Read Voyagers II - The Alien Within for Free Online

else?”
    “I’m not sure what to make of it,” the psychiatrist said. “He had a hallucinatory session yesterday. It was brief, but for a minute or so he was totally out of reality.”
    Jo felt her breath catch in her throat.
    “It may be just the lack of sleep catching up with him. But there’s a definite problem, and until we know what it is and what’s causing it…”
    “What does he do all night?”
    “He reads. He sits around his room and reads everything that I give him. He’s devoured half the books in my library—in less than a week.”
    “You’re not giving him books about recent history or current affairs, are you?” Jo asked.
    “No. I still think that he has to be introduced to the modern world gradually. But he’s certainly catching up on the classics! He’s like a student doing all his required reading for English lit. High school and college, all at once.”
    “What does he say about his not sleeping?”
    Richards grimaced good-naturedly. “I asked him about it, and he said he’d been sleeping for eighteen years so he didn’t feel the need for sleep now.”
    Jo nodded. “That sounds like him. He’s good at covering himself.”
    “There’s something more.”
    “What?”
    “He’s shown no interest in sex. Doesn’t mention it at all. No nocturnal emissions. He doesn’t even seem to pay any attention to the women who’ve been on the monitoring team. And there are a couple of very pretty ones. No come-ons, no joking with them, no preening for them.”
    Jo fell silent. As driven as Keith had been in his earlier life, he had still found time for sex. Not love, perhaps, but in bed he could unloose all the fiery passion that he had held in check through his tight-lipped, tension-filled days.
    Richards asked, “You two were…close, weren’t you?”
    “We were lovers, for a short while.” An image of herself as a star-struck student madly in love with the moody, brooding scientist-astronaut almost made Jo blush. What a fool, she scolded herself. What a fool!
    “You were with him during the project to make contact with the alien spacecraft?”
    “Yes, at Kwajalein. And I went with him to Tyuratam.”
    “And he flew off to rendezvous with the spacecraft and didn’t come back.”
    “He chose not to come back,” Jo said, her mind filling with the memory of it. “He chose to let himself freeze in the spacecraft with the dead alien’s body instead of returning safely to Earth.”
    Richards said nothing, and Jo finally realized that he was asking the questions, not she.
    She smiled at him. “Your first name is Gene, isn’t it?”
    “Yes.” He smiled back.
    “You realize that we’re going to have to move him from here. Too many prying eyes—and blabbing mouths.”
    “I was wondering if you would come to that conclusion.”
    “Will you go with him, Gene?”
    “If you want me to.”
    “I need you to,” Jo said urgently. “Gene, I need your loyalty. I need a man I can trust.”
    “You can trust me,” he said.
    She leaned forward and put her hand on his bare arm. “Can I, Gene? Not as employer and employee, but as friends? I need a friend. Desperately.”
    “Your husband…”
    “We don’t see eye to eye on this. For the first time since I’ve known him, he’s opposing me. Not openly. Not yet. But I don’t think I can count on him, not on this project.”
    Richards said nothing. Jo pulled her hand away.
    He reached out to take it in his. “You have a reputation, you know.”
    With a grin, she admitted, “I suppose I do.”
    “I don’t want to get in trouble with the chairman of the board.”
    “I don’t blame you.”
    “I’m still a married man.”
    “I’ve seen your file. You’ve been separated for six months now. Divorce proceedings started last week.”
    Richards gazed at her for a long, silent moment. Jo could see the mental calculations going on behind his bright brown eyes.
    “Where will you take him?” he asked.
    She shook her head. “I haven’t