Tim Lebbon - Alien - Out of the Shadows

Or, Hoop thought, to drive away unwanted guests.

He didn’t know if it would work, and he’d seen the effects when one had been discharged in the Delilah. But in the larger confines of Marion , if one of those things came at him, he’d be ready.

Sneddon was in the science lab. She spent a lot of time in there now, and sometimes when Hoop paid her a visit he felt as if he was intruding. She’d always been a quiet woman, and quietly attractive, and Hoop had often enjoyed talking to her about the scientific aspects of their work. She’d once worked for Weyland-Yutani on one of their research bases orbiting Proxima Centauri. Though she didn’t work directly for them any more, the company still funded science officers on many ships, and for any sub-divisional company who wanted them. The funding was very generous, and it would often go a large way toward bankrolling a mission.

He liked Sneddon. He liked her dedication to her work, and her apparent love of it. It’s an endless, wonderful playground out there , she’d said once when he asked her what she hoped to find. Anything is possible .

Now Sneddon’s childlike imagination had taken a hit.

At the same time, Hoop’s childhood dreams had found reality.

When he reached the lab, Sneddon was sitting on a stool at the large central island. There were a couple of tablet computers in front of her, and a steaming mug of coffee. She held her head in her hands, elbows resting on the counter top.

“Hey,” Hoop said.

She looked up, startled.

“Oh. Didn’t hear you.”

“Everything cool?”

Sneddon smiled softly. “Despite the fact that we’re slowly spiraling to our deaths, set to crash on a lifeless sand-hell of a planet? Yes, everything’s cool.”

He smiled wryly.

“So what do you think about Ripley?”

“It’s obvious she’s seen these things before,” Sneddon replied, a frown wrinkling her forehead. “Where, how, when, why, I haven’t got the faintest clue. But I’d like to talk to her.”

“If you think it’ll help.”

“Help?” Sneddon asked. She looked confused.

“You know what I mean,” Hoop said. He laid the plasma torch gently on the bench.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that,” she said, smiling. “I know you’re in charge, and I’m pretty sure I know what you’ve been thinking these past few days.”

“Do you, now?” Hoop asked, amused. He liked that she smiled. There were far too few smiles nowadays.

“Escape pods,” Sneddon said. “Maybe try to regulate their nav computers, land within walking distance of each other and the mine.”

Hoop drummed his fingers on the bench.

“Reach there together, there’ll be enough food and supplies down there for a couple of years.”

“And those things, too.”

“Forewarned is forearmed,” Hoop said.

“With that?” Sneddon said, nudging the plasma torch. Her bitter laugh wiped the smile from her face.

“There might not be any more things down there at all. They might have all come up on the Delilah.”

“Or there might be a dozen, or more.” Sneddon stood and started pacing. “Think about it. They were hatching from the miners. We saw that. Just… breaking out of them. Implanted by those things attached to their faces, perhaps. I don’t know. But if that is the case, we have to assume that anyone left behind was infected.”

“Sixteen on the Delilah. Six on the Samson.”

Sneddon nodded.

“So eighteen left in the mine,” Hoop said.

“I’d rather go down on the Marion ,” Sneddon said, “if it came to that. But now it doesn’t have to.”

“You know something I don’t?”

“No, but maybe I’m thinking about things in a different way.”

Hoop frowned, held out his hands.

“And?”

“Her shuttle. It’s a deep space shuttle! Used for short-distance transfers of personnel, or as a long-term lifeboat.”

“And one stasis pod for nine of us.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sneddon said. “Look.” She slid one of the tablets across to Hoop. At first he didn’t really understand what he was seeing. It was an old, old image of a lifeboat. Lost at sea back on Earth, crammed with survivors, a sail rigged from shirts and broken oars, wretched people hanging over the side, or eating fish, or squeezing drinking water from hastily rigged moisture catchers.

“Today, I’m stupid,” Hoop said. “In charge, yes. But stupid. So just tell me.”

“One stasis pod between the nine of us,” Sneddon said. “But we pack the shuttle with as many supplies as we can. Program a course toward Earth, or at the very least the outer rim. Fire the engines until the fuel’s out and we’re traveling as fast as we can. A good proportion of light speed. Then… take turns in the stasis pod.”

“Take turns?” he said. “She’s been drifting out there for thirty-seven years!”

“Yeah, but something’s very wrong with that. I haven’t checked yet, but the shuttle computer must have malfunctioned.”

“There was no indication of that when I checked its log.”

“You didn’t go deep enough, Hoop. The point is, we can survive like that. Six months at a time, one of us in stasis, eight others… surviving.”

“Six months in a tightly confined space? That shuttle’s designed for five people, max, for short trips. Eight of us? We’ll end up killing each other.” He shook his head. “And how long do you figure it’ll take?”

Sneddon raised an eyebrow.

“Well… years.”

“Years?”

“Maybe three until we reach the outer rim, and then—”

“It’s impossible!” he said.

Sneddon tapped the tablet’s screen again, and Hoop looked. She’d certainly done her homework. Examples manifested and faded on the screen—lifeboats at sea, strandings on damaged orbitals, miraculous survivals dotting the history of space disasters. None of the timescales were quite what Sneddon was describing, but each story testified to the will of desperate people to survive, whatever the situation.

However hopeless.

“We’d need to check the shuttle’s systems,” he said. “Fuel cell, life support.”

“And you’re chief engineer, aren’t you?”

Hoop laughed. “You’re serious about this.”

“Yes.”

He stared at her for a while, trying to deny the shred of hope she’d planted in him. He couldn’t afford to grab hold of it.

“Rescue isn’t coming, Hoop,” she said. “Not in time.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

“So you’ll—”

“Hoop!” Kasyanov’s voice cut in over the intercom. “Ripley’s stirring. I could sedate her again, but I really don’t want to pump her full of any more drugs.”

Hoop leapt to the wall and hit the intercom button.

“No, don’t. She’s slept enough. I’ll be right down.” He smiled at Sneddon, and then nodded. “I’ll speak to Ripley, get her access codes.”

As he left the science lab and headed for med bay, the ship’s corridors seemed lighter than they had in a long time.

Not only was she still light years from home, but she’d docked with a damaged ship in a decaying orbit around a hellhole of a planet, alongside a dropship full of the monsters that haunted her nightmares.

Ripley might have laughed at the irony.

She’d successfully shaken the idea that it was a dream, or a nightmare—it had taken time, and convincing herself hadn’t been easy—but the explanation still eluded her.

How was this all possible?

Perhaps the answers were on her shuttle.

“Really, I’m ready to walk,” she said. Kasyanov—a tall, fit woman who obviously looked after herself—shot her a disapproving look, but Ripley could see that the doctor held a grudging respect for her patient’s stubbornness.