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overloaded, damaged circuits. Couplings groaned while stressed machinery
throbbed and whined. Somewhere in the distance a massive mechanical arm
or piston was going ka-rank, ka-rank.
Her gaze darted left, then right. Her knuckles were white above the dual
weapon she carried. She had no flexible battle visor to help her, though
in the presence of so much excess heat its infrared-imaging sensors
wouldn't have been of much use, anyway. She stepped out into the
corridor, into a scene designed by Piranesi, decorated by Dante.
She was struck by the aliens' presence as soon as she turned the first
bend in the walkway. Epoxy-like material covered conduits and pipes,
flowing smoothly up into the overhead walkways to blend machinery and
resin together, creating a single chamber. She had Hicks's locator taped
to the top of the flamethrower, and she looked at it as often as she
dared. It was still functioning, still homing in on its single target.
A voice echoed along the corridor, startling her. It was calm and
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efficient and artificial.
?Attention. Emergency. All personnel must evacuate immediately. You now
have fourteen minutes to reach minimum safe distance.?
The locator continued to track; range and direction spelled out lucidly
by its LED display.
As she advanced, she blinked sweat out of her eyes. Steam swirled around
her, making it difficult to see more
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ALAN DEAN FOSTER
than a short distance in any direction. Flashing emergency lights lit an
intersecting passageway just ahead.
Movement. She whirled, and the flamethrower belched napalm, incinerating
an imaginary demon. Nothing there. Would the blast of heat from her
weapon be noticed? No time to worry about maybes now. She resumed her
march, trying not to shake as she concentrated on the locator's readouts.
She entered the lower level.
In the inner chambers now. The walls around her subsumed skeletal
shapes, the bodies of the unfortunate colonists who had been brought
here to serve as helpless hosts for embryonic aliens. Their
resin-encrusted figures gleamed like insects frozen in amber. The
locator's signal strengthened, leading her off to the left. She had to
bend to clear a low overhang.
At each turning point or intersection she was careful to ignite a timed
flare and place it on the floor behind her. It would be easy to get lost
in the maze without the markers to help her find her way back. One
passageway was so narrow, she had to turn sideways to slip through it.
Her eyes touched upon one tormented face after another, each entombed
colonist caught in a rictus of agony.
Something grabbed her. Her knees sagged, and the breath went out of her
before she could even scream. But the hand was human. It was attached to
an imprisoned body, surmounted by a face. A familiar face. Carter Burke.
?Ripley.?The moan was barely human. ?Help me. I can feel it inside. It's
moving...?
She stared at him, beyond horror now. No one deserved this.
?Here.?His fingers clutched convulsively around the grenade she handed
him. She primed it and hurried on. The voice of the station boomed
around her. There was a rising note of mechanical urgency in its tone.
?You now have eleven minutes to reach minimum safe distance.?
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According to the locator, she was all but on top of the target. Behind
her the grenade went off, the concussion nearly knocking her off her
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feet. It was answered by a second, more forceful, eruption from deep
within the station itself. A siren began to wail, and the whole
installation shuddered. The locator led her around a corner. She tensed
in anticipation. The locator's range finder read out zero.
Newt's tracer bracelet lay on the tunnel floor, the metal fabric
shredded. The glow from its sender module was a bright, cheerless green.
Ripley sagged against a wall.
It was over. All over.
Newt's eyes fluttered open, and she became aware of her surroundings.
She had been cocooned in a pillar-like structure at the edge of a
cluster of ovoid shapes: alien eggs. She recognized them right away.
Before they'd been carried off or killed, the last desperate adult
colonists had managed to acquire a few for study.
But those had all been empty, open at the tops. These were sealed. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]