title: Uncertain Voyage: A Novel
author:  Dorothy Gilman 
description: n marriage and a nervous breakdown barely behind her, Melissa sails for Europe. When a strange traveler urgently asks her to deliver a book to a secret address, Melissa agrees -- much against her better judgment. Soon Melissa realizes she's being followed. Her life is suddenly in danger. And as she finds herself forced to fight alone against an enemy she cannot understand, Melissa discovers something extraordinary about herself, something she never suspected . . .
zlib_text: 
  
  
  # Touring with the Alien
  
  
  
  
  
  CAROLYN IVES GILMAN
  
  
  
  
  
  Carolyn Ives Gilman is a writer of science fiction. Her most recent novel,
  _Dark Orbit_ , is a space exploration adventure that raises questions about
  consciousness and perception. Her short fiction has received nominations for
  both the Nebula and Hugo awards. In her professional life she is a historian
  who writes nonfiction about North American frontier and Native history, most
  recently for the National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian
  Institution). She lives in Washington, DC.
  
  
  
  
  
  The alien spaceships were beautiful, no one could deny that: towering domes of
  overlapping, chitinous plates in pearly dawn colors, like reflections on a
  tranquil sea. They appeared overnight, a dozen incongruous soap-bubble
  structures scattered across the North American continent. One of them blocked
  a major interstate in Ohio; another monopolized a stadium parking lot in
  Tulsa. But most stood in cornfields and forests and deserts where t