"2 The Alien Within" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

Voyagers 2 - The Alien Within

by Ben Bova

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Voyagers II: The Alien Within



HAWAII

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so











CHAPTER 1






Slowly, reluctantly, Keith Stoner awoke. The dream that had been swirling through his mind over and over again wafted away like drifting smoke, evaporated, until the last faint tendrils of it vanished and left him straining to remember.

Faintly, faintly the dream sang to him of another life, another world, of beauty that no human eye could see. But as he reached out with his mind to recapture the joy of it, the dream disappeared forever, leaving only a distant echo and the inward pain of unfulfilled yearning.

He opened his eyes.

A smooth gray expanse encompassed him. He was lying on his back. He could feel the weight of his body pressing down on a soft, flat surface. Instead of the deathly cold of space, he felt comfortably warm. Instead of the sealed pressure suit and helmet he had worn, he was naked beneath a smooth clean white sheet.

I'm back on Earth, he realized. I'm alive again.

He reached a hand upward. His outstretched fingertips touched the cool smooth curve of gray a scant few inches above his face. It felt like plastic, or perhaps highly polished metal. Something went click. He jerked his hand away. A series of high-pitched beeps chattered, like a dolphin scolding. The gray eggshell slid away, silently.

For long moments Stoner lay unmoving, his eyes focused on the white ceiling overhead. It looked like a normal ceiling of a normal room. It glowed faintly, bathing the room in pale light. Turning his head slightly, he saw that he was not lying on a bed, but on a shelflike extension built into a massive bulk of intricate equipment. A whole wall of gleaming metal and strange, almost menacing machinery, like the cockpit of a space shuttle combined with the jointed arms and grasping metal claws of robot manipulators. The machinery was humming faintly, and Stoner could see a bank of video display

screens clustered at the far end of it. He recognized the rhythmic trace of an EKG on one screen, patiently recording his heartbeat. The wriggling lines of the other screens meant nothing to him, but he was certain that they were monitoring his body and brain functions, also. Yet he felt no electrodes on his skin. There were no wires or probes attached to him, not even an intravenous tube.

It was a hospital room, but unlike any hospital room he had ever known. No hospital smell, no odor of disinfectants or human suffering. More electronics and machinery than an intensive care unit. Stoner felt almost like a specimen in a laboratory. Propping himself on his elbows, he saw that the other half of the room was quite normal. The ceiling was smooth and creamy white, the walls a cool pale yellow. Sunlight slanted through the half-closed blinds of a single window and threw warm stripes along the tiled floor. An ordinary upholstered armchair was positioned by the window, with a small table beside it. Two molded plastic chairs stood against the wall. The only other furniture in the room was a small writing desk, its surface completely bare, and a walnut-veneer bureau with a mirror atop it.

Stoner looked at himself in the mirror.