Then, in a sudden flood of horror, Marnay realized the other's purpose. Revenge, of course, he had known that! But he was going to sacrifice both their lives for it!

Kennett shook him away angrily. "Keep cool! You'll see something in a minute—get ready!"

Still they watched and waited. The detector dial registered the swiftly diminishing distance—fifty miles, twenty miles, ten....

Then Kennett was on his feet, moving with swift surety to the wall, opening a small iron locker. There Marnay glimpsed a complete set of odd looking controls. Swiftly Kennett plugged in a bank of connections, electric cables. He grasped a heavy lever. He stood there, looking over at the detector dial. It showed three miles.

"All right," Kennett yelled, "hold tight!... Now!"

His hand came down on the lever.

For a moment Marnay thought the pirate ship had rammed them, or that they had exploded, or both. He and Kennett were suddenly hurtling outward ... at terrific speed ... their tiny compartment away from the rest of the ship!

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 

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