"Can you suggest anything better?" Geo asked. He took the meat from the beast's claws. "Thanks, gorgeous."
It turned, looked back, and bounded up the bank and into the forest again.
With fire from the jewels, and wooden spits from the woods, they soon had the meat crackling and brown and the grease bubbling down its sides and hissing onto the hot stones they had used to rim the flame. Urson sat apart, sniffed, and then moved closer, and finally scratched his big fingers through his hairy stomach and said, "Damn it, I'm hungry." They made room for him at the fire without comment.
Sun struck the tops of the trees for the first time that morning and a moment later splashed copper in concentric curves on the water by the rock's edge, staining it further with dull gold.
"You seem to know your way around awfully well. Have you ever been on Aptor before?" Iimmi asked Snake suddenly.
Snake paused for a moment. Then he nodded, slowly.
They were all silent now.
Finally Geo asked, "What made you ask that?"
"Something in your first theory," Iimmi said. "I've been thinking it for some time, and I guess you knew I was thinking it too, Four Arms. You thought Jordde wanted to get rid of me, Whitey, and Snake, and that it was just an accident that he caught Whitey first instead of Snake. You thought he wanted to get rid of Whitey and me because of something we'd seen, or might have seen, when we were on Aptor with Argo. I just thought perhaps he wanted to get rid of Snake for the same reason. Which meant he might have been on Aptor before, too."
"Jordde was on Aptor before," said Urson. "You said that's when he became a spy for them."