Aliens

by Alan Dean Foster

  '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.

  II

  It was not the best of times, and it certainly was the worst of places. Driven by unearthly meteorological forces, the winds of Acheron hammered unceasingly at the planet's barren surface They were as old as the rocky globe itself. Without any oceans to compete with they would have scoured the landscape flat eons ago, had not the uneasy forces deep within the basaltic shell continually thrust up new mountains and plateaus. The winds of Acheron were at war with the planet that gave them life.

  Heretofore there'd been nothing to interfere with their relentless flow. Nothing to interrupt their sand-filled storms nothing to push against the gales instead of simply conceding mastery of the air to them—until humans had come to Acheron and claimed it for their own. Not as it was now, a landscape of tortured rock and dust dimly glimpsed through yellowish air, but as it would be once the atmosphere processors had done their work. First the atmosphere itself would be transformed, methane relinquishing its dominance to oxygen and nitrogen. Then the winds would be tamed, and the surface. The final result would be a benign climate whose offspring would take the form of snow and rain and growing things.

  That would be the present's legacy to future generations For now the inhabitants of Acheron ran the processors and struggled to make a dream come true, surviving on a ration of determination, humour, and oversize paychecks. They would not live long enough to see Acheron become a land of milk and honey. Only the Company would live long enough for that The Company was immortal as none of them could ever be.

  The sense of humour common to all pioneers living under difficult conditions was evident throughout the colony, most notably in a steel sign set in concrete pylons outside the last integrated structure:

  HADLEY'S HOPE - Pop. 159

  Welcome to Acheron

  Beneath which some local wag had, without official authorization, added in indelible spray paint, 'Have a Nice Day. The winds ignored the request. Airborne particles of sand and grit had corroded much of the steel plate. A new visitor to Acheron, courtesy of the atmosphere processors, had added its own comment with a brown flourish: the first rains had produced the first rust.

  Beyond the sign lay the colony itself, a cluster of bunkerlike metal and plasticrete structures joined together by conduits seemingly too fragile to withstand Acheron's winds. They were not as impressive to look upon as was the surrounding terrain with its wind-blasted rock formations and crumbling mountains, but they were almost as solid and a lot more homey. They kept the gales at bay, and the still-thin atmosphere, and protected those who worked within.

  High-wheeled tractors and other vehi
cles crawled down the open roadways between the buildings, emerging from or disappearing into underground garages like so many communal pillbugs. Neon lights flickered fitfully on commercial buildings, advertising the few pitiful, but earnest entertainments to be had at outrageous prices that were paid without comment. Where large paychecks are found, there are always small businesses operated by men and women with outsize dreams. The company had no interest in running such penny-ante operations itself, but it gladly sold concessions to those who desired to do so.

  Beyond the colony complex rose the first of the atmosphere processors. Fusion-powered, it belched a steady storm of cleansed air back into the gaseous envelope that surrounded the planet. Particulate matter and dangerous gases were removed either by burning or by chemical breakdown; oxygen and nitrogen were thrown back into the dim sky. In with the bad air, out with the good. It was not a complicated process but it was time-consuming and very expensive.