e estates of a Master
Protector, now reduced to a mere wasteland into which slaves might
escape, to lead a brute-like existence in idleness.

He had lost pseudomen slaves in this very null and he knew he would
probably lose more. Despite the vigilance of the surrogates, they kept
slipping across the river and disappearing into that swirling
nothingness. And now, with that prominence so close--

He had no guards he could trust to go after the fellows, either. Such
herd guards as he had would decide to desert their protector and take up
the idle life which their fellow pseudomen had adopted. A few of them
had gone out and done just that. Their memories of the protection and
privileges granted them were short and undependable. He sighed.

"Ungrateful beasts!"

Some Master Protectors had little trouble along that line. Others had
managed to hire the services of halfmen--weak psionics, too weak to
govern and yet strong and able enough to be more than mere pseudomen.

These halfmen made superb, loyal guards and overseers--for some--but
none had remained at Kira Barra. They had come, to be sure, but they had
stayed on for a time, then drifted away.

And, he thought angrily, it was illegal to restrain these halfmen in
any way. Some soft-headed fool had granted their kind the rights of
Commonwealth citizenship. Halfmen had even managed to take service with
the fleet during the war with the Fifth Planet. Some of them had even
managed somehow to be of small value--and now many of them held the
status of veterans of that victorious war--a status he, one of the great
landholders, was denied.

No, he told himself, until such time as the nulls were solved and
eliminated, such pseudomen as managed to cross the northeastern river
were safe enough in their unknown land. And, he thought sourly, the
scholars had made no progress in their studies of the nulls.

Probably they were concerning themselves with studies more likely to
give them preferment or more immediate personal gain.

Of course, the wasteland wasn't entirely unknown, not to him, at least.
He had viewed the area personally. There were hilltops on the Estates
from which ordinary eyesight would penetrate far into the dead area,
even though the more powerful and accurate parasight was stopped at its
borders. Yes, he had seen the affected area.

He had noted that much of it had regained a measure of fertility. There
was life now--some of it his own meat lizards who had