Alien

ROBY: Dell, what's the last thing you can remember?

BROUSSARD: ... I don't know...

ROBY: Do you remember the pyramid?

BROUSSARD: No. Just some horrible dreams about smothering. Where are we?

ROBY: Are you in pain?

BROUSSARD: Not exactly, just feel like somebody's been beating me with rubber hoses for about six years.

ROBY: There could be a whole city out there and we'd never see it.

BROUSSARD: Not sitting on our butts in here, that's for sure.

BROUSSARD: Good! Maybe we'll be able to see something then.

ROBY: Or something will be able to see us.

ROBY: Engines off.

BROUSSARD: Nine hundred meters and dropping. 800. 700. Hang on gentlemen.

ROBY: Locked.

BROUSSARD: Kill drive engines.

ROBY: If there is some kind of alien intelligence down on that planetoid, it'd be a serious mistake for us to blunder in unequipped.

BROUSSARD: Hell, we're equipped --

ROBY: Hell, no! We don't know what's down there on that piece of rock! It might be dangerous! What we should do is get on the radio to the exploration authorities... and let them deal with it.

BROUSSARD: I'm going to buy a cattle ranch.

ROBY: Cattle ranch!

BROUSSARD: I'm not kidding. You can get one if you have the credit. Look just like real cows, too.

ROBY: Oh... God... am I cold...

BROUSSARD: Is that you, Roby?

ROBY: I feel like shit...

BROUSSARD: Yeah, it's you all right.

STANDARD: Breathe deeply.

BROUSSARD: OH GOD IT HURTS SO BAD!

STANDARD: What's wrong?

BROUSSARD: I don't know... I'm getting these CRAMPS!

BROUSSARD: I'm really starving; can we get some food before we go into the freezers?

STANDARD: I think that's a pretty reasonable request.

STANDARD: Hell, you're in great shape, you've got your sense of humor back!

BROUSSARD: God I'm hungry.

STANDARD: How do you feel, Dell?

BROUSSARD: Wretched. What happened to me?

STANDARD: Don't you remember?

BROUSSARD: Don't remember nothing. Can't hardly remember my name.

STANDARD: Are you okay in there?

BROUSSARD: Yeah, I'm okay. Haven't hit bottom yet. Definitely a column of warm air rising; it keeps the shaft clear of dust.

STANDARD: What was that Dell, I lost you, do you read me?

BROUSSARD: Yeah, but this is hard work. Can't talk now.

BROUSSARD: Okay, I'm in the mouth of the chimney now, and I'm starting down.

STANDARD: Take care.

STANDARD: Dell, you want to come down, we can figure out where to go from here.

BROUSSARD: No, I want to go in.

STANDARD: Can we come up?

BROUSSARD: No, it's too small, only room enough for one person.

STANDARD: Can you see anything in the hole?

BROUSSARD: Maybe we can get in by the top.

STANDARD: You want to try?

BROUSSARD: Sure.

BROUSSARD: I was scanning the horizon to see what I could pick up. Look there, on that screen.

STANDARD: What is it, I can't --

STANDARD: What is it?

BROUSSARD: Take a look.

STANDARD: This is Chaz.

BROUSSARD: Chaz, this is Dell. Can you come topside for a minute?

STANDARD: What's up?

BROUSSARD: Well, the sun just came up again, and it seems the wind's died down. It's as clear as a bell outside. There's something I think you ought to see.

STANDARD: I'm on my way.

STANDARD: Just machinery.

BROUSSARD: But functioning.

BROUSSARD: I'll go first.

STANDARD: No, you'll follow me.

STANDARD: Appears to be a door hanging open, the entrance is clogged with debris.

BROUSSARD: Looks like a derelict.

STANDARD: Martin, we're going in. I'm going to hold the conversation to a minimum from here on.

STANDARD: I'm sending. Do you hear me?

BROUSSARD: Receiving.

BROUSSARD: Close enough to walk to!

STANDARD: Martin, would you run me an atmospheric?

BROUSSARD: Approaching point of origin. Closing at 20 kilometers, 15 and slowing. Ten. Five. Gentlemen, we are directly above the source of the transmission.

STANDARD: What's the terrain down there?

BROUSSARD: Well, line of sight is impossible due to dust. Radar gives me noise. Sonar gives me noise. Infrared -- noise. Let's try ultraviolet. There. Flat. It's totally flat. A plain.

STANDARD: Is it solid?

BROUSSARD: It's... basalt. Rock.

STANDARD: Then take her down.

BROUSSARD: Drop begins... now! Fifteen kilometers and dropping... twelve... ten... eight and slowing. Five. Three. Two. One kilometer and slowing. Lock tractor beams.

STANDARD: Activate lifter quads.

BROUSSARD: Activated. Vertical drop checked. Correcting course. On tangential course now, orbiting. Crossing the terminator. Entering night side.

