Alien (aliens universe)

by Alan Dean Foster

  Kane's forehead wrinkled as he tried to battle through the mists obscuring his memories. Real remembrances remained tantalizingly out of reach, realisation a painful, incomplete process.

  'Just some horrible dream about smothering. Where are we now? Still on the planet?'

  Ripley shook her head. 'No, I'm delighted to say. We're in hyperspace, on our way home.'

  'Getting ready to go back in the freezers,' Brett added feelingly. He was as anxious as the others to retire to the mindless protection of hypersleep. Anxious for the nightmare that had forced itself on them to be put in suspension along with their bodies.

  Though looking at the revitalized Kane made it hard to reconcile their memories with the image of the alien horror he'd brought aboard, the petrified creature was there for anyone to inspect, motionless in its stasis tube.

  'I'm all for that,' Kane said readily. 'Feel dizzy and tired enough to go into deep sleep without the freezers.' He looked around the infirmary wildly. 'Right now, though, I'm starving. I want some food before we go under.'

  'I'm pretty hungry myself.' Parker's stomach growled indelicately. 'It's tough enough coming out of hypersleep without your belly rumbling. Better if you go under with a full stomach. Makes it easier coming out.'

  'I won't argue that.' Dallas felt some sort of celebration was in order. In the absence of partying material, a final presleep feast would have to do. 'We could all use some food. One meal before bed. .'

  IX

  Coffee and tea had been joined on the mess table by individual servings of food. Everyone ate slowly, their enthusiasm coming from the fact they were a whole crew again rather than from the bland offerings of the autochef.

  Only Kane ate differently, wolfing down huge portions of the artificial meats and vegetables. He'd already finished two normal helpings and was starting in on a third with no sign of slowing down. Unmindful of nearby displays of human gluttony, Jones the cat ate delicately from a dish in the centre of the table.

  Kane looked up and waved a spoon at them, spoke with his mouth full. 'First thing I'm going to do when we get back is eat some decent food. I'm sick of artificials. I don't care what the Company manuals say, it still tastes of recycling. There's a twang to artificials that no amount of spicing or seasoning can eliminate.'

  'I've had worse than this,' Parker commented thoughtfully, 'but I've had better, too.'

  Lambert frowned at the engineer, a spoonful of steak-thatwasn't suspended halfway between plate and lips. 'For somebody who doesn't like the stuff, you're pounding it down like there's no tomorrow.'

  'I mean, I like it,' Parker explained, shoveling down another spoonful.

  'No kidding?' Kane didn't pause in his eating, but did throw Parker a look of suspicion, as though he thought the engineer might not be entirely right in the head.

  Parker tried not to sound defensive. 'So I like it. It sort of grows on you.'

  'It should,' Kane shot back. 'You know what this stuff is made out of.'

  'I know what it's made out of,' Parker replied. 'So what? It's food now. You're hardly the one to talk, the way you're gulping it down.'

  'I've got an excuse.' Kane stuffed another huge forkful in his mouth. 'I'm starving.' He glanced around the table. 'Anyone know if amnesia affects the appetite?'

  'Appetite, hell.' Dallas picked at the remnants of his single serving. 'You had nothing in you but liquids all the time you were in the autodoc. Sucrose, dextrose, and the like keep you alive but aren't exactly satisfying. No wonder you're starving.'

  'Yeah.' Kane swallowed another double mouthful. 'It's almost like I. . like I. .' He broke off, grimaced, then looked confused and a little frightened.

  Ripley leaned toward him. 'What is it. . what's wrong? Something in the food?'

  'No. . I don't think so. It tasted all right. I don't think. .' He stopped in midsentence again. His expression was strained and he was grunting steadily.

  'What's the matter then?' wondered a worried Lambert.

  'I don't know.' He made another twisted face, looking like a fighter who'd just taken a solid punch in the gut. 'I'm getting cramps. . getting worse.'

  Nervous faces watched the exec's twist in pain and confusion. Abruptly, he let out a loud, deep-toned groan and clutched at the edge of the table with both hands. His knuckles paled and the tendons, stood out in his arms. His whole body was trembling uncontrollably, as if he were freezing, though it was pleasantly warm in the mess room.

