Alien

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. He 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.

'Ready starboard airlock.'

Parker and Lambert reached the section of corridor specified by Dallas, halted. The vent opening, grille-covered and innocent-looking, showed in the wall three quarters of the way up.

'That's where it'll be coming out, if it tries this way,' Parker observed. Lambert nodded, moved to the nearby 'com pickup to report that they were in position.

Back in the food locker, Dallas listened intently as Lambert's report followed Ripley's. Dallas asked a couple of questions, acknowledged the answers, and switched off. Ash handed him his flamethrower, Dallas adjusted the nozzle and fired a couple of quick, short bursts.

'It's still working. Parker's a better applied machinist than even he thinks he is.' He noticed the expression on Ash's face. 'Something the matter?'

'You've made your decision. It's not my place to comment.'

'You're the science officer. Go ahead and comment.'

'This has nothing to do with science.'

'This is no time to hedge. Say what's on your mind.'

Ash eyed him with genuine curiosity. 'Why do you have to be the one to go? Why didn't you send Ripley? She was willing, and she's competent enough.'

'I shouldn't even have suggested anyone but myself.' He was checking the fluid level on the flamethrower. 'That was a mistake. It's my responsibility. I let Kane go down into the alien ship. Now it's my turn. I've delegated enough risk without taking any on myself. It's time I did.'

'You're the captain,' Ash argued. 'This is a time to be practical, not heroic. You did the proper thing in sending Kane. Why change now?'

Dallas grinned at him. It wasn't often you could catch Ash in a contradiction. 'You're hardly the one to be talking about proper procedure. You opened the lock and let us back into the ship, remember?' The science officer didn't reply. 'So don't lecture me on what's proper.'

'It'll be harder on the rest of us if we lose you. Especially now.'

'You just mentioned that you thought Ripley was competent. I concur. She's next in line of command. If I don't make it back, there's nothing I do that she can't.'

'I don't agree.'

They were wasting time. No telling how far ahead of him the creature was by now. Dallas was tired of arguing. 'Tough. That's my decision, and it's final.' He turned, put his right foot into the shaft opening, then slid the flamethrower in ahead of him, making sure it didn't slide on the slightly downwardinclining surface.

'Won't work like that,' he grumbled, peering in. 'Not enough room to crouch.' He removed his leg. 'Have to crawl it.' He ducked his head and wriggled into the opening.

There was less room in the shaft than he'd hoped. How something of the size Parker and Ripley had described had squirmed through the tiny crawlspace he couldn't imagine. Well, good! Dallas hoped the shaft would continue to narrow. Maybe the creature, in its haste to escape, would get itself wedged good and tight. That would make things simpler.

'How is it?' a voice called from behind him.

'Not too good,' he informed Ash, his voice reverberating around him. Dallas struggled into a crawling posture. 'It's just big enough to be uncomfortable.'

He switched on his lightbar, fumbled anxiously for a moment before locating the throat mike he'd slipped on. The light showed dark, empty shaft ahead of him, Travelling in a straight metallic line with a slight downward curve. The incline would increase, he knew. He had a full deck level to descend before emerging behind the creature outside the starboard lock.

'Ripley, Parker, Lambert. . are you receiving me? I'm in the shaft now, preparing to descend.'

Below, Lambert addressed the wall 'com. 'We read you. I'll try to pick you up as soon as you come within range of our tracker.' Next to her, Parker hefted his flamethrower and glared at the grille covering the duct.

'Parker,' Dallas instructed the engineer, 'if it tries to come out by you two, make sure you drive it back in. I'll keep pushing it forward.'

'Right.'

'Ready by the lock,' Ripley reported. 'She's standing open and waiting for company.'

'It's on its way.' Dallas started crawling, his eyes on the tunnel ahead, fingers on the controls of the incinerator. The shaft here was less than a metre wide. Metal rubbed insistently at his knees and he wished he'd donned an extra pair of overalls. Too late for that now, he mused. Everyone was ready and prepared. He wasn't going back.