STANDARD: Dell, I want greater magnification. More surface detail. I want to see what this place looks like.

BROUSSARD: I'll see what I can do.

STANDARD: Except it will take 75 years to get a reply back. Don't forget how far we are from the Colonies, Martin.

BROUSSARD: There are no commercial lanes out here. Face it, we're out of range.

STANDARD: Any rotation?

BROUSSARD: Yeah. Two hours.

STANDARD: Gravity?

BROUSSARD: Point eight six. We can walk on it.

STANDARD: Can you get it a little closer?

BROUSSARD: That's what I'm going to do.

BROUSSARD: I got it. Oh boy.

STANDARD: Where the hell are we?

BROUSSARD: Just short of Zeta II Reticuli. We haven't even reached the outer rim yet.

BROUSSARD: I don't recognize that constellation.

STANDARD: Dell, plot our location.

BROUSSARD: Where's Irth?

STANDARD: Sandy, scan the whole sky.

STANDARD: Just hold it, hold it! Computer: have you attempted to analyze the transmission?

COMPUTER: Yes. There are two points of salient interest. Number one: it is highly systematized, indicating intelligent origin. Number two: certain sounds are inconsistent with the human palate.

STANDARD: Computer, what language was that?

COMPUTER: Unknown.

COMPUTER: I have recorded the transmission.

STANDARD: Play it for us, please.

STANDARD: Computer, this is Captain Standard. What conditions are you talking about?

COMPUTER: I have intercepted a transmission of unknown origin.

STANDARD: A transmission?

COMPUTER: A voice transmission.

ROBY: Computer! I've turned all the cooling units back on! What's wrong?

COMPUTER: The reaction has proceeded too far. The core has begun to melt. Engines will overload in 2 minutes, 35 seconds.

ROBY: Yes!

COMPUTER: I have a temporary sequence on the monitor --

ROBY: Hold it, I can't hear a damn thing!

ROBY: Unknown! What do you mean?

COMPUTER: It is none of the 678 dialects spoken by technological man.

COMPUTER: I have interrupted the course of the voyage.

ROBY: What? Why?

COMPUTER: I am programmed to do so if certain conditions arise.

FAUST: What happened? Where's Sandy?

ROBY: Dead.

FAUST: Dead!

ROBY: It's monstrous -- it grew, like some horrible tapeworm. We were completely unprepared.

FAUST: It's still in the ship?

ROBY: Where does that go?

FAUST: All over the ship; we'll have to check the charts to know for sure.

ROBY: What happened to the lights?

FAUST: Bulbs burned out, nobody bothered to replace 'em.

ROBY: Okay.

FAUST: That way.

ROBY: Where's it coming from?

FAUST: Machine's screwed up, I can't tell. Needle's spinning all over the dial.

FAUST: We could cut a section out of that metallite netting. It won't hold up to that acid, but aside from that it's pretty strong.

ROBY: We have to avoid injuring it. What we really need is some electric animal prods.

ROBY: But we can't kill it. If we kill it, it will spill all its body acids right through our hull and out into space.

FAUST: Shit...

ROBY: You like this shit?

FAUST: It grows on you.

ROBY: You know what they make this stuff out of?

FAUST: Yes, I know what they make it out of, so what? It's food now. You're eating it.

ROBY: I didn't say it was bad for you, it's just kind of sickening, that's all.

FAUST: Yes? What is it?

ROBY: Jay, we've got a problem. I was wondering if there was any way you could shortcut the repairs and give us immediate takeoff capability.

FAUST: Why, what's wrong?

ROBY: The computer's translated the alien signal, and it's kind of alarming.

FAUST: What do you mean?

ROBY: It couldn't translate the whole thing, only three phrases. I'll just read it to you the way I got it: "... HOSTILE... SURVIVAL... ADVISE DO NOT LAND... " And that's all it could translate.

FAUST: Sorry to interrupt, but I'm gonna charge up the engines for a minute, okay?

ROBY: Yeah, okay. Go ahead.

ROBY: He died.

FAUST: What?

ROBY: Not they... he...

ROBY: Hello, Faust!

FAUST: Yeah!

ROBY: How's it coming on the engines?

ROBY: How long to fix?

FAUST: Hard to say.

ROBY: Well, get started.

FAUST: Right. Talk to you.

FAUST: Just a minute, hold it, I'm checking.

ROBY: Has the hull been breached?

FAUST: Well, uh... good luck. I hope you won't need me, but if you do, I'm here.

HUNTER: Right.

FAUST: That one section of the ventilator shaft has only two outlets -- you notice? The food storage room on one end --

HUNTER: -- And the cooling unit on the other.

HUNTER: And then we run out of food and oxygen.

FAUST: The water will still recycle.

HUNTER: Oh, no. Oh, no.

