The Knock

There’s a knocking on the spaceship door when there shouldn’t have been. For Chris-sake, I’m umpteen millions of miles from anywhere and here’s this knocking. It’s deliberate, and it’s the all too common knock of: knock, tiddly-knock-knock, knock knock. Is this a space hallucination? I’ve heard of them, but hell’s bells, I’ve only been up here for 50 days, surely it couldn’t happen as soon as this. Oh, mother, it’s peering in the port-hole now and looks just like me. I do feel a bit lonely now, maybe we could get along. I’ve just got to get this hatch open...

From Guest Contributor Len Mooring

The Great Beyond

Havlicek stared out the porthole.

"I think it's getting closer."

Captain Lim did not even glance in his direction.

"Unlikely," she replied. "It just appears that way. We are being dragged closer to it, rather than it following us. Black holes don't move."

Havlicek found this to be scant comfort.

"What do you think will happen to us?"

"We'll die," sighed Lim.

"Yeah, I know, everyone's going to die eventually. But what do you think happens in the black hole?"

Lim shook her head. She could not help feeling that with better officers, this whole situation could have been avoided.