Aliens

VIII

The alien had been lying dormant, prone in a pocket that blended in perfectly with the rest of the room. Slowly it emerged from its resting niche. Smoke from burning cocoons and other organic matter billowed roofward, reducing visibility in the chamber to near zero.

Something made Hudson glance briefly at his tracker. His pupils expanded, and he whirled to shout a warning 'Movement! I've got movement.'

'Position?' inquired Apone sharply.

'Can't lock up. It's too tight in here, and there's too many other bodies.'

An edge crept into the master sergeant's voice. 'Don't tell me that. Talk to me, Hudson. Where is it?'

The comtech struggled to refine the tracker's information That was the trouble with these field units: They were tough but imprecise.

'Uh, seems to be in front and behind.'

In the Operations bay of the APC, Gorman frantically adjusted gain and sharpness controls on individual monitors 'We can't see anything back here, Apone. What's going on?'

Ripley knew what was going on. Knew what was coming. She could sense it, even if they couldn't see it, like a wave rushing a black sand beach at night. She found her voice and the mike simultaneously.

'Pull your team out, Gorman. Get them out of there now.'

The lieutenant spared her an irritated glare. 'Don't give me orders, lady. I know what I'm doing.'

'Maybe, but you don't know what's being done.'

Down on C-level the walls and ceiling of the alien chamber were coming to life. Biomechanical fingers extended talons that could tear metal. Slime-lubricated jaws began to flex pistoning silently as their owners awoke. Uncertain movements were glimpsed dimly through smoke and steam by the nervous human intruders.

Apone found himself starting to back up. 'Go to infrared Look sharp, people!' Visors were snapped into place. On their smooth, transparent insides images began to materialize nightmare silhouettes moving in ghostly silence through the drifting mist.

'Multiple signals,' Hudson declared, 'all around. Closing from all directions.'

Dietrich's nerves snapped, and she whirled to retreat. As she turned, something tall and immensely powerful loomed above the smoke to wrap long arms around her. Limbs like metal bars locked across her chest and contracted. The medtech screamed, and her finger tensed reflexively on the trigger of her flamethrower. A jet of flame engulfed Frost, turning him into a blindly stumbling bipedal torch. His shriek echoed through everyone's headset.

Apone pivoted, unable to see anything in the dense atmosphere and poor light but able to hear entirely too much The heat from the cooling exchangers on the level above distorted the imaging ability of the troopers' infrared visors.

In the APC, Gorman could only stare as Frost's monitor went to black. At the same time his bioreadouts flattened, hills and valleys signifying life being replaced by grim, straight lines. On the remaining monitor screens, images and outlines bobbed and panned confusedly. Blasts of glowing napalm from the remaining operative flamethrowers combined to overload the light-sensing ability of suit cameras, flaring what images they did provide.

In the midst of chaos and confusion Vasquez and Drake found each other. High-tech harpy nodded knowingly to new wave Neanderthal as she slammed her sequestered magazine back in place.

'Let's rock,' she said curtly.

Standing back to back, they opened up simultaneously with their smartguns, laying down two arcs of fire like welders sealing the skin of a spaceship. In the confined chamber the din from the two heavy weapons was overpowering. To the operators of the smartguns the thunder was a Bach fugue and Grimoire stanthisizer all rolled into one.

Gorman's voice echoed in their ears, barely audible over the roar of battle. 'Who's firing? I ordered a hold on heavy fire!'

Vasquez reached up just long enough to rip away her headset, her eyes and attention riveted on the smartgun's targeting screen. Feet, hands, eyes, and body became extensions of the weapon, all dancing and spinning in unison Thunder, lightning, smoke, and screams filled the chamber, a little slice of Armageddon on C-level. A great calmness flowed through her.

Surely Heaven couldn't be any better than this.

Ripley flinched as another scream reverberated through the Operations bay speakers. Wierzbowski's suit camera crumbled followed by the immediate flattening of his biomonitors. Her fingers clenched, the nails digging into the palms. She'd liked Wierzbowski.

