拉拉：永不消逝的電波

The Radio Waves That Never Die

By La La

Translated by Petula Parris-Huang

‘PIONEER ONE … buzz … in front of you … buzz … over …’

‘… buzz … we recommend that you change your orbit … your current orbit

looks very unstable … buzz …’

‘Changing course to 77–1045–37– … buzz … zzzzz …’

The Background Sound Generator let out one last groan before packing it in

altogether. Suddenly, as the last trickle of energy drained away from the connector

plugs, the room was invaded by a thick cloak of darkness. A few seconds later, the

emergency lights lit up, casting feeble green rays around the room.

Nikuulla reached forward and waved his hand up and down in vain. There

was no response at all. The main fuse must have blown.

After a few more seconds, a quiet humming could be heard as the power

slowly crept back the room. Sighing, Nikuulla straightened himself in

his chair. The mechanical smart-arms connected to his shoulders detached

themselves simultaneously, sprayed out a shot of lubricating gas, then

disappeared back the wall. Nikuulla stood up and, stark naked, waited for

his left and right arms to float out of the storage locker and reattach themselves

to his shoulders.

Nikuulla let out a short cough. The sound thundered around the room,

startling him and reminding him that he had forgotten to disconnect his

speaking system from the room’s shared communication channel. It seemed he

wouldn’t be able to trace the signals back any further with this old time-space

pod, on which the basic time unit was a rather bulky 10 million seconds. In any

case, even if he’d wanted to try, there was a certain someone who wasn’t going to

let him.

Nikuulla walked out of the recreation room in a sulk. Kager, who was at

the other end of the centre tending to the repair, spotted him straight away.

He opened a floating portal just behind Nikuulla and hurried angrily after

him.

‘Hey! You! Why don’t you just sod off, you little imp!’ Kager greeted Nikuulla

enthusiastically. As a rule, hosts of entertainment centres liked nothing better

than to have a client holed up in a room somewhere, constantly pumping money

in the direction of the till. Nikuulla, however, was the exception to that rule for

Kager. At around 300,000 seconds earlier, Kager had announced that, if the

power supply at the Scoundrel Bar overloaded just one more time, he would be

throwing Nikuulla out on his ear. It looked as though his pledge was about to be

fulfilled.

‘Don’t worry,’ Nikuulla retorted on his way out. ‘I’m leaving.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t have bothered coming in the first place! Look what you’ve

done—you’ve managed to use up a whole 60,000 kryptons just by yourself! What

on earth were you doing in there anyway? Did you just stick the plug your

mouth and suck the energy straight out of it?’

‘I was using the time-space pod. It is part of your equipment, isn’t it?’

‘We never actually use that thing! It’s just there to fool the electricity

inspectors!’

‘Well, I’ll just have to go somewhere else then, won’t I?’ Nikuulla mumbled as

he hurried down the narrow corridor that led out of the Scoundrel Bar. The rest

of his body parts were struggling to keep up with him and return themselves

to their rightful places. His Auditory System was the last to reposition itself

back inside his head. As it did so, he heard Kager shouting after him. ‘Well,

why don’t you go to the Honest Sailor Bar then? They’ve got 100 time-space

pods there, and they measure by every 100,000 seconds! That will be accurate

enough for you to retrace the moment your godforsaken arse entered the world,

won’t it?’

Nikuulla paused and spent a few seconds to consider Kager’s suggestion. He

actually felt quite moved. The Honest Sailor Bar was another recreation centre

nearby and was much larger than the Scoundrel Bar. Unsurprisingly, the owner

of the Honest Sailor Bar was Kager’s sworn enemy, yet Kager had impetuously

yelled this out. He was bound to regret it later. In fact, he’d probably want to

send his Logical Assessment Unit to the factory for a check-up.

‘Fine, I’m going.’

‘And may The Almighty curse you on your way!’ Kager barked, bidding him

farewell.

The Honest Sailor Bar was, in truth, a great deal classier than the Scoundrel

Bar. On entering the front lobby, one could bump almost anyone from the

city—except, of course, for the few individuals who frequented the Scoundrel Bar.

Everyone appeared to be in a hurry as they rushed toward their chosen worlds

to unwind. They first removed their lower limbs, torsos, and propellers, and then

dumped them in the storage room, which was full to the point of bursting. There

were enough parts stashed inside it to fit out an entire spaceship. The sales

assistants at the counter were no doubt very pleased with the situation, which

served as a constant reminder of just how many clients were in the recreation

rooms swiping away happily with their credit cards.

Nikuulla stuffed his hands his trouser pockets and plodded slowly over to

the counter. The assistant on duty rarely came across such ‘clean’ organic bodies.

He cast a glance over to the storage room. He was probably grumbling to himself

how this guy wouldn’t be paying for any parking.

‘I’d like to use one of your time-space pods,’ Nikuulla announced in a youthful,

nonchalant voice.

‘Which model?’ the assistant asked with an instant smile.

‘Any model is fine,’ Nikuulla replied. ‘I just need to be in a completely

uncontaminated space with no interruptions so that I can time-space travel and

search for background signals in space.’

The assistant’s smile froze for a few seconds.

