ALIEN 4

				  by
			      Eelko de Vos



                                   Prologue
                                   --------

 Life is different wherever you go in the universe. Sometimes life is based
on proteins, amino acids. Sometimes it is based on nitrogen-hydroxyde. But
there are places where life is so different, we cannot even recognise it
as a lifeform. Too late we understand, too late we find ourselves trapped
in miscommunication and battle with something we wrongly perceived as
just another natural phenomenon. Some of us have died finding out their
mistakes the hard way.
  Sometimes life is created by us, though we do not see the creation as
alive. We create, but don't see what we have made. Androids are being
build today, which are fairly close to being alive. But there are other
huge systems which are very close to the biological human system in its
intricate complexity. We made them. They are called spaceships.

  The Sulaco sped on towards Earth. It was an old ship, many times
upgraded, but it knew it was in fine condition. It was keeping up with the
small bend distortions in hyperspace which it corrected swiftly. Regularly
it checked its subsystems, among which there was a life support system.
The LLS had four bodies it kept in top condition. Or so it thought.

  Three of them were humanoid. They were unable to sustain anything right
now, so the computer situated nearby checked them continuously and
adjusted minor environmental inputs so their bodies were kept in good
condition. If some computers here broke down, they would certainly be
dead. If the covers would break, they would have awoken very quickly but
they would have internal inbalances which the body could barely cope with.
They would be sick for months, if they were lucky enough to live that
long. Right now, they were kept alive and dreamt dreams of cold fear,
fleeing, and of being hunted by large invisible monsters in narrow
corridors.

  The fourth body received a special treatment. It was an android, or what was
left of it. The torso was hooked up to twenty tubes and hooks which made it
possible to receive enough fluids to keep itself online and busy. THe
android's systems checked for deterioration of tissues and regenerated
parts of it. When the system had time off -which was usually the case- it
formulated theories about what it had encountered. Though its hardware was
functional, it was not able to use full speed calculations because of its
current environment, controlled to some extent by external computers. The
computers were not designed to sustain an android, but they had been
reprogrammed slightly and performed adequately.


  The humans, swaying between a state of deep coma and deep sleep, dreamt
every now and then. Their axonic connections inside their bodies were slowed
down by a strong electromagnetic field inside the freezer, so their dreams
were long and they found their dreams to be very real with their brain
having time to cope with a multitude of responses from all of its parts.
 They all had nightmares. They all had dreams in which they were trapped,
being chased through places where they saw death all around them. The women
had dreams in which they fled and fought occasionally; the man fought
furiously against enemies he couldn't see or feel. Terror was among them in
their sleep. And they had no chance of waking up by themselves.

  The ship sped on. The Sulaco, an old but many times upgraded military
vessel, had one of the latest enhanced SBD systems on board and it worked
fine. The hyperdrive systems pushed the ship up to speeds which one hundred
years ago had been thought of as impossible to reach or control. But they
worked fine and the ship returned to its homeworld uninterrupted. The
graviton emmision drives shut down happily, and the particle acceleration
engines kicked in.

  As it arrived within reach of communication the Sulaco made contact with
Dowe Base. It exchanged information and the computer system on Dowe Base
alerted that a military ship was coming in, carrying three humans and one
android.

  "Bring her in!", Douglas McCarthy, chief technician, mumbled while he
instructed the Sulaco what course to take. He was somewhat amazed to see
what the life support systems were handling: two women, one man and an
android. He never saw an android on a life support system outside Sim Base
during his service. The data on his screen though, undoubtedly told him
there was an artificial person hooked up to a modificated LSS class three.
He saw the changes that had been made to the soft- and hardware to support
the artificial person.
  He also saw something he double checked. One of the women was only four
feet two inches tall. He asked for a surface scan and saw the face of a
young girl. How did she get on a military ship, he wondered. This was
getting weirder by the minute...

  He queried surface scans of all the occupied freezers, and info on the
original crew. It took a few minutes before all the data was send and
received. When he saw the pictures forming on his screen, his eyes bulged.
The android was chopped in half. Its legs and hips were gone; all above
the waist was there, though. It was a gruesome sight to see its
intestines, connected to fluid pumps of the LSS. Gruesome, but also
intriguing.

  The man was injured. He had bandages on his head, chest and left arm.
The data from his life support system told McCarthy there were no serious
injuries, although this guy must've been sprayed with fire or something...
  The woman and the girl were alright. They didn't even seem to have a
scratch. McCarthy looked at the woman and wondered what she had been
through. Even asleep, she looked awfully tired.

  He finished the docking procedure and reported the arrival of the Sulaco,
with a large part of its crew missing, and a new passenger aboard. He then
sat back and reviewed the data to see if he had missed something.







			Chapter one
			-----------

Julia Rover looked down on the sheet again.
She was standing in the infirmary, which usually was filled with empty beds.
There was something different now, though. Someone had been brought in.

The girl lay still on her bed, tucked in tight. She breathed through a
mask which was connected to a device next to her bed. A small monitor
hanging over her bed made a small blipping sound every second or so. It
echoed shortly, untampered by any other sounds but the breathing apparatus
and Julia's soft movements.

No changes.

She had been here for six weeks now, and still no changes. It was like this
young girl was having a winter sleep, nothing could wake her. Like she didn't
want to awake...

Julia read the sheet. Rebecca Jordan, age eleven. Her birthday was the day
before yesterday.
  No concussions, no internal or external bruises, no signs of shock. Just
that malnutrition problem, which had been over in a couple of days. She was a
normal, healthy little girl again, whose only wish seemed to be to stay
asleep.

 She dreamed, though. Julia observed her often, and she had seen Rebecca
having nightmares, moaning and groaning in her REM sleep. EEGs taken
during REM sleep showed extraordinary brain activity, not quite like normal
nightmares. These seemed too real. Too much so. She had no normal dreams,
only those nightmares.
 Sometimes Julia had wished she could look inside that little girl's mind.
After she had heard some indications as to what Rebecca Jordan had gone
through, she didn't want to know anymore. All she wanted was to have this
little girl running and playing again like all the other girls Julia knew,
forgetting the terrors she had encountered.


 "Newt?"
 Her name was whispered in her ear, hissingly, slimy. All was dark, though
a faint dim red light poured through Rebecca's eyes. She didn't dare open
them.
 "Newt? Are you there? Can you hear me, baby?"
 The voice was familiar but it was distorted in some ways. There was warmth in
it, and love, compassion. Understanding too. But Newt's eyes stayed closed.
 "Newt, honey? We're safe now. Everyone is. We were all just playing around,
it was all a joke. Come on, honey. Open your eyes. We can't help you unless
you open your eyes, baby!"
 Newt fought the urge to open her eyes and look around. Something was amiss.
But she didn't know what it was. She couldn't place the voice, and thought
she _had_ to remember who that voice belonged to...
 "Come on... I saved you once, I can't save you twice if you don't cooperate,
darling! Give us a sign, honey! Please?"
 Newt listened and thought...
 "Please?"
 Newt listened...
 "Honey?"
 Suddenly a face came to mind, a friendly face. It wasn't her father's or
mother's, or any other relative's, though she had strong emotional feelings
to this face. She gasped for breath and uttered:
 "Ripley...!"
 She opened her eyes and a few inches before her was the face of a creature
with no eyes, a shiny exo-skeleton and huge fangs.
 "Honey! You're awake!", it hissed with Ripley's voice.
 Newt screamed. She saw the fangs open and a slimy smaller set of teeth
showed on the inside of the creature's beak.
 "Let's have some fun, sneak!", the alien screached, and its smaller fangs
shot out to bash Newt's fragile head.
 Newt screamed, but the sound didn't carry far. She struggled and suddenly
she was fighting some creature which had attached itself to her head. The
facehugger helt on tight and tried to get some slimy tube down her throat.
 She pushed it off her, but it kept on coming back to her face, and she
yelled and pushed and yelled and pushed and...

 ...sat up straight in a dark room, listening to the short echo of her own
scream. She had something in her hand, something with tentacles which were
scurrying over her arm. She eeked and threw it away.
 The lights went on and then she saw what she had been fighting with: an
oxygen mask.
 She heared feet running to her and she looked up. A nurse came to her,
looking quite frightened, wringing her hands.
 "Are you ok?", she asked when she had gotten to Newt. Newt nodded slowly,
ready for anything. She looked around quickly and saw seven other beds,
empty. One door, two glass windows and a few cameras in the corners. Nothing
moved under beds. No sounds apart from the nurse's and some apparatus which
blipped every now and then.
 "My God, you scared me! Did you have another nightmare?", the nurse
continued, and checked Newt's pulse. Newt looked at her in silence.
 "You're ok, I think... Can I have a peek at your eyes dear?"
 Newt silently let the nurse do her job. Both were quiet until the
examination was completed. Then the nurse looked at Newt and said:
 "Haay there, pretty girl! My name is Julia Rover. What's yours?"
 Newt didn't answer but looked at her in distrust. Julia waited.

 "Where's Ripley?", Newt finally asked...




			Chapter two
			-----------



 The slow tingling sound of a metal spoon in a ceramic cup echoed sharply
in the small office. The lights in the hall and all the other offices were
out. Sharp outlines of shadows reflected in three tall mirrors in three
corners of the room. The desklight hung just three inches off the face of a
tired woman, making the small wrinkles in her face come out sharply,
palling her skin, aching her eyes. She was reading.

		'DATE:	04-13-'71
		 REF:	0
		 TO:	DR. S. MCGEE
                 CONT:  Item 3GX will be delivered at
                        13:00 to you personally. Make
                        yourself familiar to its needs,
                        nutricial and habitatal. Full
                        information is locked by PKE
                        and will follow.'

 She had read this note maybe eight times now. The next mail she had
received was weird, too weird. It described a creature which had to be
encarcerated in a complex so secure, a full platoon of soldiers with all
their equipment wouldn't be able to get out. This creature needed almost
no food, just water and could only be controlled by electrical charges.
She had never heard of anything like it. Oh- and they appreciated anything
else she could find out about it. Like she would have a chance of studying
it, if it's confined behind two yards of solid enhanced steel. Or feed
it.
 The cage was no problem. They had a small X-room used for exploding -or
better: imploding- a variety of chemicals. It was fourteen by twelve yards
big, and four high. Should do the job. There were even built-in camera's.

 Still, this creature intrigued her. She had tried to deduct from all the
info she had what it was. She couldn't.
 Susan sighed deep and took a sip of her coffee. It was cold now, but it
tasted well enough to her. She looked up at the clock. Three thirteen.
 This was getting ludicrous. Whatever she would get, she would see it in
the morning. Now, let's get to bed, girly, she said to herself, standing
up and cleaning up her desk. She locked and closed her console, took her
cup and walked out. The lights behind her automatically went dead while
the hallway lit up. She turned to the right and started for her quarters.





			Chapter three
			-------------


 "Yo', Dave! Get the controls on the B-arm over there!"
 The two engineers pushed controls and moved two artificial arms to reach
into the craft on the landingsite and lifted a crate. Three cylinders on
top of it formed a lid with large tubes coming out to enter the cylinder
back on the sides. It had large warning signs on each side. The thing inside
was very dangerous, both chemically as well as physically.
 Susan looked at the crate being positioned on an auto-lorry which started
moving almost immediately after the engineers released the crate from the
artificial arms' grip. It made a sharp turn and rode towards the doors on
Susan's right. She followed the lorry.
 The doors opened and through they went. Just before the doors closed
after them, Susan heared the two engineers starting to clear out the site
jokingly. They had forgotten the crate just a few seconds after it was out
of their sight.

