經典科幻文學:《銀河系漫遊指南》第4章 Part 2

As he skipped his boat across the seas of Damogran he smiled quietly to himself about what a wonderful exciting day it was going to be. He relaxed and spread his two arms lazily across the seat back. He steered with an extra arm he'd recently fitted just beneath his right one to help improve his ski-boxing.
On top of the cliffs stood a reception committee.
It consisted in large part of the engineers and researchers who had built the Heart of Gold — mostly humanoid, but here and there were a few reptiloid atomineers, two or three green slyph-like maximegalacticans, an octopoid physucturalist or two and a Hooloovoo (a Hooloovoo is a super-intelligent shade of the color blue). All except the Hooloovoo were resplendent in their multi-colored ceremonial lab coats; the Hooloovoo had been temporarily refracted into a free standing prism for the occasion.
There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through all of them. Together and between them they had gone to and beyond the furthest limits of physical laws, restructured the fundamental fabric of matter, strained, twisted and broken the laws of possibility and impossibility, but still the greatest excitement of all seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash round his neck. (An orange sash was what the President of the Galaxy traditionally wore.) It might not even have made much difference to them if they'd known exactly how much power the President of the Galaxy actually wielded: none at all. Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.
Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.

駕駛快艇在達蒙葛蘭的海上飛馳時，他自己暗暗地笑着，這將是多麼美妙和激動人心的一天啊。他放鬆下來，兩隻胳膊懶洋洋地撐在座椅靠背上。他用另外的一隻手掌舵，這是他最近才裝上的，就在右手下面，用來提高他進行滑雪拳擊運動的能力。
海島懸崖的頂端站着一羣迎接者。
他們主要由建造了黃金之心的工程師和研究人員組成——大部分屬於人類，但間或有些具有兩棲動物特徵的生物，兩三個綠色的苗條生物，一兩個八腳生物，還有一個藏青色生物（藏青色是一種超級色度的藍色）。除了藏青色生物以外，別的都穿着彩色工作服，顯得華麗而耀眼。
一種狂喜的情緒使他們激動不已。他們通力合作，達到並且超越了物理法則最遠的界限，重組了物質的基本結構，拉緊、擰合以及打破了可能性（概率）與不可能性（非概率）的法則。不過，最讓所有人激動的是，他們即將見到一個脖子上掛着橙色飾帶的人（橙色飾帶是銀河系總統傳統的標誌）。他們不會知道銀河系總統實際上所擁有的權力有多麼可憐：完全等於零。整個銀河系中只有6個人知道，總統的作用不是掌握權力，而是吸引注意力遠離這權力。
贊福德·畢博布魯克斯把這份職責完成得非常之好。