Alien

by Tim Lebbon

  She thought of Amanda again, and groaned out loud. No one seemed to hear, or if they did it simply echoed their own despair.

  They moved quickly, flashlight beams dancing around them. Hoop led the way, and Kasyanov and Baxter were behind him. They’d found a rhythm to their movements, and although Baxter’s left foot was all but useless, Kasyanov supported him well enough that he could hop with an almost graceful motion.

  They all grasped their weapons. Ripley’s charge thumper had three explosive charges left. She’d seen the effect one charge could have, and she knew she’d never be able to fire it if they were too enclosed. But it still gave her a sense of protection.

  Wherever they went through different areas of the massive ship, everything seemed to be made from the same strange material. Or grown, perhaps. Gone were the hints of technology. They passed many openings where thin, opaque sheets seemed to act as doors. Most were sealed, a few torn and tattered, but the small group kept to the wider passageways.

  There were more gallery areas, more pits with smooth-surfaced fluid at varying levels. Ripley wondered what they were for, these pits—fuel, food, environmental facilities of some kind? Were they storing something?

  At one point they climbed a curved stairway, the risers as deep as their waists, and they had to clamber up almost thirty stairs until the route leveled out again. Here the surfaces felt slick and sticky, and there so smooth that they took turns slipping while hauling themselves up. Ripley kept wiping her hands on her clothing, but though they felt slick and wet, they were actually dry.

  Another mystery to this place.

  Away from the nursery, the air smelled quite neutral, apart from an occasional breeze that worked through the hallways bringing a hint of decay. There was no telling what caused such a breeze this deep down beneath the ground. Huge doors opening elsewhere in the ship, Ripley thought. Something large and unseen moving around. Something big, sighing in its sleep. None of the possibilities were good.

  They encountered one large open space containing several tall sculptures made of the same material as the walls and floor. The shapes were ambiguous, fluid amalgamations of the biological and the mechanical. As elsewhere in the ship, time had softened their edges and made it more difficult to see any details. They were carvings being hidden again beneath time’s camouflage. There was an undeniable beauty to them, but lit by the flashlights they threw tall, twisting shadows that were also intensely troubling. An alien could have been hiding behind any one of them.

  “We can’t have lost them that easily,” Hoop said, but no one responded. Ripley had been thinking that, and she was sure the others had, too. But Hoop had become their leader. No one liked to hear the person in charge casting such doubts.

  They left the hall of sculpture, and soon after Hoop had cause to speak again.

  “More bodies,” he said from up ahead. But there was something wrong with his voice.

  “Oh, my...” Kasyanov said.

  Ripley moved forward. The passageway here was quite wide, and she and the others added their flashlight beams to Hoop’s.

  For a while none of them spoke. There was very little to say. Shock worked its way around them, and they all dealt with their own thoughts and fears.

  “I think we’ve found the ship builders,” Ripley said.

  14

  BUILDERS

  PROGRESS REPORT:

  To: Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Science Division

  (Ref: code 937)

  Date (unspecified)

  Transmission (pending)

  Warrant Officer Ripley is still on the planet surface with remainder of Marion’s crew. No updates for some time.

  Single alien specimen survives on Marion, whereabouts unknown.

  Plan proceeding satisfactorily. I am convinced that Ripley will fulfill her purpose. She is strong, for a human.

  I look forward to conversing with her again. I acknowledge that I am artificial, but it has been so long. I have been lonely.

  I hope this does not contradict programing.

  Infiltration of ship’s computer about to commence.

  * * *

  As they had moved through the ship, Hoop had been building a mental picture of the aliens who might have constructed it.

  His imagination had dipped once again into that childhood fascination with monsters. Such tall stairs implied long limbs. High arched openings could hint at the aliens’ shape. This ship, its nature, indicated something almost beyond understanding. It was either so technologically advanced that it was barely recognizable, or the technology was so different from any he knew that it made it futile to try to interpret it.

  What he saw before him dispelled any such guesswork. There was a sadness to their appearance that invited only pity, and he realized that their story was just as fear-filled, as tragic, as what was being played out now.

  “Poor things,” Ripley said, echoing his thoughts. “It’s not fair. None of this is fair.”

  There were three dead creatures lying in front of them—two that must have been adults, and one child. They cradled the child between them, protecting it with their bodies, and that’s how they had died and decayed. The mummified infant’s corpse was nestled between its parents’ torsos, an expression of love that had lasted for countless years. Their clothing had remained relatively whole, a metallic material that still lay draped across prominent bones and between their long, thick limbs.

  From what Hoop could make out, they each had four legs and two shorter, thinner arms. The leg bones were thick and stocky, the arms much more slender and delicate, hands protruding from narrow sleeves. The hands were skin and bones, digits long and fine, and he saw what might have been jewelry on one adult’s fingers. Their torsos were heavy, contained within suits that were reinforced with a network of metallic ribs and struts.

  It was difficult to see how much of the bodies remained whole. The skin or flesh that Hoop could see was mummified, grown dusty and pale over time.

  Their heads were the most uncertain part about them, because each had been smashed and holed by an impact. Hoop thought he knew what the impacts had been. Lying beside one adult’s outstretched hand was a weapon of some kind.

