Harry kept looking at the ceiling, and Mike the Angel smiled quietly at
his fingernails.

The detective sergeant sighed again. "Sure, we'd like to have some of
the gadgets that you and the other operators on the Row have worked out,
Harry. But I'm in no position to take 'em away from you. Besides, we
have some stuff that you'd like to have, too, so that makes us pretty
much even. If we started confiscating illegal equipment from you, the
JD's would swoop in here, take your legitimate equipment, bug it up, and
they'd be driving us all nuts within a week. So long as you don't use
illegal equipment illegally, the department will leave you alone."

Old Harry grinned. "Well, now, that's very nice of you, Sergeant. But I
don't have anything illegal--no robotics stuff or anything like that.
Oh, I'll admit I've a couple of eyes here and there to watch my shop,
but eyes aren't illegal."

The detective glanced around the room with a practiced eye and then
looked blandly back at the little Scotsman. Harry MacDougal was lying,
and the sergeant knew it. And Harry knew the sergeant knew it.

Sergeant Cowder sighed for a third time and looked at the Scot. "Okay.
So what happened?"

Harry's face became serious. "They came in about six-thirty. First I
knew of it, one of the kids--the boy--stepped out of that closet over
there and put a vibroblade at my back. I'd come back here to get a small
resistor, and all of a sudden there he was."

Mike the Angel frowned, but he didn't say anything.

"None of your equipment registered anything?" asked the detective.

"Not a thing, Sergeant," said Harry. "They've got something new, all
right. The kid must ha' come in through the back door, there. And I'd
ha' been willin' to bet ma life that no human bein' could ha' walked in
here without ma knowin' it before he got within ten feet o' that door.
Look."

He got up, walked over to the back door, and opened it. It opened into
what looked at first to be a totally dark room. Then the sergeant saw
that there was a dead-black wall a few feet from the open door.

"That's a light trap," said Harry. "Same as they have in photographic
darkrooms. To get from this door to the outer door that leads into the
alley, you got to turn two corners and walk about thirty feet. Even I,
masel', couldn't walk through it without settin' off half a dozen
alarms. Any kind of light would set off the bugs; so would the heat
radiation from the human body."

"How a