'Jesus,' Parker whispered.
'It grew.' Ripley looked blankly at her shock tube, considered it in relation to the hulking mass far above. 'It grew fast. All the time we were hunting for something Jones' size, it had turned into that.' She suddenly grew aware of their restricted space, of the darkness and massive crates pressing tight around them, of the numerous passages between crates and thick metal supports.
'What are we doing standing here? It may come back.' She hefted the toy-like tube, aware of how little effect it would be likely to have on a creature that size.
They hurried from the bay. Try as they would, the memory of that last fading scream stayed with them, glued to their minds. Parker had known Brett a long time, but that final shriek induced him to run as fast as Ripley. .
XI
There was less confidence in the faces of those assembled in the mess room than last time. No one tried to hide it, least of all Parker and Ripley. Having seen what they were now confronted by, they retained very little in the way of confidence at all.
Dallas was examining a recently printed schematic of the Nostromo. Parker stood by the door, occasionally glancing nervously down the corridor.
'Whatever it was,' the engineer said into the silence, 'it was big. Swung down on him like a giant fucking bat.'
Dallas looked up from the layout. 'You're absolutely sure it dragged Brett into a vent.'
'It disappeared into one of the cooling ducts.' Ripley was scratching the back of one hand with the other. 'I'm sure I saw it go in. Anyway, there was nowhere else for it to go.'
'No question about it,' Parker added. 'It's using the air shafts to move around. That's why we never ran it down with the tracker.'
'The air shafts.' Dallas looked convinced. 'Makes sense. Jones does the same thing.'
Lambert played with her coffee, stirring the dark liquid with an idle finger. 'Brett could still be alive.'
'Not a chance.' Ripley wasn't being fatalistic, only logical. 'It snapped him up like a rag doll.'
'What does it want him for, anyway?' Lambert wanted to know. 'Why take him instead of killing him on the spot?'
'Perhaps it requires an incubator, the way the first form used Kane,' Ash suggested.
'Or food,' said Ripley tightly. She shivered.
Lambert put down her coffee. 'Either way, it's two down and five to go, from the alien's standpoint.'
Parker had been turning his shock tube over and over in his hands. Now he turned and threw it hard against a wall. It bent, fell to the deck, and crackled a couple of times before lying still.
'I say we blast the rotten bastard with a laser and take our chances.'
Dallas tried to sound sympathetic. 'I know how you feel, Parker. We all liked Brett. But we've got to keep our heads. If the creature's now as big as you say, it's holding enough acid to burn a hole in the ship as big as this room. Not to mention what it would do to circuitry and controls running through the decks. No way can we chance that. Not yet'
'Not yet?' Parker's sense of helplessness canceled out much of his fury. 'How many have to die besides Brett before you can see that's the way to handle that thing?'
'It wouldn't work anyway, Parker.'
The engineer turned to face Ash, frowned at him. 'What do you mean?'
'I mean you'd have to hit a vital organ with a laser on your first shot. From your description of the creature it's now extremely fast as well as large and powerful. I think it's reasonable to assume it retains the same capacity for rapid regeneration as its first "hand" form. That means you'd have to kill it instantly or it would be all over you.'
'Not only would that be difficult to do if your opponent were a mere man, it's also virtually impossible to do with this alien because we have no idea where its vital point is. We don't even know that it has a vital point. Don't you see?' He was trying to be understanding, like Dallas had been. Everyone knew how close the two engineers had been.
'Can't you envision what would happen? Let's say a couple of us succeeded in confronting the creature in an open area where we can get a clear shot at it, which is by no means a certainty. We laser it, oh, half a dozen times before it tears us all to pieces. All six wounds heal fast enough to preserve the alien's life, but not before it's bled enough acid to eat numerous holes in the ship. Maybe some of the stuff burns through the circuitry monitoring our air supply, or cuts the power to the ship's lights.
'I don't consider that an unreasonable scenario, given what we know about the creature.?And what's the result? We've lost two or more people and shipwise we're worse off than we were before we confronted it.'
