“The thing was all knobs. Its arms were longer than human, with a single elbow joint in something like the right place, but the elbow was a ball seven inches across. The hands were like strings of walnuts. The shoulders and the knees and the hips bulged like cantaloupes. The head was a tilted melon on a non-existent neck. There was no noticeable forehead or chin. The alien’s mouth was a flat black beak, hard but not shine, which faded into wrinkled skin halfway between mouth and eyes. Two slits in the beak were the nose. Two human looking eyes were protected by not all human looking masses of deeply convoluted skin and by a deeply projecting shelf of brow.“
Protector, Larry Niven, 1973
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