“I’m so tired. I haven’t slept a wink!” complained Warrant Officer John Ripley.
“You’ve slept plenty in stasis,” retorted Captain Tamara Dallas. “And now it’s time to start a new mission.”
“I thought we were supposed to stay in stasis until we were within spitting distance of Earth,” protested Joan Kane, Executive Officer of the cargo space tug Nostromo and the ship’s second in command.
“Mother received a distress signal from a moon in this solar system, reporting an alien life form,” Dallas explained.
“Why do you call our computer ‘Mother’?” interrupted George Lambert, the ship’s Communication Officer. “I’ve always found that rather strange.”
The captain ignored his question. “We are duty-bound to seek out the alien mentioned in the transmission, and attempt to make contact with it.”
“You might be duty-bound to do that,” argued Chief Engineer Ritchie Parker. “But Paul and I aren’t. We’re just here to keep the ship in good working order.”
“That’s right,” agreed Paul Brett, the Nostromo’s Aeronautical Mechanics Specialist. “If Ritchie and I have to work on this extra assignment, we’ll need to be paid extra too.”
Science Officer Ash stood up from the table and assumed a tone of rigid formality. “If Messers Parker and Brett were to look at the fine print of their contracts, they would see quite clearly that they are required to assist with any project the Weyland-Yutani Corporation requests of them.” He wiped a strand of his thinning hair away from his pale eyes and walked out of the conference room.
“What’s gotten into Ash?” asked George. “He’s acting like a bloody robot.”
“Robots don’t have blood,” John countered. “They’re made of bits of metal and circuitry.” He picked up the ginger tomcat that was rubbing against his ankles. “Not like you, my sweet little Tim. You’re a real kitty. A space kitty! The only Earth cat who’s ever traveled this far out in the galaxy!” He lifted the cat to his face and kissed its nose.
Ritchie rolled his eyes, then addressed John’s remark. “Actually, a robot would need some sort of circulatory system to pump lubricant throughout its body in order to function properly. I studied robotics in Engineering School, I’ll have you know.”
John shrugged, set the cat back down on the floor, and reached for the coffee pot.
“I’m going to land the Nostromo on the surface of the moon, then put together an away team to investigate the source of this transmission,” Captain Dallas informed her crew. “Do I have any volunteers?”
“I’ll go,” offered Joan Kane. “I’ve always wanted to meet an alien!”
“Good,” the captain stated. She glowered at George. “I want you to come too, Lambert. Weyland-Yutani has ordered us to attempt contact with this alien, and you’re the ship’s communications expert. The Corporation has put a lot of resources into training you. I’m sure they want to know their money has been well-spent.”
George smirked, finished his coffee, then stood up from the table so he could prepare for the mission. “Got a lot of work to do, try to get a message through,” he mumbled as he started walking to his quarters. “Then get back out of this material world.”
* * *
“This place is so cool!” Kane squealed as she bounced over the surface of the moon.
“Adjust the gravity on your boots!” the captain commanded her. “You’re jumping like a gymnast!”
“This moon reminds of the remote deserts of ancient Egypt, where the early Christian hermits used to live,” George remarked.
“Let’s stop with the religious talk,” Dallas said, cutting him off. “We’re not here to find hermits, we’re here to find aliens!”
George noted the readings on his transponder device and pointed to the east. “The transmission is coming from over there.”
Kane peered through her binoculars. “I see a ship! Or rather, what’s left of a ship.”
Dallas led her officers to the remains of a crashed space cruiser. They entered the hull through a broken door and started exploring.
“Hey, look at these weird egg-shaped thingees!” exclaimed Kane. She bent over to examine them more carefully.
George pushed some buttons on the Transmission Control Unit hanging by a strap around his neck. “Hey, everyone, listen up! My TCU has translated that message we’ve intercepted. It isn’t a distress call. It’s a warning, telling other ships and crews not to come to this moon!”
“They’re so pretty!” Kane stated blissfully as she placed her head closer to one of the orbs. The shell of the sphere split neatly open, like a blossoming flower. A goo-covered creature with long tentacles jumped out of the globe. It made a strange cry that sounded like, “Goo-goo-ga-joob!” Then it smashed through the glass of Kane’s helmet and attached itself to her face.
“Bullocks,” George cursed. “I hate when that happens.”
“Let’s get her back to the ship!” Dallas commanded. She lifted Kane’s arms, while George grabbed her feet. They retraced the footsteps they had left behind on the moon’s dusty surface and carried the injured officer back to the Nostromo.
