"I'll yell," said Susan ominously. "The second I get out of here, I'll yell so loud the whole galaxy will hear me."
"I should think they've already heard you clear out to Andromeda."
The lights dimmed. The peculiar noises and wrenchings that went with coming out of overdrive began. Durham braced himself.
"It's too bad you reformed," said Susan. "You used to be amusing company, at least. Now you're sour and bad tempered. You're also—"
What he was also Durham never heard. There was a crashing, roaring, rending impact. The chair went out from under him so that he fell face up into the ceiling. The lights went out entirely. He heard a thin faint sound that might have been Susan screaming. Then the ceiling slid away from him and spilled him down a wall. As he went scrabbling past the window he looked out and saw that there were now long vertical rents in the outer hull through which the stars were shining.
The pumps had stopped.
A long settling groan and then silence. The antigrav field was dead. Durham floated, along with everything else that was not bolted down.
"Susan," he said. "Susan?"
"Here."
They met and clung together in mid air while the hull began a slow axial rotation around them.