Aliens

I

Two dreamers.

Not so very much difference between them despite the more obvious distinctions. One was of modest size, the other larger One was female, the other male. The mouth of the first contained a mixture of sharp and flat teeth, a clear indication that it was omnivorous, while the maxillary cutlery of the other was intended solely for slicing and penetrating. Both were the scions of a race of killers. This was a genetic tendency the first dreamer's kind had learned to moderate. The other dreamer remained wholly feral.

More differences were apparent in their dreams than in their appearance. The first dreamer slept uneasily, memories of unmentionable terrors recently experienced oozing up from the depths of her subconscious to disrupt the normally placid stasis of hypersleep. She would have tossed and turned dangerously if not for the capsule that contained and restrained her movements — that and the fact that in deep sleep, muscular activity is reduced to a minimum. So she tossed and turned mentally. She was not aware of this. During hypersleep one is aware of nothing.

Every so often, though, a dark and vile memory would rise to the fore, like sewage seeping up beneath a city street Temporarily it would overwhelm her rest. Then she would moan within the capsule. Her heartbeat would increase. The computer that watched over her like an electronic angel would note the accelerated activity and respond by lowering her body temperature another degree while increasing the flow of stabilizing drugs to her system. The moaning would stop. The dreamer would quiet and sink back into her cushions. It would take time for the nightmare to return.

Next to her the small killer would react to these isolated episodes by twitching as if in response to the larger sleeper's distress. Then it, too, would relax again, dreaming of small warm bodies and the flow of hot blood, of the comfort to be found in the company of its own kind, and the assurance that this would come again. Somehow it knew that both dreamers would awaken together or not at all.

The last possibility did not unsettle its rest. It was possessed of more patience than its companion in hypersleep, and a more realistic perception of its position in the cosmos. It was content to sleep and wait, knowing that if and when consciousness returned, it would be ready to stalk and kill again. Meanwhile it rested.

Time passes. Horror does not.

In the infinity that is space, suns are but grains of sand. A white dwarf is barely worthy of notice. A small spacecraft like the lifeboat of the vanished vessel Nostromo is almost too tiny to exist in such emptiness. It drifted through the great nothing like a freed electron broken loose from its atomic orbit.

Yet even a freed electron can attract attention, if others equipped with appropriate detection instruments happen to chance across it. So it was that the lifeboat's course took it close by a familiar star. Even so, it was a stroke of luck that it was not permanently overlooked. It passed very near another ship; in space, 'very near' being anything less than a light-year. It appeared on the fringe of a range spanner's screen.

Some who saw the blip argued for ignoring it. It was too small to be a ship, they insisted. It didn't belong where it was And ships talked back. This one was as quiet as the dead. More likely it was only an errant asteroid, a renegade chunk of nickel-iron off to see the universe. If it was a ship, at the very least it would have been blaring to anything within hearing range with an emergency beacon.

But the captain of the ranging vessel was a curious fellow. A minor deviation in their course would give them a chance to check out the silent wanderer, and a little clever bookkeeping would be sufficient to justify the detour's cost to the owners Orders were given, and computers worked to adjust trajectory The captain's judgment was confirmed when they drew alongside the stranger: it was a ship's lifeboat.

Still no sign of life, no response to polite inquiries. Even the running lights were out. But the ship was not completely dead Like a body in frigid weather, the craft had withdrawn power from its extremities to protect something vital deep within.

The captain selected three men to board the drifter. Gently as an eagle mating with a lost feather, the larger craft sidled close to the Narcissus. Metal kissed metal. Grapples were applied. The sounds of the locking procedure echoed through both vessels.

Wearing full pressure suits, the three boarders entered their airlock. They carried portable lights and other equipment. Air being too precious to abandon to vacuum, they waited patiently while the oxygen was inhaled by their ship. Then the outer-lock door slid aside.

Their first sight of the lifeboat was disappointing: no internal lights visible through the port in the door, no sign of life within. The door refused to respond when the externa controls were pressed. It had been jammed shut from inside After the men made sure there was no air in the lifeboat's cabin, a robot welder was put to work on the door. Twin torches flared brightly in the darkness, slicing into the door from two sides. The flames met at the bottom of the barrier Two men braced the third, who kicked the metal aside. The way was open.

The lifeboat's interior was as dark and still as a tomb. A section of portable grappling cable snaked along the floor. Its torn and frayed tip ended near the exterior door. Up close to the cockpit a faint light was visible. The men moved toward it.

The familiar dome of a hypersleep capsule glowed from within. The intruders exchanged a glance before approaching Two of them leaned over the thick glass cover of the transparent sarcophagus. Behind them, their companion was studying his instrumentation and muttered aloud.

'Internal pressure positive. Assuming nominal hull and systems integrity. Nothing appears busted; just shut down to conserve energy. Capsule pressure steady. There's power feeding through, though I bet the batteries have about had it Look how dim the internal readouts are. Ever see a hypersleep capsule like this one?'

