White spot

A crippled starship makes an emergency landing on a barren world to raise food, but a vast anomalous white patch on the desert provokes powerful directed-energy defenses that blind and mask the vessel by forcing its feedback screens into a self-consuming draw. The crew—Borden, his wife Ellen, and their companions—must manage depleted power, enforced concealment, and the planet's apparent weaponry while improvising repairs and descending to the surface. The narrative traces their technical problem-solving, the descent and exploration of the strange white area, and encounters that imply intelligent, hazardous forces, blending tense survival detail with speculation about alien technology and risk.