What was she doing here, anyway? Why wasn't she back home, poor and unlicensed, but safe in her little apartment surrounded by Jones and ordinary people and common sense? Why had she voluntarily sought the company of nightmares? Out of altruism? Because she'd suspected all along what had been responsible for the break in communications between Acheron and Earth? Or because she wanted a lousy flight certificate back?

Down in the depths of the processing station, frantic panicky voices ran into one another on the single persona communications frequency. Headset components sorted sense from the babble. She recognized Hudson's above everyone else's. The comtech's unsophisticated pragmatism shone through the breakdown in tactics.

'Let's get out of here!'

She heard Hicks yelling at someone else. The corporal sounded more frustrated than anything else. 'Not that tunnel the other one!'

'You sure?' Crowe's picture swung crazily as he ducked something unseen, the view provided by his suit camera a wild blur full of smoke, haze, and biomechanical silhouettes. 'Watch it—behind you. Move, will you!'

Gorman's hands slowed. Something besides button pushing was required now, and Ripley could see from the ashen expression that had come over the lieutenant's face that he didn't have it.

'Get them out of there!' she screamed at him. 'Do it now!'

'Shut up.' He was gulping air like a grouper, studying his readouts. Everything was unraveling, his careful plan of advance coming apart on the remaining monitors too fast for him to think it through. Too fast. 'Just shut up!'

The groan of metal being ripped apart sounded over Crowe's headset pickup as his telemetry went black. Gorman stuttered something incomprehensible, trying to keep control of himself even as he was losing control of the situation.

'Uh, Apone, I want you to lay down a suppressing fire with the incinerators and fall back by squads to the APC. Over.'

The sergeant's distant reply was distorted by static, the roar of the flamethrowers, and the rapid fire stutter of the smartguns.

'Say again? All after incinerators?'

'I said. ' Gorman repeated his instructions. It didn't matter if anyone heard them. The men and women trapped in the cocoon chamber had time only to react, not to listen.

Only Apone fiddled with his headset, trying to make sense of the garbled orders. Gorman's voice was distorted beyond recognition. The headsets were designed to operate and deliver a clear signal under any conditions, including under water, but there was something happening here that hadn't been anticipated by the communications equipment designers something that couldn't have been foreseen by anyone because it hadn't been encountered before.

Someone screamed behind the sergeant. Forget Gorman. He switched the headset over to straight intersuit frequency 'Dietrich? Crowe? Sound off! Wierzbowski, where are you?'

Movement to his left. He whirled and came within a millimetre of blowing Hudson's head off. The comtech's eyes were wild. He was teetering on the edge of sanity and barely recognized the sergeant. No bold assertions now; all false bravado fled. He was terrified out of his skin and made no effort to conceal the fact.

'We're getting juked! We're gonna die in here!'

Apone passed him a rifle magazine. The comtech slapped it home, trying to look every which way at once. 'Feel better? Apone asked him.

'Yeah, right. Right!' Gratefully the comtech chambered a pulse-rifle round. 'Forget the heat exchanger.' He sensed movement, turned, and fired. The slight recoil imparted by the weapon travelled up his arm to restore a little of his lost confidence.

Off to their right, Vasquez was laying down an uninterrupted field of fire, destroying everything not human that came within a metre of her—be it dead, alive, or part of the processing plant's machinery. She looked out of control Apone knew better. If she was out of control, they'd all be dead by now.

Hicks ran toward her. Pivoting smoothly, she let loose a long burst from the heavy weapon. The corporal ducked as the smartgun's barrel swung toward his face, stumbling clear as the nightmarish figure stalking him was catapulted backward by Vasquez's blast. Biomechanical fingers had been centimetres from his neck.

Within the APC, Apone's monitor suddenly spun crazily and went dark. Gorman stared at it, as though by doing so, he could will it back to life, along with the man it represented.

'I told them to fall back.' His tone was distant, disbelieving 'They must not have heard the order.'

Ripley shoved her face into his, saw the dazed, baffled expression. 'They're cut off in there! Do something!'

He looked up at her slowly. His lips worked, but the mumble they produced was unintelligible. He was shaking his head slightly.

No help from that quarter. The lieutenant was out of it. Burke had backed up against the opposite wall, as though by putting distance between himself and the images on the remaining active monitors he could somehow remove himself from the battle that was raging in the bowels of the processing station.