Parker didn't reply, looked sullen. Finally he mumbled, 'Then what the hell are we going to do?'
'The only plan that stands a chance of working is the one we had before,' Dallas told him. He tapped the schematic. 'Find which shaft it's in, then drive it from there into an air lock and blast it into space.'
'Drive it?' Parker laughed hollowly. 'I'm telling you the son-of-a-bitch is huge.' He spat contemptuously at his bent shock tube. 'We aren't driving that thing anywhere with those.'
'For once he has a point,' said Lambert. 'We have to get it to a lock. How do we drive it?'
Ripley's gaze travelled around the little cluster of humanity. 'I think it's time the science department brought us up to date on our visitor. Haven't you got any ideas, Ash?'
The science officer considered. 'Well, it seems to have adapted well to an oxygen-rich atmosphere. That may have something to do with its spectacularly rapid growth in this stage.'
'This "stage"?' Lambert echoed questioningly. 'You mean it might turn into something else again?'
Ash spread his hands. 'We know so little about it. We should be prepared for anything. It has already metamorphosed three times; egg to hand-shape, hand to the thing that came out of Kane, and that into this much larger bipedal form. We have no reason to assume that this form is the final stage in the chain of development.' He paused, added, 'The next form it assumes could conceivably be even larger and more powerful.'
'That's encouraging,' murmured Ripley. 'What else?'
'In addition to its new atmosphere, it's certainly adapted well for its nutritional requirements. So we know it can exist on very little, in various atmospheres, and possibly in none at all for an unspecified period of time.
'About the only thing we don't know is its ability to handle drastic changes in temperature. It's comfortably warm aboard the Nostromo. Considering the mean temperature on the world where we discovered it, I think we can reasonably rule out bitter cold as a potential deterrent, though the early egg form may have been tougher in that respect than the present one. There is precedent for that.'
'All right,' asked Ripley, 'what about the temperature? What happens if we raise it?'
'Let's give it a try,' said Ash. 'We can't raise the temperature of the entire ship for the same reason we couldn't exhaust all the air. Not enough air time in our suits, limited mobility, helplessness while confined in the freezers, and so on. But most creatures retreat from fire. It's not necessary to heat the whole ship.'
'We could string a high-voltage wire across a few corridors and lure it into one. That would fry it good,' Lambert suggested.
'This isn't an animal we're dealing with. Or if it is,' Ash told her, 'it's a supremely skilful one. It's not going to charge blindly into a cord or anything else blocking an obvious transit way like a corridor. It's already demonstrated that by choosing the air shafts to travel about in, instead of the corridors.
'Besides, certain primitive organisms like the shark are sensitive to electric fields. On balance, not a good idea.'
'Maybe it can detect the electrical fields our own bodies generate,' said Ripley gloomily. 'Maybe that's how it tracks.'
Parker looked doubtful. 'I wouldn't bet that it didn't depend on its eyes. If that's what those things are.'
'They aren't.'
'A creature so obviously resourceful probably utilizes many senses in tracking,' Ash
added.
'I don't like the cord idea anyway.' Parker's face was flushed. 'I don't like tricking around. When it goes out the lock, I want to be there. I want to see it die.' He went quiet for a bit, added less emotionally, 'I want to hear it scream like Brett.'
'How long to hook up three or four incinerating units?' Dallas wanted to know.
'Give me twenty minutes. The basic units are already there, in storage. It's just a question of modifying them for hand-held use.'
'Can you make them powerful enough? We don't want to run into the kind of situation Ash described, if we were using lasers. We want something that'll stop it in its tracks.'
'Don't worry.' Parker's voice was cold, cold. 'I'll fix them so they'll cook anything they touch on contact.'
'Seems like our best chance, then.' The captain glanced around the table. 'Anyone got any better ideas?'
No one did.
'Okay.' Dallas pushed away from the table, rose. 'When Parker's ready with his flamethrowers, we'll start from here and work our way back down to C level and the bay where it took Brett. Then we'll try to trace it from there.'
