Cosmo's eyes searched the dense pearl gray cloud ceiling. He blew twice more on the soundless whistle.
There was a disturbance in the cloud layer directly overhead as if tremendous fans were boiling the impenetrable fleecy ceiling into a froth. Then a huge grotesque shape plummeted from the clouds. With back flailing wings, the monster settled to the ground.
Mia screamed, tried to squirm free.
"Let me go! Let me go!"
"It's just a bird," he assured her.
"Just a bird, hell!" Mia shuddered. "That thing's a nightmare. What is it?"
"An Ormoo."
The Ormoo cocked its red-brown eye at Cosmo, rubbed its gunmetal gray beak against his leg, emitted a pleased raucous squawk.
Mia flinched. The beak looked capable of severing Cosmo's leg like a twig. From wing tip to wing tip the Ormoo extended over sixty feet. Its pearl gray plumage was a perfect camouflage as it drifted through Venus' eternal cloud blanket.
"Down!" shouted Cosmo.