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A ship lands on a planet that's a paradise. Every thought and desire is met, including being able to fly.
Some of the crew are weirded out and they leave. The planet looks like a horrible place now from space. Volcanoes and dinosaurs screaming at those that left. Planet was conscious and waiting for life to land on it.
"Here There Be Tygers", a short story by Ray Bradbury, also the (unaccepted) answer to this old question. First published in the 1951 original stories anthology New Tales of Space and Time edited by Raymond J. Healy, it was reprinted in Amazing Stories, April-May 1953, available at the Internet Archive. The story has its own Wikipedia page. It was dramatized as episode 4.12 (November 30, 1990) of The Ray Bradbury Theater; you can watch it on YouTube.
A ship lands on a planet that's a paradise.
It was the freshest green color they had ever seen since childhood.
Lakes lay like clear blue water droplets through the soft hills; there were no loud highways, signboards or cities. It's a sea of green golf links, thought Forester, which goes on forever. Putting greens, driving greens, you could walk ten thousand miles in any direction and never finish your game. A Sunday planet, a croquet-lawn world, where you could lie on your back, clover in your lips, eyes half shut, smiling at the sky, smelling the grass, drowse through an eternal Sabbath, rousing only on occasion to turn the Sunday paper or crack the red-striped wooden ball through the wicket.
"If ever a planet was a woman, this one is."
Every thought and desire is met, including being able to fly.
They stood at the top of a little rise.
"Feel," said Driscoll, his hands and arms out loosely. "Remember how you used to run when you were a kid, and how the wind felt. Like feathers on your arms. You ran and thought any minute you'd fly, but you never quite did."
The men stood remembering. There was a smell of pollen and new rain drying upon a million grass blades.
Driscoll gave a little run. "Feel it, by God, the wind. You know, we never have really flown by ourselves. We have to sit inside tons of metal, away from flying, really. We've never flown like birds fly, to themselves. Wouldn't it be nice to put your arms out like this—" He extended his arms. "And run." He ran ahead of them, laughing at his idiocy. "And fly!" he cried.
He flew.
Some of the crew are weirded out and they leave.
"I keep thinking about Chatterton," said Koestler.
"Don't," said Forester. "We'll sleep a few hours and take off. We can't chance staying here another day. I don't mean the danger that got Chatterton. No. I mean, if we stayed on we'd get to liking this world too much. We'd never want to leave."
The planet looks like a horrible place now from space. Volcanoes and dinosaurs screaming at those that left.
"It's not too late to turn back."
"I'm afraid it is." Forester made an adjustment on the port telescope. "Look now."
Koestler looked.
The face of the world was changed. Tigers, dinosaurs, mammoths appeared. Volcanoes erupted, cyclones and hurricanes tore over the hills in a welter and fury of weather.
Planet was conscious and waiting for life to land on it.
"Yes, she was a woman all right," said Forester. "Waiting for visitors for millions of years, preparing herself, making herself beautiful. She put on her best face for us. When Chatterton treated her badly, she warned him a few times, and then, when he tried to ruin her beauty, she eliminated him. She wanted to be loved, like every woman, for herself, not for her wealth. So now, after she had offered us everything, we turn our backs. She's the woman scorned. She let us go, yes, but we can never come back. She'll be waiting for us with those . . ." He nodded to the tigers and the cyclones and the boiling seas.
