Tim Lebbon - Alien - Out of the Shadows

“If they were, they’d have heard us by now,” Lachance said.

“Then where are they?” Baxter asked. None of them replied. No one had an answer.

Hoop started forward toward the wall and whatever lay beyond.

“Hoop!” Ripley said. “Don’t be stupid!” But he was already there, kneeling and looking down into the crack. She could see cables now, leading into it, proof that the miners had gone that way, too. Hoop slid through, flashlight in one hand, spray gun in the other.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “It’s huge!”

Then he was gone altogether. There was no sign that he had fallen or been pulled through, but still Ripley was cautious as she approached the hole, crouching low and aiming the charge thumper.

She saw light moving in there, and then Hoop’s face appeared.

“Come on,” he said. “You’ve got to see this.”

“No we don’t!” Kasyanov said. “We don’t have to see anything !”

But the look on Hoop’s face persuaded Ripley. Gone was the fear she had grown used to so quickly. There was something about him now, some sudden, previously hidden sense of wonder that almost made him a different man. Perhaps the man he was always meant to be.

So she dropped to her behind and eased herself down into the crack, feeling for footholds and allowing Hoop to guide her down. She dropped the last couple of feet, landed softly, and then moved forward to allow the others access.

The breath was punched from her. Her brain struggled to keep up with what her senses were relaying—the scale, the scope, the sheer impossible size and staggering reality of what she was seeing.

The vast cavern extended beyond and below the deepest part of the mine. The miners had done their best to illuminate it, stringing light cables along walls and propping them on tall masts across the open spaces. The ceilings were too high to reach, out of sight in places, like dark, empty skies.

And they had also climbed over the thing that took up much of the cavern’s floor.

Ripley found it difficult to judge just how huge the place was. There was no point of reference. The thing inside the cavern was so unknown, so mysterious, that it could have been the size of her shuttle or on the scale of the Marion. At a rough guess she would have put the cave at two hundred yards across, but it could have been less, and perhaps it was much, much more. She thought the object was some sort of carved feature, hewn from the base rock long, long ago.

She had the impression that it had once been very sharp, defined, each feature clear and obvious. But over time the structure had softened. Time had eroded it, and it was as if she looked through imperfect eyes at something whose edges had been smoothed over the millennia.

She heard the others dropping down behind her, sensed them gathering around her and Hoop. They gasped.

“Oh, no,” Kasyanov said, and Ripley was surprised at the wretchedness her voice contained. Surely they should have been feeling wonder. This was amazing, incredible, and she couldn’t look at the structure without feeling a sense of deep awe.

Then behind her, Lachance spoke and changed everything.

“It’s a ship,” he said.

“What?” Ripley gasped. She hadn’t even considered that possibility. Buried almost a mile beneath the planet’s surface, surely this couldn’t be anything but a building, a temple of some sort, or some other structure whose purpose was more obscure.

“Down here?” Hoop said. There was silence again as they all looked with different eyes.

And Ripley knew that Lachance was right.

She was certain that not all of the object was visible—it quite obviously projected beyond the edges of the cavern in places—but there were features that were beginning to make sense, shapes and lines that might only be of use in a vessel built to fly. The entire left half of the exposed surface might have been a wing, curving down in a graceful parabola, projections here and there seemingly swept back for streamlining. There were cleared areas that might have been entrance gantries or exhaust ducts, and where the object’s higher surfaces rose from the wing, Ripley could see a line of hollows seemingly punched into the curved shell.

“It’s not like any I’ve ever seen before,” Lachance said quietly, as if afraid his voice might echo out to the ship. “And I’m not sure. But the more I see, the more certain I become.” No wisecracks now. No casual quips. He was as awestruck as the rest of them.

“The miners went close,” Hoop said. “They strung those lights up and all across it.”

“But we’re not going to make the same mistake, right?” Baxter said. “They went closer, and look what happened to them!”

“Amazing,” Sneddon whispered. “I should be…” She took a small camera from her hip pocket and started filming.

“But how can it be all the way down here?” Kasyanov asked.

“You’ve seen enough of this planet,” Hoop said. “The storms, the winds, the moving sands. This looks old. Maybe it was buried long ago. Ages… ten thousand years. Sank down into the sand, and storms covered it up. Or perhaps there was some way down here, a long time back. Maybe this is the bottom of a valley that’s long-since been filled in. Whatever… it’s here.”

“Let’s go,” Baxter said. “Let’s get the hell—”

“There’s no sign of those aliens,” Hoop said.

“Not yet, no! But this must be where they came from.”

“Baxter…” Kasyanov started, but she trailed off. She couldn’t take her eyes off the massive object. Whatever it was, it might have been the most amazing thing any of them had ever seen.

“Ripley, is this anything like the one your guys found?” Hoop asked.

“Don’t think so,” she said. “I wasn’t on the ground team that went there, I only saw some of the images their suit cameras transmitted. But no, I don’t think so. That ship was large, but this…” She shook her head. “This looks enormous ! It’s on a much different scale.”

“It’s the find of the century,” Sneddon said. “Really. This planet’s going to become famous. We’ll be famous.”

“You’re shitting me!” Baxter replied. “We’ll be dead!”

“There,” Lachance said, pointing across the cavern. “Look, where it rises up into what might be the… fuselage, or the main body of the ship. Toward the back. Do you see?”

“Yeah,” Ripley said. “Damage. Maybe an explosion.” The area Lachance had pointed toward was more ragged than the rest, smooth flowing lines turned into a tattered mess, tears across the hull, and a hollow filled only with blackness. Even this rough, wrecked area had been smoothed somewhat over time. Dust had settled, sand had drifted against torn material, and everything looked blurred.

“Seriously, I think we should get back,” Baxter said. “Get ourselves away from here, and when we reach home, report everything. They’ll send an expedition. Colonial Marines, that’s who need to come here. People with big guns.”

“I agree,” Kasyanov said. “Let’s go. This isn’t for us. We’re not meant to be here.”

Ripley nodded, still unable to take her eyes from the sight, remembering the horrors of her waking nightmares.

“They’re right,” she said. She remembered her crew’s voices as they’d approached that strange extraterrestrial ship, their undisguised wonder. It had quickly turned to dread. “We should leave.”

And then they heard the noise behind them. Back through the tumbled section of cavern wall, from where they’d just dropped down. Back in the tunnels.

A long, low hiss. Then a screech, like sharp nails across stone.

A many-legged thing, running.