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"But the problem with reincarnation is that it's hard to imagine what the storage medium for past lives would be. Not to mention the input-output device. I hesitate to rule it out completely, but I'd need pretty definite proof."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Sink Hole of Space | ||
| A rip in space, a hole that pulls in passing objects. |
This is probably the first reference to a black hole, although that name is not used in the story.
| THEY went over to the Danler spacial chart and stood staring at it together. A black smear, twisted like a snake, cutting across the smooth ivory luminosity of the board — that was the Sink Hole.
Swinging across the upper end of that ebony blur they could trace the faint red line of the Walton Arc. A green sliver of glow was the Invincible; the ship crawled deliberately, it seemed to them, along the scarlet curve. As it crawled, it came nearer and nearer the blob of unfolding darkness that was the Hole. It seemed as though some one had spilled ink on the white surface of the chart, and the ink was spreading, spreading.
 (Danler Spacial Chart from 'Star Ship Invincible' by Frank K. Kelly) GRAHAM kept thinking of the girl; and not of the girl alone but of all of them on the Invincible; crouching in a little metal bubble that hurtled at inconceivable speed along the Walton Arc, along a plotted curve that passed just beyond the edge of the Hole in Space. Just beyond — maybe. If the Hole didn’t grow. And the Hole was growing. His throat was bitter and dry. “It’s no good if you’ve been preparing against collision. The Hole isn’t solid, isn’t material or tangible. What the ship’s got to have is power — power to pull away.” “You think,” Garth said slowly, “the Hole is something like a vortex or a whirlpool? And when a ship comes too near it’s sucked under.” “Now you’ve got it,” Graham said. |
| Technovelgy from Star Ship Invincible,
by Frank K. Kelly. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1935 Additional resources -
|
At the end of the story, the Sink Hole had disappeared:
Hansen got up and went over to the little screen. The Sink Hole didn’t show there at all now, nor any trace of it. The sky looked calm, and it was black the way it always had been since Hansen had been aspace, but it was the kind of black a man can look at and understand; there were stars in it, different colors, and the Sun away off in the distance like a red-hot blinking eye put there to watch over you.
“Behind us,” Moran stated, calmvoiced. “We’re on course, and close to Jupiter. Take a look in the v-plate.”
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I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
'...it was all composed of tiny, identical cubes, carefully laid to form a tilelike surface.'
'He carried on his person a triggering mechanism sensitive to his heartbeat.'
'...Anything was possible in my imaginary environment.'
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
