Anxious seconds pa.s.sed. From the height to which they had risen, a great part of the moon was visible, and for the first time Holden realized the full power of the chemical which his ingenuity had devised. Immense tongues of flame ripped through the dust and rock of the satellite, sending dense clouds of vapor bellowing out into s.p.a.ce. Mighty mountains disappeared in an instant.

The _Ganymede_ was traveling at full speed, and yet it seemed as though at any moment the conflagration might reach out, consuming the s.p.a.ce ship in that all-engulfing reaction. Holden manipulated the controls with flying fingers, seeking to get every available bit of speed from the metal monster which was carrying its precious cargo of human beings away from a terrible death.

Far ahead he could see the shape of the _Los Angeles_, now safely outside the danger zone. Thin clouds of vapor floated around the _Ganymede_, then suddenly cleared.

Captain Linet gave a shout of joy as he read the distance recorded on the dials. "Jack, my boy, we're safe. We're outside the limit to which the reaction can extend."

With the three ships playing their deadly beams on the moon, Holden watched the immense craters, the towering mountains, and the desolate plains of the moon slowly vaporize.

It was an awe-inspiring sight, as this dead world slowly melted into the nothingness of s.p.a.ce, as though a disease of matter were wasting it inexorably away.

No doubt, on the earth, as the contours of the moon slowly blurred and became indistinct, with the acc.u.mulation of vapor around its now ragged rim, there must have been terror and consternation. And as the moon slowly evaporated in the skies a virtual panic must have ensued among the Earth's people.

The hand of a terrible fate, or the coming of the end of the world, must have been shouted from city to city as the only explanation of this apparent disaster in the heavens.

But the work had to go on....

For days, the _Ganymede_ and the _Los Angeles_ cruised through the thin clouds, spreading between them the anti-gravitational shield, while the sections of vapor, freed of their mutual attraction, drifted out into uncharted s.p.a.ce.

It was slow, dangerous work, cutting those sections off from the main ma.s.s, and maintaining the proper position until they had floated off into s.p.a.ce. Occasional particles of rock, small but deadly, clattered against the hard sh.e.l.l of the s.p.a.ce ship. Fortunately, no fragments of appreciable size were encountered; the _hexoxen_ had done its work thoroughly. For eight days the powerful ray sliced and repelled. Under its influence huge clouds of vapor, the ghostly remains of the calm globe which had innocently threatened the earth, hurtled off into the farthest reaches of s.p.a.ce, there to sink at last into the substance of some flaming star.

At last the work was finished, and the two ships, saviors of the Earth, turned their bows toward home to carry to the awestruck people of Earth the glad news that interplanetary commerce would be as free of pirates thereafter as the Earth would be free of the disastrous quakes.

And Jack Holden, at last, faced with a light heart the honors that would be his, knowing that he could now share them with the girl of his dreams.

THE END.