Alien

VI

In the infirmary, they placed Kane gently on the extended medical platform. A complex of instruments and controls, different from any others aboard the ship, decorated the wall behind the unconscious exec's head. The table protruded from the wall, extending out from an opening about a metre square.

Dallas touched controls, activated the autodoc. He walked to a drawer, removed a tiny tube of gleaming metal from inside. After checking to make sure it was fully charged, he returned to stand next to Kane's body. Ash stood nearby, ready to help, while Lambert, Parker, and Brett watched from the corridor behind a thick window.

A touch on the side of the tube produced a short, intense beam of light from its far end. Dallas adjusted the beam until it was as narrow and short as he could make it without reducing power. Carefully, he touched the end of the beam to the base of Kane's helmet. Metal began to separate.

He drew the cutter slowly across the side of the helmet, over the top, and down the other side. He reached the base of the helmet on the other side, drew the beam through the thick seal. The helmet separated neatly. He and Ash each took a side as Dallas shut off the beam, removed the helmet.

Except for a slow, steady pulsing, the creature showed no sign of life, and no reaction to the removal of the helmet and its subsequent exposure to their full view.

Dallas hesitated, reached out, and touched the creature, hurriedly drew his hand back. It continued to pulse, did not react to the touch of his fingers. He reached down again, let his palm rest on the creature's back. It was dry and cold. The slow heaving made him slightly ill and he almost pulled his hand away again. When the creature still showed no inclination to object, he got the best grip he could on the rubbery tissue and pulled as hard as he could.

Not surprisingly, this had no effect. The thing neither moved nor relinquished its hold.

'Let me try.' Ash stood near a rack of nonmedical tools. He selected a pair of thick pliers, moved to the table. Carefully getting a grip on the creature, he leaned back.

'Still nothing. Try harder,' Dallas suggested hopefully. Ash adjusted the pliers for a thicker hold, pulled, and leaned back at the same time.

Dallas raised a hand, noticing a trickle of blood running down Kane's cheek.

'Hold it. You're tearing the skin.'

Ash relaxed. 'Not me. The creature.'

Dallas looked sick. 'This isn't going to work. It's not going to come off without pulling his whole face away at the same time.'

'I agree. Let the machine work on him. Maybe it will have better luck.'

'It'd better.'

Ash touched several switches in sequence. The autodoc hummed and the opening at the far end of the platform lit up. Then the platform slid silently into the wall. A glass plate descended, sealing Kane tightly inside. Lights flashed on within the wall, Kane's body clearly visible behind the glass. On a nearby console, a pair of video monitors flickered to life. Ash moved to study their readouts. He was the closest thing to a human physician on the Nostromo, was aware of both the fact and the responsibility, and was intensely anxious to learn anything the machine could tell him about Kane's present condition. Not to mention that of the alien.

A new figure appeared in the corridor, approached the three onlookers. Lambert gave Ripley a long, hard look.

'You were going to leave us out there. You were going to leave Kane out there. Twenty-four hours you were going to make us sit around with that thing on his face and the night just beginning.' Her expression told her feelings far more clearly than did her words.

Parker, perhaps the last member of the crew one would expect to come to the warrant officer's defence, looked belligerently at the navigator.

'Maybe she should have. She was only following the rules.' He gestured toward the flashing interior of the autodoc and its motionless patient.

'Who the hell knows what it is or what it can do' Kane's a little impulsive, sure, but he's no dummy, and he couldn't avoid it. Maybe one of us'll be next.'

'Right,' agreed Brett.

Ripley's attention remained on Lambert. The navigator hadn't moved, stared back at her. 'Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe not. I hope I did. In any case, I was just trying to do my job. Let's leave it at that.'

Lambert hesitated, searching Ripley's face. Then she gave her a curt nod.

Ripley sighed, relaxing slightly. 'What happened out there?'

'We went into the derelict,' Lambert told her, watching the two men working with the autodoc inside. 'There were no signs of life. That transmission must have been going for centuries. We think we found the transmitter.'