 They went down the hall, to the right and passed the elevator doors. The
lorry sped on and stopped at the doors of the X-room. It started beeping.

 Susan looked at it and waited. Behind her a door wooshed open and three
babbling technicians came her way. One of them noticed Susan waiting.
 "Susan! You here? Could've known it."
 "Hi, Dick. Are you going to unload it?"
 "That's the idea. Rick, Micheal, check the SAT's and start the valving."
 The two men looked at Susan with admiration. They knew who she was and
respected her deeply. Mumbling some kind of hellos to her, they passed her
and started on the crate. The beeping stopped.
 "You read the info on this thing?", Dick asked. Susan nodded.
 "Yep, and I haven't got a clue as to what it is. You know something?"
 Dick stared at the ground, shoveling his feet. He didn't answer right
away.
 "Have you heard about LV-426?", he asked looking up. "You know, Hadley's
Hope?" As Susan was about to answer him, Dick interrupted her.
 "It doesn't matter. What matters is that we have a highly dangerous
creature here which wiped out a complete complex and a full platoon
marines. So don't even think about opening that room. You can study the
thing, feed it perhaps, hell if you want to you can visit it. But I
wouldn't recommend it."
 "What is it?", Susan urged.
 "You'll see. Watch the monitors and the tapes. There is more info on
some logs we got with it. It could explain things better than I can. You
might not even believe me..."
 Susan shook her head.
 "Dick, I've bveen studying what I got all night and I still haven't got a
clue as to what it is. An exo-skeleton, acidic internal environment, no
found perceptory organs, what is it? A blind ant with an ulcer? Hell man,
I don't even know what it looks like..."
 Rick and Micheal had been ready for some time now. They both looked
different ways, trying not to hear what Dick and Susan were arguing about.
Rick coughed softly and Dick turned around.
 "All set?", he asked. "Let's get it out then..."
 He walked over to the crate's console and punched in his code. THere was
a small wooshing sound and on the side of the crate facing the wall there was
a short burst of steam. Susan walked around the crate into the console room.
Micheal was standing in front of her, watching one of the monitors.

 "What is it?", Susan mumbled.
 On the monitors there was little to be seen. A cold steam was flowing
through the room, blocking vision fully. something shimered inside the
artificial fog. It was moving slowly on four legs, a dark shadow visible
every now and then. Rick joined them and asked what they were looking at.
Neither of them answered.
 Then the fog cleared and suddenly they saw what was inside the X-room. It
was a dog.

 "That is it? A dog? A fuckin' dalmatian?" Rick laughed short nervously
and tapped Micheal on his shoulder. "You be careful now, Mickey. You might
get rabies. And we wouldn't want that now, would we?"
 Micheal shrugged irritated. He was somewhat disappointed too. He had
hoped for one hell of a dragon, but this didn't even come close. A dog. A
puppy.
 Susan was confused. She didn't get it. Where was her nine-foot creature,
this monster she had to babysit? Was it inside this dog? Would the dog
transform? What?
 Dick walked in and glanced at the monitor. He activated a few recorders
and then looked at the others.
 "Pretty isn't she? Four years old. Belonged to one of the scientists at
Gateway Station."
 "That's it? A dog?", Rick continued. "One that wiggles its tail, and
barks happy if you give it a bone? One of those?"
 "Yep, a dog. A beautiful, lovely dog. Rick, Micheal, get out and seal the
room. Then get the crate out of here. Put it in a container on deck four.
And guys... You never saw this, right?" They nodded shortly. "Thanks..."
 They left. Susan looked at D¡ck questioningly. He didn't answer. He
pushed some keys and suddenly the were engulfed in barking and pounding of
the dog in the X-room. He turned down the volume and turned to Susan.
 "I would sleep here, if I were you. You wouldn't want to miss this... For
anything."
 He started for the door, but hesitated before going through. Susan
watched him, but didn't stop him. He turned to the left and walked off,
his steps echoing constantly. Susan listened to them while she watched
the dog. It was lying still on the ground, breathing deep and fast,
resting for what came.



				Chapter four
				------------


"Ma'am? Are you awake?"
 Susan mumbled and lifted her head from her desk. Obviously she had been
sleeping. Against her will, she slowly realised.
 "Ma'am?"
 She rubbed her hand over her face and shook her head.
 "No thanks, Rob. I'll be fine. Just leave some of that wonderful smelling
coffee of yours."
 Robin filled her local liquid storage can with the dark fluid. He never
understood why people drank the stuff; it turned his stomache. He bend
slightly backwards as the hot steam rose from the opening of the can as he
closed it. Horrible smell.
 Susan looked at him. She knew about his repulsion of coffee and smiled.
 "You want some?", she asked him. He looked at her, surprised.
 "Ma'am, I thought I'd told you I'm not into that...?" He pointed at her
storage can where the coffee could be seen through the glass cover.
 "I'm only teasing you, Rob. Only teasing..."
 Robin shook his head and wandered off. Susan turned to the console and
watched the dog. Nothing seemed to have happened. It was obviously bored,
and it panted from barking. It just made some itchy squeeks now and then.
Susan checked the tapes and replaced a videotape. The soundtape could go
for another hour or two. She looked at the time on her display and
calculated the amount of time she had been asleep. Seven hours and twenty
minutes.

 She checked the monitors and switched to infrared vision. She didn't
expect to see anything weird and didn't. She saw a raw image of a dog
lying in a confined space and the reflection of its bodyheat on the floor
and walls nearby. Its neck and head were clearly visible and so was its
body. Nothing had changed. She nevertheless zoomed in on the body and
looked again.

 Something had changed.

 There was a light spot on the dog's image which had not been there
before. She zoomed in on it.
  There wasn't much to say about it: there was an area near the dogs
lungs which was quite active. Perhaps an internal infection. Could the dog
be infected in some way?

 She checked the spot by RDD and made an MR-scan. She fed it to the
medical database and came up with nothing.
 That was odd.
 Usually it would return at least an indication as to what tissue
surrounded the central spot.

 She broadened the area she aimed the scanners at and scanned again. This
time, the answer was: dog-intestines. Susan asked for a more specific
diagnose and was put on hold for a few seconds. She watched the monitors
and switched one back to normal vision. The dog stood up and started to
walk around, whining softly.
 Her attention was brought back to her console when a small beep signalled
the arrival of the answer of her inquiry. She read it and reread it.

 This was outrageous. There was tissue in the dog which was unknown to the
medical database. She had never seen this result in her life. It was
recognised as being tissue, but much more than that was not known. She
watched the console as her mind ran over the facts.
 She turned to the monitor and watched the dog suddenly shiver in pain. It
wanted out, so it seemed, but Susan had other things on her mind. She got
back to her console and redefined her question. She asked for a 3-D image of
the unknown tissue derived from her last scans. As she waited while the image
was slowly getting more and more shape, fear crept her. Halfway the
derivation it was obvious what it was: a small creature with two legs and a
large skull.
 "It looks a bit like a hammerhead-snake...", she thought cynically.

 After a few minutes the image was complete. It was not a funny sight.

 The creature lay curled up inside the dog, its elongated head pointing
toward the dog's chest. It did not seem to have eyes or ears, but it
certainly had a mouth. It was halfway open and there were two rows of
nasty spiky teeth to be seen. Susan shrugged.

 "Nice one, isn't it?"
 She jumped up and stared right into Dick's face. He didn't smile.
 "How did you get here?", she asked. Dick looked at the console.
 "The system warned me you were investigating something unusual. Nice
picture. Did it yourself?"
 She turned sharply back to her console.
 "Yes. You know what it is?", she snapped at him. He nodded but didn't
reply. She looked at him through the reflexion in her console's screen
and waited for an answer.
 Dick bent over and turned up the volume.
 "It's time...", he said.
 She looked at the monitor and saw the dog had layed down again. It was
restless though and whined. It also kicked, which was unusual. Dick
watched sereenly, his face emotionless.
 The whining grew stronger and the kicking followed. The dog rolled over a
few times and then lay still, panting. Suddenly, it shrieked.
 Dick zoomed in on the dog. Susan could only watch as the dog seemed to
struggle against some unknown creature inside of it. She wondered what the
creature was doing to the dog as suddenly, the dog started convulting.

 It was a horrible sight. Its paws kicked in the air as the body turned
and turned. After a few seconds, the harsh breathing of the dog turned
into a long howl and the dog stopped moving. It only shivered a bit, when
suddenly, its chest moved. and blood sprayed the floor.
 The dog died.
 For seconds, nothing happened. Susan helt her breath. Dick didn't move
either. Both were filled with disgust as they saw the dog's belly extend
and more blood gulped out of the wound. Something moved out of the dog.
 Susan startled as she suddenly saw something appear next to her head. It
was Dick's hand, readjusting the zoom of the monitors so that the wound
was centered and zoomed in on. Both of them gasped as they saw the small
creature emerge from the dog, covered with blood, taking some of the
intestines along with it. The creature jawned and a set of frightfully
sharp teeth was exposed. Susan bent over to the monitor.
 "What's it got in its mouth?", she asked. Dick answered whisperingly.
 "Another mouth..."
 Susan turned her head and frowned.
 "What?"
 "An extendable mouth. You should see what they can do with it..."
 Susan looked at Dick while he watched the monitor.
 "You know a lot more about this, don't you?", she said. He nodded.
 "Want to share it?", she added. He shook his head.
 "Why?"
 "Company orders", he said. When he saw her frown grow, he continued.
 "They want to have the opinion of someone who has not had the facts.
Thing is, they can't explain why or how that thing lives. Or even why it
exists., where it came from. They think a new face, uninfluenced by their
ideas and theories some new light on this...thing."
 "Is that why there weren't any pictures or diagrammes sent?", Susan
asked. She wondered wether Dick had seen this creature before or not. It
seemed he did. But she still wasn't sure. He could've read some things she
hadn't received.
 He nodded and readjusted the viewing window. The newly born scuffled
around the dead body of the dog. Susan watched it curiously as Dick
mumbled a short good-bye and took off. Studying the movements of the
creature, she didn't hear him walk away and stop somewhere down the hall
for a moment.



				Chapter five
				------------


 After hours of observation, Susan still had no idea what kind of creature
she was dealing with. The creature had two paws, an elongated head, and a
body which seemed to have the ribs on the outside. That was where any
comparison with any terrestrial being ended.
 Its skin seemed to consist of a substance which closely resembled
ceramic in most ways. It also had several places on its body where tubes
along the limbs came onto the surface of the creature's skin. There was no
visible pulsating of these tubes, and Susan had put down several theories
as to their function.
 It had explored the room and had taken special interest in the doorway
slits on the side. Susan thought she had seen the creature notice the
scanners and cameras, but she wasn't sure.
 The creature, now nicknamed 'Buster' by Susan for its busting abilities
in the dog's body, had settled down two hours ago, and had not moved
since. Susan scanned it once more and though she saw activity within the
body of the creature, it had not moved an inch. She had established it had
some sort of flow inside of its body, but there was no apparent heart or
valve system. The cranium of 'Buster' consisted of a complicated set of
spaces and high-density tissue. The spaces, mostly semi-circle shaped,
were almost all filled with fluids, though some exceptional ones contained
gas, so it seemed.
 The body was hydraulically based. It had no muscles but cylindricly shaped
tubes with small but seemingly strong pockets at the end, which could
contract. A tension scan revealed the creature had an internal pressure of
about three Bar. Susan tried to imagine what would happen if it got
punctured somewhere on its body. Somehow, she didn't want to know the
answer to that question.

