The Moon Destroyers
Page 7
playing their deadly beams on the moon, Holdenwatched the immense craters, the towering mountains, and the desolateplains of the moon slowly vaporize.
It was an awe-inspiring sight, as this dead world slowly melted into thenothingness of space, as though a disease of matter were wasting itinexorably away.
No doubt, on the earth, as the contours of the moon slowly blurred andbecame indistinct, with the accumulation of vapor around its now raggedrim, there must have been terror and consternation. And as the moonslowly evaporated in the skies a virtual panic must have ensued amongthe Earth's people.
The hand of a terrible fate, or the coming of the end of the world, musthave been shouted from city to city as the only explanation of thisapparent disaster in the heavens.
But the work had to go on....
For days, the _Ganymede_ and the _Los Angeles_ cruised through the thinclouds, spreading between them the anti-gravitational shield, while thesections of vapor, freed of their mutual attraction, drifted out intouncharted space.
It was slow, dangerous work, cutting those sections off from the mainmass, and maintaining the proper position until they had floated offinto space. Occasional particles of rock, small but deadly, clatteredagainst the hard shell of the space ship. Fortunately, no fragments ofappreciable size were encountered; the _hexoxen_ had done its workthoroughly. For eight days the powerful ray sliced and repelled. Underits influence huge clouds of vapor, the ghostly remains of the calmglobe which had innocently threatened the earth, hurtled off into thefarthest reaches of space, there to sink at last into the substance ofsome 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 Earththe glad news that interplanetary commerce would be as free of piratesthereafter as the Earth would be free of the disastrous quakes.
And Jack Holden, at last, faced with a light heart the honors that wouldbe his, knowing that he could now share them with the girl of hisdreams.
THE END.