Aliens

they try to make things easier for them by making things up.'

'About the monsters. Did one of those things grow inside mommy?'

Ripley found some blankets and began pulling them up around the small body, tucking them tightly around narrow ribs. 'I don't know, Newt. Neither does anybody else. That's the truth. I don't think anybody will ever know.'

The girl considered. 'Isn't that how babies come? I mean people babies. They grow inside you?'

A chill went down Ripley's spine. 'No, not like that, not like that at all. It's different with people, honey. The way it gets started is different, and the way the baby comes is different With people the baby and the mother work together. With these aliens the—'

'I understand,' Newt said, interrupting. 'Did you ever have a baby?'

'Yes.' She pushed the blanket up under the child's chin. 'Just once. A little girl.'

'Where is she? Back on Earth?'

'No. She's gone.'

'You mean, dead.'

It wasn't a question. Ripley nodded slowly, trying to remember a small female thing not unlike Newt running and playing, a miracle with dark curls bouncing around her face Trying to reconcile that memory with the picture of an older woman briefly glimpsed, child and mature lady linked together through time overspent in the stasis of hypersleep. The child's father was a more distant memory still. So much of a life lost and forgotten. Youthful love marred by a lack of common sense, a brief flare of happiness smothered by reality. Divorce Hypersleep. Time.

She turned away from the bed and reached for a portable space heater. While it wasn't uncomfortable in the operating theatre, it would be more comfortable with the heater on. It looked like a slab of plastic, but when she thumbed the 'on switch, it emitted a whirr and a faint glow as its integral warming elements came to life. As the heat spread, the operating room became a little less sterile, a shade cozier. Newt blinked sleepily.

'Ripley, I was thinking. Maybe I could do you a favour and fill in for her. Your little girl, I mean. Nothing permanent. Just for a while. You can try it, and if you don't like it, it's okay. I'll understand. No big deal. Whattaya think?'

It took what little remained of Ripley's determination and self-control not to break down in front of the child. She settled for hugging her tightly. She also knew that neither of them might see the light of another dawn. That she might have to turn Newt's face away during a very possible apocalyptic last moment and put the muzzle of a pulse-rifle to those blond tresses.

'I think it's not the worst idea I've heard all day. Let's talk about it later, okay?'

'Okay.' A shy, hopeful smile.

Ripley switched off the room light and started to rise. A smal hand grabbed her arm with desperate force.

'Don't go! Please.'

With great reluctance Ripley disengaged her arm from Newt's grip. 'It'll be all right. I'll be in the other room, right next door. I'm not going to go anywhere else. And don't forget that that's there.' She indicated the miniature video pickup that was imbedded over the doorway. 'You know what that is, don't you? A small nod in the darkness.

'Uh-huh. It's a securcam.'

'That's right. See, the green light's on. Mr. Hicks and Mr Hudson checked out all the securcams in this area to make sure all of them were operating properly. It's watching you, and I'll be watching its monitor over in the other room. I'll be able to see you just as clearly in there as I can when I'm right here.'

When Newt still seemed to hesitate, Ripley unsnapped the tracer bracelet Hicks had given her. She slipped it around the girl's smaller wrist, clinching it tight.

'Here. This is for luck. It'll help me keep an eye on you too Now go to sleep — and don't dream. Okay?'

'I'll try.' The sound of a small body sliding down between clean sheets.

Ripley watched in the dim light from the instruments on standby as the girl turned onto her side, hugging the doll head and gazing through half-lidded eyes at the steadily glowing function light imbedded in the bracelet. The space heater hummed comfortingly as she backed out of the room.

Other half-opened eyes were twitching erratically back and forth. They were the only visible evidence that Lieutenant Gorman was still alive. It was an improvement of sorts. One step further from complete paralysis.

Ripley leaned over the table on which the lieutenant was lying studying the eye movements and wondering if he could recognize her. 'How is he? I see he's got his eyes open.'

'That might be enough to wear him out.' Bishop looked up from a nearby workbench. He was surrounded by instruments and shining medical equipment. The light of the single highintensity lamp he was working with threw his features into sharp relief, giving his face a macabre cast.

'Is he in pain?'

'Not according to his bioreadouts. They're hardly conclusive of course. I'm sure he'll let us know as soon as he regains the use of his larynx. By the way, I've isolated the poison. Interesting stuff. It's a muscle-specific neurotoxin. Affects only the nonvital parts of the system; leaves respiratory and circulatory functions unimpaired. I wonder if the creatures instinctively adjust the dosage for different kinds of potential hosts?'

'I'll ask one of them first chance I get.' As she stared, one eyelid rose all the way before fluttering back down again. 'Either that was an involuntary twitch or else he winked at me. Is he getting better?'

Bishop nodded. 'The toxin seems to be metabolizing. It's powerful, but the body appears capable of breaking it down. It's starting to show up in his urine. Amazing mechanism, the human body. Adaptable. If he continues to flush the poison at a constant rate, he should wake up soon.'

'Let me get this straight. The aliens paralyzed the colonists they didn't kill, carried them over to the processing station, and cocooned them to serve as hosts for more of those.' She pointed into the back room where the stasis cylinders held the remaining facehugger specimens.

'Which would mean lots of those parasites, right? One for each colonist. Over a hundred, at least, assuming a mortality rate during the final fight of about a third.'

'Yes, that follows,' Bishop readily agreed.

'But these things, the parasitic facehugger form, come from eggs. So where are all the eggs coming from? When the guy who first found the alien ship reported back to us, he said there were a lot of eggs inside, but he never said how many, and nobody else ever went in after him to look. And not all those eggs may have been viable.

'The thing is, judging from the way the colony here was overwhelmed, I don't think the first aliens had time to hau eggs from that ship back here. That means they had to come from somewhere else.'

'That is the question of the hour.' Bishop swiveled his chair to face her. 'I have been pondering it ceaselessly since the true nature of the disaster here first became apparent to us.'

'Any ideas, bright or otherwise?'

'Without additional solid evidence it is nothing more than a supposition.'

'Go ahead and suppose, then.'

'We could assume a parallel to certain insect forms who have a hive-like organization. An ant or termite colony, for example is ruled by a single female, a queen, who is the source of new eggs.'

Ripley frowned. Interstellar navigation to entomology was a mental jump she wasn't prepared to make. 'Don't insect queens come from eggs also?'

The synthetic nodded. 'Absolutely.'

'What if there was no queen egg aboard the ship that brought these things here?'

'There's no such thing in a social insect society as a 'queen egg', until the workers decide to create one. Ants, bees termites, all employ essentially the same method. They select an ordinary egg and feed the pupa developing inside a special food high in certain nutrients. Among bees, for example, it is called royal jelly. The chemicals in the jelly act to change the composition of the maturing pupa so that what eventually emerges is an adult queen and not another worker Theoretically any egg can be used to hatch a queen. Why the insects choose the particular eggs they do is something we stil do not know.'

'You're saying that one of those things lays all the eggs?'

'Well, not exactly like one we're familiar with. Only if the insect analogy holds up. Assuming it does, there