 She leaned back and rubbed both her hands through her hair, making a
puffing sound. What now? She'd taken all the scans she could think of
and that was it. The creature was not moving and didn't seem likely to
start moving in the near future either. The activity inside its body was
steady, more fluid distribution than anything else.
 Susan sighed and let down her arms, looking around the console. She'd
pressed every button, she thought. Nothing more to do so far. She looked
at the creature which looked like a small one-foot statue two yards away
from the dog's dead body.

 "What are you doing here, Buster?", Susan whispered. "What the hell are
you doing here...?"
 She stared at the creature for a few seconds. Slowly, she frowned.
 "And where the fuck are you from...?", she wondered aloud.







				Chapter Six
				-----------


 Dick walked along the corridor towards Edwards' office. A few yards from
the door, it opened and David Eskar wandered out. Dick caught his eye, but
Eskar turned away almost looking ashamed, and walking the other way. Dick
raised his eyebrowse in wonder and eyed Eskar down the hall. When he was
out of view Dick turned and went through the opened doorway.
 "Sit down", Edwards said shortly. "And close the door."
 Dick was irritated by this display of authority, but did not show it. He
closed the door, sat down, and waited for Edwards to finish his writing.
 "Okay", Edwards said finally, "Get me the short version."
 He looked up at Dick but kept his hands on his keyboard.
 "There's nothing to say, then. Nothing worth, that is."
 "Well, then at least get me something to write here."
 Dick watched the triangular piece of mahogany with Edwards' name on it, on
the desk in front of him. He wondered whether he'd ever get one just like
that.
 "She's seen the hatching. She's good. She found the creature far before
any other scientist would've. Maybe it was luck. Maybe not."
 Edwards stroke his left thumb with his right index finger, thinking.
 "I can make something from that, I think", he said eventually. He turned
and started typing. The conversation, if there ever was one, had ended,
Dick knew.
 "Let me know anything interesting to report upstairs", Edwards said as Dick
walked out. He didn't answer.




				Chapter Seven
				-------------


 It was dark. The cold storage room was soundless apart from a low humming
noice every now and then when the cooling system came to life for a few
seconds. A vast number of shelves was filled with various items, most of
them appearing to be mere coffee machines or huge refrigerators. But the
delicacy of the interior of the items would've proven that not everything
is what it appears to be. Every item was a delicate machine with a special
purpose. But they broke down. And now it was waiting for either repair or a
complete strip.

 The section Robotics had three different subclasses. 'Total Loss',
'Repair/Maintenance', and 'Investigations'. All the machines in the first
class were completely broken down, shredded to pieces and were all
contained in glass boxes. 'Repair/Maintenance' was looking better. These
robots and androids mostly looked o.k. to the human eye, though they could
not operate fully functional anymore. They were shut down, resting and
waiting for their turn to receive service.

 The last class had no flaws whatsoever, which could be detected. But
somewhere down the line of duty some malfunction became apparant, and now a
complete system check was necessary to see what was wrong. 'Investigations'
consumed most of the finances of Robotics; it was the most time-consuming to
run every diagnostic check possible on the machines which were mostly
one-of-a-kind.

 There was one item which stood out from the last section. Apparently, it
was malplaced, though it had all the correct tags for the 'Investigations'
department.
 It was a glass box like the ones in the 'Total Loss' section, and a few
passing technicians had rechecked the tags just to make sure it should be
placed there. It contained an android, severly dismembered. Its torso was
ripped in two and its fluidic system was drained, which made it look
empty, skinny, dead. It wasn't, though.

 Somewhere inside, a few biochips still processed information, refreshed
memorybanks and tried to reroute several main functions, invain.
 Its eyes remained closed, its cognitive functions inoperative. The
routing was a Difficult Problem: there were numerous possibilities of
which only few worked. The chance of the algorithm finding one answer to
the problem were too small to calculate. But the chance was there. Not
having anything else to do, Bishop's circuitry worked full-time on this
problem.
 And found an answer.







				Chapter Eight
				-------------



 It was strange, living in Harvard Quarters, all by yourself. The
appartment was small, too small for her taste, but then again, she had no
family to share it with anymore. Sal had left her years ago. No, decades
ago. Mister McClarent found her to be inadequate for the marital stage
after three years of bonding. He chose to reorganize his life around a
twenty-two year old ballet-dancer he had met in a bar. And he had left her
with a three year old. Amanda.

 Amanda.

 She looked so pretty, so alive in her memory.

 She had seen pictures of Amanda, an old lady. A lovely old lady, but still
old. Her thoughts drifted back to something which seemed so far away, so
long ago, though it seemed only yesterday that she held Amanda, hugged her,
told her to be good to her father and take good care of him. Amanda had
looked at her seriously and had said:
 "Of course, mommy. Don't worry about me and daddy. We'll be fine."
 But she had seen the hurt in the little girl's eyes when she'd said that.
Her faughter had spent some time with her father several times now, after the
divorce, but not this long, not eight months. Eight months without even a
phonecall from her mother.
 Ripley had pulled her daughter close and rubbed through her long blond hair,
kissing her on the cheek, trying not to cry, to hide her emotions, hide her
pain.

 "I'll be back for your birthday, you hear? It'll be one huge party with
presents and lots of friends! One to remember, ok?"
 The little girl had nodded, rubbing her hair in her mother's face,
tickling.
 "Mommy?", she's asked.
 "Yes dear?"
 "Can I have a Pooh-bear?"
 Ripley had smiled, suddenly remebering the tender moments when she's read
the old stories to her daughter. The only forests they had ever encountered
were projected ones, on a vidiwall. But the eagerness and fascination
Amanda had showed about these sweet stories was astounding to her, as well
as her teachers. Children interested in old stories were rare. Ripley was
glad and proud her child was one of them.

 Had been one of them.

 Amanda was dead now, for three years. Dead and gone, ashes to ashes.
Cremated.
 She had visited Amanda's grave. It was nothing more than a wall with names
on it. "Amanda Ripley McClarent" was written on one of the tiles. She had
put her hands to the plate, trying to feel wether Amanda's spirit was still
there, behind it, next to her cremated body. But the tile was cold,
impenetrable, and all she had felt was loneliness and abondonment. Amanda
was gone.

 The room felt cold. A short meow was uttered in a corner nearby. Ripley
turned her head and watched her cat Jonesy looking at her. Feeding time,
she knew. But somehow she didn't want to get up. She wanted to stay there,
on her seat, thinking about what happened, who she had lost, who had died.
Parker, Brett, Lambert, Kane, Dallas. And Hicks.
 Dwayne.
 She hadn't seen him anymore since she'd tucked him in for hypersleep. Nor
had she seen Newt. Or Bishop.
 In her mind the image of Newt was haunting her. She tried not to think of
her, but she couldn't. She had been to Newt's grave. They had pointed out
where Newt was buried and she had met the grandparents of Newt, who had
called her Rebecca, her christian name. Nice people, though they knew little
about their grandchild, of course. People tend to forget eachother more
easily when they are seperated by a few lightyears. But they had talked for a
few minutes and then she had left. There wasn't much to say and it hurt too
much for all of them, talking about what happened.
 Somehow she wondered which was more horrid: the aliens or the emptiness
she had found here, in this future. Both had a considerable impact on her
dreams and her daily routines. But somehow she could cope better with the
alien thread than the desolation she found in her confinement. Her life
seemed so cut off. Cut off from everything she had ever loved. Cut off
forever.

 A buzzer sounded. Ripley looked up and sat up straight. With a deep metal
click the door opened and three men walked in.
 "Ellen?", the middle man said. "We'd like to talk a few minutes now..."
 Ripley looked at him, an outer shell of inpersonal psychological
proficiency. She had no idea what kind of person this guy was outside of
Harvard Quarters, and had no wish to deepen their relationship. She turned
her head back and watched Jonesy settle in a corner.
 "Ellen?", the man said again, as the other two took posts alongside the
doorway. Ripley did not respond. The man walked over to a chair in front of
Ripley. He sat down quietly and folded his hands on the table. There was a
deep silence.
 "Do you want to talk about it, Ellen?", the man asked. Ripley's hands
started shaking slightly, unnoticable.
 "You can trust us, it's ok. You're safe here. There's nothing bad here.
But we do want to talk to you. And you know about what, don't you?"
 Ripley put her hands to her forehead to stop the shaking. Her thumbs
pressed hard on her temples, paling the sides of her forehead.
 "I'd like to talk to you about what happened on Hadley's Hope, Ellen."
 Ripley's eyes closed. Her mind went beserk. She fought off all the
thoughts she had and tried to forget what was happening here. She couldn't.
The more she tried the more memories came to life.
 "Do you think you can talk to me about it?"
 "NO!", she yelled suddenly.
 "Can you tell me something about the dreams?", the man asked while the
room seemed to darken. "Do you dream often? What do you see in your
dreams?"
 Ripley looked up and saw only the man's figure, dark, sinistre. The two
men at the door were like statues and seemed to grow as the room became
darker.
 "Ellen? What do you see now?", the man in front of her whispered as he
raised an arm in front of her. There was a four-fingered claw at the end of
it. Ripley saw its silhouette against the light colours of the table and
she stared.
 "Do you blame yourself, Ellen? Do you?"
 The claw folded its fingers and spread them, and again. Ripley looked at
the men at the door. They were no men anymore. There were two silhouettes
of two aliens there, standing tall, silently waiting for a signal to
attack. Ripley looked at them in terror.
 "Eeehhhlllleeennnn..."
 She turned her head slowly, back to the person in front of her. He was
gone. In his place there was a huge creature, with a dark shiny
chitine-like skin. It hissed her name. Again.
 "Eeehhhhlllleeennn..."
 Ripley looked at it and held her breath. She felt she was looked at by
thousands of unseen eyes, inhuman eyes. Every moment now the claws of the
creature opposite her on the table would reach out and grab her, kill her.
 She waited.
 It waited.
 She waited.
 It waited.
 And Ripley closed her eyes.








				Chapter Nine
				------------

 "Ravish, has anyone touched this android?", a company clerk with an
elektronic papersheet asked to a passing technician.
 Ravish looked up at where the man was pointing to. He shook his head.
 "Ain't nobody been messin' with anything in here, sir. W'all know ya' need
at least four permissions and a squadron of company men to touch anything in
here..."
 "Then who did this?", the clerk asked him directly.
 Ravish looked at the box between the model 314-D and the gyrobot. It
contained wires and some smoking remains of an android. He knew the android
had been out of order and without power supply when he'd checked last.
 "Bugga' 'f I know it...", he responded. The clerk looked at him
dismissively, and straightened his tie as Ravish bent over the box. A foul
stench of burned synthetics rose from the smashed droid. A short spark made
the clerk jump, but Ravish looked at it without even blinking his eyes.
 "No need to be scar'd", he said. "If his thing's battery had blown, we
wouldn't even have known it." He turned his head to look at the clerk. "We'd
be vapourised within fifteen milliseconds. Hardly time to say a pray'r, I
reckon..."
 The clerk looked at him with big eyes and suddenly changed his attitude.
 "You take care of the remains. I want this droid to be examined at once, no
delay. Salvage from the memorybanks whatever you can find."
 Ravish looked at him, smilingly, knowing it would made the clerk even more
upset.
 "Now, move it!", the clerk added. Ravish bent over the box and lifted the
android's remains, while he heared the clerk scurry away. As he looked up,
there was no one near him anymore. He grinned.
 "Now, pretty boy, let's have a look at you", he said.




