Aliens

VII

The girl sat huddled against the back of the chair, hugging her knees to her chest. She looked neither right nor left, nor at any of the adults regarding her curiously. Her attention was focused on a distant point in space. A biomonitor cuff had been strapped to her left arm. Dietrich had been forced to modify it so that it would fit properly around the child's shrunken arm.

Gorman sat nearby while the medtech studied the information the cuff was providing. 'What's her name again?'

Dietrich made a notation on an electronic caduceus pad 'What?'

'Her name. We got a name, didn't we?'

The medtech nodded absently, absorbed by the readouts 'Rebecca, I think.'

'Right.' The lieutenant put on his best smile and leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees. 'Now think, Rebecca Concentrate. You have to try to help us so that we can help you. That's what we're here for, to help you. I want you to take your time and tell us what you remember. Anything at all. Try to start from the beginning.'

The girl didn't move, nor did her expression change. She was unresponsive but not comatose, silent but not mute. A disappointed Gorman sat back and glanced briefly to his left as Ripley entered carrying a steaming coffee mug.

'Where are your parents? You have to try to—'

'Gorman! Give it a rest, would you?'

The lieutenant started to respond sharply. His reply faded to a resigned nod. He rose, shaking his head. 'Total brainlock Tried everything I could think of except yelling at her, and I'm not about to do that. It could send her over the edge. If she isn't already.'

'She isn't.' Dietrich turned off her portable diagnostic equipment and gently removed the sensor cuff from the girl's unresisting arm. 'Physically she's okay. Borderline malnutrition, but I don't think there's any permanent damage. The wonder of it is that she's alive at all, scrounging unprocessed food packets and freeze-dried powder.' She looked at Ripley 'You see any vitamin packs in there?'

'I didn't have time for sight-seeing, and she didn't offer to show me around.' She nodded toward the girl.

'Right. Well, she must know about supplements because she's not showing any signs of critical deficiencies. Smart little thing.'

'How is she mentally?' Ripley sipped at her coffee, staring at the waif in the chair. The child's skin was like parchment over the backs of her hands.

'I can't tell for sure, but her motor responses are good. I think it's too early to call it brainlock. I'd say she's on hold.'

'Call it anything you want.' Gorman rose and headed for the exit. 'Whatever it is, we're wasting our time trying to talk to her.' He strode out of the side room and back into Operations to join Burke and Bishop in staring at the colony's central computer terminal. Dietrich headed off in another direction.

For a while Ripley watched the three men, who were intent on the terminals Hudson had resurrected, then knelt alongside the girl. Gently she brushed the child's unkempt hair back out of her eyes. She might have been combing a statue for all the response she elicited. Still smiling, she proffered the steaming cup she was holding.

'Here, try this. If you're not hungry, you must be thirsty. I'l bet it gets cold in that vent bubble, what with the heat off and everything.' She moved the cup around, letting the air carry the warm, aromatic smell of the contents to the girl's nostrils 'It's just a little instant hot chocolate. Don't you like chocolate? When the girl didn't react, Ripley wrapped the small hands around the cup, bending the fingers toward each other. Then she tilted hands and cup upward.

Dietrich was correct about the child's motor responses. She drank mechanically and without watching what she was doing Cocoa spilled down her chin, but most of it went down the small throat and stayed down. Ripley felt vindicated.

Not wanting to overwhelm an obviously shrunken stomach she pulled the cup away when it was still half full. 'There wasn't that nice? You can have some more in a minute. I don't know what you've been eating and drinking, and we don't want to make you sick by giving you too much rich stuff too quickly. She pushed at the blond tresses again.

'Poor thing. You don't talk much, do you? That's okay by me You feel like keeping quiet, you keep quiet. I'm kind of the same way. I've found that most people do a lot of talking and they wind up not saying very much. Especially adults when they're talking to children. It's kind of like they enjoy talking at you but not to you. They want you to listen to them all the time but they don't want to listen to you. I think that's pretty stupid Just because you're small doesn't mean you don't have some important things to say.' She set the cup aside and dabbed at the brown-stained chin with a cloth. It was easy to feel the ridge of unfinished bone beneath the tightly drawn skin.