'What about the derelict's crew?'

'No sign of them.'

'And Kane. .?'

'He volunteered to search the lower level alone.' Her expression twisted. 'He was looking for diamonds. Instead, he apparently found some kind of eggs. We told him not to touch them. Probably too late. Something happened down there, where we couldn't see what was going on. When we pulled him out, it was on his face. Somehow it melted right through his helmet faceplate, and you know how strong that stuff is.'

'I wonder where it's from originally?' Ripley spoke without looking away from the infirmary interior. 'As dead as this planetoid seems to be, I'd guess it came in with the alien ship.'

'Christ knows,' said Parker softly. 'I'd like to know where it's from too.'

'Why?' Ripley hardly glanced at him.

'So I'd know one more place to avoid.'

'Amen,' said Brett.

'What I want to know,' said Dallas questioningly, ' is how the hell is he breathing? Or is he?'

Ash studied readouts. 'Physically, he appears to be doing fine. Not only is he alive, despite having gone without normal air all the way back to the ship, but also all his vital signs are steady. Breathing all that nitrogen and methane should have killed him instantly, back on the derelict. According to the 'doc he's in a coma, but internally he's normal. A damn sight healthier than he has any right to be.

'As to how he's breathing, I can't say yet, but his blood's thoroughly oxygenated.'

'But how?' Dallas leaned over, tried to see up inside the autodoc. 'I checked that thing out pretty closely. His mouth and nose seem to be completely blocked.'

Ash punched a trio of buttons. 'We know what's going on outside. We'd better have a look inside him.'

A large screen cleared, focused. It displayed a colour X-ray image of Kane's head and upper torso. Finer resolution could show blood flowing steadily through his arteries and veins, lungs pulsing, heart beating. At the moment the onlookers were more interested in the internal schematic of the small rounded shape covering the exec's face.

'I'm no biologist,' Ash said softly, 'but that's the damndest maze of stuff I've ever seen inside another animal.' He gazed in amazement at the intricate network of forms and tubes. 'I 'don't have any idea what half of it's supposed to do.'

'Doesn't look any nicer from the inside than the out,' was Dallas's only comment.

'Look at the musculature in those fingers, that tail,' Ash insisted. 'It may look fragile, but it's anything but. No wonder we couldn't pull it off him. No wonder he couldn't pull it off. I'm assuming he had time to try before he blanked out.'

It was clear what the creature was doing to Kane, if not why. The exec's jaws had been forced apart. A long, flexible tube extended from the palm of the hand creature down his throat. It terminated at the end of his esophagus. The tube was not moving, merely sitting there.

More than anything else, this part of the internal view made Dallas feel sick.

'It's got something down his goddamn throat.' His hands clenched, unclenched with murderous regularity. 'What the hell kind of thing is that to do to a person? It's not a fair way to fight. Damn it, Ash, it's not. . clean!'

'We don't know that it's fighting with him, or even harming him.' Ash confessed to being confused by the whole situation. 'According to the medical monitors, he's fine. Merely unable to react to us. I know this sounds silly right now, but think a minute. Maybe the creature's a benign symbiote of some kind. Perhaps, in its own particular, confused way, it's done this to try to help him.'

Dallas laughed humorlessly. 'It's fond of him, all right. It won't let go.'

'That tube or whatever must be how it's supplying oxygen to him.' The science officer adjusted a control, switched to a tighter view and finer resolution. The screen showed Kane's lungs working steadily, at a normal pace, and seemingly without effort despite the obstruction in his throat. Ash switched back to the first view.

'What oxygen?' Dallas wanted to know. 'He came all the way back to the ship with a busted faceplate. The creature's not attached to his suit tanks so all his suit air must have bled out through the open regulator in the first couple of minutes.'

Ash looked thoughtful. 'I can imagine some possibilities. There's a little free oxygen in the atmosphere here. Not much, but some. And a lot more tied up with the nitrogen in various oxides. I suspect the creature possesses the ability to break down those oxides and extract the oxygen. Certainly it has the capability to pass it on to Kane, perhaps also for itself. A good symbiote would be able to determine quickly what requirements its partner would have. Certain plants have the same oxygen-extracting ability; others prefer different gases. It's not an impossibility.' He turned back to the screens.