				Chapter Ten
				-----------

 Small beeping sounds from the console every ten seconds or so signalled the
arrival of a new answer to a query. Susan read them, and queried the net
again, with new questions. She was looking for a starting point. Where did
this critter come from?
 Suddenly, she appeared to have access to a crew list of a spaceship called
'Nostromo'. She looked at it for a few seconds, after wich an update came.
It wiped the entire screen. She cursed, and requeried the system. The
crewlist was empty. There were no names, just numbers, from one to seven.
She looked at the logfile, in which no names were mentioned too, just
numbers. Someone had discovered her query, and didn't want her to see
anything personal. She cursed again, sat back and looked at a monitor. It
showed Buster, still motionless, still looking like it was about to jump
something invisible, like a dog could look, concentrated, measuring the
distance to a prey, just before it would leap.

 Suddenly she jumped up and ran to the recorders. She changed a tape and put
the old tape in a viewer. She ran it back a little, and saw her own head
from the back, viewing the information she had queried. She grabbed a still,
enhanced it manually, and zoomed in on the screen. She could make out five
names.
 "Gotcha...!", she hissed to the screen. "Gotcha, sucker. You can't trick me
that easy."
 She took a hardcopy of the screen and reconnected herself to a different
host, Central Population Base, located at their facility. She queried
information about a few populations, and some other nonsense questions, and
added a request for information about a captain named Dallas. After a few
minutes she received several answers which she discarded. A small one was
saved though. She queried again, and hid another name inbetween the data
regarding the questions. This time it was a lieutenant Kane. The third one
was an officer Ripley. Susan saved these too, and ran an automated querylist
she had stalled for a few months now, which contained about twohundred and
fifty Big Questions she always had wanted an answer to, but never came to
ask the Central Base. Like how the avarage eye colour of a family was
related to the scores on a test a family member made. Foolish, but funny
questions. It was time now, she knew grinningly, to ask these big questions,
which would keep the system busy for a few minutes, if not hours.
 As she read the three files, Susan saw one of them was still alive. The
officer Ripley had almost been institutionalised before, and had cracked up
now for good, so it seemed. She queried through another terminal the medical
file of this officer, and got it promptly. If somebody was watching her
other terminal, he wasn't paying attention to others, so it seemed. Susan
laughed softly, but her breath stocked as she saw where this officer was
helt. Harvard Quarters on Earth. That was the highest security penatentiary
she knew of. It was no psychiatric hospital, though the government called it
that, it was more like one big interrogation chamber, complete with torture
corner. She knew. She'd worked there. And quit.

 Susan looked up at Buster and sighed. She knew there wasn't any more
information to be found in these files.
 "Seems like I'll be going to visit a friend of yours...", she said softly
and bent over to the monitor. "Will you be good in the meantime?", she
whispered, her lips almost touching the screen.

 Buster stayed put and played hear no evil see no evil.




				Chapter Eleven
				--------------

 The trip wasn't too hard to schedule. Every four days a ship left for Earth
and came back the next. It was only four hours to get there and four hours
to get back, so it could even been done in a day. But as pilots are, they
always take in a certain flexibility measure of a few hundred percent, so
they could visit one of the local bars and afterwards their girlfriend, so
they could be back at the base the next morning with one huge hangover and
clothes smelling after cheap female perfumes which were inside out and
sometimes even upside down.
 Susan looked at the pilot and wondered who would fancy a guy like this. She
knew pilots were quite welcome anywhere with the ladies for their money, but
she couldn't see herself being catched with one of these types. She'd rather
spend the night with Buster, she thought.
 "We're in orbit, ma'm. Ya' wanna see what's left of the old civilisation?
We've got a few good minutes before we've got permission to drop down...?"
 Susan shook her head. The pilot grunted and turned to his console again,
irritated and disappointed. Susan had looked okay to him, and he wouldn't
have mind a nice roll on the floor with her. But this lady wasn't to be
bothered, he felt. Too bad for him.

 "We're clear to drop. Hold on to your underpants", the pilot said after a
few minutes. Suddenly the ship roared and shot forward. Susan helt her
breath and squeezed her fists. She had found out that was her way of keeping
her stomache inside and her lunch where it belonged.
 Thirty seconds later, their flight was steady again. The pilot looked back,
hoping to find his passenger unconsious in her seat. Susan looked at him
sharply and he grunted again, turning back. This bitch was a tough one. Even
he had had problems with keeping down his buttered sandwich, even though he
knew he had made the ride quite harder then usual on purpose. But this lady
seemed tougher than him.
 He sniffed and took the ship down to the base.




				Chapter Twelve
				--------------

 "What's wrong with this android?", Ravish asked one of his fellow
technicians who was holding the chart.
 "Seems like he's got the shivers. He couldn't stop it. I think we'd better
replace his motoric system, then", the technician said. Ravish nodded.
 "Fine by me. Saves m' time and lets m' get back to the lady sooner. I'm
dying for a back-rub", Ravish said. They lifted the android and placed it on
a workbench.
 "System?", Ravish asked as he turned to grab one of the countless plug-in
cards.
 "Three fourteen, D. The smaller version."
 "Got it."
 He turned and saw the gap where the technician had removed the old card. He
shoved it in and closed the neck again. He took a small in-vitro analyser
and shoved it through the skin of the right side of the android.
 "Seems ok to me. Wanna switch it on again?", Ravish asked. The technician
shrugged.
 "Can't see why not."
 Ravish pushed a small button on his analyser and a small beep signalled
that power had been restored to the android.
 "Can you hear me?", the technician asked as if he were talking to a kitchen
appliance.
 "Yes, I can hear you", the android spoke. Ravish looked the eyes of the
android which moved towards him.
 "That's it then. I'm off", the technician said. "You lock up?"
 Ravish nodded.
 "Is it ok if we do some small tests?", Ravish asked the android. It nodded
as it sat up straight and rubbed a hand through its hair.
 "Fine by me. Hmm. Seems like no more shakin' and bakin' to me. Thanks. What
did you do?"
 "Replaced your motoric system and ran full diagnostics again", Ravish
lied. "No other malfunctions were found, so here you are again."
 The android nodded.
 "I cannot find any other malfunctions either. Thank you for your trouble."
 "You're welcome. Okay if I run a pattern scan on you?", Ravish said as he
took up a small device with two holes in it.
 "Sure."
 Ravish lifted the device up to the eyes of the android and pushed a button.
A low humming sound was heard from the android's intestines, as the scan was
made. Ravish looked at the scanner a few seconds later and nodded slowly.
 "Yep, it all seems fine by me. Have you found anything?"
 "Has anyone been tampering with my memory?", the android asked. Ravish
looked up, surprised.
 "What?", he said.




				Chapter Thirteen
				----------------

 Susan walked down the white hallway towards the lonely guard in front of
the wide door. A tank could pass through that door, Susan thought, and
remembered she'd thought that every time she'd walked down this hall. She
didn't recognise the guard, but then again she had been away from here for
three years now. The guard watched her apporaoching, and looked at a
monitor next to him when she was still about fifty yards away from him.
Susan saw it and remembered the scanners. She never had seen any evidence
of the scanners, but she knew they worked very well: she'd walked next to a
man one day who was carrying a small pistol. He was shot immediately
-sedated-, and disarmed. It turned out to be nothing much, it was a present
for his kid and it wasn't even a true pistol, just a toy. After that, no
one even dared to joke about the scanners anymore.
 She couldn't help but look to her left and right shortly to see if she
could spot the lines where the scanners were located. Old habits die hard,
she thought, somewhat disappointed again she couldn't detect their presence.

 "Name, and reason for your visit.", the guard said. Nothing had changed,
Susan thought.
 "Susan McGee, investigation A fourteen, dash four.", she answered him. The
guard looked at his monitor, which showed a speech pattern confirmation
on her identity, and a confirmation that this investigation was authorised.
He still looked suspicious, though, as he opened the door for her. Susan
walked through, and interrupted the guard who was about to tell her where
to go.
 "I know the way", she said. He looked even more suspicious at her now,
and she smiled, feeling superior. He probably worked here for a few months
now, and knew everybody in this building, and all people who visited the
complex every now and then, so he was quite suspicious of everyone he
didn't know and who knew their way about.

 Susan walked on and turned to the right, passing several doors without any
nametags on them. She knew what was behind them, though. The hallway was
looking morbid, long, white, with a door every five metres on either side.
She'd had nightmares about this corridor for days when she started to work
here.
 She turned to her left and passed another guard. He looked at her and
looked at his monitor. He then looked down to his gameconsole again. It
kept them sharp, she thought, looking at the screen where the guard was
shooting several ships down in a confined three dimensional space. She
passed three other white doors and stopped at the fourth on her left. She
helt her hand against a small light next to the door. It opened. She walked
in.

 "Susan McGee. Back for more?"
 Susan looked into a grinning face of William Parth. She'd always had a
weak spot for him, even though he had been rightly insufferable from time
to time. He'd always thought he was a joker, but he was a very very bad
joker. His practical jokes usually resulted in someone injured or something
valuable smashed beyond repair.
 "Yeah, I got you a cat.", she replied. William frowned and his eyes
narrowed as he remembered a practical joke which got out of hand. He didn't
like being remembered such small tragedies. Especially when he was to
blame.
 "Sit down", he said. "Please."
 Susan sat down. She took a cigarette from her pocket and lit it. William
looked at her, waiting. She inhaled, and puffed a large cloud of smoke into
the cool sterile air. The airconditioning started humming.
 "How are y-", William started. Susan cut him off.
 "Let's cut the crap, William. I want to get out of here as soon as
possible. So if you could give me my schedule, I'd be very happy."
 William reached down and brought up a sheet of paper. He handed it to her.
She glanced at it.
 "Here you are.", he said. "Have a nice stay at our facility. If you wish
for anything, please let me know and I'll have it arranged. There's only
one cath and you know what it is."
 Susan looked up and her eyes grew slim. As she spoke, the words ricoched
across the room.
 "I don't need anything from you or anyone else here. As soon as I've done
my research I'll be leaving this place. Now, what chamber is mine?"
 "Four B", William answered calmly.
 "Goodbye then", she said sharply.
 Susan got up and walked towards the door. As it opened, William raised his
voice and spoke to her, kindly.
 "Susan, there's no need for any hostility. I'll be happy to help you in
any way I can. For old time's sake..."
 She turned around, and looked at him long. She nodded slowly, letting her
guard down a bit. He smiled at her. She just looked at him and then turned
around and walked out. William watched the door close and sighed.




				Chapter Fourteen
				----------------

 "I can't fin' anythin' wrong with ya' memorybanks. 'S there any reason
ya're feeling this way, somethin' sp'cific?"
 Ravish looked at the android expectantly. The android shook its head.
 "I cannot find anything missing or lacking from my memorybanks too. It's
just that I find small pieces of information springing to mind every now
and then, which I cannot correlate to other information I have
encountered. You might call it intuition, perhaps. But physically, that is
impossible for me. I'm just a toaster."
 Ravish looked at the android. After a few seconds he answered.
 "P'haps they did something to the motoric unit. They might've added some
new gyrocontroller, or a new enhanced neuroglia-simulator for better
st'bility..."
 The android looked at him, puzzled.
 "They would tell you if they did something like that, wouldn't they?"
 Ravish shook his shoulders.
 "I don't know. They nevah' tell m' anythin'." Ravish took his
neuroscanner again and checked the motoric unit externally. After a few
moments, he gave up.
 "Nothin' wrong with that... I don't know anymore. Ya' know what?"
 The android glanced at the display of the scanner. It then looked up at
Ravish.
 "Ya' can go now, but if anythin's out of the ordinary ya' come back, ya'
hear me?"
 The android nodded shortly.
 "That's fine by me. I can't see any reason why you would keep me here
either."
 It stood up and lifted its hand to meet Ravish's. They shook hands, a
common courtesy in the workshop when a droid had been repaired.
 "Ya' take care now!", Ravish said, as if he was talking to his eldest
son. "It's dangerous out there..."
 The android smiled at him and walked off.