  “They killed themselves?” Sneddon asked.

  “One of them did,” Hoop said. “Killed their partner, child, then themselves. Rather that than be fodder for those things, I reckon.”

  The skulls still retained shreds of skin and waves of fine hair. It looked as if they’d had a small snout, two eyes, a wide mouth containing several rows of small teeth. Not the teeth of a carnivore. Not the bodies or the appearance of monsters.

  “They look like dog-people,” Lachance said. “Only... big.”

  “I wonder what happened here,” Ripley said. “How did the aliens get on their ship? What took the ship down?”

  “We might figure it out one day, but not today,” Hoop said. “We need to keep moving.”

  “Yeah,” Baxter said. “Keep moving.” He was starting to sound weak, and Hoop was concerned that he’d start slowing them down. There was nothing to do about it if he did—nothing but reduce speed for him to keep up.

  Kasyanov threw him a brief frown. She was also exhausted.

  “Let me,” Hoop said, but she shook her head.

  “No way,” she said. “I’ve got him.”

  Past the bodies, the passageway started to grow wider and taller. Their flashlights gradually lost effectiveness, and the further they went the darker their surroundings. Footsteps began to echo. Baxter coughed and the sound carried, reverberating back to them, rumbling on and on.

  “What is this?” Hoop asked as Sneddon walked beside him.

  “No idea,” she whispered. “Hoop, we’re getting lost in here. I think we should go back the way we came.”

  “And run straight into those things?”

  “If they’re still looking for us, I’m sure they’ve found another way past that gallery by now.”

  “What do you mean,
if they’re still looking?”

  Sneddon shrugged. “Just can’t help thinking they’ve stopped following because we’re doing exactly what they want.”

  “Or because I killed one of them as it was coming for us, maybe they’re holding back. More cautious, now that they know we can kill them.”

  “Maybe,” Sneddon said, but he knew better. She didn’t think that at all. And really, neither did he.

  “So, what?” he asked. “I’m doing my best here, Sneddon.”

  “We all are.” She shrugged again. “Dunno. Let’s just move on, stay sharp.”

  “Yeah,” Hoop said. “Sharp.” He swung the spray gun left and right, the attached flashlight doing little to pierce the darkness. There seemed to be nothing but wide space around them, and he wondered whether they were in a hold of some sort. If so, then this ship had taken off without cargo.

  Or without large cargo, at least.

  It was as the walls and ceilings started to close in again that they found what might have been the way out.

  Lachance saw it first, a break in the wall to their left with a hint of those large steps rising into shadow. They went to investigate, and with their combined flashlight power they could see the top of the staircase, maybe forty yards up. What lay beyond was unclear, but it was heading in the right direction.

  Hoop started climbing, and the others followed.

  After a few stairs they started taking turns pulling Baxter up behind them. It gave Kasyanov a rest, but then halfway up even she needed some help. She had exhausted herself, and Hoop only wished she had something in her medical bag that could help. Pain inhibitor, energy booster, anything.

  By the time they reached the head of the large staircase, they were all panting with exhaustion. They were met with what appeared to be a blank wall, and Hoop turned quickly, looking back down the way they’d come and expecting an ambush. We have the high ground, he thought, but then realized that wouldn’t matter. If there were enough of them, no fight would last very long.

  “Hey, look,” Sneddon said. She’d gone to one side of the wall and touched a series of projections. Without warning, a heavy curtain of some undefinable material was slowly sliding open. It jerked, grinding as it moved, and parted in the middle. Beyond lay more shadows.

  “Enter freely,” Lachance drawled. “You’re velcome to stay the night.”

  “I’ll go first,” Hoop said. But Ripley was already through.

  He heard her sharp intake of breath even as he stepped through the ancient doorway into what lay beyond.

  “It’s a birthing ground,” Ripley said, echoing Sneddon’s comment from earlier. But this was much, much different.

  There was no telling what the room had once been intended for, but it had been turned into a vision of hell. All along one side and the far end, at least fifteen of those long-limbed dog-aliens were cocooned against the walls, trapped there by clumps and swathes of alien extrusion. Most were adults, but there were two smaller shapes that might once have been children. Their exposed chests were burst, thick ribs broken and protruding, heads thrown back in endless agony. They might have been there a hundred years or ten thousand, bodies dried and mummified in the dry air. It was awful to behold.

  Even more awful were the things scattered around the middle of the room. Most stood upright, the height of an adult’s waist. More eggs, one for each victim fixed against the wall. They all appeared to have hatched.

  “Don’t get too close!” Sneddon said as Lachance edged forward.

  “They’re ancient,” Hoop said. “And they’re all open. Look.” He kicked at a petal-like flap on the egg nearest to him and it crumbled and fell away. “Fossilized.”

  “Fucking gross,” Baxter said. “This just gets worse and worse.”

  “We’re going that way?” Ripley asked. She was aiming her flashlight across the wide room toward a shadowy doorway in the far wall.

  “Yeah,” Hoop said. “This is all ancient history. Just don’t look.” He started across the room, aiming his flashlight and spray gun at the ground ahead so that he didn’t trip.

