Alan Dean Foster - Alien - 3

Ripley gazed hard at the superintendent. ‘I need to talk to you. It’s important.’

The older man considered thoughtfully. ‘When I have finished with my official duties I’ll be quite pleased to have a little chat. Yes?’

She looked as if she wanted to say something further, but simply nodded.

Aaron took charge of the water pitcher, making sure the glasses were filled. He needn’t have bothered. Once Ripley started talking, no one noticed irrelevant details such as thirst.

She explained carefully and in detail, leaving nothing out, from the time the original alien eggs had been discovered in the hold of the gigantic ship of still unknown origin on Acheron, to the destruction of the original crew of the Nostromo and Ripley’s subsequent escape, to the later devastating encounter on Acheron and her flight from there in the company of her now dead companions.

Her ability to recall every relevant incident and detail might have struck an observer as prodigious, but remembering was not her problem. What tormented her daily was her inability to forget.

It was quiet in the superintendent’s quarters for quite a while after she finished. Ripley downed half her glass of purified water, watching his face.

He laced his fingers over his belly. ‘Let me see if I have this correct, Lieutenant. What you say we’re dealing with here is an eight-foot-tall carnivorous insect of some kind with acidic body fluids, and that it arrived on your spaceship.’

‘We don’t know that it’s an insect,’ she corrected him. ‘That’s the simplest and most obvious analog, but nobody knows for sure. They don’t lend themselves to easy taxonomic study. It’s hard to dissect something that dissolves your instruments after it’s dead and tries to eat or impregnate you while it’s alive. The colony on Acheron devoted itself frantically to such studies. It didn’t matter. The creatures wiped them out before they could learn anything. Unfortunately, their records were destroyed when the base fusion planet went critical. We know a little about them, just enough to make a few generalizations.

‘About all we can say with a reasonable degree of assurance is that they have a biosocial system crudely analogous to the social insects of Earth, like the ants and the bees and so forth. Beyond that, nobody knows anything. Their intelligence level is certainly much greater than that of any social arthropod, though at this point it’s hard to say whether they’re capable of higher reasoning as we know it. I’m almost certain they can communicate by smell. They may have additional perceptive capabilities we know nothing about.

‘They’re incredibly quick, strong, and tough. I personally watched one survive quite well in deep interstellar vacuum until I could fry it with an EEV’s engines.’

‘And it kills on sight and is generally unpleasant,’ Andrews finished for her. ‘So you claim. And of course you expect me to accept this entire fantastic story solely on your word.’

‘Right, sir,’ said Aaron quickly, ‘that’s a beauty. Never heard anything like it, sir.’

‘No, I don’t expect you to accept it,’ Ripley replied softly.

‘I’ve dealt with people like you before.’

Andrews replied without umbrage. ‘I’ll ignore that. Assuming for the moment that I accept the gist of what you’ve said, what would you suggest we do? Compose our wills and wait to be eaten?’

‘For some people that might not be a bad idea, but it doesn’t work for me. These things can be fought. They can be killed.

What kind of weapons have you got?’

Andrews unlocked his fingers and looked unhappy. ‘This is a prison. Even though there’s nowhere for anyone to escape to on Fiorina, it’s not a good idea to allow prisoners access to firearms. Someone might get the idea they could use them to take over the supply shuttle, or some similar crackbrained idea.

Removing weapons removes the temptations to steal and use them.’

‘No weapons of any kind?’

‘Sorry. This is a modern, civilized prison facility. We’re on the honour system. The men here, though extreme cases, are doing more than just paying their debts to society. They’re functioning as active caretakers. The Company feels that the presence of weapons would intimidate them, to the detriment of their work. Why do you think there are only two supervisors here, myself and Aaron? If not for the system, we couldn’t control this bunch with twenty supervisors and a complete arsenal.’ He paused thoughtfully.

‘There are some large carving knives in the abattoir, a few more in the mess hall and kitchen. Some fire axes scattered about. Nothing terribly formidable.’

Ripley slumped in her chair, muttering disconsolately. ‘Then we’re fucked.’

‘No, you’re fucked,’ the superintendent replied calmly.

‘Confined to the infirmary. Quarantined.’

She gaped at him. ‘But why?’

‘Because you’ve been a problem ever since you showed up here, and I don’t want that problem compounded. It’s my responsibility to deal with this now, whatever it is, and I’ll rest easier knowing where you are at all times. The men are going to be nervous enough as it is. Having you floating around at your leisure poking into places you shouldn’t will be anything but a stabilizing influence.’

‘You can’t do this. I’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘I didn’t say that you had. I’m confining you for your own safety. I’m in charge here and I’m exercising my discretion as installation superintendent. Feel free to file an official complaint with a board of inquiry when you get back.’ He smiled paternally.

‘You’ll have it all to yourself, Lieutenant. I think you’ll be safe from any large nasty beasts while you’re there. Right? Yes, that’s a good girl. Mr. Aaron will escort you.’

Ripley rose. ‘You’re making a bad decision.’

‘Somehow I think I’ll manage to live with it. Aaron, after escorting the lieutenant to her new quarters, get going on organizing a search party. Fast. Right now all we have to go on is that babbling Golic. Boggs and Rains may only be injured and waiting for help.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘You’re all wrong on this, Andrews,’ Ripley told him. ‘All wrong. You’re not going to find anybody alive in those tunnels.’

‘We’ll see.’ He followed her with his eyes as his assistant guided her out.

She sat on the cot, sullen and angry. Clemens stood nearby, eyeing her. Aaron’s voice sounding over the intercom system made her look up.

‘Let’s all report to the mess hall. Mr. Andrews wants a meeting. Mess hall, right away, gang.’ A subtle electronic hum punctuated the second-in-command’s brief announcement.

Ripley looked over at the medical officer. ‘Isn’t there any way off Fiorina? An emergency service shuttle? Some damned way to escape?’

Clemens shook his head. ‘This is a prison now, remember?

There’s no way out. Our supply ship comes once every six months.’

‘That’s it?’ She slumped.

‘No reason to panic. They are sending someone to pick you up and investigate this whole mess. Quite soon, I gather.’

‘Really? What’s soon?’

‘I don’t know.’ Clemens was clearly bothered by something other than the unfortunate Murphy’s death. ‘No one’s ever been in a hurry to get here before. It’s always the other way ‘round. Diverting a ship from its regular run is difficult, not to mention expensive as hell. Do you want to tell me what you and Andrews talked about?’

She looked away. ‘No, I don’t. You’d just think I was crazy.’

Her attention wandered to the far corner where the catatonic Golic stood staring blankly at the wall. He looked a lot better since Clemens had cleaned him up.