Voyagers II - The Alien Within by Ben Bova Read Free Book Online Page A

too dedicated and too photogenic not to be noticed by the major news corporations. The offers started flooding in after only a few months of her being on-camera in Quebec. She stubbornly refused them all and set herself the task of getting to the frozen astronaut. It was not difficult for her to gain a job in the public relations department of Vanguard Industries’ aircraft manufacturing division in California. The woman heading the personnel department there said she was overqualified, but the male division manager took one look at her and, grinning, hired her on the spot.
    Within six months she met Archie Madigan. She had been able to fend off the division manager, but to get herself promoted to corporate public relations, she went to bed with the smiling, seemingly sensitive lawyer. Once she started working in Hilo, she made certain that the chairman of the board noticed her. Nillson made no sexual advances, but An Linh rose rapidly to become director of corporate public relations.
    It was in her sparkling new office that she met Cliff Baker of Worldnews, Inc. And he introduced her to Father Lemoyne.
    Baker was the complete cynic, a journalist who believed in no one and nothing except himself and his own talents. He was nearly ten years older than An Linh, a ruggedly handsome Australian with golden-blond hair and a lean, muscular body. He could have been a video deity, except for the broken nose that marred his otherwise perfect face. His smile was irresistible, his sky-blue eyes disarming. For the first time, An Linh fell helplessly in love. It was not the first time for Baker.
    He casually mentioned the frozen astronaut to her, once she told him about her mother waiting in a cylinder filled with liquid nitrogen in Avignon. An Linh searched her office data banks for every shred of data about the astronaut: his past history, the details of how he flew aboard a Russian Soyuz to rendezvous with the alien spacecraft, his decision to remain aboard it with the dead alien, and finally the recapture of the spacecraft. Vanguard Industries had spent a considerable fortune to reach the alien vehicle; it was the farthest manned space mission in history. But once Vanguard’s team had brought the alien spacecraft back to an orbit around the Earth, an impenetrable blackout descended. The file stopped dead. Every attempt An Linh made to dig further was met by the computer screen displaying RESTRICTED INFORMATION, PER ORDER J. CAMERATA NILLSON, PRESIDENT, VANGUARD INDUSTRIES .
    An Linh soon realized that the marriage between Vanguard’s president and the chairman of the board was a strange one. She had a reputation for sleeping her way to the top and apparently did not care who knew about it. Nor did he, it seemed. Nillson’s own reputation was the subject of whispers and strange rumors that hinted at odd tastes but offered no real facts. An Linh kept her own amorous liaisons as quiet as possible, maintaining a delicate balance between discreetness and desirability. She owed a debt to Archie Madigan, but he seemed content to leave her alone. Perhaps he was waiting for the debt to accrue interest, An Linh thought.
    In a way, Jo Camerata Nillson became a role model for her, and she knew that sooner or later they would become deadly enemies, both seeking power through the same man: Everett Nillson.
    Then came the board meeting, and the revelation that the astronaut had been successfully revived. An Linh’s heart pounded inside her; she could see her mother being revived, recovering, returning to life.
    That evening she told Baker. She knew she shouldn’t, but she was bursting with the good news and she had to share it with someone.
    “So he’s alive,” Baker said, his voice hollow with awe. “They’ve actually brought him back.”
    He was stretched out naked on the rumpled bed of his apartment, his body deeply tanned except for the narrow stretch that his briefs usually covered. An Linh lay beside him, still moist and warm from