There was only one thing that would do the surviving soldiers any good now, and that was some kind of immediate help Gorman wasn't going to do anything about it, and Burke couldn't. So that left Jones's favourite human.

If the cat had been present and capable of taking action on Ripley's behalf, she knew what he would have done: turned the armoured personnel carrier around and driven that sucker at top speed for the landing field. Piled into the dropship, lifted back to the Sulaco, slipped into hypersleep, and gone home. Not likely anyone in colonial administration would dispute her report this time. Not with a shell-shocked Gorman and halfcomatose Burke to back her up. Not with the recordings automatically stored by the APC's computer taken directly from the soldier's suit cameras to flash in the faces of those smug content Company representatives.

Get out, go home, get away, the voice inside her skull screamed at her. You've got the proof you came for. The colony's kaput, one survivor, the others dead or worse than dead. Go back to Earth and come back with an army next time not a platoon. Atmosphere fliers for air cover. Heavy weapons Level the place if they have to, but let 'em do it without you.

There was only one problem with that comforting line of reasoning. Leaving now would mean abandoning Vasquez and Hudson and Hicks and everyone else still alive down in C-level to the tender ministrations of the aliens. If they were lucky they would die. If they were not, they'd end up cemented into a cocoon wall as replacement for the still-living host colonists they'd mercifully carbonized.

She couldn't do that and live with it. She'd see their faces and hear their screams every time she rested her head on a pillow If she fled, she'd be swapping the immediate nightmare for hundreds later on. A bad trade. One more time the numbers were against her.

She was terrified of what she had to do, but the anger that had been building inside her at Gorman's ineffectiveness and at the Company for sending her out here with an inexperienced field officer and less than a dozen troops (to save money, no doubt) helped drive her past the paralyzed lieutenant toward the APC's cockpit.

The sole survivor of Hadley Colony awaited her with a solemn stare.

'Newt, get in the back and put your seat belt on.'

'You're going after the others, aren't you?'

She paused as she was strapping herself into the driver's chair. 'I have to. There are still people alive down there, and they need help. You understand that, don't you?'

The girl nodded. She understood completely. As Ripley clicked home the latches on the driver's harness, the girl raced back down the aisle.

The warm glow of instruments set in the hold mode greeted Ripley as she turned to the controls. Gorman and Burke might be incapable of reaction, but no such psychological restraints inhibited the APC's movements. She started slapping switches and buttons, grateful now for the time spent during the past year operating all sorts of heavy loading and transport equipment out in Portside. The oversize turbocharged engine raced reassuringly, and the personnel carrier shook, eager to move out.

The vibration from the engine was enough to shock Gorman back to the real world. He leaned back in his chair and shouted forward. 'Ripley, what are you doing?'

Easy to ignore him, more important to concentrate on the controls. She slammed the massive vehicle into gear. Drive wheels spun on damp ground as the APC lurched toward the gaping entrance to the station.

Smoke was pouring out of the complex. The big armoured wheels skidded slightly on the damp pavement as she wrenched the machine sideways and sent it hurtling down the wide, descending rampway. The ramp accommodated the APC with room to spare. It had been designed to admit big earthmovers and service vehicles. Colonial construction was typically overbuilt. Even so, the roadway was depressed by the weight of the APC's armour, but no cracks appeared in its wake as Ripley sent it racing downward. Her hands hammered the controls of the independently powered wheels as she took out some of her anger on the uncomplaining plastic.

Mist and haze obscured the view provided by the externa monitors. She switched to automatic navigation, and the APC kept itself from crashing into the enclosing walls, ranging lasers reading the distance between wheels and obstacles twenty times a second and reporting back to the vehicle's central computer. She maintained speed, knowing that the machine wouldn't let her crash.

Gorman stopped staring at the dimly seen walls rushing by on the Operations bay screens, released his suit harness, and stumbled forward, bouncing off the walls as Ripley sent the APC careening wildly around tight corners.

'What are you doing?'

'What's it look like I'm doing?' She didn't turn to face him absorbed in controlling the carrier.

