He looked in the panel and his heart leaped. They had indeed exploded--very systematically! He saw fully a score of miniature _Veras_ speeding away from each other in a perfect, ever widening circle! Each was a tiny spacer with its own motivating blast. He recalled the puzzling construction of the _Vera_ as he'd first seen it, and now suddenly he understood; it had been _segmented_! Where the huge original _Vera_ had been was now only a huge steel framework, from which the score of miniature _Veras_ were speeding away in their widening circle. The pirate ship was blasting violently with its forward rockets, but it was too late. It crashed into the framework, crumpling and tangling it and carrying it forward on the momentum. "Now watch!" Kennett was yelling unnecessarily in Marnay's ear. "Space-bombs such as you never saw before--each of those _Veras_, ten tons of _Tynyte_!" "But--they're going away...." "They're equipped with magniplates! And only barely enough rocket power to hurl them away from each other. Just watch!" The mile-wide circle of miniature _Veras_ was slowing, as each of their feeble rocket-blasts ceased. And then they came heading swiftly back to their original source, the magniplates pulling them back. As though endowed with some uncanny intelligence, they came; as though aware of the revenge entrusted to them, and the significance of their name. The first one struck near the pirate ship's prow, letting loose its death. The ship lifted like a proud black stallion rearing in the air. The tough metal hull held--but only for a second. Another _Vera_ struck. The blast hurled the ship directly into a host of others which exploded in a holocaust that ripped the black hull open like a sardine can. The rest of the _Veras_ came speeding into the mass to let loose their death, complete and final. As Marnay turned from that scene in the panel he felt sick and a little weak; Kennett was pale, but the grim little lines were gone from around his mouth and a bitter look was no longer in his eyes. "Well, it's all over," he said with startling calmness. "I've done what I swore three years ago I'd do. I think I named my ship well." He stared long and wistfully into space. "Yes, they're gone now--all the _Veras_ are gone. Except one. _This_ one's left to take us back, so we'd better start sifting through all that mess out there for enough fuel." Slowly they drifted in, to begin the grim task. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Revenge of the Vera, by Henry Hasse