She was sitting in a small editing suite at a video production company in Soho. She had ‘Do not disturb’ notices plastered all over the door, and a block on all incoming calls at the switchboard. This was originally to protect her astonishing scoop, but now it was to protect her from embarrassment.

这是位于soho的一间视频制作公司，崔茜卡正坐在一个小制作间里。她往门上贴满了“请勿打扰”的标记，还告诉接线员，任何电话都不要接进来。起初这是为了保护她的独家新闻，现在则是保护她自己的面子。

She would watch the tape all the way through again from the beginning. If she could bear to. She might do some fast forwarding here and there.

她要把带子从头到尾再看一遍。如果她还能忍受的话。或许在某个地方会快进一点点。

It was’ about four o’clock on Monday afternoon, and she had a kind of sick feeling. She was trying to work out what the cause of this slightly sick feeling was, and there was no shortage of candidates.

现在大约是星期一下午四点，她稍微有点恶心反胃的感觉。她试着寻找引起这感觉的原因，但候选人实在太多。

First of all, it had all come on top of the overnight flight from New York. The red eye. Always a killer, that.

首先，这一切都发生在连夜从纽约飞回来之后。红眼航班。从来都要命的很，那东西。

Then, being accosted by aliens on her lawn and flown to the planet Rupert. She was not sufficiently experienced in that sort of thing to be able to say for sure that that was always a killer, but she would be prepared to bet that those who went through it regularly cursed it. There were always stress charts being published in magazines. Fifty stress points for losing your job. Seventy-five points for a divorce or changing your hairstyle and so on. None of them ever mentioned being accosted on your lawn by aliens and then being flown to the planet Rupert, but she was sure it was worth a few dozen points.

然后，在自家草坪上被外星人搭讪，接着又飞到了鲁伯特。这种事情上她经验不足，没法判断它是不是也从来都要命的很，但她绝对敢跟人打赌，时常飞往鲁伯特的人准会骂娘。杂志上经常刊登那种压力图。丢掉工作，五十点压力值。离婚或者换发型之类，七十五点。迄今还没人提到在自己家草坪上被外星人搭讪，接着又飞到鲁伯特去，但她确信这总该值个几十点吧。

It wasn’t that the journey had been particularly stressful. It had been extremely dull in fact. Certainly it had been no more stressful than the trip she had just taken across the Atlantic and it had taken roughly the same time, about seven hours.

其实她本身倒不是特别有压力。事实上应该说是无聊之极。反正至少不比横穿大西洋那一趟更让她紧张，而且花的时间也差不多，大约玩了7个钟头。

Well that was pretty astounding wasn’t it? Flying to the outer limits of the solar system in the same time that it took to fly to New York meant they must have some fantastic unheard-of form of propulsion in the ship. She quizzed her hosts about it and they agreed that it was pretty good.

这总该让人吃惊了吧？飞到太阳系的边缘地带，花的时间却跟人飞到纽约一样，这说明他们的飞船里肯定有些没人听说过的超级棒的推进装置。她问了问自己的东道主，而他们也表示同意，认为它确实不错。