'Late twenties.' The speaker leaned over the glass and murmured into his suit pickup. 'Good-lookin' dame.'

'Good-lookin', my eye.' His companion sounded disappointed. 'Life function diodes are all green. That means she's alive There goes our salvage profit, guys.'

The other inspector gestured in surprise. 'Hey, there's something in there with her. Nonhuman. Looks like it's alive too. Can't see too clearly. Part of it's under her hair. It's orangish.'

'Orange?' The leader of the trio pushed past both of them and rested the faceplate of his helmet against the transparent barrier. 'Got claws, whatever it is.'

'Hey.' One of the men nudged his companion. 'Maybe it's an alien life-form, huh? That'd be worth some bucks.'

Ripley chose that moment to move ever so slightly. A few strands of hair drifted down the pillow beneath her head, more fully revealing the creature that slept tight against her. The leader of the boarders straightened and shook his head disgustedly.

'No such luck. It's just a cat.'

Listening was a struggle. Sight was out of the question. Her throat was a seam of anthracite inside the lighter pumice of her skull; black, dry, and with a faintly resinous taste. Her tongue moved loosely over territory long forgotten. She tried to remember what speech was like. Her lips parted. Air came rushing up from her lungs, and those long-dormant bellows ached with the exertion. The result of this strenuous interplay between lips, tongue, palate, and lungs was a small triumph of one word. It drifted through the room.

'Thirsty.'

Something smooth and cool slid between her lips. The shock of dampness almost overwhelmed her. Memory nearly caused her to reject the water tube. In another time and place that kind of insertion was a prelude to a particularly unique and loathsome demise. Only water flowed from this tube, however It was accompanied by a calm voice intoning advice.

'Don't swallow. Sip slowly.'

She obeyed, though a part of her mind screamed at her to suck the restoring liquid as fast as possible. Oddly enough, she did not feel dehydrated, only terribly thirsty.

'Good,' she whispered huskily. 'Got anything more substantial?'

'It's too soon,' said the voice.

'The heck it is. How about some fruit juice?'

'Citric acid will tear you up.' The voice hesitated considering, then said, 'Try this.'

Once again the gleaming metal tube slipped smoothly into her mouth. She sucked at it pleasurably. Sugared iced tea cascaded down her throat, soothing both thirst and her first cravings for food. When she'd had enough, she said so, and the tube was withdrawn. A new sound assailed her ears: the trill of some exotic bird.

She could hear and taste; now it was time to see. Her eyes opened to a view of pristine rain forest. Trees lifted bushy green crowns heavenward. Bright iridescent winged creatures buzzed as they flitted from branch to branch. Birds trailed long tail feathers like jet contrails behind them as they dipped and soared in pursuit of the insects. A quetzal peered out at her from its home in the trunk of a climbing fig.

Orchids bloomed mightily, and beetles scurried among leaves and fallen branches like ambulatory jewels. An agouti appeared, saw her, and bolted back into the undergrowth From the stately hardwood off to the left, a howler monkey dangled, crooning softly to its infant.

The sensory overload was too much. She closed her eyes against the chattering profusion of life.

Later (another hour? another day?) a crack appeared in the middle of the big tree's buttressing roots. The split widened to obliterate the torso of a gamboling marmoset. A woman emerged from the gap and closed it behind her, sealing the temporary bloodless wound in tree and animal. She touched a hidden wall switch, and the rain forest went away.

It was very good for a solido, but now that it had been shut off, Ripley could see the complex medical equipment the rain forest imagery had camouflaged. To her immediate left was the medved that had responded so considerately to her request for first water and then cold tea. The machine hung motionless and ready from the wall, aware of everything that was happening inside her body, ready to adjust medication provide food and drink, or summon human help should the need arise.

The newcomer smiled at the patient and used a remote control attached to her breast pocket to raise the backrest of Ripley's bed. The patch on her shirt, which identified her as a senior medical technician, was bright with colour against the background of white uniform. Ripley eyed her warily, unable to tell if the woman's smile was genuine or routine. Her voice was pleasant and maternal without being cloying.

'Sedation's wearing off. I don't think you need any more Can you understand me?' Ripley nodded. The medtech considered her patient's appearance and reached a decision 'Let's try something new. Why don't I open the window?'

'I give up. Why don't you?'

The smile weakened at the corners, was promptly recharged Professional and practiced, then; not heartfelt. And why should it be? The medtech didn't know Ripley, and Ripley didn't know her. So what. The woman pointed her remote toward the wall across from the foot of the bed.

'Watch your eyes.'

Now there's a choice non sequitur for you, Ripley thought Nevertheless, she squinted against the implied glare.

A motor hummed softly, and the motorized wall plate slid into the ceiling. Harsh light filled the room. Though filtered and softened, it was still a shock to Ripley's tired system.