'Uh-oh.' She grinned broadly. 'I made a clean spot here Now I've gone and done it. Guess I'll just have to do the whole thing. Otherwise nothing will match.'

From an open supply packet she withdrew a squeeze bottle full of sterilized water and used it to soak the cloth she was holding. Then she applied the makeshift scrubber firmly to the girl's face, wiping away dirt and accumulated grime in addition to the remaining cocoa spots. Throughout the operation the child sat quietly. But the bright blue eyes shifted and seemed to focus on Ripley for the first time.

She felt a surge of excitement and fought to suppress it 'Hard to believe there's a little girl under all this.' She made a show of examining the cloth's surface. 'Enough dirt there to file a mining claim on.' Bending over, she stared appraisingly at the newly revealed face. 'Definitely a little girl. And a pretty one, at that.'

She looked away just long enough to assure herself that no one from Operations was about to barge in. Any interruption at this critical moment might undo everything that she'd worked so hard to accomplish with the aid of a little hot chocolate and clean water.

No need to worry. Everyone in Operations was still clustered around the main terminal. Hudson was seated at the console fingering controls while the others looked on.

A three-dimensional abstract of the colony drifted across the main screen, lazy geometric outlines tumbling from left to right, then bottom to top, as Hudson manipulated the program. The comtech was neither playing nor showing off; he was hunting something. No rude comments spilled from his lips now, no casual profanity filled the air. It was work time. If he cursed at all, it was to himself. The computer knew all the answers. Finding the right questions was an agonizingly slow process.

Burke had been inspecting other equipment. Now he shifted his position for a better view as he whispered to Gorman.

'What's he scanning for?'

'PDTs. Personal data transmitters. Every colonist has one surgically implanted as soon as they arrive.'

'I know what a PDT is,' Burke replied mildly. 'The Company manufactures them. I just don't see any point in running a PDT scan. Surely if there was anyone else left alive in the complex, we'd have found them by now. Or they'd have found us.'

'Not necessarily.' Gorman's reply was polite without being deferential. Technically Burke was along on the expedition as an observer for the Company, to look after its financial interests. His employer was paying for this little holiday excursion in tandem with the colonial administration, but what authority he had was largely unwritten. He could give advice but not orders. This was a military expedition, and Gorman was in charge. On paper Burke was his equal. The reality was very different.

'Someone could be alive but unable to move. Injured, or maybe trapped inside a damaged building. Sure the scan's a long shot, but procedure demands it. We have to run the check.' He turned to the comtech. 'Everything functioning properly, Hudson?'

'If there's anyone alive within a couple of kilometres of base central, we'll read it out here.' He tapped the screen. 'So far I've got zip except for the kid.'

Wierzbowski offered a comment from the far side of the room. 'Don't PDTs keep broadcasting if the owner dies?'

'Not these new ones.' Dietrich was sorting through her instruments. 'They're partly powered by the body's own electrical field. If the owner fades out, so does the signal. A stiff's electrical capacitance is nil. That's the only drawback to using the body as a battery.'

'No kidding?' Hudson spared the comely medtech a glance 'How can you tell if somebody's AC or DC?'

'No problem in your case, Hudson.' She snapped her medica satchel shut. 'Clear case of insufficient current.'

It was easier to find another clean cloth than to try to scrub out the first one. Ripley was working on the girl's small hands now excavating dirt from between the fingers and beneath the nails Pink skin emerged from behind a mask of dark grime. As she cleaned, she kept up a steady stream of reassuring chatter.

'I don't know how you managed to stay alive with everybody else gone away, but you're one brave kid, Rebecca.'

A sound new to Ripley's ears, barely audible. 'N-newt.'

Ripley tensed and looked away so her excitement wouldn't show. She kept moving the washcloth as she leaned closer. 'I'm sorry, kid, I didn't hear you. Sometimes my hearing's not so good. What did you say?'

'Newt. My n-name's Newt. That's what everybody calls me Nobody calls me Rebecca except my brother.'

