經典科幻文學:《基本上無害 Mostly Harmless》 第21章5

This is normally very bad for a video camera. But when the sun is roughly a third of a billion miles away it doesn’t do any harm. In fact it hardly makes any impression at all. You just get a small point of light right in the middle of the frame, which could be just about anything. It was just one star in a multitude.

這對攝影機通常非常不好。不過既然太陽是在約莫三分之一個十億英里之外，所以機器並沒有受到任何損傷。事實上根本沒有拍下多少東西，只在畫面中央有個小光點，壓根看不出那究竟是什麼。無數恆星中的一顆，僅此而已。

Tricia fast-forwarded.

崔茜卡按下“快進”。

Ah. Now, the next bit had been quite promising. They had emerged out of the ship into a vast, grey, hangar-like structure. This was clearly alien technology on a dramatic scale. Huge grey buildings under the dark canopy of the Perspex bubble. These were the same buildings that she had been looking at at the end of the tape. She had taken more footage of them while leaving Rupert a few hours later, just as she was about to reboard the spacecraft for the journey home. What did they remind her of?

啊，這兒，接下來的部分相當有希望。他們走下飛船，來到了一棟灰色的巨大建築，模樣活像個機庫，這顯然是外星科技的特大規模運用。巨大的灰色建築物矗立在深色的有機玻璃泡泡保護下——這些也就是她在帶子結尾看到的那些樓。她在魯伯特待了幾個鐘頭，離開時又拍了些它們的畫面，就在她重新登上飛船準備回家之前。這些錄像讓她想起了什麼來着？

Well, as much as anything else they reminded her of a film set from just about any low-budget science-fiction movie of the last twenty years. A lot larger, of course, but it all looked thoroughly tawdry and unconvincing on the video screen. Apart from the dreadful picture quality she had been struggling with the unexpected effects of gravity that was appreciably lower than that on Earth, and she had found it very hard to keep the camera from bouncing around in an embarrassingly unprofessional way. It was therefore impossible to make out any detail.

恩，別的不說，它們最先讓她想到的絕對是電影佈景——過去的二十年裏，差不多每部低成本科幻片都是這模樣。當然了，它們的體積要大得多，可在電視上看來實在是又假又俗氣。除了畫面質量，她還要對付意料之外的重力作用。魯伯特的重力比地球上低許多，崔茜卡尷尬地發現，自己很難不讓攝像機非常業餘地晃來晃去。由於這種種原因，畫面上根本看不清任何細節。

And now here was the Leader coming forward to greet her, smiling and sticking his hand out.

接着是首領走上前來迎接她，滿臉笑容地向她伸出一隻手。

That was all he was called. The Leader.

他就叫這個。首領。

None of the Grebulons had names, largely because they couldn’t think of any. Tricia discovered that some of them had thought of calling themselves after characters from television programmes they had picked up from Earth, but hard as they had tried to call each other Wayne and Bobby and Chuck, some remnant of something lurking deep in the cultural subconscious they had brought with them from the distant stars which were their homes must have told them that this really wasn’t right and wouldn’t do.

格里布隆人都沒名字，很大程度上是因爲他們想不出任何名字來。崔茜卡還發現，他們中的好些人本來想借用地球電視節目裏的人名，可這些人剛開始管對方叫鮑伯和查克，深埋在他們文化潛意識中的某些殘渣就開始發難，這些從遙遠的家鄉一路跟過來的小東西突然鑽出來，告訴他們這樣不對，真的不行。

The Leader had looked pretty much like all the others. Possibly a bit less thin. He said how much he enjoyed her shows on TV, that he was her greatest fan, how glad he was that she had been able to come along and visit them on Rupert and how much everybody had been looking forward to her coming, how he hoped the flight had been comfortable and so on. There was no particular sense she could detect of being any kind of emissary from the stars or anything.

首領的模樣跟其他人沒什麼差別。或許稍微沒那麼瘦。他告訴崔茜卡自己是她的超級粉絲，還說他多麼喜歡她的節目，她能來魯伯特做客他是多麼高興，每個人都多麼期待她的到來，他多麼希望旅途還算愉快等等等等。她完全覺察不出任何他可能身爲什麼星球大使之類的跡象。