Outside the port lay a vast sweep of nothingness. Beyond the nothingness was everything. A few of Gateway Station's modular habitats formed a loop off to the left, the plastic cells strung together like children's blocks. A couple of communications antennae peeped into the view from below. Dominating the scene was the bright curve of the Earth. Africa was a brown, white-streaked smear swimming in an ocean blue, the Mediterranean a sapphire tiara crowning the Sahara.

Ripley had seen it all before, in school and then in person. She was not particularly thrilled by the view so much as she was just glad it was still there. Events of recent memory suggested it might not be, that nightmare was reality and this soft, inviting globe only mocking illusion. It was comforting, familiar, reassuring, like a worn-down teddy bear. The scene was completed by the bleak orb of the moon drifting in the background like a vagrant exclamation point: planetary system as security blanket.

'And how are we today?' She grew aware that the medtech was talking to her instead of at her.

'Terrible.' Someone or two had told her once upon a time that she had a lovely and unique voice. Eventually she should get it back. For the moment no part of her body was functioning at optimum efficiency. She wondered if it ever would again because she was very different from the person she'd been before. That Ripley had set out on a routine cargo run in a now vanished spacecraft. A different Ripley had returned, and lay in the hospital bed regarding her nurse.

'Just terrible?' You had to admire the medtech, she mused. A woman not easily discouraged. 'That's better than yesterday, at least. I'd call "terrible" a quantum jump up from atrocious.'

Ripley squeezed her eyelids shut, opened them slowly. The Earth was still there. Time, which heretofore she hadn't given a hoot about, suddenly acquired new importance.

'How long have I been on Gateway Station?'

'Just a couple of days.' Still smiling.

'Feels longer.'

The medtech turned her face away, and Ripley wondered whether she found the terse observation boring or disturbing 'Do you feel up to a visitor?'

'Do I have a choice?'

'Of course you have a choice. You're the patient. After the doctors you know best. You want to be left alone, you get left alone.'

Ripley shrugged, mildly surprised to discover that her shoulder muscles were up to the gesture. 'I've been alone long enough. Whattheheck. Who is it?'

The medtech walked to the door. 'There are two of them actually.' Ripley could see that she was smiling again.

A man entered, carrying something. Ripley didn't know him but she knew his fat, orange, bored-looking burden.

'Jones!' She sat up straight, not needing the bed support now. The man gratefully relinquished possession of the big tomcat. Ripley cuddled it to her. 'Come here, Jonesey, you ugly old moose, you sweet ball of fluff, you!'

The cat patiently endured this embarrassing display, so typical of humans, with all the dignity his kind was heir too. In so doing, Jones displayed the usual tolerance felines have for human beings. Any extraterrestrial observer privy to the byplay would not have doubted for an instant which of the two creatures on the bed was the superior intelligence.

The man who'd brought the good orange news with him pulled a chair close to the bed and patiently waited for Ripley to take notice of him. He was in his thirties, good-looking without being flashy, and dressed in a nondescript business suit. His smile was no more or less real than the medtech's even though it had been practiced longer. Ripley eventually acknowledged his presence with a nod but continued to reserve her conversation for the cat. It occurred to her visitor that if he was going to be taken for anything more than a delivery man, it was up to him to make the first move.

'Nice room,' he said without really meaning it. He looked like a country boy, but he didn't talk like one, Ripley thought as he edged the chair a little closer to her. 'I'm Burke. Carter Burke I work for the Company, but other than that, I'm an okay guy Glad to see you're feeling better.' The last at least sounded as though he meant it.

'Who says I'm feeling better?' She stroked Jones, who purred contentedly and continued to shed cat hair all over the sterile bed.

'Your doctors and machines. I'm told the weakness and disorientation should pass soon, though you don't look particularly disoriented to me. Side effects of the unusually long hypersleep, or something like that. Biology wasn't my favourite subject. I was better at figures. For example, yours seems to have come through in pretty good shape.' He nodded toward the bed covers.

'I hope I look better than I feel, because I feel like the inside of an Egyptian mummy. You said "unusually long hypersleep" How long was I out there?' She gestured toward the watching medtech. 'They won't tell me anything.'

Burke's tone was soothing, paternal. 'Well, maybe you shouldn't worry about that just yet.'

Ripley's hand shot from beneath the covers to grab his arm The speed of her reaction and the strength of her grip clearly surprised him. 'No. I'm conscious, and I don't need any more coddling. How long?'

He glanced over at the medtech. She shrugged and turned away to attend to the needs of some incomprehensible tangle of lights and tubes. When he looked back at the woman lying in the bed, he found he was unable to shift his eyes away from hers.

'All right. It's not my job to tell you, but my instincts say you're strong enough to handle it. Fifty-seven years.'

The number hit her like a hammer. Fifty-seven too many hammers. Hit her harder than waking up, harder than her first sight of the home world. She seemed to deflate, to lose strength and colour simultaneously as she sank back into the mattress Suddenly the artificial gravity of the station seemed thrice Earth-normal, pressing her down and back. The air-filled pad on which she rested was ballooning around her, threatening to stifle and smother. The medtech glanced at her warning lights but all of them stayed silent.

