on to be back in the Manon System up to a
dandy first-rate compulsion."

Trigger licked her lips. "I--"

"Sure," said Pilch. "You had to have a good sensible reason. You gave
yourself one."

"Well!"

"Oh, you were fond of that young man, all right. Who wouldn't be?
Wonderful-looking lug. I'd go for him myself--till I got him on that
couch, that is. But that was the first time you hadn't been able to
stand a couple of months away from him. It was also the first time you'd
started worrying about competition. You now had your justification. And
we," Pilch said darkly, "had a fine, solid compulsion with no doubt very
revealing ramifications to it to work on. Just one thing went wrong with
that, Trigger. You don't have the compulsion any more."

"Oh?"

"You don't even," said Pilch, "have the original moderate inclination.
Now one might have some suspicions there! But we'll let them ride for
the moment."

She did something on the desk. The huge wall-screen suddenly lit up. A
soft, amber-glowing plane of blankness, with a suggestion of receding
depths within it.

"Last night, shortly before you woke up," Pilch said, "you had a dream.
Actually you had a series of eight dreams during the night which seem
pertinent here. But the earlier ones were rather vague preliminary
structures. In one way and another, their content is included in this
final symbol grouping. Let's see what we can make of them."

A shape appeared on the screen.

Trigger started, then laughed.

"What do you think of it?" Pilch asked.

"A little green man!" she said. "Well, it could be a sort of counterpart
to the little yellow thing on the ship, couldn't it? The good little
dwarf and the very bad little dwarf."

"Could be," said Pilch. "How do you feel about the notion?"

"Good plasmoids and bad plasmoids?" Trigger shook her head. "No. It
doesn't feel right."

"What else feels right?" Pilch asked.

"The farmer. The little old man who owned the farm where the mud pond
was."

"Liked him, didn't you?"

"Very much! He knew a lot of fascinating things." She laughed again.
"You know, I'd hate to have him find out--but that little green man also
reminds me quite a bit of Commissioner Tate."

"I don't think he'd mind hearing it," Pilch said. She paused a moment.
"All right--what's this?"

A second shape appeared.

"A sort of caricature of a wild, mean horse," Trigger said. She added
thoughtfully, "there was a horse like that on that farm,