Parker sounded dubious. 'It went up with him through the hull bracing before it entered the air shaft. Be hell trying to follow it up there. I'm no ape.' He stared warningly at Ripley, but she didn't comment.
'You'd rather sit here and wait until it's ready to come looking for you?' Dallas asked. 'The longer we can keep it on the defensive, the better it'll be for us.'
'Except for one thing,' Ripley said.
'What's that?'
'We're not sure it's ever been on the defensive.' She met his gaze squarely. .
The flamethrowers were bulkier than the shock tubes and looked less effective. But the tubes had functioned as they were supposed to, and Parker had assured them all the incinerators would too. He declined to give them a demonstration this time because, he explained, the flamers were powerful enough to sear the decking.
The fact that he was trusting his own life to the devices was proof enough anyway, for everyone except Ripley. She was beginning to be suspicious of everyone and everything. She'd always been a little paranoid. Current events were making it worse. She began to worry as much over what was happening to her mind as she was about the alien.
Of course, as soon as they found and killed the alien, the mental problems would vanish. Wouldn't they?
The tight knot of edgy humanity worked its cautious way down from the mess to B level. They were heading for the next companionway when both tracking devices commenced a frantic beeping. Ash and Ripley quickly shut off the beepers. They had to follow the shifting needles only a dozen metres before a louder, different sound became audible: metal tearing.
'Easy.' Dallas cradled his flamethrower, turned the corner in the corridor. Loud rending noises continued, more clearly now. He knew where they were originating. 'The food locker,' he whispered back to them.
'It's inside.'
'Listen to that,' Lambert murmured in awe. 'Jesus, it must be big.'
'Big enough,' agreed Parker softly. 'I saw it, remember. And strong. It carried Brett like. .' He cut off in mid-sentence, thoughts of Brett choking off any desire for conversation.
Dallas raised the nozzle of his flamethrower. 'There's a duct opening into the back of the locker. That's how it got here.' He glanced over at Parker. 'You sure these things are working?'
'I made them, didn't I?'
'That's what worries us,' said Ripley.
They moved forward. The tearing sounds continued. When they were positioned just outside the locker, Dallas glanced from Parker to the door handle. The engineer reluctantly got a grip on the heavy protrusion. Dallas stood back a couple of steps, readied the flamethrower.
'Now!'
Parker wrenched open the door, jumped back out of the way. Dallas thumbed the firing stud on the clumsy weapon. A startlingly wide fan of orange fire filled the entrance to the food locker, causing everyone to draw away from the intense heat. Dallas moved forward quickly, ignoring the lingering heat that burned his throat, and fired another blast inside. Then a third. He was over the raised base now and had to twist himself so he could fire sideways.
Several minutes were spent nervously waiting outside for the locker's interior to cool enough for them to enter. Despite the wait, the heat radiating from the smouldering garbage inside was so intense they had to walk carefully, lest they bump into any of the oven-hot crates or the locker walls.
The locker itself was a total loss. What the alien had begun, Dallas's flamethrower had finished. Deep black streaks showed on the walls, testimony to the concentrated power of the incinerator. The stench of charred artificial-food components mixed with carbonized packaging was overpowering in the confined space.
Despite the havoc wrought by the flamethrower, not everything within the locker had been destroyed. Ample evidence of the alien's handiwork lay scattered about, untouched by the flames. Packages of every size were strewn about the floor, opened in ways and by means their manufacturers had never envisioned.
Solid-metal storage 'tins' (so called because of tradition and not their metallurgical makeup) had been peeled apart like fruit. From what they could see, the alien hadn't left much intact for the flamethrower to finish off.
Keeping trackers and incinerators handy, they poked through the debris. Pungent smoke drifted upward and burned their eyes.
Careful inspection of every sizable pile of ruined supplies failed to produce the hoped-for discovery.
