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 space, 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 accumulation 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 space. It was slow, dangerous work, cutting those sections off from the main mass, and maintaining the proper position until they had floated off into space. Occasional particles of rock, small but deadly, clattered against the hard shell of the space 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 space, 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. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Moon Destroyers, by Monroe K. Ruch