Ripley was finishing off the second hand. If she didn't respond, the girl might lapse back into silence. At the same time she had to be careful not to say anything that might upset her. Keep it casual and don't ask any questions.

'Well, Newt it is, then. My name's Ripley— and people cal me Ripley. You can call me anything you like, though.' When no reply was forthcoming from the girl, Ripley lifted the smal hand she'd just finished cleaning and gave it a formal shake.

'Pleased to meet you, Newt.' She pointed at the disembodied doll head that the girl still clutched fiercely in one hand. 'And who is that? Does she have a name? I bet she does. Every dol has a name. When I was your age, I had lots of dolls, and every one of them had a name. Otherwise, how can you tell them apart?'

Newt glanced down at the plastic sphere with its vacant glassy eyes. 'Casey. She's my only friend.'

'What about me?'

The girl looked at her so sharply that Ripley was taken aback. The assurance in Newt's eyes bespoke a hardness that was anything but childish. Her tone was flat, neutral.

'I don't want you for a friend.'

Ripley tried to conceal her surprise. 'Why not?'

'Because you'll be gone soon, like the others. Like everybody.' She gazed down at the doll head. 'Casey's okay She'll stay with me. But you'll go away. You'll be dead and you'll leave me alone.'

There was no anger in that childish declamation, no sense of accusation or betrayal. It was delivered coolly and with complete assurance, as though the event had already occurred It was not a prediction, but rather a statement of fact soon to take place. It chilled Ripley's blood and frightened her more than anything that had happened since the dropship had departed the safety of the orbiting Sulaco.

'Oh, Newt. Your mom and dad went away like that, didn't they? You just don't want to talk about it.' The girl nodded, eyes downcast, staring at her knees. Her fingers were white around the doll head. 'They'd be here if they could, honey,' Ripley told her solemnly. 'I know they would.'

'They're dead. That's why they can't come see me anymore They're dead like everybody else.' This delivered with a cold certainty that was terrifying to see in so small a child.

'Maybe not. How can you be sure?'

Newt raised her eyes and stared straight at Ripley. Smal children do not look adults in the eye like that, but Newt was a child in stature only. 'I'm sure. They're dead! They're dead, and soon you'll be dead, and then Casey and I'll be alone again.'

Ripley didn't look away and she didn't smile. She knew this girl could see straight through anything remotely phony 'Newt. Look at me, Newt. I'm not going away. I'm not going to leave you and I'm not going to be dead. I promise. I'm going to stay around. I'll be with you as long as you want me to.'

The girl's eyes remained downcast. Ripley could see her struggling with herself, wanting to believe what she'd just heard trying to believe. After a while she looked up again.

'You promise?'

'Cross my heart.' Ripley performed the childish gesture.

'And hope to die?'

Now Ripley did smile, grimly. 'And hope to die.'

Girl and woman regarded one another. Newt's eyes began to brim, and her lower lip to tremble. Slowly the tension fled from her small body, and the indifferent mask she'd pulled across her face was replaced by something much more natural: the look of a frightened child. She threw both arms around Ripley's neck and began to sob. Ripley could feel the tears streaming down the newly washed cheeks, soaking her own neck. She ignored them rocking the girl back and forth in her arms, whispering soothing nothings to her.

She closed her own eyes against the tears and the fear and lingering sensation of death that permeated Hadley Operations Central and hoped that the promise she'd just made could be kept.

The breakthrough with the girl was matched by another in Operations as Hudson let out a triumphant whoop. 'Hah! Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen! Found 'em. Give old Hudson a decent machine and he'll turn up your money, your secrets, and your long-lost cousin Jed.' He rewarded the control console with an affectionate whack. 'This baby's been battered, but she can still play ball.'

Gorman leaned over the comtech's shoulder. 'What kind of shape are they in?'

'Unknown. These colonial PDTs are long on signal and short on details. But it looks like all of them.'

'Where?'

'Over at the atmosphere processing station.' Hudson studied the schematic. 'Sublevel C under the south part of the complex.' He tapped the screen. 'This charmer's a sweetheart when it comes to location.'