Since all the food stocked aboard the Nostromo was artificial and homogenous in composition, the only bones they would find would belong to the alien. But the closest thing they found to bones were the reinforcing bands from several large crates.
Ripley and Lambert started to relax against a still-hot wall, remembered not to. 'We didn't get it,' the warrant officer muttered disappointedly.
'Then where the hell is it?' Lambert asked her.
'Over here.'
They all turned to see Dallas standing near the back wall, behind a pile of melted black plastic. His flamethrower was pointing at the wall. 'This is where it went.'
Moving over, Ripley and the others saw that Dallas's frame was blocking the expected ventilator opening. The protective grille that normally covered the gap was lying on the floor below it, in pieces.
Dallas removed the lightbar from his belt, directed the beam into the shaft. It revealed only smooth metal twisting off into the distance. When he spoke he sounded excited.
'About time we got a break.'
'What are you talking about?' Lambert asked.
He looked back at them. 'Don't you see? This could end up working for us. This duct comes out at the main airlock. There's only one other opening large enough along the way for the creature to escape through, and we can cover that. Then we drive it into the lock with the flamethrowers and blast it into space.'
'Yeah.' Lambert's tone indicated she didn't share the captain's enthusiasm for the project. 'Nothing to it. All you have to do is crawl into the vent after it, find your way through the maze until you're staring it in the face, and then pray it's afraid of fire.'
Dallas's smile waned. 'The addition of the human element sort of kills the simplicity of it, doesn't it? But it should work, given that it's fearful of fire. It's our best chance. This way we don't have to back it into a corner and hope the flames will kill it in time. It can keep on retreating. . right toward the waiting lock.'
'That's all fine and good,' agreed Lambert. 'The problem is: Who goes in after it?'
Dallas searched the group, hunting for a prospect to engage in the lethal game of tag. Ash had the coolest nerves of the lot, but Dallas still harbored suspicions about the science officer. Anyway, Ash's project to find a nullifier for the creature's acid ruled him out as a candidate for the chase.
Lambert put up a tough front, but was more likely to go to pieces under stress than any of the others. As for Ripley, she'd be fine up to the moment of actual confrontation. H
e wasn't sure whether she'd freeze or not. He didn't think that she would. . but could he risk her life on that'
Parker. . Parker'd always pretended to be a tough son-of-a-bitch. He complained a lot, but he could do a rough job and do it right when he had to. Witness the shock tubes and now the flamethrowers. Besides, it was his friend who'd been taken by the alien. And he knew the quirks of the flamethrowers better than any of them.
'Well, Parker, you always wanted a full share and a trip's-end bonus.'
'Yeah?' The engineer sounded wary.
'Get in the pipe.'
'Why me?'
Dallas thought of giving him several reasons, decided to keep it simple instead. 'I just want to see you earn your full share, that's all.'
Parker shook his head, took a step backward. 'No way. You can have my share. You can have my whole salary for the trip.' He jerked his head in the direction of the shaft opening. 'I'm not going in there.'
'I'll go.' Dallas eyed Ripley. She figured to volunteer sooner or later. Funny lady. He'd always underestimated her. Everyone did.
'Forget it.'
'Why?' She looked resentful.
'Yeah, why?' put in Parker. 'If she's ready to go, why not let her go?'
'My decision,' he explained tersely. He looked at her, saw the mixture of resentment and confusion. She didn't understand why he'd turned her down. Well, no matter. Someday maybe he'd explain. If he could explain it to himself.
'You take the air lock,' he directed her. 'Ash, you'll stay here and cover this end in case it gets behind me somehow, or through me. Parker, you and Lambert cover the one side exit I told you about.'
They all regarded him with various looks of understanding. There was no doubt who was going into the vent
Panting, Ripley reached the vestibule by the starboard lock. A glance at her tracker showed no movement in the area. She touched a nearby red switch. A soft hum filled that section of corridor. The massive lock door moved aside. When it was clear and the hum had died she thumbed the intercom.
Alien (aliens universe) Page 17
