Aliens

Ripley repeats the action, not very smoothly. Her hands are trembling. She indicates a stout TUBE  underneath the slender pulse-rifle barrel.

RIPLEY

What's this?

HICKS

Well, that's the grenade launcher... you probably don't want to mess with that.

RIPLEY

Look, you started this. Now show me everything. I can handle myself.

HICKS

Yeah. I've noticed.

INT. CORRIDOR

DOLLYING WITH Ripley walking down the corridor, now carrying the newfound friend, the M-41A. Gorman steps out of the door to the med lab, looking weak but sound. Burke is right behind him.

RIPLEY

How do you feel?

GORMAN
All right, I guess. One hell of a hangover. Look, Ripley... I...

RIPLEY

Forget it.

She shoulders by him into the med lab. Gorman turns to see Vasquez staring at him with cold, slitted eyes.

GORMAN

You still want to kill me?

VASQUEZ

(turning away)

It won't be necessary.

INT. MED LAB – ANNEX

Ripley crosses the deserted lab, passing through the annex to the small O.R. where she left Newt.

INT. MED LAB – O.R.

Entering the darkened chamber, Ripley looks around. Newt is nowhere to be seen. On a hunch she kneels down and peers under the bed. Newt is curled up there, jammed as far back as she can get, fast asleep. Still clutching "Casey."

Ripley stares at Newt's tiny face, so angelic despite the demons that have chased her through her dreams and the reality between dreams. Ripley lays the rifle on top of the cot and crawls carefully underneath. Without waking the little girl, she slips her arms around her.

Ripley becomes merely the larger of two children huddling together in the darkness under their bed.

Newt's face contorts with the externalization of some tormented dreamscape. She cries out, a vague inarticulate plea. Ripley rocks her gently.

RIPLEY

There, there. Sssshh. It's all right.

EXT. UP-LINK TOWER – VIEW OF AP STATION

A VIEW OF the processing station from the colony landing platform. A rising wind is clearing out the low fog and the silhouette of the station grows sharper. Several systems of high pressure conduits at the base of the conical tower are actually glowing dull red with heat in the darkness. High voltage discharges arc around the upper latticework, lighting the blighted landscape with irregular glaring flashes.

PAN ONTO BISHOP, f.g. hunched against the wind at the base of the telemetry tower. He has a TEST-BAY PANEL open and the portable terminal patched in. His jacket is draped over the keyboard and monitor unit to protect it from the elements and he is typing frenetically.

BISHOP

(to himself)

Now, if I did it right...

He punches a key marked "ENABLE."

INT. SULACO CARGO LOCK – IN ORBIT

The drop bay is empty and silent, with the remaining ship brooding in the shadows. A KLAXON sounds and rotating clearance lights come on. Hydraulics whine to life. Drop-ship two moves out on its overhead track and is lowered into the drop bay fro launch-prep. Service booms and fueling couplers move in automatically around the hull. A recorded announcement echoes across the huge chamber.

FEMALE VOICE

Attention. Attention. Automatic fueling operations have begun. Please extinguish all smoking materials.

INT. OPERATING ROOM – TIGHT ON RIPLEY – MED LAB

As she awakens with a start. She checks her watch... an hour has passed. She gently disengages herself from Newt and is about to crawl out from beneath the cot when she sees something and FREEZES.

Across the room, just inside the door to the med lab, are two innocuous but nonetheless chilling objects. TWO STASIS CYLINDERS. Their tops are hinged open, and the suspension fields are switched off. They are both EMPTY. Ripley feels a slow upwelling wave of terror rise through her in that silent frozen moment... the inescapable certainty of a lethal presence. Unable to move or breathe, she looks around frantically, assessing the situation.

RIPLEY

(whispers)

Newt. Newt, wake up.

NEWT

Wah... ? Where are... ?

RIPLEY

(whispers)

Sssh. Don't move. We're in trouble.

Newt nods, now wide awake. They listen in the darkness for the slightest betrayal of movement. The scrabble of multiple legs across the polished floor, for example.

There is only the droning HUM of the little space heater. Ripley reaches up and, clutching the springs of the underside of the cot, begins to inch it away from the wall.

The SQUEAL OF METAL as the legs scrape across the floor is jarringly loud in the stillness.

When the space is wide enough she cautiously slides herself up between the wall and the edge of the cot, reaching for the rifle she left lying on top of the mattress. Here yes clear the edge of the bed. The rifle is GONE.

