找寻虫洞

Galileo

By E J Delaney

Art by Shannon Day

斯特拉在虚拟校园里散步，她本该去上历史课，但是说实在的，谁又喜欢听那么多关于独立战争和星球大战的事呢？趁着妈妈不在，她偷偷修改了虚拟时间表，将午休延长了一会儿。走着走着，斯特拉发现了一个闪闪发光、还在蠕动的东西。原来那是一条废虫（waste worm），而这意味着飞船上一定有一个虫洞。斯特拉知道虫洞是一条连接宇宙中两个不同点的不稳定时间隧道，一端在飞船上，可是另一端会在哪呢？必须找到虫洞，否则就要出大麻烦了。斯特拉进入控制系统，把虚拟校园关掉，虚拟现实消失了，她回到了熟悉的飞船上，她指挥她的宠物伽利略寻找虫洞。伽利略带着斯特拉爬过一个狭长的通道，最后来到了发动机舱。虫洞就在那里！虫洞的边缘嘶嘶作响，周围是蓝色的能量在跳动。更恐怖的是，巨石般大的黑色眼珠正从虫洞那端怒视着她。那是星际麻雀！硕大的麻雀拍打着翅膀，贪婪地撕咬着洞的边缘，用它利剑般的喙刺过去。斯特拉意识到，它一定是嗅出了废虫体内尚未消化的核垃圾，想要把虫子给吃掉。但它离船的引擎太近了，如果它冲破了屏蔽保护，会引爆周围的一切……这部颇具科幻色彩的小说带我们走进未来世界。

STELLA WAS ENJOYING a stroll across the schoolyard when she found the worm. She should have been in history with Avatar Barnett, but honestly, how much “War of Independence this” and “Battle for the Galaxy that” could a girl take?

The sun was out. Rainbow trees were flowering. With her mum gone, Stella had hacked into the virtual timetable and given herself an extended lunch break.

“Look, Galileo,” she called. “Here, boy! Come see.”

Galileo scampered over, stopping only once to leap at a passing butterfly.

“Moof, moof! Weow?”

“Check it out.” Stella kneeled down and brought her chin close to something shimmery and wriggling. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was a waste worm . . .”

“Moof!”

Galileo sprung forward, swatting at the worm. Sparks flew. Zap! He scrabbled away again.

“It is a waste worm!” Stella frowned. “Do you know what this means, Galileo?”

Galileo lay sprawled out, sunning his belly.

“It means there must be a wormhole on board. Oh, this is bad.”

“Weow?”

“A wormhole, Galileo.” She ruffled her fingers through his neck fur. “An unstable time tunnel connecting two different points in the universe. One end must have latched onto our ship.”

Galileo yawned. His tongue smacked briefly at his lips. Lolling his head to the side, he allowed one big ear to cover his eyes.

“Moof?”

“No,” Stella agreed. She took out her handkerchief and scooped up the worm. “No, we can’t wait for Mum. Who knows what else might have wriggled through after this little critter.” She slapped her thigh.“Up now, Galileo. Up, boy!”

“Moof!”

Galileo rolled left and right until he rocked over and came up with his stumpy legs beneath him. Stella held the worm out for him to sniff.

“Find the wormhole, Galileo!”

Galileo moofed and set off. Stella grinned. Her pet might be the most wonderfully ridiculous-looking creature in all the galaxies, but he never lost a scent.

“Weow!”

“No, Galileo. Notthe butterflies. Focus, now. Focus!”

By breed, Galileo was the first ever tabby hound. (The result of Stella not being able to choose between an Old Earth basset hound and a tabby cat.) He was as fat as he was furry, with smiling whiskers and a low-hanging stomach.

He was easily distracted.

“Moof, moof!”

“No, Galileo. The worm! Follow the worm’s scent.” Stella rolled her eyes. “Oh, this is hopeless.”

Sighing, she detoured over to the school’s lone bottle tree. She twisted the hidden clasp to let the hatch on its trunk fall open. Her fingers skittered briefly on the keypad within. Virtual reality disappeared. The school building and Stella’s computer-generated classmates faded away to reveal the familiar corridors of her mum’s home spaceship.

“Moof?”

“That’s right, Galileo. No more butterflies.” Stella held out the worm again. “Now, find that wormhole. Go, boy!”

“Weow!”

Nose to the metal floor, Galileo snuffled and trotted off, bouncing along like a tabby tumbleweed. Stella jogged to keep up.

“That’s it! Good boy!”

They came to a high crawlspace up near the ceiling between decks. Galileo leaped for it with a cat’s instincts but a basset’s stunted agility.

“Weow?”

Stella gave him a boost and then followed. If the worm had made it this far, then the wormhole had to have opened up hours ago, probably just after her mum was called in to work.

“Keep going, Galileo,” Stella urged.

No sooner had she spoken than she heard a frantic scratching of claws and then a muffled thunk. That was Galileo dropping down at the other end of the crawlspace.

“Hold on, Galileo! I’m coming!”

Stella tumbled after him and found herself in the engine room, staring up at the wormhole. It hung spinning above the deck like some impossible hula hoop, all fizzing edges and pulsating blueenergy.

Wormhole, she thought. Check.

The only reason Stella took it so calmly was because she’d spotted something even more worrying: a glassy black eye as big as a boulder glaring at her from within the burning circle!

Star sparrow, she winced. Double check.

“Galileo, we’re in trouble.”

“Moof! Weow!”

The tabby hound darted forward and then skipped back, growling and hissing.

The sparrow was enormous! It flapped its star-white feathers and tore hungrily at the edges of the hole, thrusting its arrowhead beak through. It was hunting for food, Stella realized. It must have sniffed out the nuclear trash lying half-digested inside the waste worm. But it was getting too close to the ship’s engines! If it broke through the shielding... Meltdown! Doomsday-level kaboom!

Horrified, Stella lost her grip on the handkerchief. The worm slipped out and fell to the floor.

To her delighted relief, Galileo pounced on it. He swiped it playfully from paw to paw, closer and closer to the wormhole. Suddenly, the star sparrow stabbed down and pecked the worm up.

“Oh, good boy!” Stella exclaimed. “Well done, Galileo!”

The hula hoop began spinning in reverse. Sparks flew from its rim, and it gurgled like a fast-emptying bathtub, sucking the sparrow back through. When the wormhole collapsed, it left nothing behind but a faint after-rain smell.

No worm, no wormhole, Stella mused.

She turned to Galileo, but the tabby hound had moved beyond petting range. He sniffed about some more, then flopped down alongside the main engine and went to sleep.

Shaking her head, Stella reached instead for the nearest control panel and restarted her virtual school. Even as the building ghosted back into existence, a frowning hologram of her mother appeared above the schoolyard, hunched forward in her pilot’s seat of her little space-hopper.

“Stella, have you been messing with the virtual reality again? If I can’t trust you alone in homeschool—”

“Sorry, Mum. Bit of an emergency. Actually, we came within a whisker of total destruction. But everything’s fine now!” Stella smiled fondly at Galileo. The tabby hound was pawing quietly at the air, shedding fur everywhere as he chased after dream butterflies. “Well, nothing a quick vacuum clean won’t sort out!”

本文刊登在《英语沙龙》（原版阅读）2024年8月刊