Alien

Ripley nodded confirmation.

'Lock still pressurized?' Another nod. He hesitated, looked from one somber face to the next. None returned his gaze. 'Anybody want to say anything?'

Naturally, there was nothing to say. Kane was dead. He'd been alive, now he was not alive. None of the crew was particularly strong with words.

Only Lambert spoke up. 'Get it over with.' Dallas thought that wasn't much of an epitaph, but he couldn't think of anything else except that they were wasting time. He made a sign to the watching Ripley.

She touched a stud. The outer cover on the lock popped. Air remaining in the lock propelled Kane's body out into the soil of nothingness.

It was a mercifully fast burial (Dallas couldn't bring himself to think 'disposal'). Kane had received a neater departure than he had a death. His last, tormented scream still rattled around in Dallas's brain, like a pebble in a shoe.

They reassembled in the mess. It was easier to discuss things when everyone could see everyone else without straining. Also, it gave him an excuse to get everyone back there to help clean up the awful mess.

'I've checked on supplies,' Ripley told them. 'With stimulants we can keep going for about a week. Maybe a day longer, but no more than that.'

'Then what?' Brett picked at his chin.

'We run out of food and oxygen. Food we can do without, oxygen we can't. That last factor makes the interesting question of whether or not we could live off unrecycled artificials a moot point.'

Lambert made a face at the unappetizing prospect. 'Thanks, I think I'd rather die first.'

'All right.' Dallas tried to sound confident. 'That's what we've got, then. A week of full activity. That's plenty of time. More than enough to find one small alien.'

Brett looked at the floor. 'I still say we ought to try exhausting the air. That might kill it. Seems the safest way to me. Avoids the need to confront it directly. We don't know what individual kinds of nastiness this version can dish out.'

'We went through that, remember?' Ripley reminded him.

That assumed we'd spend the airless time in the freezers. Suppose we put our pressure suits on instead, then bleed the air? It can't sneak up on us if we're awake in our suits.'

'What a swell idea.' Lambert's tone indicated that she considered it anything but.

'What's wrong with it?'

'We've got forty-eight hours of air in our pressure suits and it takes ten months to get home,' Ash explained. 'If the creature can go forty-nine without air, we're right back where we started, except we've lost two days' suit time.'

'Other than that,' said Lambert, 'a swell idea. Come on, Parker, think of something new, you two.'

The engineers had no intention of giving up on the idea so easily. 'Maybe we could run some kind of special lines from the suit tanks to the main ones. Brett and I are pretty good practical engineers. The valve connections would be tricky, but I'm sure we could do it. We got us back up, you know.'

'All by your little old selves.' Ripley didn't try to moderate her sarcasm.

'It's not practical.' Ash spoke sympathetically to the two men. 'You'll recall that we discussed the definite possibility this creature may be able to survive without air. The problem is more extensive than that.

'We can't remain hooked to the main tanks by umbilicals and simultaneously hunt the creature down. Even if your idea works, we'll have used so much air in the suits that there'll be none left to meet us when we emerge from hypersleep. The freezers will open automatically. . to vacuum.'

'How about leaving some kind of message, or broadcasting ahead so they can meet us and fill us with fresh air as soon as we dock?' Parker wondered.

Ash looked doubtful. 'Too chancy. First, our broadcast won't arrive more than a minute or two before we do. For an emergency team to meet us the moment we slip out of hyperspace, link up from outside, fill us with air without damaging the integrity of the ship. . no, I don't think it could be done.

'Even if it could, I concur with Ripley on one critical point. We can't risk re-entering the freezers until we're sure the creature is dead or under control. And we can't make sure it's dead if we spend a couple of days in our suits and then run for the freezers.'

Parker snorted. 'I still think it's a good idea.'

'Let's get to the real problem,' Ripley said impatiently. 'How do we find it? We can try a dozen ways of killing it, but only after we know where it is. There's no visual scan on B and C decks. All the screens are out, remember?'

'So we'll have to flush it out.' Dallas was surprised how easy the terrifying but obvious choice was to make. Once stated, he found himself resigned to it.

'Sounds reasonable,' admitted Ash. 'Easier said than done, however. How do you suggest we proceed?'

Dallas saw them wishing he wouldn't follow the inevitable to its end. But it was the only way. 'No easy way is right. There's only one way we can be sure not to miss it and still maximize our air time. We'll have to hunt for it room by room, corridor by corridor.'

'Maybe we can rig up some kind of portable freezer,' Ripley suggested halfheartedly. 'Freeze each room and corridor from a dis. .' She broke off, seeing Dallas shaking his head sadly. She looked away. 'Not that I'm all that scared, you understand. Just trying to be practical. Like Parker, I think it would be a good idea to try to avoid a direct confrontation.'

'Knock it off, Ripley.' Dallas touched his chest with a thumb. 'I'm scared shitless. We all are. We haven't got the time to screw around with making up something that complicated. We fooled around too long by letting a machine try to help Kane. Time we helped ourselves. That's what we're doing on board this bigger machine in the first place, remember? When the machines can't handle a problem, it becomes our job.

'Besides, I want the pleasure of watching the little monster explode when we blow it out the lock.'

It was not exactly an inspirational speech. Certainly nothing was farther from Dallas's mind. But it had a revivifying effect on the crew. They found themselves able to look at each other again, instead of at walls or floor, and there were mutters of determination.

'Fine,' said Lambert. 'We root it out of wherever it's hiding, then blow it out the lock. What I want to know is: How do we get from point A to point C?'

'Trap it somehow.' Ripley was turning various ideas over in her head. The alien's ability to bleed acid made all of them worse than useless.

'There might be substances other than metal it couldn't eat through so quickly,' Brett thought aloud, showing that his ideas were travelling along the same lines as Ripley's. 'Trylon cord, for example. If we had a net made out of the stuff, we might bag it without damaging it. It might not feel terribly threatened by a thin net the way it would by, say a solid metal crate.' He looked around the circle.

'I could put something together, weld it real quick.'

'He thinks we're going butterfly hunting,' Lambert sneered.

'How would we get it into the net?' Dallas asked quietly.

Brett considered. 'Have to use something that wouldn't make it bleed, of course. Knives and sharp probes of any kind are out. Same goes for pistols. I could make up a batch of long metal tubes with batteries in them. We've plenty of both somewhere back in stores. Only take a few hours.'

'For the rods and the net?'

'Sure. Nothing fancy involved.'

Lambert couldn't stand it. 'First butterflies, now cattle prods. Why do we listen to this meathead?'

Dallas turned the idea over in his head, visualizing it from the optimum. The alien cornered, threatening with teeth and claws. Electric jolts from one side, strong enough to irritate but not injure. Two of them driving it into the net, then keeping it occupied while the rest of them dragged it toward the main lock. Maybe the alien burning its way through the net, maybe not. Second and third nets standing by in case it did.