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."