CAUGHT BY A BLACK HOLE
The spaceship warned Li Yanping and me to be ready as we were approaching (靠近) the "black hole". We could see some faint lights around what looked like an empty space. Li Yanping said, "That empty hole is like a mouth always needing to be fed. Those lights are things that are being pulled into it by the gravity of the hole." We watched with interest and amazement at the lights which seemed to be going fainter and fainter round the edge of the black hole. Just then the lights on our spaceship went out and the computer stopped working. What was happening? I tried to turn the spaceship away from the hole but it would not move. Would it eat us too?
Suddenly the spaceship jumped and began to move round the edge of the hole too. The gravity of the "black hole" was pulling us into its "mouth". As the spaceship moved round the black hole, I felt rather sick. My mouth went dry and I closed my eyes. All the stories about what happened when you were caught by the gravity of a "black hole" seemed to be true.
But then the spaceship jumped again. This time it moved sideways and away from the edge of the "black hole". Someone watching me would have seen the spaceship flying like a bird away from the "black hole". But we felt nothing. At last we were able to look around us. Luckily the computer had started working again. We realized that we had discovered something new about "black holes". If you go inside the edge of a "black hole", it will "eat" you and there is no escape; but if you do not, you may have an opportunity to escape. How exciting!
