Fiasco

'There were two kinds of landscape characteristic of the inner planets of the Sun: the purposeful and the desolate.'The planet Quinta is pocked with ugly mounds and covered by a spiderweb-like network draped from spindly poles. It is a kingdom of phantoms and of a beauty afflicted by madness. The Earth spaceship Hermes arrives on Quinta with the best of intentions towards the humans' 'brothers in intelligence'.But something on the planet has gone terribly wrong...