Once upon a time, somewhere in the universe very far from here, lived a peaceful star, which moved peacefully in the immensity of the sky, surrounded by a crowd of peaceful planets about which we have not a thing to report. This star was very big and very hot, and its weight was enormous: and here a reporter’s difficulties begin. We have written “very far,” “big,” “hot,” “enormous”: Australia is very far, an elephant is big and a house is bigger, this morning I had a hot bath, Everest is enormous. It’s clear that something in our lexicon isn’t working.
很久以前，在離這里相當遙遠的宇宙里某個地方，住著一顆平靜的星星，在浩瀚的天空靜靜地行走著。這顆星星被一群我們叫不出名的行星包圍著。它很大，也很熱，還非常重：這給記者的報道工作開始造成了麻煩。我們用“遙遠，”“很大，”“很熱，”“難以計算，”形容過下面的事物：澳大利亞很遙遠，大象很大，房子更大，今天早晨我沖了個很熱的熱水澡，喜馬拉雅山龐大無比。顯然我們使用的詞典里的詞語遠遠滿足不了我們想形容的事物。
If this story must be written, we must have the courage to eliminate all adjectives that tend to excite wonder: they would achieve the opposite effect, of impoverishing the narrative. For a discussion of stars our language is inadequate and seems laughable, as if someone were trying to plow with a feather. It’s a language that was born with us, suitable for describing objects more or less as large and as long-lasting as we are; it has our dimensions, it’s human. It doesn’t go beyond what our senses tell us. Until two or three hundred years ago, small meant the scabies mite; there was nothing smaller, nor, as a result, was there an adjective to describe it. The sea and the sky were big, in fact equally big; fire was hot. Not until the thirteenth century was the need felt to introduce into daily language a term suitable for counting “very” numerous objects, and, with little imagination, “million” was coined. A while later, with even less imagination, “billion” was coined, with no care being taken to give it a precise meaning, since the term today has different values in different countries.
如果必須要寫這篇故事，我們必須要有勇氣剔除易于激發我們想入非非的所有形容詞：這些詞會使敘述貧瘠無力，起到相反的效果。因為我們人類的語言不適合論述星辰，否則會顯得可笑，就如同某些人想用羽毛去犁地一樣。語言和我們與生俱來的，適合描述和我們人類一般大小和持久存在的物體；它擁有我們的四維，它有人性。它沒有逾越我們感知的事物告知我們事情。就在兩三百年前，小指的是疥瘡上的螨蟲；沒有更小的東西了，結果呢，也就沒有形容詞來形容小了。大海和天空都很大，事實上，它們同樣大小；火是熱的。到了十九世紀，人們才感到有必要將 “很”這一詞引進到日常語言中來，以便計算無數的物體，時機一到，“百萬”這一詞便沒費吹灰之力，應運而生了。不久，也沒費多大的勁，“十億”一詞也被造了出來，也沒有介意這個詞的精確含義，因為這個詞今天在不同的國家里有著不同的價值取向。
Not even with superlatives does one get very far: how many times as high as a high tower is a very high tower? Nor can we hope for help from disguised superlatives, like “immense,” “colossal,” “extraordinary”: to relate the things that we want to relate here, these adjectives are hopelessly unsuitable, because the star we started from was ten times as big as our sun, and the sun is “many” times as big and heavy as our Earth, whose size so overwhelms our own dimensions that we can represent it only with a violent effort of the imagination. There is, of course, the slim and elegant language of numbers, the alphabet of the powers of ten, but then this would not be a story in the sense in which it wants to be a story; that is, a fable that awakens echoes, and in which each of us can perceive distant reflections of himself and of the human race.
