"In flight, it resembles a pesky insect, but it's deucedly hard to capture or swat. Though this is the only specimen reported so far, we imagine there may be others. This 'flybot' ignores non-human life, and only visits each human once. Aside from a welt at the injection point, our subjects show no adverse effect."

"It seems to be marking them, searching for some attribute," Bonf ventured. "Perhaps if you acquired some Bosnian subjects..."

"A capital idea, Bonf," Q enthused. "We are flying some chaps in as you speak. However, we need you to go round and have a look. This transmitter..." Q handed him a lapel pin "...repels the flybots. Good luck."

Bonf took an overland route into Bosnia. Though UN troops were everywhere, flight was still a dicey proposition; the few flights that did come in garnered too much attention. In Sarajevo he found a decent pub and nursed a Guinness. The sun was low in the west when the screams began.

The swarm of flybots blotted out the sky, then descended into the city. They chased children into alleyways, flew into the open windows of cars, found their way into houses. Bonf's lapel transmitter kept them about ten feet away from his person, but everyone else was bitten. After less than two minutes, the attack was over, and the flybots scattered. People picked themselves up, feeling their bites, feeling the relief of a child stepping off the roller coaster. No one had more than one bite, and no one was injured.

Bonf called Q. "The city was just attacked. Nearly everyone got it, but the lapel pin spared me. Are you sure there's not some sort of slow-acting poison injected?"

"No, we're quite sure," said Q. "The only interesting thing is, the Muslims are injected with a slightly different hormone than the other subjects. How the flybots can determine this genetically is not known."

An ominous chill settled over Bonf. "How long does it stay in the bloodstream in detectable amounts?"

"It breaks down in twenty-four hours."

"Then that's all the time I have. The flybots have partitioned the people into Muslim and non-Muslim. I fear this paves the way for some automated attack against ethnic Muslims. Cheers, Q."

"We may have a bit of a problem, Bonf. You don't need to check the blood for the presence of the marker hormone; it creates a detectable change in the subject's respiration. A marked person's breath could give him away."

To be continued!