經典科幻文學:《生命 宇宙及一切》第12章2

Did you not learn Ancient Galactic history when you were a child?
I was in the cybercubicle behind Zaphod, said Ford, it was very distracting. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t learn some pretty stunning things.
At this point Arthur noticed a curious feature to the song that the party were singing. The middle eight bridge, which would have had McCartney firmly consolidated in Winchester and gazing intently over the Test Valley to the rich pickings of the New Forest beyond, had some curious lyrics. The songwriter was referring to meeting with a girl not “under the moon” or “beneath the Stars” but “above the grass”, which struck Arthur a little prosaic. Then he looked up again at the bewildering black sky, and had the distinct feeling that there was an important point here, if only he could grasp what it was. It gave him a feeling of being alone in the Universe, and he said so.
No, said Slartibartfast, with a slight quickening of his step, the people of Krikkit have never thought to themselves “We are alone in the Universe.” They are surrounded by a huge Dust Cloud, you see, their single sun with its single world, and they are right out on the utmost eastern edge of the Galaxy. Because of the Dust Cloud there has never been anything to see in the sky. At night it is totally blank, During the day there is the sun, but you can’t look directly at that so they don’t. They are hardly aware of the sky. It’s as if they had a blind spot which extended 180 degrees from horizon to horizon.
You see, the reason why they have never thought “We are alone in the Universe” is that until tonight they don’t know about the Universe. Until tonight.
He moved on, leaving the words ringing in the air behind him.
Imagine, he said, never even thinking “We are alone” simply because it has never occurred to you to think that there’s any other way to be.
He moved on again.
I’m afraid this is going to be a little unnerving, he added. As he spoke, they became aware of a very thin roaring scream high up in the sightless sky above them. They glanced upwards in alarm, but for a moment or two could see nothing.
Then Arthur noticed that the people in the party in front of them had heard the noise, but that none of them seemed to know what to so with it. They were glancing around themselves in consternation, left, right, forwards, backwards, even at the ground. It never occurred to them to look upwards.
The profoundness of the shock and horror they emanated a few moments later when the burning wreckage of a spaceship came hurtling and screaming out of the sky and crashed about half a mile from where they were standing was something that you had to be there to experience.
Some speak of the Heart of Gold in hushed tones, some of the Starship Bistromath.
Many speak of the legendary and gigantic Starship Titanic, a majestic and luxurious cruise-liner launched from the great shipbuilding asteroid complexes of Artifactovol some hundreds of years ago now, and with good reason.
It was sensationally beautiful, staggeringly huge, and more pleasantly equipped than any ship in what now remains of history (see note below on the Campaign for Real Time) but it had the misfortune to be built in the very earliest days of Improbability Physics, long before this difficult and cussed branch of knowledge was fully, or at all, understood.
The designers and engineers decided, in their innocence, to build a prototype Improbability Field into it, which was meant, supposedly, to ensure that it was Infinitely Improbable that anything would ever go wrong with any part of the ship.
They did not realize that because of the quasi-reciprocal and circular nature of all Improbability calculations, anything that was Infinitely Improbable was actually very likely to happen almost immediately.
The Starship Titanic was a monstrously pretty sight as it lay beached like a silver Arcturan Megavoidwhale amongst the laserlit tracery of its construction gantries, a brilliant cloud of pins and needles of light against the deep interstellar blackness; but when launched, it did not even manage to complete its very first radio message an SOS before undergoing a sudden and gratuitous total existence failure.
However, the same event which saw the disastrous failure of one science in its infancy also witnessed the apotheosis of another. It was conclusively proven that more people watched the tri-d coverage of the launch than actually existed at the time, and this has now been recognized as the greatest achievement ever in the science of audience research.
Another spectacular media event of that time was the supernova which the star Ysllodins underwent a few hours later. Ysllodins is the star around which most of the Galaxy’s major insurance underwriters live, or rather lived.
But whilst these spaceships, and other great ones which come to mind, such as the Galactic Fleet Battleships the GSS Daring, the GSS Audacy and the GSS Suicidal Insanity are all spoken of with awe, pride, enthusiasm, affection, admiration, regret, jealousy, resentment, in fact most of the better known emotions, the one which regularly commands the most actual astonishment was Krikkit One, the first spaceship ever built by the people of Krikkit. This is not because it was a wonderful ship. It wasn’t.
It was a crazy piece of near junk. It looked as if it had been knocked up in somebody’s backyard, and this was in fact precisely where it had been knocked up. The astonishing thing about the ship was not that it was one well (it wasn’t) but that it was done at all. The period of time which had elapsed between the moment that the people of Krikkit had discovered that there was such a thing as space and the launching of their first spaceship was almost exactly a year.
Ford Prefect was extremely grateful, as he strapped himself in, that this was just another Informational Illusion, and that he was therefore completely safe. In real life it wasn’t a ship he would have set foot in for all the rice wine in China. “Extremely rickety” was one phrase which sprang to mind, and “Please may I get out?” was another.
This is going to fly? said Arthur, giving gaunt looks, at the lashed-together pipework and wiring which festooned the cramped interior of the ship.
Slartibartfast assured him that it would, that they were perfectly safe and that it was all going to be extremely instructive and not a little harrowing.
Ford and Arthur decided just to relax and be harrowed.

