"Decoupling," the voice announced, and not a moment too soon, since the acceleration had become difficult to tolerate. Had they not broken their connection to the tip of the whip, the gee forces would have rendered them unconscious, then killed them, and finally ripped the flivver to shreds. Flynks were built to survive forces that humans and ordinary spacecraft could not. But the geometry and the timing of the niksht had been programmed so that it would bring them to their desired velocity and release them into their new trajectory just before the crisis that, in an Old Earth bullwhip, would have been signaled by the sharp bang of a sonic boom. Weightlessness returned, unless you counted a bit of corrective jostling from the flivver’s thrusters. Kath Two’s vision cleared and she swallowed a few times, trying to settle her stomach.