She snaps her head around. A SCUTTLING SHAPE LEAPS TOWARD HER from the foot of the bed! She ducks with a startled cry. The obscene thing hits the wall above her, legs moving lightning fast. Reflexively she slams the bed against the wall, pinning the creature inches above her face. Its legs and tail writhe with incredible ferocity and it emits a demented, piercing SQUEAL.

Ripley heaves Newt across the polished floor and in a frenzied scramble rolls from beneath the cot. She flips it over, trapping the creature underneath.

They back away, gasping. Ripley's eyes flash around the shadowed room where every corner of space between equipment holds lethal promise. The creature scuttles from beneath the bed and disappears under a back of cabinets in a blur. Ripley hugs Newt close and heads toward the door, moving as if every object in the room had a million volts running through it. She reaches the door. Hits the wall switch. Nothing happens. Disabled from outside. She tries the lights. Nothing. She pounds on the door. The acoustically dampened door panel thunks dully. She moves to the observation window, glancing frantically over her shoulder. The bare floor behind her is like a screaming threat.

RIPLEY

(shouting)

Hey... hey!

She pounds on the window. Through the double thickness window we can SEE that the lab is dark and empty. Ripley whirls, hearing a loathsome scrabbling behind her. Newt starts to whimper, feeding off her fear. She steps in front of the video surveillance camera and waves her arms in a circle.

RIPLEY
Hicks! Hicks!

INT. OPERATIONS – TIGHT ON VIDEO MONITOR

Showing Ripley waving her arms. There is no sound, a surreal pantomime.

A hand ENTERS FRAME and switches off the monitor. Ripley's image vanishes.

WIDER ANGLE

As Burke straightens casually from the console. Hicks is talking via headset with Bishop and hasn't noticed Ripley's plight or Burke's action.

HICKS

(into mike)

Roger. Check back when you've activated the ship.

(turning)

He's at the up-link tower.

BURKE

(calmly)

Excellent.

INT. OPERATING ROOM

Ripley picks up a steel chair and slams it against the observation window. It bounces back from the high-impact material. She tries again.

REVERSE ANGLE

From the med lab side, showing her futile efforts, the chair hitting with a dull THWACK barely audible through the double thickness pressure port.

Ripley turns, studying the room. She fumbles through a clutter of equipment on a counter next to her and finds a SMALL EXAMINATION LIGHT. Snapping it on she plays the beam over the walls. Tall assemblies of surgical and anaethesiology equipment loom in the dark. She hears, or thinks she hears, movements. The light spins across the room, swiveling and bobbing frantically. Like an indicator of her growing panic. Newt starts a thin, high wailing.

NEWT

Mommy... mommmyyyyy...

Ripley steadies herself, realizing Newt's terror and the child's dependence on her. She plays the beam across the ceiling. Holds on something. Gets an idea. She removes her lighter from a jacket pocket and picks up some papers from the counter. Moving cautiously she boosts Newt up onto the SURGICAL TABLE in the center of the room and clambers up after her.

NEWT

Mommy... I mean, Ripley... I'm scared.

RIPLEY

I know, honey. Me too.

Ripley lights the papers and holds the flaming mass under the temperature sensor of a fire control system SPRINKLER HEAD. It triggers, spraying the room from several sources with water. An ALARM sounds  throughout the complex.

INT. OPERATIONS

Hicks jumps at the sound of the alarm, finally identifying its source among the lights flashing on his board. He bolts for the door, yelling into his headset as he moves.

HICKS

Vasquez, Hudson, meet me in medical! We got a fire!

INT. OPERATING ROOM

Ripley and Newt are drenched as the sprinklers continue to drizzle in the darkness. The SIREN hoots maniacally, masking all other sound. Ripley scans the room with her light, her hair plastered to her face, wiping water out of her eyes. She is eye level with a complex surgical MULTILIGHT. She looks into its tangle of arms and cables, inches away. Looks away. Her eyes snap back. SOMETHING LEAPS AT HER FACE. She SCREAMS and topples off the table, splashing to the floor. Newt shrieks and scrambles away as Ripley hurls the CHITTERING creature off of her. It slams against a wall of cabinets, clings for a moment, then leaps back as if driven by a steel spring. Ripley scrambles desperately, pulling equipment over on top of herself, clawing across the floor in a frenzy of motion. In a blur of multijointed legs the creature scuttles up her body.

She tears at it, but it is incredibly powerful for its size. It moves like lightning toward her head, avoiding her fumbling hands. Newt screams abjectly, backing away, until she is pressed up against a desk in one corner.