FAUST: What was that? What the Christ was that?

HUNTER: Boy do I feel a lot better. It's a straight shot back to the Colonies, and then we can start taking bids on the paydirt. Any bets on the top bid?

FAUST: Well, we should at least be able to each buy our own planet.

HUNTER: Oh -- God -- oh --

FAUST: Is it alive?

FAUST: What the hell's going on?

HUNTER: Don't know -- Broussard got hurt somehow.

FAUST: Hurt! How?

HUNTER: Don't know -- maybe we'll be real lucky and he just broke his neck. I knew we shouldn't of come down here.

STANDARD: All right... but do not go below decks.

FAUST: Right.

STANDARD: And be right back.

FAUST: There's some more combustible fuel down in the storage lockers next to the lounge. I'll go get it.

STANDARD: No, I don't want us separated.

FAUST: You just sealed it off; it can't get to that section.

FAUST: Hey, are you guys still there? What's going on?

STANDARD: Meet us on the bridge. Be careful -- it's huge now.

FAUST: Right.

STANDARD: So it's trapped in between -- now we have to drive it out.

FAUST: Poison gas...

STANDARD: It looks completely different from the first one -- it's more like a worm with legs... and tentacles.

FAUST: Well we better do something.

FAUST: It's clear.

STANDARD: All right -- Roby and Melkonis will go with Faust. Hunter and I will make up the second team.

FAUST: Might even incinerate the damn thing.

STANDARD: I hope not.

STANDARD: So does anybody have any suggestions?

FAUST: We could put on our pressure suits and blow all the air out of the ship. That would kill it.

STANDARD: No, we can't afford to lose that much oxygen. We're going to have to flush it out.

STANDARD: Oh it's okay. I've had better cag than this, but I've had worse too, if you know what I mean.

FAUST: I kind of like it.

FAUST: This dust is getting clogged in the intakes again!

STANDARD: Just hold us together till we're in space, that's all!

FAUST: Hey, guess what?

STANDARD: What?

FAUST: The engines are fixed.

STANDARD: It's really on there tight.

FAUST: Here, let me try.

STANDARD: Jay... how's it coming on the repairs?

FAUST: Well... I'm going to have to blow the engines out...

STANDARD: And when will you be ready to do that?

FAUST: Oh -- I'm not near ready yet.

STANDARD: Then why the hell are you sitting around here?

FAUST: Right.

FAUST: Martin, this is Jay. The intakes are clogged with dust. We overheated and burned out a whole cell.

STANDARD: Damn it! How long to fix?

MELKONIS: We can't go into hypersleep with that thing running around loose.

HUNTER: We'd be sitting ducks in the freezers.

MELKONIS: It's a crude symbolic language -- looks primitive.

HUNTER: You can't tell -- that kind of stuff could represent printed circuits...

HUNTER: It makes me sick to see him like that.

MELKONIS: Isn't there some way we can get it off him?

MELKONIS: I never saw anything like that in my life... except molecular acid.

HUNTER: But this thing uses it for blood.

MELKONIS: Hell of a defense mechanism. You don't dare kill it.

MELKONIS: God, that smoke's poisonous!

HUNTER: It's eating a hole in the floor!

MELKONIS: We can't expect to understand a life form like this. We're out of our back yard. Things are different here.

HUNTER: Well, can't we kill it? I mean, we can't leave the damn thing on him.

MELKONIS: We don't know what might happen if we tried to kill it. At least right now it's keeping him alive.

HUNTER: How about cutting it off? We can't pull it loose, but we can cut off everything but the bottom layer, where it's stuck to his face.

MELKONIS: Blood's thoroughly oxygenated.

HUNTER: Yeah, but how? His nose and mouth are blocked.

HUNTER: Where did it come from?

MELKONIS: He's the only one that knows that.

HUNTER: How does he breathe?

MELKONIS: He wouldn't open the lock; he was going to leave us out there.

HUNTER: Yeah... well, maybe he should have. I mean, you brought the goddamn thing in here. Maybe you deserve to get slapped.

HUNTER: The flamethrower!

STANDARD: I can't, the acid will pour out!

HUNTER: It must have stopped moving. I'm not getting anything.

STANDARD: Let me go first; you stay behind me.

STANDARD: Well... now we have to herd that thing up here.

HUNTER: Whoever's doing the herding is gonna have their hands pretty full. I think somebody should stay by the lifeboat to slam the door on the thing once it's inside, and to serve as... as...

STANDARD: It will be.

HUNTER: What we really need is some red meat in here for bait.

STANDARD: The ship's gravitational attraction must have drawn him back.

HUNTER: Should we go outside and bring him in?

STANDARD: No... the risk is too great. Perhaps after we've destroyed the thing.

STANDARD: You can't say that; I think it's a good plan.

HUNTER: The flamethrower needs more fuel.

