All those dome workers seem very anaemic and wiishy-washy (think 'Neil' from The Young Ones) Clocking-off after a shift you see them all lined up to be 'bled'. After all, those uniquely gene-edited crops are productive for a reason.

Another faction moves into abandoned grow-domes, with plans for belching smelters and steel factories. Luckily, sweet old Riko has a sideline in eco-terrorism - and she'll pay a lifetime in mushrooms to drive these dirty Diesel-punks from her precious green-zone. Lock & load Robot!

Blood & Bone is the very best fertiliser for roses, and probably other stuff too. But where to get the bone? Negotiate with the more squeamish factions to claim their dead.

Deep in some overgrown research zone you find a GIANT flower-bud. It opens as you approach, revealing a great huddle of 'gold-wool' footballs (think steel-wool, but in GOLD) - worth a credit or two you think. As you gather them up they begin to clamp their little jaws into your chassis. Before long you have become waddling golden fuzz-bot.

There's not much work you can do in this bulky bling-suit - until you find the female flower of the species. Your fuzzballs then all un-clamp. Chirping excitedly, they roll away to transfer their pollen. You escape unharmed, though none the richer, Yet somehow you feel a little violated.

Hungry and parched you find yourself hiking down a dry riverbed. You discover a place choked with giant melon plants, somehow surviving on the last water lingering in the sand below.

The ripest melons swell to roughly 3m in diameter - their rinds taut with their contents. Tentatively, you make a small cut in one. It splits open violently, showering you with its delicious sugary goop. You can eat all you want!

On close inspection the black seeds in this goop look much like large tadpoles - about centimetres long if you count their waggling tails. Don't worry, they seem content just to wriggle about in the thick layer of goop you find yourself covered in. But walking in a suit of sugar goop is a little awkward. Things you brush against tend to stick inconveniently, and domestic animals follow you everywhere.

Luckily the goop is water soluble - but you'll need a LOT of water. An hour’s bathing in a stream will be enough. As the goop falls away and the seeds swim off to colonise the river system - where thirsty melons can flourish until they drain another watercourse dry.

The valley's ochre stones in begin to pale in the day's last hour. You've got here late after slow progress through the trembling cactus fields, where any heavy footfall invites a shower of javelins. That's a worry - even now begins the rattle of the distant night hunters.

But there's safety here amongst the succulents - if you're only quick enough to find it. And you find the blossom between the stone-plants, some ten feet wide - with its deep soft carpet of pink anthers to bed down upon.

Curled now foetus-like around your backpack the great white petals close over you as the day dies - with just a shrinking gap of red-streaked sky now darkening into blue, then black. Exhausted, you can give in to sleep - at least between the rattling trampings of the night-triffids on their hunt.

Finally, the morning sun illuminates the dome with a white translucence. Then the petals arch back, as the great bud opens. You're woozy from a night of breathing perfume, but still hitch your pack to travel, before the white heat of day returns. And dust yourself down as best you can, scattering a cloud of that golden down you can never quite clean from your clothes. Then begin your hike towards the next safe valley, where the Night Lilies close at dusk.

It’s cool beneath the high forest canopy, and the springy peat-soil makes for easy hiking. it’s beautiful here, where occasional tree-ferns struggle for their place in shafts of stray sunlight.

Soon you must wind your way through calf-high clusters of fern crosiers, that tremble and unfurl at your touch. Their squeak against your striding leather boots amuses you with a cry of “wait-a-while, wait-a-while”

Seemingly reluctant at your passing, one frond curls about your ankle. Another cheekily prods behind a knee and has you half-kneeing. They’re all quite easy to unfurl, except those that tenderly caress your forearms soon grip insistently. And then you're snugly held with one cheek down against the earth. "Wait a-while" insists the rustle.

At ground-level there’s so much detail a brisk hiker often overlooks. Like the sweet-dark scent of peat. And the bleached ribs that nurture thriving tree-ferns. And the tentative way a millipede explores the curve of one socket in an empty skull.

Perhaps that tiny penknife on your keyring is useful after all? Simply a matter now of wriggling one free hand into your pocket.