Aliens

'Check.' The sergeant gestured at his troops. 'Drake, take point. The rest of you follow by twos. Let's go.'

Hudson hesitated at the control panel. 'What about the door?'

'There's nobody here. Leave it open.'

They started down the broad ramp into the guts of the station. Light filtered down from above, slanting through floors and catwalks fashioned of steel mesh, bending around conduits ranked side by side like organ pipes. They had their suit lights switched on, anyway. Machinery pounded steadily around them as they descended.

The multiple views provided by their suit cameras bounced and swayed as they walked, making viewing difficult for those watching the monitors inside the APC. Eventually the floor levelled out and the images steadied. Multiple lenses revealed a floor overflowing with heavy cylinders and conduits, stacks of plastic crates, and tall metal bottles.

'B-level.' Gorman addressed the operations bay pickup 'They're on the next one down. Try to take it a little slower. It's hard to make anything out when you're moving fast on a downslope.'

Dietrich turned to Frost. 'Maybe he wants us to fly? That way the picture wouldn't bounce.'

'How about if I carry you instead?' Hudson called back to her.

'How about if I throw you over the railing?' she responded 'Picture would be steady that way, too, until you hit bottom.'

'Shut up back there,' Apone growled as they swung around a turn in the descending rampway. Hudson and the rest obliged.

In the Operations bay Ripley peered over Gorman's right shoulder, and Burke around the other, while Newt tried to squeeze in from behind. Despite all the video wizardry the lieutenant could command, none of the individual suit cameras provided a clear picture of what the troops were seeing.

'Try the low end gain,' Burke suggested.

'I did that first thing, Mr. Burke. There's an awful lot of interference down there. The deeper they go, the more junk their signals have to get through, and those suit units don't put out much power. What's an atmosphere processing station's interior built out of, anyway?'

'Carbon-fibre composites and silica blends up top wherever possible, for strength and lightness. A lot of metallic glass in the partitions. Foundations and sublevels don't have to be so fancy. Concrete and steel floors with a lot of titanium alloy thrown in.'

Gorman was unable to contain his frustration as he fiddled futilely with his instruments. 'If the emergency power was out and the station shut down, I'd be getting clearer reception, but then they'd be advancing with nothing but suit lights to guide them. It's a trade-off.' He shook his head as he studied the blurred images and leaned toward the pickup.

'We're not making that out too well ahead of you. What is it?'

Static garbled Hudson's voice as well as the view provided by his camera. 'You tell me. I only work here.'

The lieutenant looked back at Burke. 'Your people build that?'

The Company rep leaned toward the row of monitors squinting at the dim images being relayed back from the bowels of the atmosphere-processing station.

'Hell, no.'

'Then you don't know what it is?'

'I've never seen anything like it in my life.'

'Could the colonists have added it?'

Burke continued to stare, finally shook his head. 'If they did they improvised it. That didn't come out of any station construction manual.'

Something had been added to the latticework of pipes and conduits that crisscrossed the lowest level of the processing station. There was no question that it was the result of design and purpose, not some unknown industrial accident. Visibly damp and lustrous in spots, the peculiar material that had been used to construct the addition resembled a solidified liquid resin or glue. In places light penetrated the material to a depth of several centimetres, revealing a complex internal structure At other locations the substance was opaque. What little colour it displayed was muted: greens and grays, and here and there a touch of some darker green.

Intricate chambers ranged in size from half a metre in diameter to a dozen metres across, all interconnected by strips of fragile-looking webwork that on closer inspection turned out to be about as fragile as steel cable. Tunnels led off deeper into the maze while peculiar conical pits dead-ended in the floor. So precisely did the added material blend with the existing machinery that it was difficult to tell where human handiwork ended and something of an entirely different nature began. In places the addition almost mimicked existing station equipment, though whether it was imitation with a purpose or merely blind duplication, no one could tell.

The whole gleaming complex extended as far back into C-level as the trooper's cameras could penetrate. Although it filled every available empty space, the epoxy-like incrustation did not appear to have in any way impaired the functioning of the station. It continued to rumble on, having its way with Acheron's air, unaffected by the heteromorphic chambering that filled much of its lower level.

Of them all, only Ripley had some idea of what the troopers had stumbled across, and she was momentarily too numb with horrid fascination to explain. She could only stare and remember.

Gorman happened to glance back long enough to catch the expression on her face. 'What is it?'

'I don't know.'

'You know something, which is more than any of the rest of us. Come on, Ripley. Give. Right now I'd pay a hundred credits for an informed guess.'

'I really don't know. I think I've seen something like it once before, but I'm not sure. It's different, somehow. More elaborate and—'

'Let me know when your brain starts working again. Disappointed, the lieutenant turned back to the mike. 'Proceed with your advance, Sergeant.'

The troopers resumed their march, their suit lights shining on the vitreous walls surrounding them. The deeper they went into the maze, the more it took on the appearance of having been grown or secreted rather than built. The labyrinth looked like the interior of a gigantic organ or bone. Not a human organ, not a human bone.

Whatever else its purpose, the addition served to concentrate waste heat from the processor's fusion plant. Steam from dripping water formed puddles on the floor and hissed around them. Factory respiration.

'It's opening up a little just ahead.' Hicks panned his camera around. The troop was entering a large, domed chamber. The walls abruptly changed in character and appearance. It was a testimony to their training that not one of the troopers broke down on the spot.

Ripley muttered, 'Oh, God.' Burke mumbled a shocked curse.

Cameras and suit lights illuminated the chamber. Instead of the smooth, curving walls they'd passed earlier, these were rough and uneven. They formed a rigged bas-relief composed of detritus gathered from the town: furniture, wiring, solid and fluid-state components, bits of broken machinery, persona effects, torn clothing, human bones and skulls, all fused together with that omnipresent, translucent, epoxy-like resin.

Hudson reached out to run a gloved hand along one wall casually caressing a cluster of human ribs. He picked at the resinous ooze, barely scratching it.

'Ever see anything like this stuff before?'

'Not me.' Hicks would have spat if he'd had room. 'I'm not a chemist.'

Dietrich was expected to render an opinion and did so 'Looks like some kind of secreted glue. Your bad guys spit this stuff out or what, Ripley?'

'I—I don't know how its manufactured, but I've seen it before, on a much smaller scale.'

Gorman pursed his lips, analysis taking over from the initial shock. 'Looks like they ripped apart the colony for building materials.' He indicated the view offered by Hicks's screen 'There's a whole stack of blank storage disks imbedded there.'

'And portable power cells.' Burke gestured toward another of the individual monitors. 'Expensive stuff. Tore it all apart.'