				Chapter Fifteen
				---------------

 "What is reality, dear? You call it reality because you think it
happened, but to all of us it might never have happened at all. What you
made into your reality is not necessarily our reality. It's all in the
eye of the beholder."
 The man in the suit looked across the table with a friendly smile on his
face, the kind of smile behind which lurks a leech or something far worse,
something so unspeakable detestable, you cannot bear looking at it.
 "Now, tell me, what do you think has happened during your trip home?"
 Ripley looked up, in her white gown. She looked across the white table at
the man who was sitting in front of a white wall. The white of his eyes
was to Ripley as if she could look right through them, as if the pupils of
this man were just suspended in mid air in the holes in the front of his
head. As if there was no mind inside of this head, no life.
 "You're an android.", she said.
 There was a pause in which she took a sip of her cigarette. As her arm
came down again, the man in front of her looked down at his hands and
folded his fingers.
 "What if I was?"
 "That's no answer."
 "You didn't ask me anything."
 "Perhaps I did."
 The man looked up.
 "This is getting you nowhere. Why are you insisting on refusing reality?
Why am I an android? Can you tell me that?", he said slowly.
 "Because you don't take offense by the remark.", she replied.
 He sighed and lifted his eyebrowse.
 "Well, it doesn't matter anymore now I guess, but I did take offense. I
don't like being compared to a washing machine. Not even if it was meant
as a compliment. Especially not if it was meant as a compliment."
 Ripley sighed and tipped her cigarette over the floor next to her. The
man watched the ashes fall.
 "When do you think you will get out of here?", he asked her.
 "Never."
  The answer came fast, too fast. It was almost as if she was determined
never to leave this place.
 "Now, that could be your reality if you want it to. Perhaps you'd even be
confined to this place, even after you left it. Have you thought of that?"
 "I am confined to something far worse. I am confined to a life which is
not mine. Which leaves me with NOTHING! I cannot SEE who I want because
they are DEAD! I cannot FEEL those I loved because they are DEAD! I cannot
HEAR the voices of my friends because other sounds DROWN THEIR MEMORIES!"
 She was standing now. She panted. But she did not break down. She did not
cry. And she was not mad. She was only trying to get through the shell of
this man, of his sherade, failing miserably. She sighed and looked down at
her cigarette. She took it between her thumb and index finger.
 "I want to get out of here.", she whispered to him, and with a flick of
her fingers she shot the cigarette towards him. He startled and jumped up.
She smiled.
 "Perhaps you're more human than you think you are", she said and walked
towards the door. It opened when the man pushed a small button on his
wrist console. She walked out and was escorted to her cell.





				Chapter Sixteen
				----------------

 Susan knocked on the door. There was no answer. She looked at the guard
who nodded to her and opened the cell. She entered, holding her sheets of
paper which she had been studying last evening.
 "Officer Ripley?", she asked to the quietness in the room. There was no
answer. The sheets on the bed did not move. The person in the bed kept
still.
 "I would like to talk to you, if I could...?", Susan hesitatingly asked.
 There was movement. The person on the other side of the room rose. Susan
looked at her, and shivered. Somehow, this officer Ripley had seen things
she had never dreamt of. Ripley's eyes glanced at her, disrespecting,
disregarding her presence so it seemed. Susan walked a few steps towards
her.
 "I would like to talk to you about your encounter", she said while she
looked around to see if she could pick out any microphones. There were
microphones everywhere, so she had to hurry. There wasn't much time, after
which Susan would probably be taken away and interrogated. She had come
here to ask this officer Ripley questions about her physical well-being,
and her long hypersleep. Well, that was her story when she had asked to
come here to question this officer Ripley. They hadn't known she was here
to find out what Ripley knew about the creature. They probably did now, or
at least in a few seconds.
 Ripley looked at her and frowned.
 "What?"
 "I would like to talk to you about what you saw. Could you tell me
something specific about these creatures?", Susan continued.
 "Are you Newt's mother?", Ripley asked puzzled. Susan looked at her in
despair.
 "Please, I don't have much time", she urged. "What is their lifecycle?
What do they eat?"
 "I don't know... What are you talking about?", Ripley said as she stood
up and walked across the room. She got her robe and put it on.
 Susan walked over to her. Somewhere, far away from them, three small
burst of high intensity light burned three small holes in a hallway.
 "Please, it could be minutes, it could be seconds. Could you please tell
me where they come from? Who made them? Anything?"
 Ripley turned to her and watched Susan beg her for an answer.
 A few seconds later a guard fell forwards, with a small hole where his
nose ended between his eyes. One moment later, a door opened and someone
started running. Susan waited for Ripley to answer.
 There was a small knock on the door. Susan looked up in fear, and urged
Ripley to tell her anything. Ripley just looked at her.
 The door swung open. There was a man in the dooropening, carrying a small
sidearm. He beckoned them to come towards the door.
 "Come", he said. Susan did not move, and neither did Ripley. "Come on!
There isn't much time left!", he urged. "Ripley, it's me, Bishop!"
 Ripley looked at him with big eyes.
 "Bishop...?", she said as the man ran in towards her. Susan ducked away
from the man as he took hold of Ripley's arm.
 "Let me GO!", she yelled. The man looked at her and then at Susan.
 "What's with her?", he asked.
 "She's in shock from a malfunctioning hypersleep chamber", she answered.
"There's no telling if she's ever getting out again."
 The man watched Ripley scurry away in a far corner.
 "She's bright every now and then, but has these kinds of attacks every
hour or so. It's hopeless. The cryotube didn't sustain an environme-"
 "Who are you?", he interrupted her.
 "Wha- I'm Susan McGee, and I'm investigating a creature she apparently
encountered."
 The man looked at her, nodded once and suddenly moved towards the door.
 "Then let's go. We need you."
 "Go whe-", Susan was about to ask as an alarm went off somewhere outside.
The shrieking noise penetrated every bone in her body and she moaned.
 "You want to study this thing? Then let's GO! In a few moments they'll
know where I am and there's no telling who'll die then. You'd better come
with me."
 He walked out, the hand with the gun behind his back. Susan looked at
Ripley who was crying in the corner of her room. Somehow she felt sorry
for this woman. She looked back one more time as she ran out, following
the man.
 He waited at every corner and walked casually around them, as if he was
perfectly at home. At one time, a guard approached him and he shot him, a
perfect shot right between the eyes. Susan looked at it with big eyes as
she carefully stepped over the body. They came to the exit and ran out
through the hallway.
 Halfway, Susan noticed the three holes in the wall. Finally, she thought.
Finally she knew where the scanners were hidden.
 They ran onwards, towards the docking bay. There were a few technicians
walking about, who didn't notice them. They came to the door of one of the
ships, a small one. The man pointed at the door and they got in. The door
closed and the man took the pilot's seat.
 "Can you navigate?", he said to Susan. She shook her head.
 "Damn...", he said. He switched on the power of the ship. Somewhere
outside, a red light started to blink.
 Susan grabbed the buckles of her seat and tried to get them around her.
It didn't work. As the engines started whining she got one in place and
just before the ship spurt forwards, she had the other one. The sudden
movement slapped her head to one side and she felt a sudden headache
coming up.

 As the ship spurt out of the bay, its engines roared and spurt flames
into the entire docking bay. Several technicians who were lucky enough
were dead instantaniously. Others were just scorched and saw how the
flames licked the other ships and the power supply at the back of the bay.
Suddenly, every elektronic device in the bay shut down, and only the
flames were to be heard. When the ship was gone, everything was quiet.
Then, pipes started hissing and sparks flew around. As the ship rose, the
entire bay exploded in red flames and white light. The shockwave ran all
the way through to the corridors to where William was sitting in his room.
He looked up, just to see another explosion nearby blow his door out of
its hinges inwards, followed by a cloud of burning gasses. His body fell
down, smouldered, as his face still gazed at the door opening.

 Outside, the ship sped on and ran out of sight. The morning was softly
lit, and Susan wondered about what she had just got herself in to. She
watched the man work his consoles and sighed deep.
 As the ship got into the higher parts of the atmosphere, she looked
outside into the soft tones of light of the fastly rising sun and tried to
think about what was going to happen to her next.




				Chapter Seventeen
				-----------------

 "Who are you?", Susan asked. The man was only looking at his instruments
every now and then, and seemed they seemed to be on course for wherever
they where going.
 "I am Bishop, a military android, remodelled."
 "Where are we going, and why did you come there?"
 "We are going to Cyberol Three, to the colony. We will be picked up there
by a man called Dwayne Hicks, a soldier. He knows a lot more about this
creature you are studying. And so do I, by the way."
 "You do? What kind are you?"
 "This external body is a three-fourteen D system, but my previous body
was a higher class one, science officer. I was torn in two but I
downloaded my system and memorybanks into this body as I was waiting to be
investigated. Then I contacted private Hicks. He was the only one of my
crew who was still alive, next to officer Ripley and a little girl called
Rebecca Jordan."
 "Newt?", Susan asked.
 Bishop nodded.
 "That's her nickname."
 "What is going to happen to me?", Susan asked carefully.
 "Nothing, if you behave nicely", Bishop said. "We need you. Have you any
idea what you have been studying?"
 "No..."
 "It's more horrifying than anything you've ever seen, I tell you. It's
grewsome. It kills, and there's no stopping it. You can have all the
details of my investigation when we arrive."
 "You were remodelled?", Susan asked curiously.
 "That's correct, I was remodelled by Hicks and a friend of his. Call it,
made less machine-like. They removed certain rules I had to obey."
 Susan thought about it, and the looked up in disgust.
 "Like killing people."
 Bishop looked over his shoulder at her and nodded slowly.
 "I don't like doing it, but sometimes I have to, otherwise the
consequences are too significant. It's like choosing between killing one
man, or to let thousands of others be killed. I used to be unable to make
such a decision. Before I'd have killed, I would have gone mad. Now, I just
feel sorry."
 Susan looked at him, repulsed. She turned her head away and watched the
stars standing firmly in space, and wished she would've become a lavatory
attendant instead of a scientist. Bishop looked at his consoles again and
punched in his comm code.
 "This is cargo vessel 56743 dash 3 A, am I clear to enter Cyberol Three
zone?", he asked to the console. There was no answer for a few seconds.
Then, a human voice answered him.
 "You are clear to proceed. Stick to the given route, 56743 dash 3 A."
 "Confirmed. Out." Bishop punched in a few other codes.
 "We'll be there in twenty minutes", he said. Susan only nodded her head.

 Far away, a woman in a lonely room looked at the white wall in front of
her, in deep sorrow. Outside her room, people ran about shouting, carrying
cannisters of liquid solvents in despair, spraying fires, calling for
help, fighting their fears as well as the fires.
 Ripley watched the white of her walls, listening, weeping silently.




