經典科幻文學:《基本上無害 Mostly Harmless》 第21章4

‘Would you like to watch television? It is a long flight. We watch television. It is something we enjoy.’

“你想看電視嗎？路還長。我們看電視。我們喜歡這個。”

All of this riveting stuff was on the tape, and fine viewing it made. First of all the picture quality was extremely poor. Tricia didn’t know why this was, exactly. She had a feeling that the Grebulons responded to a slightly different range of light frequencies, and that there had been a lot of ultra-violet around which was mucking up the video camera. There were a lot of interference patterns and video snow as well. Probably something to do with the warp drive that none of them knew the first thing about.

所有這些迷人的東西都在帶子上，問題是這東西沒法拿出去播放。首先，所有的圖像質量都很差。崔茜卡也不明白這究竟是爲什麼。她覺得大概是因爲格里布隆人對光線的反應和地球人稍有不同，而且周圍又有好多紫外線搞亂。畫面上總有特別濃密的干擾和雪花。沒準跟那個他們誰都半點也不懂的偏差驅動器有什麼關係。

So what she had on tape, essentially, was a bunch of slightly thin and discoloured people sitting around watching televisions that were showing network broadcasts. She had also pointed the camera out of the very tiny viewport near her seat and got a nice, slightly streaky effect of stars. She knew it was real, but it would have taken a good three or four minutes to fake.

因此，總的來說，她的帶子上就是一堆有點瘦有點褪色的人排排坐看電視。她還把攝影機鏡頭對準了座位旁一個特別小的觀察孔，拍到星星有些拖拽的效果。挺漂亮。她知道那是真的，但如果是造假的話，這番景象不過就需要個三四分鐘。

In the end she had decided to save her precious videotape for Rupert itself and had simply sat back and watched television with them. She had even dozed off for a while.

最後她決定還是把珍貴的帶子留着到了魯伯特再用，於是她乾脆坐下來跟他們一起看電視，甚至還打了會瞌睡。

So part of her sick feeling came from the sense that she had had all that time in an alien spacecraft of astounding technological design, and had spent most of it dozing in front of reruns of M*A*S*H and Cagney and Lacey. But what else was there to do? She had taken some photos as well, of course, all of which had subsequently turned out to be badly fogged when she got them back from the chemist.

這麼說來，一部分噁心的感覺應該源於這次飛行。她在一艘科技超高的外星飛船上待了那麼久，結果大部分時間都在重播的《風流醫生俏護士》和《美國警花》跟前打瞌睡。可她又有什麼辦法？當然她還照了幾張照片，可等回地球洗出來卻發現，裏頭沒有一張清楚的。

Another part of her sick feeling probably came from the landing on Rupert. This at least had been dramatic and hair-raising. The ship had come sweeping in over a dark and sombre landscape, a terrain so desperately far removed from the heat and light of its parent sun that it seemed like a map of the psychological scars on the mind of an abandoned child.

另一部分噁心的感覺多半來自降落。至少降落的時候頗富戲劇性，讓人汗毛倒豎。飛船掠過一片漆黑陰沉的大地，這地方跟母星的光和熱的差別實在大得讓人絕望，地表活像是棄兒心理上的傷疤。

Lights blazed through the frozen darkness and guided the ship into the mouth of some kind of cave that seemed to bend itself open to accept the small craft.

燈光射透凍結的黑暗，指引着飛船，某個山洞似的東西似乎張開了嘴，迎接小飛船進入。

Unfortunately, because of the angle of their approach, and the depth at which the small thick viewport was set into the craft’s skin, it hadn’t been possible to get the video camera to point directly at any of it. She ran through that bit of the tape.

不幸的是，由於他們接近洞口的角度以及飛船表面觀察孔的深度，崔茜卡的攝影機沒法從正面拍下任何畫面，她把這部分快進過去。

The camera was pointing directly at the sun.

攝影機的鏡頭直指着太陽。