經典科幻文學:《宇宙盡頭的餐館》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.
過了一會兒，福特叫他靠後站。他朝遠距傳物裝置裏投了一枚硬幣，然後輕輕打開垂着的控制面板上的開關，隨着一聲“噼啪”聲和一道閃光，硬幣消失了。
“這部分算是能正常工作了。”櫥特說，“可是沒找到制導系統，沒有制導程序控制的遠距傳物會把你送到－－嗯，任何地方。”
卡庫拉馮太陽的巨大身影映在屏幕上。
“這有什麼關係嗎？”贊福德說，“我們去的就是我們去的地方。”
“並且，”福特說，“也沒有自動系統。我們不能全部離開，得有人留下來操作它。”
一陣莊嚴的時刻過去了。太陽顯得越來越大。
“嘿，馬文夥計，”贊福德輕快地說，“你好嗎7”
“非常糟糕，我想。”馬文嘀咕着。
不久以後，卡庫拉馮上的音樂會達到了一個事先誰也沒料到的高潮。
黑色飛船帶着它那個惟一的鬱悶的乘客，按照原定計劃撞上了太陽的核反應表面。瓦大的太陽耀光衝上幾百萬英里的空中，使大約十幾個耀光駕馭者激動不已，他們已經滑翔到了太陽表面附近，正期待着這一時刻。一會兒，被聲波所撞擊的沙漠居然裂開了一道深深的溝墼。一條巨大的、此前從未被發現的地下河流向星球表面奔涌而出，幾秒鐘之後就開始噴發數百萬噸沸騰的岩漿，噴射高度足有好幾百英尺。一瞬間，地上和地下的河流激起了一場爆炸，回聲遠播，直到這顆星球遙遠的角落，叉傳了回來。
那些爲數非常之少、並親服日睹了這一場面並且倖存下來的人發誓說，整個數十萬平方英里的沙漠都升到了空中，像一張一英里厚的煎餅，翻了個身之後才落下來。而恰好在同一時刻，太陽耀光帶來的輻射透過水蒸氣形成的雲層，照射在地面上。
一年以後，這片數十萬平方英里的沙漠開滿了鮮花。圍繞着這變了。夏季的陽光不再那麼灼熱喜人的雨水光臨得也更加頻繁。於是漸漸地，卡庫拉馮的沙漠世界變成了一個天堂。甚至連卡庫拉馮人被詛咒而獲得的讀心術能力，也由於這次爆炸的力量而永久地消失了。
“災難地帶”的一位發言人，就是那個打死所有環境保護論者的傢伙——有一句名言，後來常常被人引用，他說，這是“一場好演出”。
許多人都感動地談論着音樂的“治癒力量”。而少數對此持懷疑態度的科學家，在仔細查閱了這一事件的記錄後宣稱，他們發現了一個巨大的人造誘導非概率場從附近空間飄過的微弱痕跡。
