Tree, Spare that Woodman

On a colonized alien world, a woman and her husband confront tree-like organisms that seem capable of sensing and transmitting fear after they find their neighbor dead and their young son drawn into a living tree. The husband explains scientific and social responses: meetings, selective secrecy, and clearing trees, while the family must suppress panic because belief magnifies the trees' lethal effect. The narrative follows their efforts to retrieve the child and cope with communal choices about warning others, exploring fear as a psychic weapon, plant intelligence, and the ethical costs of protective secrecy.