Alien

'God,' he murmured.

'Is it alive?' Parker studied the alien, admired the symmetry of it. That did not make it appear less loathsome in his eyes.

'I don't know, but don't touch it.' Lambert spoke as she slipped off her boots.

'Don't worry about that.' Parker leaned forward, trying to make out details of the creature where it was contacting Kane. 'What's it doing to him?'

'Don't know. Let's take him to the infirmary and find out'

'Right,' agreed Brett readily. 'You two okay?'

Dallas nodded slowly. 'Yeah. Just tired. It hasn't moved, but keep an eye on it.'

'Will do.' The two engineers took the burden from the floor, slipping carefully beneath Kane's arms, Ash moving to help as best he could. .

VI

In the infirmary, they placed Kane gently on the extended medical platform. A complex of instruments and controls, different from any others aboard the ship, decorated the wall behind the unconscious exec's head. The table protruded from the wall, extending out from an opening about a metre square.

Dallas touched controls, activated the autodoc. He walked to a drawer, removed a tiny tube of gleaming metal from inside. After checking to make sure it was fully charged, he returned to stand next to Kane's body. Ash stood nearby, ready to help, while Lambert, Parker, and Brett watched from the corridor behind a thick window.

A touch on the side of the tube produced a short, intense beam of light from its far end. Dallas adjusted the beam until it was as narrow and short as he could make it without reducing power. Carefully, he touched the end of the beam to the base of Kane's helmet. Metal began to separate.

He drew the cutter slowly across the side of the helmet, over the top, and down the other side. He reached the base of the helmet on the other side, drew the beam through the thick seal. The helmet separated neatly. He and Ash each took a side as Dallas shut off the beam, removed the helmet.

Except for a slow, steady pulsing, the creature showed no sign of life, and no reaction to the removal of the helmet and its subsequent exposure to their full view.

Dallas hesitated, reached out, and touched the creature, hurriedly drew his hand back. It continued to pulse, did not react to the touch of his fingers. He reached down again, let his palm rest on the creature's back. It was dry and cold. The slow heaving made him slightly ill and he almost pulled his hand away again. When the creature still showed no inclination to object, he got the best grip he could on the rubbery tissue and pulled as hard as he could.

Not surprisingly, this had no effect. The thing neither moved nor relinquished its hold.

'Let me try.' Ash stood near a rack of nonmedical tools. He selected a pair of thick pliers, moved to the table. Carefully getting a grip on the creature, he leaned back.

'Still nothing. Try harder,' Dallas suggested hopefully. Ash adjusted the pliers for a thicker hold, pulled, and leaned back at the same time.

Dallas raised a hand, noticing a trickle of blood running down Kane's cheek.

'Hold it. You're tearing the skin.'

Ash relaxed. 'Not me. The creature.'

Dallas looked sick. 'This isn't going to work. It's not going to come off without pulling his whole face away at the same time.'

'I agree. Let the machine work on him. Maybe it will have better luck.'

'It'd better.'

Ash touched several switches in sequence. The autodoc hummed and the opening at the far end of the platform lit up. Then the platform slid silently into the wall. A glass plate descended, sealing Kane tightly inside. Lights flashed on within the wall, Kane's body clearly visible behind the glass. On a nearby console, a pair of video monitors flickered to life. Ash moved to study their readouts. He was the closest thing to a human physician on the Nostromo, was aware of both the fact and the responsibility, and was intensely anxious to learn anything the machine could tell him about Kane's present condition. Not to mention that of the alien.

A new figure appeared in the corridor, approached the three onlookers. Lambert gave Ripley a long, hard look.

'You were going to leave us out there. You were going to leave Kane out there. Twenty-four hours you were going to make us sit around with that thing on his face and the night just beginning.' Her expression told her feelings far more clearly than did her words.

Parker, perhaps the last member of the crew one would expect to come to the warrant officer's defence, looked belligerently at the navigator.

'Maybe she should have. She was only following the rules.' He gestured toward the flashing interior of the autodoc and its motionless patient.

'Who the hell knows what it is or what it can do' Kane's a little impulsive, sure, but he's no dummy, and he couldn't avoid it. Maybe one of us'll be next.'

'Right,' agreed Brett.

Ripley's attention remained on Lambert. The navigator hadn't moved, stared back at her. 'Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe not. I hope I did. In any case, I was just trying to do my job. Let's leave it at that.'

Lambert hesitated, searching Ripley's face. Then she gave her a curt nod.

Ripley sighed, relaxing slightly. 'What happened out there?'

'We went into the derelict,' Lambert told her, watching the two men working with the autodoc inside. 'There were no signs of life. That transmission must have been going for centuries. We think we found the transmitter.'

'What about the derelict's crew?'

'No sign of them.'

'And Kane. .?'

'He volunteered to search the lower level alone.' Her expression twisted. 'He was looking for diamonds. Instead, he apparently found some kind of eggs. We told him not to touch them. Probably too late. Something happened down there, where we couldn't see what was going on. When we pulled him out, it was on his face. Somehow it melted right through his helmet faceplate, and you know how strong that stuff is.'

'I wonder where it's from originally?' Ripley spoke without looking away from the infirmary interior. 'As dead as this planetoid seems to be, I'd guess it came in with the alien ship.'

'Christ knows,' said Parker softly. 'I'd like to know where it's from too.'

'Why?' Ripley hardly glanced at him.

'So I'd know one more place to avoid.'

'Amen,' said Brett.

'What I want to know,' said Dallas questioningly, ' is how the hell is he breathing? Or is he?'

Ash studied readouts. 'Physically, he appears to be doing fine. Not only is he alive, despite having gone without normal air all the way back to the ship, but also all his vital signs are steady. Breathing all that nitrogen and methane should have killed him instantly, back on the derelict. According to the 'doc he's in a coma, but internally he's normal. A damn sight healthier than he has any right to be.

'As to how he's breathing, I can't say yet, but his blood's thoroughly oxygenated.'

'But how?' Dallas leaned over, tried to see up inside the autodoc. 'I checked that thing out pretty closely. His mouth and nose seem to be completely blocked.'

Ash punched a trio of buttons. 'We know what's going on outside. We'd better have a look inside him.'

A large screen cleared, focused. It displayed a colour X-ray image of Kane's head and upper torso. Finer resolution could show blood flowing steadily through his arteries and veins, lungs pulsing, heart beating. At the moment the onlookers were more interested in the internal schematic of the small rounded shape covering the exec's face.

'I'm no biologist,' Ash said softly, 'but that's the damndest maze of stuff I've ever seen inside another animal.' He gazed in amazement at the intricate network of forms and tubes. 'I 'don't have any idea what half of it's supposed to do.'

'Doesn't look any nicer from the inside than the out,' was Dallas's only comment.

'Look at the musculature in those fingers, that tail,' Ash insisted. 'It may look fragile, but it's anything but. No wonder we couldn't pull it off him. No wonder he couldn't pull it off. I'm assuming he had time to try before he blanked out.'