“Okay,” Hoop said. He looked down at the plasma torch, went to shrug it off.
“No,” Ripley said, pressing her hand over his on the torch’s barrel. “It might help.”
Hoop nodded, frowning. He’s seen some stuff himself, she thought. Maybe once she’d found out exactly how and why she was here, the two of them could talk properly.
“Right,” he said. “Besides, we’re passing close to the docked dropship.”
“But everything’s secure,” Ripley said. “Isn’t it?”
“We’re keeping a close eye on things,” Hoop said, nodding. “The image we showed you is the last we’ve seen inside the Samson. But it’s safe.”
“Safe,” Ripley said, trying the word. On this dying ship it seemed so out of place.
Hoop led the way, and at the end of a corridor they turned to go right. He nodded to the left, where a heavy bulkhead door had been welded shut with a dri-metal seal. “The Delilah crashed into the ship through there, taking out Bays One and Two. We were lucky the fuel cell didn’t rupture, but we had to cut it loose afterward. It was snagged on the wrecked superstructure, wrapped up a load of other tattered ship parts. Me, Welford, and Powell went out there and spent three hours with cutting torches. Shoved it aside. When we came back inside we watched for an hour while it floated away.”
“And this way?” Ripley asked, pointing right. They continued, and she noticed Hoop taking a tighter grip on the plasma torch.
“Bay Three’s through there,” he said, nodding toward a door. Its control panel had been removed and wires and connectors hung loose.
“What’s with that?” Ripley asked.
“No way of opening it without fixing the controls.”
“Or smashing the door down.”
“That’s six-inch triple-layered polymer-inlaid steel,” Hoop said. “And there are three more doors and a vented airlock between here and the Samson.”
Ripley only nodded. But the word “safe” still eluded her.
“Come on,” Hoop said. “Your shuttle’s through here.”
Ripley was surprised at how comforted she felt, ducking through Bay Four’s open airlock and entering the Narcissus. She had no good memories of the vessel— only of the alien, and her terror that it would take her, too. But Jonesy was there, snuggled up in the open stasis pod as if still in hypersleep. And there were memories of the Nostromo and her crew. Dead for almost four decades, now, but to Ripley it felt like yesterday.
Parker, slaughtered on the floor. Lambert, hanging where the alien had slung her after ripping a hole through her face. All that blood.
“You okay?” Hoop asked.
Ripley nodded. Then she moved through the cramped shuttle and sat in the pilot’s seat. She was aware of Hoop walking, slowly, around the shuttle as she ran her fingers across the keyboard and initiated the computer. Mother was gone, but the Narcissus’s computers still had a similarly constructed interface, designed so that the user felt as if they were actually talking to a friend. With technologies that could make an android like Ash, it had always seemed strange to Ripley giving a faceless computer a human voice.
She entered her access code. Morning, Narcissus, she typed. The reply appeared onscreen.
Good morning, Warrant Officer Ripley.
Request reason for Narcissus’s change of course.
Information withheld.
“Huh,” Ripley said.
“Everything okay?” Hoop asked. He was examining the stasis pod she’d spent so long in, stroking Jonesy who was slinking back and forth with his back arched, tail stretched. He might well have been the oldest cat in the galaxy.
“Sure,” she replied.
Hoop nodded, glanced toward the computer screen, and then started looking around the rest of the shuttle’s interior.
Request records of incoming signals received over the past one thousand days. Ripley expected a streaming list of information—space was filled with beamed communications, and most ship’s computers logged and discarded them if they were not relevant.
That information also withheld.
Request replay of distress signal received from Deep Space Mining Orbital Marion.
That information also withheld.
“Fuck you very much,” Ripley muttered as she typed, Because of Special Order 937?
That reference does not compute.
Emergency Command Override 100375.
I’m afraid that Override code is no longer valid.
Ripley frowned. Tapped her fingers beside the keyboard. Stared at the words on the screen. Even Mother had never communicated in such a conversational tone. And this was just the shuttle’s computer. Weird.
Request data of timescales and travel distances since Nostromo’s detonation?
That data unavailable.
Unavailable or withheld?
The computer did not reply.
Such evasiveness wasn’t possible from this machine. Not on its own. It was a functional system, not an AI like Mother. And Mother was gone.
The only other person who’d had access to Mother was Dallas. Dallas and…
…and after Dallas had been taken, and she’d quizzed Mother herself, she remembered her shock at that other presence in the computer room.
Screw you, Ash, Ripley typed.
The cursor blinked.
But the computer didn’t respond. Not even a “Does not compute.”
Ripley gasped. She hit the shutdown, and the text on the screen faded to a soft, background glow. Yet still she felt as if she was being watched. The computer’s arrogant silence seemed to ring through the interior of the shuttle, almost mocking.
“What was in your distress signal?” Ripley asked abruptly.
Hoop was rooting around in the rear of the shuttle, examining the space suits still hanging in the locker back there.
“Huh?”
“The distress signal you sent after the crash!” Ripley said. “Did you mention those things? The creatures? Did you say what they were like, what they did?”
“I… Yeah, I think so.”
“You think so?”
“It was more than ten weeks ago, Ripley. I recorded it hours after I’d seen lots of friends die, and witnessed what happened—”
“I need to hear it.”
“What’s wrong?”
She stood and backed away from the interface. It was stupid—there was no camera there—but she felt observed. She took off her jacket and dropped it across the screen.
“The alien on my ship wasn’t an accident,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s an accident that I’ve come here, either. But I need to know. I need to hear the signal.”
Hoop nodded and came toward her.
“I can patch in from here,” he said, nodding down at where her jacket covered the keyboard.
“You can?”
“I’m chief engineer on this jaunt, and that covers all the infotech systems, too.”
Ripley stepped aside and watched as Hoop moved the jacket, sat, and worked at the interface. The words she saw on the screen—the interaction—seemed innocent enough.
Hoop chuckled.