Alien (aliens universe) Read online

  The captain turned a jaundiced eye on Parker, but that worthy was now subdued.

  'Can we land on it?' he asked Ash.

  'Somebody did.'

  'That's what I mean,' he said significantly. ' "Land" is a benign term. It implies a sequence of events successfully carried out, resulting in the gentle and safe touchdown of a ship on a hard surface. We're faced with a distress call. That implies events other than benign. Let's go find out what's going on. . but let's go quietly, with boots in hand.'

  There was an illuminated cartographic table on the bridge. Dallas, Kane, Ripley, and Ash stood at opposite points of its compass, while Lambert sat at her station.

  'There it is.' Dallas fingered a glowing point on the table. He looked around the table. 'Something I want everyone to hear.'

  They resumed their seats as he nodded to Lambert. Her fingers were poised over a particular switch. 'Okay, let's hear it. Watch the volume.'

  The navigator flipped the switch. Static and hissing sounds filled the bridge. These cleared suddenly, were replaced by a sound that sent shivers up Kane's back and unholy crawling things down Ripley's. It lasted for twelve seconds, then was replaced by the static.

  'Good God.' Kane's expression was drawn.

  Lambert switched off the speakers. It was human on the bridge again.

  'What the hell is it?' Ripley looked as though she'd just seen something dead on her lunch plate. 'It doesn't sound like any distress signal I ever heard.'

  'That's what Mother calls it,' Dallas told them. 'Calling it 'alien' turns out to have been something of an understatement.'

  'Maybe it's a voice.' Lambert paused, considered her just-uttered words, found the implications they raised unpleasant, and tried to pretend she hadn't said them.

  'We'll know soon. Have you homed in on it?'

  'I've found the section of planet.' Lambert turned gratefully to her console, relieved to be able to deal with mathematics instead of disquieting thoughts.

  'We're close enough.'

  'Mother wouldn't have pulled us out of hypersleep unless we were,' Ripley murmured.

  'It's coming from ascension six minutes, twenty seconds; declination minus thirty-nine degrees, two seconds.'

  'Show me the whole thing on a screen.'

  The navigator hit a succession of buttons. One of the bridge viewscreens flickered, gifted them with a bright dot.

  'High albedo. Can you get it a little closer?'

  'No. You have to look at it from this distance. That's what I'm going to do.' Immediately the screen zoomed in tighter on the point of light, revealing an unspectacular, slightly oblate shape sitting in emptiness.

  '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.

  '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.

  The lights went out and they fumbled for hand beams while Parker tried to find the button controlling the backup generator, which provided power in the absence of direct service from the operating engines.

  Controlled confusion reigned on the bridge. When the yells and questions had died down, it was Lambert who voiced the most common thought.

  'Secondary generator should have kicked over by now.' She took a step, bumped a knee hard against a console.

  'Wonder what's keeping it?' Kane moved to the wall, felt along it. Backup landing controls. . here. He ran his fingers over several familiar knobs. Aft lock stud. . there. Nearby ought to be. . his hand fastened on an emergency lightbar, switched it on. A dim glow revealed several ghostly silhouettes.

  With Kane's light serving as a guide, Dallas and Lambert located their own lightbars. The three beams combined to provide enough illumination to work by.

  'What happened? Why hasn't the secondary taken over? And what caused the outage?'

  Ripley thumbed the intercom. 'Engine room, what happened? What's our status?'

  'Lousy.' Parker sounded busy, mad, and worried all at once. A distant buzzing, like the frantic wings of some colossal insect, formed a backdrop to his words. Those words rose and faded, as though the speaker were having trouble staying in range of the omni-directional intercom pickup.

  'Goddamn dust in the engines, that's what happened. Caught it coming down. Guess we didn't close it off and clean it out in time. Got an electrical fire back here.'