				Chapter Seventeen
				-----------------

 Cyberon Three was a colony founded in the mid-twentyfirst century.
Originally it had been a spacestation dedicated to communications and
high-resolution scanning of the galaxy, but many who frequently visited it
eventually stayed there and lived there with their family. Within fifty
years, the population on Cyberon Three had tripled, which meant that the
spacestation officially became a colony. It now protected over eight
million people from the cold of space, making it into the largest space
colony in the universe.
 Trade was good on Cyberon Three. There was little poverty, but there were
getos, quite a few of them. Those who lived there knew few would die of
old age, and most of them would not die of a gunshot by a gangster, but of
one by the police, who did not abide to any law anymore. They thought they
were the law. Which had meant that nobody could trust the cops anymore;
hunting season was open. Some areas had no police force left, and the
government showed no effort to change this anymore.

 Karan City was one of these areas. It was dark, foul and dirty, but it
was also safe. That was, if you weren't a police officer. Karan City was
protected by the honour system. If anybody was somehow cought in an
offense, this person was dealt with, severely dealt with. The system
relied on its own, but worked perfectly. Apart from some petty theft,
there was no real crime. Anyone who even tried to break the system was
squashed by it.
 But the lack of a police force or any written law made it possible for
anyone to do whatever he or she liked. In many secret rooms, atticks and
cellars people worked on devious machines and weapons, small but powerful.
Weapons were provided for by these people, and rebellions used these
weapons eagerly. One small shop was founded in a cellar, under a boutique,
or better, what was left of an old boutique. Ross Dunson was adjusting a
light above his table in there, and took his tweezers again.

 Slowly, he lowered a small cylinder into a round disc. It flashed once
while it was lowered into a square shaped hole. Suddenly, in the hole
four small holders shot out and grabbed the cylinder. Ross sighed and let
go of it. He sat back and saw the cylinder being transported down, and a
lid shoved over the hole from the inside. A small click announced that
the weapon was ready for use, now it was loaded with the energy module.

 "What's that?"
 Ross jumped up, almost knocking over his table. Halfway, a strong hand
pushed him down again.
 "Don't get up. Please."
 Ross looked over his shoulder and saw a man, about thirty, with scars in
his face. Like he had been sprayed with fire or something. Ross shrugged.
 "I won't. Who are you?"
 The man didn't answer right away, but looked around instead. Ross tried
to act casual and studied his new weapon closeby. He took a small recorder
and scanned the disc.
 "I'm Hicks", the man said slowly. He sat down next to Ross, and looked at
the device he was working on.
 "What's that?"
 Ross studied the results of his last scan.
 "It's a weapon.", he said sharply. "Something you seem to be familiar
with."
 "I haven't seen any like these", Hicks said. "How does it work?"
 "It's easy. You just drop in any kind of material here..." Ross took the
disk in his hand, where it fitted neatly. "And the plasma field inside
will hold it in place. Then the magnetic fields around the disc will start
pulsating and the material will start whizzing around. Then you press
this...", Ross pressed a button under his thumb, "...and a small part of
the magnetic field will be removed. The material will shoot out then,
penetrating almost anything."
 Hicks nodded shortly.
 "Handheld particle accelerator...", he said.
 Ross looked at him and tried to see beyond the scars what man he was
facing.
 "Right... There are quite some similarities..."
 "And what's this?", Hicks asked, pointing at a cupboard with a large
black rifle inside.
 "Pulsar plasma rifle. Will shoot small pulsating plasma balls. Quite a
nice trick how I put the magnetic field generator into the-"
 "That?", Hicks interrupted, pointing at another weapon.
 "That's a distortion gun. No electro-magnetic field will hold once you
press the button on that baby."
 Hicks looked slowly around. Ross watched him, somehow fascinated by this
man. Usually customers walked around, trying to guess what the weapons
could by themselves. This one was different.
 "You looking for something special?"
 "Yeah...", Hicks said, standing up. He walked over to a small table and
felt beneath it.
 "Wha-?", Ross started, but fell still as Hicks rose again, holding his
smallest hand weapon, which he had stuck beneath the table for
emergencies.
 "What's this?", Hicks asked.
 "That's a .22 laser spray.", Ross answered. He let down his guard,
knowing he couldn't fool this guy.
 "Length?"
 "About twenty yards, for four seconds. Then it needs shutdown of at least
fifteen minutes. Heat's intense, you know. I never got those coolers down
to size..."
 Ross watched Hicks walk across the room, holding the spraygun.
 "I like your stuff", Hicks said slowly, decisively. Somehow Ross got the
feeling he was pulled into something he wasn't ready for. Not that it
mattered. This Hicks person wasn't about to accept any rejection, he knew.
 "You're hired."



				Chapter Eighteen
				----------------

 Susan had been sitting for over an hour, studying charts, diagrams,
reports. She was alone in the small office, working on a console which
was about twenty years old, she reckoned. It was a stand-alone workstation
with very limited capability, but adequate enough to show her three
dimensional real-time rendered animations of the creature she had
studied.
 This Bishop android had done a great study of the creature, and its
procreation. Though the limited intelligence of the android had obviously
tampered the investigation, it was done thoroughly and a lot of
information was neatly stacked in seperate documents with pictures to go
with them. It seemed like a lot of them were taken from a film. When Susan
asked, she found out that they were downloaded from Bishop's memorybanks.
 The enhancements bettered the stills, but still she would've loved
close-ups of the creatures and their intestines.

 A door opened behind her. The light shone in, a broad arc of white light
reflecting in her console's screen. She saw a familiar man coming in,
accompanied by a stranger.
 "Haay Bishop. Who's the stranger?", she said aloud while the door slided
back close.
 "Susan, this is Hicks. He's one of the soldiers who accompanied me
during my... trip."
 "Corporal Hicks. One of the three survivors, right?"
 Hicks walked over to her console and watched the documents she had been
reading. He glanced down at her. Suddenly, she felt very small next to
this man, though he wasn't that big. It were his eyes. They seemed to
darken as you looked into them.
 "Yeah...", he said. It didn't sound threatening. It was just a
confirmation. Somehow, it sounded tired.
 She watched him, as he skipped through a few documents. Bishop walked over
to a table, and set some plates. Susan sat back and waited for Hicks to
start talking. He didn't.
 Hicks glanced at Susan again and walked to the table, sitting down. He
grabbed a jar and poured out some dark jelly-like liquid. He took a spoon
and started eating.
 "Are you going to tell me anything?", Susan snapped at him. HIcks looked
up at her. His eyes looked tired.
 "No", he said.
 "Figures...", she mumbled.
 "Bishop can tell you anything you want to know. I'm gonna sleep. I've
been up for about sixty hours."
 "What have you been up to?", Susan inquired.
 "Ask Bishop."
 Susan stared at him, while he finished his meal. She shook her head, and
turned back to her console.

				-----


 "And who are you?", Susan asked. The person in front of her looked up,
somehow looking a bit scared, nervous.
 "Me?", he said. He wrubbed through his hair and sighed deep.
 "I'm Dunson. But you can call me Ross."
 "So what do you do, Ross?", she continued. Hicks was walking around at
the back of the room, checking ammunition and weaponry. Bishop was working
on his documents again, manually now. The console's keyboard was clicking
furiously under Bishop's key punches.
 "I'm a weapon designer. I design cool weapons.", Ross said. Susan nodded
slowly and took a sip of her cigarette.
 "You look like that sort of a guy. You don't go out much, do you?"
 Ross stared at Susan and then looked down. He didn't like her, but
respected her, somehow. And she frightened him. Her femininity attrackted
him, but her moves and her ways didn't appeal to him. He had never made
love to a woman, and barely ever spoke with one. He had no idea how to act
when one was around.
 He didn't answer her. After a while, she moved away and started on her
console again, shaking her head. Inside, Ross sighed deep.



				Chapter Nineteen
				----------------


 "These creatures are horrid."
 They were sitting at a round table, one light hanging over it swaying
slowly from side to side. Bishop reached out and stopped it.
 Susan continued.
 "I don't know where they could've come from, and I can't even begin to
describe what their home planet could be like. It's more alien than you
could imagine. We won't even be able to walk around there in any spacesuit
we have at the moment."
 She paused for the moment, take a big puff of her cigarette.
 "What's more important is that the company has a few of these creatures
in stock and is trying to breed them for military purposes. But they don't
know how to, yet. They're studying it."
 "What do they know? What do you know?", Hicks asked.
 "I know they don't know much yet. I've been asked to study one creature,
most likely because they had no new ideas of themselves. I'm curious as to
what they would've done with me when I'd finished my study. I can imagine
I would've been... eliminated."
 Hicks' eyes rested on her face, making her feel uneasy. She shifted her
weight and sat up straight.
 "My question is: what are you up to?"
 Hicks put his hands on the table, and bent over the table, peering into
her eyes. Susan back up a bit.
 "We are here to blow them the fuck out of space. All of them. No one is
to be kept alive in any way. No body part can be spared. We don't want
them to be examined or studied in any way."
 Susan frowned.
 "Why?"
 "Why?", Hicks mirrored. "Why? Have you any idea what these fuckers can
do? Any idea? You say you've studied them, now tell me, what happens if
one of these shitbags would fall down in some colony, let's say, Cyberon
Three. Or even better, let's say Earth. Any idea what would happen then?
Do I need to tell you 'why?' now?"
 Susan turned her eyes down and sat back. She shook her head.
 "Nah", she uttered.
 "These shitbrains have killed my friends, my entire platoon, lady. I want
them. It's hell to see them in my dreams, being murdered by these,
these..." Hicks paused. When he spoke again, his tone was more relaxed,
though there was a tension in it. Agression helt back.
 "They killed my platoon, sergeant and lieutenant included. The only ones
who survived are me, Bishop, a lady who lost her mind during the trip back
and a little girl who vanished. The company says she was killed by a
malfunctioning freezer, but I can't find a trace of her body. I think
she's still alive, but I don't care about that. It's these critters that
worry me. I want them killed. And I want to know where they come from.
Where the company gets them."
 "We've studied your moves, dr. McGee", Bishop said. "We know you have
been studying the creature that was sent to you. We don't know what you
have found out, but we do know we want that creature destroyed. We know
where it came from, and we're planning a little trip to the source."
 Susan looked at Bishop questioningly.
 "Destroyed? Buster? How do we do that? And where-"
 "We want you to destroy your lab and your documents. From here."
 Susan laughed.
 "What?"
 "We want you to-", Bishop repeated.
 "Yes, yes, I heared you. How can I do that? Why can't I-"
 "We can't send you back, we haven't got the time. And the company already
knows you're missing, so they won't allow you access without questioning
you for days. We don't have that amount of time."
 "I see", Susan said.
 "Couldn't we just blow up your spacestation?", Ross suggested.
 "Yeah, right", Susan said. "Blow up a space station. Sure. Get real."
 Ross looked eagerly.
 "I'd love to try!", he added.
 "No way, buddy. There are friends of mine over there. And I bet we
haven't got the time to set up an operation as big as that, right?"
 Bishop nodded.
 "Not this one", he said.
 "Do you trust anyone on your station?", Hicks asked Susan. She looked
down, thinking.
 "Well, there's Dick", she said. "He's ok. I think I trust him."
 "Could you ask him to destroy your lab and your data?"
 "Yeah, well, I guess so", she said. "I don't know for sure if he'll do it
though."
 "We will", Hicks said. "Contact him."
 "Could be one hell of an explosion..!", Ross tried in vain. No one
listened to him.

