‘Would you like to watch television? It is a long flight. We watch television. It is something we enjoy.’

“你想看电视吗？路还长。我们看电视。我们喜欢这个。”

All of this riveting stuff was on the tape, and fine viewing it made. First of all the picture quality was extremely poor. Tricia didn’t know why this was, exactly. She had a feeling that the Grebulons responded to a slightly different range of light frequencies, and that there had been a lot of ultra-violet around which was mucking up the video camera. There were a lot of interference patterns and video snow as well. Probably something to do with the warp drive that none of them knew the first thing about.

所有这些迷人的东西都在带子上，问题是这东西没法拿出去播放。首先，所有的图像质量都很差。崔茜卡也不明白这究竟是为什么。她觉得大概是因为格里布隆人对光线的反应和地球人稍有不同，而且周围又有好多紫外线搞乱。画面上总有特别浓密的干扰和雪花。没准跟那个他们谁都半点也不懂的偏差驱动器有什么关系。

So what she had on tape, essentially, was a bunch of slightly thin and discoloured people sitting around watching televisions that were showing network broadcasts. She had also pointed the camera out of the very tiny viewport near her seat and got a nice, slightly streaky effect of stars. She knew it was real, but it would have taken a good three or four minutes to fake.

因此，总的来说，她的带子上就是一堆有点瘦有点褪色的人排排坐看电视。她还把摄影机镜头对准了座位旁一个特别小的观察孔，拍到星星有些拖拽的效果。挺漂亮。她知道那是真的，但如果是造假的话，这番景象不过就需要个三四分钟。

In the end she had decided to save her precious videotape for Rupert itself and had simply sat back and watched television with them. She had even dozed off for a while.

最后她决定还是把珍贵的带子留着到了鲁伯特再用，于是她干脆坐下来跟他们一起看电视，甚至还打了会瞌睡。

So part of her sick feeling came from the sense that she had had all that time in an alien spacecraft of astounding technological design, and had spent most of it dozing in front of reruns of M*A*S*H and Cagney and Lacey. But what else was there to do? She had taken some photos as well, of course, all of which had subsequently turned out to be badly fogged when she got them back from the chemist.

这么说来，一部分恶心的感觉应该源于这次飞行。她在一艘科技超高的外星飞船上待了那么久，结果大部分时间都在重播的《风流医生俏护士》和《美国警花》跟前打瞌睡。可她又有什么办法？当然她还照了几张照片，可等回地球洗出来却发现，里头没有一张清楚的。

Another part of her sick feeling probably came from the landing on Rupert. This at least had been dramatic and hair-raising. The ship had come sweeping in over a dark and sombre landscape, a terrain so desperately far removed from the heat and light of its parent sun that it seemed like a map of the psychological scars on the mind of an abandoned child.

另一部分恶心的感觉多半来自降落。至少降落的时候颇富戏剧性，让人汗毛倒竖。飞船掠过一片漆黑阴沉的大地，这地方跟母星的光和热的差别实在大得让人绝望，地表活像是弃儿心理上的伤疤。

Lights blazed through the frozen darkness and guided the ship into the mouth of some kind of cave that seemed to bend itself open to accept the small craft.

灯光射透冻结的黑暗，指引着飞船，某个山洞似的东西似乎张开了嘴，迎接小飞船进入。

Unfortunately, because of the angle of their approach, and the depth at which the small thick viewport was set into the craft’s skin, it hadn’t been possible to get the video camera to point directly at any of it. She ran through that bit of the tape.

不幸的是，由于他们接近洞口的角度以及飞船表面观察孔的深度，崔茜卡的摄影机没法从正面拍下任何画面，她把这部分快进过去。

The camera was pointing directly at the sun.

摄影机的镜头直指着太阳。