JENNA: Look, I told you...
VAN LEUWEN: It did not, however, contain any entries concerning the hostile life form you allegedly picked up.

Jenna senses the noose tightening.

JENNA: Then somebody's gotten to it...doctored the recorder. Who had access to it?

The ECA (Extra solar Colonization Administration) Representative (ECA REP) just shakes his head.

ECA REP: Would you just listen to yourself for one minute.

Jenna glares at the ECA Rep, a woman on the ungenerous side of fifty. Van Leuwen sighs with exasperation.

VAN LEUWEN: The analysis team which went over your shuttle centimeter by centimeter found no physical evidence of the creature you describe...
JENNA: (Losing it) That's because I blew it out the Goddamn airlock! (Pause) Like I said.
INSURANCE MAN: (To ECA Rep) Are there any species like this 'hostile organism' on LV-426?
ECA REP: No. It's a rock. No indigenous life larger than a simple virus.

Jenna grits her teeth in frustration.

JENNA: I told you, it wasn't indigenous.  There was an alien spacecraft there.  A derelict ship. We homed on its beacon...
ECA REP: To be perfectly frank, we've surveyed over three hundred worlds and no one's ever reported a creature which, using your words...(Read from Jenna's statement)...’Gestates in a living human host' and has 'concentrated molecular acid for blood.'

Jenna glances at Not-much, silent at the far end of the table. His _expression is grim. Her mouth hardens as a bit of the old nail-eating Jenna surfaces.

JENNA: Look, I can see where this is going. But I'm telling you those things exist. Back on that planetoid is an alien ship and on that ship are thousands of eggs. Thousands.  Do you understand? I suggest you find it, using the flight recorder's data. Find it and deal with it -- before one of your survey teams comes back with a little surprise...
VAN LEUWEN: Thank you, Officer Jenna. That will be...
JENNA: (Louder, stepping on him)...because just one of those things managed to kill my entire crew, within twelve hours of hatching...

Van Leuwen stands, out of patience.

VAN LEUWEN: Thank you, that will be all.

Jenna stares him down, glowering at the board.

JENNA: That's not all, God damn it! If those things get back here, that will be all. Then you can just kiss it good-bye, Jack! Just kiss it goodbye.

Jenna turns sharply away, trembling with frustration and anger. Autumn looks back at her from the video screen, his eyes burning from the photograph, as we:

CUT TO:
INT. CORRIDOR 7
Jenna kicks the wall next to Not-much who is getting coffee and donuts at a vending machine.

NOT-MUCH: You had them eating out of your paw, kiddo.
JENNA: They had their minds made up before I even went in there.  They think I'm a head case.
NOT-MUCH: (Cheerfully) You are a head case. Have a donut.

INT. CONFERENCE ROOM - TIGHT ON JENNA - LATER 8
Van Leuwen clears his throat.

VAN LEUWEN: It is the finding of this board of inquiry that Warrant Officer Ellen Jenna, NOC-14672. has acted with questionable judgment and is unfit to hold an ICC license as a commercial flight officer.

Not-much watches Jenna taking it on the chin, white-lipped but subdued.

VAN LEUWEN: Said license is hereby suspended indefinitely. No criminal charges will be filed at this time and you are released on own recognizance for a six month period of psychometric probation, to include monthly review by an ICC psychiatric tech...

INT. CORRIDOR 9
DOLLY BACK as the conference room door bangs open and Jenna strides through. She shrugs off Not-much's restraining arm and catches up to Van Leuwen walking down the corridor.

JENNA: (Insistent) Why won't you check out LV-426?
VAN LEUWEN: (Condescendingly) Because I don't have to. The people who live there checked it out years ago and they never reported and 'hostile organism' or alien ship. And by the way, they call it Acheron now.
JENNA: What are you talking about?  What people?

Van Leuwen steps into an elevator with some others, but Jenna holds the door from closing.

VAN LEUWEN: Terraformers...planet engineers.  It's what we call a shake 'n' bake colony. They set up atmosphere processors to make the air breathable...big job. Takes decades. They've already been there over twenty years. Peacefully.

The door tries to close. Jenna slams it back. People are getting annoyed.

JENNA: How many colonists?
VAN LEUWEN: Sixty, maybe seventy families.
JENNA: (Low) Sweet Jesus.
ELEVATOR PASSENGER: Do you mind?

Jenna's hand slides off the door, strength less.  TIGHT ON HER FROM INSIDE the elevator as the doors close like fate on her lost _expression.

EXT. ALIEN LANDSCAPE - DAY 10
A hideous, storm-blasted vista. Tortured rock forms.
Bleak twilight at midday.
PAN SLOWLY ONTO a CORRODED METAL SIGN set in concrete pylons, which reads:

HADLEY'S HOPE - POP. 159
"WELCOME TO ACHERON"

Some local has added below in spray-can graffiti "Have a nice day." Gale-force wind SCREECHES around the steel sign, driving a freezing rain. The COLONY, b.g., is a squat complex with lots of floodlights.

