She then spent another hour dithering about what to wear. At last she settled on a smart little black dress she'd got in New York. She phoned a friend to see who was likely to be at the club that evening, and was told that it was closed this evening for a private wedding party.

然后她又花了一个钟头优柔寡断，不知道该穿什么好。最后她打定主意，正巧在纽约买了条漂亮的黑色小裙子，今晚就穿它。她给一个朋友打电话，问都有谁会过去；结果对方告诉她今晚有人结婚，在那儿开私人派对，不对外开放。

She thought that trying to live life according to any plan you actually work out is like trying to buy ingredients for a recipe from the supermarket. You get one of those trolleys which simply will not go in the direction you push it and end up just having to buy completely different stuff. What do you do with it? What do you do with the recipe? She didn't know.

她暗暗叹口气，没错，你大可以整出各种各样的方案来规划你的生活，可要想按部就班地执行那简直就像手拿菜谱在超市找材料，你会摊上一辆破手推车，无论如何都不肯往你推的那个方向去，结果只好买上一车完全不同的东西。你该拿它们怎么办？你该拿你的菜谱怎么办？她不知道。

Anyway, that night an alien spacecraft landed on her lawn.

对了，那天晚上一艘外星飞船降落到了她家的草坪上。

She watched it coming in from over the Henley direction with mild curiosity at first, wondering what those lights were. Living, as she did, not a million miles from Heathrow, she was used to seeing lights in the sky. Not usually so late in the evening, or so low, though, which was why she was mildly curious.

她望着它从亨利方向飞过来，起先只是稍微有些好奇，奇怪那些灯是什么东西。崔茜卡住的地方跟希斯罗机场并没隔着百万英里，天上有灯光她早就见怪不怪了。当然它们出现的时间通常都不会这么晚，高度也不会这么低，所以她才稍微有些好奇。

When whatever it was began to come closer and closer her curiosity began to turn to bemusement.

等那个什么东西越来越近越来越近，她的好奇变成了茫然。

'Hmmm,' she thought, which was about as far as she could get with thinking. She was still feeling dopey and jet-lagged and the messages that one part of her brain was busy sending to another were not necessarily arriving on time or the right way up. She left the kitchen where she'd been fixing herself a coffee and went to open the back door which led out to the garden. She took a deep breath of cool evening air, stepped outside and looked up.

“呣。”她想。论起思考，这是她目前所能达到的最高境界。时差还没倒过来，她仍然昏昏沉沉的，半边大脑发给另一边的信息不一定能准时抵达或者跑对方向。她已经倒好了咖啡，现在走出厨房，打开通向后花园的后门。她深深地吸了口夜晚凉爽的空气，走出门去，抬头往上看。

There was something roughly the size of a large camper van parked about a hundred feet above her lawn.

有个东西——差不多跟一辆大号露营车一般大小——正停在她家草坪上方一百英尺的地方。

It was really there. Hanging there. Almost silent.

它真的在那儿。悬在那儿。几乎没有声音。