By twelve, the sun had parched the sky. Once they stopped to swim and cool themselves. Chill water gave before reaching arms and lowered faces. They even dove in search of their aquatic helpers, but grubbed the pebbly bottom of the river with blind fingers instead, coming up with dripping twigs and smooth wet stones. Soon, they were in a splashing match, of which it is fair to say, Snake won--hands down. Hunger thrust its sharp finger into their abdomens once more, only a mile on. "Maybe we should have saved some of that stuff from breakfast," muttered Urson. Iimmi suddenly broke away from the bank toward the forest. "Come on," he said. "Let's get some food." The building they suddenly came upon had tongues of moss licking twenty to fifty feet up the loosely mortared stones. A hundred yards from the water, the jungle came right to its edges. The whole edifice had sunk a bit to one side in the boggy soil. It was a far more stolid and primitive structure than the barracks. They scraped and hacked in front of the entrance where two great columns of stone, six feet across at the base, rose fifty feet to a supported arch. The stones of the building were rough and unfinished. "It's a temple," Geo suddenly said. And again they fell back to work. What spots of light spilled through the twisted net of jungle stopped at the total shadow beneath the great arch. A line of blackness up one side of the basalt door showed that it was ajar. Now they mounted the steps, moving aside a fallen branch which chattered leaves at them. Geo, Iimmi, then Snake, and at last Urson, squeezed through the door. Ceiling blocks had fallen from the high vault so that three shafts of sun struck through the continual shift of dust to the littered floor. "Do you think it's Hama's temple?" Urson asked. His voice came back in the stone room, small and hollow. "I doubt it," said Iimmi. "At least not the one we're supposed to find." "Maybe it's an abandoned one," said Geo, "and we can find out something useful from it." Something large and dark suddenly flapped through a far shaft of sun. They stepped back. After a moment of silence, Geo handed his jewel to Snake. "Make some light in here," he said. The blue green glow flowed from the up-raised jewel in Snake's hand. As the light flared, and flared brighter, they saw that the flapping had come from a medium-sized bird that was perched harmlessly on an arch that ran between two columns. It ducked its head at them, cawed harshly, and then flapped from its perch and out one of the apertures in the ceiling, the sound of its wings still thrumming in echo seconds after it was gone. There were doors between the columns, and one far wall had not withstood time's sledge. A gaping rent was nearly blocked with vines except for a dim, green-tinted shimmer that broke in here and there through the uneven foliage.