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?" Wayne shook his head wearily. "No," he agreed. "It doesn't matter now." Sheilah moved away from the control board and came toward him. In her filmy, transparent costume, she was the quintessence of womanly allure. Wayne gasped and stared, but not at her. The view screen had become visible when she'd moved. It showed earth. Or a curved, cloud-veiled slice of earth. Intact, serene and growing steadily larger. "What the hell! Why, I thought ..." Wayne jumped to his feet, brushed past Sheilah and peered more closely at the view plate. There was no mistaking it. Earth. "What's a matter with you, mister?" Sheilah asked. Wayne felt dizzy. O'Reilly had said, "Earth blasted away," hadn't he? And the H-bomb hadn't destroyed the Cirissin ship. Therefore ... Well, therefore what? In the first place what O'Reilly had actually said was, "Rid of earth now. Blasted away." It wasn't quite the same as ... O'Reilly had never said anything about _destroying_ earth. Quite a sizeable re-evaluation project was taking place in Wayne's mind. It took several minutes for all the pieces to fall into their proper places. But once he was willing to realize that the Cirissins had known what they were doing, everything seemed obvious. "Oh, good Gawd!" he muttered. "What utter idiots!" "The Cirissins?" Sheilah asked. "No, I mean us. Me. Good Lord, just because O'Reilly's English wasn't perfect! What did I expect for only three weeks? Hummm. The atomic structure of the entire ship must be uniformly charged to ... Damn! High dragon bump!" "I don't getcha," Sheilah said. "What's with this high dragon bump business? I thought they wanted a hydrogen bomb to destroy earth, and I thought you'd agreed to help 'em, and so I thought ..." "Oh, never mind," Wayne said. "I know what you thought, and you weren't any more stupid than I was. We were both wrong. "Look, the Cirissins must have been stalled--out of gas, sort of. Something had gone wrong with their nuclear drive units. They had some emergency fuel, but they didn't want to use it. Like having a can of kerosene in the car when the tank runs dry, I suppose. It will work, but it messes up the engine. You understand so far?" "Sure."