Reptiles could also die in cold that was too intense or sustained, and Lex noticed several patches of rough, cracked hide on Scar’s hands that resembled the chilblains that appeared on humans in icy weather. While Lex was no expert in the fields of extraterrestrial biology or herpetology, it didn’t look as if Scar was holding up well in the brutal climate of Antarctica.
Soon Lex began to wonder about her own health.
For one thing, she knew she had the “Martian Effect” to contend with—a phrase coined by a Carnegie Mellon University professor of extraterrestrial biology in homage to H. G. Wells’s novel
Of course, Lex realized that if she lived long enough to actually
And creatures like Scar were far from safe to be around even if she had made peace with him. Predators lived for the kill. The ritualistic slaughter of another being, sentient or not, was an intrinsic part of their cultural makeup. By all indications the Predators’ civilization was built on cruelty, with the ceremonial hunt as the central tenet of their religion—important enough, in fact, for them to coolly and cynically manipulate a primitive culture, get themselves elected to godhood, and then compel generations of humans to build their pyramids and populate them with “game” hatched out of their own chests.
It was viciousness on a near-genocidal scale, and Lex was suddenly filled with rage toward Scar and his ilk for how they’d manipulated her primitive ancestors, and for what they’d done to Sebastian, to Max Stafford and Charles Weyland—and probably Miller, too.
Lex noticed that Scar had turned his back on her and was busy with a new project. He drew the ceremonial dagger—the one she’d watched him wield as he’d bloodied himself and gathered his first trophy. Now Scar dragged the Alien carcass to a corner of the chamber and yanked out the spear. Scar showed Lex the melted tip of the spear, then cast it aside. Using one arm, he splayed the dead creature out on its belly on the stone floor. With a grunt of effort, he plunged the blade into the small of the Alien’s back and pried open the armored shell at the torso until the entire chitin shell split like a cooked lobster.
Black bile, steaming in the frigid air, and slimy green ooze gushed onto the flagstones and immediately began pitting the rock. A vile stench filled the small chamber. Lex retched and covered her nose and mouth with the edge of her scarf. Careful to avoid the gore sizzling on the floor, Scar stepped around the carcass, lifted the Alien’s elongated head, and severed the exoskeleton and internal veins and tendons with a sickening crunch. The legs and hips fell away, and more guts spilled out.
Working with speed and precision, Scar stood the head and torso up and sliced the edge of the rubbery, translucent flap that covered the Alien’s head. Peeling the thick membrane back, the Predator exposed the Alien’s brain, which was—amazingly—still throbbing with life. Finally, the Predator lifted the armored external skull away from the Alien body and placed it aside. The bony shell was completely hollow. The elongated brain remained connected to the torso and still twitched and pulsed.
Both intrigued and repulsed, Lex moved closer, carefully avoiding the acid blood that stained the cell floor. As she watched, Scar removed one arm and began stripping away the muscles from the Alien’s shell. While he let the gore slide to the floor, he set the bony armor down next to the hollow skull.
“What are you doing?” Lex repeated.
Once again Scar stood the gory torso up and began to probe the creature’s brain with his knife. Even without its skull and its missing left arm, the Alien looked menacing.
Lex watched the brain flop about and wondered,
At that instant the Alien’s right arm shot out and raked the air just inches from her face. Lex literally jumped backwards with a yelp.
But the Alien made no further movement, and Scar sat passively behind it, prodding and picking at a lobe of its brain. The Predator looked up at Lex, then plunged the knife into a cluster of nerves. The Alien hand lashed out again. She realized that Scar had frightened her deliberately—and now Lex could swear that the Predator was laughing.
“Ha, ha, very funny.”
Fun time over, Scar went back to work, stripping away the organs and muscles and keeping only the shell, which he stacked in a pile near the empty Alien skull.
“What are you doing?” Lex asked again. This time she laid her hand on Scar’s arm, firmly enough to get his attention.
With an impatient snarl, the Predator threw down the half-mangled arm he’d been working on and held up his knife, as if displaying it. Lex leaned closer and examined the blade. Only then did she realize that it was not forged of metal but carved from some bony substance like ivory, and honed to a sharp edge.
“Okay,” Lex said. “It’s a special blade…. So what?”
Very deliberately, Scar dipped the tip of the sacrificial blade into the Alien’s seeping brain pan and covered it with the acid blood. Then he shook the blade over a segment of battered Predator armor. As soon as the drops splashed the surface, the acid went to work, melting the armor.
Then the Predator shook more acid blood off the blade—and onto a segmented piece of the Alien’s shell. Nothing happened; the acid just rolled off.
The Predator gave her a look that clearly meant, Get it?
“Of course!” Lex cried. “The Aliens are immune to their own bodily defenses. A porcupine can’t stab itself.”
And obviously the sacrificial blade the Predator carried was made of the same substance—Alien exoskeleton, carved and shaped and honed to a razor-sharp edge, like the whalebone blades nineteenth-century whalers used to fashion out of the bones of their prey.
Lex nodded vigorously. “I get it, I get it. We’ll keep it together and make it to the surface.”
Scar reached out and touched her arm, then lifted his hand and touched the mark on his mask.
“Keep it together… Make it to the surface…” Lex was startled to hear the Predator speak to her using an electronic recording of her own words.
Lex smiled, then she slapped the top of his giant fist with the palm of her tiny hand. “Deal,” she said.
Suddenly, an unearthly cry unlike any other they’d heard before literally shook the walls. The cry was more than loud enough to penetrate their chamber, so surely it could be heard all over the pyramid.
Lex and Scar exchanged anxious glances, then Scar snatched a chunk of Alien armor from the pile and slapped it against Lex’s chest hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Holding it in place, Scar sized the piece, then tossed it aside in favor of a smaller segment.
Lex understood his plan immediately, and to show him she got it Lex lifted a heavy piece of armor and placed it on
The Predator tensed at her touch but allowed Lex to fit the piece of chitin to its arm without protest. As Scar picked through the Alien shells for other usable components, Lex drew her survival knife and started cutting the straps off her ruined backpack.
As they worked side by side for the common purpose of mutual survival, Lex and Scar—human and Predator —began to function like a team.
For endless hours, the Alien Queen, powerless to act due to the wicked barbed chains that held her captive, had been compelled to watch helplessly as one after the other of her precious eggs were tipped into the roaring furnace. Only a few of the eggs had been given a chance to yield life, and they had all been spirited away to another part of the pyramid where she could no longer watch over them.
Even now the Queen sensed that some of her offspring were alive and well.
