Hell's Gate

experimented with. Where man's personality includes creativity and human interaction, the vacii have only scientific curiosity. They live for their experiments. The purpose of the race is to glean knowledge from the universe, or thus has developed their chief philosophy. Man is not the only race they have brought under their rule. There are other species throughout several galaxies. With each new race it subdues, the vacii begins controlled social experiments. How will men, for instance, react in a world of total anarchy? To find out, the vacii produce a world of anarchy and watch for a few centuries. The experiment never ends really, continuing as long as one human being is left alive in that experimental situation. Or maybe they create a world of pure democracy. Or a world ruled by teen-agers. Or they introduce a certain invention into the established society, perhaps a new weapon, perhaps something making genetic control possible. All sorts of things.”
        “And on this probability line, in our own future?” Salsbury asked.
        “Fascism,” the computer said. “Man has had his two-hundred-and-eighty-five years of Hitlers. It is not a pleasant place-your future.”
        Three-hundred years of fascist rule…
        “The men who structured this operation were confident of your cooperation up to this point. It was realized that you would begin to grow less like the Puppet and more as a human being, which you are. Whether you would be anxious to help at this point was not known. If you rejected direct briefing through my sensor plates, then a series of senso-tapes was provided to show you the world of your future, show you what it will be like as a vacii experiment.”
        A hundred questions had risen now. “Why,” Salsbury asked, “couldn't all this knowledge have been implanted in my mind to start, as well as a complete set of orders?”
        “Because, as you grew younger, all the knowledge in your memory cells would fade. You arrived here with a blank brain and would have arrived blank even if you had been briefed in the future.”
        “Then how did I know to kill Harold Jacobi?”
        “A small chemical tape, impervious to unaging, was built into your brain. It played back your orders on your arrival. While you slept those two weeks in the cave, I filled you in on your background as Victor Salsbury, but there was not time to tell you more, and no room for another chemical tape to have been implanted at the start”
        “The senso-tapes,” Lynda said. “What are they?”
        “They affect all your senses,” the computer said. If you will each put a hand on one of the glow plates, I will transmit them to you. The nerves in your fingertips are enough to guarantee reception.”
        Salsbury grabbed Lynda's hand as she reached out. He spoke to the computer. “This would be a fine moment to indoctrinate both of us, to turn me into a Puppet again.”
        “No,” the 810-40.04 said. “It would not work. You are no longer receptive.”
        He looked skeptical.
        “You are too humanized now,” the computer said. “Surely you can see that.”
        He shrugged, reached out as Lynda did, touched the transmission plates on the top of the trunk. They faded into another world.
        
         You are in a cell. Underground. There is no window. Only the gray cement floor, the gray damp walls, and the black iron bars that seal you off from the dimly lighted corridor beyond. You have not been fed your breakfast; it is getting toward the end of the lunch hour as well, and you have had nothing. A rat runs across the floor, stops at your bars and looks in. You realize, for the first time, that you are lying on the floor, on a level with the rat. The rat is looking directly into your eyes, its own eyes gleaming crimson, hot. It shows its teeth, very pointed teeth, in a vicious grin, the grin of every predator since time immemorial. It would like to chew on your eyeballs. You can't let that happen. You try to move and get halfway up, fall back onto the floor. You are so terribly weak. The rat comes closer. You try to think why you are here in this place, why this is happening. You were on the wrong side of some political issue, but you can't remember what it was. It hardly matters in a fascist regime. But it couldn't have been this important, could it? The rat scampers two feet closer. Could it? Closer… You scream. But there is no one interested in your