Soa como Velvet Fields , de Anne McCaffrey, publicado pela primeira vez na revista de ficção especulativa "Worlds of If "em sua edição de novembro-dezembro de 1973 e, em seguida, em" A menina que ouviu os dragões ", um coleção de contos de McCaffrey.
O planeta está aparentemente deserto:
Although Survey had kept a watch on the planet for more than thirty years standard and the cities were obviously on a standby directive, the owners remained conspicuous by their absence.
Os colonos criam gado na grama:
We pastured the cattle in neatly separated velvet fields. Martin Chavez worried when close inspection disclosed that each velvet field was underpinned by its own ten-meter-thick foundation of ancient, rock-hard clay. Those same foundations housed what seemed to be a deep irrigation system.
Mas a grama acaba por ser o primeiro estágio das espécies nativas:
“You mean, the plants are the people?”
“What else have I been saying? They are born from the Trees.”
E no final, os colonos que tomaram nutrição do planeta devolveram partes de seus corpos:
We had to give back to the soil what we had taken from it. The handless Zobranoirundisi, recognizing his missing member from the cells now incorporated into the fingers of a young colony child nurtured on milk from cattle fed in the velvet fields, had every right to reclaim what was undeniably his own flesh. The legless Zobranoirundisi could not be condemned to a crippled existence when the Terran child had used the same cells to run freely for seven years on land where previously only Zobranoirundisi had trod.