Alan Dean Foster - Alien

She nearly fell a couple of times. Once she stumbled into a bulkhead and nearly knocked herself out. Somehow she kept her balance and staggered on. The alien was not uppermost in her mind. It was Parker, another human being. A rare enough commodity on board the Nostromo now.

She raced down the companionway onto B corridor, headed up toward the airlock. It was empty, except for a limp form sprawled across the deck: Parker.

She bent over him. He was groggy and half conscious. 'What happened? You look like hell. Did. .?'

The engineer was trying to form words, had to settle for gesturing feebly toward the airlock. Ripley shut up, looked in the indicated direction, saw the bubbling hole in the lock door. The outer hatch was still open, ostensibly after blowing the alien out into nothingness. She started to rise.

The acid ate completely through.

There was a bang of departing air, and a small hurricane enveloped them. Air screamed as it was sucked into a vacuum. A flashing red sign appeared in several recesses in the corridor walls.

CRITICAL DEPRESSURIZATION.

The Klaxon was sounding again, more hysterically now and with better reason. Emergency doors slammed shut all over the ship, beginning with the breached section. Parker and Ripley should have been safely sealed in a section of corridor. . except that the airtight door separating them from the airlock vestibule had jammed on one of the methane cylinders.

Wind continued to tear at her as she hunted for something, anything, to fight with. There was only the remaining tank. She raised it, used it to hammer at the jammed cylinder. If either one of them cracked, a slight spark from metal banging on metal could set off the contents of both bottles. But if she didn't knock it free, quickly, the complete depressurization would kill them anyway.

Lack of air was already weakening her. Blood frothed at her nose and ears. The fall in pressure made Parker's existing wounds bleed afresh.

She heaved the bottle at the trapped cylinder a last time. It popped free as easily as a clean birth. The door slammed the rest of the way shut behind it, and the howl of disappearing wind vanished. Confused air continued to swirl around them for several minutes more.

On the bridge, Lambert had seen the ominous readouts appear on her console: HULL BREACHED–-EMERGENCY BULKHEADS CLOSED. She hit the 'com.

'Ash, get some oxygen. Meet me at the main lock by the last of the sealed doors.'

'Check. Be right there.'

Ripley staggered to her feet, fighting for every breath in the atmosphere-depleted chamber. She headed for the emergency release set inside every bulkhead door. There was a stud there that would slide the door back, opening onto the next sealed section and fresh air.

At the last instant, as she was about to depress the red button, she saw to her horror that she was fumbling against the door leading not down B corridor, but to the empty vestibule outside the lock. She turned, tried to aim herself, and fell as much as walked to the opposite door. It took precious minutes to locate the panel on it. Thoughts swam in her brain, broke apart like oil on water. The air around her was turning foggy, full of the smell of roses and lilac.

She thumbed the stud. The door didn't move. Then she saw she was pushing the wrong control. Sagging against the door for support, trying to give her rubbery legs some badly needed assistance, she fought to gather her strength for another try. There wasn't much air left worth breathing.

A face appeared at the port set in the door. It was distorted, bloated, yet somehow familiar. It seemed that she knew that face from sometime long ago. Someone named Lambert lived behind that face. She was very tired now and started to slide slowly down the door.

She thought distant, angry thoughts as her last support was taken away. The door slid into the roof and her head struck the deck. A rush of clean air, ineffably sweet and refreshing, swept over her face. The mist began to fade from her eyes, though not yet from her starved brain.

A horn sounded the return of full internal pressurization as Lambert and Ash joined them. The science officer hurried to administer to Parker, who had collapsed again from lack of oxygen and was only now beginning to regain consciousness.

Ripley's eyes were open and working, but the rest of her body was dysfunctional. Hands and feet, legs and arms were sprawled in ungainly positions across her body and the deck, like the limbs of a slim, not particularly well-crafted doll. Her breath came in labored, shallow gasps.

Lambert set one of the oxygen tanks down next to her friend. She placed the transparent mask over Ripley's mouth and nose, opened the valve. Ripley inhaled. A wonderful perfume filled her lungs. Her eyes closed from sheer pleasure. She stayed that way, unmoving, sucking in long, deep draughts of pure oxygen. The only shock to her system was of delight.

Finally she moved the respirator aside, lay for a moment breathing normally. Full pressure had been restored, she noted. The bulkhead doors had automatically retracted with the return of standard atmosphere.

To replenish that atmosphere, she knew, the ship had been forced to bleed their storage tanks. They'd deal with that new problem when they were forced to, she thought.

'Are you all right?' Ash was querying Parker. 'What finally happened here?'

Parker wiped a crust of dried blood from his upper mouth, tried to shake the webs from his brain. 'I'll live.' For the moment, he ignored the science officer's last question.

'What about the alien?' Ash tried again.

Parker shook his head, wincing at some sudden pain. 'We didn't get it. The warning Klaxon went off and it jumped back into the corridor. It caught an arm, or whatever you'd like to call it, in the closing inner door. Just pulled itself free like a lizard shedding its tail.'

'Why not,' commented Ash, 'with its inbuilt talent for regeneration?'

The engineer continued, sounding every bit as disappointed as he felt. 'We had the bastard. We had him.' He paused, added, 'When it pulled free of its limb, it bled all over the place. The limb did. I guess the stump healed over fast, lucky for us. The acid ate right through the hatch. That's what caused the depressurization.' He pointed shakily toward the door sealing off the airlock vestibule from the rest of the corridor.

'You can probably see the hole in the hatch from here.'

'Never mind that now.' Ash looked up curiously. 'Who hit the warning siren?'

Ripley was staring over at him. 'You tell me.'

'What does that mean?'

She wiped blood from her nose, sniffed. 'I guess the alarm went off by itself. That would be the logical explanation, wouldn't it? Just a temporary, slightly coincidental malfunction?'

The science officer rose, looked at her from beneath lowered lids. She'd made certain the remaining methane cylinder was within reach before she'd spoken. But Ash made no move toward her. She still couldn't figure him.

If he was guilty, he ought to jump her while she was weakened and Parker was worse. If he was innocent, he ought to be mad enough to do the same. He was doing nothing, which she hadn't prepared for.

At least his first words in response were predictable. He did sound angrier than usual. 'If you've got something to say, say it. I'm getting sick of these constant, coy insinuations. Of being accused.'

'Nobody's accusing you.'

'Like hell.' He lapsed into sullen silence. Ripley said nothing for a long moment, then gestured at Parker. 'Take him to the infirmary and get him patched up. Leastwise we know the autodoc can handle that.'

Ash gave the engineer a hand up, slipped Parker's right arm over his shoulders, and helped him down the corridor. Ash walked past Ripley without looking back at her.