Fifty-seven years. In the more than half century she'd been dreaming in deepsleep, friends left behind had grown old and died, family had matured and faded, the world she'd left behind had metamorphosed into who knew what. Governments had risen and fallen; inventions had hit the market and been outmoded and discarded. No one had ever survived more than sixty-five years in hypersleep. Longer than that and the body begins to fail beyond the ability of the capsules to sustain life She'd barely survived; she'd pushed the limits of the physiologically possible, only to find that she'd outlived life.

'Fifty-seven!'

'You drifted right through the core systems,' Burke was telling her. 'Your beacon failed. It was blind luck that that deep salvage team caught you when they. ' he hesitated. She'd suddenly turned pale, her eyes widening. 'Are you all right?'

She coughed once, a second time harder. There was a pressure — her expression changed from one of concern to dawning horror. Burke tried to hand her a glass of water from the nightstand, only to have her slap it away. It struck the floor and shattered. Jones's fur was standing on end as the cat leapt to the floor, yowling and spitting. His claws made rapid scratching sounds on the smooth plastic as he scrambled away from the bed. Ripley grabbed at her chest, her back arching as the convulsions began. She looked as if she were strangling.

The medtech was shouting at the omnidirectional pickup 'Code Blue to Four Fifteen! Code Blue, Four One Five!'

She and Burke clutched Ripley's shoulders as the patient began bouncing against the mattress. They held on as a doctor and two more techs came pounding into the room.

It couldn't be happening. It couldn't!

'No — noooooo!'

The techs were trying to slap restraints on her arms and legs as she thrashed wildly. Covers went flying. One foot sent a medtech sprawling while the other smashed a hole in the soulless glass eye on a monitoring unit. From beneath a cabinet Jones glared out at his mistress and hissed.

'Hold her,' the doctor was yelling. 'Get me an airway, stat! And fifteen cc's of—!'

An explosion of blood suddenly stained the top sheet crimson, and the linens began to pyramid as something unseen rose beneath them. Stunned, the doctor and the techs backed off. The sheet continued to rise.

Ripley saw clearly as the sheet slid away. The medtech fainted. The doctor made gagging sounds as the eyeless toothed worm emerged from the patient's shattered rib cage. It turned slowly until its fanged mouth was only a foot from its host's face, and screeched. The sound drowned out everything human in the room, filling Ripley's ears, overloading her numbed cortex, echoing, reverberating through her entire being as she.

. sat up screaming, her body snapping into an upright position in the bed. She was alone in the darkened hospital room. Coloured light shone from the insect-like dots of glowing LEDs. Clutching pathetically at her chest she fought to regain the breath the nightmare had stolen.

Her body was intact: sternum, muscles, tendons, and ligaments all in place and functional. There was no demented horror ripping itself out of her torso, no obscene birth in progress. Her eyes moved jerkily in their sockets as she scanned the room. Nothing lying in ambush on the floor nothing hiding behind the cabinets waiting for her to let down her guard. Only silent machines monitoring her life and the comfortable bed maintaining it. The sweat was pouring off her even though the room was pleasantly cool. She held one fist protectively against her sternum, as if to reassure hersel constantly of its continued inviolability.

She jumped slightly as the video monitor suspended over the bed came to life. An older woman gazed anxiously down at her Night-duty medtech. Her face was full of honest, not merely professional, concern.

'Bad dreams again? Do you want something to help you sleep?' A robot arm whirred to life left of Ripley's arm. She regarded it with distaste.

'No. I've slept enough.'

'Okay. You know best. If you change your mind, just use your bed buzzer.' She switched off. The screen darkened.

Ripley slowly leaned back against the raised upper section of mattress and touched one of the numerous buttons set in the side of her nightstand. Once more the window screen that covered the far wall slid into the ceiling. She could see out again. There was the portion of Gateway, now brilliantly lit by nighttime lights and, beyond it, the night-shrouded globe of the Earth. Wisps of cloud masked distant pinpoints of light Cities — alive with happy people blissfully ignorant of the stark reality that was an indifferent cosmos.

Something landed on the bed next to her, but this time she didn't jump. It was a familiar, demanding shape, and she hugged it tightly to her, ignoring the casual meowrr of protest.

'It's okay, Jones. We made it, we're safe. I'm sorry I scared you. It'll be all right now. It's going to be all right.'

All right, yes, save that she was going to have to learn how to sleep all over again.

Sunlight streamed through the stand of poplars. A meadow was visible beyond the trees, green stalks splattered with the brightness of bluebells, daisies, and phlox. A robin pranced near the base of one tree, searching for insects. It did not see the sinewy predator stalking it, eyes intent, muscles taut. The bird turned its back, and the stalker sprang.