He put a hand on her shoulder. 'Turn around! That's an order!'

'You can't give me orders, Gorman. I'm a civilian remember?'

'This is a military expedition under military control. As commanding officer, I am ordering you to turn this vehicle around!'

She gritted her teeth, attention focused on the forward viewscreens. 'Go sit on a grenade, Gorman. I'm busy.'

He reached down and tried to pull her out of the chair Burke got both arms around him and pulled him off. She would have thanked the Company rep, but she didn't have the time.

They reached C-level and the big wheels screamed as she sent the APC into a mad turn, simultaneously switching off the automatic navigation system and the ranging lasers. The engine revved as they rumbled forward, tearing away pipes and conduits, equipment modules, and chunks of alien encrustation. She glanced at the control console until she located the external instrumentation she wanted: strobe beacon, siren, running lights. She wiped the entire panel with the palm of her right hand.

The exterior of the APC came alive with sodium-arc lights infrared homing beacons, spinning locater flashers, and the piercing whine of the battle siren. The individual suit monitors were all back in the Operations bay, but she didn't need to see them, zeroing in on the flash of weapons fire just ahead. The lights and roar came from beyond a thick wall of translucent alien resin, the material eerily distributing the light from the guns throughout its substance, giving the cocoon chamber the appearance of a dome pulsing from within.

She nudged the accelerator. The APC smashed through the curving wall like an iron ingot shot from a cannon. Fragments of resin and biomechanical mortar went flying. Huge chunks were crushed beneath the armoured wheels. She wrenched on the wheel, and the personnel carrier pivoted neatly. The rear of the powerful machine swung around and brought down another section of alien wall.

Hicks appeared out of the smoke. He was firing back the way he'd come, holding the big pulse-rifle in one hand while supporting a limping Hudson with the other. Adrenaline muscle, and determination were all that kept the two men going. Ripley looked away from the windshield and back down the APC's central aisle.

'Burke, they're coming!'

A faint reply as he hollered back toward the cockpit: 'I'm on my way! Hang on.'

The Company rep stumbled to the crew access door fumbled with unfamiliar controls until the armoured hatch cycled wide. Following in Hicks's and Hudson's footsteps, the two smartgun operators materialized out of the dense mist They were retreating with precision, side by side, firing and covering the retreat as they fell back on the personnel carrier As Ripley looked on, Drake's gun went empty. Automatically he snapped the release buckles on the smartgun harness. It sloughed away like an old skin. Before it hit the ground, he'd pulled a flamethrower from his back and had brought it into play. The hollow whoosh of napalm mixed with the deep-throated chatter of Vasquez's still operative smartgun.

Hicks reached the APC, put his weapon aside, and all but threw the injured Hudson through the opening. Then he tossed his pulse-rifle after the comtech and cleared the hatch in two strides. Vasquez was still firing as the corporal got both hands under her arms and heaved, pulling her in after him. At the same time she saw a dark, towering silhouette lunge toward Drake from behind, and she changed her field of fire as Hicks was dumping her onto the APC's deck.

A flash of contact lit up an inhuman, frozen grin as the smartgun shells tore apart the alien's thorax. Bright yellow body fluid sprayed in all directions. It splashed across Drake's face and chest. Smoke rose from the staggering body of the smartgun operator as the acid chewed rapidly through flesh and bone. His muscles spasmed, and his flamethrower fired as he toppled backward.

Vasquez and Hicks rolled as a gout of flame slashed through the open crew door, setting portions of the APC's flammable interior ablaze. As Drake fell, Hicks charged the hatch and started to cycle the door. Moving on hands and knees, Vasquez lunged wildly at the opening. The corporal had to leave the controls to grab her. It was a struggle to keep her from plunging outside.

'Drake!' She was screaming, not calm and controlled anymore. 'He's down!'

It took all of Hicks's superior size and strength to wrench her around to face him. 'He's gone! Forget it, Vasquez. He's gone.'

She stared up at him, irrational, her face streaked with soot and grime. 'No. No, he's not! He's. '

Hicks looked back at the APC's other occupants. 'Get her away from here. We've got to get this door closed.' Hudson nodded Together he and Burke dragged the dazed smartgun operator away from the entry hatch. The corporal looked toward the cockpit and raised what was left of his voice. 'Let's go! We're clear back here.'

