Mind-Bending Tales of Discoveries from Beyond the Universe — V. Bertolaccini

An astounding twenty-first century mind-bending sci-fi adventure classic, with two novelettes about the discovery of alien artifacts, which lead to voyages beyond the boundaries of space and time, with the explorers marooned and racing to escape. The first story, set at the end of the twenty-first century, explores the discovery of a pulsating alien sphere on Mars, and the investigation of it and a small black hole that it holds in its confines, and beyond space and time. It magically suspends gleams of light frozen in time, motionlessly in mid-air, as they enter objects into its miniature black hole, creating spectacular optical effects (suspending objects in clusters of transparent layers). Then an accident occurs and scientists are pulled into it, and they travel out beyond the realms of the universe. In the second story, Beyond Space and Time, an entity/life form from beyond the boundaries of space and time enters the universe, and on its exploration of the galaxy crashes into the surface of the Earth. Archaeologists discover it, in an alien artifact, concealed beneath a cave below the ruins of a castle, over a sea cliff. They take it away on a ship, and soon start to find that it is far more than they thought. In the end they activate it, sending it and them hurtling into space, and beyond the universe, with them trapped there.