Alan Dean Foster - Aliens

'I was best at the game.' She hugged the doll head and stared at the opposite wall. 'I knew the whole maze.'

'The "maze"?'Ripley thought back to where they'd found her. 'You mean the air-duct system?'

'Yeah, you know,' she replied proudly. 'And not just the air ducts. I could even get into tunnels that were full of wires and stuff. In the walls, under the floor. I could get into anywhere. I was the ace. I could hide better than anybody. They all said I was cheating because I was smaller than everybody else, but it wasn't 'cause I was smaller. I was just smarter, that's all. And I've got a real good memory. I could remember anyplace I'd been before.'

'You're really something, ace.' The girl looked pleased Ripley's gaze shifted forward. Through the windshield the processing station loomed directly ahead.

It was an unbeautiful structure, strictly utilitarian in design Its multitude of pipes and chambers and conduits had been scoured and pitted by decades of wind-blown rock and sand. It was as efficient as it was ugly. Working around the clock for years on end, it and its sister stations scattered around the planet would break down the components of Acheron's atmosphere, scrub them clean, add to them, and eventually produce a pleasant biosphere equipped with a balmy, homelike climate. A great deal of beauty to spring forth from so much ugliness.

The monolithic metal mass towered over the armoured personnel carrier as Wierzbowski braked to a stop across from the main entryway. Led by Hicks and Apone, the waiting troopers deployed in front of the oversize door. Up close to the complex the thrum of heavy machinery filled their ears, rising above the steady whistle of the wind. The well-built machinery continued to do its job even in the absence of its human masters.

Hudson was first to the entrance and ran his fingers over the door controls like a locksmith casing his next crack.

'Surprise, chiluns. Everything works.' He thumbed a single button, and the heavy barrier slid aside to reveal an interior walkway. Off to the right a concrete ramp led downward.

'Which way, sir?' Apone inquired.

'Take the ramp,' Gorman instructed them from inside the APC. 'There'll be another at the bottom. Take it down to C-level.'

'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—'