'How you doing?' a voice sounded over his mike speaker.

'Okay, Ash,' he told the anxious science officer. 'Don't worry about me. Keep your eyes on that opening in case it's slipped behind me somehow.'

He turned his first bend in the shaft, fighting to see in his head the exact layout of the ship's ventilating system. The printed schematic back in the mess was fuzzy and indistinct in his memory. The vents were hardly among the ship's critical systems. It was too late to wish that he'd taken more time to study them.

Several more tight turns showed in the shaft ahead of him. He paused, breathing heavily, and raised the tip of the flamethrower. There was nothing to indicate that anything lay hiding behind those bends, but it was better not to take chances. The incinerator's fuel level read almost full. It wouldn't hurt to let the creature know what was following close behind it, maybe drive it forward without having to face it.

A touch on the red button sent a gout of flame down the tunnel. The roar was loud in the constricted shaft, and heat rushed back across his protesting skin. He started forward again, taking care to keep his ungloved hands off the now hot metal he was crawling over. A little heat even penetrated the tough fabric of his pants. He didn't feel it. His senses were all concentrated forward, searching for movement and smell.

In the equipment area, Lambert thoughtfully regarded the tightly screened opening. She reached back, threw a switch. There was a hum and the metal grille slid out of sight, leaving a gaping hole in the wall.

'Are you crazy?' Parker eyed her uncertainly.

'That's the one it's got to come out of if it leaves the main shaft,' she told him. 'Let's keep it open. It's too dark behind the grille. I'd like to know if anything's coming.'

Parker thought to argue, decided his energy would be better spent keeping an eye on the opening, grilled or unblocked. Anyway, Lambert outranked him.

Sweat was seeping into his eyes, persistent as ants, and Dallas had to stop to wipe it away. Salt burned, impairing his sight. Ahead, the shaft turned steeply downward. He'd been expecting the downturn about now, but the satisfaction of having his memory confirmed gave him little pleasure. Now he'd have to watch his speed and balance in addition to the shaft itself.

Crawling to the drop, he pointed the flamethrower downward and let loose another fiery discharge. No screams, no aroma of seared flesh drifted back up to him. The creature was still far ahead. He wondered if it were crawling, perhaps angrily, perhaps fearfully, in search of the exit. Or maybe it was waiting, turned to confront its persistent pursuer with inconceivable methods of alien defence.

It was hot in the shaft, and he was growing tired. There was another possibility, he mused. What if the creature had somehow discovered another way to leave the shaft? In that event he'd have made the tense, agonizing crawl for nothing. There was still only one way to resolve all the questions. He started down the steep slide head first, keeping the flamethrower balanced and pointing forward.

It was Lambert who first noticed the movement of the tracker needle. She had a nervous minute until some hasty figuring matched the reading with a known quantity.

'Beginning to get a reading on you,' she informed the distant Dallas.

'Okay.' He felt better, knowing that others knew exactly where he was. 'Stay on me.'

The shaft made another turn. He didn't recall there being quite so many twists and sharp bends, but he was positive he was still in the main shaft. He hadn't passed a single side tunnel wide enough to admit anything larger than Jones. Despite the alien's demonstrated aptitude for squeezing into small spaces, Dallas didn't think it could shrink its bulk enough to fit into a secondary vent pipe only a dozen or so centimetres across.

The present turn confronting him proved especially difficult to negotiate. The long, inflexible barrel of the flamethrower didn't make it any easier. Panting, he lay there and considered how to proceed.

'Ripley.'

She jerked at the sharpness in his voice, spoke hurriedly into the 'com pickup. 'I'm here. Reading you clearly. Anything wrong? You sound. .' she caught herself. How else should Dallas sound except nervous'

'I'm okay,' he told her. 'Just tired. Out of shape. Too many weeks in hypersleep, you lose your muscle tone no matter what the freezers do for you.' He wriggled into a new position, gained a better view ahead.

