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"I started writing in the 1930's when I was eighteen years old. And deep inside me I'm still eighteen and it's still 1938."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Dead Spot | ||
| A small planet in space has unusual properties. |
| ...the rockets sent trembling
vibrations through the ship. Instruments showed an exhaust velocity that should have sent the craft scudding outward into the spaceways. But Procrustes, behind them now, grew no
smaller and the dim, pin-point of the
.. sun far ahead grew no brighter.
"Something's the matter with the mixture—we're getting no acceleration!" exclaimed Lucas. "I suppose we'd better land on this thing—asteroid or whatever it is—and make some repairs." Layden shook his head as the craft once more was wheeled about. Again the rocket motors sent volcanic blasts into the ether—this time with the ship's nose pointed toward Procrustes. But the planet grew no nearer. "We're stuck!" exclaimed Jim Vorhees, the second pilot. "Something's holding us here!" Lucas glanced at Layden, who nodded. "I nearly got stuck here once before," said Layden. "I've named this planet Procrustes, the dead spot in the universe, where no laws seem to be in force!" |
| Technovelgy from Interplanetary Graveyard,
by R.R. Winterbotham. Published by Amazing Stories in 1939 Additional resources -
|
How does it work? It's complicated...
"There's a funny thing about this world. Magnetic conditions in the vicinity of the planet operate along the same lines as the Fitzgerald contraction, only, of course, it's quite different.
"The nearer we get to the planet, the closer the atoms in our bodies are packed. As a result we get smaller, but we don't realize it. We only know that the relative distance to the planet remains the same. No matter how close we go to the planet, we'd still be just as
far away, because the nearer we get, the smaller we become. Our ship, our
rocket fuel, our instruments, everything
decreases in the same proportion.
The interplanetary graveyard idea is also known by another name - the Sargasso of Space. Compare to the sargasso asteroid from The Stars My Destination (1956) by Alfred Bester.
You see, we're stuck in spacial mud—so to speak—and it'll hold us tighter than any terrestrial mud you've ever seen, because of a peculiar magnetic phenomenon that is inherent to Procrustes..."
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'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
