经典科幻文学:《宇宙尽头的餐馆》第24章1

Chapter 24
“Er, captain…”
“Yes, Number One?”
“Just heard a sort of report thingy from Number Two.”
“Oh, dear.”
High up in the bridge of the ship, the Captain stared out into the infinite reaches of space with mild irritation. From where he reclined beneath a wide domed bubble he could see before and above them the vast panorama of stars through which they were moving – a panorama that had thinned out noticably during the course of the voyage. Turning and looking backwards, over the vast two-mile bulk of the ship he could see the far denser mass of stars behind them which seemed to form almost a solid band. This was the view through the Galactic centre from which they were travelling, and indeed had been travelling for years, at a speed that he couldn’t quite remember at the moment, but he knew it was terribly fast. It was something approaching the speed of something or other, or was it three times the speed of something else? Jolly impressive anyway. He peered into the bright distance behind the ship, looking for something. He did this every few minutes or so, but never found what he was looking for. He didn’t let it worry him though. The scientist chaps had been very insistent that everything was going to be perfectly alright providing nobody panicked and everybody got on and did their bit in an orderly fashion.
He wasn’t panicking. As far as he was concerned everything was going splendidly. He dabbed at his shoulder with a large frothy sponge. It crept back into his mind that he was feeling mildly irritated about something. Now what was all that about? A slight cough alerted him to the fact that the ship’s first officer was still standing nearby.
Nice chap, Number One. Not of the very brightest, had the odd spot of difficulty doing up his shoe laces, but jolly good officer material for all that. The Captain wasn’t a man to kick a chap when he was bending over trying to do up his shoe laces, however long it took him. Not like that ghastly Number Two, strutting about all over the place, polishing his buttons, issuing reports every hour: “Ship’s still moving, Captain.” “Still on course, Captain.” “Oxygen levels still being maintained, Captain.” “Give it a miss,” was the Captain’s vote. Ah yes, that was the thing that had been irritating him. He peered down at Number One.
“Yes, Captain, he was shouting something or other about having found some prisoners…”
The Captain thought about this. Seemed pretty unlikely to him, but he wasn’t one to stand in his officers’ way.
“Well, perhaps that’ll keep him happy for a bit,” he said, “He’s always wanted some.”
Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent trudged onwards up the ship’s apparently endless corridors. Number Two marched behind them barking the occasional order about not making any false moves or trying any funny stuff. They seemed to have passed at least a mile of continuous brown hessian wall weave. Finally they reached a large steel door which slid open when Number Two shouted at it.
They entered. To the eyes of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, the most remarkable thing about the ship’s bridge was not the fifty foot diameter hemispherical dome which covered it, and through which the dazzling display of stars shone down on them: to people who have eaten at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, such wonders are commonplace. Nor was it the bewildering array of instruments that crowded the long circumferential wall around them. To Arthur this was exactly what spaceships were traditionally supposed to look like, and to Ford it looked thoroughly antiquated: it confirmed his suspicions that Disaster Area’s stuntship had taken them back at least a million, if not two million, years before their own time.
No, the thing that really caught them off balance was the bath.
The bath stood on a six foot pedestal of rough hewn blue water crystal and was of a baroque monstrosity not often seen outside the Maximegalon Museum of Diseased Imaginings. An intestinal jumble of plumbing had been picked out in gold leaf rather than decently buried at midnight in an unmarked grave; the taps and shower attachment would have made a gargoyle jump.
As the dominant centrepiece of a starship bridge it was terribly wrong, and it was with the embittered air of a man who knew this that Number Two approached it.
“Captain, sir!” he shouted through clenched teeth – a difficult trick but he’d had years during which to perfect it.
A large genial face and a genial foam covered arm popped up above the rim of the monstrous bath.