STANDARD: Right. We've got a lot to accomplish. Let's get moving.

STANDARD: If we could just get the creature into the lifeboat, we could launch it into space and blow it up.

HUNTER: Good! That's good!

STANDARD: We can load the lifeboat up with explosives and trigger them remotely, once the lifeboat is in space.

HUNTER: Oh no! We can't fight this thing! There's only six hours of air left -- we're dead men!

STANDARD: I don't buy that. There's still time to destroy it and get ourselves in the freezers.

HUNTER: How?

STANDARD: It's time for drastic remedies.

STANDARD: We've got six hours left.

HUNTER: Oh my God.

STANDARD: Does anybody know what happened?

HUNTER: Listen, it sure didn't like this flamethrower.

STANDARD: That's right -- we can't kill it on the ship, but we can at least keep it at bay -- and maybe drive it into the air lock.

HUNTER: Thing is, I'm about out of fuel.

STANDARD: We'd better seal off the lower maintenance level; at least trap it there.

HUNTER: At least it can't get up here now.

STANDARD: While the rest of us wait down in the cooling unit with the net.

HUNTER: Sounds like a rough one.

STANDARD: Got a better idea?

HUNTER: We can't pump poison gas down into the cooling unit! It'll flood the whole ship!

STANDARD: The only other thing I can think of is for somebody to crawl in there and flush it out.

HUNTER: Maybe we don't have to. It's trapped in there. We could just leave it in there all the way back to Irth.

STANDARD: Don't be an idiot.

HUNTER: Don't worry, it won't damage it, it'll just give it a little incentive.

STANDARD: How do we locate the creature?

HUNTER: I think I could cobble something together. A long metal rod with a battery in it. Give it a hell of a shock.

STANDARD: Good. Get on it. But first, I'm issuing a standing order: from this moment forth, every one of us will wear protective garments, including helmets. Let's get down to the locker and change.

HUNTER: Yes?

STANDARD: How's Broussard?

HUNTER: He's running a fever.

STANDARD: Still unconscious?

HUNTER: Yes.

STANDARD: Can you do anything for him?

HUNTER: The machine will bring his temperature down. His vital functions are strong.

STANDARD: Good.

STANDARD: No, don't open the door. We don't want it escaping.

HUNTER: Well, what the hell good can we do in here? We can't grab it -- it might jump on us --

STANDARD: Maybe we can catch it.

HUNTER: Now we're in for it.

STANDARD: The door was closed. It must still be in here.

STANDARD: You know, it's fantastic -- the human race has gone this long without ever encountering another advanced life form, and now we run into a veritable zoo.

HUNTER: What do you mean?

STANDARD: Well, those things out there aren't the same, you know -- the spaceship and the pyramid. They're from different cultures and different races. That ship just landed here -- crashed like we did. The pyramid and the thing from it are indigenous.

HUNTER: How could anything be indigenous to this asteroid? It's dead.

STANDARD: Maybe it wasn't always dead.

STANDARD: I'll do it. The rest of you continue.

HUNTER: I'll come with you.

STANDARD: There. Should be coming through about there.

HUNTER: Careful, don't get under it!

HUNTER: Hey now, what is this?

STANDARD: Ask him.

HUNTER: That thing, God almighty, didn't you try to get it off him?

STANDARD: It wouldn't come.

STANDARD: It's over, Hunter.

HUNTER: Boy, that's terrific.

STANDARD: Well, how does it feel to be rich men?

HUNTER: Just keep your finger off the button till she's way away from the ship, that's all.

ROBY: Is it armed?

HUNTER: If you press the button right now, it will blow the whole nose of the ship off.

ROBY: Thanks for the thought.

ROBY: Isn't "bait" the word you used?

HUNTER: Hey look, somebody has to have his hands free to lock the creature in the lifeboat!

HUNTER: This should do it.

ROBY: I should hope so! And we'd better make sure it's pretty far from the ship when we blow it.

ROBY: I think it's going to be almost impossible to drive it up into the lifeboat.

HUNTER: We can use the flamethrower.

ROBY: It's not going to work.

HUNTER: What about all the minerals and elements in the cargo hold? That's the only reason we came out here. We'd have to abandon them all. We'd be broke.

ROBY: Our lives are more important. Anyway, we can take a small amount of the most valuable stuff with us on the lifeboat.

HUNTER: Blow the ship up?

ROBY: And the creature with it. We can make it back to Irth in the lifeboat.

HUNTER: We can't kill it on board. It's huge now and must have tremendous amounts of that acid in its body.

ROBY: I've got an idea, but you're not going to like it.

HUNTER: ... And Broussard got caught in their reproductive cycle.

ROBY: You will notice, though, that there are no more phases. Only four forms are shown. After that the pattern repeats.

HUNTER: Recognizable! In that?

