"These will keep you from holding your eyes shut," he said. "You can blink, but the springs are too strong for you to hold your eyelids down against the tension."
He inserted button earphones into Maitland's ears—
And then the show began.
He was looking at a door in a partly darkened room, and there were footsteps outside, a peremptory knocking. The door flew open, and outlined against the light of the hall, he saw a man with a twelve-gauge shotgun. The man shouted, "Now I've got you, you wife-stealer!" He swung the shotgun around and pulled the trigger. There was a terrible blast of sound and the flash of smokeless powder—then blackness.
With a deliberate effort, Maitland unclenched his fists and tried to slow his breathing. Some kind of emotional reaction test—what was the countermove? He closed his eyes, but shortly the muscles around them declared excruciatingly that they couldn't keep that up.
Now he was looking at a girl. She....
Maitland gritted his teeth and fought to use his brain; then he had it.
He thought of a fat slob of a bully who had beaten him up one day after school. He remembered a talk he had heard by a politician who had all the intelligent social responsibility of a rogue gorilla, but no more. He brooded over the damnable stupidity and short-sightedness of Swarts in standing by his silly rules and not telling him about this new world.
Within a minute, he was in an ungovernable rage. His muscles tightened against the restraining straps. He panted, sweat came out on his forehead, and he began to curse. Swarts! How he hated....
The scene was suddenly a flock of sheep spread over a green hillside. There was blood hammering in Maitland's temples. His face felt hot and swollen and he writhed against the restraint of the straps.