经典科幻文学:《宇宙尽头的餐馆》第21章5

After a moment or so Ford told him to stand back. He tossed a coin into the teleport and jiggled a switch on the lolling control panel. With a crackle and spit of light, the coin vanished.
“That much of it works,” said Ford, “however, there is no guidance system. A matter transference teleport without guidance programming could put you… well, anywhere.”
The sun of Kakrafoon loomed huge on the screen.
“Who cares,” said Zaphod, “we go where we go.”
“And,” said Ford, “there is no autosystem. We couldn’t all go. Someone would have to stay and operate it.”
A solemn moment shuffled past. The sun loomed larger and larger.
“Hey, Marvin kid,” said Zaphod brightly, “how you doing?”
“Very badly I suspect,” muttered Marvin.
A shortish while later, the concert on Kakrafoon reached an unexpected climax.
The black ship with its single morose occupant had plunged on schedule into the nuclear furnace of the sun. Massive solar flares licked out from it millions of miles into space, thrilling and in a few cases spilling the dozen or so Flare Riders who had been coasting close to the surface of the sun in anticipation of the moment. Moments before the flare light reached Kakrafoon the pounding desert cracked along a deep faultline. A huge and hitherto undetected underground river lying far beneath the surface gushed to the surface to be followed seconds later by the eruption of millions of tons of boiling lava that flowed hundreds of feet into the air, instantaneously vaporizing the river both above and below the surface in an explosion that echoed to the far side of the world and back again.
Those – very few – who witnessed the event and survived swear that the whole hundred thousand square miles of the desert rose into the air like a mile-thick pancake, flipped itself over and fell back down. At that precise moment the solar radiation from the flares filtered through the clouds of vaporized water and struck the ground.
A year later, the hundred thousand square mile desert was thick with flowers. The structure of the atmosphere around the planet was subtly altered. The sun blazed less harshly in the summer, the cold bit less bitterly in the winter, pleasant rain fell more often, and slowly the desert world of Kakrafoon became a paradise. Even the telepathic power with which the people of Kakrafoon had been cursed was permanently dispersed by the force of the explosion.
A spokesman for Disaster Area – the one who had had all the environmentalists shot – was later quoted as saying that it had been “a good gig”.
Many people spoke movingly of the healing powers of music. A few sceptical scientists examined the records of the events more closely, and claimed that they had discovered faint vestiges of a vast artificially induced Improbability Field drifting in from a nearby region of space.

过了一会儿，福特叫他靠后站。他朝远距传物装置里投了一枚硬币，然后轻轻打开垂着的控制面板上的开关，随着一声“噼啪”声和一道闪光，硬币消失了。
“这部分算是能正常工作了。”橱特说，“可是没找到制导系统，没有制导程序控制的远距传物会把你送到－－嗯，任何地方。”
卡库拉冯太阳的巨大身影映在屏幕上。
“这有什么关系吗？”赞福德说，“我们去的就是我们去的地方。”
“并且，”福特说，“也没有自动系统。我们不能全部离开，得有人留下来操作它。”
一阵庄严的时刻过去了。太阳显得越来越大。
“嘿，马文伙计，”赞福德轻快地说，“你好吗7”
“非常糟糕，我想。”马文嘀咕着。
不久以后，卡库拉冯上的音乐会达到了一个事先谁也没料到的高潮。
黑色飞船带着它那个惟一的郁闷的乘客，按照原定计划撞上了太阳的核反应表面。瓦大的太阳耀光冲上几百万英里的空中，使大约十几个耀光驾驭者激动不已，他们已经滑翔到了太阳表面附近，正期待着这一时刻。一会儿，被声波所撞击的沙漠居然裂开了一道深深的沟墼。一条巨大的、此前从未被发现的地下河流向星球表面奔涌而出，几秒钟之后就开始喷发数百万吨沸腾的岩浆，喷射高度足有好几百英尺。一瞬间，地上和地下的河流激起了一场爆炸，回声远播，直到这颗星球遥远的角落，叉传了回来。
那些为数非常之少、并亲服日睹了这一场面并且幸存下来的人发誓说，整个数十万平方英里的沙漠都升到了空中，像一张一英里厚的煎饼，翻了个身之后才落下来。而恰好在同一时刻，太阳耀光带来的辐射透过水蒸气形成的云层，照射在地面上。
一年以后，这片数十万平方英里的沙漠开满了鲜花。围绕着这变了。夏季的阳光不再那么灼热喜人的雨水光临得也更加频繁。于是渐渐地，卡库拉冯的沙漠世界变成了一个天堂。甚至连卡库拉冯人被诅咒而获得的读心术能力，也由于这次爆炸的力量而永久地消失了。
“灾难地带”的一位发言人，就是那个打死所有环境保护论者的家伙——有一句名言，后来常常被人引用，他说，这是“一场好演出”。
许多人都感动地谈论着音乐的“治愈力量”。而少数对此持怀疑态度的科学家，在仔细查阅了这一事件的记录后宣称，他们发现了一个巨大的人造诱导非概率场从附近空间飘过的微弱痕迹。