too. I suppose
you know that?"

"Yes. Any thoughts about it?"

"No-o-o. Well, one. The little farmer was the only one who could handle
that horse. It was mutated horse, actually--one of the Life Bank deals
that didn't work out so well. Enormously strong. It could work
forty-eight hours at a stretch without even noticing it. But it was just
a plain mean animal."

"'Crazy-mean,'" observed Pilch, "was the dream feeling about it."

Trigger nodded. "I remember I used to think it was crazy for that horse
to want to go around kicking and biting things to pieces. Which was
about all it really wanted to do. I imagine it was crazy, at that."

"You weren't ever in any danger from it yourself, were you?"

Trigger laughed. "I couldn't have got anywhere near it! You should have
seen the kind of place the old farmer kept it when it wasn't working."

"I did," said Pilch. "Long, wide, straight-walled pit in the ground.
Cover for shade, plenty of food, running water. He was a good farmer.
Very high locked fence around it to keep little girls and anyone else
from getting too close to his useful monster."

"Right," said Trigger. She shook her head. "When you people look into
somebody's mind, you look!"

"We work at it," Pilch said. "Let's see what you can do with this one."

Trigger was silent for almost a minute before she said in a subdued
voice, "I just get what it shows. It doesn't seem to mean anything?"

"What does it show?"

"Laughing giants stamping on a farm. A tiny sort of farm. It looks like
it might be the little green man's farm. No, wait. It's not his! But it
belongs to other little green people."

"How do you feel about that?"

"Well--I hate those giants!" Trigger said. "They're cruel. And they
laugh about being cruel."

"Are you afraid of them?"

Trigger blinked at the screen for a few seconds. "No," she said in a
low, sleepy voice. "Not yet."

Pilch was silent a moment. She said then, "One more."

Trigger looked and frowned. Presently she said, "I have a feeling that
does mean something. But all I get is that it's the faces of two clocks.
On one of them the hands are going around very fast. And on the other
they go around slowly."

"Yes," Pilch said. She waited a little. "No other thought about those
clocks? Just that they should mean something?"

Trigger shook her head. "That's all."

Pilch's hand moved on the desk again. The wall-screen went blank, and
the light in the little room brightened sl