"I can understand that. But you can rest assured that we would never do such a thing. It isn't civilized. Our civil police do use certain drugs to obtain information, but we have so little knowledge of Kerothi body chemistry that we hesitate to use drugs on you."
"The application of stress, you say, is not civilized. Not, perhaps, according to your definition of"—he used the English word—"cifiliced. No. Not cifiliced—but it works." Again he smiled. "I said that I have become soft since I have been here, but I fear that your civilization is even softer."
"A man can lie, even if his arms are pulled off or his feet crushed," MacMaine said stiffly.
The Kerothi looked startled. When he spoke again, it was in English. "I will say no morr. If you haff questionss to ask, ko ahet. I will not take up time with furtherr talkink."
A little angry with himself and with the general, MacMaine spent the rest of the hour asking routine questions and getting nowhere, filling up the tape in his minicorder with the same old answers that others had gotten.
He left, giving the general a brisk salute and turning before the general had time to return it.
Back in his office, he filed the tape dutifully and started on Item Two of the duty list: Strategy Analysis of Battle Reports.
Strategy analysis always irritated and upset him. He knew that if he'd just go about it in the approved way, there would be no irritation—only boredom. But he was constitutionally incapable of working that way. In spite of himself, he always played a little game with himself and with the General Strategy Computer.
The only battle of significance in the past week had been the defense of an Earth outpost called Bennington IV. Theoretically, MacMaine was supposed to check over the entire report, find out where the losing side had erred, and feed correctional information into the Computer. But he couldn't resist stopping after he had read the first section: Information Known to Earth Commander at Moment of Initial Contact.
Then he would stop and consider how he, personally, would have handled the situation if he had been the Earth commander. So many ships in such-and-such places. Enemy fleet approaching at such-and-such velocities. Battle array of enemy thus-and-so.