After Kevin McGuire's post on his question similar to mine during the PEOPLE interview, I checked the transcript for Wolfe's answer which is given as follows: (emphasis added)
"Quetzal, on his deathbed so to speak, advises them to land on Green. When they discover that he's an alien, they reverse his decision and land on Blue, and I thought that was clear."
I guess this is an example of how even an author can lose track of the details of his text because the text of that section in Exodus makes it quite clear that the colonists, following Remora's advice, decided to continue on course to Green and only discovered three days later "that the monitor had overruled him [i.e. Remora]. No one questions its decision now." (emphasis added).
So Wolfe's online answer appears to make things even murkier!
Details and memory! (two important desiderata for Wolfe and his readers, I should have thought)
Ron Crown
crownrw at slu.edu