Alien Page 4

  '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.'

  'It's big,' was Brett's single addition to the conversation. He sounded weak with distance.

  There was a pause, during which they could make out only the whoosh of chemical extinguishers over the speaker. 'The intakes got clogged,' Brett finally was able to tell the anxious knot of listeners. 'We overheated bad, burnt out a whole cell, I think. Christ, it's really breaking loose down here. . . .'

  Dallas glanced over at Ripley. 'Those two sound busy enough. Somebody give me the critical answer. Something went bang. I hope to hell it was only back in their department, but it could be worse. Has the hull been breached?' He took a deep breath. 'If so, where and how badly?'

  Ripley performed a quick scan of the ship's emergency pressurization gauges, then made a rapid eye search via individual cabin diagrams before she felt confident in replying with certainty. 'I don't see anything. We still have full pressure in all compartments. If there is a hole, it's too small to show and the self-seal's already managed to plug it.'

  Ash studied his own console. Along with the others, it was independently powered in the event of a massive energy failure such as they were presently experiencing. 'Air in all compartments shows no sign of contamination from outside atmosphere. I think we're still tight, sir.'

  'Best news I've had in sixty seconds. Kane, hit the exterior screens that are still powered up.'

  The executive officer adjusted a trio of toggles. There was a noticeable flickering, hints of faint geologic forms, then complete darkness.

  'Nothing. We're blind outside as well as in here. Have to get secondary power at least before we can have a look at where we are. Batteries aren't enough for even minimal imaging.'

  The audio sensors required less energy. They conveyed the voice of this world into the cabin. The storm-wind sounds rose and fell against the motionless receptors, filling the bridge with a hoo-click that sounded like fish arguing.

  'Wish we'd come down in daylight.' Lambert gazed out a dark port. 'We'd be able to see without instruments.'

  'What's the matter, Lambert?' Kane was teasing her. 'Afraid of the dark?'

  She didn't smile back. 'I'm not afraid of the dark I know. It's the dark I don't that terrifies me. Especially when it's filled with noises like that distress call.' She turned her attention back to the dustswept port.

  Her willingness to express their deepest fears did nothing to improve the mental atmosphere on the bridge. Cramped at the best of times, it grew suffocating in the near blackness, made worse by a continuing silence among them.

  It was a relief when Ripley announced, 'We've got intercom to engineering again.' Dallas and the others watched her expectantly as she fiddled with the amp. 'That you, Parker?'

  'Yeah, it's me.' From the sound of it, the engineer was too tired to snap in his usual acerbic manner.

  'What's your status?' Dallas crossed mental fingers. 'What about that fire?'

  'We finally got it knocked down.' He sighed, making it sound like the wind over the 'corn. 'It got into some of that old lubrication lining the corridor walls down on C level. For a while I thought we'd get our lungs seared proper. The combustible stuff was thinner than I thought, though, and it burnt out fast before it ate up too much of our air. Scrubbers seem to be getting the carbon out okay.'

  Dallas licked his lips. 'How about damage? Never mind the superficial stuff. Ship-efficiency function and performance hindrance are all I'm concerned about.'

  'Let's see . . . four panel is totally shot.' Dallas could imagine the engineer ticking off items on his fingers as he reported back. 'The secondary-load sharing unit is out and at least three cellites on twelve module are gone. With all that implies.' He let that sink in, added, 'You want the little things? Give me about an hour and I'll have you a list.'

  'Skip it. Hold on a second.' He turned to Ripley. 'Try the screens again.' She did so, with no effect. They remained as blank as a Company accountant's mind.

  'We'll just have to do without a while longer,' he told her.

  'You sure that's everything?' she said into the pickup. Ripley found herself feeling sympathy for Parker and Brett for the first time since they'd become part of the crew. Or since she had, as Parker preceded her in seniority as a member of the Nostromo's complement.

  'So far.' He coughed over the speaker. 'We're trying to get full ship power back right now. Twelve module going out screwed up everything back here. Let you know better about power when we've gone through everything the fire ate.'

  'What about repairs? Can you manage?' Dallas was running over the engineer's brief reports in his mind. They ought to be able to patch up the initial damage, but the cellite problem would take time. What might be wrong with module twelve he preferred not to think about.

  'Couldn't fix it all out here no matter what,' Parker replied.

  'I didn't think you could. Don't expect you to. What can you do?'

  'We need to reroute a couple of these ducts and reline the damaged intakes. We
'll have to work around the really bad damage. Can't fix those ducts properly without putting the ship in a full drydock. We'll have to fake it.'

  'I understand. What else?'

  'Told you. Module twelve. I'm giving it to you straight. We lost a main cell'

  'How? The dust?'

  'Partly.' Parker paused, exchanged inaudible words with Brett, then was back at the pickup. 'Some fragments agglutinated inside the intakes, caked up, and caused the overheating that sparked the fire. You know how sensitive those drivers are. Went right through the shielding and blew the whole system.'

  'Anything you can do with it?' Dallas asked. The system had to be repaired somehow. They couldn't replace it.

  'I think so. Brett thinks so. We've got to clean it all out and revacuum, then see how well it holds. If it stays tight after it's been scoured, we should be fine. If it doesn't, we can try metalforming a patchseal. If it turns out that we've got a crack running the length of the duct, well. . .' His voice trailed away.

