Alan Dean Foster - Alien

Apparently there were audio sensors located in the torso as well as the skull, because the powerful form turned immediately at the sound of Parker's voice and began to advance on him. Raising the tracker, the engineer banged it down on Ash's shoulder, then again, and again. . to no effect. Groping arms swung close, embraced Parker in a hug that was anything but affectionate. The hands climbed upward, locked around his neck, and contracted with inhuman strength.

Ripley had recovered, now searched frantically until she spotted one of the old shock tubes they'd first planned to drive the alien with. She snatched it up, noting that it still carried a full charge.

Lambert was pulling at Ash's legs, trying to upend the rampaging machine. Naked wiring and contacts showed from the open neck. Ripley dug at them. Parker's eyes were glazing over, and faint wheezing sounds were coming from his constricted throat.

Finding a knot thick with circuitry, Ripley jabbed the prod inward and depressed the trigger. Ash's grip on the engineer appeared to weaken slightly. She withdrew the prod, aligned it differently, and stabbed downward a second time.

Blue sparks flew from the stump. She jabbed again, crying inside, holding the trigger down. There was a bright flash and the smell of burnt insulation.

Ash collapsed. Chest rising and falling as he struggled to regain his wind, Parker rolled over, coughed a couple of times, spat phlegm onto the deck.

He blinked a few times, glared at the motionless hulk of the machine. 'Damn you. Goddamn company machine.' He climbed to his feet, kicked at the metal. It did not react, lay supine and innocent on the deck.

Lambert looked uncertainly from Parker to Ripley. 'Will somebody please tell me what the hell's going on?'

'There's only one way to find out.' Ripley carefully set the shock tube aside, making certain it was within easy reach in case they needed it quickly, and approached the body.

'What's that?' Lambert asked.

Ripley looked over at Parker, who was massaging his throat. 'Wire the head back up. I think I burnt out the locomotor system in the torso, but the head and memory ought to be functional when powered up.

'He's been protecting the alien from the beginning. I tried to tell you.' She gestured at the corpse. It was hard to start thinking of fellow crew member Ash as just another piece of equipment. 'He let it on board, remember, against regulations.' Her expression twisted as she remembered.

'He was using Kane's life as an excuse, but he was never interested in Kane. He let that thing grow inside him, knew what was happening all the time. And he set off the emergency airlock Klaxon to save it.

'But why?' Lambert was struggling, still couldn't put it all together.

'I'm only guessing, but the only reason I can come up with for putting a robot crew member on board with the rest of us and not letting us know about it at the time is that someone wanted a slave observer to report developments back to them.' She glanced up at Lambert. 'Who assigns personnel to the ships, makes last-minute changes like trading science officers, and would be the only entity capable of secretly slipping a robot on board? For whatever purpose?'

Lambert no longer looked confused. 'The company.'

'Sure.' Ripley smiled humorlessly. 'The company's drone probes must have picked up the transmission from the derelict. The Nostromo happened to be the next Company vessel scheduled to pass through this spatial quadrant. They put Ash on board to monitor things for them and to make sure we followed something Mother calls Special Order 937.

'If the follow-up on the transmission turns out to be worthless, Ash can report that back to them without us ever knowing what was going on. If worthwhile, then the Company learns what it needs to know before it goes to the trouble of sending out an expensively equipped exploration team. Simple, matter of maximizing profit, minimizing loss. Their profit, our loss.'

'Great,' Parker snorted. 'You got it all figured out so far. Now tell me why we've got to put this sonofabitch back together.' He spat at Ash's body.

Ripley already had Ash's head set up on a counter, was running a power line from a wall outlet near the autochef back to the quiescent skull. 'We have to find out what else they might be holding back. Agreed?'

Parker nodded reluctantly. 'Agreed.' He started forward. 'Here, let me do that.'

The engineer fooled with the wires and the connections located in the back of Ash's head, beneath the artificial hair. When the science officer's eyelids began to flicker, Parker grunted in satisfaction and stepped clear. Ripley leaned close. 'Ash, can you hear me?' No response. She looked back to Parker.

'The hookup's clean. Power level is self-adjusting. Unless some critical circuits were interrupted when the head hit the deck, he ought to reply. Memory cells and verbal-visual components are packed pretty tight in these sophisticated models. I'd expect it to talk.'

She tried again. 'Can you hear me, Ash?'

A familiar voice, not distant at all, sounded in the mess. 'Yes, I can hear you.'

It was hard for her to address the disembodied head, for all that she knew it was only part of a machine, like the shock tube or the tracker. She'd served too many hours with Ash.

'What. . what was Special Order 937?'

'That's against regulations and my internal programming. You know I can't tell you.'

She stood back. 'Then there's no point in talking. Parker, pull the plug.'

The engineer reached for the wires and Ash reacted with sufficient speed to show that his cognitive circuits were indeed intact. 'In essence, my orders were as follows.' Parker's hand hovered threateningly over the power line.

'I was directed to reroute the Nostromo or make sure that this crew rerouted it from its assigned course so that it would pick up the signal, program Mother to bring you out of hypersleep, and program her memory to feed you the story about the emergency call. Company specialists already knew that the transmission was a warning and not a distress signal.'

Parker's hands clenched into fists.

'At the source of the signal,' Ash continued, 'we were to investigate a life form, almost certainly hostile according to what the Company experts distilled from the transmission, and bring it back for observation and Company evaluation of any potential commercial applications. Using discretion, of course.'

'Of course,' agreed Ripley, mimicking the machine's indifferent tone. 'That explains a lot about why we were chosen, beyond the expense of sending a valuable exploration team in first.' She looked coldly pleased at having traced the reasoning behind Ash's words.

'Importation to any inhabited world, let alone Earth, of a dangerous alien life form is strictly prohibited. By making it look like we simple tug jockeys had accidentally stumbled onto it, the Company had a way of seeing it arrive at Earth "unintentionally". While we maybe got ourselves thrown in jail, something would have to be done with the creature. Naturally, Company specialists would magnanimously be standing ready to take this dangerous arrival off the hands of the customs officers, with a few judicious bribes prepaid just to smooth the transition.

'And if we were lucky, the Company would bail us out and take proper care of us as soon as the authorities determined we were honestly as stupid as we appeared. Which we've been.'

'Why?' Lambert wanted to know. 'Why didn't you warn us? Why couldn't we have been told what we were getting ourselves into?'

'Because you might not have gone along,' Ash explained with cold logic. 'Company policy required your unknowing co-operation. What Ripley said about your honest ignorance fooling customs was quite correct.'

'You and the damn Company,' Parker growled. 'What about our lives, man?'