Nothing but bare land and ocean bottom met his eye.
Feeling increasingly queasy, he nosed the skimmer around and set it swishing back toward New York.
Jorik watched the shadow of his skimmer pacing his own motion over the tops of the tangled jungle trees below. He inclined the nose of the craft downward, and began a shallow glide toward a clearing in the midst of the dense undergrowth.
Braking the skimmer gently, he let it settle slowly into the resilient grip of the tall yellow-brown grass in the clearing. Making sure his gun was loaded and the safety catch off, he slid open the cockpit and eased himself out.
He was—though of course he didn't know it—deep in the Matto Grosso of South America. Everywhere he looked, violent flares of color peeped at him through the twisted, swaying vines that clung everywhere. Nature had run riot in the jungle. No subtleties of shading or form here. Long, sharp leaves gleamed greenly on all sides of the biochemist. Radiant reds glowed from the shadowy depths of forest beyond the small clearing. Golden streamers hung in profusion from each crooked elbow of the chaotically twisted tree branches all about him.
Despite the brilliance and beauty of it, Jorik sensed a hidden menace in the place. He should, at that spot, have been hearing shrieking, roaring, bleating, grunting of animals, the cries of birds and skittering of insects. There was nothing but that all-pervading silence.
Jorik moved slowly away from the skimmer and approached the nearest tree, his scientist's eye pondering something not-quite-right-looking about it. As he got to it, and touched it, the thick, corrugated bark fell into powder between his fingers. He pressed, pried, thumped and tugged at the tree. It was dead. Dead and rotting.
His heart fluttered annoyingly in his breast. There was something frightening about the way things were going. He could understand a war destroying human life, even civilization, but this—this was primeval territory. The beasts, the plants, the lower forms of life—these should have survived.
But they hadn't.