Thehistory of the Galaxy has got a little muddled, for a number of reasons: partlybecause those who are trying to keep track of it have got a little muddled, butalso because some very muddling things have been happening anyway.

银河系的历史被整得有些稀里糊涂的，原因有很多：一部分在于那帮试图把它记录下来的家伙有点糊涂了，但同时也因为确实发生了不少稀里糊涂的事儿。

One of the problems has to do with thespeed of light and the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can’t.Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception ofbad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people ofArkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news butthey didn’t work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome wheneverthey arrived anywhere that there wasn’t really any pointin being there.

其中一个问题涉及光速与超光速运动的困难。你超不过它，谁都不可能比光的速度更快，唯一的例外大概只有坏消息，因为坏消息遵循的是它自己的一套规则。小阿金图浮星的枢纽莫尔人倒是勇于尝试，造出一种用坏消息驱动的飞船，可结果并不特别理想，再说，无论它们飞到哪儿都极其不受欢迎，所以就算去了也没多大意思。

So, by and large, the peoples of the Galaxytended to languish in their own local muddles and the history of the Galaxyitself was, for a long time, largely cosmological.

因此，总的来说，银河系的人民趋向于陷在自己本地的稀里糊涂里枯萎憔悴，而整个银河系统一的历史，在很长时间里都完全是形而上的宇宙哲学性质的。

Which is not to say that people weren’ttrying. They tried sending off fleets of spaceships to do battle or business indistant parts, but these usually took thousands of years to get anywhere. Bythe time they eventually arrived, other forms of travel had been discoveredwhich made use of hyperspace to circumvent the speed of light, so that whateverbattles it was that the slower-than-light fleets had been sent to fight hadalready been taken care of centuries earlier by the time they actually gotthere.

这倒不是说完全没人试着干点什么。比如，有不少人派了舰队到遥远的地方打仗或者做生意，但通常不管去哪儿，花在路上的时间就要好几千年。等他们终于抵达目的地的时候，大家早已经发现了另外一种旅行方式——通过超空间来避开光速问题。因此，对于这些“亚光速舰队”，无论人家派他们去打的是什么仗，等他们当真赶到的时候，都会发现那场仗在几个世纪之前就已经搞定了。

This didn’t, of course, detertheir crews from wanting to fight the battles anyway. They were trained, theywere ready, they’d had a couple of thousand years’sleep, they’d come along way to do a tough job and by Zarquon they were going to do it.

当然了，这种局面并不能浇灭船员们的战斗热情。他们受了训练，他们做好了准备，他们睡了好几千年的觉，他们跑了大老远来啃这块硬骨头，看在老天爷的份上他们一定要把它给啃了。

This was when the first major muddles ofGalactic history set in, with battles continually re-erupting centuries afterthe issues they had been fought over had supposedly been settled. However,these muddles were as nothing to the ones which historians had to try andunravel once time-travel was discovered and battles started pre-eruptinghundreds of years before the issues even arose. When the Infinite ImprobabilityDrive arrived and whole planets started turning unexpectedly into bananafruitcake, the great history faculty of the University of MaxiMegalon finallygave up, closed itself down and surrendered its buildings to the rapidlygrowing joint faculty of Divinity and Water Polo, which had been after them foryears.

银河系历史的第一摊稀里糊涂由此开始：该解决的问题已经解决了几百年，战争还不断地重新爆发。不过，比起之后历史学家需要解开的那些稀里糊涂，这实在不值一晒。时间旅行刚一发明，立马有无数的战斗提前好几百年开打，在那个时候，需要解决的问题都还没出现呢。等到无限非概率驱动器问世时，一个个星球更是莫名其妙地变成了稀里糊涂的香蕉饼，于是，马克希姆佳伦大学那伟大的历史学院终于举手投降，自个儿关门大吉，把名下的教学楼全部拱手让给正飞速壮大的神学与水球联合学院，反正人家觊觎这些东西也已经好久了。

Which is all very well, of course, but italmost certainly means that no one will ever know for sure where, for instance,the Grebulons came from, or exactly what it was they wanted. And this is apity, because if anybody had known anything about them, it is just possiblethat a most terrible catastrophe would have been averted –or at leastwould have had to find a different way to happen.

当然，当然，这其实也没什么不好，只不过它几乎肯定意味着，有些事情咱们永远都别指望闹明白了——比方说，那些格里布隆人究竟打哪儿来，或者他们到底想干吗。这挺可惜的，因为如果有人对他们哪怕稍微了解一丁点儿，一场特别可怕的灾难说不定就可以避免——或者至少得另外找个法子发生。

Click, hum.

滴答，嗡。

The huge grey Grebulon reconnaissance shipmoved silently through the black void. It was travelling at fabulous,breath-taking speed, yet appeared, against the glimmering background of abillion distant stars to be moving not at all. It was just one dark speckfrozen against an infinite granularity of brilliant night. On board the ship,everything was as it had been for millennia, deeply dark and silent.

格里布隆人巨大的灰色侦察舰静静地穿行在黑色的虚空中。它速度奇快，令人叹为观止。不过，在远处上亿颗闪烁恒星的映衬下，它却仿佛根本没有动弹，就像一粒小黑点，凝结在无数晶体汇成的明亮夜空里。飞船上一切如常，几千年如一日，深沉的黑暗和寂静。

Click, hum.

滴答，嗡。

At least, almost everything.

至少，几乎是一切如常。

Click, click, hum.

滴答，滴答，嗡。

Click, hum, click, hum, click, hum.

滴答，嗡，滴答，嗡，滴答，嗡。

Click, click, click, click, click, hum.

滴答，滴答，滴答，滴答，滴答，嗡。

Hmmm.

嗡嗡嗡。

A low level supervising program woke up aslightly higher level supervising program deep in the ship’ssemi-somnolent cyberbrain and reported to it that whenever it went click all itgot was a hum.

在飞船处于半睡眠状态的数字大脑里，一个低级别的监管程序叫醒了一个级别稍高一点点的监管程序，向它报告说每次自己滴答都只收到一声嗡。

The higher level supervising program askedit what it was supposed to get, and the low level supervising program said thatit couldn’t remember exactly, but thought it was probably more of a sort of distantsatisfied sigh, wasn’t it? It didn’t know what this hum was. Click, hum, click,hum. That was all it was getting.

高级别的监管程序问它本来该收到什么回应，低级别的监管程序说它自己也记不大清了，可它觉得应该是某种遥远的、满足的叹息，不是吗？它不知道这个嗡是什么。滴答，嗡， 滴答， 嗡。现在它收到的全是这个。

The higher level supervising programconsidered this and didn’t like it. It asked the low level supervising programwhat exactly it was supervising and the low level supervising program said itcouldn’t remember that either, just that it was something that was meant to goclick, sigh every ten years or so, which usually happened without fail. It hadtried to consult its error look-up table but couldn’t find it,which was why it had alerted the higher level supervising program to theproblem.

级别稍高的监管程序琢磨半晌，觉得不大放心。它问低级别的监管程序它到底在监管什么，那个低级别的监管程序回答说这个它也一样记不清了，只记得那东西应该每十年左右滴答、叹气，而且通常都能准点发生。它查过自己的《常见故障速查手册》，可没找着这个症状，所以它才把问题报告给级别高些的监管程序。

The higher level supervising program wentto consult one of its own look-up tables to find out what the low levelsupervising program was meant to be supervising.

级别高些的监管程序于是去看自己的那份《速查手册》，查查那个低级别的监管程序到底应该监管些什么。

It couldn’t find the look-uptable.

它的《速查手册》找不到了。

Odd.

奇怪。