'Perhaps it's our terrestrial prejudices at work and it's really a plant and not an animal. Or maybe it possesses characteristics and abilities common to both.'

'It doesn't make sense.'

Ash glanced at him. 'What doesn't?'

'It paralyzes him, puts him into a coma, then works like mad to keep him alive.' He glanced up at the screen. ' I thought it would be, well, feeding on him somehow. The posture and position it's in right now is typical of feeding. But as the instruments say, it's doing exactly the opposite. I can't figure it.

'In any case, we can't leave the damn thing on him. It might be doing all kinds of things to him, maybe good, maybe bad. We can be sure of one thing, though. None of them are natural to the human system.'

Ash looked doubtful. 'I don't know if that's really such a good idea.'

'Why not?' Dallas eyed his science officer questioningly.

'At the moment,' Ash explained, not offended by the slight challenge in Dallas's voice, 'the creature is keeping him alive. If we remove it we risk losing Kane.'

'We have to take that chance.'

'What do you propose to do? It won't pull off.'

'We'll have to try cutting it off. The sooner we remove it, the better it's likely to be for Kane.'

Ash appeared ready to argue further, then apparently changed his mind. 'I don't like it, but I see your point. You'll take the responsibility' This is a science decision and you're taking it out of my hands.'

'Yeah, I'll take the responsibility.'

He was already pulling on a pair of disposable surgical gloves. A quick check indicated that the autodoc wasn't attached in any way to the body, wasn't doing anything to it that could result in harm if it was temporarily removed. A touch of a button and Kane slid back out of the machine.

A cursory inspection was enough to show that the creature still hadn't moved or released its grasp on Kane's face.

'The cutter?' Ash indicated the laser device Dallas had used to remove Kane's helmet.

'No. I'm going to proceed as slowly as possible. See if you can find me a manual blade.'

Ash moved to an instrument case, searched through it briefly. He returned with a thinner version of the cutter and handed it carefully to Dallas.

He inspected the tiny device, shifted it in his hand until he had a firm, comfortable grip on the slim pencil. Then he switched it on. A miniature version of the beam the heavy-duty cutter had generated appeared shining coherently at the far end of the surgical knife.

Dallas moved to stand opposite Kane's head. Working with as much control as he could muster, he moved the light-blade toward the creature. He had to be prepared to pull away fast and carefully if it reacted. A wrong move and he could sever Kane's head from his shoulders as easily as a bad report could cut a man's pension.

The creature didn't move. Dallas touched the beam to grey skin, moved it a millimetre or two downward until he was sure he was actually cutting flesh. The beam travelled effortlessly down the creature's back.

Still the subject of this preliminary biopsy did not move, nor did it show any sign of pain from the continuing cut. At the top of the wound a yellowish fluid began to drip, flow down the smooth side.

'Starting to bleed,' Ash noted professionally.

The liquid flowed onto the bedding next to Kane's head. A small wisp of what Dallas first thought might be steam rose from the pallet. The dark gas was not familiar. The hissing noise that began to issue from the bedding was.

He stopped, removed the blade, and stared at the sizzling spot. The hissing grew louder, deeper. He looked downward.

The liquid had already eaten through the bedding and the metal medical platform. It was pooling and sizzling, a miniature hell, near his feet as it began to eat into the deck. Metal bubbled steadily. Gas produced as a by-product started to fill the infirmary. It seared Dallas's throat, reminding him of police-control gas, which was only mildly painful but impossible to stomach. He panicked at the thought of what this stuff might be doing to his own lungs.

Eyes filling with sharp tears, nose running, he tried frantically to close the wound by squeezing together the two sides of the cut with his hands. In the process, some of the still-flowing liquid leaked onto his gloves. They began to smoke.

