“It’s okay,” Master Sunvyer said, holding up an airy hand. “No need to panic. I’ve got the Cavorite field up.”

“Will that help?!” Hendry asked, peering out the window at the ground rushing by far below.

“Of course,” Sunvyer said soothingly. “It completely shields us from the effects of gravity. Though not inertia, I’m afraid, so now we have to…”

“Wait, it does what?” Hendry exclaimed. “How?”

“There’s no time to explain, and you wouldn’t understand it anyway,” Sunvyer snapped, his hands flying over the controls. “I invented it for the surveying teams.”

“What surveying teams?”

“The ones I sent out to measure black holes.”

“To what!?”

“Measure black holes. They’ve only gotten one so far, of course…”

Hendry’s mind felt as much in freefall as the ship had just been. Nothing in this time period made sense!

“But…why?” he asked weakly.

“I was tired of not being able to check the long-distance calculations on the point,” the other man answered. “Which were completely wrong, by the way.”