第二十四章
“呃，舰长……”
“什么事，一号？”
“有一份来自二号、类似报告的东西。”
“哦唷，天哪！”
高居飞船的舰桥上，舰长望着外面延伸到无限远处的太空，微微觉得有些愠怒。他躺在一个半球形的宽阔气泡下面，前方和上方是巨大的星空全景，星球在上面运行着——在航行过程中，这副全景用已经变得稀疏多了。转身往后看，越过这艘足有两英里长的巨大飞船，他能够看见他们身后稠密得多的星群，看上去几乎形成了一条固态的带状物。这是从银河系中心所看到的景观，他们正在这个区域航行，已经航行了好几年。至于航行速度，他这会儿已经记不太清楚了，但他知道这个速度非常快。这个速度逼近了什么东西或者另一个什么东西的速度，或者它是别的什么东西的速度的几倍’总之，给人的印象非常深刻。他凝视飞船后面明亮的区域，寻找着什么。他每隔几分钟就要这样做，却从来没有找到他寻找的东西-但他并不觉得失落。科学家老兄们一直非常坚定地声称，假如没有任何人惊慌失措——每个人都有条不紊地把自己那一小部分向前推进的话，任何事情都将达到尽善尽美的地步。
于足，他没有惊惶失措。到日前为止，他认为一切都进行樽相当顺利。他用一块多孔大海绵拭了拭肩膀。他这才记起来，自己刚才正在为了什么事感到有些愠怒。那么，是件什么事呢，一声轻轻的咳嗽提醒了他，这艘飞船的舰长还站在旁边。
好人呐，一号。虽然不是十分聪明，连系鞋带都会有些困难，但处理起事务来绝对是上好的副官料子。费牛劲才能搞定自己的鞋带，有人会一脚踹过去，但舰长不是那种人。一号不像那个面色苍白的二号，整天昂首阔步地到处走来走去，擦拭着他的钮扣，每小时都跑来报告一番：“飞船继续前进，舰长”、“航程稳定，舰长”、“氧气指标稳定，舰长”。舰长的指令通常是，“别老瞎操心”。哦，对了，这就是刚才让他恼火的事。他看着一号。
“舰长，他在嚷嚷什么抓住了几个人”
舰长想了想。这件事听上去似乎不太可能，但他不是个一天到晚申斥下属的人。
”那好吧，也许这样会让他高兴点儿。”他说，“他不是总想逮到几个吗？”
福特长官和阿瑟·邓特在这艘飞船上似乎永无止境的走廊里蹒跚前行。二号正步走在他们后面，不时呵斥两声，告诫他们别有什么不老实的举动。看上去他们至少经过了一英里连续的褐色粗麻布墙纸，最后终丁抵达一扇曩大的铁门。二号对着它喊了几句什么之后，门滑开了。
他们走进去。对福特长官和阿瑟·邓特来说，这艘飞船舰桥最引人注目的地方，不是它被一个直径五十英了的半球形拱顶罩着，上面布满令人眼花缭乱的星星——对于在宇宙尽头餐馆用过餐的人来说，这样的景观实在是太平常了；也不是用绕着他们的环形墙壁上挤满了令人费解的各种仪器，对阿瑟来说，太空飞船本来就该是这个样子：而对福特来说，这些玩意儿则太古老了——这也坚定了他的怀疑，即“灾难地带”的特技飞船把他们从他们自己的年代往回送了起码一百万年（如果不是二百万年的话）。
不，不是这些，真正让他们大吃一惊的是那个浴缸。
这个浴缸放在一个由粗糙的蓝色水晶制成的六英尺高的底座上，是一个在马看到的巴洛克风格的巨大怪物。它内部乱作一团的管道都用金叶子重点标出，而不是埋设在内部，像趁着夜深人静把尸首埋进墓穴一样；水龙头和琳浴喷头则做成怪兽状，像是要跃起的样子：
作为在飞船舰桥上占据最显著位置的东西，它简直太不伦不类了。而且，浴缸里此时痛苦不堪，里面的人知道二号正在接近。
“舰长，长官！”二号从咬紧的牙缝里喊出了几个字——这是一种高难度技艺，但经过几年练习，他已经掌握得很完美了。
一张亲切的大脸和一只亲切的满是泡沫的胳膊从这个巨大的浴缸的边缘探出来。