  'Breathe deeply, work at it,' Ash advised, when no one else offered any suggestions.

  Kane tried. The deep breath turned into a scream.

  'Oh, God, it hurts so bad. It hurts. It hurts.' He stood unsteadily, still shaking, hands digging into the table as if afraid to let go. 'Ohhhh!'

  'What is it?' Brett asked helplessly. 'What hurts? Something in. .?'

  The look of agony that took over Kane's face at that moment cut off Brett's questioning more effectively than any shout. The exec tried to rise from the table, failed, and fell back. He could no longer control his body. His eyes bugged and he let out a lingering, nerve-chilling shriek. It echoed around the mess, sparing none of the onlookers, refusing to fade.

  'His shirt. .' Ripley murmured, as thoroughly paralyzed as Kane, though from different cause. She was pointing at the slumping officer's chest.

  A red stain had appeared on Kane's tunic. It spread rapidly, became a broad, uneven bloody smear across his lower chest. There followed the sound of fabric tearing, ugly and intimate in the cramped room. His shirt split like the skin of a melon, peeled back on both sides as a small head the size of a man's fist punched outward. It writhed and twisted like a snake's. The tiny skull was mostly all teeth, sharp and red-stained. Its skin was a pale, sickly white, darkened now by a crimson slime. It displayed no external organs, not even eyes. A nauseating odour, fetid and rank, reached the nostrils of the crew.

  There were screams from others besides Kane now, shouts of panic and terror as the crew reflexively stumbled away from the table. They were preceded in instinctive retreat by the cat. Tail bottled, hair standing on end, it spat ferociously and cleared the table and the room in two muscle-straining leaps.

  Convulsively, the toothed skull lunged outward. All of a sudden it seemed to fairly spurt from Kane's torso. The head and neck were attached to a thick, compact body covered in the same white flesh. Clawed arms and legs propelled it outward with unexpected speed. It landed messily among the dishes and food on the table, trailing pieces of Kane's insides. Fluid and blood formed an unclean wake behind it. It reminded Dallas of a butchered turkey with teeth protruding from the stump of a neck.

  Before anyone could regain their senses and act, the alien had wriggled off the table with the speed of a lizard and vanished down the open corridor.

  Much heavy breathing but little movement filled the mess. Kane remained slumped in his chair, his head thrown back, mouth agape. Dallas was grateful for that. It meant that neither he nor anyone else had to look at Kane's open eyes.

  There was a huge, ragged hole in the executive officer's exploded chest. Even from a distance Dallas could see how internal organs had been pushed aside without being damaged, to provide a cavity large enough for the creature. Dishes lay scattered on table and floor. Much of the uneaten food was covered with a slick layer of blood.

  'No, no, no, no. .' Lambert was repeating, over and over, staring blankly at the table.

  'What was that?' Brett murmured, gazing fixedly at Kane's corpse. 'What the Christ was that?'

  Parker felt sick, did not even think of taunting Ripley when she turned away from them all to retch. 'It was growing in him the whole time and he didn't even know it.'

  'It used him for an incubator,' Ash theorized softly. 'Like certain wasps do with spiders on Earth. They paralyze the spider first, then lay their eggs on the body. When the larvae hatch, they begin to feed on. .'

  'For God's sake!' yelled Lambert, snapping out of her trance. 'Shut up, can't you?'

  Ash look
ed hurt. 'I was only. .' Then he caught a look from Dallas, nodded almost imperceptibly, and changed the subject. 'It's self-evident what happened.'

  'That dark stain on the medical monitors.' Dallas didn't feel too good himself. He wondered if he looked as shaky as his companions. 'It wasn't on the lens after all. It was inside him. Why didn't the scanners tell us that?'

  'There was no reason, no reason at all, to suspect anything like this,' Ash was quick to point out. 'When we were monitoring him internally the stain was too small to take seriously. And it looked like it was a lens defect. In fact, it could have been a matching blot on the lens.'

  'I don't follow you.'

  'It's possible this stage of the creature generates a natural field capable of intercepting and blocking the scanning radiation. Unlike the first form, the "hand" shape, which we were easily able to see into. Other creatures have been known to produce similar fields. It suggests biological requirements we can't begin to guess at, or else a deliberately produced defence evolved to meet requirements so advanced I prefer not to guess at it.'

