She explained carefully and in detail, leaving nothing out, from the time the original alien eggs had been discovered in the hold of the gigantic ship of still unknown origin on Acheron, to the destruction of the original crew of the Nostromo and Ripley’s subsequent escape, to the later devastating encounter on Acheron and her flight from there in the company of her now dead companions.

Her ability to recall every relevant incident and detail might have struck an observer as prodigious, but remembering was not her problem. What tormented her daily was her inability to forget.

It was quiet in the superintendent’s quarters for quite a

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while after she finished. Ripley downed half her glass of purified water, watching his face.

He laced his fingers over his belly. ?Let me see if I have this correct, Lieutenant. What you say we’re dealing with here is an eight-foot-tall carnivorous insect of some kind with acidic body fluids, and that it arrived on your spaceship.?

?We don’t know that it’s an insect,?she corrected him. ?That’s the simplest and most obvious analog, but nobody knows for sure. They don’t lend themselves to easy taxonomic study. It’s hard to dissect something that dissolves your instruments after it’s dead and tries to eat or impregnate you while it’s alive. The colony on Acheron devoted itself frantically to such studies. It didn’t matter. The creatures wiped them out before they could learn anything. Unfortunately, their records were destroyed when the base fusion planet went critical. We know a little about them, just enough to make a few generalizations.

?About all we can say with a reasonable degree of assurance is that they have a biosocial system crudely analogous to the social insects of Earth, like the ants and the bees and so forth. Beyond that, nobody knows anything. Their intelligence level is certainly much greater than that of any social arthropod, though at this point it’s hard to say whether they’re capable of higher reasoning as we know it. I’m almost certain they can communicate by smell. They may have additional perceptive capabilities we know nothing about.

?They’re incredibly quick, strong, and tough. I personally watched one survive quite well in deep interstellar vacuum until I could fry it with an EEV’s engines.?

?And it kills on sight and is generally unpleasant,?Andrews finished for her. ?So you claim. And of course 123

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you expect me to accept this entire fantastic story solely on your word.?

?Right, sir,?said Aaron quickly, ?that’s a beauty. Never heard anything like it, sir.?

?No, I don’t expect you to accept it,?Ripley replied softly. ?I’ve dealt with people like you before.?