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Alan Dean Foster: Alien

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Alan Dean Foster Alien

Alien: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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A crew of spaceship Nostromo is suddenly woken up from a cryogenic sleep because of mysterious signals coming from an unknown planet and received by a ship computer. The astronauts land on the planet surface and go to investigate an alien spaceship where one of them is attacked by an alien which fasten itself on his face. When the crew returns to their ship and abandon the planet, nobody forefeels that the real horror will begin very soon…

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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.

'Correct course three degrees, four minutes right.' He complied with the directions. 'That's got it. Five kilometres to centre of search circle and steady.'

'Tightening now.' Dallas fingered the helm once more.

'Three kiloms. Two.' Lambert sounded just a mite excited, though whether from the danger or the nearness of the signal source Dallas couldn't tell. 'We're practically circling above it now.'

'Nice work, Lambert. Ripley, what's the terrain like? Find us a landing spot.'

'Working, sir.' She tried several panels, her expression of disgust growing deeper as unacceptable readings came back. Dallas continued to make sure the ship held its target in the centre of its circling flightpath while Ripley fought to make sense of the unseen surface.

'Visual line of sight impossible.'

'We can see that,' Kane mumbled. 'Or rather, can't see it.' The rare half-glimpses the instruments had given him of the ground hadn't put him in a pleasant frame of mind. The occasional readings had hinted at extensive desolation, a hostile, barren desert of a world.

'Radar gives me noise.' Ripley wished electronics could react to imprecations as readily as people. 'Sonar gives me noise. Infra-red, noise. Hang on, I'm going to try ultra violet. Spectrum's high enough not to interfere.' A moment, followed by the appearance on a crucial readout of some gratifying lines at last, followed in turn by brightly lit words and a computer sketch.

'That did it.'

'And a place to land on it?'

Ripley looked fully relaxed now. 'As near as I can tell, we can set down anywhere you like. Readings say it's flat below us. Totally flat.'

Dallas's thoughts turned to visions of smooth lava, of a cool but deceptively thin crust barely concealing molten destruction. 'Yeah, but flat what? Water, pahoehoe, sand? Bounce something off, Kane. Get us a determination. I'll take her down low enough so that we lose most of this interference. If it's flat, I can get us close without too much trouble.'

Kane flipped switches. 'Monitoring. Analytics activated. Still getting noise.'

Carefully, Dallas eased the tug toward the surface.

'Still noisy, but starting to clear.'

Again, Dallas lost altitude. Lambert watched gauges. They were more than high enough for safe clearance, but at the speed they were Travelling that could change rapidly if anything went wrong with the ship's engines, or if an other-worldly downdraft should materialize. Nor could they cut their speed further. In this wind, that would mean a critical loss of control.

'Clearing, clearing. . that's got it!' He studied readouts and contour lines provided by the ship's imaging scanner. 'It was molten once, but not anymore. Not for a long time, according to the analytics. It's mostly basalt, some rhyolite, with occasional lava overlays. Everything's cool and solid now. No sign of tectonic activity.' He utilized other instruments to probe deeper into the secrets of the tiny world's skin.

'No faults of consequence below us or in the immediate vicinity. Should be a nice place to set down.'

Dallas thought briefly. 'You're positive about the surface composition?'

'It's too old to be anything else.' The executive officer sounded a touch peeved. 'I know enough to check age data along with composition. Think I'd take any chances putting us down inside a volcano?'

'All right, all right. Sorry. Just checking. I haven't done a landing without charts and beacon since school training. I'm a bit nervous.'

'Ain't we all?' admitted Lambert readily.

'If we're set then?' No one objected. 'Let's take her down. I'm going to spiral in as best I can in this wind, try to get us as close as possible. But you keep a tight signal watch on, Lambert. I don't want us coming down on top of that calling ship. Warn me for distance if we get too close.' His tone was intense in the cramped room.

Adjustments were made, commands given and executed by faithful electronic servants. The Nostromo commenced to follow a steady spiraling path surfaceward, fighting crosswinds and protesting gusts of black air every metre of the way.

'Fifteen kilometres and descending,' announced Ripley evenly. 'Twelve. . ten. . eight.' Dallas touched a control. 'Slowing rate. Five. . three. . two. One kilometre.' The same control was further altered. 'Slowing. Activate landing engines.'

'Locked.' Kane was working confidently at his console. 'Descent now computer monitored.' A crisp, loud hum filled the bridge as Mother took over control of their drop, regulating the last metres of descent with more precision than the best human pilot could have managed.

'Descending on landers,' Kane told them.

'Kill engines.'

Dallas performed a final prelanding check, flipped several switches to OFF. 'Engines off. Lifter quads functioning properly.' A steady throbbing filled the bridge.

'Nine hundred metres and dropping.' Ripley watched her console. 'Eight hundred. Seven hundred Six.' She continued to count off the rate of descent in hundreds of metres. Before long she was reciting it in tens.

At five metres the tug hesitated, hovering on its landers above the storm-wracked, night-shrouded surface.

'Struts down.' Kane was already moving to execute the required action as Dallas was giving the order. A faint whine filled the bridge. Several thick metal legs unfolded beetle-like from the ship's belly, drifted tantalizingly close to the still unseen rock below them.

'Four metres. . ufff!' Ripley stopped. So did the Nostromo, as landing struts contacted unyielding rock. Massive absorbers cushioned the contact.

'We're down.'

Something snapped. A minor circuit, probably, or perhaps an overload not properly compensated for, not handled fast enough. A terrific shock ran through the ship. The metal of the hull vibrated, producing an eerie, metallic moan throughout the ship.

'Lost it, lost it!' Kane was shouting as the lights on the bridge went out. Gauges screamed for attention as the failure snowballed back through the interdependent metal nerve ends of the Nostromo.

When the shock struck engineering, Parker and Brett were preparing to crack another set of beers. A line of ranked pipes set into the moulded ceiling promptly exploded. Three panels in the control cubicle burst into flame, while a nearby pressure valve swelled, then burst.

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