Captain Corelli drew himself up stiffly. "I think," he said, "that the three of us should be able to unravel your little riddle, if you'll condescend to tell us what it is."
Gaffa sent a puzzled look at the Quack, and I could see that he was wondering why Corelli hadn't included him in the boast. But Gaffa didn't know how simple the Quack could be, nor how preoccupied with his own physiology he was.
"One of these two," said Gaffa, pointing to the two Haslops, "is the original Ira Haslop, who was stranded here twenty-two Terran years ago. The other is a synthetic creation of ours—an android, if you like, who is identical, cell by cell, with the original so far as exterior likeness is concerned. We could not duplicate the interior without dissection, which of course was out of the question, so we were forced to make compromises that—"
Gibbons interrupted him incredulously. "You mean you've created a living creature, brain and all?"
"Only the body," Gaffa said. "Creation of intelligence is still beyond us. The brain of the duplicate Haslop is one of our own, transplanted and conditioned to Haslop's knowledge, memories and ideology."
He paused for a moment, and the waiting circle of Balakians grinned with him in anticipation.
"Your problem is this," Gaffa said. "If you know yourselves well enough to merit our help, then you should be able to distinguish readily between the real and false Haslops. If you fail, we shall have no alternative but to keep you here on Balak for the rest of your lives, since to release you would bring other Terrans down on us in force."
And that was it. All we had to do was to take these two identical twins—who looked alike, thought alike and cursed alike—and determine which was real and which was bogus.
"For a very pertinent reason which you may or may not discover," Gaffa said, "the test must be limited to a few hours. You have until sunrise tomorrow morning, gentlemen."
And with that he crutched away at his skip-a-step walk, taking his grinning cohorts with him. The two Haslops remained behind, glowering and grumbling at each other.