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brakes, tyres, exhausts” and “Butler’s Wholesale Fish – fresh today!”.
    The place was eerily quiet – there was no sound except for the distant roar of traffic and the continued barking of somebody’s dog. Agent K crouched down, and took a silver case from her inside jacket pocket. Carefully, she placed it on the grass in front of her and stood back.
    The case suddenly flipped open, and SWARM’s seven micro-robots emerged. Each of them beeped a contact signal back to SWARM headquarters, where Queen Bee watched seven monitors.
    The screens showed a complex array of information, including the robots’ exact locations, the programming subroutines that were guiding their behaviour, and the current status of their sensor readings. The largest section of each display was taken up with a view of what the robots were seeing. The advanced cameras fitted into Chopper showed the clearest picture, since he was designed to record and observe in fine detail.
    Crouched on the grass, Agent K snapped the case shut and, pausing only to make sure she wasn’t being followed, she stood and made her way back to the road.
    The robots maintained their positions.
    “Get ready to move in,” said Queen Bee.

    “I can’t do it,” declared Fraser, slumping over the keyboard of his PC and gripping it with sweating hands. “Every route through the program ends in a lockout.” On the screen in front of him, multiple terminal windows showed long strings of UNIX commands, each ending in error codes. “The Whiplash software continually rewrites the encryption algorithm. You’d have to think three dozen steps ahead of it all the time!”
    Williams looked from Fraser to the PC’s screen and back again. He took in a long, slow breath.
    With a sudden knotted feeling in his stomach, Fraser realized he’d pushed too far.
    Everyone in the room carried on with what they were doing but kept one eye on Williams,wondering what he would do.
    Williams stood beside Fraser. “Oh … dear … me,” he said quietly. “Are you telling me you can’t do your job? Is that what you’re telling me?”
    He loomed over Fraser, blocking out the light from the bare electric bulb hanging high above. Fraser stared up at Williams, terrified.

    “Move in,” said the voice of Queen Bee in the robots’ sensory circuits. “Detain the suspects and locate the weapon.”
    “I’m live, Queen Bee,” signalled Chopper. He transmitted a stream of data to the other robots: “Spread out. Sensors on maximum. Our target is the lock-up in the middle.”
    “We’ll make a beeline for it,” said the deep voice of Hercules.
    “Very, very funny, Hercules,” said Nero. “What great programming.”
    “Pay attention,” came the high, musical voice of Sirena the butterfly. “We have a job to do. Queen Bee, are you getting my data feed?”
    “Got it,” said Queen Bee back at headquarters, checking Sirena’s monitor. It was filled with sensor readings of the area surrounding the butterfly.
    All seven robots moved ahead at speed. Sirena, Chopper the dragonfly, Hercules the stag beetle and Sabre the mosquito flew low over the grass, fanning out slightly so that their sensors could pick up information from a wider area. Nero the scorpion, Widow the spider and Morph the centipede scuttled rapidly across the ground.
    “How many suspects will there be?” said Morph. “What weapons will they have?”
    “Unknown, as yet,” said Chopper. “Stay alert.”
    Sirena, whose sensors were the most advanced, fluttered a little ahead of the others. The long antennae extending from her head waved and turned to pick up whatever clues she could.
    “I’m detecting life forms in the lock-up,” she said.
    “How many?” said Chopper.
    “Processing…” said Sirena. “Multiple life signals, but the trace is quite faint. I don’t detectanything shielding my signals. Not sure what to make of it.”
    “There could be electronic interference,” said Chopper.
    “That would match