XVII
Phil struck out wildly, with the instinctive hope that a man falling to his death could warp space to his advantage if he tensed his muscles sufficiently.
Then he wondered how long it would take a man to fall fifty floors, but the mathematics were beyond anything he could do quickly enough in his head.
Then he asked himself why the inky sack was falling with him.
Then he retched, but brought up only the ghosts of a yeast-spread sandwich and a glass of soybean milk consumed a day ago.
He continued to fall.
Soft light sprang up around him. He was inside a sphere some eight feet in diameter and his feet were near the center, while his cheek gently brushed the sphere's soft lining. Swiveling his gaze past his feet, he noticed Dytie da Silva sprawled negligently in the air and intently studying a screen set in the lining of the sphere.
But he was still falling.
Phil knew little enough about space ships, but he knew they couldn't safely go into free-fall without accelerating first to get some kind of edge on earth's gravitational field.