				-----

 "Hi Dick, remember me, loverboy?"
 Susan was talking to a console on which she saw Dick's face now starting
to look surprised. He was about to ask a question, but then refrained from
asking it. He sat back, amazed.
 "Yeah... How are you?", he asked.
 "I'm okay. I was just passing by and thought I'd look you up."
 Susan's face was distorted. Bishop had set up a program which altered
Susan's facial colour and her contours, which made her look quite
different. And less attractive, Ross had thought.
 "What do you want?", Dick asked, still a bit off.
 "Nothing... Just a chat about the old days...", she said smiling.
"Remember what we did on Rodan Four?"
 For a moment he looked confused, but then he understood.
 "Yeah... Those were the days...", he smiled. "Shall I help you again?"
 Susan nodded.
 "Make it a good one, this time. Don't hold back. It's important."
 "I won't", he replied.
 "Well, I'll see ya'!", she said.
 "Yes, stop by any time", he concluded smilingly. "If you can."
 Susan broke the connection. Hicks looked at her and raised his eyebrowse.
 "Help you?", he said. She grinned.
 "Dick sort of helped me with an experiment on Rodan Four. At least,
that's what he thought. Turned out he blew up an entire subsection of the
science station. Wonderful explosion..."
 Hicks smiled at her. For the first time, she felt like there was someone
inside this hard man. She enjoyed his smile. Ross turned away.
 "Shame I can't help...", he mumbled looking blue. "I bet I could've been a
great helper."





				Chapter Twenty
				--------------

 "What's that?"
 Susan stood next to Bishop, who was working on a terminal. On the display
a small dot moved between a large number of greenly highlighted lines,
projecting a three dimensional image of some space. The dot followed one
of the lines, so it seemed. It moved along slowly. Bishop touched the
screen and the dot grew in size until it filled the entire screen. It was
a spaceship, small, barely large enough for a human.
 "It's an information transporter."
 Susan watched the ship while it spun around on the screen. She asked
what it was carrying.
 "Information from a spacestation. They won't send any information by
radio because it would take days if not years to get to the destination,
and it could be intercepted. This ship transports information and gets
there much faster. It's got a space bending device on board. And its
destination is Gateway."
 "Gateway? That's next to Earth!"
 "Yes, it is. But it's not carrying any biological materials, no eggs or
something. It couldn't withstand the accelerations and the subspace jumps."
 "What are you going to do?"
 "Watch."
 Bishop zoomed out, and again to display was filled with green lines and
the dot moving along one of them. Then suddenly another dot appeared on one
of the crossing lines, and the pattern altered.
 "What's happening?", Susan asked. Bishop didn't answer.
 The lines shifted quickly. Then, suddenly, the lines near the first dot
formed a knot in front of the ship. About twenty different lines gathered
where the ship was moving to. Bishop started typing furiously again, and
the knot altered its appearance slightly. The second dot was lying still
on one line coming from the knot.
 The dot entered the knot and halted. Bishop zoomed in on it. The ship
spun around quickly seemingly uncertain where it had to go. Slowly, it
stopped spinning and started following one line again. Bishop zoomed out,
and relaxed. The other ship was on waiting further on that line.
 "We've just captured the ship." He turned his head to face Susan and
smiled. Seeing her raised eyebrowse, he continued.
 "We send another ship into hyperspace near the first ship, and bended space
once more. Well, quite a few times more to be exact. We know how their
propulsion works, and it hasn't got such a sophisticated tracker. We
reformed space in front of it to a space-time knot, and made sure that when
it came out of it, it came our way. It shall leave subspace in a few
minutes quite near here. Hicks is on his way with a few friends to pick it
up."
 Ross had come stand next to Susan.
 "It's always fun to see how shitty the stuff of the company works. Nothing
works. Not even their political system. I even bet the chief of the company
is impotent!", he said and grinned.
 Susan turned her head and Ross stopped grinning. He looked away from her
piercing eyes, and pretended to get back to his work.




                             Chapter Twenty One
                             ------------------


 "Is there anything I can do now?", Susan asked Bishop.
 The android looked up at her and nodded.
 "Your specialty is molecular biology, isn't it?"
 "Yes?"
 "Try to analyze my studies. There is no one who has seen or worked with
my derivations yet."
 "I thought I had seen all the data you had?", Susan said.
 "You have. But next to the raw data, I have made some crosslinks with
a few scientific databases which were appropriate. There are stunning
results, I reckon."
 "Like what?"
 "You have seen the images of the spore, and the chestburster?" Susan
nodded. "There is something you probably haven't noticed. I have found
this only after thoroughly examining some tissue scans of a victim.
Look."
 Bishop turned to his terminal and created a new window. He punched in
a few codes, and suddenly the image of a man was shown. It was the
MRI-scan of a host to the alien creature. The blot in the center of the
body was obvious now she knew what to search for. Bishop zoomed in, and
adjusted the view.
 Susan bent over to the screen as she saw the image enlarge. The creature
was curled up, just like the one she had seen in her own lab. It was just
turned a few degrees to the left.
 "See it?", Bishop asked. Susan frowned.
 "See what? I can see the creature obviously."
 "Look again. Look at the the creature as if it were a baby."
 "Meaning...?", Susan wondered aloud.
 Then she saw it. She gasped. It was hard to notice, but she could kick
herself for not noticing it: it was supposed to be her job.
 On the right side of the creature there was a small extension of the
tissues of the creature. It formed three small extensions, tentacles,
which pointed outwards. They were minute, very small.
 Susan adjusted the view herself to center and enlarge the area. Bishop
sat back and watched her.
 The tentacles split up again a few inches away from the origin. On screen
it was clear, but on a scale of one to one, it probably were micro inches.
She followed one tentacle, which split up again after a few inches. And
again, for the last time. The resulting fibre was very thin. She added a
scale table to the image, and measured the distance. The fibre was only a
few molecules wide. It could not even be an axonic connection, she thought.
 "It is similar to a neuronic axon like we have.", Bishop suddenly said,
as if he had read Susan's mind. She turned her head and faced him.
 "What? That's impossible. It's only a few hundred nanometres wide!"
 "It is. I've done some tests, and it is an infomation carrier. It can be
compared to axons, the bridges between individual neurons in your brain.
But it's better than human axons. This is a two-way street, instead of the
one-way street version human nature provides. And it's faster. And it has
a growing potential which is far greater than the human version."
 Susan watched amazed and ordered the computer to follow the little line
along the body of the man. The view started shifting.
 "Could it be implanted in a human body?", she asked. Bishop frowned and
thought about it for a minute.
 "I see no problems with implanting the fibre into a human body. As you can
see, it is fairly self-sustaining."
 "This could help out millions of people with motoric dysfunctions!", Susan
cried. "This could help us redesign a human being completely after injury!
We could recreate their entire neural network with only a few implantations!"
 Bishop did not join her enthousiasm.
 "There is only one problem.", he said.
 "And that is?"
 "After a certain amount of time the placenta, if I may call it that, gives
a signal to the fibre. This is probably just after the hatching. This signal
results in a chain reaction which transforms the fibre. The fibre starts
redesigning the host's body, so to say."
 "And..?", Susan asked, amazed and horrified.
 "And turns the host into the egg-form you have studied."
 Susan sat down staring into the room. Her eyes were wide open, horrified by
the image her mind saw. A man transforming slowly into a large bulk of alien
tissues. Probably alive while the procedure took place. This was more
painful, more ghastly than any torture she had ever encountered.
 "Can it be removed from the body after someone has been impregnated?" Susan
spoke softly.
 "Unknown. Probably not. You should have to remove or disable the placenta
first. It can grow these feelers in a couple of minutes, extending into the
body for several metres. It's like a cancer, only for this, there is no
cure. The body doesn't even notice the extentions into the human tissues.
It's just too odd, and it doesn't react to any terrestrial organic
materials."
 Susan sighed. Bishop walked over to another terminal and started the same
view on that screen. He also opened a document which Susan had not seen
before. It contained the crosslinks to the other databases.
 "Perhaps you could shed some new light on this while we wait?", Bishop asked
her. Eagerly she stept forward and sat down. As Bishop returned to his
previous work, Susan learned to understand the ways of the alien creature.





                        Chapter Twenty Three
                        --------------------

 Ross held a micro torch and melted two small fieldgenerators together. It
always was precision work to fix these generators: they had to be perfectly
aligned to create the electro magnetic plasma field inducer. If not, nothing
happened when you pulled the trigger. And the generators couldn't be
re-aligned. With his tongue sticking out a few millimetres, he tipped the
last connection and then turned off the torch.
 He lifted the device, a small cylinder like weapon with a short nozzle. He
aimed it at a dead terminal and pulled the trigger. A tiny bundle of plasma
shot out fiercely and hit the screen, splashing to the sides when it hit the
glass. The burst was short but the hiss was harsh and Susan jumped up.

 "Are you mad?", she yelled at him. He grinned at her as she walked towards
him. He laid down the weapon next to eight of the same plasma pistols and
stood up.
 "It's not dangerous. Unless you were hit directly. And I know how to
use the thing", he said.
 "Just don't get near me when you wish to show you are a fucking lunatic."
Susan looked at him with eyes shooting fire, and he sat down, nodding.
 "Sure, sure... Don't get upset by me."
 "And where is Hicks?", Susan asked aloud. "Bishop? Are we going to sit here
all day and wait around? Or are we actually going to do something?"
 "We are waiting for Hicks to return with the information from the
intercepted ship. We cannot act unless we know whether they expect us or
not. It's vital to the mission."
 Susan sighed. "Ok, so we wait. I'm good at that. I've been praised by my
parents and teachers for my patience. I can wait." But somehow it sounded
not quite sincere.

 The door wooshed open and Hicks ran in, followed by three soldiers.
 "It's time", he said. Bishop stood up and picked up three bags.
 "Let's go", he said to Susan. She got up from her chair and took her
memory card from the terminal.
 "I'm ready", she answered. "I think."
 "We've got to move quick", one of the soldiers told them. His name tag said
he was called Veso. "The company is on to you", he pointed at Susan, "and they
tracked the ship to this station. They're searching decks fourty-one to
sixty-eight now. Seems like you've got a tracker inside you, dear lady."
 Susan lifted her hands to her stomache and gazed.
 "Me? A tracking device?"
 "Yep", another soldier, Hansen, replied, holding up a small device, "It's
planted near your left kidney. It's got a small range. About fifty yards."
 "We've got to go now. They'll be able to track you in a couple of minutes",
Hicks urged. He also took a couple of bags and started for the door.
 "Do we really need this woman?", Veso asked him. He stopped and looked at
Susan for a moment.
 "Yes", he finally said. "She might find a way to deal with the creatures.
Now let's go."
 Veso grunted and took the last five bags and a couple of plasma pistols.
 "You take the rest", he said to Susan. She nodded and put the memory card
in her side pocket. Looking for a bag, she saw Ross gearing up: he had slung
four large plasma rifles over his left shoulder, about ten headphone sets
around his neck, and a large bag of small arms over his right shoulder. He
looked rediculous and Susan smiled as she saw him stumble over to the door.
She grabbed the remaining five plasma pistols and walked out.

