And at the end they travelled again.
There was a time when Arthur Dent would not. He said that the Bistromathic Drive had revealed to him that time and distance were one, that mind and Universe were one, that perception and reality were one, and that the more one travelled the more one stayed in one place, and that what with one thing and another he would rather just stay put for a while and sort it all out in his mind, which was now at one with the Universe so it shouldn’t take too long, and he could get a good rest afterwards, put in a little flying practice and learn to cook which he had always meant to do. The can of Greek olive oil was now his most prized possession, and he said that the way it had unexpectedly turned up in his life had again given him a certain sense of the oneness of things which made him feel that…
He yawned and fell asleep.
In the morning as they prepared to take him to some quiet and idyllic planet where they wouldn’t mind him talking like that they suddenly picked up a computer-driven distress call and diverted to investigate.
A small but apparently undamaged spacecraft of the Merida class seemed to be dancing a strange little jig through the void. A brief computer scan revealed that the ship was fine, its computer was fine, but that its pilot was mad.
Half-mad, half-mad, the man insisted as they carried him, raving, aboard.
He was a journalist with the Siderial Daily Mentioner. They sedated him and sent Marvin in to keep him company until he promised to try and talk sense.
I was covering a trial, he said at last, on Argabuthon.
He pushed himself up on to his thin wasted shoulders, his eyes stared wildly. His white hair seemed to be waving at someone it knew in the next room.
Easy, easy, said Ford. Trillian put a soothing hand on his shoulder.
The man sank back down again and stared at the ceiling of the ship’s sick bay.
The case, he said, is now immaterial, but there was a witness… a witness… a man called… called Prak. A strange and difficult man. They were eventually forced to administer a drug to make him tell the truth, a truth drug.
His eyes rolled helplessly in his head.
They gave him too much, he said in a tiny whimper. They gave him much too much. He started to cry. I thing the robots must have jogged the surgeon’s arm.
Robots? said Zaphod sharply. What robots?
Some white robots, whispered the man hoarsely, broke into the courtroom and stole the judge’s sceptre, the Argabuthon Sceptre of Justice, nasty Perspex thing. I don’t know why they wanted it. He began to cry again. And I think they jogged the surgeon’s arm…
He shook his head loosely from side to side, helplessly, sadly, his eyes screwed up in pain.
And when the trial continued, he said in a weeping whisper, they asked Prak a most unfortunate thing. They asked him, he paused and shivered, to tell the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth. Only, don’t you see?
He suddenly hoisted himself up on to his elbows again and shouted at them.
They’d given him much too much of the drug!
He collapsed again, moaning quietly.
Much too much too much too much too…
n. 宇宙,万物,世界