traitor, who has been working in the Company's interests all along, because he has been programmed to do so. Worse still, the theretofore benevolent Corporation, that supposedly mandates its crews to rescue spaceships broadcasting distress signals, is revealed as a profiteering entity that cares not at all for human lives, and considers them to be commodities of no more inherent worth than the android machine that they programmed to capture and return a specimen of the alien. Revelation Thompson observes that in hindsight it is clear that Ash is in fact beginning a scientific analysis of the alien, for the Corporation, in these scenes, to which Kane's welfare is largely irrelevant. Ash is acting as the midwife for the organism within Kane. He is anxious when monitoring the activity of the rescue party, in contrast to his lack of apparent emotion at other times, and violates protocol in order to ensure that Kane, with the alien inside him, is brought aboard the Nostromo. When the young alien emerges from Kane's chest, Ash urgently tells the others not to touch it, which in hindsight seems to be out of concern for the survival of the alien rather than the welfare of the human crew members. Loyalty to the Corporation Ash is, in the words of Per Schelde, the "perfect Corporation man". He reflects the Corporation's views, and is its functionary. He is an inhumane science officer who lacks human values, an example of the "mad scientist" or "mad doctor" stereotype of fiction. However, from the character's own viewpoint, according to Mary Pharr, he is neither. He is aware that he is Corporation property and comfortable with his programming, confident and purposeful. He cares neither for the human crew of the Nostromo nor for the humans of the Corporation (who, Pharr notes, would have received a very unpleasant surprise had Ash been successful in transporting the alien back to Earth). His interest is in "collating", the collection of knowledge. When Ripley and the other crewmen power up his head in order to question him about how to kill the alien, he expresses admiration for it. It is, he says, "a perfect organism" whose "structural perfection is matched only by its hostility". He admires the creature's purity as "a survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality." Pharr believes that here Ash is, in fact, describing his ideal self. Sexual metaphors and