對于形容詞最高級形式，人們也沒有走得太遠：多高的塔算非常高的塔呢？像“巨大的，”“龐大的，”“非凡的，”這些形容詞，我們也不能希望從偽裝的最高級性用詞那里得到幫助：敘述我們想在這里敘述的事情，這些形容詞很不適宜，我們不抱有希望，因為星星從開天辟地起就比太陽大十倍，而太陽比我們居住的地球大并且重“許多”倍，其體積遠遠超出了地球，致使我們想破了腦袋也描述不出它的體積到底有多大。誠然，有許多嫻雅和優美的語言，遠比十個字母表的力量要大得多，但在某種意義上說這不是人們想要講述的故事；就是說，寓言可以產生共鳴，我們每個人在讀寓言的時候都能夠隱約看到他自己的和人類的影子。
This tranquil star wasn’t supposed to be so tranquil. Maybe it was too big: in the far-off original act in which everything was created, it had received an inheritance too demanding. Or maybe it contained in its heart an imbalance or an infection, as happens to some of us. It’s customary among the stars to quietly burn the hydrogen they are made of, generously giving energy to the void, until they are reduced to a dignified thinness and end their career as modest white dwarfs. The star in question, however, when some billions of years had passed since its birth, and its companions began to rarefy, was not satisfied with its destiny and became restless—to such a point that its restlessness became visible even to those of us who are “very” distant and circumscribed by a “very” brief life.
這顆恬靜的星星不應該如此沉靜。也許它太大了：每樣東西都是在遙遠的原始狀態下創造出來的，它已收到了一份相當苛刻的遺傳物。或許在它的內部包含有失調或感染疾病，就像我們身上得的疾病那樣。在星星之間不知不覺中燃盡它們賴以組成的氧氣，慷慨地將能量給予空曠的太空，直到減縮到得體的苗條形狀，變成端莊白色的矮星，已是習以為常的事了。然而，我們提到的這個星星自從它誕生以來已經經歷了數十億年代的滄桑巨變，它的一些伙伴開始稀少，不滿足于它們的宿命，變得煩躁不安了——它的煩躁不安對我們這些距離它“非常”遙遠的并且受到“非常”短暫的生命制約的人來講，就不言而喻了。
Of this restlessness Arab and Chinese astronomers were aware. The Europeans, no: the Europeans of that time, which was a time of struggle, were so convinced that the heaven of the stars was immutable, was in fact the paradigm and kingdom of immutability, that they considered it pointless and blasphemous to notice changes. There could be none—by definition there were none. But a diligent Arab observer, equipped only with good eyes, patience, humility, and the love of knowing the works of his God, had realized that this star, to which he was very attached, was not immutable. He had watched the star for thirty years, and had noticed that it oscillated between the fourth and the sixth of the six magnitudes that had been described many centuries earlier by a Greek, who was as diligent as he, and who, like him, thought that observing the stars was a route that would take one far. The Arab felt a little as if it were his star: he wanted to place his mark on it, and in his notes he called it al-Ludra, which in his dialect means “the capricious one.” Al-Ludra oscillated, but not regularly: not like a pendulum; rather, like someone who is at a loss between two choices. It completed its cycle sometimes in one year, sometimes in two, sometimes in five, and it didn’t always stop in its dimming at the sixth magnitude, which is the last visible to the naked eye: at times it disappeared completely. The patient Arab counted seven cycles before he died: his life had been long, but the life of a man is always pitifully brief compared with that of a star, even if the star behaves in such a way as to arouse suspicions about its eternity.
阿拉伯和中國的天文學家了解這一煩躁不安的緣由。歐洲的天文學家們卻不得而知：那個時代的歐洲人，是個與時代進行抗爭的時候，確信星星的王國是不可改變的，事實上是不可改變的典范和領域，他們認為留意那些變化是毫無意義且褻瀆天庭的行為。可能沒有一個人——根據這一定義，沒有一個人相信星星居住的太空會改變。但是，有一個勤奮的阿拉伯觀察家，僅僅通過良好的視力、耐心、謙遜以及對上帝造物了解之篤誠，明白他所深深迷戀的這顆星星，不是不可改變的。他花了三十年的光陰觀察這顆星星，他注意到這顆星星在六個等級中第四和第六顆星星之間來回擺動，這一現象早在許多世紀前就被一個希臘人描述過，這個希臘人很勤奮，知道觀測星星是一條漫長的征程。這個阿拉伯人感覺那顆星星有點像是他自己的星星似的：他想在那上面做上他的標記，在他的筆記本里他將它稱為艾爾-路得拉（音譯——譯注），用阿拉伯話說叫做“反復無常的星星。”艾爾-路德拉來回擺動，但卻沒有規律：它不像鐘擺那樣擺動;卻像個人，處于兩種選擇之間不知所措。有時它完成一個周期的循環需要一年的時間，有時需要兩年，有時需要五年，而且在它處于第六等級昏暗的時候也不總是停下行進的步伐，竟至到了肉眼看不見的程度：有時它完全消失不見了。那個耐心的阿拉伯人在去世前數過七次周期：他在世上活的時間很長，但一個人的生命與那顆星星的壽命相比總是短暫的，令人感到可憐，即便這個星星以這樣方式存在于宇宙之間，也還是引起人類對其永恒性產生了質疑。
After the death of the Arab, al-Ludra, although provided with a name, did not attract much interest, because the variable stars are so many, and also because, starting in 1750, it was reduced to a speck, barely visible with the best telescopes of the time. But in 1950 (and the message has only now reached us) the illness that must have been gnawing at it from within reached a crisis, and here, for the second time, our story, too, enters a crisis: now it is no longer the adjectives that fail but the facts themselves. We still don’t know much about the convulsive death-resurrection of stars: we know that, fairly often, something flares up in the atomic mechanism結構 of a star’s nucleus核心 and then the star explodes, on a scale not of millions or billions of years but of hours and minutes.We know that these events are among the most cataclysmic that the sky holds; but we understand only—and approximately—the how, not the why. We’ll be satisfied with the how.