When they reached the ship, Dallas banged on the door and shouted into the Nostromo’s intercom unit. “Injured crewmember! Let us in immediately!”
“What kind of injury?” John asked through the intercom’s speaker.
“An alien life form has attached itself to Kane’s face!” she replied.
“Um…well…” John said, a trace of nervousness running through his voice. “Then I can’t let any of you in. As Captain, ma’am, I sure you know that Weyland-Yutani regulations state quite clearly that any crewmember who makes contact with an alien life form needs to undergo three days of de-contamination procedures before they can come back on board a company-owned ship. So…um…sorry.”
“Screw the regulations!” Dallas shouted back. “As Captain, I order you to open the ship’s doors!”
“I’d really like to,” John replied. “But, well…you know. Kane could be infectious, you see, and…”
The door to the ship swished opened. Dallas and George hurried past John as they carried Kane’s body to the sickbay. Dallas scowled at him through the protective glass of her helmet.
John glanced over his shoulder and noticed Paul Brett standing in the chamber’s doorway, holding the key to the airlock fastener in his hand.
Paul looked back at John and shrugged. “Someone was knocking on the door, so I let ’em in.”
* * *
The crew gathered around Kane’s body as she lay on a bed in the ship’s sickbay. Science Officer Ash poked at the gelatinous creature on her face with a long metal stick. It flinched, then lifted one of its tentacles off of Kane’s neck, wrapped it around the stick, and hurled the offensive object to the floor.
“Maybe you can burn it off?” Dallas suggested.
Ash shook his head. “There’s no way I can do that without hurting our Executive Officer.”
“How can she breathe with that thingee plastered to her face?” Ritchie asked.
“It seems to have slipped one of its tentacles down her esophagus and is transporting oxygen to her lungs through that,” Ash answered. He turned towards George. “You said you heard the creature speak before it attached itself to Officer Kane?”
“Right,” George said. “The little eggman made some nonsensical gibberish sounds.”
Ash squared his shoulders. “Referring to gibberish as nonsensical is redundant. I should think a man who had been trained in communications by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation would have a better grasp of the English language.”
George scowled at him. “I should think a Science Officer trained to save human lives would be doing a better job of getting poor Joannie here back on her feet.”
Ash furrowed his brow. “Joannie? Why did you call her that? Officer Kane’s first name is Joan.”
“Joannie is a nickname for Joan,” John said with a sneer. “A pretty basic one that any person should recognize.”
“The nickname suited her,” Ritchie piped in. “She had such a childlike sense of wonder.”
“Joan was quizzical,” Paul agreed.
“Stop talking about her in the past tense!” shouted the captain. “Officer Kane is still alive and breathing!”
“Well, that thingee is sort of doing the breathing for her, isn’t it?” challenged George.
Ash pulled a scalpel out of his bag of medical supplies and held it towards his patient. The face-hugger shivered and shuddered, then slipped off Kane’s face and fell to the floor. Dallas aimed her blaster at the alien and released her trigger. The creature exploded, projecting globs of its decimated body all over the floor. They shriveled up with hissing noises, then left a series of black stains in their place.
“Bugger! That was manky,” John remarked.
“Pretty vile,” George agreed.
Kane bolted upright and smiled at her crewmembers. “Gosh, that was an exhilarating experience! I’ve made actual contact with an alien!”
“Did it speak to you?” Ash asked, tilting his head in curiosity.
“I’m not sure,” Kane replied. “It was more like it sang to me. Though it wasn’t very melodious.” She slid off the exam table and started walking out of the room. “I’m very hungry. Would anyone care to join me for lunch?”
* * *
Kane finished off the last of her sandwich, then reached her hand across the table and grabbed an apple off Paul’s plate. “If you’re not going to eat this, I will.”
“You’re eating like a horse,” George said, resting a gentle hand on Kane’s arm. “This isn’t like you, Joannie.”
“Actually, horses don’t generally overeat,” Ash noted. “Pigs will, of course. And vultures and sharks as well. Hummingbirds also eat continually, though their extraordinarily rapid metabolism burns off the calories almost as fast as they’re consumed. But horses will seldom eat more than their proper fill.”
Ritchie eyed Ash suspiciously. “It was just an expression, you know, ‘to eat like a horse.’ George wasn’t making any judgment call about gluttonous animals.”
“Ah, yes, of course,” Ash said. He brought his hand to his head and brushed back a rogue strand of hair.