Jones slammed into the solido of the robin, neither acquiring prey nor disturbing the image, which continued its blithe quest for imaged insects. Shaking his head violently, the tomcat staggered away from the wall.

Ripley sat on a nearby bench regarding this cat-play. 'Dumb cat. Don't you know a solido by now when you see one? Although maybe she shouldn't be too hard on the cat. Solido design had improved during the last fifty-seven years Everything had been improved during the last fifty-seven years. Except for her and Jones.

Glass doors sealed the atrium off from the rest of Gateway Station. The expensive solido of a North American temperate forest was set off by potted plants and sickly grass underfoot The solido looked more real than the real plants, but at least the latter had an honest smell. She leaned slightly toward one pot. Dirt and moisture and growing things. Of cabbages and kings, she mused dourly. Horsepucky. She wanted off Gateway. Earth was temptingly near, and she longed to put blue sky between herself and the malign emptiness of space.

Two of the glass doors that sealed off the atrium parted to admit Carter Burke. For a moment she found herself regarding him as a man and not just a company cipher. Maybe that was a sign that she was returning to normal. Her appraisal of him was mitigated by the knowledge that when the Nostromo had departed on its ill-fated voyage, he was two decades short of being born. It shouldn't have made any difference. They were approximately the same physical age.

'Sorry.' Always the cheery smile. 'I've been running behind all morning. Finally managed to get away.'

Ripley never had been one for small talk. Now more than ever, life seemed too precious to waste on inconsequential banter. Why couldn't people just say what they had to say instead of dancing for five minutes around the subject'

'Have they located my daughter yet?'

Burke looked uncomfortable. 'Well, I was going to wait unti after the inquest.'

'I've waited fifty-seven years. I'm impatient. So humour me.'

He nodded, set down his carrying case, and popped the lid He fumbled a minute with the contents before producing several sheets of thin plastic.

'Is she.?'

Burke spoke as he read from one of the sheets. 'Amanda Ripley-McClaren. Married name, I guess. Age sixty-six at. time of death. That was two years ago. There's a whole history here. Nothing spectacular or notable. Details of a pleasant ordinary life. Like the kind most of us lead, I expect. I'm sorry. He passed over the sheets, studied Ripley's face as she scanned the printouts. 'Guess this is my morning for being sorry.'

Ripley studied the holographic image imprinted on one of the sheets. It showed a rotund, slightly pale woman in her midsixties. Could have been anyone's aunt. There was nothing distinctive about the face, nothing that leapt out and shouted with familiarity. It was impossible to reconcile the picture of this older woman with the memory of the little girl she'd left behind.

'Amy,' she whispered.

Burke still held a couple of sheets, read quietly as she continued to stare at the hologram. 'Cancer. Hmmm. They stil haven't licked all varieties of that one. Body was cremated Interred Westlake Repository, Little Chute, Wisconsin. No children.'

Ripley looked past him, toward the forest solido but not at it She was staring at the invisible landscape of the past.

'I promised her I'd be home for her birthday. Her eleventh birthday. I sure missed that one.' She glanced again at the picture. 'Well, she'd already learned to take my promises with a grain of salt. When it came to flight schedules, anyway.'

Burke nodded, trying to be sympathetic. That was difficult for him under ordinary circumstances, much more so this morning. At least he had the sense to keep his mouth shut instead of muttering the usual polite inanities.

'You always think you can make it up to somebody — later you know.' She took a deep breath. 'But now I never can. I never can.' The tears came then, long overdue. Fifty-seven years overdue. She sat there on the bench and sobbed softly to herself, alone now in a different kind of space.

Finally Burke patted her reassuringly on her shoulder uncomfortable at the display and trying hard not to show it 'The hearing convenes at oh-nine-thirty. You don't want to be late. It wouldn't make a good first impression.'

She nodded, rose. 'Jones. Jonesey, c'mere.' Meowing, the cat sauntered over and allowed her to pick him up. She wiped self-consciously at her eyes. 'I've got to change. Won't take long. She rubbed her nose against the cat's back, a smal outrage it suffered in silence.

'Want me to walk you back to your room?'

'Sure, why not?'

He turned and started for the proper corridor. The doors parted to permit them egress from the atrium. 'You know, that cat's something of a special privilege. They don't allow pets on Gateway.'

'Jones isn't a pet.' She scratched the torn behind the ears 'He's a survivor.'

As Ripley promised, she was ready in plenty of time. Burke elected to wait outside her private room, studying his own reports, until she emerged. The transformation was impressive. Gone was the pale, waxy skin; gone the bitterness of expression and the uncertain stride. Determination? he wondered as they headed for the central corridor. Or just clever makeup?

Neither of them said anything until they neared the sub-leve where the hearing room was located. 'What are you going to tell them?' he finally asked her.

'What's to tell that hasn't already been told? You read my deposition. It's complete and accurate. No embellishments. It didn't need any embellishments.'

