带上她的眼睛 1 中英故事版

Prologue 

Two months of nonstop work had left me exhausted. I asked my director for a two-day leave of absence so that I could go on a short trip and clear my mind. He agreed, but only on the condition that I take a pair of eyes along with me. I accepted, and he took me to pick them up from the Control Center. 

The eyes were stored in a small room at the end of a corridor. I counted about a dozen pairs. The director gestured to the large screen in front of us as he handed me a pair and introduced me to the eyes’ owner, a young woman who appeared to be fresh out of university. She was staring blankly at me. The woman’s puffy spacesuit made her appear even more petite than she probably was. She looked miserable, to be honest. No doubt she had dreamt of the romance of space from the safety of her university library; now she faced the hellish reality of the infinite void.

‘I’m really sorry for the inconvenience,’ she said, bowing apologetically. Never in my life had I heard such a gentle voice. Her soft words seemed to float down from space like a gentle breeze, turning those crude and massive orbiting steel structures into silk. ‘Not at all. I’m happy to have some company,’ I replied sincerely. ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘Really? You still haven’t decided where you’re going?’ She looked pleased. But as she spoke, my attention was drawn to two peculiarities. Firstly, any transmission from space reaches its destination with some degree of delay. Even transmissions from the Moon have a lag of two seconds. The lag time is even longer with communications from the Asteroid belt. Yet somehow her answers seemed to arrive without any perceptible delay. This meant that she had to be in LEO: low-Earth orbit. With no need for a transfer mid-journey, returning to the surface from there would be cheap and quick. So why would she want me to carry her eyes on a vacation? Her spacesuit was the other thing that seemed odd. I work as an astro-engineer specializing in personal equipment, and her suit struck me as odd for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it lacked any visible anti-radiation system, and the helmet hanging by her side appeared to lack an anti-glare shield on its visor. Her suit’s thermal and cooling insulation also looked incredibly advanced.

‘What station is she on?’ I asked, looking over at my director. ‘Don’t ask.’ His expression was glum. ‘Leave it, please,’ echoed the young woman on the screen, abjectly enough to tug at my heartstrings. ‘You aren’t in lockup, are you?’ I joked. The room displayed on the monitor looked exceedingly cramped. It was clearly some sort of cockpit. An array of complex navigation systems pulsed and blinked around her, yet I could see no windows, not even an observation monitor. The pencil spinning near her head was the only visible evidence that she was currently in space. Both she and the director seemed to stiffen at my words. ‘OK,’ I continued hurriedly. ‘I won’t ask about things that aren’t my concern. So where are we going? It’s your choice.’

Coming to a decision appeared to be a genuine struggle for her. Gloved hands gripped in front of her chest, she shut her eyes. It was as though she were deciding between life and death, or as if she thought the planet would explode after our brief vacation. I couldn’t help but chuckle. ‘Oh, this isn’t easy for me. Have you read the book by Helen Keller Three Days to See? If you have, you’ll understand what I’m talking about!’ ‘We don’t have three days, though. Just two. When it comes to time, modern-day folk are dirt-poor. Then again, we’re lucky compared to Helen Keller: in three hours, I can take your eyes anywhere on Earth.’ ‘Then let’s go to the last place I visited before leaving!’ She told me the name of the place. I set off, her eyes in my hand.