“Maybe you’re right, George,” Kane said, lifting her hand and rubbing some beads of sweat off her flushed forehead. She stood up from the table and clutched her stomach. “I think I ate too much. I’m feeling kind of sick.”
The crewmembers watched in horror as a large bulge started growing out of her stomach.
“Lie down!” Paul commanded her. He grabbed her wrists and pushed her on top of the table.
Kane continued to writhe and squirm in obvious pain as the bulge protruded further away from her abdomen and continued to enlarge. Then a small, hand-like appendage burst through her skin. It ripped open a hole in Kane’s body and jumped to the tabletop beside her. The Nostromo’s crewmembers gasped collectively and leapt back from the creature in horror.
“What the bloody hell is that?!” screamed John.
“It’s a beastly beast!” Ritchie shouted.
Paul summoned his courage and took a cautious step towards the alien. “Actually, it’s not that hideous, underneath all that goop and blood. I bet it would clean up nice.”
The creature looked back at Paul, then jumped into a pitcher of water and gave itself a quick bath. Then it leapt back to Kane’s side and inspected the bleeding hole in her abdomen.
“It looks like a little boy,” Dallas remarked.
“Yes,” George agreed reluctantly. “He has pretty blonde hair and an angelic face.”
“And he was born wearing a little sailor suit striped like the Union Jack,” the captain noted. “How do you suppose he managed that?”
“He is rather cute,” Ash agreed. He started smiling at the creature.
The alien locked eyes with Ash, then opened his mouth and started to sing:
“I am ’En-er-y the Eighth, I am!
’En-er-y the Eighth, I am, I am!
I got married to the widow next door.
She’s been married seven times before,
And every one was an ’Enery, she wouldn’t have a Willy or a Sam!
I’m her eighth old man named ’Enery,
’En-er-y the Eighth, I am!”
The alien rested his hands on his hips and laughed maniacally at the crew members. They stared back at him in shock. Then he flipped them off with a rude finger gesture, spat into the captain’s face, and jumped off the table. He ran across the room and disappeared from sight into a small air-conditioning vent.
“What the hell was that all about?” John asked, his eyes still wide with shock.
“I don’t know, but that thing sure was irritating,” the captain replied, wiping the alien’s spit from her cheek.
George, Paul and Ritchie each opened their mouths to speak. But then a loud chant started ringing out of the vent, amplified by the ship’s communications speaker system:
“Second verse, same as the first!
I am ’En-er-y the Eighth, I am!
’En-er-y the Eighth, I am, I am!
I got married…”
The creature sang the rest of his song, then repeated it once more, even louder.
Ritchie covered his ears and fell to the floor in agony. “Oh, God, that noise is excruciating!” he shouted.
Paul covered his ears as well and started backing out of the room. “Captain, please, make it stop!”
Dallas threw the engineers a hostile look. “No, you boys make it stop! You two know this ship’s innards like nobody’s business. Fix this problem!” She turned towards George. “Go help them, Lambert. You’re the communications expert. Stop that thing from commandeering our speakers. Ripley, Ash, come with me! Let’s get the ship off this cursed moon and start flying her home!”
John put his hands to his ears and followed Dallas, George and the engineering team out of the room. Ash lingered for a few seconds. He threw a cursory glance at Kane’s bloody corpse, then looked up at the speaker stationed by the ceiling and grinned.
* * *
George looked over Ritchie’s shoulder as the Chief Engineer and his assistant fiddled with a tangle of wires. Then he stepped backwards and knocked into a set of wind chimes, setting off a chorus of little tinkles.
“Bloody hell, why did you hang wind chimes from the ceiling of an indoor engineering deck?” he cursed as he rubbed the back of his head.
“Dunno,” Paul replied. “We didn’t design this room. Someone from the Corporation did.”
Ritchie tightened a screw, then stepped back with a smug look on his face. “There! I silenced the little bugger!”
Paul slapped victorious high-fives with his boss. “ ’En-er-y the Eighth, he was!”
George smiled at his colleagues, then walked over to his communications console. “Damn, there’s a whole trove of messages from the Corporation hidden in an encrypted file. They seem to be locked to Ash’s email account. I wonder if I can figure out how to read them?”
Suddenly, the alien leapt out of a vent, pointed at the three men and started singing, “I am ’En-er-y the Eighth, I am! ’En-er-y the Eighth, I am, I am…”
“Mee-ar-OWW!” howled Tim. John’s cat sprang out from the back corner of the engineering deck and hissed at the alien. Then he chased the creature into the neighboring, cavernous, supply room.