  He saw movement inside an open egg close by, and froze, readied to spray it with acid. But it had only been a shadow. Shit, he was on edge.

  As he started to move again, he felt almost like an intruder in this ancient tableau. Whatever had happened here was between those dog-aliens and the monsters that still infested the ship—a confrontation that had apparently occurred long before Earth had discovered technology, and while its people were still farming the land and looking to the stars with superstition and fear. Even then, these things existed.

  It made him feel very small and ineffectual. Even bearing the spray gun he was just a weak creature needing a weapon to protect him. Those aliens were their own weapons, perfect hunting and killing organisms. It was almost as if they were created as such, though he had no wish to imagine the creator.

  Hoop had never been a God-fearing man, and he regarded such outdated beliefs as ignorant and foolish. But perhaps there were gods other than those the human race had once known.

  Light flickered around the large room, casting movement into the eggs, into the eye sockets of the dog-aliens, and into corners where anything could be hiding. He sensed everyone’s nervousness, and he felt it himself. This was far more than any of them had expected.

  “We’ll get through this,” he said softly, but no one answered. None of them could know that for sure.

  At the end of the room, passing through the opening to whatever might lie beyond, they came close enough to touch one of the cocooned victims. Hoop passed his flashlight over the dead thing and paused on its face. The creatures they’d found back in the tunnels had been deformed by the weapon that had ended them, but apart from their chest wounds, these were whole.

  This one looked agonized and wretched. Hoop wondered at a universe that could still express such pain, after so long.

  He shone the light into the space beyond and then entered.

  * * *

  Another tunnel, another corridor, another hallway. The walls were curved, the floors uneven and damp. The dampness was a new thing, and he paused to sweep his foot across the surface. Fluid was bubbled on the floor, as if the surface was greasy, and his boot broke a thousand bubbles into a smear.

  “Slippery in here,” he said back over his shoulder. Ripley was there again, shining her flashlight past him.

  “The smell’s changed, too,” she said. She was right. Until now the ship’s interior had smelled of age—dust, staleness, air filtered in from the atmosphere-processed mine to lift scents from all around. But here it was different. He breathed in deeply and frowned, trying to place the smell. It was subtle but foul, slightly tangy, like someone who had gone unwashed for a long time. There was also something underlying it that he couldn’t place at all. Not a smell, but a sensation.

  “It’s warmer,” Ripley said. “Not the air, but... it smells warm.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Like something alive.”

  “The ship?” Ripley asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I think if it ever was alive, in any form, that was long ago. This is more recent. This is them.”

  He heard Ripley passing the word back—Go careful, stay sharp!—and then he moved forward once again. Always forward. Going back was still an option, but it also felt like it would be a mistake.

  Responsibility weighed down heavier than ever, gathering mass the more time that passed without incident. He’d never been a great decision maker—it often took him a long while just to choose dinner from the Marion’s limited menu—but he feared that if he decided they should turn back, the act of making that choice might doom them all.

  Better to forge forward.

  As they moved on, the dampness and the smells in the air increased. The inside of his nose started to sting. He was sweating, the humidity rising, nervousness drawing moisture from his body. His mouth was parched, his throat sore.

  “We shouldn’t
be going this way,” Baxter said. “This is bad. This is wrong.”

  “It’s all wrong!” Lachance said sharply. “But this is up towards the top of the ship again, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “What about the things they hatched?” Sneddon asked, and Hoop stopped dead. Something’s been bugging me and that’s...

  “Where are they?” he asked, turning around to look at the others.

  “That was a long time ago,” Ripley said.

  “We don’t know how long they live. The ones in the Samson waited for weeks, so maybe they can hibernate for years. Or longer.”

  “So there could be a lot more down here than just those hatched from the miners,” Sneddon said.

  “It doesn’t change anything,” Hoop said, and he waited for any response. But everyone was looking at him. “Changes nothing. We’re here now. We go forward, up, and out.”

  They continued on, but the corridor—twisting and turning, erring only slightly upward—ended at another wide, dark room.

  Oh, no, Hoop thought. This is it. This is what they found, or some place like it.

  It was another birthing ground. There was no telling how many places like this there were in the ship, nor how big the ship even was. As they paused at the edge of the hold, he found himself shaking with a deep, primeval fear. This was a danger beyond humanity, one that had existed since long before humans even knew what the stars were.

  “They’re unopened,” Sneddon said. She pushed past Hoop, slinging the spray gun over her shoulder and taking something from her pocket.

  “Don’t get too close!” Hoop said.

  “Mummified. Preserved.” The room was lit with a bright flash as Sneddon started taking pictures of the eggs. “They’re almost like fossils.”

  Hoop swept the spray gun and its attached flashlight from side to side, searching the extent of the chamber and looking for an exit. He saw one at the far side of the room, a tall, framed opening. He also saw something else. He aimed his flashlight up.

  “Look.”

  The string of lights was slung from wire supports fixed into the room’s high ceiling. Some of the lights were smashed, others seemed whole, but no longer worked. Or they had been intentionally deactivated.