'Going!' Ripley jammed on the controls and nailed the accelerator. The armoured personnel carrier roared and shuddered as she sent it racing backward up the ramp.

A storage rack broke free, burying Hudson beneath a pile of equipment. Cursing and flailing, he threw the stuff aside indifferent to whether it was marked EMERGENCY RATIONS or EXPLOSIVES.

Hicks turned his attention back to the door, fumbled with the controls. It was nearly shut when two sets of long claws suddenly appeared to slam into the metal flange like a pair of power hammers. From her seat Newt let out a primordial child's scream. The saber-tooth, the giant bear, the boogeyman was at the entrance to the cave, and this time she had no place to hide.

Vasquez stumbled to her feet and joined Hicks and Burke in leaning on the door. Despite their combined efforts, the metal barrier was slowly being wrenched open from the outside. Locks and seals groaned in protest.

Hicks managed to find enough wind to yell at the still numbed Gorman. 'Get on the door!'

The lieutenant heard him and reacted. Reacted by backing away and shaking his head, his eyes wide. Hicks muttered a curse and jammed his shoulder against the latching lever. This freed one hand to pull out the sawed-off twelve-gauge just as a nightmare alien head wedged its way through the opening Outer jaws parted to reveal the piston-like inner throat and penetrating teeth. As slime-covered fangs swung toward him Hicks jammed the muzzle of the shotgun between the gaping demon jaws and pulled the trigger. The explosion of the ancient projectile weapon echoed through the personnel carrier as the shattered skull fell backward, fountaining acid blood. The spray immediately began to eat into the door and deck.

Hicks and Vasquez fell aside, but some of the droplets struck Hudson on the arm. Smoke rose from skin as hissing flesh dissolved. The comtech operator let out a howl and stumbled into the empty seats.

Hicks and Burke slammed the hatch shut and locked it.

Like a runaway comet, the APC rumbled backward up the ramp and slammed into a mass of conduit. Ripley worked on the wheels, spinning the oversize metal rims and ripping free Sparks showered over the vehicle. In the crew quarters behind her, everyone seemed to be yelling simultaneously Extinguishers were unbolted and brought into play on the internal fire. Newt stayed out of the way, sitting silently in her seat as panicky adults ran to and fro around her. She was breathing hard but steadily, eyes alert, watching. None of what was happening was new to her. She'd been through it all before.

Something made a soft metallic thump as it landed on the roof.

Gorman had retreated into a corner to the left of the aisle. He was staring blankly at his frantic companions. Consequently he did not see the small gun hatch, against which he was leaning begin to vibrate. But he felt it when the hatch cover was ripped from its seals. He started to turn, not nearly fast enough, and was snatched through the opening.

There was something at the tip of the alien's tail, something silver-sharp and superfast. It whipped around one leg to bury itself in the lieutenant's shoulder. He screamed. Hicks threw himself into the crew bay fire-control chair and clutched the controls, jabbing contact points and switches with his other hand as the seat motor hummed and swung him around Brightly coloured telltales came to life on the board, adding no cheer to the beleaguered APC's interior but bringing a smile to the corporal's face.

In response to his actions servomotors whirred and a smal turret came to life on the personnel carrier's roof. It spun in a half circle. The alien holding Gorman two-thirds of the way out of the vehicle turned sharply in the direction of the new sound just as twin guns fired in its direction. The heavy shells blew it right off the top of the machine, the impact knocking it clear before the acid in its body began to spill.

Burke dragged the unconscious Gorman back inside while Vasquez hunted for something to plug the opening with.

Trailing fire and smoke, the APC tore up the ramp. Ripley wrestled with the controls as the big vehicle slewed sideways broadsiding a control room outbuilding. Office furniture and splintered sections of wall exploded in all directions, forming a wake of plastic and composite fibre behind the retreating machine.

Almost clear now, almost out. Another minute or two, and if nothing broke down, they'd be free of the station's confines Free to.