Everyone in Operations had clustered around the comtech for a look at the monitor. Hudson froze the colony scan and enlarged one portion. In the centre of the processing station's schematic a cluster of glowing blue dots pulsed like deep-sea crustaceans.

Hicks grunted as he stared at the screen. 'Looks like a town meeting.'

'Wonder why they all went over there?' Dietrich mused aloud. 'I thought we'd decided that this was where they made their last stand?'

'Maybe they were able to make a break for it and secure themselves in a better place.' Gorman turned away, brisk and professional. 'Remember, the processing station still has ful power. That'd be worth a lot. Let's saddle up and find out.'

'Awright, let's go, girls.' Apone was slipping his pack over his shoulders. Operations became a hive of activity. 'They ain't payin' us by the hour.' He glanced at Hudson. 'How do we get over there?'

The comtech adjusted the screen, reducing the magnification. An overview of the colony appeared on the monitor 'There's one small service corridor. It's a pretty good hike Sarge.'

Apone looked to Gorman, waiting for orders. 'I don't know about you, Sergeant,' the lieutenant told him, 'but I'm not fond of long, narrow corridors. And I'd like for everyone to be fresh when we arrive. I'd also like to have the APC's armament backing us up when we go in there.'

'My thoughts exactly, sir.' The sergeant looked relieved He'd been ready to suggest and argue and was glad that neither was going to be necessary. A couple of the troops nodded and looked satisfied. Gorman might be inexperienced in the field, but at least he wasn't a fool.

Hicks yelled back toward the small ready room. 'Hey Ripley, we're going for a ride in the country. You coming?'

'We're both coming.' A few looks of surprise greeted her as she led the girl out of the back room. 'This is Newt. Newt, these are my friends. They're your friends too.'

The girl simply nodded, unwilling to extend that privilege beyond Ripley as yet. A couple of the soldiers nodded to the child as they shouldered their equipment. Burke smiled encouragingly at her. Gorman looked surprised.

Newt looked up at her live friend, still clutching the disembodied doll head tightly in her right hand. 'Where are we going?'

'To a safe place. Soon.'

Newt almost smiled.

The atmosphere in the APC during the ride from colony Operations to the processing station was more subdued than it had been when they'd first roared out of the dropship. The universal devastation; the hollow, wounded buildings; and the unmistakable evidence of hard fighting had put a damper on the Marines' initial high spirits.

It was clear that the cause of the colony's interrupted communications with Earth had nothing to do with its relay satellite or base instrumentation. It had to do with Ripley's critter. The colonists had ceased communicating because something had compelled them to do so. If Ripley was to be believed, that something was still hanging around Undoubtedly the little girl was a storehouse of information on the subject, but no one tried to press questions on her Dietrich's orders. The child's recovery was still too fragile to jeopardize with traumatizing inquiries. So as they rode along in the APC they had to fill in the gaps in Ripley's library disks with their imaginations. Soldiers have active imaginations.

Wierzbowski drove the personnel carrier across the twilight landscape, traversing a causeway that connected the rest of the colony complex to the atmosphere-processing station a kilometre away. Wind tore at the massive vehicle but could not sway it. The APC was designed for comfortable travel in winds up to three hundred kph. A typical Acheronian gale didn't bother it. Behind it, the dropship had settled to ground at the landing field, awaiting the soldiers' return. Ahead, the conical tower of the massive processing unit glowed with a spectra light as it continued with its business of terraforming Acheron's inhospitable atmosphere.

Ripley and Newt sat side by side just aft of the driver's cab Wierzbowski kept his attention on his driving. Within the comparative safety of the heavily armoured vehicle the girl gradually grew more voluble. Though there were at least a dozen questions Ripley badly wanted to ask her, she just sat patiently and listened, letting her charge ramble on Occasionally Newt would offer the answer to an unasked question, anyway. Like now.

'I was best at the game.' She hugged the doll head and stared at the opposite wall. 'I knew the whole maze.'

'The "maze"?'Ripley thought back to where they'd found her. 'You mean the air-duct system?'

