'Goddamn it, Jones, come here. Here kitty. . come to mama, kitty.' Ripley's tone was gentle and reassuring, but Lambert could detect the exasperation beneath.
Parker staggered out of Food Locker 2, hidden behind a double armload of food. Lambert continued to sort her boxes, occasionally trading one for another. The thought of eating raw, unpreprocessed artificial food was daunting at best. There was no autochef on the tiny shuttle. The raw bulk would keep them alive, but that was all. She wanted the tastiest selection possible.
She didn't notice the faint red light on the tracker lying nearby.
'Gotcha!' An indignant Jones resisted, but Ripley had him firmly by the nape of the neck. Nor did bracing his feet keep him from being shoved unceremoniously into his pressurized travelling case.
Ripley switched it on. 'There. Breathe your own recycled smell for a while.'
The two flamethrowers were lying outside the food locker. Parker knelt carefully and tried to pick up his. He overbalanced and a fair portion of the neatly aligned boxes tumbled from his arms.
'Goddamn.'
Lambert stopped her rearranging, tried to see around the locker doors.
'What's the matter?'
'Nothing. I was trying to carry too much at once, that's all. Just hurry it up.'
'I'm coming. Keep your head on.'
The red light on the tracker suddenly turned bright crimson, the beeper chirping simultaneously. Parker dropped his packages, stared at it, and picked up his flamethrower. He called back in to Lambert.
'Let's get out of here.'
She'd heard the noise too. 'Right now.'
Something made a different sound behind her. She turned, screamed as the hand clutched at her. The alien was still unfolding its bulk from the airshaft.
Ripley heard the shriek over the open 'com speaker on the bridge and froze.
Parker looked back into the locker, went a little crazy when he saw what the alien was doing. Parker couldn't use the flamethrower without hitting Lambert. Swinging the incinerator like a club, he charged into the locker.
'Goddamn you!'
The alien dropped Lambert. She fell motionless to the deck as Parker landed a solid blow with the flamethrower. It had no effect on the alien. The engineer might as well have been trying to fracture the wall.
He tried to duck, failed. The single blow broke his neck, killing him instantly. The alien turned its attention back to Lambert.
Ripley still hadn't moved. Faint shrieks reached her over the 'com. The screams were Lambert's and they faded with merciful speed. Then it was quiet again.
She spoke toward the pickup. 'Parker. . Lambert?'
She waited for a response, expecting none. Her expectations were fulfilled. The import of the continuing silence took only a moment to settle in.
She was alone. There were probably three living things left on the ship: the alien, Jones, and herself. But she had to be sure.
It meant leaving Jones behind. She didn't want to, but the cat had heard the screams and was meowing frantically. He was making too much noise.
She reached B deck unopposed, her flamethrower held tightly in both hands. The food locker lay just ahead. There was an outside chance the alien had left someone behind, being unable to maneuver itself and two bodies through the narrow ducts. A chance that someone might still be alive.
She peered around the jamb of the locker entrance. What remained showed her how the alien had succeeded in squeezing both victims into the airshaft.
Then she was running, running. Blindly, a little madly, neither thinking or caring. Walls reached out to stun her and slow her down, but nothing halted her crazed flight. She ran until her lungs hurt. They reminded her of Kane and the creature that had matured inside him, next to his lungs. That in turn reminded her of the alien.
All that thinking brought her back to her senses. Gulping for breath, she slowed and took stock of her surroundings. She'd run the length of the ship. Now she found herself standing alone in the middle of the engine room.
She heard something and stopped breathing. It was repeated, and she let out a cautious sigh. The sound was familiar, human. It was the sound of weeping.
Still cradling the flamethrower, she walked slowly around the room until the source of the noise lay directly below her. She found she was standing on a companionway cover, a round metal disc. Keeping half her attention on the well-lit chamber surrounding her, she knelt and removed the disc. A ladder descended into the near darkness.
She felt her way down the ladder until she reached solid footing. Then she activated her lightbar. She was in a small maintenance chamber. The light picked out plastic crates, rarely used tools. It also fell on bones with shreds of flesh still attached. Her skin crawled as the light moved over fragments of clothing, dried blood, a ruined boot. Bizarre extrusions lined the walls.
Something moved fitfully in the darkness. She spun, raising the nozzle of the flamethrower as her light sought out the cause of the movement.
A huge cocoon hung from the ceiling, off to her right. It looked like an enclosed, translucent hammock, woven from fine white silky material. It twitched.
Her finger tense on the trigger of the flamethrower, she walked nearer. The beam from her lightbar made the cocoon slightly transparent. There was a body inside. . Dallas.
Quite unexpectedly the eyes opened and focused on Ripley. Lips parted, moved to form words. She moved closer, simultaneously fascinated and repelled.
'Kill me,' the whisperer pleaded with her.
'What. . what did it do to you?'
Dallas tried to speak again, failed. His head turned a little to the right. Ripley swung her light, turned it upward slightly. A second cocoon hung there, different in texture and colour from the first. It was smaller and darker, the silk having formed a hard, shining shell. It looked, although Ripley couldn't know it, like the broken, empty urn on the derelict ship.
'That was Brett.' Her light turned back to focus on the speaker again.
'I'll get you out of here.' She was crying. 'We'll crank up the autodoc, get you. .'
She broke off, unable to talk. She was remembering Ash's analogy of the spider, the wasp. The live young feeding on the paralyzed body of the spider, growing, the spider aware of what was happening but. .
Somehow she managed to shut off that horrid line of thought. Madness lay that way. 'What can I do?'
The same agonized whisper. 'Kill me.'
She stared at him. Mercifully, his eyes had closed. But his lips were trembling, as if he were readying a scream. She didn't think she could stand to hear that scream.
The nozzle of the flamethrower rose and she convulsively depressed the trigger. A molten blast enveloped the cocoon and the thing that had been Dallas. It and he burned without a sound. Then she swung the fire around the lair. The entire compartment burst into flames. She was already scrambling back up the ladder, heat licking at her legs.
She stuck her head out into the engine room. It was still deserted. Smoke curled up around her, making her cough. She climbed out, kicked the disc back into place, leaving enough of a gap for air to reach the fire. Then she strode resolutely toward the engine-room control cubicle.
Gauges and controls functioned patiently within, waiting to be told what to do. There was one particular board whose switches were outlined in red. She studied it a moment, recalling sequences, then began to close the switches one at a time.
One double switch lay protected beneath a locked cover. She pried at it a moment, then stepped back and hammered it loose with the butt end of the flamethrower, moved up, and threw the dual control.
She waited an eternity. Sirens began to wail. A voice called from the intercom and she jumped, startled, until she recognized it as Mothers.
'Attention. Attention. The cooling units for the hyperdrive engines are not functioning. Overrides are not functioning. Engines will overload in four minutes, fifty seconds: four minutes, fifty seconds.'