ROBY: In symbolic form... very stylized... but if you stare at it, you can see some of the different creatures we've been dealing with.

HUNTER: Well... I suppose that star-shaped thing could be the parasite that got on Broussard. Is that what you mean?

ROBY: And right next to it, that oval design with the markings -- it's a dead ringer for the spore casings.

ROBY: Don't count on it.

HUNTER: We sure need this flamethrower.

HUNTER: You mean his body was still kicking when it ran off with him?

ROBY: It was horrible -- horrible. Like a chicken.

ROBY: What common objects?

HUNTER: Listen, hadn't somebody better check on Broussard?

HUNTER: That must have been when he got it.

ROBY: The same thing must've happened to the creatures on the other ship... except they took one of those jars on board, and opened it there.

HUNTER: This is horrible.

ROBY: Hey! what about the film?

HUNTER: What's happening up here?

ROBY: I think it's fizzled out.

ROBY: I think that's how it's getting oxygen to him.

HUNTER: It doesn't make any sense. It paralyzes him... puts him into a coma... then keeps him alive.

ROBY: Look at that.

HUNTER: What is it -- I can't tell anything --

ROBY: It's some kind of organ -- it's inserted some kind of tube or something down his throat.

HUNTER: Oh... God...

HUNTER: I keep my mouth pretty much shut, but I don't like hitting.

ROBY: I guess I had it coming. Let's call it settled.

ROBY: Oh no.

HUNTER: Jay, this is Cleave! Meet me at the main air lock!

HUNTER: I've got 'em! They're back on my screens!

ROBY: How many?

HUNTER: Three blips! They're coming this way!

HUNTER: I'm getting nowhere. The whole area around the pyramid is dead to transmission. I think we should go after them.

ROBY: No.

HUNTER: What do you mean, no?

ROBY: We're not going anywhere.

HUNTER: But they don't know about the translation! They could be in danger right now.

ROBY: We can't spare the personnel. We've got minimum takeoff capability right now. That's why Chaz left us on board.

HUNTER: Why, you chickenshit bastard --

ROBY: Just can that crap! I'm in command here till Chaz returns! And nobody's leaving this ship!

HUNTER: What? What was that?

ROBY: The computer just translated the goddamn message. It's not an S.O.S. It was a warning.

ROBY: Now what's wrong?

HUNTER: I've completely lost their signal.

ROBY: Can you get them back?

HUNTER: I'm trying.

MELKONIS: They're getting pretty close now.

STANDARD: All right, then -- when it gets to the other side of the door, you sing out, then drop the door. Okay?

MELKONIS: Okay.

STANDARD: And you and I will bag it, and then we'll take it to the ventral air lock, got it?

MELKONIS: I've got Hunter... and something else as well, in front of him.

STANDARD: Are they close?

MELKONIS: They're on the next level up.

STANDARD: Let's get moving with this net.

STANDARD: I thought I'd find you here.

MELKONIS: I was thinking of a line from an old poem: "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink." All that space out there, and we're trapped in this ship.

STANDARD: That's the one about the albatross, right?

MELKONIS: We can't even radio for help; the carrier wave wouldn't reach its destination till long after we'd died and turned to dust. We are utterly, absolutely alone. Can anybody really visualize such a scale of distances? Halfway across Creation...

STANDARD: We came out there, we'll go back. A long time by the clock, but a short time to us.

MELKONIS: Time and space have no meaning out here. We're living in Einsteinian equation.

STANDARD: I can see you're putting your spare time to good use. Let me tell you something: you keep staring at hyperspace for long enough, they'll be peeling you off a wall. I've seen it happen.

MELKONIS: We're the new pioneers, Chaz. We even have our own special diseases.

STANDARD: Come on -- let's go above and see how they're coming with the gear.

MELKONIS: And what do we do when we find it?

STANDARD: We'll have to trap it somehow. If we had a really strong piece of net, we could bag it.

MELKONIS: How?

STANDARD: Room by room, corridor by corridor.

STANDARD: We'll have to catch it and eject it from the ship.

MELKONIS: Well, I kind of hate to point it out, but all our supplies are based on us spending a strictly limited amount of time out of suspended animation... and as you know, we used up most of that time in harvesting.

STANDARD: We've got about a week left, right?

MELKONIS: I'm going to write a book about this expedition. I'm going to call it "The Snark Log."

STANDARD: The commander normally has first publication rights.

MELKONIS: Maybe we could write it together.

STANDARD: We're going home. We're in hyperspace.

MELKONIS: We're going into the freezers now.

STANDARD: Too primitive. It's a pre- technological construction. That slab was engineered by an Iron-Age culture at best.

MELKONIS: They're from a dead civilization; they're spores from a tomb. God knows how long they've been here.

STANDARD: That sounds a little fanciful...

MELKONIS: Primitive pictorial languages are based on common objects in the environment, and this can be used as a starting point for translation...

