He cut off the wall polarizer and faced the specimen on the other side.
“You will answer the next several questions in the negative,” Thagobar said. “It doesn’t matter what the real and truthful answer may be, you will say No; is that perfectly clear?”
“No,” said Magruder.
Thagobar frowned. The instructions seemed perfectly lucid to him; what was the matter with the specimen? Was he possibly more stupid than they had at first believed?
“He’s lying,” said Zandoplith.
It took Thagobar the better part of half a minute to realize what had happened, and when he did, his face became unpleasantly dark. But there was nothing else he could do; the specimen had obeyed orders.
His Splendor took a deep breath, held it for a moment, eased it out, and began reading the questions in a mild voice.
“Is your name Edwin?”
“No.”
“Do you live on the planet beneath us?”
“No.”
“Do you have six eyes?”
“No.”
After five minutes of that sort of thing, Zandoplith said: “That’s enough, Your Splendor; it checks out; his nervous system wasn’t affected by the pain. You may proceed to the next list.”
“From now on, you will answer truthfully,” Thagobar said. “Otherwise, you will be punished again. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly clear,” said Magruder.
Although his voice sounded perfectly calm, Magruder, on the other side of the transparent wall, felt just a trifle shaky. He would have to think quickly and carefully from now on. He didn’t believe he’d care to take too much time in answering, either.
“How many Homo sapiens are there?”
“Several billions.” There were actually about four billions, but the Dal equivalent of “several” was vaguely representative of numbers larger than five, although not necessarily so.
“Don’t you know the actual number?”
“No,” said Magruder. Not right down to the man, I don’t.
The needle didn’t quiver. Naturally not—he was telling the truth, wasn’t he?
“All of your people surely aren’t on Earth, then?” Thagobar asked, deviating slightly from the script. “In only one city?”
With a sudden flash of pure joy, Magruder saw the beautifully monstrous mistake the alien had made. He had not suspected until now that Earthmen had developed space travel. Therefore, when he had asked the name of Magruder’s home planet, the answer he’d gotten was “Earth.” But the alien had been thinking of New Hawaii! Wheeee!
“Oh, no,” said Magruder truthfully. “We have, only a few thousand down there.” Meaning, of course, New Hawaii, which was “down there.”
“Then most of your people have deserted Earth?”
“Deserted Earth?” Magruder sounded scandalized. “Heavens to Betsy, no! We have merely colonized; we’re all under one central government.”
“How many are there in each colony?” Thagobar had completely abandoned the script now.
“I don’t know exactly,” Magruder told him, “but not one of our colonized planets has any more occupants on it than Earth.”
Thagobar looked flabbergasted and flicked off the sound transmission to the prisoner with a swift movement of his finger.