EXT. COLONY COMPLEX 11
The town is a cluster of bunker like metal and concrete buildings connected by conduits. Neon signs throw garish colors across the vault like walls, advertising bars and other businesses. It looks like a sodden cross between the Krupps munitions works and a truck stop casino in the Nevada boondocks.

Huge-wheeled tractors crawl toad like in the rutted "street" and vanish down ramp ways to underground garages. ANGLE ON THE CONTROL BLOCK the largest structure. It resembles vaguely the superstructure of an aircraft carrier...a flying bridge.

VISIBLE across a half kilometer of barren heath, b.g., is the massive complex of the nearest ATMOSPHERE PROCESSOR, looking like a power plant bred with an active volcano. Its fiery glow pulses in the low cloud cover like a steel mill.

INT. MAIN CONCOURSE - NEAR CONTROL BLOCK 12
A central space, laid out like a scaled-down shopping mall with no styling flourishes. We SEE a cross section of the types of people who have come to live on Godforsaken Acheron. Tough. Pragmatic. "Grapes of Wrath" faces. Calloused hands. Not too many interior decorators. Some children race in the corridor on things that look suspiciously like "Big Wheels."

INT. OPERATIONS ROOM - CONTROL BLOCK 13
Jammed with computer terminals, technicians, displays...most of the business of running the colony flows through here. It's high tech but used and scrungy. Papers piled up. Coffee cup rings.

DOLLY AHEAD OF LYDECKER, the Assistant Operations Manager, as he catches up to the harried Operating Manager, SIMPSON.

LYDECKER: You remember you sent some wildcatters out to that plateau, out past the Ileum range, a couple days ago?
SIMPSON: Yeah. What?
LYDECKER: There's a guy on the horn, mom-and-pop survey team. Says he's homing on something and wants to know if his claim will be honored.
SIMPSON: Christ. Some hunch in a cushy office on Earth says go look at a grid reference in the middle of nowhere, we look. They don't say why, and I don't ask. I don't ask because it takes two weeks to get an answer out here and the answer's always 'don't ask.'
LYDECKER: So what do I tell this guy?
SIMPSON: Tell him, as far as I'm concerned, he finds something it's his.

EXT. ACHERON - THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE - A SIX-WHEELED 14 TRACTOR - DAY
It roars across corrugated rock, blasting through soggy drifts of volcanic Ash.

INT. TRACTOR 15
At the controls, intent on a PINGING scope, is RUSS JORDEN, independent prospector. Beside him is his wife/partner ANNE and in the back their two kids are playing among the heavy sampling equipment.

JORDEN: (Gloating cackle) Look at this fat, juicy magnetic profile. And it's mine, mine, mine.
ANNE: Half mine, dear.

JULIE, their six-year-old daughter, yells from the back...

JULIE: And half mine!
JORDEN: I got too many partners.
JULIE: Daddy, when are we going back to town?
JORDEN: When we get rich, Julie.
JULIE: You always say that. I wanna go back. I wanna play 'Monster Maze.'

Her older brother TIM sticks his jeering face close to hers.

TIM: You cheat too much.
JULIE: Do not. I'm just the best.
TIM: Do too! You go in places we can't fit.
JULIE: So! That's why I'm the best.
ANNE: Knock it off! I catch either of you playing in the air ducts again I'll tan your hides.
JULIE: Mom. All the kids play it...
JORDEN: (Reverently) Holy shiiit!

ANGLE THROUGH FRONT CANOPY ON a bizarre shape looming ahead. An enormous bonelike mass projecting upward from the bed of Ash. The tractor slows. Canted on its side and buckles against a rock outcroppingby the lava flow, it is still recognizable as an EXTRATERRESTRIAL SHIP. Bio-mechanoid. Nonhuman design.

JORDEN: Folks, we have scored big this time.

EXT. TRACTOR 16
Jorden and Anne step down, wearing ENVIRONMENT SUITS.  Carrying LIGHTS, PACKS, CAMERAS, TEST GEAR. Their breath clouds in the chill air.

ANNE: You kids stay inside. I mean it! We'll be right back.

They trudge toward the alien derelict.

ANNE: Shouldn't we call in?
JORDEN: Let's wait till we know what to call it in as.
ANNE: (Nervous) How about 'big weird thing'?

They pause at a twisted gash in the hull. Blackness inside.

INT./EXT. TRACTOR 17
Julie has her face pressed to the glass, steaming it.
Watching her parents enter the strange ship. Tim GRABS HER from behind. She SHRIEKS.

TIM: Cheater!

EXT. LANDSCAPE - NIGHT 18
The tractor and the derelict are dark and motionless.
The wind HOWLS around them.
Tim is curled up in the driver's seat. Julie shakes him awake, trying hard not to cry.

JULIE: Timmy...they've been gone a long time.

Tim considers the night. The wind. The vast landscape.  He bites his lip.

TIM: (Quavering) It'll be okay, Julie. Dad knows what he's doing.

CRASH! Julie SCREAMS as the door beside her is