The Masked World

Seven survey ships have approached a distant planet, and six have vanished without a trace. The seventh arrives to find a world unlike any other: a scorched landing zone surrounded by a silent, sprawling jungle of grotesque plants. Even the planet’s genes are disturbingly complex, carrying unfamiliar chemical elements and biological messages the expedition’s genetic micro-probe was built to decipher.

Pilot Lance Llandark is driven by a personal mission: his wife commanded the previous lost ship. When the crew discovers a fine-boned skeleton beside a tormented, poisonous plant, they believe they have found her fate—and perhaps the first clue to the planet’s deadly defenses. But then a bloodied woman emerges from the jungle and calls Lance by name, claiming to be Lilith. As the crew struggles to understand what they have encountered, the alien vegetation begins to seem less like a passive landscape and more like a living mask concealing a terrifying secret.