conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a plot for a book about Osden, Tomiko, Vaster entitled Vaster than Empires and More Slow. End with the sentence '\nThey leave him enough provisions for the rest of his life, and return to Terra after finishing the survey.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Vaster than Empires and More Slow: Vaster than Empires" follows the crew of a survey ship sent by the League of Worlds to a planet far outside the region of the galaxy it has previously colonized.\nThe crew consists of 10 people, including five Terrans (people from Earth).\nOne of the crew members, named Osden, is an "empath"; he has the ability to feel the emotions of any sentient creatures around him, including humans.\nHis abilities are depicted as being the result of his being treated for autism.\nThe team is led by Tomiko Haito, a woman of East-Asian descent, whose official title is "coordinator".\nTensions among the team members run high from the very beginning; in addition to several neurotic personalities, Osden\'s abrasive personality causes the others to dislike him intensely.\nThe team arrives at the planet, named World 4470.\nThey find it completely covered in vegetation, and seemingly devoid of intelligent life.\nOsden, whose role is to sense the presence of sentient beings, senses nothing.\nAfter some exploration, the scientists find that there is nothing resembling animal life on the planet; all of its life-forms are either photosynthetic, or feed off of dead plant material.\nDue to the tensions between Osden and the rest, he is sent alone to do a species survey in the forest.\nWhile he is still out alone, Porlock, one of the scientists on the team, is scared by what he believes to be a large ape in the forest.\nThe other team members investigate for a couple of days, without finding anything, before Osden fails to contact them at a pre-assigned time.\nTomiko leads three others to his camp in the forest, where they find him knocked out, apparently by an unknown assailant.\nThey bring him back to camp, where he gradually recovers, and tells the group that he had felt a strong fear response from the forest itself.\nTomiko realizes that the assailant must have been one of the other team members.\nWhile Osden is asleep, the fear emanations from the forest drive Porlock to verbally lash out at Osden, and admit to trying to kill him in the forest.\nPorlock attempts to assault Osden again, but the others restrain him and place him under a sedative.\nThe team decides to try a different location on the planet, in the hope of moving away from the sentience they believe to be in the forest.\nThey find that the fear emanations can be felt at their new camp as well, which is in a grassland, which makes them realize that the sentience extends over all of the vegetation on the planet.\nOsden also realizes that this sentience has never been in contact with anything alien before; thus it experienced fear when the explorers landed.\nOsden decides to attempt to communicate with the sentience, with the help of Tomiko and two others.\nThey land in the middle of a forest, where a surge in the fear response kills one of them.\nOsden leaves the group, and by surrendering to the fear completely makes the planet understand that they mean it no harm; and the fear emanations cease.\nThe group tries to locate Osden, but is unable to find him; Tomiko suspects that he does not want to be found.\nThey leave him enough provisions for the rest of his life, and return to Terra after finishing the survey.