'Look, I believe you, but there are going to be some heavyweights in there, and every one of them is going to try to pick holes in your story. You got feds, you got Interstellar Commerce Commission, you got Colonial Administration insurance company guys—'

'I get the picture.'

'Just tell them what happened. The important thing is to stay cool and unemotional.'

Sure, she thought. All of her friends and shipmates and relatives were dead, and she'd lost fifty-seven years of reality to an unrestoring sleep. Cool and unemotional. Sure.

Despite her determination, by midday she was anything but cool and collected. Repetition of the same questions, the same idiotic disputations of the facts as she'd reported them, the same exhaustive examination of minor points that left the major ones untouched — all combined to render her frustrated and angry.

As she spoke to the sombre inquisitors the large videoscreen behind her was printing out mug shots and dossiers. She was glad it was behind her, because the faces were those of the Nostromo's crew. There was Parker, grinning like a goon. And Brett, placid and bored as the camera did its duty. Kane was there, too, and Lambert. Ash the traitor, his soulless face enriched with programmed false piety. Dallas.

Dallas. Better the picture behind her, like the memories.

'Do you have earwax or what?' she finally snapped. 'We've been here three hours. How many different ways do you want me to tell the same story? You think it'll sound better in Swahili, get me a translator and we'll do it in Swahili. I'd try Japanese, but I'm out of practice. Also out of patience. How long does it take you to make up your collective mind?'

Van Leuwen steepled his fingers and frowned. His expression was as gray as his suit. It was approximated by the looks on the faces of his fellow board members. There were eight of them on the official board of inquiry, and not a friendly one in the lot. Executives. Administrators. Adjusters How could she convince them? They weren't human beings They were expressions of bureaucratic disapproval. Phantoms She was used to dealing with reality. The intricacies of politicorporate maneuvering were beyond her.

'This isn't as simple as you seem to believe,' he told her quietly. 'Look at it from our perspective. You freely admit to detonating the engines of, and thereby destroying, an M-Class interstellar freighter. A rather expensive piece of hardware.'

The insurance investigator was possibly the unhappiest member of the board. 'Forty-two million in adjusted dollars That's minus payload, of course. Engine detonation wouldn't leave anything salvageable, even if we could locate the remains after fifty-seven years.'

Van Leuwen nodded absently before continuing. 'It's not as if we think you're lying. The lifeboat shuttle's flight recorder corroborates some elements of your account. The least controversial ones. That the Nostromo set down on LV-426, an unsurveyed and previously unvisited planet, at the time and date specified. That repairs were made. That it resumed its course after a brief layover and was subsequently set for self-destruct and that this, in fact, occurred. That the order for engine overload was provided by you. For reasons unknown.'

'Look, I told you—'

Van Leuwen interrupted, having heard it before. 'It did not however, contain any entries concerning the hostile alien life-form you allegedly picked up during your short stay on the planet's surface.'

'We didn't "pick it up",' she shot back. 'Like I told you, it—'

She broke off, staring at the hollow faces gazing stonily back at her. She was wasting her breath. This wasn't a real board of inquiry. This was a formal wake, a post-interment party. The object here wasn't to ascertain the truth in hopes of vindication it was to smooth out the rough spots and make the landscape all nice and neat again. And there wasn't a thing she could do about it, she saw now. Her fate had been decided before she'd set foot in the room. The inquiry was a show, the questions a sham. To satisfy the record.

'Then somebody's gotten to it and doctored the recorder. A competent tech could do that in an hour. Who had access to it?'

The representative of the Extrasolar Colonization Administration was a woman on the ungenerous side of fifty Previously she'd looked bored. Now she just sat in her chair and shook her head slowly.

'Would you just listen to yourself for one minute? Do you really expect us to believe some of the things you've been telling us? Too much hypersleep can do all kinds of funny things to the mind.'

Ripley glared at her, furious at being so helpless. 'You want to hear some funny things?'

Van Leuwen stepped in verbally. 'The analytical team that went over your shuttle centimetre by centimetre found no physical evidence of the creature you describe or anything like it. No damage to the interior of the craft. No etching of metal surfaces that might have been caused by an unknown corrosive substance.'

Ripley had kept control all morning, answering the most inane queries with patience and understanding. The time for being reasonable was at an end, and so was her store of patience.

'That's because I blew it out the airlock!' She subsided a little as this declaration was greeted by the silence of the tomb. 'Like I said.'

The insurance man leaned forward and peered along the desk at the EGA representative. 'Are there any species like this "hostile organism" native to LV-426?'

'No.' The woman exuded confidence. 'It's a rock. No indigenous life bigger than a simple virus. Certainly nothing complex. Not even a flatworm. Never was, never will be.'

Ripley ground her teeth as she struggled to stay calm. 'I told you, it wasn't indigenous.' She tried to meet their eyes, but they were having none of it, so she concentrated on Van Leuwen and the ECA rep. 'There was a signal coming from the surface The Nostromo's scanner picked it up and woke us from hypersleep, as per standard regulations. When we traced it, we found an alien spacecraft like nothing you or anyone else has ever seen. That was on the recorder too.

