Alien by Alan Dean Foster

  'Standing by,' said Ripley.

  Dallas glanced across at Ash. 'How's she holding?'

  The science officer studied his gauges. 'Everything's working. For how long, I can't say.'

  'Just long enough to get us up.' Dallas flipped on the intercom. 'Parker, how do we look from down there? Can we make it out without engaging the deep drive?'

  If they couldn't break gravity on the primary drive, Dallas knew, they'd have to cut in the hyper to get them out. But a second or two of hyperdrive would throw them completely out of this system. That would mean relocating it and using precious wake time to link up once more with their cargo. And wake time translated as air. Minutes equaled litres. The Nostromo could continue to recycle their meager supply of breathing material only so long. When their lungs started rejecting it, they'd have to go back into the freezers whether they'd found the refinery or not.

  Dallas thought of the gigantic floating factory, tried to imagine how long it would take for them to pay for it on their various modest salaries.

  Parker's reply was hopeful, if not exactly encouraging. 'Okay. But remember, this is just a patch job. Need shipyard equipment to make proper repairs.'

  'Will she hold together?'

  'Ought to, unless we hit too much turbulence going up. That might blow the new cells . . . and that's all she said. No way we could fix them again.'

  'So take it easy,' Brett added from his seat in the engineering cubicle.

  'I hear you. We'll watch it. All we have to do is reach zero-gee and we can go hyper all the way into Sol. Then the damn cells can go like popcorn if they want to. But until we're up and out, you keep them intact if you have to hold them steady with your bare hands.'

  'Do our best,' said Parker.

  'Check. Bridge out.' Dallas turned to face the Nostromo's warrant officer. Ripley was presently doubling duty for the incapacitated Kane. 'Take us up a hundred metres and bring in the landing struts.' He turned his attention to his own console. 'I'll keep her steady.'

  'Up a hundred.' Ripley touched controls.

  The thunder intensified outside as the tug lifted from the parched, dust-blasted surface. The ship hovered a hundred metres above the ground, dust racing confusedly beneath it. Massive leg-like pillars that had supported the Nostromo now folded neatly into her metal belly.

  A slight thump sounded on the bridge, confirming computer telltales. 'Struts retracted,' Ripley announced. 'Closing shields.' Metal plates slid tightly shut over the strut housings, sealing out dust particles and alien atmosphere.

  'Standing by,' declared Ash.

  'Okay. Ripley, Kane's not here, so it's all yours. Take us up.'

  She nudged a double lever on the exec's console. The roaring outside was deafening now, though there was nothing to hear and be suitably impressed by the cleverness of mankind. Inclined slightly upward, the Nostromo began to move forward.

  'Rolling up the G's,' she said, hitting several additional buttons. 'And here we go.'

  Moving sharply skyward and accelerating steadily, the tug suddenly leaped ahead. Powerful winds clutched at the tough, alloyed skin, neither slowed the starship nor altered its course.

  Lambert's attention was fixed on one particular gauge. 'One kilometre and ascending. On course. Orbital insertion in five point three two minutes.' If, she added silently to herself, we hold together that long.

  'Sounding good,' Dallas murmured, watching two lines overlap pleasingly on his console. 'Engage artificial gravity.'

  Lambert threw a switch. The ship seemed to stumble. Dallas's stomach protested as the fading gravity of the little world receding behind them was replaced by a full, unforgiving pull.

  'Engaged,' Lambert reported, as her own insides finished realigning themselves.

  Ripley's gaze danced from one readout to another. A slight discrepancy appeared and she hurried to correct for it. 'Unequal thrust reading. I'm altering the vector now.' She nudged a switch, watched with satisfaction as a liquid needle crawled back to where it belonged. 'Compensation effected. Holding steady now. We're set.'

  Dallas was beginning to believe they'd make it without any trouble when a violent tremor ran through the bridge. It sent personal possessions and the frantic thoughts of the crew flying. The tremor lasted only an instant, wasn't repeated.

  'What the hell was that?' Dallas wondered aloud. By way of reply, the 'com beeped for attention.

  'That you, Parker?'

  'Yeah. We had some trouble back here.'

  'Serious?'

  'Starboard quad's overheating. Judge for yourself.'

  'Can you fix it?'

  'Are you kidding? I'm shutting it down.'

  'Compensating again for unequal thrust,' Ripley announced solemnly.

  'Just hold us together until we're beyond double zero,' Dallas asked the pickup.

  'What do you think we're trying to do back here?' The intercom clicked off.

  A slight change in the roaring of the engines became audible on the bridge. No one looked at their neighbour, for fear of seeing their own worry reflected there.

  Moving a little more slowly but still slicing effortlessly through boiling clouds, the Nostromo continued to power spaceward, on course to meet with the drifting refinery.

  In contrast to the comparative calm of the bridge, the engine room was the scene of frenzied activity. Brett was scooched up inside a tube again, sweating and wishing he was elsewhere.

  'Got it figured?' asked Parker from outside.

