able to match the alien.

'However, I am not exactly at my best at the moment. If you would simply replace. .'

'Nice try, Ash,' Ripley interrupted him, shaking her head from side to side, 'but no way.'

'You idiots! You still don't realize what you're dealing with. The alien is a perfectly organized organism. Superbly structured, cunning, quintessentially violent. With your limited capabilities you have no chance against it.'

'My God.' Lambert stared dully at the head. 'You admire the damned thing.'

'How can you not admire the simple symmetry it presents? An interspecies parasite, capable of preying on any life form that breathes, regardless of the atmospheric composition involved. One capable of lying dormant for indefinite periods under the most inhospitable conditions. Its sole purpose to reproduce its own kind, a task it pursues with supreme efficiency. There is nothing in mankind's experience to compare with it.

'The parasites men are used to combating are mosquitoes and minute arthropods and their ilk. This creature is to them in savagery and efficiency as man is to the worm in intelligence. You cannot even begin to imagine how to deal with it.'

'I've heard enough of this shit.' Parker's hand dropped toward the power line. Ripley put up a restraining hand, stared at the head.

'You're supposed to be part of our complement, Ash. You're our science officer as well as a Company tool.'

'You gave me intelligence. With intellect comes the inevitability of choice. I am loyal only to discovering the truth. A scientific truth demands beauty, harmony, and, above all, simplicity. The problem of you versus the alien will produce a simple and elegant solution. Only one of you will survive.'

'I guess that puts us poor humans in our place, doesn't it? Tell me something, Ash. The Company expected the Nostromo to arrive at Earth station with only you and the alien alive all along, didn't it?'

'No. It was honestly hoped you would survive and contain the alien. The Company officials simply had no idea how dangerous and efficient the alien was.'

'What do you think's going to happen when the ship arrives, assuming we're all dead and the alien, instead of being properly restrained, has the run of the ship?'

'I cannot say. There is a distinct possibility the alien will successfully infect the boarding party and any others it comes in contact with before they realize the magnitude of the danger it presents and can take steps to combat it. By then it may be too late.

'Thousands of years of effort have not enabled man to eradicate other parasites. He has never before encountered one this advanced. Try to imagine several billion mosquitoes functioning in intelligent consort with one another. Would mankind have a chance?

'Of course, if I am present and functional when the Nostromo arrives, I can inform the boarding party of what they may expect and how to proceed safely against it. By destroying me, you risk loosing a terrible plague on mankind.'

There was silence in the mess, but not for long. Parker spoke first.

'Mankind, in the person of the Company, doesn't seem to give a damn about us. We'll take our chances against the alien. At least we know where it stands.' He glanced over at Ripley. 'No plague's going to bother me if I'm not around to worry about it. I say pull the plug.'

'I agree,' said Lambert.

Ripley moved around the table, started to disconnect the power cord.

'A last word,' Ash said quickly. 'A legacy, if you will.'

Ripley hesitated. 'Well?'

'Maybe it is truly intelligent. Maybe you should try to communicate with it.'

'Did you?'

'Please let my grave hold some secrets.'

Ripley pulled the wire from the socket. 'Good-bye, Ash.' She turned her attention from the silent head to her companions. 'When it comes to choosing between parasites, I'd rather take my chances with one that doesn't lie. Besides, if we can't beat that thing we can die happy knowing that it's likely to get its hooks into a few Company experts. .'

She was seated before the central computer console in the main annex when Parker and Lambert rejoined her. She spoke dejectedly. 'He was right about one thing, Ash was. We haven't got much of a chance.' She indicated a flashing readout. 'We've got less than twelve hours of oxygen left.'

'Then it's all over.' Parker looked at the deck. 'Reconnecting Ash would be a faster form of suicide. Oh, I'm sure he'd try to take care of the alien, all right. But he wouldn't leave us alive. That's one Company order he couldn't tell us. Because having told us everything else, he couldn't leave us around to tell the port authorities what the Company's been up to.' He grinned. 'Ash was a loyal Company machine.'

'I don't know about the rest of you,' said the unsmiling Lambert, 'but I think I prefer a painless, peaceful death to any of the alternatives on offer.'

'We're not there yet.'

Lambert held up a small card of capsules. Ripley recognized the suicide pills by their red colour and the miniature skull and crossbones imprinted on each. 'We're not. Huh.'

Ripley swung around in the chair. 'I'm saying we're not. You let Ash convince you. He said he was the only one with a chance to handle the alien, but he's the one lying in the mess disconnected, not us.

