announcement boomed across the vast, open chamber. Procedure required it even though there was no one present to listen.
'Attention. Attention. Final fueling operations have begun Please extinguish all smoking materials.'
Bishop witnessed none of the activity, saw no lights rotating rapidly, heard no warning. He was satisfied nonetheless. The tiny readouts that came alive on the portable guidance console were as eloquent as a Shakespearean sonnet. He knew that the dropship had been prepared and that fueling was taking place because the console told him so. He'd done more than make contact with the Sulaco: he was communicating. He didn't have to be there in person. The portable was his electronic surrogate. It told him everything he needed to know, and what it told him was good.
XII
She hadn't intended to go to sleep. All she'd wanted was to share a little space, some warmth, and a few moments of quiet with the girl. But her body knew what she needed better than she did. When she relinquished control and allowed it the chance to minister to its own requirements, it took over immediately.
Ripley awoke with a start and just missed banging her head against the underside of the cot. She was wide-awake instantly.
Dim light from the Med lab filtered into the operating room Checking her watch, she was startled to see that more than an hour had passed. Death could have visited and departed in that much time, but nothing seemed to have changed. No one had come in to wake her, which wasn't surprising. Their minds were occupied with more important matters. The fact that she'd been left alone was in itself a good sign. If the final assault had begun, Hicks or someone else surely would have rousted her out of the warm corner beneath the bed by now.
Gently she disengaged herself from Newt, who slept on oblivious to adult obsessions with time. Ripley made sure the small jacket was pulled up snugly around the girl's chin before turning to crawl out from beneath the cot. As she turned to roll, she caught another glimpse of the rest of the Med lab — and froze.
The row of stasis cylinders stood just inside the doorway that led toward the rest of Hadley central. Two of them were dark their tops hinged open, the stasis fields quiescent. Both were empty.
Hardly daring to breathe, she tried to see into every dark corner, under every counter and piece of freestanding equipment. Unable to move, she frantically tried to assess the situation as she nudged the girl sleeping behind her with her left hand.
'Newt,' she whispered. Could the things sense sound waves? They had no visible ears, no obvious organs of hearing, but who could tell how primitive alien senses interpreted their environment? 'Newt, wake up.'
'What?' The girl rolled over and rubbed sleepily at her eyes 'Ripley? Where are—'
'Shssh!' She put a finger to her lips. 'Don't move. We're in trouble.'
The girl's eyes widened. She responded with a single nod now as wide-awake and alert as her adult protector. Ripley didn't have to tell her a second time to be quiet. During her solitary nightmare sojourn deep within the conduits and service ducts that honeycombed the colony, the first thing Newt had learned was the survival value of silence. Ripley pointed to the sprung stasis tubes. Newt saw and nodded again. She didn't so much as whimper.
They lay close to each other and listened in the darkness Listened for sounds of movement, watching for lethal lowslung shapes skittering across the polished floor. The compact space heater hummed efficiently nearby.
Ripley took a deep breath, swallowed, and started to move Reaching up, she grabbed the springs that lined the underside of the cot and began trying to push it away from the wall. The squeal of metal as the legs scraped across the floor was jarringly loud in the stillness.
When the gap between bed rail and wall was wide enough, she cautiously slid herself up, keeping her back pressed against the wall. With her right hand she reached across the mattress for the pulse-rifle. Her fingers groped among the sheets and blanket.
The pulse-rifle was gone.
Her eyes cleared the rim of the bed. Surely she'd left it lying there in the middle of the mattress! A faint hint of movement caught her attention, and her head snapped around to the left As it did so, something that was all legs and vileness jumped at her from its perch on the foot of the bed. She uttered a startled, mewling cry of pure terror and ducked back down Horny talons clutched at her hair as the loathsome shape struck the wall where her head had been a moment earlier. It slid, fighting for a grip while simultaneously searching for the vulnerable face that had shown itself a second ago.
Rolling like mad and digging her bare fingers into the springs, Ripley slammed the cot backward, pinning the teratoid against the wall only centimetres above her face. Its legs twitched and writhed with maniacal ferocity while the muscular tail banged against springs and wall like a demented python. It emitted a shrill, piercing noise, a cross between a squeal and a hiss.
Ripley heaved Newt across the floor and, in a frenzied scramble, rolled out after her. Once clear, she put both hands against the side of the cot and shoved harder against the imprisoned facehugger. Timing her move carefully, she flipped the cot and managed to trap it underneath one of the metal rails.
Clutching Newt close to her, she backed away from the overturned bed. Her eyes were in constant motion, darting from shadow to cupboard, searching out every corner. The whole lab area was fraught with fatal promise. As they retreated, the facehugger, displaying terrifying strength for something so small, shoved the bulk of the bed off its body and scuttled away beneath a bank of cabinets. Its multiple legs were a blur of motion.
Trying to keep to the centre of the room as much as possible Ripley continued backing toward the doorway. As soon as her back struck the door, she reached up to run a hand over the wall switch. The barrier at her back should have rolled aside. It didn't move. She hit the switch again then started pounding on it, regardless of the noise she was making. Nothing Deactivated, broken, it didn't matter. She tried the light switch Same thing. They were trapped in the darkness.
Trying to keep her eyes on the floor in front of them, she used one fist to pound on the door. Dull thunks resounded from the acoustically dampened material. Naturally the entrance to the operating theatre would be soundproofed Wouldn't want unexpected screams to unsettle a queasy colonist who happened to be walking past.
Keeping Newt with her, she edged away from the door and around the wall until they were standing behind the big observation window that fronted on the main corridor. Hardly daring to spare a glance away from the threatening floor, she turned and shouted.
'Hey — hey!'
She hammered desperately on the window. No one appeared on the other side of the triple-glazed transparency. A scrabbling noise from the floor made her whirl. Now Newt began to whimper, feeding off the adult's fear. Desperately Ripley stepped out in line with the wall-mounted video surveillance pickup and began waving her arms.
'Hicks! Hicks!'
There was no response, not from the pickup, nor from the empty room on the other side of the glass. The camera didn't pan to focus on her and no curious voice came from its speaker. In frustration Ripley picked up a steel chair and slammed it against the observation window. It bounced off without even scarring the tough material. She kept trying.
Wasting her strength. The window wasn't going to break and there was no one in the outer lab to witness her frantic efforts. She put the chair aside and struggled to control her breathing as she surveyed the room.
A nearby counter yielded a small, high-beam examination light. Switching it on, she played the narrow beam over the walls. The circle of light whipped over the stasis tubes, past tal assemblies of surgical and anaesthesiological equipment, over flush-mounted storage bins and cabinets and research instrumentation. She could feel Newt shaking next to her as she clung to the tall woman's leg.
'Mommy — Mommmyyyy. '
Perversely it helped to steady Ripley. The child was completely dependent on her, and her own obvious fear was only making the girl panic. She swept the beam across the ceiling, brought it back to something. An idea took
