n and glass is going to solve all the crimes."

"Not quite," the captain said. "The watchbirds are supposed to prevent
the crimes before they happen."

"Then how'll they be crimes?" one of the policeman asked. "I mean they
can't hang you for murder until you commit one, can they?"

"That's not the idea," the captain said. "The watchbirds are supposed to
stop a man before he commits a murder."

"Then no one arrests him?" Celtrics asked.

"I don't know how they're going to work that out," the captain admitted.

The men were silent for a while. The captain yawned and examined his
watch.

"The thing I don't understand," Celtrics said, still leaning on the
captain's desk, "is just how do they do it? How did it start, Captain?"

* * * * *

The captain studied Celtrics' face for possible irony; after all,
watchbird had been in the papers for months. But then he remembered that
Celtrics, like his sidekicks, rarely bothered to turn past the sports
pages.

"Well," the captain said, trying to remember what he had read in the
Sunday supplements, "these scientists were working on criminology. They
were studying murderers, to find out what made them tick. So they found
that murderers throw out a different sort of brain wave from ordinary
people. And their glands act funny, too. All this happens when they're
about to commit a murder. So these scientists worked out a special
machine to flash red or something when these brain waves turned on."

"Scientists," Celtrics said bitterly.

"Well, after the scientists had this machine, they didn't know what to
do with it. It was too big to move around, and murderers didn't drop in
often enough to make it flash. So they built it into a smaller unit and
tried it out in a few police stations. I think they tried one upstate.
But it didn't work so good. You couldn't get to the crime in time.
That's why they built the watchbirds."

"I don't think they'll stop no criminals," one of the policemen
insisted.

"They sure will. I read the test results. They can smell him out before
he commits a crime. And when they reach him, they give him a powerful
shock or something. It'll stop him."

"You closing up Homicide, Captain?" Celtrics asked.

"Nope," the captain said. "I'm leaving a skeleton crew in until we see
how these birds do."

"Hah," Celtrics said. "Skeleton crew. That's funny."

"Sure," the captain said. "Anyhow, I'm going to leave some men on. It