'In addition to its new atmosphere, it's certainly adapted well for its nutritional requirements. So we know it can exist on very little, in various atmospheres, and possibly in none at all for an unspecified period of time.
'About the only thing we don't know is its ability to handle drastic changes in temperature. It's comfortably warm aboard the Nostromo. Considering the mean temperature on the world where we discovered it, I think we can reasonably rule out bitter cold as a potential deterrent, though the early egg form may have been tougher in that respect than the present one. There is precedent for that.'
'All right,' asked Ripley, 'what about the temperature? What happens if we raise it?'
'Let's give it a try,' said Ash. 'We can't raise the temperature of the entire ship for the same reason we couldn't exhaust all the air. Not enough air time in our suits, limited mobility, helplessness while confined in the freezers, and so on. But most creatures retreat from fire. It's not necessary to heat the whole ship.'
'We could string a high-voltage wire across a few corridors and lure it into one. That would fry it good,' Lambert suggested.
'This isn't an animal we're dealing with. Or if it is,' Ash told her, 'it's a supremely skilful one. It's not going to charge blindly into a cord or anything else blocking an obvious transit way like a corridor. It's already demonstrated that by choosing the air shafts to travel about in, instead of the corridors.
'Besides, certain primitive organisms like the shark are sensitive to electric fields. On balance, not a good idea.'
'Maybe it can detect the electrical fields our own bodies generate,' said Ripley gloomily. 'Maybe that's how it tracks.'
Parker looked doubtful. 'I wouldn't bet that it didn't depend on its eyes. If that's what those things are.'
'They aren't.'
'A creature so obviously resourceful probably utilizes many senses in tracking,' Ash added.
'I don't like the cord idea anyway.' Parker's face was flushed. 'I don't like tricking around. When it goes out the lock, I want to be there. I want to see it die.' He went quiet for a bit, added less emotionally, 'I want to hear it scream like Brett.'
'How long to hook up three or four incinerating units?' Dallas wanted to know.
'Give me twenty minutes. The basic units are already there, in storage. It's just a question of modifying them for hand-held use.'
'Can you make them powerful enough? We don't want to run into the kind of situation Ash described, if we were using lasers. We want something that'll stop it in its tracks.'
'Don't worry.' Parker's voice was cold, cold. 'I'll fix them so they'll cook anything they touch on contact.'
'Seems like our best chance, then.' The captain glanced around the table. 'Anyone got any better ideas?'
No one did.
'Okay.' Dallas pushed away from the table, rose. 'When Parker's ready with his flamethrowers, we'll start from here and work our way back down to C level and the bay where it took Brett. Then we'll try to trace it from there.'
Parker sounded dubious. 'It went up with him through the hull bracing before it entered the air shaft. Be hell trying to follow it up there. I'm no ape.' He stared warningly at Ripley, but she didn't comment.
'You'd rather sit here and wait until it's ready to come looking for you?' Dallas asked. 'The longer we can keep it on the defensive, the better it'll be for us.'
'Except for one thing,' Ripley said.
'What's that?'
'We're not sure it's ever been on the defensive.' She met his gaze squarely. .
The flamethrowers were bulkier than the shock tubes and looked less effective. But the tubes had functioned as they were supposed to, and Parker had assured them all the incinerators would too. He declined to give them a demonstration this time because, he explained, the flamers were powerful enough to sear the decking.
The fact that he was trusting his own life to the devices was proof enough anyway, for everyone except Ripley. She was beginning to be suspicious of everyone and everything. She'd always been a little paranoid. Current events were making it worse. She began to worry as much over what was happening to her mind as she was about the alien.
Of course, as soon as they found and killed the alien, the mental problems would vanish. Wouldn't they?
The tight knot of edgy humanity worked its cautious way down from the mess to B level. They were heading for the next companionway when both tracking devices commenced a frantic beeping. Ash and Ripley quickly shut off the beepers. They had to follow the shifting needles only a dozen metres before a louder, different sound became audible: metal tearing.
'Easy.' Dallas cradled his flamethrower, turned the corner in the corridor. Loud rending noises continued, more clearly now. He knew where they were originating. 'The food locker,' he whispered back to them.
'It's inside.'
'Listen to that,' Lambert murmured in awe. 'Jesus, it must be big.'
'Big enough,' agreed Parker softly. 'I saw it, remember. And strong. It carried Brett like. .' He cut off in mid-sentence, thoughts of Brett choking off any desire for conversation.
Dallas raised the nozzle of his flamethrower. 'There's a duct opening into the back of the locker. That's how it got here.' He glanced over at Parker. 'You sure these things are working?'
'I made them, didn't I?'
'That's what worries us,' said Ripley.
They moved forward. The tearing sounds continued. When they were positioned just outside the locker, Dallas glanced from Parker to the door handle. The engineer reluctantly got a grip on the heavy protrusion. Dallas stood back a couple of steps, readied the flamethrower.
'Now!'
Parker wrenched open the door, jumped back out of the way. Dallas thumbed the firing stud on the clumsy weapon. A startlingly wide fan of orange fire filled the entrance to the food locker, causing everyone to draw away from the intense heat. Dallas moved forward quickly, ignoring the lingering heat that burned his throat, and fired another blast inside. Then a third. He was over the raised base now and had to twist himself so he could fire sideways.
Several minutes were spent nervously waiting outside for the locker's interior to cool enough for them to enter. Despite the wait, the heat radiating from the smouldering garbage inside was so intense they had to walk carefully, lest they bump into any of the oven-hot crates or the locker walls.
The locker itself was a total loss. What the alien had begun, Dallas's flamethrower had finished. Deep black streaks showed on the walls, testimony to the concentrated power of the incinerator. The stench of charred artificial-food components mixed with carbonized packaging was overpowering in the confined space.
Despite the havoc wrought by the flamethrower, not everything within the locker had been destroyed. Ample evidence of the alien's handiwork lay scattered about, untouched by the flames. Packages of every size were strewn about the floor, opened in ways and by means their manufacturers had never envisioned.
Solid-metal storage 'tins' (so called because of tradition and not their metallurgical makeup) had been peeled apart like fruit. From what they could see, the alien hadn't left much intact for the flamethrower to finish off.
Keeping trackers and incinerators handy, they poked through the debris. Pungent smoke drifted upward and burned their eyes.
Careful inspection of every sizable pile of ruined supplies failed to produce the hoped-for discovery.
Since all the food stocked aboard the Nostromo was artificial and homogenous in composition, the only bones they would find would belong to the alien. But the closest thing they found to bones were the reinforcing bands from several large crates.
Ripley and Lambert started to relax against a still-hot wall, remembered not to. 'We didn't get it,' the warrant officer muttered disappointedly.