The Masked World

A survey crew studies a hostile, seemingly vegetable planet that has swallowed six earlier expeditions. Their pilot, Lance Llandark, finds his wife's skeleton beside a monstrous plant whose DNA strands contain unusual copper and arsenic atoms. A genetic micro-probe decodes those atomic patterns as a binary message embedded in the genes, revealing that the planet's life is pseudomorphic, capable of mimicking or entrapping humans and posing grave danger if assisted or allowed to leave. The narrative follows the scientific unraveling of the mystery, the personal cost to the crew, and the hurried decision to evacuate based on the cellular warning.