When CIA Officer Tom Grant was pulled out of early retirement to investigate a recent high-tech robbery at United States Nanotechnologies, America's government-run agency for the development of nanoweapons, he had no idea that he would be propelled into the middle of a conspiracy that could threaten the survival of our species. Teaming up with young Rachel Muratani, a rising star in the agency, and Karen Frost, an old hand from the FBI, Grant tracks the cyber thieves to CyberWerke, a German conglomerate run by Rolf Hartman. Hartman has stretched his high-tech empire across Europe, and now plans to use the newly acquired nanotechnology to take his empire global.Among the stolen USN hardware is a prototype nanoassembler, a highly intelligent and self-propelled machine with the capability of creating and destroying any object allowed by the laws of physics, including itself---though it needs access to radioactive material in order to mine the fuel required to power its clones.