盡管那個星星被那個阿拉伯人在生前起了艾爾-路德拉的名字，卻沒有引起人們極大的興趣，因為變幻莫測的星星如此之多，也由于自從1750年開始，它變成了一顆小斑點，用那個時代最精確的望遠鏡幾乎都難以看見。但在1950年（我們剛剛才收到這條信息）這一來自其內在的危機的病態一定一直在嚙噬著它，在此，我們講述的故事也再次進入一種危機：現在并非是形容詞不再發揮其作用，而是事實本身。對于起決定性作用的星星的死亡和再生的規律我們仍然知之甚少：我們知道，星星核心的原子結構里頻頻驟然發出火焰，接著這顆星星便爆炸了，其規模不是數百萬或數十億年，而是數小時和數分鐘。我們知道這些偶發事件是在天空擁有的最大的災難；但我們僅僅——大概了解——只知其然，卻不知其所以然。我們將會滿足于只知其然的水平上。
An observer who, to his misfortune, found himself on October 19th of 1950, at ten o’clock our time, on one of the silent planets of al-Ludra would have seen, “before his very eyes,” as they say, his gentle sun swell, not a little but “a lot,” and would not have been present at the spectacle for long. Within a quarter of an hour he would have been forced to seek useless shelter against the intolerable heat—and this we can affirm independently of any hypothesis concerning the size and shape of this observer, provided that he was constructed, like us, of molecules and atoms—and in half an hour his testimony, and that of all his fellow-beings, would end. Therefore, to conclude this account we must base it on other testimony, that of our earthly instruments, for which the event, in its intrinsic horror, happened in a “very” diluted form and, besides, was slowed down by the long journey through the realm of light that brought us the news. After an hour, the seas and ice (if there were any) of the no longer silent planet boiled up; after three, its rocks melted and its mountains crumbled into valleys in the form of lava. After ten hours, the entire planet was reduced to vapor, along with all the delicate and subtle works that the combined labor of chance and necessity偶然性和必然性, through innumerable trials and errors試驗, had perhaps created there, and along with all the poets and wise men who had perhaps examined that sky, and had wondered what was the value of so many little lights, and had found no answer. That was the answer.
1950年10月19日10點鐘，一位星象觀測家不無遺憾地發現自己本來會看到艾爾-路得拉上寂靜的一顆行星，他們說他觀測的那顆溫和的太陽“就在他眼前”增大起來，增大的既不少也不“多”，而且這一奇觀也不會長時間呈現。在一刻鐘內他不得不被迫去尋找無用的掩體以抵御那叫人難以忍受的酷熱——這一點我們可以斷言有關這個星象觀測家觀測到的那顆行星的大小和形狀不以任何一項假說為依據，假設他像我們一樣構想出分子和原子的話——在半個小時之內，他以及他的諸位同人的證據都將結束。因此，總結這一現象，我們必須根據這一現象并在其它的證據基礎上進行總結歸納，通過使用我們塵世的儀器，其相互作用以其本身固有的恐懼，在非常無力的形式下產生的，此外，這一進程通過光的領域（給我們帶了這個消息）的長期行程而得以放緩。一小時之后，這顆不再沉寂的星星上的海洋和冰塊便沸騰起來：三個消失之后，巖石開始融化，山脈以火山巖的形式崩潰，變成座座峽谷。十小時之后，整個行星變為蒸汽，以及所有因偶然性和必然性結合的勞作的、并經過無數次試驗發明的那些精美的工程，還有，所有詩人和明智之士也許觀測過天空，想知道那么多小小的亮點到底有什么價值，可是他們都沒有找到答案。沒有答案也是種答案。
After one of our days, the surface of the star had reached the orbit of its most distant planets, invading their sky and, together with the remains of its tranquillity, spreading in all directions—a billowing wave of energy bearing the modulated news of the catastrophe.
