Eden

A six-man crew crash-lands on Eden fourth planet from another sun. The men find a strange world that grows ever stranger: a desert plain exuding acrid vapors a greenish tinge at the horizon a gray seven-foot tree that hisses and withdraws into the ground when touched and thickets of vegetation like hanging spiders.<P>In a labyrinth of plant-shaped buildings are dead ends passage-ways domes vaulted ceilings and giant statues. And everywhere there are images of death: mass graves naked bodies in ditches and wells a beehive structure filled with clusters of giant eggs -- a skeleton within each egg.<P>The crew's attempt to communicate with this civilization leads to violence and to a cruel truth -- cruel precisely because it is so human.