Ribbon in the Sky

Calhoun is a med ship pilot who has made a terrible mistake. A navigation error strands him light-years from anywhere, on a planet where the very sky is a lie, a luminous ribbon that isn't natural phenomenon but climate control, a relic of a dead civilization keeping a dying world alive. The humans who landed here generations ago have calcified into isolated communities, each one terrified of the other, each one convinced that outside contact means contamination. They've developed what Calhoun calls "isolation syndrome": a pathological fear of strangers that has become their only social contract. When a young couple defies both communities and attempts to flee together, Calhoun finds himself trapped between paranoid factions and a planet that is slowly dying. The ribbon in the sky is failing. He must save the lovers, heal a planet's paralyzing fear of the unknown, and confront the question at the heart of every isolated society: is safety worth the price of extinction? Leinster delivers tight, propulsive adventure with real psychological weight. This is science fiction that uses a strange world to ask what happens when humans forget how to trust each other.