Survival Type

Arthur Lanceford is an agent of the Bureau of Extraterrestrial Exploration, and Niobe wants him dead. The jungle humidity alone could kill him. The insects certainly will. When a deadly sith bite sends him into anaphylactic shock, his only hope lies in the hands of Kron, his Niobian guide, a man Lanceford has dismissed as barely more than a primitive. But Kron knows something the Earthman doesn't. He knows which plants heal and which kill. He understands the jungle in ways Lanceford's training never prepared him for. As the antidote pulls Lanceford back from the edge, he finds himself reassessing everything he believed about civilization, progress, and who deserves the label of "human." Written in 1957, this is early science fiction doing what it does best: using the alien to hold a mirror to Earth. It's a story about survival, yes, but more specifically about the survival of pride, and what it costs to set it aside.