'Yeah, you know,' she replied proudly. 'And not just the air ducts. I could even get into tunnels that were full of wires and stuff. In the walls, under the floor. I could get into anywhere. I was the ace. I could hide better than anybody. They all said I was cheating because I was smaller than everybody else, but it wasn't 'cause I was smaller. I was just smarter, that's all. And I've got a real good memory. I could remember anyplace I'd been before.'

'You're really something, ace.' The girl looked pleased Ripley's gaze shifted forward. Through the windshield the processing station loomed directly ahead.

It was an unbeautiful structure, strictly utilitarian in design Its multitude of pipes and chambers and conduits had been scoured and pitted by decades of wind-blown rock and sand. It was as efficient as it was ugly. Working around the clock for years on end, it and its sister stations scattered around the planet would break down the components of Acheron's atmosphere, scrub them clean, add to them, and eventually produce a pleasant biosphere equipped with a balmy, homelike climate. A great deal of beauty to spring forth from so much ugliness.

The monolithic metal mass towered over the armoured personnel carrier as Wierzbowski braked to a stop across from the main entryway. Led by Hicks and Apone, the waiting troopers deployed in front of the oversize door. Up close to the complex the thrum of heavy machinery filled their ears, rising above the steady whistle of the wind. The well-built machinery continued to do its job even in the absence of its human masters.

Hudson was first to the entrance and ran his fingers over the door controls like a locksmith casing his next crack.

'Surprise, chiluns. Everything works.' He thumbed a single button, and the heavy barrier slid aside to reveal an interior walkway. Off to the right a concrete ramp led downward.

'Which way, sir?' Apone inquired.

'Take the ramp,' Gorman instructed them from inside the APC. 'There'll be another at the bottom. Take it down to C-level.'

'Check.' The sergeant gestured at his troops. 'Drake, take point. The rest of you follow by twos. Let's go.'

Hudson hesitated at the control panel. 'What about the door?'

'There's nobody here. Leave it open.'

They started down the broad ramp into the guts of the station. Light filtered down from above, slanting through floors and catwalks fashioned of steel mesh, bending around conduits ranked side by side like organ pipes. They had their suit lights switched on, anyway. Machinery pounded steadily around them as they descended.

The multiple views provided by their suit cameras bounced and swayed as they walked, making viewing difficult for those watching the monitors inside the APC. Eventually the floor levelled out and the images steadied. Multiple lenses revealed a floor overflowing with heavy cylinders and conduits, stacks of plastic crates, and tall metal bottles.

'B-level.' Gorman addressed the operations bay pickup 'They're on the next one down. Try to take it a little slower. It's hard to make anything out when you're moving fast on a downslope.'

Dietrich turned to Frost. 'Maybe he wants us to fly? That way the picture wouldn't bounce.'

'How about if I carry you instead?' Hudson called back to her.

'How about if I throw you over the railing?' she responded 'Picture would be steady that way, too, until you hit bottom.'

'Shut up back there,' Apone growled as they swung around a turn in the descending rampway. Hudson and the rest obliged.

In the Operations bay Ripley peered over Gorman's right shoulder, and Burke around the other, while Newt tried to squeeze in from behind. Despite all the video wizardry the lieutenant could command, none of the individual suit cameras provided a clear picture of what the troops were seeing.

'Try the low end gain,' Burke suggested.

'I did that first thing, Mr. Burke. There's an awful lot of interference down there. The deeper they go, the more junk their signals have to get through, and those suit units don't put out much power. What's an atmosphere processing station's interior built out of, anyway?'

'Carbon-fibre composites and silica blends up top wherever possible, for strength and lightness. A lot of metallic glass in the partitions. Foundations and sublevels don't have to be so fancy. Concrete and steel floors with a lot of titanium alloy thrown in.'

Gorman was unable to contain his frustration as he fiddled futilely with his instruments. 'If the emergency power was out and the station shut down, I'd be getting clearer reception, but then they'd be advancing with nothing but suit lights to guide them. It's a trade-off.' He shook his head as he studied the blurred images and leaned toward the pickup.

'We're not making that out too well ahead of you. What is it?'

Static garbled Hudson's voice as well as the view provided by his camera. 'You tell me. I only work here.'

