Now there was the ship—and no matter how far she stretched it she couldn’t call the vehicle a plane. If she accepted that it was real and not part of some strange, vivid dream, then she had to accept Cal’s story.

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/ than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”

“Hamlet.” He grinned at her quick, suspicious look. “We still read Shakespeare. Want some coffee?”

She shook her head. Dream or not, she needed answers. “You say you . . . bounced off a black hole?”

He smiled, immeasurably relieved. She believed him. Perhaps she didn’t fully realize it herself, but she believed him. “That’s right, or at least that’s what I think. I’m going to need my computer. My instruments went berserk when we hit the gravitational field, so I went to manual and managed to bank east. I remember the force. It must be what a fly feels like when someone gives it a good solid bat. I passed out. When I came to, I was free-falling toward Earth. I switched back to computer and thought my troubles were over.”

“That doesn’t explain how you ended up here—or should I say now.”

“There are a lot of theories. The one I lean toward deals with the space-time continuum. It’s like a curved bowl.” He cupped his palm to demonstrate. “Mathematically, the bowl isn’t space and it isn’t time. It’s a combination of both. Everything in it moves through space and time. Gravity’s the curve of the bowl, drawing everything down. Around the Earth it’s not much of a curve. You don’t really feel it unless you, say, fall off a cliff. But around the sun, and around a black hole . . .” He deepened the cup of his palm.

“And you’re saying you were caught in that curve?”

“Like a marble being spun around the lip of the bowl. And somewhere, somehow, along the spin, I was flicked off. The speed, the trajectory, sent me tunneling not just through space but through time.”

“It sounds almost plausible when you say it.”

“It’s the only theory I’ve got. Maybe if we look at it, it’ll sound more plausible.” Leaning forward, he turned a dial. “Computer.”

Yes, Cal.

Libby lifted a brow at the soft, sultry voice. “Since when do they make computers tall, blond and busty?”

He just grinned. “Intergalactic runs can be lonely. Computer, play back log date 02–05. On screen.”