Voyagers (Bova)

Stoner knew. The fiery object hurtling toward the Earth was an alien spacecraft. But the world might never know. For the discovery had shattered the world power balance, setting off a brutal struggle for supremacy that raged from the sacred halls of the Vatican to the corridors of the Kremlin and the Pentagon.

When Keith Stoner awoke, he found himself in a world changed almost beyond recognition. Eighteen years before, Stoner had been the American member of a joint U.S.-Soviet mission to capture an alien ship. The Soviets had to pull out, but Stoner persisted, and while on the strange ship, he fell into suspended animation. Jo Camerata, the ambitious young student who fell in love with Stoner, is now head of Vanguard Industries, which has recovered the alien ship. As a result, her company is now in control of its vast new technology and the fortune it reaps—and in control of Keith Stoner. What Camerata doesn't know, however, is that someone else has been awake, someone who dwells within Stoner's mind. The alien presence that has kept Stoner alive all this time is now free and intends to explore our world, letting nothing stand in its way.

Keith Stoner has become merged with an alien intelligence embodied in the nanotechnology that lives inside his body. That technology in Stoner's bloodstream has the power to change mankind forever. And now, there are powerful and ruthless leaders who will stop at nothing to gain it.

After more than a century of exploring the stars, Keith Stoner returns to Earth to find that the world he has come back to does not match the one he left. The planet is suffering the consequences of disastrous greenhouse flooding. Most nations have been taken over by ultraconservative religion-based governments, such as the New Morality in the United States. With population ballooning and resources running out, Earth is heading for nuclear war. Stoner, the star voyager, wants to save Earth's people. But first he must save himself from the frightened and ambitious zealots who want to destroy him—and the terrifying message he brings from the stars.