'We've got another choice. I think we should blow up the ship.'

'That's your alternative?' Lambert spoke softly. 'I'll stick with chemicals if you don't mind.'

'No, no. Remember what you proposed before, Lambert? We leave in the shuttle and then let the ship blow. Take the remaining air in portable tanks. The shuttle's got its own air supply. With the extra, there's a chance we might make it back to well-travelled space and get ourselves picked up. We may be breathing our own waste by that time, but it's a chance. And it'll take care of the alien.'

They went quiet, thinking. Parker looked up at Ripley, nodded. 'I like that better than chemicals. Besides, I'll enjoy watching some Company property go up in pieces.' He turned to leave. 'We'll get started bleeding the air into bottles.'

The engineer supervised the transfer of compressed air from the Nostromo's main tanks into smaller, portable canisters they could lug onto the shuttle.

'That's everything?' Ripley asked when Parker leaned tiredly back against the hatchjamb.

'Everything we can carry.' He gestured at the ranked canisters. 'It may not look like much, but that stuffs really under pressure. Enough extra air to give us some breathing space.' He grinned.

'Great. Let's get some bulk artificial food, set the engines, and get the hell out of here.' She stopped at a sudden thought. 'Jones. Where's Jones?'

'Who knows?' Parker clearly wasn't interested in the whereabouts of the ship's cat.

'Last I saw of him he was slinking around the mess, sniffing at Ash's body,' said Lambert.

'Go look. We don't want to leave him. We still have enough humanity in us for that.'

Lambert eyed her companion warily. 'No deal, I don't want to go anywhere on this ship by myself.'

'Always disliked that damn uppity cat,' Parker grumbled.

'Never mind,' Ripley told them. 'I'll go. You two load up the air and food.'

'Fair enough,' Lambert agreed. She and Parker loaded up oxygen canisters, headed for the shuttle. Ripley jogged toward the mess.

She didn't have to hunt long for the cat. After searching the mess and making certain she didn't touch Ash's decapitated form, she headed for the bridge. She found Jones immediately. He was lying on Dallas's console, preening himself and looking bored.

She smiled at him. 'Jones, you're in luck.'

Apparently the cat disagreed. When she reached for him he jumped lithely off the console and walked away, licking himself. She bent, followed him, coaxing with hands and voice.

'Come on, Jones. Don't play hard to get. Not now. The others won't wait for you.'

'How much do you think we'll need?' Lambert stopped stacking boxes, looked over at Parker, and wiped a hair from her face.

'All we can carry. We don't want to make two trips.'

'For sure.' She turned to rearrange her assembled stack. A voice sounded over the open communicator.

'Goddamn it, Jones, come here. Here kitty. . come to mama, kitty.' Ripley's tone was gentle and reassuring, but Lambert could detect the exasperation beneath.

Parker staggered out of Food Locker 2, hidden behind a double armload of food. Lambert continued to sort her boxes, occasionally trading one for another. The thought of eating raw, unpreprocessed artificial food was daunting at best. There was no autochef on the tiny shuttle. The raw bulk would keep them alive, but that was all. She wanted the tastiest selection possible.

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 the 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.

She let out a yell, then moved back to peer out the rear port. A writhing, smoking shape was tumbling slowly away from the ship. Bits and pieces of charred flesh fell from it. Then the incredibly tough organism finally succumbed to the laws of differential pressure and the alien exploded, swelling up and then bursting, sending particles of itself in all directions. Harmless now, the smouldering fragments dwindled from sight.

It couldn't be said she was cheerful. There were lines in her face and a raped place in her brain that mitigated any such possibility. But she was composed enough to relax her body and lean back in the pilot's seat.

A touch on several buttons repressurized the cabin. She opened the catbox. With that wonderful facility common to all cats, the tom had already forgotten the attack. It curled up in her lap as she sat down again, a tawny curlicue of contentment, and started to purr. She stroked it as she dictated into the ship's recorder.

'I should reach the frontier in another four months or so. With a little luck the beacon network will pick up my SOS and put out the word. I'll have a statement ready to recite to the media, and will secure a duplicate copy of it in this log, including a few comments of some interest to the authorities concerning certain policies of the Company.

'This is Ripley, ident number W5645022460H, warrantofficer, last survivor of the commercial starship Nostromo, signing off this entry.'

She thumbed the stop. It was quiet in the cabin, the first quiet of many days. She thought it barely possible she might rest now. She could only hope not to dream.

A hand caressed orange-yellow fur. She smiled. 'Come on, cat. . Let's go to sleep. . '