The fighting is extensive and severe, most of it performed by "leadies", robots built to withstand the most extreme circumstances.

Unable to exist in the atmosphere created by robot war, vast "ant tanks" are constructed underground to save the diminishing human population.

Their president, Talbot Yancy, delivers inspirational speeches to the tankers, motivating them to increase their production of leadies and win the war.

The Agency is run by the most vicious and greedy Yance-man, Stanton Brose, who is kept alive by pre-war artificial organs which he hoards.

The tank president, Nicholas St. James, is forced to go to the surface to buy an artificial pancreas on the black market.

He has lived through history, taking many positions of note under different names, and now he has killed the members of this special project.

In desperation and fear, he joins up with St. James, who discovered a cache of artificial organs, and flees into the Tom Mix tank with him.