"Best think of them as that," Ash said. "Never point one at anyone you don’t want to kill. There’s a relationship between what happens when you depress this stud," she indicated a point on the inner curve of the parrot-head handle, "and the position of the barrel. Though not exclusively, so not entirely like a gun in that regard. Once the system acquires a biological target, on being triggered, it dispatches assemblers, which seek and find the target regardless. Pick one up."