The Gift of the Trinde Tree

Thrown together on an extrasolar planet, Terrans Bailey Marshall and Melalie Noris despise one another. Marshall, the freewheeling, morally questionable agent for an interplanetary trade association, is searching for the source of a rare mind-expanding drug. Melalie, a cultural attaché in the Terran embassy, rebuffs his attempts at friendly conversation. She admires the indigenous people. Marshall calls them "big octopuses" and mocks their sacred trinde trees. He dispatches Melalie to a jungle region as a decoy. He does not expect her to survive when his murderous rivals trail her. Marshall travels north where he thinks the bearlike inhabitants conceal the drug's source. What he finds are threats to his own life. Unless he and Melalie find ways to help one another despite the distance between them and their mutual distrust, they each face death. Can a trinde tree offer a solution to their desperate dilemma?