you. Bert's sixteen, Sue's seventeen. They were
pretty thick, I gather: real brother and sister team."

"Good family, bad kids," Mike muttered. He had wandered over to the wall
to look at his Dali. It had fallen to the floor, but it wasn't hurt. The
Valois was bent, but it could be fixed up easily enough.

"I wonder," Mike said, picking up the head of a smashed figurine and
looking at it. "I wonder if the so-called sociologists have any
explanation for it?"

"Sure," Cowder said. "Same one they've been giving for more decades than
I'd care to think of. The mother was married before. Divorced her
husband, married Larchmont. But she had a boy by her first husband."

"Broken home and sibling rivalry? _Pfui!_ And if it wasn't that, the
sociologists would find another excuse," Mike said angrily.

"Funny thing is that the older half brother was a perfectly respectable
kid. Made good grades in school, joined the Space Service, has a
perfectly clean record. And yet _he_ was the product of the broken home,
not the two younger kids."

Mike laughed dryly. "_That_ ought to be food for high sociological
thought."

The door announcer chimed again, and Cowder said: "That's probably the
lab boys. I told them to come over here as soon as they could finish up
at the cathedral."

Mike checked his screen and when Cowder identified the men at the door,
Mike let them in.

The short, chubby man in the lead, who was introduced as Perkins, spoke
to Sergeant Cowder first. "We checked one of those rockets. Almost a
professional job. TNT war head, surrounded by a jacket filled with
liquid HCN and a phosphate inhibitor to prevent polymerization. Nasty
things." He swung round to Mike. "You're lucky you weren't in the room,
or you'd just be part of the wreckage, Mr. Gabriel."

"I know," said Mike the Angel. "Well, the room's all yours. It probably
won't tell you much."

"Probably not," said Perkins, "but we'll see. Come on, boys."

Mike the Angel tapped Cowder on the shoulder. "I'd like to talk to you
for a minute."

Cowder nodded, and Mike led the way back into his private office. He
opened his desk drawer and took out the little pack that housed the
workings of the vibroblade shield.

"That accident you were talking about, Sergeant--the one that made those
vibroblades blow, remember? I got to thinking that maybe this could have
caused it. I think that with a little more power, it might even vaporize
a high-speed bullet. But I'd ad