"If there is a spy from Aptor on the ship, then Jordde is it," said Geo. "The captain told me he had been to Aptor once before. It must have been then that he was enjoined into their forces. Iimmi, both you and Whitey had also been on Aptor's shore, if only for a few hours. There must be something that Jordde learned from the island that he was afraid you might learn, something you might see. Something dangerous, dangerous for Aptor, something you might see just from being on the beach. Probably it was something you wouldn't even recognize, something you'd maybe not see the significance of until much later. But probably something very obvious." Now Urson spoke. "What did happen when you were on Aptor? How were those ten men killed?" Though the sun was warm, Iimmi shivered. He waited for a moment, and then he began. "We took a skiff out from the ship and managed to get through the rocks somehow. It was evening when we started and the moon, I remember, had risen just above the horizon, though the sky was still deep blue. 'This light of the full moon is propitious to the White Goddess Argo,' she said from her place at the bow of the boat. By the time we landed, the sky was black behind her, and the beach was all silvered by the light, up and down. Whitey and I were left to guard the skiff at the water's edge, and sitting on the gunwales, shoulders hunched in the slight chill, we watched the others go up the beach, five and five, with Argo behind them. "Suddenly there was a scream, and the first man fell. They came from the air like vultures. The moon was overhead by now, and a cloud of them darkened the white disk with their wings. They scurried after the fleeing men, over the sand. All we could really make out was a dark battling against the silver. There were swords raised in the white light, screams, and howls that nearly sent us back into the ocean. But Argo and a handful of those men left began to run toward the boat. They followed them down to the edge of the water, loping behind them, half flying, half running, hacking one after another down with swords. I saw one man fall forward and his head roll from his body while blood squirted ten feet along the sand, crimson under the moon. One actually caught at her veils, but she screamed and slipped from it into the water now, and climbed back into the boat, panting. You would think a woman would collapse, but no. She stood in the bow while we rowed our arms off. They would not come over the water, apparently, and somehow we managed to get the skiff back to the ship without foundering against the rocks." "Our aquatic friends may have had something to do with that," said Geo. "Iimmi, you say her veils were pulled off. Tell me, do you remember if she were wearing any jewelry or not?" "She certainly wasn't," Iimmi said. "She stood there in only her dark robe, her throat as bare as ivory."