MacMaine decided he might as well spring his bomb on the Kerothi officer now as later. "I am not so certain but that you might have stretched out your time longer if you had forced us to learn Kerothic, general," he said in Kerothic. He knew his Kerothic was bad, since it had been learned from the Kerothi spaceman who had been captured with the general, and the man had been badly wounded and had survived only two weeks. But that little bit of basic instruction, plus the work he had done on the books and tapes from the ruined Kerothi ship, had helped him.
"Ah?" The general blinked in surprise. Then he smiled. "Your accent," he said in Kerothic, "is atrocious, but certainly no worse than mine when I speak your Inklitch. I suppose you intend to question me in Kerothic now, eh? In the hope that I may reveal more in my own tongue?"
"Possibly you may," MacMaine said with a grin, "but I learned it for my own information."
"For your own what? Oh. I see. Interesting. I know no others of your race who would do such a thing. Anything which is difficult is beneath them."
"Not so, general. I'm not unique. There are many of us who don't think that way."
The general shrugged. "I do not deny it. I merely say that I have met none. Certainly they do not tend to go into military service. Possibly that is because you are not a race of fighters. It takes a fighter to tackle the difficult just because it is difficult."
MacMaine gave him a short, hard laugh. "Don't you think getting information out of you is difficult? And yet, we tackle that."
"Not the same thing at all. Routine. You have used no pressure. No threats, no promises, no torture, no stress."
MacMaine wasn't quite sure of his translation of the last two negative phrases. "You mean the application of physical pain? That's barbaric."
"I won't pursue the subject," the general said with sudden irony.