him Sheilah screamed, "The bomb! You've got the bomb and
you're going to--Well, you're not!"

Her body slammed against his shoulders and her arms encircled his neck.
Her fingers clawed at his eyes.

Wayne struggled, not to free himself, but only to get one hand loose, to
reach the control board. When he did get a hand free, they had floated
too far from the controls.

"Stop it, you stupid bitch!" Wayne snarled. "You're going to kill us
both!"

Wayne said, "Listen, there's a guided missile from earth heading
straight for this ship, and it has a hydrogen bomb warhead. It'll get
here any minute now and when it--"

His words were broken off by the tremendous roar and concussion of the
hydrogen bomb.

Wayne's last thought before oblivion swallowed him was that they
wouldn't have had time to escape, anyway.

But that wasn't the end. Wayne woke up enough to refuse to believe he
was alive, and O'Reilly was somewhere near, telling him:

"Cirissins full of grate your forts. Radio eggulant blan. Thankel
normous. Rid of earth now. Blasted away. Givish _good_ high dragon bump.
Yukon gome now."

Wayne groaned. The meaning of O'Reilly's words was trying to get through
to his brain, and he was trying desperately to keep the meaning out.

O'Reilly's voice receded into a thick gray fog. "Keep shib. Shores.
Presirent felpings. Gluck."

Metal slammed against metal. Wayne slammed against something hard. And
darkness closed in once again.

But this time it wasn't so smothering and didn't last nearly so long.

When he opened his eyes his head was clear. He wasn't floating. He was
lying on something hard--a floor surface of the Cirissin landing ship.
He didn't ache anywhere.

All in all he felt pretty good.

For the first few seconds.

Then he started remembering things, and he wished he hadn't bothered to
wake up.

Sheilah was standing by the control panel, her back to him. She blocked
the view screen, but Wayne didn't want to see it anyway. He wasn't even
curious.

Sheilah turned, saw him, smiled broadly.

She said, "Gee, mister, I guess you're a hero. I dunno how you done it,
but you made 'em go away, and you made 'em turn us loose." Wayne could
detect no mockery or bitterness in her voice.

"Aw, shut up," he growled.

"You still mad at me cause of what I done? Well, gee, I'm sorry. I
didn't get whatcha were up to. I guess I still don't, but ... Oh, hell,
let's don't fight about it. It don't matter now, does it