The Pollinators of Eden

Dr Freda Caron, a cystologist with the Bureau of Exotic Plants, waits at touchdown for a fiancé who never gets off the ship. The starship Botany is home from Flora, the Flower Planet, and Paul Theaston has chosen to stay. So she goes out to see why. John Boyd was the pen name of Boyd Upchurch, and Penguin files the whole affair, on the back, as a psychiatric case history.