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."