The lieutenant looked back at Burke. 'Your people build that?'

The Company rep leaned toward the row of monitors squinting at the dim images being relayed back from the bowels of the atmosphere-processing station.

'Hell, no.'

'Then you don't know what it is?'

'I've never seen anything like it in my life.'

'Could the colonists have added it?'

Burke continued to stare, finally shook his head. 'If they did they improvised it. That didn't come out of any station construction manual.'

Something had been added to the latticework of pipes and conduits that crisscrossed the lowest level of the processing station. There was no question that it was the result of design and purpose, not some unknown industrial accident. Visibly damp and lustrous in spots, the peculiar material that had been used to construct the addition resembled a solidified liquid resin or glue. In places light penetrated the material to a depth of several centimetres, revealing a complex internal structure At other locations the substance was opaque. What little colour it displayed was muted: greens and grays, and here and there a touch of some darker green.

Intricate chambers ranged in size from half a metre in diameter to a dozen metres across, all interconnected by strips of fragile-looking webwork that on closer inspection turned out to be about as fragile as steel cable. Tunnels led off deeper into the maze while peculiar conical pits dead-ended in the floor. So precisely did the added material blend with the existing machinery that it was difficult to tell where human handiwork ended and something of an entirely different nature began. In places the addition almost mimicked existing station equipment, though whether it was imitation with a purpose or merely blind duplication, no one could tell.

The whole gleaming complex extended as far back into C-level as the trooper's cameras could penetrate. Although it filled every available empty space, the epoxy-like incrustation did not appear to have in any way impaired the functioning of the station. It continued to rumble on, having its way with Acheron's air, unaffected by the heteromorphic chambering that filled much of its lower level.

Of them all, only Ripley had some idea of what the troopers had stumbled across, and she was momentarily too numb with horrid fascination to explain. She could only stare and remember.

Gorman happened to glance back long enough to catch the expression on her face. 'What is it?'

'I don't know.'

'You know something, which is more than any of the rest of us. Come on, Ripley. Give. Right now I'd pay a hundred credits for an informed guess.'

'I really don't know. I think I've seen something like it once before, but I'm not sure. It's different, somehow. More elaborate and—'

'Let me know when your brain starts working again. Disappointed, the lieutenant turned back to the mike. 'Proceed with your advance, Sergeant.'

The troopers resumed their march, their suit lights shining on the vitreous walls surrounding them. The deeper they went into the maze, the more it took on the appearance of having been grown or secreted rather than built. The labyrinth looked like the interior of a gigantic organ or bone. Not a human organ, not a human bone.

Whatever else its purpose, the addition served to concentrate waste heat from the processor's fusion plant. Steam from dripping water formed puddles on the floor and hissed around them. Factory respiration.

'It's opening up a little just ahead.' Hicks panned his camera around. The troop was entering a large, domed chamber. The walls abruptly changed in character and appearance. It was a testimony to their training that not one of the troopers broke down on the spot.

Ripley muttered, 'Oh, God.' Burke mumbled a shocked curse.

Cameras and suit lights illuminated the chamber. Instead of the smooth, curving walls they'd passed earlier, these were rough and uneven. They formed a rigged bas-relief composed of detritus gathered from the town: furniture, wiring, solid and fluid-state components, bits of broken machinery, persona effects, torn clothing, human bones and skulls, all fused together with that omnipresent, translucent, epoxy-like resin.

Hudson reached out to run a gloved hand along one wall casually caressing a cluster of human ribs. He picked at the resinous ooze, barely scratching it.

'Ever see anything like this stuff before?'

'Not me.' Hicks would have spat if he'd had room. 'I'm not a chemist.'

Dietrich was expected to render an opinion and did so 'Looks like some kind of secreted glue. Your bad guys spit this stuff out or what, Ripley?'

'I—I don't know how its manufactured, but I've seen it before, on a much smaller scale.'

Gorman pursed his lips, analysis taking over from the initial shock. 'Looks like they ripped apart the colony for building materials.' He indicated the view offered by Hicks's screen 'There's a whole stack of blank storage disks imbedded there.'

