Ripley:
I don't understand this. We have been here for three and a half hours. How many different ways you want me to tell you the same story?
Van Leuwen:
Look at it from our perspective, please [points at an empty chair] Please [Ripley sits down] Now, you freely admit detonating the engines of, and thereby destroying an M-class star freighter, a rather expensive piece of hardware.
Insurance attorney:
Forty-two million in adjusted dollars. That's minus payload, of course.
Van Leuwen:
The lifeboat's flight recorder corroborates some parts of your account. In that for reasons unknown, the Nostromo set down on LV-426, an unsurveyed planet at that time. That it resumed its course and was subsequently set for self-destruct, by you, for reasons unknown.
Ripley:
Not for reasons unknown. I told you. We set down there on company's orders, to get this thing, which destroyed my crew. And your expensive ship.
Van Leuwen:
The analysis team, which went over the lifeboat centimeter by centimeter, found no physical evidence of the creature you describe.
Ripley:
[stands up] Good! That's because I blew it out of the goddamn airlock! Like I said.
Insurance attorney:
Are there any species like this hostile organism on LV-426?
ECA representative:
No, it's a rock. No indigenous life.
Ripley:
[sarcastically] Did IQs just drop sharply when I was away? Ma'am, I already said it was not indigenous, it was a derelict spacecraft, it was an alien ship, it was not from there. You get it? We homed in on its beacon.
ECA representative:
And found something never recorded once in any of the three hundred surveyed worlds [reads the report] 'A creature that gestates inside living human host', these are your words 'and has concentrated acid for blood'.
Ripley:
That's right [beat] Look... I can see where this is going, but I'm telling you those things exist.
Van Leuwen:
Thank you, officer, that will be all.
Ripley:
Please! You're not listening to me. Kane, the crew member... Kane, who went into that ship, said he saw thousands of eggs there. Thousands.
Van Leuwen:
Thank you, that will be all.
Ripley:
Goddammit, that's not all! Because if just one of this things gets down here, then that will be all, and all this [picks up documents] this bullshit that you think is so important [throws the documents on tabletop] you can just kiss all that goodbye!
[long moment of silence; members of the hearing watch Ripley with disapproval]
Van Leuwen:
It is the finding of this court of inquiry that Warrant Officer E. Ripley, NOC 14472, has acted with questionable judgement, and is unfit to hold an ICC license as a commercial flight officer. Said license is hereby suspended indefinitely. No criminal charges will be filed against you at this time. You are released on your own recognizance for six months of psychometric probation, to include monthly review by an ICC psychiatric technician. These proceedings are closed.
