經典科幻文學:《宇宙盡頭的餐館》第24章9
“Well,” said Ford, “I can see that you’ve got a lot of things you’re going to talk about, so, thanks for the drinks, and if you could sort of drop us off at the nearest convenient planet…”
“Ah, well that’s a little difficult you see,” said the Captain, “because our trajectory thingy was preset before we left Golgafrincham, I think partly because I’m not very good with figures…”
“You mean we’re stuck here on this ship?” exclaimed Ford suddenly losing patience with the whole charade, “When are you meant to be reaching this planet you’re meant to be colonizing?”
“Oh, we’re nearly there I think,” said the Captain, “any second now. It’s probably time I was getting out of this bath in fact. Oh, I don’t know though, why stop just when I’m enjoying it?”
“So we’re actually going to land in a minute?”
“Well not so much land, in fact, not actually land as such, no… er…”
“What are you talking about?” said Ford sharply.
“Well,” said the Captain, picking his way through the words carefully, “I think as far as I can remember we were programmed to Crash on it.”
“Crash?” shouted Ford and Arthur.
“Er, yes,” said the Captain, “yes, it’s all part of the plan I think. There was a terribly good reason for it which I can’t quite remember at the moment. It was something to with… er…”
Ford exploded.
“You’re a load of useless bloody loonies!” he shouted.
“Ah yes, that was it,” beamed the Captain, “that was the reason.”
“嗅，”福特說，“我能看得出你們還有許多事想交換意見。那麼，謝謝你們的飲料。如果艦長能找一顆最近的方便的行星把我們放下去…”
“哦，你瞧，這有畦用難。”艦長說，“我們的航行軌道在離開高爾伽弗林查姆之前就預先設定好了，我想，部分原因是我對數字不太在行…”
“你是說我們被困在這艘飛船上了，”福特叫道。突然問，他再也不想打啞謎丁。“你們什麼時候才能到達你們想殖民的那顆行星？”
“哦，我們幾乎已經到了，我想。”艦長說，“隨時吧。事實上，現在大概也到了我離開這個浴缸的時候了。噢，不過誰知道，爲什麼要在正洗得舒服的時候停下來？”
“這麼說，我們很快就要降落了？”阿瑟問：
“嗯，不是‘降落’，事實上，不能說是降落，不，嗯……”
“你究竟在說什麼啊？”福特厲聲說。
“嗯，”艦長說，一邊小心翼翼地選擇着詞彙，“我想，根據我的記憶，我們被設定爲墜毀在那上面。”
“墜毀？”福特和阿瑟叫了起來。
“嗯，是的，”艦長說，“是的，這是計劃的一部分，我想。關於這個安排有一個極好的理由，但我現在記不大清楚了。和一些事情有關嗯……”
福特終於爆發了。
“你們簡直是一羣毫無用處的十足的瘋子！”他叫道。
“哦，對了，就是這個。”艦長的臉上綻開了笑容，“這就是那個理由。”
