Predator ship scanners

The predator woke slowly from the icy depths of his dream-state. As his consciousness returned in languid waves of recognition, the insular silence of his life-chamber softly echoed with the sigh of his breathing and the swift quadruple rolling of his heart, intense as a hummingbird.

  A finger touched a smooth plate at the side of the console. Instantly the light in the cocoon chamber shifted from amber to blue as the stasis field—a modular pattern of strobing light-beams that hovered above his warrior’s body, controlling his vital functions—dissolved, returning control of the ship once more to his command.

  The light flow across the control panel fluttered, settling into familiar navigational patterns, analyzing and adjusting the craft’s velocity to the constraints of the unexplored gravity field. Constantly decelerating, the ship began to ease into a steady, high-altitude orbit, where analysis of vital data on the watery planet far below would begin.

  As the craft responded to the predator’s adjustment of speed, altitude and parabola, his finger again touched the burnished plate on the console. A matrix of microscopic wire rose soundlessly, energized and began to glow, resolving into an electronic display screen. Information as to the planet’s location in the solar system was entered, A high-speed display of data momentarily filled the screen, followed by a spectrum review of the planet’s inhabitants, the predator’s only guide to the alien species of the planet Earth.

  Big cats, rhinos, bears, elephants—all passed in rapid review, accompanied by a biological analysis of each animal. Then primates appeared, and the images began to slow, holding on the image of a hairless, bipedal creature The image expanded to full frame, becoming three-dimensional, as a more complex array of data flashed around the periphery of the screen.

  A detailed, biomechanical analysis followed, indicating the range of the creature’s varied and remarkable evolutionary adaptations to the planet. The predator touched the plate again, and the analysis shifted to an anatomical breakdown, peeling away, in layers, the muscular, organic, and skeletal composition. The brain followed, showing the left and right hemispheres and the quadrants relating to memory, speech, and motor activity.

  A final touch to the plate and the encyclopedic screen filled with further configurations of the biped depicted in a variety of situations, then followed by an image totally unlike the others.

  The predator leaned closer to the screen, studying the final image of this creature, dressed in camouflage and heavily armed with weapons strange in appearance but familiar in function and deadliness. Here was a creature modified and trained for a single function—to kill—exactly the creature the predator sought, the challenge worthy of his own vast skill, a kindred spirit at last, a reason to exist.

   The Predator (1987 novelization), prologue