Green Patches (also known as "Misbegotten Missionary") is a science-fiction short story by Isaac Asimov.
A standalone story, it was first published in the November 1950 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It was later collected in 1969's Nightfall and Other Stories and 1990's The Complete Stories.
Summary[]
A human colony ship led by Captain Saybrook lands on a fertile alien world. Saybrook makes a horrifying discovery: all the planet's flora and fauna are part of a single, unified consciousness. This collective intelligence perceives individual humans as fragmented, incomplete beings and, in a twisted act of altruism, seeks to "complete" them by assimilating them. It impregnates all female animals from the ship, and the resulting offspring are born as part of the hive mind, marked by green patches of fur instead of eyes. To prevent this fate from befalling humanity, Saybrook destroys his ship and all aboard after sending a warning to Earth.
Later, an all-male investigation crew arrives, taking extreme precautions to avoid contamination. They confirm Saybrook's findings and decide to leave immediately to recommend a permanent quarantine. Unbeknownst to them, a small, camouflaged organism from the planet has stowed away on their ship. This creature, acting as an agent of the planetary consciousness, is horrified by the chaotic individuality and selfishness it senses in the humans. Its mission is to reach Earth and assimilate all terrestrial life into a blissful, unified whole.
The invasion is narrowly averted by accident. The creature, which has replaced a section of the ship's wiring, is incinerated when the airlock doors it now controls are activated upon landing on Earth. The story ends with the scientists relieved to return to the beautiful, competitive, and individualistic "anarchy" of human society.