Sure enough, once Lew was hanging dangerously from very top of the inertrium lattice he heard the videophone ring. He clambered down the lattice's spherical side and fell onto the phone as its bell sounded for the fourth time.
Cornelius Zappencackler's face lit up the videophone: this excited some primordial part of Lew's brain, which started to pump messages about saber tooth tigers to any other part of his brain that would listen.
"Get on with it, Stone!" Professor Zappencackler bellowed. (Cave bears! Forest fires!) "You've got till the end of the day." And the phone went dark again.
Lew looked from the phone back up at the inertrium lattice where it bumped against the ceiling. So glad you called to remind me, he thought. And he climbed back up the struts to the cross braces at the top. He'd already nearly finished - after bolting the last few struts into place, he had a perfect open sphere of inertrium. Another inertrium block of the same volume was floating up at the sphere's top. For now, Lew thought.
The big lattice was chained to the floor just because that was standard practice with unbalanced inertrium. It couldn't float up any higher than the lab ceiling anyway. But Lew was scrupulous about his laboratory procedures, even when Zappencackler was hounding him. (Dire wolves!)
With his two equal volumes of inertrium ready it was only the work of a few moments to disconnect the videophone and reconnect it to the transmitter and receiver that faced each other through the lattice. Lew unpacked the Chiralitron and aimed it at the floating inertrium block. That was when Lew's roommate ambled i
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