'And portable power cells.' Burke gestured toward another of the individual monitors. 'Expensive stuff. Tore it all apart.'

'And the colonists,' Ripley pointed out, 'when they were done with them.' She turned to look down at the sombre-visaged little girl standing next to her.

'Newt, you'd better go sit up front. Go on.' She nodded and obediently headed for the driver's cab.

The steam on C-level intensified as the troops moved stil deeper into the chamber. It was accompanied by a corresponding increase in temperature.

'Hotter'n a furnace in here,' Frost grumbled.

'Yeah,' Hudson agreed sarcastically, 'but it's a dry heat.'

Ripley looked to her left. Burke and Gorman stayed intent on the videoscreens. To the lieutenant's left was a small monitor that showed a graphic readout of the station's ground plan.

'They're right under the primary heat exchangers.'

'Yeah.' A fascinated Burke was unable to take his eyes off the view being relayed by Apone's camera. 'Maybe the organisms like the heat. That's why they built—'

'That's not what I mean. Gorman, if your people have to use their weapons in there, they'll rupture the cooling system.'

Burke abruptly realized what Ripley was driving at. 'She's right.'

'So?' asked the lieutenant.

'So,' she continued, 'that releases the freon and/or the water that's been condensed out of the air for cooling purposes.'

'Fine.' He tapped the screens. 'It'll cool everybody off.'

'It'll do more than cool them off.'

'For instance?'

'Fusion containment shuts down.'

'So? So? Why didn't she get to the point? Didn't the woman realize that he was trying to direct a search-and-clear expedition here'

'We're talking thermonuclear explosion.'

That made Gorman sit back and think. He weighed his options. His decision was made easier by the fact that he didn't have any. 'Apone, collect rifle magazines from everybody. We can't have any firing in there.'

Apone wasn't the only one who overheard the order. The troopers eyed one another with a combination of disbelief and dismay.

'Is he crazy?' Wierzbowski clutched his rifle protectively to his ribs, as if daring Gorman to come down and disarm it personally.

Hudson all but growled. 'What're we supposed to use, man? Harsh language?' He spoke into his headset. 'Hey, Lieutenant you want maybe we should try judo? What if they ain't got any arms?'

'They've got arms,' Ripley assured him tightly.

'You're not going in naked, Hudson,' Gorman told him 'You've got other weapons you can use.'

'Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea,' Dietrich muttered.

'What, using alternates?' Wierzbowski muttered.

'No. Hudson going in naked. No living thing could stand the shock.'

'Screw you, Dietrich,' the comtech shot back.

'Not a chance.' With a sigh the medtech yanked the fully charged magazine from her rifle.

'Flame units only.' Gorman's tone was no-nonsense. 'I want all rifles slung.'

'You heard the lieutenant.' Apone began circulating among them, collecting magazines. 'Pull 'em out.'

One by one the rifles were rendered harmless. Vasquez turned over the power packs for her smartgun with great reluctance. Three of the troopers carried portable incinerator units in addition to their penetration weapons. These were unlimbered, warmed up, and checked. Unnoticed by Apone or any of her colleagues, Vasquez slipped a spare power cell from the back of her pants and slipped it into her smartgun. As soon as the sergeant's eyes and all suit cameras were off them, Drake did likewise. The two smartgun operators exchanged a grim wink.

Hicks had no one to wink at and no smartgun to jimmy with What he did have was a cylindrical sheath attached to the inner lining of his battle harness. Unzipping his torso armour, he opened the sheath to reveal the gunmetal-gray twin barrels of an antique pump twelve-gauge shotgun with a sawed-off butt stock. As Hudson looked on with professional interest the corporal resealed his armour, clicked back the stock of the well-maintained relic, and chambered a round.

'Where'd you get that, Hicks? When I saw that bulge, I thought you were smuggling liquor, except that'd be out of character for you. Steal it from a museum?'

'Been in my family for a long time. Cute, isn't it?'

'Some family. Can it do anything?'

Hicks showed him a single shell. 'Not your standard militaryissue high-velocity armour-piercing round, but you don't want it going off in your face, either.' He kept his voice down. 'I always keep this handy. For close encounters. I don't think it'l penetrate anything far enough to set off any mushrooms.'

