wandered across
the river and out of his control. And he had even seen some of the
escaped pseudomen slinking through the scrub growth and making their
crudely primitive camps.

"Savages!" he told himself. "Mere animals. And one can't do a thing
about them, so long as they let that dead area persist."

Eventually, the scholars had reported, the dead areas would diminish and
fade from existence. He smiled bitterly. Here was a nice evasion--a neat
excuse for avoiding study and possible, dangerous research.

So long as those nulls remained, they would be sources of constant loss
of the responsible Master Protectors, and would thus threaten the very
foundations of the Commonwealth.

Possibly, he should-- He shook his head.

No, he thought, this was impractical. Parasight was worthless beyond the
borders of the null. No surrogate could penetrate it and no weapon would
operate within it. It would be most unsafe for any true man to enter.
There, one would be subject to gross, physical attack and unable to make
proper defense against it.

Certainly, the northern null was no place for him to go. Only the
pseudomen could possibly tolerate the conditions to be found there, and
thus, there they had found haven and were temporarily supreme.

Besides, this matter was the responsibility of the Council of
Controllers and the scholars they paid so highly.

He concentrated on the crystal, shifting the view to scan toward the
nearest village.

* * * * *

Suddenly, he sat forward in his chair. A herd of saurians was slowly
drifting toward one of the arms the null had thrust out. Shortly, they
would have ambled into a stream and beyond, out of all possible control.
Perhaps they might wander for years in the wastelands. Perhaps they and
their increase might furnish meat for the pseudomen who lurked inside
the swirling blankness.

He snarled to himself. No herders were in sight. No guard was in
attendance. He would have to attend to this matter himself. He
concentrated his attention on the power crystals of a distant surrogate,
willing his entire ego into the controls.

At last, the herd leader's head came up. Then the long-neck curved,
snaking around until the huge beast stared directly at the heap of rocks
which housed the crystals of the surrogate himself. The slow drift of
the herd slowed even more, then stopped as the other brutes dimly
recognized that something had changed. More of the ridic