Free Quofum by Alan Dean Foster

craft’s controls over to its unpretentious AI. The automatics would keep the boat properly positioned, keeping it away from shore against any shift in current or sudden rise in water level. They would thus be able to sleep secure in the knowledge that they would not drift ashore and expose themselves to any marauding terrestrial carnivores. As for anything that might rise out of the deep or come swimming toward them, the boat’s integrated security systems would either deal with any such threat on its own or wake them with ample time to confront and analyze it themselves.
    Inflatable sleepers (flat and rectangular for the humans, narrow and slightly rounded for Valnadireb) provided comfortable platforms for a night’s rest. Despite these beckoning temptations, everyone was reluctant to turn in for the night. With the disappearance of the sun and in the absence of a moon, a vast and varied multitude of night-dwellers soon took wing in the star-filled alien sky. They constituted, Tellenberg immediately determined, an entirely new and astounding biota that was if anything even more exceptional and perplexing than the fauna he and his colleagues had studied during the day. As he busied himself with his recorder, which automatically adjusted for the greatly reduced light, his fascination and unease continued to expand in equal measure.
    While his eyes were drawn to the fluorescent and phosphorescent creatures that darted along the shoreline, or winked in and out among the trees, his mind was fascinated by the glowing growths themselves. Within the boundaries of the Commonwealth, plant life that fluoresced was hardly unknown, but it usually restricted itself to one class of flora. Fungi, for example, or the siliceous crystalline sprays of Prism.
    Not here. So much light emanated from the forest fringe that Tellenberg guessed it would be possible to wander those alien woods without any artificial light at all. The biological quandary he found himself confronting did not involve a lack of naturally generated light but rather a surfeit of it.
    A thicket of ten-meter-high bamboolike shoots alternately flashed a deep red, then purple. Nearby, a cluster of flowers with weirdly twisted petals flared bright yellow, their internal luminescence flashing in sequence from petal to petal as if their internal lights were chasing each other around the outside of the flower. Gnarled scrub that during the day would have defined inconspicuousness pulsed with soft pink, then green light. The tips of grasslike ground cover twinkled like a billion blue stars. Some otherwise florid florals remained perfectly dark, choosing to bask in the radiance of their neighbors.
    Or perhaps to hide among it, he thought as he let his recorder run. Flashier plant life might draw the attention of nocturnal herbivores away from tastier growths that did not phosphoresce at all. Maybe the fluorescence was the luciferaselike equivalent of the bright colors worn by certain toxic Terran fauna, warning prospective predators that their potential prey was poisonous, treacherous, or both. For a xenologist, to see what amounted to the blanket application of luminous protective coloration was startling. Or possibly he was ruminating in the wrong direction. Perhaps all the rampant floral luminosity had another purpose entirely, one that could only be properly divined by patient research in the lab. For example, carnivorous plant life might use such internal lights to attract prey.
    Whatever the function, the shimmering forest certainly made for a spectacular journey upriver. Reflected lights danced off the water as the boat cleaved a steady path to the northeast.
    Flecks of deep crimson like windblown bloodstains swooped and darted through the night air just aft of the stern, surfing the disturbed air that trailed in the boat’s wake as they sought even smaller arboreal prey. One time something like a blue blanket soared past, blocking out the stars as it glided silently