'The ship was a derelict. Crashed, abandoned. we never did find out. We homed in on its beacon. We found the ship's pilot, also like nothing previously encountered. He was dead in his chair with a hole in his chest the size of a welder's tank.'

Maybe the story bothered the ECA rep. Or maybe she was just tired of hearing it for the umpteenth time. Whatever, she felt it was her place to respond.

'To be perfectly frank, we've surveyed over three hundred worlds, and no one's ever reported the existence of a creature which, using your words'—and she bent to read from her copy of Ripley's formal statement—"gestates in a living human host" and has "concentrated molecular acid for blood".'

Ripley glanced toward Burke, who sat silent and tight-lipped at the far end of the table. He was not a member of the board of inquiry, so he had kept silent throughout the questioning. Not that he could do anything to help her. Everything depended on how her official version of the Nostromo's demise was received Without the corroborating evidence from the shuttle's flight recorder the board had nothing to go on but her word, and it had been made clear from the start how little weight they'd decided to allot to that. She wondered anew who had doctored the recorder and why. Or maybe it simply had malfunctioned on its own. At this point it didn't much matter. She was tired of playing the game.

'Look, I can see where this is going.' She half smiled, an expression devoid of amusement. This was hardball time, and she was going to finish it out even though she had no chance of winning. 'The whole business with the android — why we followed the beacon in the first place — it all adds up, though I can't prove it.' She looked down the length of the table, and now she did grin. 'Somebody's covering their Ash, and it's been decided that I'm going to take the muck for it. Okay, fine. But there's one thing you can't change, one fact you can't doctor away.

'Those things exist. You can wipe me out, but you can't wipe that out. Back on that planet is an alien ship, and on that ship are thousands of eggs. Thousands. Do you understand? Do you have any idea what that implies? I suggest you go back there with an expedition and find it, using the flight recorder's data and find it fast. Find it and deal with it, preferably with an orbital nuke, before one of your survey teams comes back with a little surprise.'

'Thank you, Officer Ripley,' Van Leuwen began, 'that will be—'

'Because just one of those things,' she went on, stepping on him, 'managed to kill my entire crew within twelve hours of hatching.'

The administrator rose. Ripley wasn't the only one in the room who was out of patience. 'Thank you. That will be all.'

'That's not all!' She stood and glared at him. 'If those things get back here, that will be all. Then you can just kiss it goodbye Jack. Just kiss it goodbye!'

The ECA representative turned calmly to the administrator 'I believe we have enough information on which to base a determination. I think it's time to close this inquest and retire for deliberation.'

Van Leuwen glanced at his fellow board members. He might as well have been looking at mirror images of himself, for al the superficial differences of face and build. They were of one mind.

That was something that could not be openly expressed however. It would not look good in the record. Above all everything had to look good in the record.

'Gentlemen, ladies?' Acquiescent nods. He looked back down at the subject under discussion. Dissection was more like it, she thought sourly. 'Officer Ripley, if you'd excuse us, please?'

'Not likely.' Trembling with frustration, she turned to leave the room. As she did so, her eyes fastened on the picture of Dallas that was staring blankly back down from the videoscreen. Captain Dallas. Friend Dallas. Companion Dallas.

Dead Dallas. She strode out angrily.

There was nothing more to do or say. She'd been found guilty, and now they were going to go through the motions of giving her an honest trial. Formalities. The Company and its friends loved their formalities. Nothing wrong with death and tragedy, as long as you could safely suck all the emotion out of it. Then it would be safe to put in the annual report. So the inquest had to be held, emotion translated into sanitized figures in neat columns. A verdict had to be rendered. But not too loudly, lest the neighbours overhear.

None of which really bothered Ripley. The imminent demise of her career didn't bother her. What she couldn't forgive was the blind stupidity being flaunted by the all-powerful in the room she'd left. So they didn't believe her. Given their type o mind-set and the absence of solid evidence, she could understand that. But to ignore her story totally, to refuse to check it out, that she could never forgive. Because there was a lot more at stake than one lousy life, one unspectacular career as a flight transport officer. And they didn't care. It didn't show as a profit or a loss, so they didn't care.

She booted the wall next to Burke as he bought coffee and doughnuts from the vending machine in the hall. The machine thanked him politely as it accepted his credcard. Like practically everything else on Gateway Station, the machine had no odor. Neither did the black liquid it poured. As for the alleged doughnuts, they might once have flown over a wheat field.

'You had them eating out of your hand, kiddo.' Burke was trying to cheer her up. She was grateful for the attempt, even as it failed. But there was no reason to take her anger out on him. Multiple sugars and artificial creamer gave the ersatz coffee some taste.

'They had their minds made up before I even went in there I've wasted an entire morning. They should've had scripts printed up for everyone to read from, including me. Would've been easier just to recite what they wanted to hear instead of trying to remember the truth.' She glanced at him. 'You know what they think?'

