ALIEN 3

Novelization by Alan Dean Foster

based on a screenplay by DAVID GILER & WALTER HILL

and LARRY FERGUSON

story by VINCENT WARD

i If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as ?unsold and destroyed?to the publisher in such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this ?stripped book.?

WARNER BOOKS EDITION

TM & copyright Ş1992 by Twentieth century Fox Film

Corporation

Cover illustration and design courtesy of 20th century Fox

Warner Books, inc.

1271 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10020

A Time Warner company

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing: June, 1992

ii With thanks to Insight Computers of Tempe, Arizona for their wonderful computers.

ADF iii

Bad dreams.

Funny thing about nightmares. They’re like a chronically recurring disease. Mental malaria. Just when you think you’ve got them licked they hit you all over again, sneaking up on you when you’re unprepared, when you’re completely relaxed and least expect them. Not a damn thing you can do about it, either. Not a damn thing. Can’t take any pills or potions, can’t ask for a retroactive injection. The only cure is good sound sleep, and that just feeds the infection.

So you try not to sleep. But in deep space you don’t have any choice. Avoid the cryonic chambers and the boredom on a deep-space transport will kill you. Or even worse, you’ll survive, dazed and mumbling after the sacrifice of ten, twenty, thirty years of useless consciousness. A lifetime wasted gazing at gauges, seeking enlightenment in the unvarying glare of readouts of limited colors. You can read, and watch the vid, and exercise, and think of what iv

might have been had you opted to slay the boredom with deep sleep. Not many professions where it’s considered desirable to sleep on the job. Not a bad deal at all. Pay’s good, and you have the chance to observe social and technological advance from a unique perspective. Postponing death does not equate with but rather mimics immortality.

Except for the nightmares. They’re the inescapable downside to serving on a deep-space vessel. Normal cure is to wake up. But you can’t wake up in deep sleep. The machines won’t let you. It’s their job to keep you under, slow down your body functions, delay awareness. Only, the engineers haven’t figured out yet how to slow down dreams and their bastard cousin the nightmare. So along with your respiration and circulation your unconscious musings are similarly drawn out, lengthened, extended. A single dream can last a year, two. Or a single nightmare.