For other, more powerful wheels were turning: not only Enigma wheels, but tank wheels.
因为现在有更强大的东西转起来了：谜机的转轮，还有坦克的履带。
The bluff was called, so the deterrent had failed to work.
战争已是箭在弦上，一切阻碍都是徒劳。
Yet Hitler had miscalculated, for this time British duty would be done. Parliament kept the government to its word, and there would be war with honour.
希特勒没有想到，英国这次真的遵守了诺言，对德国宣战了。
It was much as Back to Methuselah had prophesied in 1920:
这正如《千岁人》在1920年所预言的：
And now we are waiting, with monster cannons trained on every city and seaport, and huge aeroplanes ready to spring into the air and drop bombs every one of which will obliterate a whole street,
我们正等待着，巨炮瞄准每一个城市和海港，铁鸟冲上云霄向每个人投下炸弹。
until one of you gentlemen rises in his helplessness to tell us, who are as helpless as himself, that we are at war again.
一位绅士在无助中站起，对一样无助的我们说：哦，又打起来了。
Yet they were not quite as helpless as they seemed.
不过，他们并没有看起来那么无助。
At eleven o'clock on 3 September, Alan was back at Cambridge, sitting in his room with Bob, when Chamberlain's voice came over the wireless.
9月3日11点，艾伦回到剑桥，和鲍勃一起坐在房间里，这时从收音机里传出了张伯伦的声音。
His friend Maurice Pryce would soon be giving serious thought to the practical physics of chain reactions.
他的朋友莫里斯·普瑞斯很快就会认真思考链式反应的实际物理原理。
But Alan had committed himself to the other, logical, secret.
艾伦已经准备好了，即将投入到一个逻辑而机密的事业中，
It would do nothing for Poland. But it would connect him with the world, to a degree surpassing the wildest dream.
他将扼住世界的命运，进入一个最狂野的梦境。