經典科幻文學:《銀河系漫遊指南》第1章Part 3

A cloud passed overhead. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent as he lay propped up on his elbow in the cold mud. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent's house. Mr Prosser frowned at it.
"It's not as if it's a particularly nice house," he said.
"I'm sorry, but I happen to like it."
"You'll like the bypass."
"Oh shut up," said Arthur Dent. "Shut up and go away, and take your bloody bypass with you. You haven't got a leg to stand on and you know it."
Mr Prosser's mouth opened and closed a couple of times while his mind was for a moment filled with inexplicable but terribly attractive visions of Arthur Dent's house being consumed with fire and Arthur himself running screaming from the blazing ruin with at least three hefty spears protruding from his back. Mr Prosser was often bothered with visions like these and they made him feel very nervous. He stuttered for a moment and then pulled himself together.
"Mr Dent," he said.
"Hello? Yes?" said Arthur.
"Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?"
"How much?" said Arthur.
"None at all," said Mr Prosser, and stormed nervously off wondering why his brain was filled with a thousand hairy horsemen all shouting at him.
By a curious coincidence, None at all is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he usually claimed.
Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.
This friend of his had first arrived on the planet some fifteen Earth years previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself into Earth society — with, it must be said, some success. For instance he had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out of work actor, which was plausible enough.
He had made one careless blunder though, because he had skimped a bit on his preparatory research. The information he had gathered had led him to choose the name "Ford Prefect" as being nicely inconspicuous.
"Oh, just looking for flying saucers," he would joke and everyone would laugh and ask him what sort of flying saucers he was looking for.
"Green ones!" he would reply with a wicked grin, laugh wildly for a moment and then suddenly lunge for the nearest bar and buy an enormous round of drinks.

這時，一片雲飄過頭頂，撒下的陰影正好罩在用肘支撐着躺在冰冷的泥漿中的阿瑟·鄧特身上，也罩在他的房子上。普洛塞先生看着，皺了一下眉頭。
“看上去這似乎算不上一所特別好的房子。”他說。
“我很遺憾，不過我恰好就喜歡它。”
“你也會喜歡通道的。”
“噢，閉嘴，”阿瑟·鄧特說，“你給我閉嘴，然後滾蛋，帶上你該死的通道。你們根本就站不住腳，這你知道。”
普洛塞先生的嘴好幾次張開了又閉上，這時他的腦海裏突然被一種無法解釋卻又充滿了吸引力的情景所佔據：阿瑟·鄧特的房子燃着大火，阿瑟本人正尖叫着從燃燒着的廢墟中往外跑，至少有三支粗大的長矛從他的後心穿透出來。普洛塞先生經常被類似這樣的場景困擾，這使他感到非常緊張。他支吾了好一會兒，這才定下神來。
“鄧特先生。”他說。
“嗯？什麼事？”阿瑟說。
“有些很現實的情況你得明白。你想過嗎，如果我讓這輛推土機直接從你身上碾過去，會有什麼樣的後果？”
“什麼樣的呢？”阿瑟問道。
“沒什麼。”普洛塞先生說。現在他更緊張了，因爲他弄不明白，爲什麼他的腦海裏像是有成千的長毛騎兵一齊對着他怒吼。
一個奇怪的巧合是，“沒什麼”正好代表了從猿進化來的阿瑟·鄧特對他最親密的朋友之一併非同樣從猿進化而來這一事實的懷疑程度，那人實際上來自獵戶座參宿四附近的一顆小行星，而不是他自己通常所宣稱的來自吉爾福德。
阿瑟·鄧特卻從來沒有懷疑過他的話。
他的這個朋友首次來到這顆叫做地球的行星是在15個地球年以前，他拼命工作，希望能融入地球社會——而在這一點上，必須承認，他還是頗爲成功的。比方說，他花這15年扮演了一個失業的演員，而這差不多也就足夠了。
但他還是犯了一個疏忽導致的錯誤，這是因爲他在準備工作上偷了一點兒懶。根據收集到的信息，他選擇了“福特·普里弗克特”這個名字，以求不引起人們的注意。
“噢，沒什麼，只是在尋找天上的飛碟。”聽到他這種笑話，所有人都會大笑，問他在尋找什麼樣的飛碟。
“它們是綠色的！”他總是壞笑着回答，然後在狂笑一陣後，突然一頭衝進最近的酒吧裏，猛喝一輪。