  'Yeah. I think so. Dust is clogging the damn intakes again. Number two's overheating now.?

  'I thought we shut that junk out.'

  'So did I. Must've slipped a screen again. Damn engines are too sensitive.'

  'They weren't designed to fly through particulate hurricanes,' Parker reminded his associate. 'Spit on it for two more minutes and we'll be clear.'

  A second tremor rattled the bridge. Everyone's attention stayed glued to their respective consoles. Dallas thought of querying engineering, then thought better of it and decided not to. If Parker had anything to report, he'd do so.

  Come on, come on, he urged silently. Get it up. He promised himself that if Parker and Brett could keep the primaries functioning for another couple of minutes, he'd put them in for the bonuses they were constantly harping about. A gauge on his board showed that gravitational pull was fading rapidly. Another minute, he pleaded, one hand unconsciously caressing the nearby wall. Another lousy minute.

  Erupting from the crown of clouds, the Nostromo burst into open space. One minute, fifty seconds later, the surface-gravity indicator on Dallas's console fell to zero.

  That was the signal for some unprofessional but heartfelt cheering on the bridge.

  'We made it.' Ripley lay exhausted against the padded back of her flight seat. 'Damn. We made it.'

  'When that first tremor hit and we started velocity slide, I didn't think we were going to,' Dallas husked. 'I saw us splattering ourselves all over the nearest hillside. We might as well have done that if we'd had to go hyper and lost the refinery.'

  'Nothing to worry about.' Lambert wasn't smiling. 'We could have landed again and stayed there. Then our automatic distress beacon would've come on. We could've relaxed in hypersleep while some other lucky crew got itself kicked out of the freezers to come and rescue us.'

  Don't mention anything about bonuses yet, Dallas was telling himself. Surprise them with it when you wake up in Earth orbit. But for now, the engineering team was at least entitled to some verbal commendation. He addressed the 'com.

  'Nice work, you two. How's she holding?'

  'Now that we're out of that dust, she's purring like Jones.' A sharp crackling noise sounded over the speaker. Dallas frowned for a second, unable to place it. Then he realized that Parker had probably opened a beer while inadvertently holding it within range of the pickup.

  'It was a walk in the park,' the engineer continued pridefully. 'When we fix something it stays fixed.' A gurgling sound filled the speaker, as if
Parker were submerging.

  'Sure it was A good job,' Dallas assured him. 'Take a break. You've both earned it. And Parker?'

  'Yo?'

  'When we raise Earthside and you're co-ordinating your department with engineering control, keep your beer away from the mike.' The gurgling noise receded.

  Satisfied, Dallas switched off and said to no one in particular, 'Let's pick up the money and go home. Put her in the garage, Lambert.'

  The Nostromo's angle of ascent began to flatten. Several minutes passed before a steady beeping began to sound from a telltale above the navigator's station.

  'Here she comes,' she informed her companions. 'Right where she's supposed to be.'

  'Okay.' Dallas was thumbing controls. 'Line us up and stand by to dock.' Instrumentation hummed as the tug adjusted its attitude with respect to the mountain of metal and plastic. Ripley threw a switch, and the tug locked itself in position backside first to the dull mass of the refinery.

  'Positioned,' she said.

  'Bring us in.' Dallas watched a certain readout intently, fingers poised over a rank of red buttons.

  'We're moving.' Ripley's attention was focused on two screens at once. 'Distance shrinking. Twenty . . . fifteen . . . set.' She hit a switch.

  Dallas depressed the red controls. 'Engines cut and primaries compensated for. We have inertial stability. Activate the hyperdrive lock.'

  'Activated,' Ripley informed him. 'We're tied together.' When activated now, the Nostromo would generate a hyperdrive field of sufficient size to include the refinery. It would travel with them, enveloped in that mysterious manifestation of nonreality that enabled ships and men to travel faster than light.

  'Set course for Earth,' Dallas ordered crisply. 'Then fire up the big one and get us up to light plus four, Ripley.'

  'With pleasure.'

  'Course computed and locked in,' said Lambert a moment later. 'Time to go home.' Then, to herself, 'Feets, get me out of here.'

  Ripley touched a major control. The tiny world and its imprisoned alien ship vanished as though it had never existed. The Nostromo achieved, exceeded the speed of light. A corona effect materialized around ship and refinery. Stars ahead of them became blue, those behind shifted to red.

  Six crew members raced relievedly for home. Six crew members, and something else named Kane. . .

  They sat around the mess table and sipped coffee, tea or other warm liquid stimulants according to taste and habit. Their relaxed postures reflected their current state of mind, which until recently had been stiff as glass and twice as fragile. Now legs sprawled unconcernedly over chair arms, and backs slumped against cushions.

  Lambert was still up on the bridge, making final course checks before she'd permit herself the luxury of collapsing. Ash was down in the infirmary, keeping watch over Kane. The executive officer and his condition were the principal topics of conversation.

