'It's on its way.' Dallas started crawling, his eyes on the tunnel ahead, fingers on the controls of the incinerator. The shaft here was less than a metre wide. Metal rubbed insistently at his knees and he wished he'd donned an extra pair of overalls. Too late for that now, he mused. Everyone was ready and prepared. He wasn't going back.
'How you doing?' a voice sounded over his mike speaker.
'Okay, Ash,' he told the anxious science officer. 'Don't worry about me. Keep your eyes on that opening in case it's slipped behind me somehow.'
He turned his first bend in the shaft, fighting to see in his head the exact layout of the ship's ventilating system. The printed schematic back in the mess was fuzzy and indistinct in his memory. The vents were hardly among the ship's critical systems. It was too late to wish that he'd taken more time to study them.
Several more tight turns showed in the shaft ahead of him. He paused, breathing heavily, and raised the tip of the flamethrower. There was nothing to indicate that anything lay hiding behind those bends, but it was better not to take chances. The incinerator's fuel level read almost full. It wouldn't hurt to let the creature know what was following close behind it, maybe drive it forward without having to face it.
A touch on the red button sent a gout of flame down the tunnel. The roar was loud in the constricted shaft, and heat rushed back across his protesting skin. He started forward again, taking care to keep his ungloved hands off the now hot metal he was crawling over. A little heat even penetrated the tough fabric of his pants. He didn't feel it. His senses were all concentrated forward, searching for movement and smell.
In the equipment area, Lambert thoughtfully regarded the tightly screened opening. She reached back, threw a switch. There was a hum and the metal grille slid out of sight, leaving a gaping hole in the wall.
'Are you crazy?' Parker eyed her uncertainly.
'That's the one it's got to come out of if it leaves the main shaft,' she told him. 'Let's keep it open. It's too dark behind the grille. I'd like to know if anything's coming.'
Parker thought to argue, decided his energy would be better spent keeping an eye on the opening, grilled or unblocked. Anyway, Lambert outranked him.
Sweat was seeping into his eyes, persistent as ants, and Dallas had to stop to wipe it away. Salt burned, impairing his sight. Ahead, the shaft turned steeply downward. He'd been expecting the downturn about now, but the satisfaction of having his memory confirmed gave him little pleasure. Now he'd have to watch his speed and balance in addition to the shaft itself.
Crawling to the drop, he pointed the flamethrower downward and let loose another fiery discharge. No screams, no aroma of seared flesh drifted back up to him. The creature was still far ahead. He wondered if it were crawling, perhaps angrily, perhaps fearfully, in search of the exit. Or maybe it was waiting, turned to confront its persistent pursuer with inconceivable methods of alien defence.
It was hot in the shaft, and he was growing tired. There was another possibility, he mused. What if the creature had somehow discovered another way to leave the shaft? In that event he'd have made the tense, agonizing crawl for nothing. There was still only one way to resolve all the questions. He started down the steep slide head first, keeping the flamethrower balanced and pointing forward.
It was Lambert who first noticed the movement of the tracker needle. She had a nervous minute until some hasty figuring matched the reading with a known quantity.
'Beginning to get a reading on you,' she informed the distant Dallas.
'Okay.' He felt better, knowing that others knew exactly where he was. 'Stay on me.'
The shaft made another turn. He didn't recall there being quite so many twists and sharp bends, but he was positive he was still in the main shaft. He hadn't passed a single side tunnel wide enough to admit anything larger than Jones. Despite the alien's demonstrated aptitude for squeezing into small spaces, Dallas didn't think it could shrink its bulk enough to fit into a secondary vent pipe only a dozen or so centimetres across.
The present turn confronting him proved especially difficult to negotiate. The long, inflexible barrel of the flamethrower didn't make it any easier. Panting, he lay there and considered how to proceed.
'Ripley.'
She jerked at the sharpness in his voice, spoke hurriedly into the 'com pickup. 'I'm here. Reading you clearly. Anything wrong? You sound. .' she caught herself. How else should Dallas sound except nervous'
'I'm okay,' he told her. 'Just tired. Out of shape. Too many weeks in hypersleep, you lose your muscle tone no matter what the freezers do for you.' He wriggled into a new position, gained a better view ahead.
'I don't think this shaft goes much farther. It's getting hot in here.' That was to be expected, he told himself. The accumulated effect of multiple blasts from his flamethrower would tax the internal cooling capacity of the shaft's thermostats.
'Continuing on now. Stay ready.'
An onlooker could easily have read the relief in Dallas's face when he finally emerged from the cramped tunnel. It opened into one of the Nostromo's main air ducts, a two-tiered tunnel split by a catwalk. He crawled out of the shaft and stood on the railless walkway, stretched gratefully.
A careful inspection of the larger passage proved negative. The only sound he heard was the patient throbbing of cooling machinery. There was a repair junction partway down the walk and he strolled out to it, repeated his inspection there. As far as he could see, the huge chamber was empty.
Nothing could sneak up on him here, not while he was standing in the centre of the room. It would be a good place to grab a couple of minutes of much needed rest. He sat down on the catwalk, casually examining the level floor below the junction, and spoke toward the throat mike.
'Lambert, what kind of reading are you getting? I'm in one of the central mixing chambers, at the repair station in the centre. Nothing here but me.'
The navigator glanced at her tracker, looked suddenly puzzled. She glanced worriedly at Parker, thrust the device under his gaze. 'Can you make any sense out of this?'
Parker studied the needle and readout. 'Not me. That's not my toy, it's Ash's. Confusing, though.'
'Lambert?' Dallas again.
'Here. I'm not sure.' She jiggled the tracker. The reading remained as incomprehensible as before. 'There seems to be some kind of double signal.'
'That's crazy. Are you getting two separate, distinct readings for me?'
'No. Just one impossible one.'
'It may be interference,' he told her. The way the air's shifting around in here, it could confuse the hell out of a jury-rigged machine designed to read air density. I'll push on ahead. It'll probably clear up as soon as I move.'
He rose, not seeing the massive, clawed hand rising slowly from the catwalk under him. The groping paw just missed his left foot as he continued onward. It drifted back beneath the walkway as silently as it had appeared.
Dallas had walked halfway to the end of the chamber. Now he stopped. 'Is that better, Lambert? I've moved. Am I registering any clearer now?'
'It's clear, all right.' Her voice was strained. 'But I'm still getting a double signal, and I think they're distinct. I'm not sure which one is which.'
Dallas whirled, his eyes darting around the tunnel, canvassing ceiling, floor, walls, and the large shaft opening he'd just emerged from. Then he looked back down the catwalk to the repair junction, his gaze settling on the spot where he'd been sitting just seconds ago.
He lowered the nose of the flamethrower. If he was now the front signal, having moved down the catwalk, then the cause of the double signal ought be. . his finger started to tense on the incinerator's trigger.
A hand reached up from below and behind, toward his ankle.
The alien was the front signal.
Ripley stood alone by the duct, watching it and thinking of the open airlock standing ready nearby. There was a distant ringing sound. At first she thought it was inside her head, where funny noises often originated. Then it was repeated, louder, and followed by an echo this time. It seemed to be coming from deep within the shaft. Her hands tensed on the flamethrower.
The ringing ceased. Against her better judgment she moved a little closer to the opening, keeping the nozzle of the flamethrower focused on it.
There came a recognizable sound. A scream. She recognized the voice.
