The Superluminal Man

 

By day, the arc of his passing was like a second horizon, a phosphorescent ribbon of dawn that never diminished, as if a new sun were trying to pierce the sky.

 

By night, his body was a constellation of dark stars, his distended head an incandescent crown, his feet twin meteor trails, reflected one upon the other.

 

Thus, in his cold long-dead capsule, the body of John Grisham Ballard, the first solarnaught to cross the event horizon of a black hole and return, circled the Earth. Beyond any hope of rescue or retrieval.  

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Extract from the short story collection The Last Aviator

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