The little balding man with the watery eyes entered the room. "I'm here," he said. "Ah, I see you have Ker-jon," he smiled, handed a sheet of paper to the prisoner. "Here, you might be interested in this."
Ker-jon scanned it rapidly. Yesterday, yes, he'd have been interested. But not today—too much had happened since then.
Subjects: Bio-technician first class Ker-jon, hydroponics division.
Dream: (An objective description of the recurrent dream.)
Conclusions: a) Both Ker-jon and his betrothed, Cluny-ann, appear as mutants in the dream-sequence. Four votes for an unstable, neurotic personality; eleven for obvious feelings of sympathy with the mutants; one abstention. Alternative two is thus a logical certainty.
b) The bell-jar machinery is a meaningless bit of gadgetry which defies analysis. Sixteen votes for symbolic representation of the Mutant-making machinery, esoteric and unknown to all technicians save the bio-techs, mutant-making division. Conclusion a logical certainty.
c) Ker-jon destroys the bell-jar with brute force. Five votes for an un-neurotic personality's desired destruction of a major social institution. Eleven for uneasiness and a rigid anxiety concerning the revolution, for subconscious doubts on Ker-jon's part that a frontal assault against the Mutant-maker will solve the Ark's problem. Alternative two a logical certainty.
d) The warped prismatic effect in the background is crucial. The red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet of the spectrum is replaced by green-blue-red-orange-yellow, with indigo and violet out of the sequence entirely. Three votes for mistaken knowledge concerning the "rainbow" of the ancients, and for no other significance; three votes for a representation of star-colors (note that indigo and violet, not visible in any stellar object seen through the astro-port, are entirely lacking)—three votes for a representation of star-colors for the subject's desire to associate himself with the stars, hence with the void of space, hence with death; four abstentions; five for an immersed subconscious conviction that our knowledge of the "Rainbow" and hence of the physical sciences is lacking, and that this lack of knowledge may be crucial to the entire problem. No alternative a logical certainty, and while the conclusion is indeterminate, the final alternative is preferred....
Comments: Faced with violent action which his subconscious mind refused to accept as a satisfactory answer, Ker-jon also was confronted by a recurrent dream fostered by that subconscious rejection. Ker-jon's subconscious recognized the pending revolution as (1) a displacement in the order of events, a striving to conquer effects rather than causes and to leave the whole solution indeterminate, and (2) an inadequate course of action directed in a frontal assault against the most obvious effect of the hinted-at ailments which afflict the Ark.