“你小時候沒有學過遠古銀河史嗎？”
“我坐在贊福德隔壁，”福特說，“根本沒法集中。不過這不代表我沒學到驚人的知識。”
此刻，阿瑟注意到那羣人的歌有點特別。中間第八段的歌詞挺奇特——如果是麥卡特尼的話，就會唱他盤桓於溫切斯特城，深情遙望泰斯特山谷和新森林那可愛的遠景。作者提到遇見一個女孩時，不是說“月光裏”或“星空下”，而是“草地上”，阿瑟覺得太缺乏詩意。他一擡頭，看見那古怪的漆黑夜空，他有種強烈的感覺：問題的重點就在這兒，只不過他不知是什麼問題。他只覺得自己在宇宙中是孤獨的。他把這個感覺講了出來。
“不。”司拉提巴特法斯稍稍加快腳步，“版求人從未想過‘我們在宇宙中是孤獨的’。他們被包圍在巨大的塵雲中，你瞧，只有他們自己的世界，自己的太陽。他們處在銀河系最東端的邊緣。由於塵雲的包裹，他們的天上什麼也沒有。入夜之後，天空徹底空無一物；白天有太陽，但無法直視，他們也就不去看。他們根本不注意天空。就像是有個180度的盲點，從地平線的這端直到另一端。
“你瞧，他們之所以從未想過‘我們在宇宙中是孤獨的’，是因爲，直到今晚，他們從未了解宇宙。直到今晚。”
他往前走着，他的話則向後飄來。
“想想看，”他說，“從未想過‘我們是孤獨的’，就因爲你根本沒想到其他的可能性。”
他繼續走着。
“待會兒恐怕會有點嚇人。”他補了一句。話音未落，只聽一聲微弱的尖嘯，劃破空寂的蒼穹。他們連忙向上看，可是過了好一會兒，也不見有東西。
阿瑟看到，那邊玩樂的人們也聽見了響聲，但似乎誰也不知該怎麼辦。他們警覺地四處張望，左看，右看，前看，後看，連地上也看了，就是沒人往頭上看。
不久，一團燃燒的飛船殘骸呼嘯着從天而降，砸到離這羣人半里遠的地方。這羣人頓時陷入巨大的震驚和恐懼。這真是值得親歷的時刻。
當人們提到黃金之心、或者提到意館數學飛船時，會連語氣都充滿神聖的感情。
亦或是提到那傳奇色彩的超巨型飛船——泰坦尼克時，人們也會如此。那是一艘高貴奢華的遊船，在數百年前、由人工星系小行星造船集團製造，它可是很有來歷的。
那艘飛船美得醉人，大得驚心，其裝備比史上已知任何飛船都要齊全（關於“史上已知”這點，參見“真實時間運動”條目）。不幸的是，它的製造遠在非概率物理學建立之前。
它的設計師和工程師決定——出於好意——在飛船上建一個類似非概率場的東西。這意味着：理論上講，這能保證飛船上出現任何差錯的可能性是無限不可能。
然而，有一點他們未能認識到。所有非概率算術的性質，都是近似可逆、環狀結構的。所以那些無限不可能的事，恰恰非常可能發生，而且隨時可能發生。
泰坦尼克飛船停泊在海邊時，是一道無比美麗的風景線。它就像一隻銀色的大角星巨空鯨，被花格窗般霓光紛呈的塔架所環繞，襯托着幽深黑暗的星際空間，猶如一片金絲銀線織就的雲彩。但是，它甚至沒能成功發送第一條電波信號——一條SOS信號——在它無端遭遇難場毀滅性災難之前。
話說回來，雖然這一事件讓人們看到，一門科學創始階段那可怕的失敗，卻也造就了另一項科研的豐功偉績。 此事件首次證實：觀看了飛船發射儀式報道的人數，比當時實際存在於世上的人數還要多。這一發現被稱爲受衆調查學最偉大的成就。
當時還有另一樁轟動性的事件：伊斯洛丁星，在泰坦尼克發射幾小時後，就發生了超新星爆發。伊斯洛丁星周圍地帶，正是銀河系最大的保險商們所居住（確切地說，曾經居住）的地方。
除此之外，尚有許多著名的飛船。比如銀河艦隊戰船——GSS敢死隊，GSS豹子膽隊，GSS自殺狂人隊……當人們提到這些名字時，是滿心敬畏的/驕傲的/熱情的/鍾情的/崇拜的/遺憾的/嫉妒的/忿恨的——也就是所有感情的。不過，最最驚天動地的飛船，當數“版求一號”。那是版求星人制造的第一艘飛船，它驚人不是因爲它很棒。它可一點也不棒。
它約等於一塊廢鐵。看上去，像是在誰家後院裏胡亂拼成的——它的確也是。最最驚人的地方，不在於它有多好（它一點也不好），而是它竟然被造出來了。版求星人從發現太空這個東西，到造出第一艘飛船之間，只隔了一年的時間。
福特此時心懷強烈的感恩之情。因爲他知道，自己只是處在信息幻影之中，故而是非常安全的。要在現實中的話，他就是喝光全中國的米酒，也不會想踏進這艘飛船一步。“太不靠譜了吧？”是他腦中蹦出的第一句話。“我能不能出去？”則是第二句。
“它能飛嗎？”阿瑟說。他以懷疑的眼神看着面前這堆東西。拴在一起的管子、電線，“裝飾”着飛船內部逼仄的空間。
司拉提巴特法斯向他表示肯定，並保證他非常安全，這將是很有意義的體驗，一點也不嚇人。
福特和阿瑟決定放輕鬆，做好被嚇的準備。