Aliens

by Alan Dean Foster

  The row of stasis cylinders stood just inside the doorway that led toward the rest of Hadley central. Two of them were dark their tops hinged open, the stasis fields quiescent. Both were empty.

  Hardly daring to breathe, she tried to see into every dark corner, under every counter and piece of freestanding equipment. Unable to move, she frantically tried to assess the situation as she nudged the girl sleeping behind her with her left hand.

  'Newt,' she whispered. Could the things sense sound waves? They had no visible ears, no obvious organs of hearing, but who could tell how primitive alien senses interpreted their environment? 'Newt, wake up.'

  'What?' The girl rolled over and rubbed sleepily at her eyes 'Ripley? Where are—'

  'Shssh!' She put a finger to her lips. 'Don't move. We're in trouble.'

  The girl's eyes widened. She responded with a single nod now as wide-awake and alert as her adult protector. Ripley didn't have to tell her a second time to be quiet. During her solitary nightmare sojourn deep within the conduits and service ducts that honeycombed the colony, the first thing Newt had learned was the survival value of silence. Ripley pointed to the sprung stasis tubes. Newt saw and nodded again. She didn't so much as whimper.

  They lay close to each other and listened in the darkness Listened for sounds of movement, watching for lethal lowslung shapes skittering across the polished floor. The compact space heater hummed efficiently nearby.

  Ripley took a deep breath, swallowed, and started to move Reaching up, she grabbed the springs that lined the underside of the cot and began trying to push it away from the wall. The squeal of metal as the legs scraped across the floor was jarringly loud in the stillness.

  When the gap between bed rail and wall was wide enough, she cautiously slid herself up, keeping her back pressed against the wall. With her right hand she reached across the mattress for the pulse-rifle. Her fingers groped among the sheets and blanket.

  The pulse-rifle was gone.

  Her eyes cleared the rim of the bed. Surely she'd left it lying there in the middle of the mattress! A faint hint of movement caught her attention, and her head snapped around to the left As it did so, something that was all legs and vileness jumped at her from its perch on the foot of the bed. She uttered a startled, mewling cry of pure terror and ducked back down Horny talons clutched at her hair as the loathsome shape struck the wall where her head had been a moment earlier. It slid, fighting for a grip while simultaneously searching for the vulnerable face that had shown itself a second ago.

  Rolling like mad and digging her bare fingers into the springs, Ripley slammed the cot backward, pinning the teratoid against the wall only centimetres above her face. Its legs twitched and writhed with maniacal ferocity while the muscular tail banged against springs and wall like a demented python. It emitted a shrill, piercing noise, a cross between a squeal and a hiss.

  Ripley heaved Newt across the floor and, in a frenzied scramble, rolled out after her. Once clear, she put both hands against the side of the cot and shoved harder against the imprisoned facehugger. Timing her move carefully, she flipped the cot and managed to trap it underneath one of the metal rails.

  Clutching Newt close to her, she backed away from the overturned bed. Her eyes were in constant motion, darting from shadow to cupboard, searching out every corner. The whole lab area was fraught with fatal promise. As they retreated, the facehugger, displaying terrifying strength for something so small, shoved the bulk of the bed off its body and scuttled away beneath a bank of cabinets. Its multiple legs were a blur of motion.

  Trying to keep to the centre of the room as much as possible Ripley continued backing toward the doorway. As soon as her back struck the door, she reached up to run a hand over the wall switch. The barrier at her back should have rolled aside. It didn't move. She hit the switch again then started pounding on it, regardless of the noise she was making. Nothing Deactivated, broken, it didn't matter. She tried the light switch Same thing. They were trapped in the darkness.

  Trying to keep her eyes on the floor in front of them, she used one fist to pound on the door. Dull thunks resounded from the acoustically dampened material. Naturally the entrance to the operating theatre would be soundproofed Wouldn't want unexpected screams to unsettle a queasy colonist who happened to be walking past.

  Keeping Newt with her, she edged away from the door and around the wall until they were standing behind the big observation window that fronted on the main corridor. Hardly daring to spare a glance away from the threatening floor, she turned and shouted.

  'Hey—hey!'

  She hammered desperately on the window. No one appeared on the other side of the triple-glazed transparency. A scrabbling noise from the floor made her whirl. Now Newt began to whimper, feeding off the adult's fear. Desperately Ripley stepped out in line with the wall-mounted video surveillance pickup and began waving her arms.

  'Hicks! Hicks!'

  There was no response, not from the pickup, nor from the empty room on the other side of the glass. The camera didn't pan to focus on her and no curious voice came from its speaker. In frustration Ripley picked up a steel chair and slammed it against the observation window. It bounced off without even scarring the tough material. She kept trying.

  Wasting her strength. The window wasn't going to break and there was no one in the outer lab to witness her frantic efforts. She put the chair aside and struggled to control her breathing as she surveyed the room.

  A nearby counter yielded a small, high-beam examination light. Switching it on, she played the narrow beam over the walls. The circle of light whipped over the stasis tubes, past tal assemblies of surgical and anaesthesiological equipment, over flush-mounted storage bins and cabinets and research instrumentation. She could feel Newt shaking next to her as she clung to the tall woman's leg.