“Christ!” shouted Ritchie. “We’d better tell the captain!”
“I’ll see if I can open a line to her,” George said. He fiddled with some buttons on the newly rewired control board. “Captain Dallas,” he stated in a calm, measured voice. “The alien has been spotted entering the supply room.”
“Go catch it!” came the immediate response from Dallas.
Paul and Ritchie exchanged nervous looks.
“I’m not going in there,” Paul said. “That place is dark and creepy.”
“It has a whole bunch of chains hanging randomly from the ceiling,” Ritchie agreed.
“And pipes that trickle water onto you from out of nowhere,” Paul noted.
The two engineers turned towards George, crossed their arms in front of their chests, and shook their heads in unison.
“Finding runaway alien creatures is not part of our job description,” Ritchie insisted.
“That’s right. We’re just here to keep the Nostromo chugging along,” Paul added. “We’re the rhythm section of this ship. Not the leaders.”
George sighed dramatically and leaned into the microphone on the communications panel. “Assistance requested,” he stated succinctly.
“Frickin’ wankers! I tried to stop you lot from letting that thingee on this ship!” replied the irritated voice of John Ripley through the speaker. “Fine then! Just hold on, world – world, hold on. It’s gonna be alright. I’m on my way.”
Paul and Ritchie started to nonchalantly re-organize a backlog of paperwork while George tinkered with the encrypted file. John entered the engineering deck, carrying a large net and a blowtorch. He scowled at his crewmembers. “Where’d it go?”
Paul shrugged and pointed in the general direction of the storage room. “In there somewhere. Tim chased it inside.”
John’s face blanched. “Tim went in there with it? Bloody hell, why didn’t you tell me that straight away?” He ran into the room, shouting, “Here, kitty, kitty! Come to daddy, Timmy! Here kitty!”
Paul and Ritchie set aside their paperwork and tip-toed over to the door of the storage room. They watched John work his way through the maze of upended crates and barrels, knocking his head against the long, dangling chains as he searched for the creature and the cat.
“There it is!” Ritchie whispered to Paul.
Paul nodded and watched the alien step up behind John. It tapped its finger against John’s shoulder to grab his attention, then started shouting, “H-E-N-R-Y! H-E-N-R-Y! H-E-N-R-Y!”
Tim leapt out from behind a barrel and hissed at the alien. The alien screamed, then set off running.
John grabbed the cat and cradled him to his chest. “Such a good boy you are,” he cooed. “You’re not afraid of anything.” He carried Tim into the engineering deck, leaving his net and torch behind him. “I’m going to find Tim’s carrying case and put him someplace safe. I don’t fancy giving him run of the place with that blasted creature loose.”
“Good idea,” Ritchie agreed. He motioned for Paul to go fetch John’s discarded supplies.
“I’m not going in there,” Paul insisted.
Ritchie straightened his shoulders and assumed an authoritative stance. “I’m your boss, and I said go get…”
“My sweet Lord!” George shouted, drawing each of the men’s attention to the communications console. “It’s all been a trap!”
Ritchie, Paul and John gathered around George and looked over his shoulder at the glowing, green letters of the Corporation’s message that he had retrieved from the encrypted file:
“Priority One – Ensure return of the organism for analysis.
All other considerations secondary.
Crew expendable.”
* * *
“Did you know about this?” John shouted at Ash, trying to make his voice heard over the loud, repetitive chant streaming out of the Nostromo’s internal speaker system.
Ash scratched at his forehead and looked away from the rest of the crew. “It is my job as science officer to follow all scientific directives from the Corporation. If they want to analyze this alien, then I am committed to bringing it to them.”
“That thing is driving me crazy with its goddamned singing!” Dallas screamed. “I thought I told you boys to shut it up!”
“We did,” Paul insisted.
“At least for a while anyway, before it figured out how to reconfigure the system,” Ritchie added.
“Say what you will about this alien, it’s persistent,” George added.
“And resourceful,” John chimed in.
“He’s amazing!” Ash exclaimed, turning back towards his crewmates. “He’s a wonder to behold! Why, with him on our side, the Corporation could vanquish any competitor that came its way!”
“How?” John challenged. “By irritating them to death?”
