He attempted a smile, failed. The Nostromo was not human. It did not play practical jokes on its crew, and it would not have awakened them from hypersleep with a yellow warning light without a perfectly good reason. A malfunctioning autochef did not qualify as a candidate for the latter.
Oh well. After several months of doing nothing but sleeping, he had no right to complain if a few hours' honest sweat was now required of him. .
The central computer room was little different from the other awake rooms aboard the Nostromo. A disarming kaleidoscope of lights and screens, readouts and gauges, it conveyed the impression of a wild party inhabited by a dozen drunken Christmas trees.
Settling himself into a thickly padded contour seat, Dallas considered how to proceed. Ash took the seat opposite the Mind Bank, manipulated controls with more speed and ease than a man just out of hypersleep ought to have. The science officer's ability to handle machines was unmatched.
It was a special rapport Dallas often wished he possessed. Still groggy from the after-effects of hypersleep, he punched out a primary request. Distortion patterns chased each other across the screen, settled down to form recognizable words. Dallas checked his wording, found it standard.
ALERT OVERMONITORING FUNCTION FOR MATRIX DISPLAY AND INQUIRY.
The ship found it acceptable also, and Mother's reply was immediate. OVERMONITOR ADDRESS MATRIX. Columns of informational categorizations lined up for inspection beneath this terse legend.
Dallas examined the long list of fine print, located the section he wanted, and typed in, COMMAND PRIORITY ALERT.
OVERMONITOR FUNCTION READY FOR INQUIRY, Mother responded. Computer minds were not programmed for verbosity. Mother was no exception to the rule.
Which was fine with Dallas. He wasn't in a talkative mood. He typed briefly, WHAT'S THE STORY, MOTHER? and waited. .
You couldn't say that the bridge of the Nostromo was spacious. Rather, it was somewhat less claustrophobic than the ship's other rooms and chambers, but not by much. Five contour seats awaited their respective occupants. Lights flashed patiently on and off at multiple consoles, while numerous screens of varying shapes and sizes also awaited the arrival of humans who were prepared to tell them what to display. A large bridge would have been an expensive frivolity, since the crew spent most of its flight time motionless in the freezers. It was designed strictly for work, not for relaxation or entertainment. The people who worked there knew this as thoroughly as did the machines.
A seal door slid silently into a wall. Kane entered, followed closely by Ripley, Lambert, and Ash. They made their way to their respective stations, settled behind consoles with the ease and familiarity of old friends greeting one another after a long time apart.
A fifth seat remained empty, would continue unoccupied until Dallas returned from his tГЄte-a-tГЄte with Mother, the Nostromo's Mind Bank computer. The nickname was an accurate one, not given in jest. People grow very serious when speaking about the machinery responsible for keeping them alive. For its part, the machine accepted the designation with equal solemnity, if not the emotional overtones.
Their clothing was as relaxed as their bodies, casual travesties of crew-member uniforms. Each reflected the personality of the wearer. Shirts and slacks, all were rumpled and worn after years of storage. So were the bodies they encased.
The first sounds spoken on the bridge in many years summed up the feelings of all present, even though they couldn't understand them. Jones was meowing when Ripley set him on the deck. He changed that to a purr, sliding sensuously around her ankles as she snuggled herself into the high-backed seat.
'Plug us in.' Kane was checking out his own console, caressing the automatics with his eyes, hunting for contrasts and uncertainties as Ripley and Lambert commenced throwing necessary switches and thumbing requisite controls.
There was a flurry of visual excitement as new lights and colours migrated across readout panels and screens. It gave the feeling that the instruments were pleased by the reappearance of their organic counterparts and were anxious to display their talents at first opportunity.
Fresh numbers and words appeared on readouts in front of him. Kane correlated them with well- remembered ones imprinted in his mind. 'Looks okay so far. Give us something to stare at.'
Lambert's fingers danced an arpeggio on a tightly clustered rank of controls. Viewscreens came alive all over the bridge, most suspended from the ceiling for easier inspection. The navigator examined the square eyes closest to her seat, frowned immediately. Much that she saw was expected. Too much was not. The most important thing, the anticipated shape that should be dominating their vision, was absent. So important was it that it negated the normality of everything else.
'Where's Earth?'
Examining his own screen carefully, Kane discerned blackness speckled with stars and little else. Granting the possibility that they'd emerged from hyperspace too soon, the home system at least should be clear on the screen. But Sol was as invisible as the expected Earth.
'You're the navigator, Lambert. You tell me.'
There was a central sun fixed squarely in the middle of the multiple screens. But it wasn't Sol. The colour was wrong, and computer-enhanced dots orbiting it were worse than wrong. They were impossible, improper of shape, of size, of number.
'That's not our system,' Ripley observed numbly, giving voice to the obvious.
'Maybe the trouble's just our orientation, not that of the stars.' Kane didn't sound very convincing, even to himself. 'Ships have been known to come out of hyperspace ass-backward to their intended destinations. That could be Centauri, at top amplification. Sol might be behind us. Let's take a scan before we do any panicking.' He did not add that the system visible on the screens resembled that of Centauri about as much as it did that of Sol.
Sealed cameras on the battered skin of the Nostromo began to move silently in the vacuum of space, hunting through infinity for hints of a warm Earth. Secondary cameras on the Nostromo's cargo, a monstrous aggregation of bulky forms and metal shapes, contributed their own line of sight. Inhabitants of an earlier age would have been astonished to learn that the Nostromo was towing a considerable quantity of crude oil through the void between the stars, encased in its own automatic, steadily functioning refinery.
That oil would be finished petrochemicals by the time the Nostromo arrived in orbit around Earth. Such methods were necessary. While mankind had long since developed marvellous, efficient substitutes for powering their civilization, they had done so only after greedy individuals had sucked the last drop of petroleum from a drained Earth.
Fusion and solar power ran all of man's machines. But they couldn't substitute for petrochemicals. A fusion engine could not produce plastics, for example. The modern worlds could exist without power sooner than they could without plastics. Hence the presence of the Nostromo's commercially viable, if historically incongruous, cargo of machinery and the noisome black liquid it patiently processed.
The only system the cameras picked up was the one set neatly in the centre of the various screens, the one with the improper necklace of planets circling an off-colour star. There was no doubt now in Kane's mind and less than that in Lambert's that the Nostromo's intended that system to be their immediate destination.
Still, it could be an error in time and not in space. Sol could be the system located in the distance just to this star's left or right. There was a sure way to find out
'Contact traffic control.' Kane was chewing his lower lip. 'If we can pick up anything from them, we'll know we're in the right quadrant. If Sol's anywhere nearby, we'll receive a reply from one of the outsystem relay stations.'
Lambert's fingers nicked different controls. 'This is the deep-space commercial tug Nostromo, registration number one eight zero, two four six, en route to Earth with bulk cargo crude petroleum and appropriate refinery. Calling Antarctica traffic control. Do you read me? Over.'
Only the faint, steady hiss of distant suns replied over the speakers. Near Ripley's feet, Jones the cat purred in harmony with the stars.
Lambert tried again. 'Deepspace commercial tug Nostromo calling Sol/Antarctica traffic control. We are experiencing navigation-fix difficulties. This is a priority call; please respond.' Still only the nervous stellar sizzle- pop. Lambert looked worried. 'Mayday, mayday. Tug Nostromo calling Sol traffic control or any other vessel in