Ripley has both hands up, forcing the pulsing body back from her face. The thing's tail whips around her throat and begins to tighten, forcing the underside of its body close to her. Ripley thrashes about, knocking over equipment, sending instruments CLATTERING. Water streams over her, into her eyes, blinding her and making it impossible to get a grip on the creature's body.

ANGLE ON NEWT

As crablike legs appear from behind the desk, right behind her. She sees it and, thinking fast, jams the desk against the wall, pinning the writhing thing. The desk jumps and shudders against all the pressure her tiny body can bring to bear on it. She wails between gritted teeth as the second creature gets one leg free, then another and another. Squeezing itself inexorably onto the desk top... toward her.

The legs of the chittering thing claw at Ripley's head, getting a surer grip even as she whips her head from side to side. The obscene TUBULE extrudes wetly from the sheath on the creature's underside, forcing itself between the arms she has crossed tightly over her face.

A figure appears at the observation window, a silhouette behind the misted-over glass. A hand wipes a clear spot. Hick's eyes appear. He steps back. WHAM! A burst of pulse-rifle fire shatters the tempered glass. Hicks dives into the crazed spider web pattern and explodes into the room in a shower of fragments. He hits rolling, his armor grinding through the shards, and slides across to Ripley. He gets his fingers around the thrashing legs of the vicious beast and pulls. Between the two of them they force is away from her face, though Ripley is losing strength as the tail tightens sickeningly around her throat. Hudson leaps into the room, flings Newt away from the desk to go skidding across the wet floor, and blasts the second creature against the wall. Point-blank. Acid and smoke.

Gorman appears at Ripley's side and grabs the tail, unwinding its writhing length like a boa constrictor coil from her throat. All of them grip the struggling, SHRIEKING creature.

HICKS

The corner! Ready?

HUDSON

Do it!

Hicks hurls the thing into the corner. It scrabbles upright in an instant and leaps back toward them. WHAM! Hudson gets it clean.

Ripley collapses, gagging. The alarm and sprinklers shut off automatically. Hicks sees the stasis cylinders.

RIPLEY

(coughing)

Burke... it was Burke.

INT. OPERATIONS – ANGLE ON HUDSON

Looking decidedly stressed-out. He grips his rifle tightly, AIMED RIGHT AT CAMERA.

HUDSON

(intense)

I say we grease this rat-fuck son of a bitch right now!

THE GROUP is gathered around Burke who sits in a chair, maintaining an icy calm although beads of sweat betray intense concealed tension. Only a few minutes have passes and everyone is still buzzed on adrenaline, as if the whole group is charged with high voltage.

HICKS

(pacing)

I don't get it. It doesn't make any Goddamn sense.

Ripley stands in front of Burke, every fiber of her being accusing him with absolute outrage. Burke tries to break Ripley's stare, which is like a diamond drill. He can't.

RIPLEY

He wanted an alien, only he couldn't get it back through quarantine. But if we were impregnated... whatever you call it... and then frozen for the trip back at just the right time... then nobody would know about the embryos we were carrying. We and Newt.

Ripley glances at the little girl, a frail figure sitting nearby, hugging her knees and watching the proceedings with somber eyes. She is all but lost in an adult jacket someone has found for her, and her still damp hair is plastered to her forehead and cheeks.

HICKS

Wait a minute. We'd know about it.

RIPLEY

The only way it would work is if he sabotaged certain freezers on the trip back. Then he could jettison the bodies and make up any story he liked.

HUDSON

Fuuuck! He's dead.

(to Burke)

You're dogmeat, pal.

BURKE

This is total paranoid delusion. It's pitiful.

RIPLEY

(wearily)

You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them screwing each other over for a fucking percentage.

HICKS

(serious)

Let's waste him.

(to Burke)

No offense.

Ripley shakes her head, the rage giving way to a sickened emptiness.

RIPLEY

Just find someplace to lock him up until it's time to –

THE LIGHTS GO OUT. Everyone stops in the sudden darkness, realizing instinctively it is a new escalation in the struggle. Hicks looks at the board. Everything is out. Doors. Video screens.

RIPLEY

They cut the power.

HUDSON

What do you mean, they cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals.

Ripley picks up her rifle and thumbs off the safety.

RIPLEY

Newt! Stay close.

(to the others)

Let's get some trackers going. Come on, get moving. Gorman, watch Burke.

Hudson and Vasquez pick up their scanners and move to the door. Vasquez has to slide it open manually on its track.

INT. CORRIDOR

The two troopers separate and move rapidly to the barriers at opposite ends of the control block.

DOLLYING WITH VASQUEZ as she moves forward with feral steps in the darkness.

ON HUDSON

Scanning the med lab and the nearby barrier.