was a tug, a working vessel, not a pleasure craft. When not performing necessary tasks her crew was supposed to be spending its blank time in the comforting womb of hypersleep. It was only natural that unoccupied wake time would make them nervous under the best of circumstances, and the present circumstances were something less than the best.
Ash could run problems in theory through the computer over and over, without ever becoming bored. He found the awake time stimulating.
'Any response yet to our outcalls?' Dallas leaned out from his chair to eye the science officer.
'I've tried every type of response in the manual, plus free association. I've also let Mother try a strictly mechanalog code approach.' Ash shook his head and looked disappointed. 'Nothing but the same distress call, repeated at the usual intervals. All the other channels are blank, except for a faint, steady crackle on oh-point- three-three.' He jabbed upward with a thumb.
'Mother says that's the characteristic discharge of this world's central star. If anything, or anyone, is alive out there, it's unable to do more than call for help.'
Dallas made a rude noise. 'We've got full power back. Let's see where we are. Kick on the floods.'
Ripley threw a switch. A chain of powerful lights, bright pearls on the dark setting on the Nostromo, came to life outside the ports. Wind and dust were more evident now, sometimes forming small whirlpools in the air, sometimes blowing straight and with considerable force across their line of sight. Isolated rocks, rises and falls, were the only protrusions on the blasted landscape. There was no sign of anything living, not a patch of lichen, a bush, nothing. Only wind and dust swirling in an alien night.
'No oasis,' Kane whispered to himself. Blank and featureless, inhospitable.
Dallas rose, walked to a port, and stared out at the continuing storm, watched splinters of rock scud past the glass. He wondered if the air was ever still on this little world. For all they knew of local conditions, the Nostromo might have set down in the midst of a quiet summer's day. That was unlikely. This globe wasn't big enough to produce really violent weather, like on Jupiter, say. He drew some consolation from that, realizing that the weather outside probably couldn't get much worse.
The vagaries of the local climate formed the principal topic for discussion. 'We can't go anywhere in this,' Kane pointed out. 'Not in the dark, anyway.'
Ash looked up from his console. He hadn't moved, evidently content physically as well as mentally. Kane couldn't understand how the science officer could do it. If he hadn't left his own station occasionally to walk around, he'd be going crazy by now.
Ash noticed his stare, offered some hopeful information. 'Mother says the local sun's coming up in twenty minutes. Wherever we decide to go, it won't be in the dark.'
'That's something,' admitted Dallas, grasping at the least bit of encouragement. 'If our callers won't or can't talk further, we'll have to go looking for them. Or for it, if the signal's being produced by an automatic beacon. How far are we from the source of the transmission?'
Ash studied readouts, activated a ground-level plotter for confirmation. 'About three thousand metres, over mostly level terrain as near as the scanners can tell, roughly northeast of our present position.'
'Composition of terrain?'
'Seems to be the same as we determined on descent. Same hard stuff we're sitting on now. Solid basalt with minor variations, though I wouldn't rule out the possibility of encountering some large amygdaloidal pockets here and there.'
'We'll watch our step, then.'
Kane was comparing distance with suit time in his head. 'At least it's close enough to walk to.'
'Yeah.' Lambert looked pleased. 'I didn't fancy having to move the ship. A straight drop from orbit's easier to plot than a surface-to-surface shift in this kind of weather.'
'Okay. We know what we're going to be walking on. Let's find out what we're going to be walking through. Ash, give us a preliminary atmospheric.'
The science officer punched buttons. A tiny port opened on the skin of the Nostromo. It shoved a metal flask out into the wind, sucked in a minute portion of this world's air, and sank back into the ship.
The sample was ejected into a vacuum chamber. Sophisticated instruments proceeded to pick it to pieces. Very shortly these pieces of air appeared in the form of numbers and symbols on Ash's console.
He studied them briefly, requested a double check on one, then reported to his companions.
'It's almost a primordial mix. Plenty of inert nitrogen, some oxygen, a high concentration of free carbon dioxide. There's methane and ammonia, some of the latter existing in the frozen state. . it's cold outside. I'm working on the trace constituents now, but I don't expect any surprises. It all looks pretty standard, and unbreathable.'
'Pressure?'
'Ten to the fourth dynes per square centimetre. Won't hold us back unless the wind really picks up.'
'What about moisture content?' Kane wanted to know. Images of an imaginary off-Earth oasis rapidly fading from his mind.
'Ninety-eight double P. It may not smell good, but it's humid. Lot of water vapor. Weird mixture, that. Wouldn't think to find that much vapor coexisting with the methane. Oh well. I wouldn't advise drinking from any local water holes, if they exist. Probably not water.'
'Anything else we should know?' Dallas asked.
'Just the basalt surface, plenty of cold, hard lava. And cold air, well below the line,' Ash informed them. 'We'd need suits to handle the temperature even if the air were breathable. If there's anything alive out there, it's tough.'
Dallas looked resigned. 'I suppose it was unreasonable to expect anything else. Hope springs eternal. There's just enough of an atmosphere to make vision bad. I'd have preferred no air at all, but we didn't design this rock.'
'You never know.' Kane was being philosophical again. 'Might be something else's idea of paradise.'
'There's no point in cursing it,' Lambert advised them. 'It could've been a helluva lot worse.' She studied the storm outside. It was gradually growing lighter as dawn approached.
'I sure prefer this to trying to set down on some gas giant, where we'd have three-hundred kph winds in a calm period and ten or twenty gravities to cope with. At least we can walk around on this without generator support and stabilizers. You people don't know when you're well off.'
'Funny that I don't feel well off,' Ripley countered, 'I'd rather be back in hypersleep.' Something moved against her ankles and she reached down to stroke Jones' rump. The cat purred gratefully.
'Oasis or not,' Kane said brightly, 'I volunteer for first out. I'd like a chance for a close look at our mysterious caller. Never know what you might find.'
'Jewels and money?' Dallas couldn't repress a grin. Kane was a notorious rainbow chaser.
The exec shrugged. 'Why not?'
'I hear you. Okay.' It was accepted that Dallas would be a member of the little expedition. He glanced around the bridge for a candidate to complete the party. 'Lambert. You too.'
She didn't look happy. 'Swell. Why me?'
'Why not you? You're our designated direction finder. Let's see how good you are outside your seat.' He started for the corridor, paused, and said matter-of-factly, 'One more thing. We're probably faced with a dead derelict and a repeating beacon or we'd likely have heard from any survivors by now. But we still can't be sure what we'll run into. This world doesn't appear to be teeming with life, inimical or otherwise, but we won't take unnecessary risks. Let's get out some weapons.' He hesitated as Ripley moved to join them.
'Three is the maximum I can let off ship, Ripley. You'll have to wait your turn out.'
'I'm not going out,' she told him. 'I like it here. It's just that I've done everything I can here. Parker and Brett are going to need help with the fine work while they're trying to fix those ducts. . '
It was entirely too hot back in the engine room, despite the best efforts of the tug's cooling unit. The trouble stemmed from the amount of welding Parker and Brett had to do and the cramped quarters they were forced to work in. The air near the thermostats would remain comparatively cool, while that around the weld itself could overheat rapidly.
The laser welder itself wasn't at fault. It generated a relatively cool beam. But where metal melted and flowed together to form a fresh seal, heat was generated as a by-product. Both men were working with shirts off
