Aliens (aliens universe)

by Alan Dean Foster

  '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, pat
ience, 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 vehicles 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.

  But how much is a world worth? And Acheron was not as bad as some that the Company had invested in. At least it possessed an existing atmosphere capable of modification Much easier to fine-tune the composition of a world's air than to provide it from scratch. Acheron had weather and near normal gravity. A veritable paradise.

  The fiery glow that emanated from the crown of the volcanolike atmosphere processor suggested another realm entirely. None of the symbolism was lost on the colonists. It inspired only additional humour. They hadn't agreed to come to Acheron because of the weather.

  There were no soft bodies or pallid, weak faces visible within the colony corridors. Even the children looked tough. Not tough as in mean or bullying, but strong within as well as without. There was no room here for bullies. Cooperation was a lesson learned early. Children grew up faster than their Earthbound counterparts and those who lived on fatter gentler worlds. They and their parents were a breed unto themselves, self-reliant yet interdependent. They were not unique. Their predecessors had ridden in wagons instead of starships.

  It helped to think of oneself as a pioneer. It sounded much better than a numerical job description.

  At the centre of this ganglion of men and machines was the tall building known as the control block. It towered above every other artificial structure on Acheron with the exception of the atmosphere processing stations themselves. From the outside it looked spacious. Within, there wasn't a spare square metre to be found. Instrumentation was crowded into corners and sequestered in the crawl spaces beneath the floors and the serviceways above the suspended ceilings. And still there was never enough room. People squeezed a little closer to one another so that the computers and their attendant machines could have more room. Paper piled up in corners despite unceasing efforts to reduce every scrap of necessary information to electronic bytes. Equipment shipped out new from the factory quickly acquired a plethora of homey scratches, dents, and coffee-cup rings.

  Two men ran the control block and therefore the colony One was the operations manager, the other his assistant. They called one another by their first names. Formality was not in vogue on frontier worlds. Insistence on titles and last names and too much supercilious pulling of rank could find a man lost outside without a survival suit or communicator.

  Their names were Simpson and Lydecker, and it was a toss-up as to which looked more harried than the other. Both wore the expression of men for whom sleep is a teasing mistress rarely visited. Lydecker looked like an accountant haunted by a major tax deduction misplaced ten years earlier Simpson was a big, burly type who would have been more comfortable running a truck than a colony. Unfortunately he'd been stuck with brains as well as brawn and hadn't managed to hide it from his employers. The front of his shirt was perpetually sweat-stained. Lydecker confronted him before he could retreat.

  'See the weather report for
next week?' Simpson was chewing on something fragrant, which stained the inside of his mouth. Probably illegal, Lydecker knew. He said nothing about it. It was Simpson's business, and Simpson was his boss Besides, he'd been considering borrowing a chew. Small vices were not encouraged on Acheron, but as long as they didn't interfere with a person's work, neither were they held up to ridicule. It was tough enough to keep one's sanity, hard enough to get by.

  'What about it?' the operations manager said.

  'We're going to have a real Indian summer. Winds should be all the way down to forty knots.'

  'Oh, good. I'll break out the inner tubes and the suntan lotion. Heck, I'd settle for just one honest glimpse of the local sun.'

  Lydecker shook his head, affecting an air of mock disapproval. 'Never satisfied, are you? Isn't it enough to know it's still up there?'

  'I can't help it; I'm greedy. I should shut up and count my blessings, right? You got something else on your mind Lydecker, or are you just on one of your hour-long coffee breaks?'

  'That's me. Goof off every chance I get. I figure my next chance will be in about two years.' He checked a printed readout. 'You remember you sent some wildcatters out to that high plateau out past the Ilium Range a couple days ago?'

  'Yeah. Some of our dreamers back home thought there might be some radioactives out that way. So I asked for volunteers, and some guy named Jorden stuck up his mitt. I told 'em to go look if they wanted to. Some others might've taken off in that direction also. What about it?'

  'There's a guy on the horn right now. Mom-and-pop survey team. Says he's homing something and wants to know if his claim will be honoured.'

  'Everybody's a lawyer these days. Sometimes I think I should've gone in for it myself.'