  'Mommy—Mommmyyyy . . .'

  Perversely it helped to steady Ripley. The child was completely dependent on her, and her own obvious fear was only making the girl panic. She swept the beam across the ceiling, brought it back to something. An idea took hold.

  Removing her lighter from a jacket pocket, she hastily crumpled together a handful of paper gleaned from the same cabinet that had provided the beam. Moving as slowly as she dared, she boosted Newt up onto the surgical table that occupied the centre of the room, then clambered up after her.

  'Mommy—I mean, Ripley—I'm scared.'

  'I know, honey,' she replied absently. 'Me too.'

  Twisting the paper tightly, she touched the lighter's flame to the top of her improvised torch. It caught instantly, blazing toward the ceiling. She raised her hand and held the fire toward the temperature sensor at the bottom of one of the Med lab's fire-control sprinkler heads. Like much of the self-contained safety equipment that was standard issue for frontier worlds, the sprinkler had its own battery-powered backup power supply. It wasn't affected by whatever had killed the door and the lights.

  The flames rapidly consumed her handful of paper threatening to burn her ungloved skin. She gritted her teeth and held tight to the torch as it illuminated the room, bouncing off the mirror-bright surface of the globular surgica instrument cluster that hung suspended above the operating table.

  'Come on, come on' she muttered tightly.

  A red light winked to life on the side of the sprinkler head as the flames from her makeshift torch finally got hot enough to trigger internal sensors. As it was activated, the sensor automatically relayed its information to the other sprinklers set into the ceiling. Water gushed from several dozen outlets flooding cabinets and floor with an artificial downpour Simultaneously the Operations complex fire alarm came to life like a waking giant.

  In Operations central, Hicks jumped at the sound of the alarm. His gaze darted from the tactical console to the main computer screen. One small section of the floor plan was flashing brightly. He rose and bolted for the exit, shouting into his headset pickup as he ran.

  'Vasquez, Hudson, meet me in Medical! We got a fire!' Bo
th troopers abandoned their guard positions and moved to rendezvous with the corporal.

  Ripley's clothes clung to her as the sprinklers continued to drench the room and everything in it. The siren continued to hoot wildly. Between its steady howl and the splatter of water on metal and floor, it was impossible to hear anything else.

  She tried to see through the heavy spray, wiping water and hair away from her eyes. One elbow banged against the surgical multiglobe and its assortment of cables, highintensity lights, and tools, setting it swaying. She glanced at it and turned away to resume her inspection of the room. Something made her look a second time.

  The something leapt at her face.

  Falling water and the shrieking siren drowned out the sound of her scream as she stumbled backward, falling off the table and splashing to the floor, arms flailing, legs kicking wildly Newt screamed and scrambled clear as Ripley hurled the chittering facehugger away. It slammed into a wall, clung there like an obscene parody of a climbing tarantula, then leapt back at her as though propelled by a steel spring.

  Ripley scrambled desperately, pulling equipment down on herself, trying to put something solid between her and the abomination as she retreated. It went over, under, or around everything she heaved in its path, its multijointed legs a frenzy of relentless motion. Claws caught at her boots and it scuttled up her body. She pushed at it again, the feel of the slick leathery hide making her nauseous. The one thing she dared not do was throw up.

  It was unbelievably strong. When it had jumped at her from atop the multiglobe, she'd managed to fling it away before it could get a good grip. This time it refused to be dislodged, hung on tight as it ascended her torso. She tried to rip at it, to pull it away, but it avoided her hands as it climbed toward her head with single-minded purpose. Newt screamed abjectly, backing away until she was pressed up against a desk in one corner.

  With a last, desperate gesture Ripley slid both hands up her chest until they blocked her face, just as the facehugger arrived She pushed with all her remaining strength, trying to force it away from her. As she fought, she stumbled blindly, knocking over equipment, sending instruments flying. On the wet floor her feet threatened to slip out from under her. Water continued to pour from the ceiling, flooding the room and blinding her. It also hindered the facehugger's movements somewhat, but it made it impossible for her to get a strong grip on its body or legs.

  Newt continued to scream and stare. In consequence she failed to see the crablike legs that appeared above the rim of the desk she was leaning against. But her ability to sense motion had become almost as acute as that of the sentry-gun sensors Whirling, she jammed the desk against the wall, fear lending strength to her small form. Pinned against the wall, the creature writhed wildly, fighting to free itself with its legs and tail as she leaned against the desk and wailed.

  'Ripleyyy!'

  The desk bounced and shuddered with the teratoid's struggles. It slipped one leg free, then another. A third, as it began to squeeze itself out of the trap.

  'Ripleeyyy!'

  The facehugger's legs clawed at Ripley's head, trying to reach behind it to interlock even as she whipped her face from side to side. As it fought for an unbreakable grip it extruded the ovipositorlike tubule from its ventral opening. The organ pushed wetly at Ripley's arms, trying to force its way between.

