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"It's hard to tell stories about critters that are not human. John W. Campbell tried it, in "Twilight," and everybody says it's a wonderful story, and nobody ever reads it twice."
- Jerry Pournelle

Hunter-seeker  
  An assassination device that floats in mid-air; kills by entering the body and following nerve pathways to vital organs.  

As a child of royal blood, Paul Atreides learns how to survive in a difficult universe where all below you covet your station in life. One device uses a compressed version of the suspensor field (present in many Dune artifacts) which makes it float through the air silently.

From behind the headboard slipped a tiny hunter-seeker no more than five centimeters long. Paul recognized it at once - a common assassination weapon that every child of royal blood learned about at an early age. It was a ravening sliver of metal guided by some near-by hand and eye.


(Hunter Seeker from 'Dune' by Frank Herbert)

Technovelgy from Dune, by Frank Herbert.
Published by Putnam in 1965
Additional resources -

And did I mention that it is attracted to movement? Barehanded, there is only one way to defeat a hunter-seeker.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Dune
  More Ideas and Technology by Frank Herbert
  Tech news articles related to Dune
  Tech news articles related to works by Frank Herbert

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