As he staggered toward the corridor, he fought to pull them off before the tough material was eaten through and the liquid started on his skin. He threw them on the deck. The still-active droplets fell from the gloves and commenced dissolving additional pits in the metal.

Brett was looking mad and more than a little scared. 'Shit. It's going to eat through the decks and out the hull.' He turned, ran for the nearest companionway. Dallas yanked an emergency lamp from its holding socket and followed the engineering tech, the others crowding close behind.

The B deck corridor below was lined with instruments and conduits. Brett was already searching the ceiling below the infirmary. The liquid still had several intervening levels of alloy to penetrate.

Dallas turned the light on the roof, hunted, then held it steady. 'There.'

Above them, smoke began to appear. A smudge of yellow fluid appeared, metal sizzling around it. It oozed downward, formed a drop, and fell. It immediately began to bubble on the deck. Dallas and Brett watched helplessly as the tiny pool increased in size and ate its way through the bulkhead.

'What's below us?'

'C corridor,' announced Parker. ' Not instrumentation.' He and Ripley rushed for the next down companionway while the others remained staring at the widening hole in the deck.

'What can we put under it?' Ash was considering the problem with his usual detachment, though fully aware that in a few minutes the Nostromo might be hulled. That would mean sealing all compartments until the destruction could be repaired. And it could be worse. A large amount of critical hyperdrive circuitry ran through the main hull. If the liquid ruined it, it was quite possible the resulting damage might be beyond the meager capability of the ship's engineering staff to repair. Much of that circuitry was integral to the ship's construction and not designed to be worked on outside of a major zero-gee shipyard.

No one offered any suggestions as to what they might employ to catch the steady leak.

Below, Parker and Ripley moved cautiously along the narrower, darker confines of C corridor. Their attention remained fixed to the ceiling.

'Don't get under it,' Parker warned. 'If it can eat through deck alloy like that, I don't care to think what it could do to your pretty face.'

'Don't worry. I'll take good care of my pretty face. You watch out for your own.'

'Seems to be losing some activity.' Dallas peered at the hole in the floor, hardly daring to hope.

Brett and Ash stood opposite, crouching over the dark depression in the deck. Ash fished a stylus from one of his tunic pockets, probed the hole. The outer metal lining of the writing instrument bubbled weakly, looking like carbonated quicksilver. The bubbling stopped, petering out after barely marring the shiny finish. The science officer continued to poke at the hole. Instead of slipping through, the stylus met resistance.

'It's not passing more than three centimetres in. The liquid's stopped penetrating.'

Below, Parker glanced over at Ripley in the dim light. 'See anything?'

They continued to scan the ceiling. Beneath their feet lay a small service crawlway, and beyond that, the Nostromo's primary hull. After that, there was only the atmosphere of an unknown planet.

'Nothing,' she finally replied. 'Keep an eye out. I'll go see what's happening above.' She turned, sprinted down the corridor toward the stairs.

Her first sight was of the others all crouching over the hole in the deck. 'What's going on? It hasn't come through yet.'

'I think it's lost steam.' Ash knelt over the pitted metal. 'Either the continuous reactions with the alloys have diluted its strength, or else it simply loses its caustic potential after a certain period of time. In any case, it no longer seems to be active.'

Ripley moved to check the still-smoking hole in the deck for herself. 'Could the alloy be stronger inside this deck than above? Maybe the stuffs corroding the deck horizontally now, looking for another weak place where it can eat downward.'

Ash shook his head. 'I don't think so. From what little I remember about ship construction, the principal decks and hull of the Nostromo are all composed of the same material. No, I think it's reasonable to assume the fluid is no longer dangerous.'

He started to put his stylus back in his pocket, still holding it by the unmarred end. At the last moment, he thought better of the idea, continued to let it dangle loosely from one hand.

Ripley noticed the hesitation, smirked at him. 'If it's no longer dangerous, why not put it back in your shirt?'

'There's no need to act recklessly. Plenty of time after I've run tests and made certain the substance is truly no longer active. Just because it can't eat through deck alloy any more doesn't mean it couldn't give you a helluva burn.'