‘Great … and will you be requiring any of our special discounted services?’

‘No.’

‘You know, using the pod isn’t cheap,’ the assistant said a little caustically. ‘If

you don’t need any other services, I’ll have to set a minimum charge …’

‘That’s fine.’

The assistant dropped a card onto the counter. ‘Go inside, 3,775th floor, room

1190,’ he said curtly, dispensing with any further niceties. ‘It will be 1,000 dollars

for every 600 seconds. Drinks not included.’

The room was pitch black, meaning that Nikuulla had to feel around for a while

before he was able to locate the chair. It was made from Llasidragon leather and

was hard and cool. Nikuulla sunk back the seat. He felt something crawl

the skin at the back of his neck, after which a cool gust of wind blew deep the

inner reaches of his mind.

Nikuulla’s consciousness had connected with the control panel in the room. He

then carefully examined each of the various switches on the panel.

Suddenly, a beam of light running from floor to ceiling appeared a short

distance in front of him. As it began to widen, Nikuulla realized that it was the

curtains opening in front of a full-length window.

The brightness in the room soon reached dazzling proportions. Located on

the 3,775th floor, the room sat above the thin atmospheric layer of the planet

Lathmu. On the right-hand side of the skyline, the twin stars Ploaedes and Lagaol

shone unhindered, projecting their brilliant rays directly the room. Although

a protective black membrane quickly generated itself over the outer layer of

Nikuulla’s eyes, it still took him a while to get used to the intensity of the light.

Nikuulla stood up and walked over to the window. The gloomy arc of the

planet Lathmu lay far below him, emitting weak orange rays. Few celestial

bodies could be seen in this remote corner of the Milky Way. Not so many milli?light seconds ahead of him was the lonely image of the Golmoddon Space City,

while further away to the left he could even make out the spectacular Tasha dust

cloud. Far away in the distance, at a spot less than 500 light seconds from the

United Systems of Ploaedes and Lagaol, the dust cloud’s colossal body whirled

away as it went about forming a new planet. Attracted by its pull, much of the

stardust on the outskirts of the United Systems was sucked the vortex of

the cloud, forming a waterfall of light that stretched across the sky for several

hundred light seconds.

‘What an incredible place,’ Nikuulla grinned to himself. In fact, this was

probably the most amazing place on the entire planet.

Nikuulla sat down again in the chair and detached his arms. He then

connected the arms supplied in the room for controlling the time-space pod. The

new arms were heavy and his body seemed to be rejecting them. As a result, it

took a while for him to open up each of the control windows and turn on the pod’s

various switches.

The room vibrated slightly before breaking away from the building and

drifting off space. Before it had travelled very far, the room was enveloped

and then dissolved by indescribable purplish rays. Towed by the gravitational

transmission line, the pod began to slide slowly the corridor of time.

At first glance, the universe looked the same as always. However, on closer

inspection, Nikuulla noticed that the faraway Tasha dust cloud was turning in a

very peculiar manner. Sometimes it would rotate clockwise, and at other times

anticlockwise. The vast curtain of light that was being sucked the dust cloud

became so blurred that it looked as if the stardust was flowing both in and out of

the cloud at the same time.

All of these changes were controlled by Nikuulla’s right hand. With the

slightest movement of his fingers, the pod sped to and fro through time on the

scale of approximately 30 billion seconds1

(this was the maximum range for

the machines on Games Street). The main problem was energy. The room was

charging 1,000 dollars for every 600 seconds travelled, which was mostly to pay

for the outrageous energy use.

Nikuulla positioned himself about 100 billion seconds after the last signal he

had received and then dropped his gravity anchor. The pod shook a little in the

time-warp gap. Nikuulla swapped his control arms for a pair of receiving arms

that he had assembled in the Wireless Interest Group. Immediately, his mind

filled with a jumble of confused signals originating from the background depths

of the universe.

Nikuulla searched patiently through each of the signals. He was looking for

a very specific bandwidth. It was not long before the voices he was after floated

out from within the din.

‘Da Gama Ten … buzz-buzz … this is Pioneer One … buzz … our position is …

approximately 11,000 light seconds away—the path set by the guiding rocket is

very clear … The stellar rings are at position 6–2 and are approximately 3,000

light seconds away …’

‘Pioneer One, please reconfirm your orbit. Your plane of orbit is approximately

1.5 per cent off course.’

‘Da Gama Ten, we can see the path very clearly. We can pass through the

rings.’

‘Pioneer One … The signal is …’

‘…’

‘Pioneer One! Why did the communication link just cut out? Pioneer One,

please respond!’

‘This is Da Gama Ten … Pioneer One, please respond!’

Here, the signal cut off completely. Nikuulla smiled in satisfaction. He had

finally managed to track down the origin of the signal. And by the sound of

things, ‘they’ were still on the road 100 billion seconds later.

I suppose that now might be a good time to explain things a little more clearly—

starting with the fact that Nikuulla was a member of the Hermits, a division of

the Organization of Listeners.

There were all sorts of organizations and societies across the United Star


试阅到此结束，如需查看全部内容请购买正版文献。
如因学习需要阅览全文，请联系站长。