he watchbirds won't let
him fish even though his family is starving. What are we going to do
about it, he wants to know."

"How many hundred is that?"

"I don't know. I haven't opened the mail."

"Well, I figured out where the trouble is," Macintyre said gloomily,
with the air of a man who knows just how he blew up the Earth--after it
was too late.

"Let's hear it."

"Everybody took it for granted that we wanted all murder stopped. We
figured the watchbirds would think as we do. We ought to have qualified
the conditions."

"I've got an idea," Gelsen said, "that we'd have to know just why and
what murder is, before we could qualify the conditions properly. And if
we knew that, we wouldn't need the watchbirds."

"Oh, I don't know about that. They just have to be told that some things
which look like murder are not murder."

"But why should they stop fisherman?" Gelsen asked.

"Why shouldn't they? Fish and animals are living organisms. We just
don't think that killing them is murder."

The telephone rang. Gelsen glared at it and punched the intercom. "I
told you no more calls, no matter what."

"This is from Washington," his secretary said. "I thought you'd--"

"Sorry." Gelsen picked up the telephone. "Yes. Certainly is a mess ...
Have they? All right, I certainly will." He put down the telephone.

"Short and sweet," he told Macintyre. "We're to shut down temporarily."

"That won't be so easy," Macintyre said. "The watchbirds operate
independent of any central control, you know. They come back once a week
for a repair checkup. We'll have to turn them off then, one by one."

"Well, let's get to it. Monroe over on the Coast has shut down about a
quarter of his birds."

"I think I can dope out a restricting circuit," Macintyre said.

"Fine," Gelsen replied bitterly. "You make me very happy."

* * * * *

The watchbirds were learning rapidly, expanding and adding to their
knowledge. Loosely defined abstractions were extended, acted upon and
re-extended.

To stop murder ...

Metal and electrons reason well, but not in a human fashion.

_A_ living organism? _Any_ living organism!

The watchbirds set themselves the task of protecting all living things.

The fly buzzed around the room, lighting on a table top, pausing a
moment, then darting to a window sill.

The old man stalked it, a rolled newspaper in his hand.

Murderer!

The watchbirds swept down and saved the f