Hard Landing Author:Algis Budrys ISBN 0-446-36235-2 but this is a club edition hardback, not paperback — They were stranded on Earth, doing their very best to remain anonymous-never expecting to be betrayed by one of their own... — Neville Sealman looked like just another commuter, an ordinary guy - until he died on a subruban Chicago train track, electrocuted in a tragic acciden... more »t.
He had lived alone, and no one came forward to claim his body, or sue the transit authority. So his death was, for all intensice purposes, the end of his story.
But Neville Sealman's death was only the begining. Because the routine autopsy performed by the medical examiner revealed inexplicable abnormalities in the victim's physilogy. And when that startling discovery was added to another startling discovery made in the New Jersy pine barrens - the unearthing of a metal-domed spaceship- the authorities could only come to one conclusion: There was other sentient life in the universe, it had come to Earth, and there was every reason to believe that some of those alien visotors were still among us...
There had been five of them abord the vessle when engine failure forced them to a hard landing on Earth - a final planetfall from which their ship, and one member of their crew, would never rise again.
The survivers followed standard emergency procedure: sinking the ship in a concealing bog and then scattering in different directions, hoping to blend in among the primitive indigenous race. For their mutual safety, they knew they must never see each other again, unless an unexpected rescue occured.
Thirty years passed, and things went according to plan for the four. "Neville Sealman" and Jack Mullica" learned that they were both living in the Chicago area, yet each had bulit a life for himself, and they did their best to ignore one another.
But that became impossible when news of their ship's discovery was released. Because one of their fellow survivors had viloated all the precepts of their people by trading their acvance technology in return for personal wealth and security-risking the lives of his former crewmates, and setting in motion a chain of intrigues with unforseeable consequences.« less