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.