"Because Jordde had by now managed to do what a static mind always does. The situation, the beach, the whole thing suddenly meant for him the revelation of a concrete God. Now, he knew that Snake had contacted something also, something which the blind priestesses told him was thoroughly evil, an enemy, a devil. On the raft, on the boat, he religiously tried to 'convert' Snake, till at last, in evangelical fury, he cut the boy's tongue out with the electric generator and the hot wire which the blind priestesses had given him before he left. Why did he want to get rid of anybody who had seen his beach, a sacred place to him by now? One, because the devils were too strong and he didn't want anybody else possessed by them; Snake had been too much trouble resisting conversion. And two, because he was jealous that someone else might have that moment of exaltation and hear the voice of The Goddess also." "In other words," summarized Iimmi, "he thought what happened to him and Snake was something supernatural, actually connected with the beach itself, and didn't want it to happen to anybody else." "That's right," said Geo, lying back in his bunk. "Which is sort of understandable. They didn't come in contact with any of the technology of Aptor, and so it might well have seemed that way." Iimmi leaned back also. "Yeah," he said. "I can see how the same thing almost--almost might have happened to me. If everything had been the same." Geo closed his eyes. Snake came down and took the top bunk; and when he slept, Snake told him of Urson, of his last thoughts, and surprisingly, things he mostly knew. * * * * * Emerging from the forecastle the next morning, he felt bright sunlight slice across his face. He had to squint, and when he did so, he saw her sitting cross-legged on the stretched canvas topping of a suspended lifeboat. "Hi, up there," he called. "Hello," she called down. "How are you feeling?" Geo shrugged. Argo slipped her feet over the gunwale and with paper bag in hand, dropped to the deck. She bobbed up next to his shoulder, grinned, and said, "Hey, come on back with me. I want to show you something." "Sure." He followed her. Suddenly she looked serious. "Your arm is worrying you. Why?" Geo shrugged. "You don't feel like a whole person. I guess you're not really a whole person." "Don't be silly," said Argo. "Besides, maybe Snake will let you have one of his. How are the medical facilities in Leptar?" "I don't think they're up to anything like that." "We did grafting of limbs back in Aptor," Argo said. "A most interesting way we got around the antibody problem, too. You see--" "But that was back in Aptor," Geo said. "This is the real world we're going into now." "Maybe I can get a doctor from the temple to come over," she shrugged. "And then, maybe I won't be able to." "It's a pleasant thought," Geo said.