Alien: Out the Shadows

“You in pain? Want another shot?”

Ripley looked across at where Kasyanov watched her expectantly. The doctor had bound her own hand and placed it in a sling. “No,” she says. “No, I just want to stay awake.”

“Your call.”

“How long ’til we get to the Marion?”

“Lachance?” Hoop called. The ship was shaking, buffeted from all sides as it powered up through the unforgiving atmosphere.

“Two, maybe three hours,” the pilot said. “Once we’re in orbit we’ve got to travel a thousand miles to the Marion.”

“Everything good?” Ripley looked at the fuel cell on the rack in front of them, shaking as the Samson vibrated.

“Yeah, everything’s good.”

“Sneddon?”

Hoop nodded. “Everything’s good.”

“For now,” Ripley said. “Only for now. Nothing stays good for long. Not ever.”

Hoop didn’t reply to that, and across the cabin Kasyanov averted her eyes.

“I’ve got to go help Lachance,” Hoop said. “You be okay?”

Ripley nodded. But they all knew that she was lying, and that she would not be okay.

Nothing stays good for long.

PART 3 NOTHING GOOD

20 HOME

This was the first step of Hoop’s journey home. All the way home. He’d decided that down in the mine, and the more time that passed, the more he began to believe it. He had started thinking of his children again. This time, however, their faces and voices no longer inspired feelings of intense guilt, but a sense of hope. The fact that he’d left them behind could never be changed or forgotten—by them, or by him—but perhaps there were ways that damage could be fixed.

He had found his monsters, and now it was time to leave them behind.

“How long until the Marion enters the atmosphere?” he asked.

In the pilot’s seat beside him, Lachance shrugged.

“Difficult to say, especially from here. We might have a couple of days once we dock, it might only be hours. If we approach the ship and it’s already skimming the atmosphere, there’s a good chance we won’t be able to dock, anyway.”

“Don’t say that,” Hoop said.

“Sorry. We’ve always known this was a long shot, haven’t we?”

“Long shot, yeah. But we’ve got to believe.” Hoop thought of those they had lost, Baxter’s terrible death even though he had given the best he could, done everything possible to survive. To run through an alien-infested mine on a broken ankle, only to meet an awful end like that… it was so unfair.

But fairness had no place in the endless dark depths of the universe. Nature was indifferent, and space was inimical to man. Sometimes, Hoop thought they’d made a mistake crawling from the swamp.

“We’re going to do this,” Hoop said. “We’ve got to. Get away from this pit, get back home.”

Lachance looked across in surprise.

“Never thought you had anything to go back to.”

“Things change,” he said. Hopefully. Hopefully things can change.

“We’ve left them all behind,” Lachance said, relaxing into his seat. He scanned the instrument panel as they went, hands on steering stick, but Hoop heard such a sense of relief in his voice. “Who’d have thought we would? I didn’t. Those things… they’re almost unnatural. How can God allow something like that?”

“God?” Hoop scoffed. But then he saw something like hurt in Lachance’s eyes. “Sorry. I’m no believer, but if that’s your choice, then…” He shrugged.

“Whatever. But those things, I mean… how do they survive? Where’s their home planet, how do they travel, what are they for?”

“What’s anything for?” Hoop asked. “What are humans for? Everything’s an accident.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“And I can’t believe otherwise. If your God made everything, then what was his purpose for them?”

The question hung between them, and neither could offer an answer.

“Doesn’t matter,” Hoop went on. “We survive, we get out of here, head for home.”

“Five of us, now,” Lachance said.

“Four,” Hoop said softly. “Sneddon’s with us now, but…”

“But,” Lachance said. “Four of us on Ripley’s shuttle. Two men, two women.”

“We’ll start a whole new human race,” Hoop quipped.

“With respect, Hoop, I believe Ripley would eat you alive.”

He laughed. It was the first time he’d laughed properly in a long while, perhaps even since before the disaster, more than seventy days before. It felt strange, and somehow wrong, as if to laugh was to forget all his friends and colleagues who had died. But Lachance was laughing, too, in that silent shoulder-shaking way of his.

Though it felt wrong, it also felt good. Another step toward survival.

Leaving the atmosphere brought a sense of peace. The rattling and shaking ended, and the shuttle’s partial gravity gave them all a sense of lightness that helped lift their moods. Glancing back into the cabin, Hoop noticed Ripley looking in on Sneddon. He stood to go to her, but she turned and nodded, half-smiling. Whatever Sneddon’s fate, it had yet to happen.