Before the hyper-space vessels could go from planet to planet, stations had to be set up. And that meant manned spaceships cut off from Earth for decades.

The explorer vessel Ariadne had gone toward galactic center and was considered lost - until its call was heard appealing for a xeno-biologist.

There new world was all swamp. As far as could be seen there was no intelligent species. Yet this was alarming because all inhabitable planets so far discovered had thinking inhabitants.

But the nature of that planet's "people" turned out to be an enigma that had to be solved. For the alien biology there could spell doom to all the civilizations of the stars ... doom or a terrible unity!

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There's something inside you that doesn't want to run away, that always wants to return, that saves you from yourself, that makes you what you are, and sucks your blood and caresses your skin and thrusts its stinger into the space behind your eyes.

The trees begin to move and march away, forming ranks and shouldering arms, with flowers falling form the sky and rain like tears that vanish into mist. All the whiteness in the world is going way, to leave you beneath the moon, in an infinite sea of blackness, burning in a sea of tears.

Then the moon goes out, an eye obscured by the lid of darkness, the lid of the world that seals you in.
Forever.

And somehow you're glad that this time it's never to end ...