Related:

• As the writhing, teeming mass of Mind Worms swarmed over the outer perimeter, we saw the defenders recoil in horror.
  Stay calm! Use your flame guns!" shouted the commander, but to no avail....
• Symbols are the key to telepathy. The mind wraps its secrets in symbol
  when we discover the symbols that shape our enemy's thought, we can penetrate the vault of his mind....
• The fungus has been Planet's dominant lifeform since about the time of the Lower Paleozoic on Earth.
  But when, once every hundred million years or so, the neural net at last achieves the critical mass necessary to become sentient, the final metamorphosis kills off most of the other life on the planet....
• Although Planet's native life is based, like Earth'
  on right-handed DNA, and codes for all the same amino acids, the inevitable chemical and structural differences from a billion years of evolution in an alien environment render the native plant life highly poisonous to humans....
• Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind. Have you drunk your fill?
  -- Lady Deirdre Skye, "Conversations with Planet", Epilogue...
• I believe Planet will talk to us if we are willing to listen.
  These fungal stalks behave as multistate relays: taken together, the neural net connectivity must be staggering....
• The prevalence of anoxic environments rich in organic material
  combined with the presence of nitrated compounds has led to an astonishing variety of underground organisms which live in the absence of oxygen and "breathe" nitrate....
• No longer mere earthbeings and planetbeings are we, but bright children of the stars!
  And together we shall dance in and out of ten billion years, celebrating the gift of consciousness until the stars themselves grow cold and weary, and our thoughts turn again to the beginning....
• In the great commons at Gaia's Landing we have a tall and particularly beautiful stand of white pine, planted at the time of the first colonies.
  It represents our promise to the people, and to Planet itself, never to repeat the tragedy of Earth....