'I can imagine.' He bit into a doughnut.

'They think I'm a headcase.'

'You are a headcase,' he told her cheerfully. 'Have a doughnut. Chocolate or buttermilk?'

She eyed the precooked torus he proffered distastefully 'You can taste the difference?'

'Not really, but the colours are nice.'

She didn't grin, but she didn't sneer at him, either.

The "deliberations" didn't take long. No reason why they should, she thought as she reentered the room and resumed her seat. Burke took his place on the far side of the chamber He started to wink at her, thought better of it, and aborted the gesture. She recognized the eye twitch for what it almost became and was glad he hadn't followed through.

Van Leuwen cleared his throat. He didn't find it necessary to look to his fellow board members for support.

'It is the finding of this board of inquiry that Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley, NOC-14672, has acted with questionable judgment and is therefore declared unfit to hold an ICC license as a commercial flight officer.'

If any of them expected some sort of reaction from the condemned, they were disappointed. She sat there and stared silently back at them, tight-lipped and defiant. More likely they were relieved. Emotional outbursts would have to be recorded Van Leuwen continued, unaware that Ripley had reattired him in black cape and hood.

'Said license is hereby suspended indefinitely, pending review at a future date to be specified later.' He cleared his throat, then his conscience. 'In view of the unusual length of time spent by the defendant in hypersleep and the concomitant indeterminable effects on the human nervous system, no criminal charges will be filed at this time.'

At this time, Ripley thought humourlessly. That was corporatese for 'Keep your mouth shut and stay away from the media and you'll still get to collect your pension.'

'You are released on your own recognizance for a six-month period of psychometric probation, to include monthly review by an approved ICC psychiatric tech and treatment and or medication as may be prescribed.'

It was short, neat, and not at all sweet, and she took it all without a word, until Van Leuwen had finished and departed Burke saw the look in her eye and tried to restrain her.

'Lay off,' he whispered to her. She threw off his hand and continued up the corridor. 'It's over.'

'Right,' she called back to him as she lengthened her stride 'So what else can they do to me?'

She caught up with Van Leuwen as he stood waiting for the elevator. 'Why won't you check out LV-426?'

He glanced back at her. 'Ms. Ripley, it wouldn't matter. The decision of the board is final.'

'The heck with the board's decision. We're not talking about me now. We're talking about the next poor souls to find that ship. Just tell me why you won't check it out.'

'Because I don't have to,' he told her brusquely. 'The people who live there checked it out years ago, and they've never reported any "hostile organism" or alien ship. Do you think I'm a complete fool? Did you think the board wouldn't seek some sort of verification, if only to protect ourselves from future inquiries? And by the way, they call it Acheron now.'

Fifty-seven years. Long time. People could accomplish a lot in fifty-seven years. Build, move around, establish new colonies. Ripley struggled with the import of the administrator's words.

'What are you talking about? What people?'

Van Leuwen joined the other passengers in the elevator car Ripley put an arm between the doors to keep them from closing. The doors' sensors obediently waited for her to remove it.

'Terraformers,' Van Leuwen explained. 'Planetary engineers. Much has happened in that field while you slept, Ripley We've made significant advances, great strides. The cosmos is not a hospitable place, but we're changing that. It's what we call a shake-'n'-bake colony. They set up atmosphere processors to make the air breathable. We can do that now, efficiently and economically, as long as we have some kind of resident atmosphere to work with. Hydrogen, argon — methane is best Acheron is swimming in methane, with a portion of oxygen and sufficient nitrogen for beginning bonding. It's nothing now. The air's barely breathable. But given time, patience, and hard work, there'll be another habitable world out there ready to comfort and succor humanity. At a price, of course. Ours is not a philanthropic institution, though we like to think of what we do as furthering mankind's progress.

'It's a big job. Decades worth. They've already been there more than twenty years. Peacefully.'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'Because it was felt that the information might have biased your testimony. Personally I don't think it would have made a bit of difference. You obviously believe what you believe. But some of my colleagues were of a differing opinion. I doubt it would have changed our decision.'

The doors tried to close, and she slammed them apart. The other passengers began to exhibit signs of annoyance.

'How many colonists?'

Van Leuwen's brow furrowed. 'At last count I'd guess sixty maybe seventy, families. We've found that people work better when they're not separated from their loved ones. It's more expensive, but it pays for itself in the long run, and it gives the community the feeling of a real colony instead of merely an engineering outpost. It's tough on some of the women and the kids, but when their tour of duty ends, they can retire comfortably. Everyone benefits from the arrangement.'

'Sweet Jesus,' Ripley whispered.

One of the passengers leaned forward, spoke irritably. 'Do you mind?'

Absently she dropped her arm to her side. Freed of their responsibility, the doors closed quietly. Van Leuwen had already forgotten her, and she him. She was looking instead into her imagination.

Not liking what she saw there.