Alien 3: The Official Movie Novelization E-Book

Alan Dean Foster

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

It's back—and hiding in the most terrifying place of all! Fury 161 is a wretched planet—a penal colony and industrial complex manned by violent prisoners. When an escape pod from the USS Sulaco crash-lands there, Ellen Ripley appears to be the only passenger left alive. Then inmates begin to die, all at the hands of another survivor. A creature which encounters ripley, and spares her life! desperate to know why, she seeks out the answer—and discovers terror unlike any she's ever known. Science fiction master Alan Dean Foster returns to the Alien universe to reveal the ultimate destinies of Ellen Ripley and her eternal foe, the xenomorph known as the Alien.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Alan Dean Foster

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Coming Soon from Titan Books

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

ALIEN™: OUT OF THE SHADOWS

ALIEN: SEA OF SORROWS (JULY 2014)

ALIEN: RIVER OF PAIN (NOVEMBER 2014)

THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATIONS ALIEN

ALIENS™

Alien3™: The Official Movie NovelizationPrint edition ISBN: 9781783290192E-book edition ISBN: 9781783290208

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: May 20141 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

™ & © 1992, 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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With thanks to Insight Computers of Tempe,Arizona for their wonderful computersADF

I

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 colours. You can read, and watch the vid, and exercise, and think of what 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.

Under certain circumstances being bored to death might be the preferable alternative. But you’ve got no options in deep sleep. The cold, the regulated atmosphere, the needles that poke and probe according to the preset medical programmes, rule your body, if not your life. When you lie down in deep sleep you surrender volition to the care of mechanicals, trusting in them, relying on them. And why not? Over the decades they’ve proven themselves a helluva lot more reliable than the people who designed them. Machines bear no grudges, engage in no animosity. The judgements they render are based solely on observation and analysis. Emotion is something they’re not required to quantify, much less act upon.