Ash glowered at John, George, Paul and Ritchie with a maniacal look in his eyes. “You lot don’t appreciate the enormous potential of this being. If we could find a way to replicate him, we could use his song to drown out all voices of opposition! We could silence our enemies! We could…”
“What’s that little trickle on your forehead?” Paul asked, pointing to a small stream of white liquid running out of the edge of Ash’s hairline.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Ash said. He took a step backwards and brushed his hair off his face. “I just…I just spilt some milk.”
“On your head?” Dallas challenged. She stepped closer to the Science Officer.
“Keep back,” Ash warned her. More white liquid started oozing out of his ears, nose and mouth. It dripped from the inside corners of his eyes and the tips of his fingers. Strands of hair started falling from his scalp. One of his eyeballs popped out of his face. Then one of his fingernails slipped off and white goop came gushing out of his hand.
“Fuck!” Ash shouted. “The creature is singing at an intolerable frequency! He’s shorting all my circuits!”
The crewmembers stood back in horror and watched their Science Officer shrivel up, then split into two halves. Wires and circuits protruded like a spiky rash from the exposed parts of his torn body. A large magnetic disc rolled out of his severed backbone and picked up a few metal springs that had escaped from his severed abdomen.
“Magneto and titanium man,” Paul noted.
John watched Ash’s eyeball roll across the floor and attach itself to the magnetic disc. “He’s as blind as he could be,” he added.
“And he lost his hair,” Ritchie pointed out, brushing a clump of fibers off his boot.
“Fool’s illusions everywhere,” George summed up.
Dallas cleared her throat. “Well, okay. That was unanticipated. And now we’re down one more crewmember. So the five of us have to catch that warbling weirdo before it takes over the ship and spreads its poisonous music to Earth.”
“I just had a thought, Captain,” George replied. “Since King Henry the Eighth wrote the song ‘Green Sleeves’, maybe we could try singing that to the alien to counteract his song. Fight fire with fire, so to speak. And maybe we can neutralize him.”
Ritchie rolled his eyes. “Right. I’ll sing harmony with you. That’ll scare the little bugger.”
“Let’s just blast the damn thing,” Paul proposed. “After what he did to Kane, it’s all he deserves.”
Dallas nodded and turned towards John. “Ripley, where’d you put your net and flamethrower?”
“I left them in the storage room,” he confessed.
“Brett! Parker! Go fetch them for me!” she commanded.
Paul crossed his arms in front of his chest and stepped away from the captain. “No, ma’am. I’m not going in there. Not while those fifty-foot-long chains are still dangling from the ceiling.”
“Me neither,” Ritchie added, his jaw set in rigid defiance. “It’s not in my contract.”
“Bloody hell, I’ll get the damned tools myself!” Dallas shouted back. “Lambert! Grab me the headphones from your communications console so I can drown out at least some of that goddamned noise! That creature is driving me bonkers!”
* * *
John, Paul, George and Ritchie stood at the foot of the Nostromo’s main air duct, trying to hear their captain’s commands over the relentless droning of the alien.
“I think she said, ‘I’ve got it!’” Paul said hopefully.
“Sounded more like ‘goddamn it’ to me,” George countered.
“Maybe we should sic Tim after the little beasty,” Ritchie proposed. “He’s the only one on board who’s managed to instill any fear in that trilling imp.”
“Over my dead body!” John shouted. “Leave my kitten alone!”
“He’s a full grown cat,” George pointed out. “He can handle himself.”
“Against that horrible creature?” Paul argued. “I don’t believe it. We’re all doomed.”
“In that case, I’d say our best bet is to program the Nostromo to self-destruct, then climb onboard the escape pod and use it to go back to Earth,” Ritchie suggested.
“But if we don’t bring the cargo back to Earth, then the Corporation won’t pay us,” Paul challenged.
“If we die on this bloody ship, we won’t get paid either,” George replied.
“Right,” John agreed. “Well, I’m second-in-command, now that Kane’s gone. So if the captain doesn’t come out of that vent, I say we should put Ritchie’s plan into action.”
“We should check on Dallas first though,” Paul said. “We can’t just leave her behind when we blow up the ship. Not if she’s still alive.”
“Right then,” John agreed. “Give me a weapon.”
George, Ritchie and Paul exchanged nervous glances.
“What kind of weapon?” Paul asked.
“Hell, I don’t know!” John shouted. “Anything!”
The singing emerging from the vent grew suddenly louder, as if someone had cranked up the volume on a record player.
“Give me an axe!” John commanded his crewmates. “I’ll behead that bloody ’En-er-y the Eighth!”
