_You're_ still very much a part of the puny world outside the theater you've lived in most of your life. You know it, you feel it ... you can't escape from it. When a big screen production has been designed solely to entertain you, you can identify yourself with the giants to some extent. You become a part of the illusion. But how can you identify with four or five brutish looking lads with no resemblance to yourself, with a look on their faces which says they hate your guts and are out for blood and won't be satisfied until they've brain-washed you. Oh, it looks easy. Resistance, laughing in their faces, should be no problem at all, because you know damn well it's nothing but an illusion. But just how long do you think you can go on believing that those Neanderthaler types with five-pronged metal whip-lashes dangling from their wrists aren't flesh-and-blood tormentors? All right, you still think it should be easy. All I can say is ... just sit for five hours in a Big-Image interrogation room and try staying sane. Go ahead, insist on being granted that privilege. It might be a little difficult to come as close to it as I was right at that moment, flat on my back in a hospital bed with Glacial Stare reminding me just how terrible it could be. But you never know until you try. On Mars bringing that about shouldn't be too difficult ... with Wendel Atomics determined to build up a reputation for ruthlessness to protect its interests in the war it was waging with Endicott Fuel and all of the colonists who were being forced to wildcat in a commodity field so explosive that it could turn them into killers of the dream and blow them apart for good measure. But let's go back to the Big-Image interrogation room for a moment. You're sitting there, staring up at the Neanderthaler-type giants and they're staring down at you. Their eyes are slitted and they're stripped to the waist and there is a fine sheen of sweat on their chests. There is nothing trim or athletic looking about them. They're heavyset, almost muscle-bound, with the outsize, very ugly-looking kind of physical massiveness you see in some wrestlers, but hardly ever in a professional boxer even in the heavyweight class. "Well, pal!" one of them says, winking at you. "I have an idea he'd like to high-hat us," another chimes in, winking also, but at Muscle Bound Number One instead of at you. "We'll have to do something about that," Muscle Bound Number Three insists. "Oh, we will ... we will. But we ought to give him a little time to get better acquainted with us. Maybe we can soften him up a little just by talking to him. What do you say?" "Sure, why not? You see a guy flat on his face, with his skull bashed in, and you start feeling sorry for him. Right off, that's bad. It keeps you from really setting to work on him."