  'What it boils down to,' observed Ripley, wiping her mouth with an unstained napkin, 'is that we've got another alien. Probably equally hostile and twice as dangerous.' She glared challengingly at Ash, but this time the science officer couldn't or wouldn't dispute her.

  'Yeah. And it's loose on the ship.' Dallas moved unwillingly over to stand by Kane's body. The others slowly joined him. The inspection was necessary, no matter how unpleasant they found it. Eloquent glances passed from Parker to Lambert, Lambert to Ash, and around the little circle. Outside, the universe, vast and threatening, pressed tight around the Nostromo, while the thick, ripe smell of death filled the corridors leading into the crowded mess. .

  Parker and Brett descended the companionway leading from the service deck above, joined the rest of a tired, discouraged group of hunters.

  'Any signs?' Dallas asked the assemblage. 'Any strange smells, blood,' he hesitated momentarily, finished, 'pieces of Kane?'

  'Nothing,' Lambert told him.

  'Nothing,' echoed Ash, with obvious disappointment.

  Parker brushed dust from his arms. 'Didn't see a goddamn thing. It knows how to hide.'

  'Didn't see anything,' Brett confirmed. 'Can't imagine where it's got to. Though there's parts of the ship it could reach that we can't. I wouldn't think anything could survive in some of those heated ducts, though.'

  'Don't forget the kind of environment its, uh. .,' Dallas looked at Ash, 'what would you call its first stage?'

  'Prelarval. Just giving it a name. I can't imagine its stages of development.'

  'Yeah. Well, let's not forget what it was living in through its first incarnation. We know it's plenty tough, and adaptable as hell. Wouldn't surprise me if we found it nesting on top of the reaction chambers.'

  'If that's where it's got to, we won't be able to get near it,' Parker pointed out.

  'Then let's hope it's travelled in a different direction. Somewhere we can go after it.'

  'We've got to find it.' Ripley's expression reflected a universal concern.

  'Why not just go into hypersleep?' Brett suggested. 'Pump the air back into the tanks and suffocate it?'

  'In the first place, we don't know how long this form can survive without air,' the warrant officer argued heatedly. 'It may not even need air. We only saw a mouth, not nostrils.'

  'Nothing can exist without some kind of atmosphere.' Brett still sounded positive, though less so.

  She cocked an eye at him. 'Want to bet your life on it?' He didn't respond. 'Besides, it only has to live without air for a little while. Maybe it can take up whatever gases it requires from its. . food. We'd be sitting. . no, we'd be sleeping ducks in the freezers. Remember how easily the first form melted through the faceplate of Kane's helmet? Who's to promise that this version can't do the same to our freezers?'

  She shook her head resignedly. 'No way I'm going under until we've found the thing and killed it.'

  'But we can't kill it.' Lambert kicked at the deck in frustration. 'As far as its internal composition, it's probably identical to the first version. If it is and we try to laser it, it's liable to spill or squirt acidic body fluids all over the place. It's a lot bigger than that "hand" was. If it leaks the same stuff, it might eat a hole larger than we could patch. You all know how critical hull integrity is during faster-than-light, not to mention how delicate the circuitry running through the primary hull is.'

  'Son-of-a-bitch,' muttered Brett. 'If we can't kill it, what do we do with it when we find it?'

  'Somehow,' Ripley said, 'we have to track it down, catch it, and eject it from the ship.' She looked to Dallas for confirmation of the proposal.

  He thought a moment. 'I don't see anything else but to try it.'

  'Much more talking and not searching and it won't matter what we decide to do,' Ash informed them. 'Our supplies are based on us spending a limited amount of time out of hypersleep. Strictly limited. I strongly suggest we get started immediately on some kind of organized search.'

  'Right,' agreed Ripley quickly. 'The first thing we have to do is find it.'

  'No,' said Dallas in a funny kind of voice. They all looked at him. 'First we've got something else to do.' He looked back down the corridor, to where the body of Kane remained just visible through the mess doorway.