                               -------


 "Check the lifters and engage A-G in fifteen."
 Hicks sat in the command chair in the cockpit of the craft. Susan and Ross
were sitting in the back. Veso, Hansen, Lapaz and Lejeune were at their
seats doing navigation, communication and engines. Three other man had
joined them in the ship, three other soldiers so it seemed. They were
checking their equipment while Susan watched them. There was nothing for her
to do, and she couldn't find a terminal to study Bishop's work. This ship
was old, probably ancient. She wondered why there even was an engines man.
There probably wasn't even an engine on board, she mocked.
 Bishop walked in and sat down next to Hicks.
 "We're clear. As far as Control knows, we're just another cargo freighter
leaving for Earth", he said. Hicks nodded approvingly and punched a few buttons
on his console.
 "Excellent. We're rolling. Veso, get me a direction!"
 Veso hit his keyboard and cursed.
 "This fucking thing isn't working!", he exclamed. Bishop frowned.
 "It worked fine a few minutes ago. Let me see."
 "Never mind", Veso said. "I forgot to turn the damn thing on. How old is
this ship anyway?"
 "About as old as your mother says she is", Ross replied quick.
 "Or wished she was", Hansen added. Veso grunted.
 "Remember me to kill you two when we get back", he said. "Here it is..."
 On the main viewscreen a starmap was projected. Down below, two numbers
appeared.
 "Let's get to it", Hicks ordered and steered the ship out of the hangar
bay.
 "I just hope nothing falls off when we enter hyperspace", Veso mumbled
hopefully.
 "Like your brain", Ross said affectionously. A short punch in the ribs by
Veso stopped his grinning.

                                   ------


 Susan was sitting in the corner with a portable reader. Her hands moved
slowly over the cursor keys but her eyes ran over the screen quickly. She
read Bishop's ideas about the species and was about halfway when Bishop came
to sit next to her. At first, she ignored him. Then he turned to her and
spoke softly.
 "Does it make any sense?", he asked in a quiet tone.
 Her face said enough. Her eyes were wide open and her mouth felt dry. She
had been reading for over four hours now, she noticed.
 "Yes, it does. Some things are a bit vague but I think I can enhance the
detail of the description by what I've seen myself. What I still don't get
is where these gritters come from. Were they genetically designed?"
 Bishop looked up and saw Hicks busy at his console. He turned to Susan.
 "Come", he said, and got up.
 Susan followed him into a hallway. There he stopped and turned to her.
 "The creature was found in a ship on LV-426, a small planetoid near Zeta
Two Reticuli. The ship was not human, it was an alien ship, probably
infested by the creatures. The colony on LV-426 found the ship some time ago
and the entire colony was destroyed by these creatures."
 "What has Hicks got to do with it? Did he live there?", Susan asked him
whisperingly. Her eyes glanced to where Hicks was sitting.
 "Hicks was part of a survey mission to see what was going on on LV-426.
They assumed the colony had problems with their transmittor. Three of the
original crew survived that expidition: Hicks, me and a woman named Ellen
Ripley. She was a consultant, but I think there was some chemistry between
them."
 "Hicks and Ripley? From Harvard Quarters?"
 The android nodded.
 "Yes, I can't say I've got an eye for these sort of things, but I think
they felt more for eachother than just admiration. She was a wonderful
woman."
 Susan sat down in the hallway and pulled out her pic-mem. It contained the
pictures of those who were dear to her. She pushed a button and her mother's
face appeared smilingly on the small screen.
 "What was she like?", she asked softly.
 "I guess she could've been considered brave. She was about ninety years
old, you know."
 "What?", Susan said in disbelief.
 "She was about ninety years old. Her first encounter with this species was
fifty-nine years ago. Her transport ship was directed to LV-426 and they got
one of the creatures on board. Killed everyone except Ripley. She escaped
with a shuttle and was found fifty-seven years later. No one had ever been
in hypersleep that long."
 "Then she must have lost everything...", Susan thought aloud.
 "She did. She lost her daughter too. Died two years before she arrived at
the age of sixty-six."
 "And the ship?"
  Bishop looked at her piercingly.
 "The alien ship is still out there. It still contains hundreds, if not
thousands of eggs."
 Susan's eyes widened. She was about to ask when Bishop said the words.
 "And that's where we're headed."






                            Chapter Twenty Four
                            -------------------

 Edwards was browsing through his journals vigorously. His chubby fingers
touched the cursor keys hastily, as if the document was about to be erased
by someone else.
 "Well?", a dark voice said monotomely behind him.
 "I'll get it! I'll get it!", Edwards said. "Just hold on, I'm almost there!"
 At last he saw what he was looking for. It were just a few lines, but they
were what he had been searching for. He lifted his hand and wiped away some
drops of sweat from his forehead. He was frightened.
 "Read it to me.", the voice said.
 "Fifteen-hundred hours, received notification of D. Archer. Cargo has
arrived safely. McGee installed it in section fourteen, the X-room. No
sign of problems so far." 
 "And..?", the voice asked. "There must be more."
 "Yes, yes. There is. Twenty hundred twenty. Item 3GX has been declared
operational by D. Archer. McGee is recommended for her observation of the
item. Reports will follow soon." 
 "So where are her reports?"
 "I think she's got them on her personal computer."
 "Access them", the man ordered.
 "Impossible. She's not hooked up, and she never kept a copy on the
system", Edwards said hesitatingly.
 "What?" The voice was amazed. And it didn't sound like it was amused. "So
get them from her computer. Now."
 "There might be small problem there too, sir. Her machine has been stolen
in the last hour. It's gone."
 There was a silence in which Edwards' breathing was barely audible. He was
sweating heavily, looking at the man standing behind him with scary eyes.
Then the man spoke.
 "Who was closest to doctor McGee?", it asked in a pleasant tone. To
Edwards, this tone was even more threatening. He shivered and pondered for a
moment.
 "I think... Dick. But she wasn't talking to him on a frequent base too.
She was a loner."
 "I want to see this Dick.", the man said calmly. Edwards turned sharply
and punched in Dick's comm-code.
 "He'll be here in couple of minutes, sir", Edwards uttered. Then, he made a
small brave mistake. He added a small code to the comm-code. It told
Dick there was trouble, big trouble. It was a red-alert code. The
numbers flashed shortly on the screen, but the man behind Edwards had seen
it, and knew what it meant. As Edwards turned around and tried to smile, the
man had already pointed a gun at Edwards' head and pulled the trigger.

 Dick ran. He had just gotten Edwards' message and had understood
perfectly. Things were getting a bit out of hand. He ran towards the
X-room and saw two guards posted alongside the console room. He stopped
in the middle of the hallway and almost collapsed. The guards looked at
him for a moment and then again stared at the wall in front of them. 
 Dick staggered pantingly to the console room.
 "Just in time...", he panted. "It's feeding time, gentlemen. Do you care to
take a look?"
 "No one is allowed to enter this room", one of the guards stated.
 "Well, dear sir, if that is your opinion, than I shall be running even
faster from this section. Because if I don't feed this thing inside, it'll
be so mad, it will break out and eat whatever is moving. Including guards."
 For a moment Dick thought he had them. But their eyes just glanced at
him for a moment and then pointed themselves at the wall in front of them
again. 
 "No one shall pass unless we have written authorisation."
 "I have to feed that thing!", Dick suddenly yelled at him. "If I don't
do that, people shall die, do you hear me? We've had that before, and I
will not have that again. Just follow me, see if I care. But I am going
inside!" 
 The guards looked at eachother as Dick stepped to the door. They were
uncertain whether this man was telling the truth or not and just as they
were to stop them, Dick said:
 "Come on, take a look inside, man! I am not kidding you!"
 They gave in and one of them followed him. Obviously the man hadn't been
inside yet.
 "What is that?", he whispered looking at a monitor. Buster was sitting
next to the body of the dog. Dick looked up and gazed at it too for a
moment. He had not been in this room for hours now and again, something
had changed. The dog's body was almost gone. Some kind of egg-shaped mass
had appeared. Buster was sitting at exactly the same spot as it was hours
ago. Dick answered the man. 
 "That, my dear friend, is what a lot of people would like to know. It's
dangerous, I can tell you that."
 As he was speaking, he was running a few macros on the console's computer.
Screens flashed, and suddenly steam shot out the walls in the X-room.
 Never thought I'd be a special effects man, Dick thought to himself. Then
he connected several programs together. 
 "What are you feeding him?", the man asked.
 "Gas. This thing digests gasses. At a very high pressure."
 Dick increased the pressure inside the X-room to twenty bar. That would
give a nice jolt to the entire science station when the door opened. And
he would open it. Just not now. 
 "It can also live on elektric energy, and some metals. But it favours
flesh. And who could blame it?" Dick used two gasses to fill up the room.
Hydrogen and oxygen. At twenty bar it would form a nice layer of liquid
gass on the floor of the room. But at five bar Buster seemed uneasy and
started to move. It moved slowly towards the door. 
 Dick hoped nothing inside the room would cause an early explosion.
Buster didn't seem to mind the gass apart from the pressure. Tough bitch,
Dick thought. 
 "You're going up to twenty bar?", the guard asked, slowly realizing that
twenty bar was a bit too much for any creature.
"That's ludicrous! You can't be serious!"
 "Of course I'm not", Dick said. "But do you know what happens when I take
my hand off this button?" 
 The guard looked at him questioningly, uneasy.
 "Err. No?"
 "The room there will be sparked. It's got a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen
in there at, let me see, six piont eight bars. I guess that would cause
quite a little hole in this space station if it got ignited. Now, shoot me
or get your superior."
 The guard pointed his gun at Dick, at the monitor and back to Dick. Then
he called his brother in arms. His voice shook. 
 "Randy! Get the man here..! We've got a little problem."
 "Wha-", the guard outside begun.
 "GET HIM!", the guard inside yelled. "NOW!"

 "You let him what?"
 The man who had shot Edwards was walking with the second guard towards the
landing bay.
 "He wanted to feed the creature and-"
 "I don't care what he wanted. You had your orders."
 "What do you wish we do, sir?", the young guard asked.
 "Shoot him. He's bluffing.", the man said cold. "I'm not buying this load
of shit about hydrogen and oxygen. And if it's true, too bad for him."
 "Sir?", the guard started, aware of the risk involved. "If it's true, we..."
 "You have your orders. You want to disobey them again?"
 The guard suddenly froze and saluted the man. He also lifted his hand and
the guard took off.

 "Asshole...", the man said as he stepped up a ladder into a small
spaceship. As he took the controls of the ship, a slow rumble ran through
the science station.
 The man looked up for a second, listening, and then punched a few buttons
on his console. The small ship started humming. He pressed a red button in
the middle of his console and a large flare shot out from under the ship
towards the closed airlock doors in front of the ship.
 The doors exploded. The air in the landing bay shot out with huge force,
taking the ship with it. It kicked from left to right while the man behind
the controls cursed and tried to keep the ship in a straight line. Behind
the ship, the landing bay was suddenly lit with large yellow flames coming
from the hallway. As the small ship got speed, the part where the landing
bay was ripped apart. An explosion followed quickly. The man cursed again,
looking at the monitors showing the backview.
 The landing bay was suddenly dipped in darkness. Just the glowing of the
immense heat of the last explosion showed on the metal with fierce redness.
Then the science station shook slowly. The man looked at it, with cold eyes.
 "Asshole", he whispered slowly. Then the science station exploded. The
landing bay was the first to blow up, and in a chain reaction all the other
parts followed within the next two seconds. A small shockwave of expanding
gasses hit the ship a few seconds later. It was compensated by the
stabilizers easily. Then the nuclear reactors in the Research and
Development section of the station blew up in a chain reaction and a ball of
fire of three miles wide formed. Everything in that area was vaporized. The
ball grew a bit and then faded from view. The science station was gone.
Silence triumphed again.

 "Fuck...", the man in the small ship whispered astounded and mad.