經典科幻文學:《基本上無害 Mostly Harmless》 第21章2

She was sitting in a small editing suite at a video production company in Soho. She had ‘Do not disturb’ notices plastered all over the door, and a block on all incoming calls at the switchboard. This was originally to protect her astonishing scoop, but now it was to protect her from embarrassment.

這是位於soho的一間視頻製作公司，崔茜卡正坐在一個小製作間裏。她往門上貼滿了“請勿打擾”的標記，還告訴接線員，任何電話都不要接進來。起初這是爲了保護她的獨家新聞，現在則是保護她自己的面子。

She would watch the tape all the way through again from the beginning. If she could bear to. She might do some fast forwarding here and there.

她要把帶子從頭到尾再看一遍。如果她還能忍受的話。或許在某個地方會快進一點點。

It was’ about four o’clock on Monday afternoon, and she had a kind of sick feeling. She was trying to work out what the cause of this slightly sick feeling was, and there was no shortage of candidates.

現在大約是星期一下午四點，她稍微有點噁心反胃的感覺。她試着尋找引起這感覺的原因，但候選人實在太多。

First of all, it had all come on top of the overnight flight from New York. The red eye. Always a killer, that.

首先，這一切都發生在連夜從紐約飛回來之後。紅眼航班。從來都要命的很，那東西。

Then, being accosted by aliens on her lawn and flown to the planet Rupert. She was not sufficiently experienced in that sort of thing to be able to say for sure that that was always a killer, but she would be prepared to bet that those who went through it regularly cursed it. There were always stress charts being published in magazines. Fifty stress points for losing your job. Seventy-five points for a divorce or changing your hairstyle and so on. None of them ever mentioned being accosted on your lawn by aliens and then being flown to the planet Rupert, but she was sure it was worth a few dozen points.

然後，在自家草坪上被外星人搭訕，接着又飛到了魯伯特。這種事情上她經驗不足，沒法判斷它是不是也從來都要命的很，但她絕對敢跟人打賭，時常飛往魯伯特的人準會罵娘。雜誌上經常刊登那種壓力圖。丟掉工作，五十點壓力值。離婚或者換髮型之類，七十五點。迄今還沒人提到在自己家草坪上被外星人搭訕，接着又飛到魯伯特去，但她確信這總該值個幾十點吧。

It wasn’t that the journey had been particularly stressful. It had been extremely dull in fact. Certainly it had been no more stressful than the trip she had just taken across the Atlantic and it had taken roughly the same time, about seven hours.

其實她本身倒不是特別有壓力。事實上應該說是無聊之極。反正至少不比橫穿大西洋那一趟更讓她緊張，而且花的時間也差不多，大約玩了7個鐘頭。

Well that was pretty astounding wasn’t it? Flying to the outer limits of the solar system in the same time that it took to fly to New York meant they must have some fantastic unheard-of form of propulsion in the ship. She quizzed her hosts about it and they agreed that it was pretty good.

這總該讓人吃驚了吧？飛到太陽系的邊緣地帶，花的時間卻跟人飛到紐約一樣，這說明他們的飛船裏肯定有些沒人聽說過的超級棒的推進裝置。她問了問自己的東道主，而他們也表示同意，認爲它確實不錯。