  'Let's not talk about ultimate problems,' Dallas suggested. 'Let's stick with the immediate ones for now and hope they're all we have to deal with.'

  'Okay by us.'

  'Right,' added Brett, sounding as though he was working somewhere off to the engineer's left

  'Bridge out.,'

  'Engineering out. Keep the coffee warm.'

  Ripley flipped off the intercom, looked expectantly at Dallas. He sat quietly, thinking.

  'How long before we're functional, Ripley? Given that Parker's right about the damage and that he and Brett can do their jobs and the repairs hold?'

  She studied readouts, thought for a moment. 'If they can reroute those ducts and fix module twelve to the point where it'll carry it's share of the power load again, I'd estimate fifteen to twenty hours.'

  'Not too bad. I got eighteen.' He didn't smile, but he was feeling more hopeful. 'What about the auxiliaries? They'd better be ready to go when we get power back.'

  'Working on it.' Lambert made adjustments to concealed instrumentation. 'We'll be ready here when they're finished back in engineering.'

  Ten minutes later a tiny speaker at Kane's station let go with a series of sharp beeps. He studied a gauge, then flipped on the 'com. 'Bridge. Kane here.'

  Sounding exhausted but pleased with himself, Parker spoke from the far end of the ship. 'I don't know how long it'll hold . . . some of the welds we had to make are pretty sloppy. If everything kicks over the way it ought to, we'll retrace more carefully and redo the seals for permanence. You ought to have power now.'

  The exec thumbed an override. Lights returned to the bridge, dependent readouts flickered and lit up, and there were scattered grunts and murmurs of appreciation from the rest of the crew.

  'We've got power and lights back,' Kane reported. 'Nice work, you two.'

  'All our work is nice,' replied Parker.

  'Right.' Brett must have been standing next to the intercom pickup back by the engines, judging from the steady hum that formed an elegant counterpoint to his standard monosyllabic response.

  'Don't get too excited,' Parker was saying. 'The new links should hold, but I'm not making any promises. We just threw stuff together back here. Anything new up your way?'

  Kane shook his head, reminded himself that Parker couldn't see the gesture. 'Not a damn thing.' He glanced out the nearest port. The bridge lights cast their faint glow over a patch of featureless, barren ground. Occasionally the storm raging outside would carry a large fragment of sand or bit of rock into view and there would be a brief flash produced by reflection. But that was all.

  'Just bare rock. We can't see very far. For all I know we could be squatting five metres from the local oasis.'

  'Dream on.' Parker shouted something to Brett, closed with a workmanlike, 'Be in touch if we have any trouble. Let us know the same.'

  'Send you a postcard.' Kane switched off . . .

  III

  It might have been better for everyone's peace of mind if the emergency had continued. With lights and power back and nothing to do save stare emptily at each other, the five people on the bridge grew increasingly restless. There was no room to stretch out and relax. A single floor pacer would have used all the available deck. So they moped at their stations, downed inordinate quantities of coffee spewed out by the autochef, and tried to think of something to do that would keep their damnably busy brains from concentrating on the present unpleasant situation. As to what lay outside the ship, possibly close by, they elected not to speculate aloud.

  Of them all, only Ash seemed relatively content. His only concern at the moment was for the mental condition of his shipmates. There were no true recreation facilities on the ship for them to turn to. The Nostromo was a tug, a working vessel, not a pleasure craft. When not performing necessary tasks her crew was supposed to be spending its blank time in the comforting womb of hypersleep. It was only natural that unoccupied wake time would make them nervous under the best of circumstances, and the present circumstances were something less than the best.

  Ash could run problems in theory through the computer over and over, without ever becoming bored. He found the awake time stimulating.

  'Any response yet to our outcalls?' Dallas leaned out from his chair to eye the science officer.

  'I've tried every type of response in the manual, plus free association. I've also let Mother try a strictly mechanalog code approach.' Ash shook his head and looked disappointed. 'Nothing but the same distress call, repeated at the usual intervals. All the other channels are blank, except for a faint, steady crackle on oh-point-three-three.' He jabbed upward with a thumb.

  'Mother says that's the characteristic discharge of this world's central star. If anything, or anyone, is alive out there, it's unable to do more than call for help.'

  Dallas made a rude noise. 'We've got full power back. Let's see where we are. Kick on the floods.'

  Ripley threw a switch. A chain of powerful lights, bright pearls on the dark setting on the Nostromo, came to life outside the ports. Wind and dust were more evident now, sometimes forming small whirlpools in the air, sometimes blowing straight and with considerable force across their line of sight. Isolated rocks, rises and falls, were the only protrusions on the blasted landscape. There was no sign of anything living, not a patch of lichen, a bush, nothing. Only wind and dust swirling in an alien night.

  'No oasis,' Kane whispered to himself. Blank and featureless, inhospitable.

  Dallas rose, walked to a port, and stared out at the continuing storm, watched splinters of rock scud past the glass. He wondered if the air was ever still on this little world. For all they knew of local conditions, the Nostromo might have set down in the midst of a quiet summer's day. That was unlikely. This globe wasn't big enough to produce really violent weather, like on Jupiter, say. He drew some consolation from that, realizing that the weather outside probably couldn't get much worse.