'Yeah, real cute.' Hudson favoured the sawed-off with a last admiring look. 'You're a traditionalist, Hicks.'

The corporal smiled thinly. 'It's my tender nature.'

Apone's voice carried back to them from just ahead. 'Let's move. Hicks, since you seem to like it back there, you take rear guard.'

'My pleasure, Sarge.' The corporal rested the old shotgun against his right shoulder, balancing it easily with one hand, his finger light on the heavy trigger. Hudson grinned appreciatively, gave Hicks the high sign, and jogged forward to take up his assigned position near the point.

The air was thick, and their lights were diffused by the roiling steam. Hudson felt as though they were advancing through a steel-and-plastic jungle.

Gorman's voice echoed in his headset. 'Any movement?' The lieutenant sounded faint and far away, even though the comtech knew he was only a couple of levels above and just outside the entrance to the processing station. He kept his eyes on his tracker as he advanced.

'Hudson here, sir. Nothing so far. Zip. The only thing moving around down here is the air.'

He turned a corner and glanced up from the miniature readouts. What he saw made him forget the tracker, forget his rifle, forget everything.

Another encrusted wall lay directly in front of them. It was marred by bulges and ripples and had been sculpted by some unknown, inhuman hand, a teratogenic version of Rodin's Gates of Hell. Here were the missing colonists, entombed alive in the same epoxy-like resin that had been used to construct the latticework and tunnels, chambers and pits, and had transformed the lowest level of the processing station into something out of a xenopsychotic nightmare.

Each had been cocooned in the wall without regard for human comfort. Arms and legs had been grotesquely twisted broken when necessary in order to make the unfortunate victim fit properly into the alien scheme and design. Heads lolled at unnatural angles. Many of the bodies had been reduced to desiccated lumps of bone from which the flesh and skin had decayed. Others had been cleaned to the naked bone They were the fortunate ones who had been granted the gift o death. Every corpse had one thing in common, no matter where it was situated or how it had been placed in the wall: the rib cages had been bent outward, as though the sternum had exploded from behind.

The troopers moved slowly into the embryo chamber. Their expressions were grim. No one said anything. There wasn't one among them who hadn't laughed at death, but this was worse than death. This was obscene.

Dietrich approached the still-intact figure of a woman. The body was ghostly white, drained. The eyelids fluttered and opened as the woman sensed movement, a presence something. Madness dwelt within. The figure spoke in a hollow, sepulchral voice, a whisper conjured up out of desperation. Trying to hear, Dietrich leaned closer.

'Please—kill me.'

Wide-eyed, the medtech stumbled back. Within the safety of the APC Ripley could only stare helplessly, biting down hard on the knuckles of her left hand. She knew what was coming knew what prompted the woman's ultimate request, just as she knew that neither she nor anyone else could do anything except comply. The sound of somebody retching came over the Operations bay speakers. Nobody made jokes about that either.

The woman imprisoned in the wall began to convulse Somewhere she summoned up the energy to scream, a steady sawing shriek of mindless agony. Ripley took a step toward the nearest mike, wanting to warn the troopers of what was coming but unable to make her throat work.

It wasn't necessary. They'd studied the research disks she'd prepared for them.

'Flamethrower!' Apone snapped. 'Move!'

Frost handed his incinerator to the sergeant, stepped aside As Apone took possession, the woman's chest erupted in a spray of blood. From the cavity thus formed, a small fanged skull emerged, hissing viciously.

Apone's finger jerked the trigger of the flamethrower. The two other soldiers who carried similar devices imitated his action. Heat and light filled the chamber, searing the wall and obliterating the screaming horror it contained. Cocoons and their contents melted and ran like translucent taffy. A deafening screeching echoed in their ears as they worked the fire over the entire end of the room. What wasn't carbonized by the intense heat melted. The wall puddled and ran, pooling around their boots like molten plastic. But it didn't smell like plastic. It gave off a thick, organic stench.

Everyone in the chamber was intent on the wall and the flamethrowers. No one saw a section of another wall twitch.