STANDARD: No, thank God... just missed him.

MELKONIS: Is it still dripping?

STANDARD: It appears to have healed itself.

STANDARD: It's stopped?

MELKONIS: Yes, thank heaven.

STANDARD: We're just plain lucky. That could have gone right through the hull -- taken weeks to patch it.

MELKONIS: Reminded me of when I was a kid and the roof leaked -- everybody running for the pots and pans.

MELKONIS: It's not coming off -- not without his whole face coming off too.

STANDARD: Let's let the machine work on him.

STANDARD: It won't come -- it's stuck.

MELKONIS: What is it?

STANDARD: How the hell should I know? Come on, give me a hand, let's get him out of there!

MELKONIS: Oh God, oh God no.

STANDARD: Help me -- I'm going to try to get it off.

MELKONIS: What is it?

STANDARD: Don't touch him, watch it!

STANDARD: There, it caught!

MELKONIS: Is it still coming up, or is it hooked on something?

STANDARD: No, it's coming.

MELKONIS: Can you see anything?

STANDARD: Here's his line. We can haul him out of there if we have to.

MELKONIS: It'll yank him right off his feet if he's not expecting it. The line could get tangled in something.

STANDARD: But what can we do? He's out of radio contact.

MELKONIS: Maybe we should just wait a few more minutes.

STANDARD: If we don't hear from him soon, I think we better go in after him.

MELKONIS: Sun will be down in a minute.

STANDARD: What'd he say?

MELKONIS: I couldn't make it out -- too much interference.

MELKONIS: This looks ancient.

STANDARD: Can't tell -- these weather conditions could erode anything, fast.

STANDARD: Doesn't seem much doubt about it, does there?

MELKONIS: That creature sure must have considered it important... using his last strength to draw it...

MELKONIS: Air lock?

STANDARD: Who knows?

MELKONIS: It's close, real close.

STANDARD: How far?

MELKONIS: We should be almost on top of it. I just can't quite...

STANDARD: What's wrong?

MELKONIS: My signal's fading.

MELKONIS: That way.

STANDARD: You lead.

MELKONIS: Receiving.

STANDARD: All right. Now just remember: keep away from those weapons unless I say otherwise. Martin, do you read me?

STANDARD: Just settle down. Sandy, you get any response yet?

MELKONIS: Sorry. Nothing but that same damn transmission, every 32 seconds. I've tried every frequency on the spectrum.

STANDARD: Well, we can't go anywhere in this darkness. How long till dawn?

MELKONIS: Well... this rock rotates every two hours. The sun should be coming up in about 20 minutes.

MELKONIS: I've got it. It's coming from ascension 6 minutes 32 seconds, declination -39 degrees 2 seconds.

STANDARD: Dell -- show me that on a screen.

MELKONIS: First contact...

STANDARD: Sandy, can you home in on that beam?

MELKONIS: What's the frequency?

STANDARD: Computer, what's the frequency of the transmission?

STANDARD: Sandy, you want to give us some vision?

MELKONIS: Feast your eyes.

ROBY: First thing I'm going to do when we get back is eat some biological food.

MELKONIS: What's the matter, you don't like this stuff?

ROBY: Tastes like something you'd feed a chicken to make it lay more eggs.

MELKONIS: No. It's just too small to support fauna as big as the parasites. If there were a native ecology, it would have to be microscopic.

ROBY: Couldn't the pyramid have been built here by space travellers?

MELKONIS: We do know that.

ROBY: Yeah?

MELKONIS: They never made it off the planet. The parasites won.

MELKONIS: These day and night cycles are totally disorienting. I feel like we've been here for days, but it's only been how long?

ROBY: About four hours.

MELKONIS: It appears to be a heavy fluid of some sort... it blocks the X-rays...

ROBY: That tube must be depositing it in him.

MELKONIS: Could be some kind of venom, or poison...

MELKONIS: Source of transmission is to the northeast... about 300 meters.

ROBY: Close...

MELKONIS: My God, it's stormy for a piece of rock that size!

ROBY: Just a second. Those aren't water vapor clouds; they have no moisture content.

MELKONIS: Men have waited centuries to contact another form of intelligent life in the universe. This is an opportunity which may never come again.

ROBY: Look --

STANDARD: That was Melkonis... it ate Hunter...

ROBY: I'll get you out of there.

STANDARD: No... don't...

ROBY: But I can save you -- get you to the Autodoc!

STANDARD: No good... it's eaten too much of me...

ROBY: What can I do?

STANDARD: Kill me...

STANDARD: Kill me...

ROBY: What did it do to you?

STANDARD: Look...

STANDARD: All right, Martin, we'll be in touch with you on the communicator.

ROBY: And you'll let me know when you've got it coming this way...

