The second salient feature of the Space Ark's social institutions was its favoring of the biolo-mental sciences over the chemi-physical sciences. This, again, proves to be an inevitable by-product of the Space Ark's static environment. No physical world existed: physics became a useless dogma, a meaningless jumble of terms which bore no semantic relation to the world-at-large. On the other hand, the Space Ark was a universe of introversion. The biolo-mental sciences leaped ahead of what had developed into a something-less-than-static-civilization. This, as we have seen, gave rise to the Mutant-makers. But on a constructive level, it fostered the growth of a new science of psychology, vastly superior to the old Urth science, and, some suspect, considerably more refined than our own mental sciences. A particular manifestation of this lost science was the ability to project tri-dimensional images of dreams, to record them while the conscious mind slumbered, to play them back later and to interpret them unerringly....
—Andoos-Rob't, A Short History of the Abortive Social Institutions of the Urth-Canopus Space Ark, Introduction.
Ker-jon awoke suddenly, sitting bolt-upright in bed. It was cool—night-period temperatures always were—but fine droplets of perspiration dotted Ker-jon's forehead and dark sweat-stains discolored the armpits of his sleeping robe.
Over and over, one thought twisted through his mind; he was not a mutant; he was one-hundred percent normal homo sapiens and a bio-technician on the hydroponics staff at that. Yet—why did he always dream the same dream of a big hairless Ker-jon, his bald, shining dome topped with the three ridges of flesh which had manifested themselves in a series of mutations during the generation of his birth? Why did that dream always follow the same path....
He chuckled in spite of himself. The psych-technicians might yield the answer this time. He removed the electrodes from his temples, snapped the recorder off, rewound the dream-tape. Yes, he'd let the psycho-techs play with it in the morning, despite Cluny-ann's warning.
When the morning gong sounded, Ker-jon crept softly from his room. His way would lead past the quarters of the female bio-technicians, and he hoped to avoid a meeting with Cluny-ann. But the slim, fair-haired maid knew of his appointment with the psych-tech, and she had other ideas. Ker-jon barely got past the portal to the female quarters when its door slid into the wall with a faintly audible hiss. Arms akimbo, Cluny-ann stood there facing him, the crown of her head hardly reaching his chin.
"Good morning, Ker-jon," she greeted him coolly.
"Please, I'm busy."