經典科幻文學:《銀河系漫遊指南》第4章 Part 4

Everyone beamed at him, or, at least, nearly everyone. He singled out Trillian from the crowd. Trillian was a gird that Zaphod had picked up recently whilst visiting a planet, just for fun, incognito. She was slim, darkish, humanoid, with long waves of black hair, a full mouth, an odd little nob of a nose and ridiculously brown eyes. With her red head scarf knotted in that particular way and her long flowing silky brown dress she looked vaguely Arabic. Not that anyone there had ever heard of an Arab of course. The Arabs had very recently ceased to exist, and even when they had existed they were five hundred thousand light years from Damogran. Trillian wasn't anybody in particular, or so Zaphod claimed. She just went around with him rather a lot and told him what she thought of him.
"Hi honey," he said to her.
She flashed him a quick tight smile and looked away. Then she looked back for a moment and smiled more warmly — but by this time he was looking at something else.
"Hi," he said to a small knot of creatures from the press who were standing nearby wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get on with the quotes. He grinned at them particularly because he knew that in a few moments he would be giving them one hell of a quote.
The next thing he said though was not a lot of use to them. One of the officials of the party had irritably decided that the President was clearly not in a mood to read the deliciously turned speech that had been written for him, and had flipped the switch on the remote control device in his pocket. Away in front of them a huge white dome that bulged against the sky cracked down in the middle, split, and slowly folded itself down into the ground. Everyone gasped although they had known perfectly well it was going to do that because they had built it that way.

每個人都朝他微笑着，或者，至少幾乎每個人。他從人羣中認出了崔莉恩。這個女孩兒是贊福德最近才從所訪問的一個星球上選出來的，只是爲了玩玩而已。她很苗條，膚色淺黑，人類的模樣，有着一頭黑色的波浪長髮，嘴脣豐滿，鼻子稍稍有些突出，褐色的眼睛顯得很可笑。她繫着一條紅色的頭巾，打結的方式很特別，穿着褐色的絲綢長裙，這些使她看上去多少有些像阿拉伯人。當然，這裏的人們誰也沒有聽說過阿拉伯人，畢竟這個種族離達蒙葛蘭足有50萬光年之遠。崔莉恩並非什麼特殊人物，起碼贊福德是這麼聲稱的。
“嗨，寶貝兒。”他衝她打了個招呼。
她對他微微笑了笑，隨即移開目光。過了一會兒，她又看過來，這次笑得熱情多了——不過，此時贊福德的注意力已經轉移到其他人身上去了。
“嗨。”他對身邊的記者們說，他們站在他周圍，希望能聽見他停止說“嗨”，而發表一些妙語。贊福德特意衝他們笑着，因爲他知道，用不了一會兒他就會讓他們大吃一驚的。
他的話對這羣人一點兒意義都沒有。一個官員於是慌亂地判定總統今天顯然沒有心情再宣讀精心爲他準備的講稿了，所以他摁下衣服口袋裏遙控設備的開關。在他們面前，一個直刺向天空的巨大的白色穹頂啪的一聲從中間裂開，摺疊起來緩緩地向地面下降。每個人這時都屏住了呼吸，雖然他們很清楚即將發生什麼，因爲這就是他們建造的。