Ripping himself out of the swollen cocoon of sofoam that had saved his life, he’d rushed the control console, only to stumble and fall. Not because he had been injured in the crash, not because he was suddenly overcome with dizziness, but because the floor of the skimmer was pointed down and sideways at respectively sharp angles. Recovering from the slip, he noticed immediately that the protective climate-controlled canopy was cracked in at least a dozen places. He was made aware of this fact because he was sitting in the rain. Also because several blue-striped tree branches now extended inside the skimmer. A head-sized flying creature was presently perched on one. It stared at him out of eyes that were so deep-sunk it seemed they must be set in the back of the animal’s skull. In actual fact, they were positioned in the center, where by rotating they could stare as easily out the back of the skull as the front.
“Get out of here, you neeking goscack! I’m nobody’s dinner yet!” Reaching down, he picked up a piece of some instrument that he hoped was not essential to the skimmer’s functioning and threw it.
Letting out an unexpectedly melodious tootle, the weird arboreal with the internally gimbaled oculars dodged the chunk of airborne apparatus as it spiraled up and out of the wounded skimmer. Multiple wings extended out of the sides of its head and rotated parallel to the ground. In addition to providing lift, the spiral-screw wing system was an excellent design for shedding precipitation. Nature was ever so goddamned inventive, he told himself sullenly. Trying to taxonomize the bizarre creature would twist a bemused biologist’s bowels.