Ritchie ran to the fire extinguisher cupboard and pulled out an axe. “Be careful with this,” he told John as he handed it over. “The blade is sharp.”
“I hope it’s sharp enough,” John replied.
He climbed into the airshaft and headed towards the source of the obnoxious singing. After he’d traveled a hundred yards or so, the air duct abruptly fell silent. He heard a few drops of liquid splashing in the vent to his right. He turned the corner cautiously and saw Dallas’ body hanging from the top of the shaft.
“Tamara!” he called to her in a loud whisper. “Hold on tight! I’m coming to get you!”
He crawled towards his captain, then realized as he approached that a bulge was pushing out from the inside of her abdomen. A little hand was cutting an incision through her skin, dripping blood onto the floor as he worked.
“Fuckin’ hell!” John shouted. He turned and crawled out of the airshaft as fast as he could, barely escaping from the duct before the alien’s song started ringing out behind him in perfect, harmonious stereophonic sound.
“There’s another bloody bastard just sprung out of the captain!” John panted. “Ritchie – set the self-destruct sequence! Paul and George, run like hell to the escape pod. I’m going to fetch Tim!”
* * *
“How much time do we still have?” George asked Ritchie nervously.
“There’s three minutes left on the timer,” Ritchie replied.
“Where the hell is John?” Paul cursed.
“He’ll be here,” Ritchie assured them. “You know he couldn’t bear to leave that cat behind.”
Just then John came rushing into the escape pod, holding the cat’s carrier in his right hand. “I had to fight him off,” John panted. “The littler one. He’s just a newborn, so he’s not that strong yet. I just barely managed to get away. But then the big one came after me. He’s a full-grown man now. He scared the shit out of Tim. Literally. Sorry about the smell.”
“That’s okay,” Paul said. He took the carrier from John, pulled out the cat, and placed him in the smallest stasis booth. Then he started adjusting a few buttons on the cat’s hibernation panel. Tim lifted his head and nudged the lid of his booth open so he could watch Paul work.
John turned the lock on the escape pod’s hatch. “Right then, it’s shut tight. Now everyone, strip down to your knickers and settle into your pods so I can get you ready for torpor.”
“Hell no, I want to watch the ship explode!” George insisted. He ran to the thick glass windshield.
John laughed in semi-hysterical relief. “Suit yourself.” He stepped over to the navigation console and pulled some levers. The pod started breaking away from the Nostromo.
“Ah, do you hear that?” Paul asked.
“Here what?” Ritchie replied.
“The silence,” Paul said with a smile. “That goddamned song has finally stopped!”
“Yeah,” George stated dreamily. “There’s a kind of hush all over the world.”
Suddenly a voice cried out from the other side of the window. The four crewmen stared in horror as the two aliens attached themselves to the glass with sticky tentacles protruding from their fingers and toes. A muffled chorus of ‘’H-E-N-R-Y!” rumbled in from the outside of the pod.
“I thought soundwaves couldn’t travel in space,” George said as the pod pulled further away from the cargo ship.
“Apparently this wretched song defies the laws of physics,” Ritchie replied.
The Nostromo burst apart. The force of the explosion hurled the pod away at breakneck speed. The two aliens struggled to keep their grip on the pod’s windshield.
Then Tim leapt out of his booth and flung his body at the window. He bared his teeth and hissed at the two stowaways. The aliens screamed in horror and dis-attached themselves from the pod. John, Paul, George and Ritchie watched in wonder as the two creatures’ bodies shrunk to the size of small specks as the escape pod zoomed away.
Tim jumped back down to the floor of the pod and started licking his paws nonchalantly.
“There’s my good boy,” John said. He scooped up the cat and cradled him in his arms, then carried him back to his tiny booth. He stroked Tim’s furry forehead, then closed the glass shield over him.
“I’m not sure if Tim really needs to be put into cyrosleep,” Paul pointed out. “Cats sleep all the time as it is.”
“Except for when they’re on the hunt,” John replied. He smiled as Tim curled himself into a little ball in the back corner of his booth and closed his eyes.
“You’ve earned a good long rest, sweet boy,” John sang to the animal through the glass. “Now’s the time to say good night. Good night. Sleep tight.”
Inspired by the movie “Alien,” written by Dan O’Bannon and directed by Ridley Scott (1979). With apologies to Peter Noone, who, according to my very cool twenty-year-old daughter, runs an amazing Instagram account.
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