Voyagers II - The Alien Within Read Online Free PDF Page A

apologetic gesture. “You wouldn’t make a good poker player. I can read your face.”
    “It seems to me you can read my mind.”
    “No, nothing so…” The breath caught in Stoner’s chest. He saw Richards’s searching, inquisitive face, the dark eyes probing him. He saw the laboratory building behind the psychiatrist and the bright blue Hawaiian sky and the grass and graceful palms out by the beach.
    But like a double exposure on a piece of film, Stoner also saw another scene, a completely different scene from a different world. A smooth, graceful tower, impossibly slim, incredibly tall, soared endlessly into a softly glowing sky of pale yellow. Stoner craned his neck painfully and still could not see the top of the tower. It rose heavenward against all the laws of gravity and sense, up and up until it was lost to his sight. He was standing at its base, atop a low, gently sloping hill. His feet were shod in metallic boots, and the ground was covered with brilliant orange blades of grass that seemed to shrink away from him and leave the ground where he was standing bare and sandy. He dropped to one knee, and as he did so, the individual blades of grass scurried out of his way, like frightened little creatures with wills of their own.
    Stoner smiled at the strange orange blades, trying to see how they managed to move themselves. He put out a hand and saw that it was gloved in the same gleaming silvery metal as his boots. The motile grass backed away from his extended hand. He smiled. “I won’t hurt you. Honestly, I won’t….”
    The chanting made him look up. Far across the open orange field, a long procession was winding its way up the slope of the hill toward him. The grass was parting itself, making an open path for the people, a path that led straight to the spot where Stoner was standing. He could not make out the words they were singing, but the tone was mournful, sad. He saw they were carrying a body stretched out on a bier.
    “That’s me,” Stoner realized. “It’s my funeral procession.”
    He looked up again and saw Richards staring down at him. Stoner realized he was kneeling on the thick green grass of the laboratory lawn, the afternoon sun burning hotly behind the psychiatrist, framing his curly mop of hair with a halo of radiance.
    Feeling almost foolish, Stoner got to his feet. A few of the employees walking some distance away were staring at them.
    “Your funeral?” Richards asked. He was almost quivering with anticipation, like a hunting dog who had just scented its quarry.
    His stomach fluttering, Stoner asked, “What did you say?”
    “You said something about a funeral procession.”
    “Did I?” he stalled.
    “What happened to you? What did you see?”
    With a shake of his head, Stoner answered, “I don’t know. I blanked out….”
    Richards’s eyes were trying to pry the information out of him. “You went completely out of focus. You looked up at the sky, then you dropped down on your knees and muttered something about a funeral procession.”
    Stoner said nothing.
    “You were hallucinating,” the psychiatrist said.
    “I’ve never done that before.”
    Abruptly, Richards turned back toward the building where Stoner’s quarters were. “Come on, I want to see what the EEG looks like.”
    Stoner caught up with him in two long strides. “You’ve been recording me out here?”
    Nodding, Richards said, “Every second. The equipment can monitor you anywhere in the complex—as far as the beach, maybe farther.”
    “You implanted sensors inside me?”
    “Sprayed them on your skin. The technology’s improved since you took your sleep. You can’t feel them or wash them off, but they’re there.”
    Instead of returning to Stoner’s quarters, Richards hurried to a windowless room halfway down the antiseptic-white corridor. To Stoner it looked like a spaceflight control center: banks of monitoring display screens tended by a handful of young men and women in white lab smocks.