The assistant control engineer gestured. In a corner of the repair room lay the senior control engineer. He was just regaining consciousness. "He tried to turn one of them off," the assistant engineer said. Both his hands were knotted together. He was making a visible effort not to shake. "That's ridiculous. They haven't got any sense of self-preservation." "Then turn them off yourself. Besides, I don't think any more are going to come." What could have happened? Gelsen began to piece it together. The watchbirds still hadn't decided on the limits of a living organism. When some of them were turned off in the Monroe plant, the rest must have correlated the data. So they had been forced to assume that they were living organisms, as well. No one had ever told them otherwise. Certainly they carried on most of the functions of living organisms. Then the old fears hit him. Gelsen trembled and hurried out of the repair room. He wanted to find Macintyre in a hurry. * * * * * The nurse handed the surgeon the sponge. "Scalpel." She placed it in his hand. He started to make the first incision. And then he was aware of a disturbance. "Who let that thing in?" "I don't know," the nurse said, her voice muffled by the mask. "Get it out of here." The nurse waved her arms at the bright winged thing, but it fluttered over her head. The surgeon proceeded with the incision--as long as he was able. The watchbird drove him away and stood guard. "Telephone the watchbird company!" the surgeon ordered. "Get them to turn the thing off." The watchbird was preventing violence to a living organism. The surgeon stood by helplessly while his patient died. * * * * * Fluttering high above the network of highways, the watchbird watched and waited. It had been constantly working for weeks now, without rest or repair. Rest and repair were impossible, because the watchbird couldn't allow itself--a living organism--to be murdered. And that was what happened when watchbirds returned to the factory. There was a built-in order to return, after the lapse of a certain time period. But the watchbird had a stronger order to obey--preservation of life, including its own. The definitions of murder were almost infinitely extended now, impossible to cope with. But the watchbird didn't consider that. It responded to its stimuli, whenever they came and whatever their source. There was a new definition of living organism in its memory files. It had come as a result of the watchbird discovery that watchbirds were living organisms. And it had enormous ramifications. The stimuli came! For the hundredth time that day, the bird wheeled and banked, dropping swiftly down to stop murder. Jackson yawned and pulled his car to a shoulder of the road. He didn't notice the glittering dot in the sky. There was no reason for him to. Jackson wasn't contemplating murder, by any human definition.