Alien

As he worked his way nearer he bent to clear a beam and had a glimpse of fur and whiskers: Jones.

'Here kitty. . good to see you, you furry little bastard.' He reached for the cat. It hissed threateningly at him and backed farther into its corner. 'Come on, Jones. Come to Brett. No time to fool around now.'

Something not quite as thick as the beam the engineering tech had just passed under reached downward. It descended in utter silence and conveyed a feeling of tremendous power held in check. Fingers spread, clutched, wrapped completely around the engineer's throat and crossed over themselves. Brett shrieked, both hands going reflexively to his neck. For all the effect his hands had on them, those gripping fingers might as well have been welded together. He went up in that hand, legs dancing in empty air. Jones bolted beneath him.

The cat shot past Ripley and Parker, who'd just arrived. They plunged unthinking into the equipment bay. Soon they were standing where they'd seen Brett's legs flailing moments before. Staring up into blackness, they had a last brief glimpse of dangling feet and twisting torso receding upward. Above the helpless figure of the engineer was a faint outline, something man-shaped but definitely not a man. Something huge and malevolent. There was a split second's sight of light reflecting off eyes far too big for even a huge head. Then both alien and engineer had vanished into the upper reaches of the Nostromo.

'Jesus,' Parker whispered.

'It grew.' Ripley looked blankly at her shock tube, considered it in relation to the hulking mass far above. 'It grew fast. All the time we were hunting for something Jones' size, it had turned into that.' She suddenly grew aware of their restricted space, of the darkness and massive crates pressing tight around them, of the numerous passages between crates and thick metal supports.

'What are we doing standing here? It may come back.' She hefted the toy-like tube, aware of how little effect it would be likely to have on a creature that size.

They hurried from the bay. Try as they would, the memory of that last fading scream stayed with them, glued to their minds. Parker had known Brett a long time, but that final shriek induced him to run as fast as Ripley. .

XI

There was less confidence in the faces of those assembled in the mess room than last time. No one tried to hide it, least of all Parker and Ripley. Having seen what they were now confronted by, they retained very little in the way of confidence at all.

Dallas was examining a recently printed schematic of the Nostromo. Parker stood by the door, occasionally glancing nervously down the corridor.

'Whatever it was,' the engineer said into the silence, 'it was big. Swung down on him like a giant fucking bat.'

Dallas looked up from the layout. 'You're absolutely sure it dragged Brett into a vent.'

'It disappeared into one of the cooling ducts.' Ripley was scratching the back of one hand with the other. 'I'm sure I saw it go in. Anyway, there was nowhere else for it to go.'

'No question about it,' Parker added. 'It's using the air shafts to move around. That's why we never ran it down with the tracker.'

'The air shafts.' Dallas looked convinced. 'Makes sense. Jones does the same thing.'

Lambert played with her coffee, stirring the dark liquid with an idle finger. 'Brett could still be alive.'

'Not a chance.' Ripley wasn't being fatalistic, only logical. 'It snapped him up like a rag doll.'

'What does it want him for, anyway?' Lambert wanted to know. 'Why take him instead of killing him on the spot?'

'Perhaps it requires an incubator, the way the first form used Kane,' Ash suggested.

'Or food,' said Ripley tightly. She shivered.

Lambert put down her coffee. 'Either way, it's two down and five to go, from the alien's standpoint.'

Parker had been turning his shock tube over and over in his hands. Now he turned and threw it hard against a wall. It bent, fell to the deck, and crackled a couple of times before lying still.

'I say we blast the rotten bastard with a laser and take our chances.'

Dallas tried to sound sympathetic. 'I know how you feel, Parker. We all liked Brett. But we've got to keep our heads. If the creature's now as big as you say, it's holding enough acid to burn a hole in the ship as big as this room. Not to mention what it would do to circuitry and controls running through the decks. No way can we chance that. Not yet'

'Not yet?' Parker's sense of helplessness canceled out much of his fury. 'How many have to die besides Brett before you can see that's the way to handle that thing?'

'It wouldn't work anyway, Parker.'

The engineer turned to face Ash, frowned at him. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean you'd have to hit a vital organ with a laser on your first shot. From your description of the creature it's now extremely fast as well as large and powerful. I think it's reasonable to assume it retains the same capacity for rapid regeneration as its first "hand" form. That means you'd have to kill it instantly or it would be all over you.'

'Not only would that be difficult to do if your opponent were a mere man, it's also virtually impossible to do with this alien because we have no idea where its vital point is. We don't even know that it has a vital point. Don't you see?' He was trying to be understanding, like Dallas had been. Everyone knew how close the two engineers had been.

'Can't you envision what would happen? Let's say a couple of us succeeded in confronting the creature in an open area where we can get a clear shot at it, which is by no means a certainty. We laser it, oh, half a dozen times before it tears us all to pieces. All six wounds heal fast enough to preserve the alien's life, but not before it's bled enough acid to eat numerous holes in the ship. Maybe some of the stuff burns through the circuitry monitoring our air supply, or cuts the power to the ship's lights.

'I don't consider that an unreasonable scenario, given what we know about the creature.?And what's the result? We've lost two or more people and shipwise we're worse off than we were before we confronted it.'

Parker didn't reply, looked sullen. Finally he mumbled, 'Then what the hell are we going to do?'

'The only plan that stands a chance of working is the one we had before,' Dallas told him. He tapped the schematic. 'Find which shaft it's in, then drive it from there into an air lock and blast it into space.'

'Drive it?' Parker laughed hollowly. 'I'm telling you the son-of-a-bitch is huge.' He spat contemptuously at his bent shock tube. 'We aren't driving that thing anywhere with those.'

'For once he has a point,' said Lambert. 'We have to get it to a lock. How do we drive it?'

Ripley's gaze travelled around the little cluster of humanity. 'I think it's time the science department brought us up to date on our visitor. Haven't you got any ideas, Ash?'

The science officer considered. 'Well, it seems to have adapted well to an oxygen-rich atmosphere. That may have something to do with its spectacularly rapid growth in this stage.'

'This "stage"?' Lambert echoed questioningly. 'You mean it might turn into something else again?'

Ash spread his hands. 'We know so little about it. We should be prepared for anything. It has already metamorphosed three times; egg to hand-shape, hand to the thing that came out of Kane, and that into this much larger bipedal form. We have no reason to assume that this form is the final stage in the chain of development.' He paused, added, 'The next form it assumes could conceivably be even larger and more powerful.'

'That's encouraging,' murmured Ripley. 'What else?'