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WHILE WAITING FOR AUBRIOT and his goons—as Kes had come to think of them—to put the finishing touches to the rafts, he decided to give his team a few final tips about what they were looking for.
“Obviously,” he said, “anything edible is better than nothing, but ideally we want plants that yield a high amount of calories preferably without taking up a lot of space. Plants that produce grains, tubers, nuts...that kind of thing. Potential food that’s dense in starches or oils.”
“But surely we’ll need leafy plants too?” asked a horticulturalist called Garcia. Cherry had warned against bringing him, saying their dire situation had made him mentally unstable, but the man had the exact skills required for the trip. “I mean, we’ll need the range of nutrients over the long term, not onl
