"I see." Naran leaned back. "Now, what about this null?" "Well, of course you know about the time the pseudomen from the Fifth managed to sneak in and lay a mess of their destructors on Carnol?" "I might. I was one of the guys that saw to it they didn't get back to celebrate." Naran closed his eyes for an instant. "Yeah. Way I heard it, you were the guy that wrapped 'em up. Too bad they didn't get you on the job sooner. Maybe we wouldn't have this mess on our hands now." Dar Girdek shrugged. "Anyway, they vaporized the city and a lot of area around it. That was bad, but the aftereffect is worse. We've got scholars beating their brains cells together, but all they can tell us is that there's a big area up there just as psionically dead as an experimental chamber." He grinned. "I could tell 'em that much myself. It's a sort of cloud. Goes turbulent, shoots out arms, then folds in again. "We'd by-pass the whole thing, but it's right on the main trade route. Only way around it is plenty of days out of the path, clear down around the middle sea and into the lake region. Then you have to go all the way back anyway, if you plan to do any mid-continent trading. And you still take a chance of getting caught in a swirl arm." Naran tilted his head. "So? Suppose you do get into a swirl? All you need to do is wait." He smiled. "You know. Just sort of ignore it. It'll go away." "Uh huh. Sounds easy enough. It's about what we do when we have to. But there are things living there. They can be hard to ignore." "You mean the carnivores?" "That's right. If you meet one of those fellow out in normal territory, he's no trouble at all. You hit him with a distorter and he flops. Then you figure out whether to reduce him to slime or leave the carcass for his friends and relations." He smiled. "From what your brother said, you wouldn't need the distorter." Naran smiled deprecatingly. "That's one of the things they pay me for," he remarked. "We run into some pretty nasty beasties at sea." "Yeah. I've heard. Big, rough fellows. Our varmints are smaller. But what would you do if you ran into twenty tons or so of pure murder, and you with no more psionic power than some pseudoman?" Naran looked at him thoughtfully. "I hadn't thought of that," he admitted. "I might not like it. Jaws as longs as a man, you said?" The other nodded. "Longer, sometimes. And teeth as long as your hand. One snap and there's nothing left. "When they kill a long-neck, they have a good meal and walk away from whatever's left. But people are something else. They just can't get enough and they don't leave any crumbs." He waved a hand. "There've been several trains caught by those things. A swirl arm comes over at night, you see, and the caravan master loses his head. He can't think of anything but getting out. Oh, he can yell at his drivers. They've got a language, and we all know it. That's easy. But did you ever try to get a long-neck going without psionic control?"