Alan Dean Foster: Alien

'Smart ass.' Dallas voiced it without malice. 'You sure that's it? It's a crowded system.'

'That's it, all right. Just a planetoid, really. Maybe twelve hundred kilometres, no more.'

'Any rotation?'

'Yeah. 'Bout two hours, working off the initial figures. Tell you better in ten minutes.'

'That's good enough for now. What's the gravity?'

Lambert studied different readouts. 'Point eight six. Must be pretty dense stuff.'

'Don't tell Parker and Brett,' said Ripley. 'They'll be thinking it's solid heavy metal and wander off somewhere prospecting before we can check out our unknown broadcaster.'

Ash's observation was more prosaic. 'You can walk on it.' They settled down to working out orbiting procedure. .

The Nostromo edged close to the tiny world, trailing its vast cargo of tanks and refinery equipment

'Approaching orbital apogee. Mark. Twenty seconds. Nineteen, eighteen. .' Lambert continued to count down while her mates worked steadily around her.

'Roll ninety-two degrees starboard yaw,' announced Kane, thoroughly businesslike.

The tug and refinery rotated, performing a massive pirouette in the vastness of space. Light appeared at the stern of the tug as her secondary engines fired briefly.

'Equatorial orbit nailed,' declared Ash. Below them, the miniature world rotated unconcernedly.

'Give me an EG pressure reading.'

Ash examined gauges, spoke without turning to face Dallas. 'Three point four five en slash em squared. . About five psia, sir.'

'Shout if it changes.'

'You worried about redundancy management disabling CMGS control when we're busy elsewhere?'

'Yeah.'

'CMG control is inhibited via DAS/DCS. We'll augment with TACS and monitor through ATMDG land computer interface. Feel better now?'

'A lot.' Ash was a funny sort, kind of coldly friendly, but supremely competent. Nothing rattled him. Dallas felt confident with the science officer backing him up, watching his decisions. 'Prepare to disengage from platform.' He flipped a switch, addressed a small pickup. 'Engineering, preparing to disengage.'

'L alignment on port and starboard is green,' reported Parker, all hint of usual sarcasm absent.

'Green on spinal umbilicus severance,' added Brett.

'Crossing the terminator,' Lambert informed them all. 'Entering nightside.' Below, a dark line split thick clouds, leaving them brightly reflecting on one side, dark as the inside of a grave on the other.

'It's coming up. It's coming up. Stand by.' Lambert threw switches in sequence. 'Stand by. Fifteen seconds. . ten. . five. . four. Three. Two. One. Lock.'

'Disengage,' ordered Dallas curtly.

Tiny puffs of gas showed between the Nostromo and the ponderous coasting bulk of the refinery platform. The two artificial structures, one tiny and inhabited, the other enormous and deserted, drifted slowly apart. Dallas watched the separation intently on number two screen.

'Umbilicus clear,' Ripley announced after a short pause.

'Precession corrected.' Kane leaned back in his seat, relaxing for a few seconds. 'All clean and clear. Separation successful. No damage.'

'Check here,' added Lambert.

'And here,' said a relieved Ripley.

Dallas glanced over at his navigator. 'You sure we've left her in a steady orbit? I don't want the whole two billion tons dropping and burning up while we're poking around downstairs. Atmosphere's not thick enough to give us a safe umbrella.'

Lambert checked a readout. 'She'll stay up here for a year or so easy, sir.'

'All right. The money's safe and so's our skulls. Let's take it down. Prepare for atmospheric flight.' Five humans worked busily, each secure in his or her assigned task. Jones the cat sat on a port console and studied the approaching clouds.

'Dropping.' Lambert's attention was fixed on one particular gauge. 'Fifty thousand metres. Down. Down. Forty-nine thousand. Entering atmosphere.'

Dallas watched his own instrumentation, tried to evaluate and memorize the dozens of steadily shifting figures. Deep-space travel was a question of paying proper homage to one's instruments and letting Mother do the hard work. Atmospheric flight was another story entirely. For a change, it was pilot's work instead of a machine's.

Brown and grey clouds kissed the underside of the ship.

'Watch it. Looks nasty down there.'

How like Dallas, Ripley thought. Somewhere in the dun-hued hell below another ship was bleating a regular, inhuman, frightening distress call. The world itself was unlisted, which meant they'd begin from scratch where such matters as atmospheric peculiarities, terrain, and such were concerned. Yet to Dallas, it was no more or less than 'nasty'. She'd often wondered what a man as competent as their captain was doing squiring an unimportant tub like the Nostromo around the cosmos.

The answer, could she have read his mind, would have surprised her. He liked it.

'Vertical descent computed and entered. Correcting course slightly,' Lambert informed them. 'On course now, homing. Locked and we're in straight.'

'Check. How's our plotting going to square with secondary propulsion in this weather?'

'We're doing okay so far, sir. I can't say for sure until we get under these clouds. If we can get under them.'

'Good enough.' He frowned at a readout, touched a button. The reading changed to a more pleasing one. 'Let me know if you think we're going to lose it.'

'Will do.'

The tug struck an invisibility. Invisible to the eye, not to her instruments. She bounced once, twice, a third time, then settled more comfortably into the thick wad of dark cloud. The ease of the entry was a tribute to Lambert's skills in plotting and Dallas'ss as a pilot.

It did not last. Within the ocean of air, heavy currents swirled. They began buffeting the descending ship.

'Turbulence.' Ripley wrestled with her own controls.

'Give us navigation and landing lights.' Dallas tried to sort sense from the maelstrom obscuring the viewscreen. 'Maybe we can spot something visually.'

'No substitute for the instruments,' said Ash. 'Not in this.'

'No substitute for maximum input, either. Anyhow, I like to look.'

Powerful lights came on beneath the Nostromo. They pierced the cloud waves only weakly, did not provide the clear field of vision Dallas so badly desired. But they did illuminate the dark screens, thereby lightening both the bridge and the mental atmosphere thereon. Lambert felt less like they were flying through ink.

Parker and Brett couldn't see the cloud cover outside, but they could feel it. The engine room gave a sudden shift, rocked to the opposite side, shifted sharply again.

Parker swore under his breath. 'What was that? You hear that?'

'Yeah.' Brett examined a readout nervously. 'Pressure drop in intake number three. We must've lost a shield.' He punched buttons. 'Yep, three's gone. Dust pouring through the intake.'

'Shut her down, shut her down.'

'What do you think I'm doing?'

'Great. So we've got a secondary full of dust.'

'No problem. . I hope.' Brett adjusted a control. 'I'll bypass number three And vent the stuff back out as it comes in.'

'Damage is done, though.' Parker didn't like to think what the presence of wind-blown abrasives might've done to the intake lining. 'What the hell are we flying through? Clouds or rocks? If we don't crash, dollars to your aunt's cherry we get an electrical fire somewhere in the relevant circuitry.'

Unaware of the steady cursing taking place back in engineering, the five on the bridge went about the business of trying to set the tug down intact and near to the signal source.

'Approaching point of origin.' Lambert studied a gauge. 'Closing at twenty-five kilometres. Twenty. Ten, five. .'

'Slowing and turning.' Dallas leaned over on the manual helm.