'I don't think this shaft goes much farther. It's getting hot in here.' That was to be expected, he told himself. The accumulated effect of multiple blasts from his flamethrower would tax the internal cooling capacity of the shaft's thermostats.

'Continuing on now. Stay ready.'

An onlooker could easily have read the relief in Dallas's face when he finally emerged from the cramped tunnel. It opened into one of the Nostromo's main air ducts, a two-tiered tunnel split by a catwalk. He crawled out of the shaft and stood on the railless walkway, stretched gratefully.

A careful inspection of the larger passage proved negative. The only sound he heard was the patient throbbing of cooling machinery. There was a repair junction partway down the walk and he strolled out to it, repeated his inspection there. As far as he could see, the huge chamber was empty.

Nothing could sneak up on him here, not while he was standing in the centre of the room. It would be a good place to grab a couple of minutes of much needed rest. He sat down on the catwalk, casually examining the level floor below the junction, and spoke toward the throat mike.

'Lambert, what kind of reading are you getting? I'm in one of the central mixing chambers, at the repair station in the centre. Nothing here but me.'

The navigator glanced at her tracker, looked suddenly puzzled. She glanced worriedly at Parker, thrust the device under his gaze. 'Can you make any sense out of this?'

Parker studied the needle and readout. 'Not me. That's not my toy, it's Ash's. Confusing, though.'

'Lambert?' Dallas again.

'Here. I'm not sure.' She jiggled the tracker. The reading remained as incomprehensible as before. 'There seems to be some kind of double signal.'

'That's crazy. Are you getting two separate, distinct readings for me?'

'No. Just one impossible one.'

'It may be interference,' he told her. The way the air's shifting around in here, it could confuse the hell out of a jury-rigged machine designed to read air density. I'll push on ahead. It'll probably clear up as soon as I move.'

He rose, not seeing the massive, clawed hand rising slowly from the catwalk under him. The groping paw just missed his left foot as he continued onward. It drifted back beneath the walkway as silently as it had appeared.

Dallas had walked halfway to the end of the chamber. Now he stopped. 'Is that better, Lambert? I've moved. Am I registering any clearer now?'

'It's clear, all right.' Her voice was strained. 'But I'm still getting a double signal, and I think they're distinct. I'm not sure which one is which.'

Dallas whirled, his eyes darting around the tunnel, canvassing ceiling, floor, walls, and the large shaft opening he'd just emerged from. Then he looked back down the catwalk to the repair junction, his gaze settling on the spot where he'd been sitting just seconds ago.

He lowered the nose of the flamethrower. If he was now the front signal, having moved down the catwalk, then the cause of the double signal ought be. . his finger started to tense on the incinerator's trigger.

A hand reached up from below and behind, toward his ankle.

The alien was the front signal.

Ripley stood alone by the duct, watching it and thinking of the open airlock standing ready nearby. There was a distant ringing sound. At first she thought it was inside her head, where funny noises often originated. Then it was repeated, louder, and followed by an echo this time. It seemed to be coming from deep within the shaft. Her hands tensed on the flamethrower.

The ringing ceased. Against her better judgment she moved a little closer to the opening, keeping the nozzle of the flamethrower focused on it.

There came a recognizable sound. A scream. She recognized the voice.

Forgetting all carefully laid plans, all sensible procedure, she ran the rest of the way to the opening. 'Dallas. . Dallas!'

There were no more screams after the first. Only a soft, far-off thumping, which rapidly faded away. She checked her tracker. It displayed a single blip, the red colour also fading fast. Just like the scream.

'Oh my God. Parker, Lambert!' She rushed toward the pickup, yelled into the grid.

'Here, Ripley,' responded Lambert. 'What's going on? I just lost my signal.'

She started to say something, had it die in her throat. She suddenly remembered her new responsibilities, firmed her voice, straightened though there was no one around to see. 'We just lost Dallas. . '