Roger looked up helplessly. "I don't--know--" he said, weakly. "I
don't know."
The Security Chief threw up his hands in disgust. "Then we'll do it
the hard way," he grated. Flipping an intercom switch, his voice
snapped out cold in the still room. "Send in Psych squad," he growled.
"We've got a job to do--"
* * * * *
Roger Strang lay back on the small bunk, his nerves yammering from the
steady barrage, lights still flickering green and red in his eyes. His
body was limp, his mind functioning slowly, sluggishly. His eyelids
were still heavy from the drugs, his wrists and forehead burning and
sore where the electrodes had been attached. His muscles hardly
responded when he tried to move, his strength completely gone--washed
out. He simply lay there, his shallow breathing returning to him from
the dark stone walls.
The inquisition had been savage. The hot lights, the smooth-faced men
firing questions, over and over, the drugs, the curious sensation of
mouthing nonsense, of hearing his voice rambling on crazily, yet being
unable in any way to control it; the hypnotic effect of Whitman's soft
voice, the glitter in his steel-gray eyes, and the questions,
questions, questions. The lie detector had been going by his side,
jerking insanely at his answers, every time the same answers, every
time setting the needle into wild gyrations. And finally the foggy,
indistinct memory of Whitman mopping his forehead and stamping
savagely on a cigarette, and muttering desperately, "It's no use!
Lies! Nothing but lies, lies, lies! He _couldn't_ be lying under this
treatment, but he is. _And he knows he is!_"
Lies? Roger stretched his heavy limbs, his mind struggling up into a
tardy rejection. Not lies! He hadn't lied--he had been answering the
truth to the questions. He couldn't have been lying, for the answers
were there, clear in his memory. And yet--the same nagging doubt crept
through, the same feeling that had plagued him throughout the
inquisition, the nagging, haunting, horrible conviction, somewhere in
the depths of his numb brain that he _was_ lying! Something was
missing somewhere, some vast gap in his knowledge, something of which
he simply was not aware. The incredible turnabout of Martin Drengo,
the attack on David, who was killed, but somehow was not dead. He
_had_ to be lying--
But how could he lie, and still know that he was not lying? His
sluggish mind wrestled, trying to choke back the incredible doubt.
Somewhere in the morass, the picture of Martin Drengo came
through--Drengo, the traitor, who was trying to kill his son--but the
conviction swept through again, overpowering, the certain knowledge
that Drengo was _not_ a traitor, that he must trust Drengo. Drengo was
his friend, his stalwart--