Ramón Escojido was thirty-four and had two charming children. With his wife he had a complex and tense relationship: he was Peruvian and she was of Austrian origin, he solitary, modest, and lazy, she ambitious and eager for social life. But what social life can you dream of if you live in an observatory天文臺 at an altitude海拔高度 of twenty-nine hundred metres, an hour’s flight from the nearest city and four kilometres from an Indian village, dusty in summer and icy in winter? Judith loved and hated her husband, on alternate days, sometimes even in the same instant. She hated his wisdom and his collection of shells; she loved the father of her children, and the man who was under the covers in the morning.
過了幾天后，這顆星星的平面到達了最遙遠的行星的軌跡，入侵它們的天空，與這顆恬靜的星星的殘害一道朝四面八方散去——能量滾滾的浪濤傳送出大災難變了調的信息。拉蒙三十四歲，有兩個可愛的孩子。他跟他太太的關系復雜而緊張：他是秘魯人，她的祖籍是奧地利，他性格孤僻，謙遜待人，生性懶惰，而她性情豪放，渴望社交生活。但如果你住在海拔兩萬九千米的高度，乘坐飛機到最近的城市需要一個小時的時間，從印度的一個村落走也要四公里的路程，夏季塵土飛揚，冬季冰天雪地，那么你夢想的社交生活還有什么意義呢？朱迪絲時而愛她的丈夫，時而恨她的丈夫，有時愛恨交織在一起。她狠他的聰明和他收集貝殼的嗜好；她愛這個孩子的父親，愛這個早晨頭蒙大被愛睡懶覺的男人。
They reached a fragile accord on weekend outings. It was Friday evening, and they were getting ready with noisy delight for the next day’s excursion. Judith and the children were busy with the provisions; Ramón went up to the observatory to prepare the photographic plate for the night. In the morning, he struggled to free himself from the children, who overwhelmed him with lighthearted questions: How far was the lake? Would it still be frozen? Had he remembered the rubber raft? He went into the darkroom to develop the plate; he dried it and placed it beside the plate that he had made seven days earlier. He examined both under the microscope: good, they were identical; he could leave in tranquillity. But then he had a scruple and looked more carefully, and realized that there was something new—not a big thing, a barely perceptible spot, but it wasn’t there on the old plate. When something like this shows up, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s a speck of dust (one can’t be too clean in the workplace) or a microscopic defect in the emulsion; but there is also the minuscule probability that it’s a nova, and one has to make a report, subject to confirmation. Farewell, outing: he would have to retake the photograph on the following two nights. What would he tell Judith and the children? ♦
關于周末交友他們達成了脆弱的一致意見。那是星期五的晚上，他們都為次日的出行亂哄哄地忙碌著。朱迪絲和孩子們忙著準備攜帶的物品；拉蒙去了天文臺準備那天晚上的照相底片。到了早晨，他好不容易擺脫了孩子們，他們競問些天真的問題攪擾他：那座湖有多遠啊？它還上著凍嗎？他記得那個橡皮伐子嗎？他去暗示沖洗底片：他晾干了底片，放在他早在七天前就沖洗完畢的底片旁邊。他在顯微鏡下仔細檢查了兩張底片：很好，一模一樣；他可以平靜地離開了。但這時他還是有點顧慮，于是又更仔細看了一眼，發現有樣新的東西——不是很大的東西，而是幾乎難以察覺到的斑點，但它不在那張舊的底片上了。但凡出現這種事，一百次里有九十九次會發現一粒灰塵（工作間里越清潔越好）或者感光乳劑中有一個極小的缺陷；但也有微小的可能性，因為那是顆新星，人們必須作出報告確認下來。再會吧，郊游：在接下來的兩天夜里他將不得不再拍下那顆星星的照片。他將怎樣告訴朱迪絲和孩子們呢？
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