Only seventeen of the mechanical soldiers had survived the destruction of the saucers and their masters. Twelve of the ten-foot-diameter pods shot free of the mangled remains of the saucers and went to their programmed destination-the planet below. Their sensors immediately picked up advanced electrical sources that the primitive world should not have on its surface. They locked on to the signals and shot into space with fiery engine bursts, their destination Earth. The mechanical killers’ programmed orders from their masters were to eliminate the last vestiges of mankind.

The last five pods rolled out of the wreckage in ball form. Three started roving the lunar surface searching for the enemy they had been programmed to kill, while the other two rolled toward the last place their telemetry had told them humans had been-the crater. Each of the five pods, after not discovering their enemy, settled into the lunar dust, their mechanical bodies curled into fetal positions inside their shells. Their duty would be to wait, no matter how long, for man to return to the surface of the lunar world.

The minister of armaments for the Third Reich stood silently in front of the most powerful man in Nazi Germany other than the Fuhrer himself. The smallish, sheepish little man sat behind his desk with not so much as a single oiled hair out of place, and a uniform that had been recently cleaned and pressed. Even while his world was falling apart and burning around him, the small rat managed to maintain an air of superiority. The man behind the desk studied the last page in the brown folder that had been delivered to him only moments before. The reich minister for armament production, Albert Speer, stood waiting for a reaction by the former chicken farmer who was now serving as the head of the most powerful entity outside of the German army, the SS.

Heinrich Himmler adjusted his glasses as he read.