The Eye of Japetus had blinked, as if to remove an irritating speck of dust. David Bowman had time for just one broken sentence which the waiting men in Mission Control, nine hundred million miles away and eighty minutes in the future, were never to forget:

“The thing’s hollow – it goes on forever – and – oh my God! – it’s full of stars!”

2001: a Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke (1968)