Cherryh’s Alternate Realities #1
Port Eternity
by C. J. Cherryh
Living an isolated life on the spaceship Maid of Astolat, Lady Dela and her crew
of cloned servants designed in the image of Arthurian legends are
pulled into a parallel dimension, but despite the title of this first book in Cherryh’s Alternate Realities series, there is no
actual time travel.
— from publicity material
Then it was as if whatever was holding us had just stopped existing, no jolt, but like
sliding on oil, like a horrible falling where there is no falling.
Port Eternity by C. J. Cherryh (DAW Books,
October 1982).