STANDARD: And you stand aside while we drive it in, then shut the hatch, launch the boat, and --

ROBY: Kablooey.

STANDARD: Yes, and maybe launch the boat and blow it too... if the others are injured.

ROBY: Who gets the privilege?

ROBY: So what do we do? Do we ignore it and finish loading the explosives into the boat -- or do we flush it out now?

STANDARD: Now. If we can get it into the boat, we won't have to blow it up -- we can just eject it into space.

ROBY: Hey watch it!

STANDARD: It's stable; it doesn't hurt to drop it.

ROBY: You know, it's funny -- this stuff we went to so much trouble to dig up -- this treasure, the paydirt -- it'll make it back to Irth just fine -- even if we're not with it.

STANDARD: Here, carry these.

STANDARD: No, it won't work and I just realized why. There's only one hypersleep freezer on the lifeboat. Only one of us could survive.

ROBY: Yeah... I forgot.

STANDARD: But the idea's good, if we could just turn it around somehow.

STANDARD: But the lifeboat can't accelerate to light speed.

ROBY: Doesn't matter -- we're already at light speed. And when we get back to the Colonies, they'll pick us up in the network.

STANDARD: Let's hear it.

ROBY: Okay. First we shut down all the cooling systems on the stardrive engines.

STANDARD: That'll blow the ship up.

ROBY: Right... but it'll take a few minutes for the engines to overheat and melt down the core. In the meantime, we get in the lifeboat and leave the ship.

ROBY: It was time for that a couple days ago.

STANDARD: That kind of remark is pointless. Now come on -- I want to hear every suggestion you can come up with, no matter how wild.

ROBY: Poor kitty; puss puss puss.

STANDARD: At least we're rid of the damn monster. It must have been the first thing sucked out of the ship.

ROBY: No such luck. I saw it running down one of the corridors.

ROBY: I saw it. Faust got himself jammed in the air lock door. His body held it open.

STANDARD: Can we get to him?

ROBY: No, I had to seal off a whole section. We'd lose too much of our remaining air if we opened the connecting door.

STANDARD: Which presumably means...

ROBY: ... More spores coming.

ROBY: This is all the same creature. We're seeing the different stages in its life-cycle.

STANDARD: Then that tomb... must have been some kind of fertility temple... where they stored their eggs, and maybe held mating rituals...

STANDARD: That next thing there -- six legs, tentacles -- that's the thing we saw in the food locker.

ROBY: So the next step should be --

ROBY: Can you make out any pattern in all that?

STANDARD: Well... yes... there's a pattern... but it's meaningless to me.

ROBY: I know it looks like a senseless jumble, but if you look closely, there are recognizable forms.

ROBY: Two down, four to go.

STANDARD: What's that supposed to mean?

ROBY: Nothing.

STANDARD: How did it get so big?

ROBY: By eating our food supplies.

ROBY: That's a flip-flop gate to channel the air, but we can use it to trap the thing.

STANDARD: Right now let's keep it closed.

ROBY: So the only question left is: who gets to crawl down the airshaft?

STANDARD: Let's be democratic.

ROBY: Are you crazy?

STANDARD: The man would need protection, obviously -- as well as some way to drive the thing before him.

ROBY: Now what?

STANDARD: What do you think? Now we go in.

ROBY: This stuff's deadly -- I hope we know what we're doing.

STANDARD: Go ahead, Jay.

ROBY: Hey, wait a minute! That's all our food supplies in there! We can't pump poison gas all over them!

STANDARD: Once we kill the thing we won't need the food any more -- we can go straight into hypersleep. Also, it sounds like that thing is already doing a pretty good job on our supplies; it may be fouling them all.

ROBY: You win.

ROBY: What's it doing, having a seizure?

STANDARD: It started crashing around right after we locked it in.

ROBY: Now what?

STANDARD: I guess we open the door and net it.

ROBY: Yes!

STANDARD: We've got it up here! It's trapped! Get up here fast!

ROBY: Where are you?

STANDARD: Food-storage room!

ROBY: We're coming!

STANDARD: These will be very useful. At least we won't have to go digging around in closets with our bare hands. All right, here's the battle plan: we're going to break into two teams and start systematically covering the ship. Whoever finds it first, catches it in the net and ejects it from the nearest airlock. Clear?

ROBY: Even simple.

ROBY: We won't need it then.

STANDARD: All right, so that's what we've got. A week. It's plenty of time.

ROBY: But if we haven't caught it in a week, then we have to go into the freezers anyway.

STANDARD: I think the best thing to do with Broussard is to just freeze him as he is. It'll arrest the progress of his disease, and he can get complete medical attention when we get back to the Colonies.

ROBY: We'll have to go into quarantine, maybe for quite a while.

STANDARD: That's okay, he can remain in hypersleep until they're ready to treat him.

ROBY: That's the part that always makes me feel like I'm gonna puke -- when we accelerate into light speed.

