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."