Phytosphere

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From his eighth-floor room in the Nectaris Buena Vista Hotel and Gambling Casino, Gerry Thorndike watched the shroud form over Earth. It moved with the slowness of a minute hand sweeping around a clock. He tried to view it as a scientist might, struggled to bring to bear his scientific education, training, and experience, but was hard-pressed to make any substantive observations about the Tarsalan-created phenomenon, knowing he was up here on the Moon, and his wife and children were still down there, on Earth.

He turned from the unsightly thing, angry that the aliens should resort to such an insidious measure, wondering why after nine years in orbit they should now suddenly decide to change their political approach to the immigration question. He checked his waferscreen notes. If the shroud’s current growth rate remained the same, it would reach North Carolina in less than a day. He thought of Glenda in their house on the outskirts of Raleigh; of his two children, Jake and Hanna; and of how he had been a fool to jeopardize everything he had ever valued with this questionable trip to Nectaris.

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