經典科幻文學:《銀河系漫遊指南》第24章2

Slartibartfast touched a button and added, not entirely reassuringly. "It scares the willies out of me. Hold tight."
The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like.
It wasn't infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity — distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very big, so that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself.
Arthur's senses bobbed and span, as, travelling at the immense speed he knew the aircar attained, they climbed slowly through the open air leaving the gateway through which they had passed an invisible pinprick in the shimmering wall behind them.
The wall.
The wall defied the imagination — seduced it and defeated it. The wall was so paralysingly vast and sheer that its top, bottom and sides passed away beyond the reach of sight. The mere shock of vertigo could kill a man.
The wall appeared perfectly flat. It would take the finest laser measuring equipment to detect that as it climbed, apparently to infinity, as it dropped dizzily away, as it planed out to either side, it also curved. It met itself again thirteen light seconds away. In other words the wall formed the inside of a hollow sphere, a sphere over three million miles across and flooded with unimaginable light.
"Welcome," said Slartibartfast as the tiny speck that was the aircar, travelling now at three times the speed of sound, crept imperceptibly forward into the mindboggling space, "welcome," he said, "to our factory floor."
Arthur stared about him in a kind of wonderful horror. Ranged away before them, at distances he could neither judge nor even guess at, were a series of curious suspensions, delicate traceries of metal and light hung about shadowy spherical shapes that hung in the space.
"This," said Slartibartfast, "is where we make most of our planets you see."
"You mean," said Arthur, trying to form the words, "you mean you're starting it all up again now?"
"No no, good heavens no," exclaimed the old man, "no, the Galaxy isn't nearly rich enough to support us yet. No, we've been awakened to perform just one extraordinary commission for very ... special clients from another dimension. It may interest you ... there in the distance in front of us."
Arthur followed the old man's finger, till he was able to pick out the floating structure he was pointing out. It was indeed the only one of the many structures that betrayed any sign of activity about it, though this was more a sublimal impression than anything one could put one's finger on.
At the moment however a flash of light arced through the structure and revealed in stark relief the patterns that were formed on the dark sphere within. Patterns that Arthur knew, rough blobby shapes that were as familiar to him as the shapes of words, part of the furniture of his mind. For a few seconds he sat in stunned silence as the images rushed around his mind and tried to find somewhere to settle down and make sense.
Part of his brain told him that he knew perfectly well what he was looking at and what the shapes represented whilst another quite sensibly refused to countenance the idea and abdicated responsibility for any further thinking in that direction.
The flash came again, and this time there could be no doubt.
"The Earth ..." whispered Arthur.

司拉提巴特法斯特按下一個按鈕，然後不是很有把握地補充說：“其實我也很緊張。坐穩了。”
飛車筆直地朝前衝進光環。突然間，阿瑟對無限是個什麼樣子有了一種清晰的概念。
實際上這並不是無限。無限看上去是扁平的，毫無意思。擡頭仰望夜空就是仰望無限——距離廣闊無垠，因而也就失去了意義。空中飛車進入的這個房間可以是任何東西，但決不是無限，它只是非常非常大，大得給人以無限的感覺，甚至比無限本身還要大。
阿瑟感到天旋地轉。空中飛車以最大速度前進着，他們穿過開闊的空間，把剛纔進入的門甩往後面，成爲他們身後那堵泛着微光的牆上的一個細不可見的小孔。
那堵牆。
那堵牆否定了一切想像——先引誘它，再擊敗它。這堵牆大得如此不可思議，又是透明的，以至於它的頂端、底部和兩側幾乎不能被視線所捕捉。面對它時的那種眩暈的震撼簡直能夠殺死一個人。
這堵牆極其平坦。看上去平直地向着兩側延伸，其實它是彎曲的，但這隻有使用最高級的激光測量設備才能測出。經過13光秒的距離後，它的首尾會連接起來。換句話說，這堵牆圍出了一箇中空的空間，直徑足有300萬英里，中間充滿難以想像的光。
“歡迎，”司拉提巴特法斯特說，此時空中飛車就像一個小點，以3倍於音速的速度，難以察覺地在這個不可思議的空間中前進，“歡迎，”他說，“來到我們的工廠。”
阿瑟以～種驚訝的恐慌盯着他。在他們前方，一段阿瑟判斷不出、甚至猜測不出的距離之外，一組奇怪的懸浮物排列在空間中：一個個投下巨大陰影的球體，周圍是金屬和光形成的精細花紋。
“這裏，”司拉提巴特法斯特介紹說，“就是我們製造大部分行星的地方。”
“你的意思是，”阿瑟說，一邊試圖組織自己的語言，“你們現在重新把這個地方開動起來了？”
“不，不，天啊，不，”老人解釋說，“不。目前的銀河系還沒有富裕到足夠支付我們的產品的程度。我們被喚醒是爲了接受一個非同尋常的委託，一些……很特別的客戶，他們來自另一個維度。我們前方的東西……你也許有興趣。”
阿瑟順着老人手指的方向看過去，終於分辨出了他所指的那座飄浮的結構。是這麼多結構中，惟有它纔有活動跡象，雖然這種跡象更多的只是一種微妙的感覺，而不是實實在在可以觸摸得到的。
正在這個時候，一道弧形的光在這座結構中閃了一下，照亮了它內部一片黑暗中的一些浮雕似的圖案。這些圖案是阿瑟所知道的，粗糙的佈滿斑點的形態，對他來說就像詞語一樣熟悉，像是他頭腦中的儲存物的一部分。整整幾秒鐘時間內，他靜靜地坐在那兒，仃憑這些形象在他的頭腦中橫衝直撞，試圖找到什麼地方安頓下來，形成意義。
他大腦的一部分告訴他，他對眼前所看到的景象非常熟悉，清楚地知道這些圖案代表着什麼；與此同時，另一部分卻又極力否定這樣的想法，並且阻止他朝着這個方向進一步想下去。
光又閃了一下。這一次沒有任何疑問了。
“地球……”阿瑟喃喃道。