'What do you think the stuff is?' Dallas's gaze travelled from the tiny crater in the deck to the hole in the ceiling overhead. 'I've never seen anything that could cut through hull alloy like that. Not with that kind of speed.'

'I've never seen anything like it myself,' the science officer confessed. 'Certain highly refined varieties of molecular acid are tremendously powerful, but they generally will act only on certain specific materials. They have restricted general applications.

'On the other hand, this stuff appears to be a universal corrosive. We've already watched it demonstrate its ability to eat through several very different substances with equal facility. Or indifference, if you prefer. Hull alloy, surgical gloves, the medical pallet, infirmary bedding; it went through all of them with equal ease.'

'And that damned thing uses it for blood. One tough son-of-a-bitch little monster.' Brett spoke of the hand-shaped alien with respect, despite his feelings toward it.

'We don't know for a fact that it uses it for blood.' Ash's mind was functioning overtime under the pressure of the situation. 'It might be a component of a separate circulatory system, designed to lubricate the creature's insides. Or it might comprise part of a protective inner layer, a sort of liquid, defensive endothelium. It might be no more than the creature's counterpart of our own lymph fluid.?

'Wonderful defensive mechanism, though,' Dallas observed. 'You don't dare kill it.'

'Not on board a sealed ship, anyway.' Ripley made the interesting point quietly.

'That's so,' Ash conceded. ' We could take Kane outside, where the creature's fluids couldn't damage the Nostromo, and try cutting it off, except that we're fairly certain it's the only thing keeping him alive.'

'Once we cut it off him and got that tube out of his throat, we could feed him oxygen.' Ripley pressed the thought. 'A thermal wrap would keep him warm. For that matter, we could set up an air tent with a ground seal. Let the liquid drip onto the ground below it.'

'Not a bad idea,' admitted Ash, 'save for two things.' Ripley waited impatiently. 'First, as we've already discussed, removing the creature forcibly might result in a fatal interruption of life-sustaining action. The shock alone could kill Kane.

'Second, we have no guarantee that, upon being sufficiently injured, the creature might not react by Spraying that liquid all over itself and everything else in sight. That would be a defensive reaction fully in keeping with the fluid's destructive and protective qualities.' He paused long enough to let the image dominate everyone's mind.

'Even if whoever was doing the actual cutting could somehow escape serious injury from the flying liquid, I would not care to be the one responsible for what would be left of Kane's face. Or head.'

'All right.' Ripley sounded a bit resentful. 'So maybe it wasn't such a brilliant idea. What do you suggest instead?' She jerked a thumb toward the infirmary above. 'Trying to haul him all the way home with that thing sitting on his skull?'

'I see no danger in that.' Ash was unimpressed by her sarcasm. 'As long as his vital signs remain stable, I consider that a viable alternative. If they show signs of failing, naturally we'll have to try something else. But at this time I have to say that I think removing the creature forcibly presents greater potential for injury to Kane than it does improvement.'

A new face appeared at the top of the nearby companionway. 'Still no sign of the stuff. It's stopped bleeding?' Parker switched his gaze from the sullen Ripley to Dallas.

'Yeah. After it ate through two levels.' He was still a bit stunned by the potency of the alien fluid.

Ripley came to life, looked around. 'We're all down here. What about Kane? No one's watching him. . or the alien.'

There was a concerted rush for the stairs.

Dallas was the first one back at the infirmary. A quick glance inside showed him that nothing had changed. Kane still lay as they'd left him, immobile on the platform, the alien secured to his face.

Dallas was angry at himself. He'd acted like a damn kid. The liquid had demonstrated unexpected and dangerous properties, sure, but hardly enough to justify the total panic that had ensued. He should first have delegated one or two members of the crew to remain behind and keep an eye on the creature.

Fortunately, nothing had changed during their absence. The thing hadn't moved, nor, from the looks of it, had Kane. From now on, regardless of any problem that might arise elsewhere, there would be someone assigned to the infirmary at all times. The situation was serious enough without offering the alien the opportunity to do things unobserved,

'Any of the acid get on him?' Parker was at the portal, straining to see Kane.

