He no longer had a barely suppressed fear of being hurled by his deity into the molten ocean of Rejectus. It was as if he had paid for his own sins through the mechanical scapegoat and now could live on with an untroubled conscience.
He took the cigar from his mouth and chortled.
And a third mushroom suddenly sprouted.
Revanche and his star yacht went back to the elements in its white heart, far hotter than the flames of Rejectus.
Da Vincelleo had been a thorough man, as suspicious as Revanche himself. Shortly after he had made his deal with the financier, he had had a machine built which keyed in to the personal pattern of his kappa brain-waves. If that pattern disappeared, quit radiating, a circuit was activated which sent a "bloodhound" missile soaring up into the air from a buried pit in the city of Messina, a missile whose electromagnetic nose sniffed for the scent of Revanche's kappa brain-waves and would not stop until it homed in on its target.
Thus, if the financier had paused long enough to light up his cigar before pressing the button that disposed of his enemy, he would have finished smoking it and many more after it.
For Da Vincelleo had been convinced that Revanche had perished with the false city of Dafess, and he was just reaching out to flick the bloodhound's de-activation stud when Revanche's missile interrupted him forever.