Voyagers II - The Alien Within by Ben Bova

Author:Ben Bova [Bova, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Madigan watched Jo climb into a green-and-white Vanguard Industries helicopter and whirl off from Governors Island toward the corporation’s offices in Greenwich. He waited for almost fifteen minutes as a buzzing airlift of choppers took the various VIPs up and away to their respective offices. The helicopters were noisy despite their electric motors, the big rotors whooshing through the air like giant scimitars and kicking up sandstorms of grit and dust. The harsh wind blew wildly at his hair. He clutched his suit jacket with one hand and squinted against the blast.

Madigan’s own chopper was small, dark brown, unmarked. He clambered up into the seat behind the pilot and latched his safety belt. The aircraft jerked neatly off the cement landing pad and lifted quickly into the sky. Looking down, Madigan saw that there were only a few people left on the pad.

It was a beautiful afternoon in late spring, warm without being muggy. The skyline of Manhattan sparkled against the clean blue sky. Cheap, abundant electricity had transformed New York City. Electric cars had replaced most of the taxis and private automobiles; those that were not electric-powered ran on hydrogen fuels. No more soot or carbon monoxide was being pumped into the air. The gray smudge of pollution that once hung over the city like a funeral shroud had disappeared for good.

But Madigan had no time to admire the view. His only real thought about it was that the fusion generators that provided the electricity were very profitable for Vanguard Industries.

His little helicopter winged across the harbor and turned south, following the New Jersey coastline past Bayonne and Elizabeth, then swinging eastward out toward Sandy Hook. Madigan saw the near empty runways of the old Newark Airport on one side of him, the green-patined Statue of Liberty standing resolutely on the other side.

Finally the chopper dropped down onto the cracked concrete of the old Fort Monmouth Army Electronics Center. Vanguard Industries had bought the weed-infested base from the government several years earlier. Outwardly, the base still looked abandoned and forgotten. But there were certain Vanguard operations going on inside its dismal gray concrete buildings.

It made sense to turn Baker over to Nillson, the lawyer insisted to himself as he ducked out of the helicopter. It made him look good to the chairman of the board, and by offering to tell Jo whatever Nillson’s people pumped out of Baker, he looked equally good to the corporation’s president. It was the right move, he repeated. They won’t kill Baker. They know what they’re doing.

Cliff Baker lay naked on a table, wrists and ankles securely cuffed, legs spread apart. A bank of bright lights blazed overhead, and a team of men and women in green surgical gowns clustered so closely around him that Madigan could barely see his naked, vulnerable body. From his vantage point in the control room, above the floor of the interrogation center, it looked almost like an old-style surgical theater. They had even taken the bandaging off Baker’s shoulder wound and inserted a metal probe into the torn flesh.

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