Dallas walked over and stood next to the platform. He inspected the exec's head carefully. 'I don't think so. He looks okay. The fluid ran down the outside of the creature without contacting his skin.'

Brett crowded into the doorway. 'Is it still dripping that crap? We've got some ceramics down in engineering supply that'll hold just about anything. I don't know about this stuff, but we can give it a try if we have to. I can jury-rig a container out of scraps.'

'Don't bother,' Dallas told him. 'It's stopped bleeding.'

Ash was examining the section cut by the laser knife. 'Healed over. No sign of the wound. Remarkable regenerative abilities. You'd never know it had been touched.'

'There must be some way we can get it off.' Lambert shivered. 'It makes me sick to see it resting there like that, that tube or whatever it is down his throat.'

'You'd be a lot sicker if it was on you,' Ripley taunted her.

Lambert kept her distance. 'You're not being funny.'

'I'll say again, sir, I don't think it would be a good idea to try removing the creature.' Ash wasn't looking at him. 'It didn't work out too well the last time.'

Dallas glanced sharply at his science officer, then relaxed. As usual, Ash was only being objective. It wasn't in his nature to be sarcastic.

'So what do we do?' Lambert wanted to know.

'We do nothing,' Dallas finally said. 'We can't do anything. We tried and, as Ash noted, it nearly cost us a hulled ship. So. . we feed him back to the autodoc and hope it can come up with a better idea.'

He touched a control. There was a soft hum as Kane's platform slid back into the machine. Dallas threw additional switches, was again provided with internal views of the comatose exec, plus related schematics and diagrams. They offered no new information, and no solutions.

Ash was correlating several readouts. 'His bodily functions continue normal, but there's some fresh indication of tissue degeneracy and breakdown.'

'Then it is hurting him,' Lambert said.

'Not necessarily. He's gone without food and water for some time. These readings might reflect a natural reduction in weight. There's no indication he's being drastically weakened, either by the creature or circumstances.

'Nevertheless, we want to keep him in the best condition possible. 'I'd better get some intravenous feeding started, until I can determine for sure whether the alien's absorbing protein from his system.' He activated a block of controls. New sounds echoed through the infirmary as the autodoc began to efficiently assume the job of feeding the helpless Kane and processing the resultant waste products.

'What's that thing?' Ripley was pointing at a portion of the slowly shifting internal scan. 'That stain on his lungs?'

'I don't see any "stain".'

Dallas studied the view. 'I think I see what she means. Increase magnification on the respiratory system, Ash.'

The science officer complied. Now the small blot that had caught Ripley's attention stood out clearly, a dark irregular patch overlying Kane's chest cavity. It was completely opaque.

'We don't know that it's on his lungs.' Ash fiddled with controls. 'It could just as readily be a scanner malfunction, or a radiation-damaged section of the scanner lens. Happens all the time.'

'Try more power,' Dallas demanded. 'Let's see if we can't improve the resolution.'

Ash adjusted instrumentation, but despite his best efforts the dark blot remained just that: an unresolved splotch of blackness.

'I can't raise the intensity any further or he'll begin to suffer radiation damage.'

'I know.' Dallas stared at the enigmatic blot. 'If we lose scanning capability now we won't know what the hell's happening inside him.'

'I'll handle it, sir,' the science officer assured him. 'I think I can clean up the lens. It's just a question of some slight repolishing.?'

'But that'll leave us blind.'

Ash looked apologetic. 'I can't remove the blot without dismantling the scanner.'

'Skip it, then. As long as it doesn't grow to the point where it

obscures our vision.'

'As you wish, sir.' Ash turned back to his readouts.

Brett looked confused, sounded frustrated. 'What happens now, huh? We just sit and wait?'

'No,' Dallas responded, remembering that he had a ship to run in addition to caring for Kane.?We sit And wait, you two go back to work. .