  A shape appeared outside the observation window, dim behind mist-shrouded glass. A hand wiped a clear place Hicks's face pressed against the glass. His eyes grew wide as he saw what was happening inside. There was no thought of trying to repair the inoperative door mechanism. He stepped back and raised the muzzle of his pulse-rifle.

  The heavy shells shattered the triple-paned barrier in several places. The corporal then dove at the resulting spiderweb patterns and exploded into the room in a shower of glittering fragments, a human comet with a glass tail. He hit the floor rolling, his armour grinding through the shards and protecting him from their sharp edges, sliding across to where the facehugger finally got its powerful tail secured around Ripley's throat. It began to choke her and pull itself closer to her face.

  Hicks slipped his fingers around the thrashing arachnoidal limbs and pulled with superhuman force. Between the two of them they forced the monstrosity away from her face.

  Hudson followed Hicks into the room, stared a moment at Ripley and the corporal as they struggled with the facehugger Then he spotted Newt leaning against the desk. He shoved her aside, sending her spinning across the damp floor, and, in the same motion, raised his rifle to blast the second parasite to bits before it could crawl free of the desk's imprisoning bulk. Acid splattered, chewing into desk, wall, and floor as the crablike body was blown apart.

  Gorman leaned close to Ripley and got both hands around the end of the facehugger's tail. Like a herpetologist removing a boa constrictor from its favourite branch, he unwound it from her throat. She gasped, swallowing air and water and choking spasmodically. But she kept her grip on it as the three of them held it between them.

  Hicks blinked against the spray, nodded to his right. 'The corner! Together. Don't let it keep a grip on you.' He glanced over his shoulder toward the watching Hudson. 'Ready?'

  'Do it!' The comtech raised his weapon.

  The three of them threw the thing into the empty corner. It scrabbled upright in an instant and jumped back at them with demented energy. Hudson's shot caught it in midair, blowing it apart. The heavy downpour from the sprinklers helped to localize the resultant gush of acid. Smoke began to mix with water vapour as the yellow liquid ate into the floor.

  Gagging, Ripley fell to her knees. Red streaks like rope burns scarred her throat. As she knelt next to Hicks, and Hudson the sprinklers finally shut down. Water dripped from cabinets and equipment, racing away through the holes the acid had eaten in the floor. The fire siren died.

  Hicks was staring at the stasis cylinders. 'How did they get out of there? You can't break a stasis field from the inside.' His gaze rose to the security pickup mounted on the far wall. 'I was watching the monitors. Why didn't I see what was going on here?'

  'Burke.' It came out as a long wheeze. 'It was Burke.'

  It was very quiet in Operations. Everyone's thoughts were racing at breakneck speed, but no one spoke. None of the thoughts were pleasant. Finally Hudson gestured at the subject of all this solemn contemplation and spoke with his usua eloquence.

  'I say we grease him right now.'

  Burke tried hard not to stare at the menacing muzzle of the comtech's pulse-rifle. One twitch of Hudson's finger and the Company rep knew his head would explode like an over-ripe melon. He managed to maintain an icy calm betrayed only by the isolated beads of sweat that dotted his forehead. The last five minutes had seen him compose and discard half a dozen speeches as he decided it was best to say nothing. Hicks might listen to his arguments, but the wrong word, even the wrong movement, could set any of the others off. In this he was quite correct.

  The corporal was pacing back and forth in front of the Company rep's chair. Occasionally he would look down at him and shake his head in disbelief.

  'I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense.'

  Ripley crossed her arms as she regarded the man-shape in the chair. In her eyes it had ceased to be human. 'It makes plenty of sense. He wanted an alien, only he couldn't figure out a way to sneak it back through Gateway quarantine. I guaranteed him I'd inform the appropriate authorities if he tried it. That was my mistake.'

  'Why would he want to try something like that?' Hicks bemusement was plain on his face.

  'For weapons research. Bioweapons. People—and I use the word advisedly—like him do things like that. If it's new and unique, they see a profit in it to the exclusion of everything else.' She shrugged. 'At first I thought he might be different When I figured otherwise, I made the mistake of not thinking far enough ahead. I'm probably being too hard on myself. I couldn't think beyond what a sane human being might do.'

  'I don't get it,' said Vasquez. 'Where's
his angle if those things killed you? What's that get him?'

  'He had no intention of letting them kill us—right away. Not until we got his toys back to Earth for him. He had it timed just right. Bishop'll have the dropship down pretty soon. By then the facehuggers would've done their job, and Newt and I would be flat-out with nobody knowing the cause. The rest of you would have hauled us unconscious onto the dropship. See if we were impregnated, parasitized, whatever you want to call it, and then frozen in hypersleep before we woke up, the effects of hypersleep would slow down the embryonic alien's growth just like it does ours. It wouldn't mature during the flight home. Nobody would know what we were carrying, and as long as our vital signs stayed stable, no one would think anything was radically wrong. We'd unload at Gateway, and the first thing the authorities would do is ship us Earthside to a hospital.

  'That's where Burke and his Company cronies would step in They'd claim responsibility, or bribe somebody, and check us into one of their own facilities where they could study us in private. Me and Newt.'