  Parker downed steaming tea, smacked his lips indelicately, and proposed with his usual confidence, 'The best thing to do is just freeze him. Arrest the goddamn disease.'

  'We don't know that freezing will alter his condition in any way,' Dallas argued. 'It might make him worse. What affects Earthside diseases might only intensify whatever this is that has a hold on him.'

  'It's a damn sight better than doing nothing.' Parker waved the cup like a baton. 'And that's what the autodoc's done for him so far: nothing. Whatever he's got is beyond its capability to handle, just like Ash said. That medical computer's set up to handle things like zero-gee sickness and broken bones, not something like this. We all agree Kane needs specialized help.'

  'Which you just admitted we can't offer him.'

  'Right.' Parker leaned back in his chair. 'Exactly. So I say freeze him until we get back home and a doc specializing in alien diseases can run over him.'

  'Right,' added Brett.

  Ripley shook her head, looked put upon. 'Whenever he says anything, you say "right." You know that, Brett?'

  He grinned. 'Right.'

  She turned to face the engineer. 'What do you think about that, Parker? Your staff just follows you around and says "right". Like regular parrots.'

  Parker turned to his colleague. 'Yeah. Shape up. What are you, some kind of parrot?'

  'Right.'

  'Oh, knock it off.' Dallas was sorry for the unthinking comment. A little levity would do them some good, and he had to up and step on it. Why did he have to be like that? The relationships among the members of the tug's crew were more informal ones among equals than a boss-and-employee type of chain of command. So, why did he all of a sudden feel compelled to play captain?

  Perhaps because they were in a crisis situation of sorts and someone had to officially be 'in charge.' He was stuck with the responsibility. Lousy job. Right now he'd much rather have Ripley's or Parker's. Especially Parkers. The two engineers could squat back in their private cubicle and blithely ignore everything that didn't directly affect them. So long as they kept the engines and ship's systems functioning, they were answerable to no one save each other.

  It occurred to Dallas that he didn't particularly like making decisions. Maybe that was why he was commanding an old tug instead of a liner. More revealingly, maybe that was why he never complained about it. As tug captain he could spend most of his ship time in hypersleep, doing nothing but dreaming and collecting his salary. He didn't have to make decisions in hypersleep.

  Soon, he assured himself. Soon they could all return to the private comforts of their individual coffins. The needles would come down, the soporifics would enter their veins and numb their brains, and they would drift pleasantly away, away to the land where decisions no longer had to be made and the unpleasant surprises of a hostile universe could not intrude.

  As soon as they finished their coffee.

  'Kane will have to go into quarantine,' he said absently, sipping at his mug.

  'Yeah, and so will we.' Ripley looked dismayed at the thought. That was understandable. They would travel all the way back to Earth, only to spend weeks in isolation until the medics were convinced none of them harbored anything similar to what had flattened Kane. Visions of green grass underfoot and blue skies filled her mind. She saw a beach and a blissfully ground bound little town on the coast of El Salvador. It was painful to have to force them out.

  Eyes turned as a new figure joined them. Lambert looked tired and depressed.

  'How about a little something to lower your spirits?' she told them.

  'Thrill me.' Dallas tried to prepare himself mentally for what he suspected was coming. He knew what the navigator had remained on the bridge to work out.

  'According to my calculations, based on the time spent getting to and from that unscheduled stop we made, the amount of time spent making the detour . .'

  'Give me the short version,' Dallas said, interrupting her. 'We know we went off course to trace that signal. How long to Earth?'

  She finished drawing a cup of coffee for herself, slumped into a chair, and said sadly, 'Ten months.'

  'Christ.' Ripley stared at the bottom of her cup. Clouds and grass and beach receded farther in her mind, blended into a pale blue-green haze well out of reach. True, ten months in hypersleep was little different from a month. But their minds worked with real time. Ripley would rather have heard six months instead of the projected ten.

  The intercom beeped for attention and Dallas acknowledged. 'What's up, Ash?'

  'Come see Kane right away.' The request was urgently phrased, yet with a curious hesitancy to it.

  Dallas sat up straight, as did the others at the table. 'Some change in his condition? Serious?'

  'It's simpler if you just come see him.'

  There was a concerted rush for the corridor. Coffee remained steaming on the deserted table.

  Horrible visions clouded Dallas's thoughts as he made his way down to the infirmary with the others trailing behind. What gruesome aftereffects had the alien disease produced in the exec? Dallas imagined a swarm of tiny grey
hands, their single eyes shining wetly, crawling possessively over the infirmary walls, or some leprous fungus enveloping the rotting corpse of the luckless Kane.

  They reached the infirmary, panting from the effort of running down corridor and companionways. There was no cluster of replicated alien hands crawling on the walls. No alien growth, fungoid or otherwise, decorated the body of the executive officer. Ash had greatly understated the matter when he'd reported a change in Kane's condition.

  The exec was sitting up on the medical platform. His eyes were open and clear, functioning in proper concert with his brain. Those eyes turned to take in the knot of gaping arrivals.