Drowning World by Alan Dean Foster

“Too much shining to see safely, I fear,” he commented unnecessarily.

“No brighter than what you wearing,” Jemunu-jah couldn’t resist observing.

Lowering his arm, the Deyzara glanced down at the swirl of fabric that spiraled up his body to enclose his torso in a tornado of pink, bright blue, and chartreuse fabric splashed with black ovals and squares.

“In deference to the seriousness of our enterprise, my friend, I have come garbed in my most subdued attire.”

“Your subdued attire will make you target for first predator that see us the instant we step outside skimmer craft.”

A single bubble formed at the tip of Masurathoo’s speaking trunk before expiring with a single soft pop. “Then I must rely on you, my most esteemed and knowledgeable companion, to exercise your natural talents on my behalf to ensure that I do not become a meal for some indifferent wandering horror.”

Not until we have accomplished our goal, Jemunu-jah thought silently, before quickly quashing the thought as dishonorable. Much more of that and he would lose mula, he decided. But it wasn’t going to be easy to moderate either his words or his thoughts.

In spite of himself, he admired the skill the Deyzara displayed in raising the skimmer above the tops of the trees. Rain continued to fall around them as Masurathoo pivoted the craft in midair, turned south, and accelerated along the course heading that had been filed by the missing human. Finding their objective in the absence of an actively broadcasting emergency beacon was going to be difficult, Jemunu-jah knew. But not necessarily impossible. His people had spent thousands of years evolving to find one another, and other things, in the depths of the rain-swept Viisiiviisii. Smaller things. The skimmer they were hunting was larger than the one they were flying. If it only boasted a working light or two, he might well be able to spot it while soaring over the varzea below.

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