An alien arm arced down right in front of her face to smash the shatterproof windshield. Glistening, slime-coated jaws lunged inside. Ripley threw up both arms to shield her face and leaned away. Once before, she'd been this close to perdition. In the shuttle Narcissus, secure in its pilot's seat luring another alien close so that she could blow it out the airlock. But there was no airlock here, no comforting atmosphere suit enclosing her, no tricks left to pull, and no time to think of any.

She tried to crush the brakes underfoot. The big wheels locked up at high speed, screeching over the sound of the chaos outside. She felt herself being thrown forward, her head flying toward those gaping jaws. But her seat harness checked her motion and kept her in the chair.

No such restraints secured the alien. Leaning over the windshield, it was clinging awkwardly to the edge of the roof and not even its inhuman strength could prevent it from being thrown forward. As soon as it landed on the ground she threw the personnel carrier back in gear. It didn't even bump as it trundled over the skeletal body, crushing it beneath its massive weight. Acid squirted over armoured wheels, but the APC's forward movement carried it clear before more than a few inconsequential pits had been eaten in the spinning disks Their movement was not affected.

Darkness ahead. Clean, welcoming darkness. Not a blank falling over her mind but the darkness of a dimly lit world: the surface of Acheron, framed by the walls of the station. A moment later they were through, rumbling over the connecting causeway toward the landing field.

A noise like bolts dropped in a food processor was coming from the rear of the APC. Occasionally a louder clunk could be heard. It was a sound beyond the soothing effects of lubrication, beyond repair. She fiddled with controls and tried to adjust the noise out of existence, but like her recurring nightmares, it refused early dismissal.

Hicks came forward and, gently but firmly, eased her fingers off the accelerator control. Her face was as white as her knuckles. She blinked, glanced back up at him.

'It's okay,' he assured her, 'we're clear. They're all behind us I don't think fighting out in the open suits them. Ease up We're not going much further in this hunk of junk, anyway.'

The grinding noise was overpowering as they slowed. She listened intently as she brought the big vehicle to a halt.

'Don't ask me for an analysis. I'm an operator, not a mechanic.'

Hicks cocked an ear in the direction of the metallic gargling 'Sounds like a blown transaxle. Maybe two. You're just grinding metal. Actually I'm surprised that the underside of this baby isn't lying back on B-level somewhere. They build these things tough.'

'Not tough enough.' That was Burke's voice, filtering up to them from somewhere in the passenger compartment.

'Nobody expected to have to face anything like these creatures. Ever.' Hicks leaned toward the console and rotated an exterior viewer. The APC looked terrible on the outside, a smoking, acid-scarred hulk. It was supposed to be invulnerable. Now it was scrap.

Ripley spun her seat, glanced at the empty one next to her and then turned to stare down the aisle that led back through the personnel carrier.

'Newt. Where's Newt?'

A tug on her pants leg. Not hard, so she didn't jump. Newt was squeezed into the tiny space between the driver's seat and the APC's armoured bulkhead. She was trembling and terrified but alert. No catatonia this time, no withdrawal from reality No reason for an extreme reaction, Ripley knew. Doubtless the girl had been witness to much worse when the aliens had overwhelmed the colony.

Had she been watching the Operations bay monitors when the soldiers had initially penetrated the alien cocoon chamber? Had she seen the face of the woman who had whispered in agony to Dietrich? What if the woman had been. '

But she couldn't have been. If that had been Newt's mother the girl would be beyond catatonia by now. Gone, withdrawn and unreachable, perhaps forever.

'You okay?' Sometimes inanities had to be asked. Besides she wanted, needed, to hear the child respond.

Newt did so with a thumbs-up gesture, still employing selective silence as a defence mechanism. Ripley didn't push her to talk. Keeping quiet while everyone around her was being killed had kept her alive.

'I have to check on the others,' she told the upturned face 'Will you be all right?'

A nod this time, accompanied by a shy little smile that made Ripley swallow hard. She tried to conceal what she was feeling inside, because this wasn't the time or place to break down. They could do that when they were safely back aboard the Sulaco.