  Miscellaneous supplies yielded just enough material to make a crude shroud, which Parker laser-sealed in the absence of thread. It was amateurishly rough and the informality of it as they walked away from the main lock bothered everyone. But they had the consolation of knowing they were doing as much as they could.

  They could have frozen the body for more substantial burial back on Earth, but the transparent canopy of the freezer compartment would leave Kane's gutted body exposed for them all to see immediately on reawakening. Better to dispose of it here, quick and clean, where it could be forgotten as fast as possible.

  Back on the bridge, they resumed their stations, depression making the air seem thick as Vaseline. Dallas checked readouts, said morosely, 'Inner hatch sealed.'

  Ripley nodded confirmation.

  'Lock still pressurized?' Another nod. He hesitated, looked from one somber face to the next. None returned his gaze. 'Anybody want to say anything?'

  Naturally, there was nothing to say. Kane was dead. He'd been alive, now he was not alive. None of the crew was particularly strong with words.

  Only Lambert spoke up. 'Get it over with.' Dallas thought that wasn't much of an epitaph, but he couldn't think of anything else except that they were wasting time. He made a sign to the watching Ripley.

  She touched a stud. The outer cover on the lock popped. Air remaining in the lock propelled Kane's body out into the soil of nothingness.

  It was a mercifully fast burial (Dallas couldn't bring himself to think 'disposal'). Kane had received a neater departure than he had a death. His last, tormented scream still rattled around in Dallas's brain, like a pebble in a shoe.

  They reassembled in the mess. It was easier to discuss things when everyone could see everyone else without straining. Also, it gave him an excuse to get everyone back there to help clean up the awful mess.

  'I've checked on supplies,' Ripley told them. 'With stimulants we can keep going for about a week. Maybe a day longer, but no more than that.'

  'Then what?' Brett picked at his chin.

  'We run out of food and oxygen. Food we can do without, oxygen we can't. That last factor makes the interesting question of whether or not we could live off unrecycled artificials a moot point.'

  Lambert made a face at the unappetizing prospect. 'Thanks, I think I'd rather die first.'

  'All right.' Dallas tried to sound confident. 'That's what we've got, then. A week of full activity. That's plenty of time. More than enough to find one small alien.'

  Brett looked at the floor. 'I still say we ought to try exhausting the air. That might kill it. Seems the safest way to me. Avoids the need to confron
t it directly. We don't know what individual kinds of nastiness this version can dish out.'

  'We went through that, remember?' Ripley reminded him.

  That assumed we'd spend the airless time in the freezers. Suppose we put our pressure suits on instead, then bleed the air? It can't sneak up on us if we're awake in our suits.'

  'What a swell idea.' Lambert's tone indicated that she considered it anything but.

  'What's wrong with it?'

  'We've got forty-eight hours of air in our pressure suits and it takes ten months to get home,' Ash explained. 'If the creature can go forty-nine without air, we're right back where we started, except we've lost two days' suit time.'

  'Other than that,' said Lambert, 'a swell idea. Come on, Parker, think of something new, you two.'

  The engineers had no intention of giving up on the idea so easily. 'Maybe we could run some kind of special lines from the suit tanks to the main ones. Brett and I are pretty good practical engineers. The valve connections would be tricky, but I'm sure we could do it. We got us back up, you know.'

  'All by your little old selves.' Ripley didn't try to moderate her sarcasm.

  'It's not practical.' Ash spoke sympathetically to the two men. 'You'll recall that we discussed the definite possibility this creature may be able to survive without air. The problem is more extensive than that.

  'We can't remain hooked to the main tanks by umbilicals and simultaneously hunt the creature down. Even if your idea works, we'll have used so much air in the suits that there'll be none left to meet us when we emerge from hypersleep. The freezers will open automatically. . to vacuum.'

  'How about leaving some kind of message, or broadcasting ahead so they can meet us and fill us with fresh air as soon as we dock?' Parker wondered.

  Ash looked doubtful. 'Too chancy. First, our broadcast won't arrive more than a minute or two before we do. For an emergency team to meet us the moment we slip out of hyperspace, link up from outside, fill us with air without damaging the integrity of the ship. . no, I don't think it could be done.