Cloudcry

Verrons, the interstellar explorer, is infected with the dread "bloodblossom" disease, and exiled to the quarantine planet. But Verrons is not the kind of man to stay quietly in a depressing little colony of dying men and other humanoids. Together with Wells, a human from the ice-planet Talberon, and Tiehl, a bird-man alien, he strikes out across the surveyed-but-unexplored wilderness of the planet. All of them are cynical about the prospects of a cure and determine to live or die on their own.