'Good. I'll be right back. If you get tired of staying under there, you can come back and join the rest of us, okay?' The smile widened slightly and was followed by a more vigorous nod but the girl stayed put. She still trusted her own instincts more than she trusted any adult. Ripley wasn't offended. She unbuckled herself and headed back down the aisle.

Hudson was standing off to one side inspecting his arm. The fact that he still had an arm showed that he'd only been lightly misted by the alien acid. He was reliving the last twenty minutes of his life, replaying every second over and over in his mind and not believing what he saw there. She could hear him muttering to himself.

'—I don't believe it. It didn't happen. It didn't happen, man.'

Burke tried to have a look at the injured comtech's arm, more curious than sympathetic. Hudson jerked away from the Company rep.

'I'm all right. Leave it!'

Burke pursed his lips, wanting to see but not willing to push 'Better let somebody take a look at it. Can't tell what the side effects are. Might be toxic.'

'Yeah? And if it is, I suppose you're going to check stores and break out an antidote in a couple of minutes, right? Dietrich's the medtech.' He swallowed and his anger faded. 'Was our medtech. Stinking bugs.'

Hicks was bending over the motionless Gorman, checking for a pulse. Ripley joined him.

'Anything?' she asked tightly.

'Heartbeat's slow but steady. He's breathing the same way. It's the same with the rest of his vital signs: slowed down but regular He's alive. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was sleeping, but it ain't sleep. I think he's paralyzed.'

Vasquez pushed both of them aside and grabbed the unconscious lieutenant by his collar. She was too furious to cry 'He's dead is what he is!' She hauled the upper half o Gorman's body upright with one hand and drew back the other in a fist, screaming in his face.

'Wake up, pendejo! Wake up. I'm gonna kill you, you useless waste!'

Hicks inserted his bulk between her and the frozen lieutenant. Same soft voice employed, but with a slight edge to it now. Same hard eyes staring into the smartgun operator's face.

'Hold it. Hold it. Back off-right now.'

Their eyes locked. Vasquez continued to hold Gorman half off the deck. Something basic cut its way through her fury Marine—she was a Marine, and Marines live by basics. The basics in this case were simple. Apone was gone and therefore Hicks was in charge.

'It ain't worth bruising my knuckles,' she finally muttered She released the lieutenant's collar, and his head bounced off the deck as she turned away, still cursing to herself. Ripley didn't doubt for an instant that if Hicks hadn't intervened, the smartgun operator would have beaten the unconscious Gorman to a pulp.

With Vasquez out of the way Ripley bent over the paralyzed officer and opened his tunic. The bloodless purple puncture wound that marred his shoulder had already sealed itself.

'Looks like it stung him or something. Interesting. I didn't know they could do that.'

'Hey!'

The excited shout made Hicks and her turn toward the Operations bay. Hudson was in there. He'd been staring morosely at the biomonitors and videoscreens, and something had caught his eye. Now he beckoned to his remaining companions.

'Look. Crowe and Dietrich aren't dead, man.' He gestured at the bio readouts, swallowed uneasily. 'They must be like Gorman. Their signs are real low, but they ain't dead—' His voice trailed off, along with his initial excitement.

If they weren't dead and they were like Hudson, that meant The comtech started to shake with a mixture of anger and sorrow. He was standing on the thin edge of hysteria They all were. It clung to them like a psychic leech, hanging on the fringes of their sanity, threatening to invade and take over the instant anyone let down his mental guard.

Ripley knew what those soporific bioreadouts meant. She tried to explain, but she couldn't meet Hudson's eyes as she did so.

'You can't help them.'

'Hey, but if they're still alive—'

'Forget it. Right now they're being cocooned, just like those others. Like the colonists you found in the wall when you went in there. You can't do a damn thing for them. Nobody can That's the way it is. Just be glad you're here talking about them instead of down there with them. If Dietrich was here, she'd know she couldn't do anything to help you.'

The comtech seemed to sag in on himself. 'This ain't happening.'

Ripley turned away from him. As she did so, her gaze met Vasquez's. It would have been easy for her to say 'I told you so to the smartgunner. It also would have been superfluous. That one look communicated everything the two women needed to say.

This time it was Vasquez who turned away.