STANDARD: Quit complaining; we're in space.

ROBY: We made it! Damn, we made it!

STANDARD: You bet we made it. Martin, set course for Irth and accelerate us into stardrive.

ROBY: With great pleasure.

ROBY: Engaged.

STANDARD: Let's take her into an escape orbit.

STANDARD: Take us up.

ROBY: Up one kilometer, Jay.

ROBY: Where did the parasites come from?

STANDARD: They seem native to the planet. It's got an atmosphere and a dense gravity. It's dead now, but once it must have been fertile.

STANDARD: I'm sorry to say it looks like you were right in the first place, Martin. We never should have landed here.

ROBY: Look, I'm not trying to rub anybody's nose in anything. The important thing is just to get away from here as fast as possible.

STANDARD: I can't lean on Faust any harder -- he's been working non-stop on the engines.

ROBY: If we knew exactly what happened to the beings on the other ship --

STANDARD: Look at these suckers -- no wonder we couldn't get it off him.

ROBY: Is that its mouth?

STANDARD: What film?

ROBY: Broussard had film in his datastick, didn't he? We can see what happened to him.

ROBY: Would somebody fill me in?

STANDARD: He went into the pyramid alone. We lost radio contact with him. When we pulled him out, it was on his face. It won't come off, not without injuring him.

ROBY: I understand why you did that.

STANDARD: Good.

STANDARD: You hear me, Martin? Open the outer door.

ROBY: Chaz, if it's an organism, and we let it in, the ship will be infected.

STANDARD: We can't leave him out here, open the door.

ROBY: Chaz, listen to me -- we've broken every rule of quarantine. If we bring an organism on board, we won't have a single layer of defense left.

STANDARD: Martin, this is an order! Open the door!

ROBY: Here, Chaz.

STANDARD: We're coming up now, open the outer lock door.

ROBY: Chaz -- what happened to Broussard?

STANDARD: It's some kind of organism, it's attached itself to him. Let us in.

ROBY: Hey, can you guys hear me?

STANDARD: Yeah, we hear you! We're coming back!

ROBY: Thank Christ! We lost you! Listen, there's been a new development --

STANDARD: Can't talk now; Broussard's injured. We'll need some help getting him into the ship.

ROBY: This ship is full of cat hair.

STANDARD: Tell you what, Martin. As soon as the engine's fixed --

ROBY: What would you say that was supposed to mean?

STANDARD: Well... it's obviously intentional... some kind of attempt at communication... maybe it's a symbol that means something to them...

ROBY: But why draw it on the wall?

STANDARD: Find anything we missed?

ROBY: I don't even know what I'm looking for.

STANDARD: Still worried?

ROBY: Oh well... you know me.

STANDARD: I've always respected your opinion, Martin. If something worries you, it worries me.

STANDARD: Martin?

ROBY: I agree. This is the single most important discovery in history.

STANDARD: But?

ROBY: What killed it?

STANDARD: Martin, uh, we've found it.

ROBY: Found what?

STANDARD: It appears to be some sort of spacecraft. We're going to approach it.

ROBY: Okay, Chaz, I hear you. I've got you on my board.

STANDARD: Good. I'm getting you clear too. Let's just keep the line open.

ROBY: 10% argon, 85% nitrogen, 5% neon... and some trace elements.

STANDARD: Nontoxic... but unbreathable. Pressure?

ROBY: Ten to the fourth dynes per square centimeter.

STANDARD: Good! Moisture content?

ROBY: Zero. Dry as a bone.

STANDARD: Any microorganisms?

ROBY: Not a one. It's dead.

STANDARD: Anything else?

ROBY: Yeah, rock particles. Dust.

STANDARD: Well, we won't need pressure suits, but breathing masks are called for. Sandy -- can you rig up some kind of portable unit that we can use to follow that transmission to its source?

ROBY: Yeah, okay.

STANDARD: Sandy... how far are we from the source of the transmission?

STANDARD: What the hell happened?

ROBY: Engine room, what happened?

ROBY: Atmospheric turbulence. Dust storm.

STANDARD: Turn on navigation lights.

STANDARD: It's out of focus.

ROBY: No -- that's atmosphere. Cloud layer.

ROBY: Oh my God.

STANDARD: Well, it's finally happened.

STANDARD: This is Chaz speaking. Sorry, but we are not home. Our present location seems to be only halfway to Irth. Remain at your posts and stand by. That is all.

ROBY: Chaz, I've got something here on my security alert. A high priority from the computer...

STANDARD: Let's hear it.

ROBY: Computer, you have signalled a priority three message. What is the message?

ROBY: Where are we?

STANDARD: Sandy, contact traffic control.

STANDARD: All right, tycoons, let's stop spending our credit and start worrying about the job at hand.

ROBY: Right. Fire up all systems.