XL-136 was supposed to be a beginning. Dr. Vita Townsend has spent her career studying how worlds can be made habitable. Now she leads the crew of the spaceship Calliope beyond the outer rim to survey a lush alien planet that could become humanity’s next home. But XL-136 is quickly proving not to be the passive wilderness their scans had indicated. Its plants respond to touch. Its creatures adapt with impossible speed. As the crew’s own biology begins to change, one truth becomes terrifyingly clear: The longer they remain on XL-136, the harder it becomes to tell whether they are adapting to the planet—or the planet is adapting to them.
