7 Liftoff

Chapter 7 LIFTOFF The rumbling from below was accompanied by a loud humming noise, as if a billion cats were purring into microphones and the sound was being pumped out of speakers positioned all around. Gentle vibrations washed over Coke and Pep. They could feel the hair on their arms standing on end. "This is a joke, right?" asked Coke. "I suggest you strap into the seats over there, and quickly," warned Moe. "But we have to leave!" Pep shouted. "Our parents are waiting for us back at the motel!" "Too late for that now," Moe informed them. He and the other two aliens went off to busy themselves in preparation for liftoff. If you've ever watched old videos of the Apollo missions or the space shuttles rising up

下面的隆隆声伴随着巨大的嗡嗡声，仿佛十亿只猫对着麦克风咕噜咕噜地叫，声音从四面八方的扬声器里传了出来。 温和的震动冲刷着可口可乐和百事可乐。 他们感到胳膊上的汗毛都竖起来了。 “这是个玩笑，对吧？”可口可乐问道。 “我建议你把安全带系到那边的座位上，快点。”莫警告道。 “但是我们必须离开！”Pep喊道。 “我们的父母在汽车旅馆等我们！”“现在太晚了，”莫告诉他们。 他和另外两个外星人忙着准备升空。 如果你看过阿波罗任务或航天飞机升空的老视频

off the launch pad, it looks like everything is moving in slow motion. It takes an incredible amount of fuel—and a lot of time—to escape the grip of the earth's gravity. But this was not like that at all. Using an advanced propulsion technology that human rocket scientists can only dream about, the spaceship seemed to lift almost effortlessly off the ground and rise to treetop level. If the nation's sophisticated defense systems detected an unidentified flying object, nothing was done about it. No jets were scrambled. The president was not informed. Nobody in the area of Roswell, New Mexico, noticed anything unusual in the night sky. In seconds, the ship was gliding on a straight vertical path, pushing the earth's atmosphere out of its way like it was strolling through a beaded curtain. Of course, the effect on the human body was not so smooth. Newton's laws saw to that. As the ship went from zero to 17,500 miles per

离开发射台，一切看起来都是慢动作。 要想摆脱地球引力的束缚，需要大量的燃料和大量的时间。 但这完全不是那样的。 使用人类火箭科学家只能梦想的先进推进技术，宇宙飞船似乎毫不费力地离开地面，上升到树顶水平。 即使美国先进的防御系统探测到不明飞行物，也没有采取任何措施。 没有飞机紧急起飞。总统没有得到通知。 在新墨西哥州的罗斯威尔地区，没有人注意到夜空中有什么不寻常的东西。 几秒钟后，飞船沿着一条垂直的直线滑行，把地球的大气层推开，就像漫步在串珠窗帘里一样。 当然，对人体的影响并不是那么顺利。 牛顿定律证明了这一点。 当船从0加速到17500英里每小时

hour in less than four minutes, Coke and Pep felt themselves being pushed hard against the floor. Coke looked down to see the flesh on his legs pulling against the bones. If he could have seen the soft tissue of his cheeks flapping, he would have laughed. "We must be pulling four g's," Coke groaned to nobody in particular. It was five, actually. The twins felt pressure across their chests as the ship punched its way through the troposphere. They felt heavy. It was like they had doubled their weight instantly. There were two seats that looked like dentist chairs in the corner, and a large window in front of them. The twins struggled to crawl over to the chairs and strap themselves in. "Look!" Coke said, pointing out the window. Earth was falling away before their eyes. Coke, of course, remembered learning about the layers of the atmosphere in school. At seven and a half miles up, the troposphere ends and the

在不到四分钟的时间里，可口可乐和佩普感到自己被用力推到了地板上。 可乐低下头，看到腿上的肉在拉着骨头。 如果他能看到他脸颊上的软组织在拍打，他会笑的。 “我们一定是拉了四个g，”可口可乐呻吟着说。 实际上是5。当飞船冲过对流层时，双胞胎感到胸口有压力。 他们感到沉重。就好像他们的体重瞬间增加了一倍。 角落里有两个看起来像牙医椅子的座位，前面有一扇大窗户。 双胞胎挣扎着爬到椅子上，系好安全带。 “看!”科克指着窗外说。 地球在他们眼前逐渐下沉。 当然，可口可乐还记得他在学校里学到的各种各样的气氛。 在七英里半的高空，对流层结束了

stratosphere begins. At twenty-one miles, the stratosphere ends and the mesosphere begins. At around forty-nine miles, they reached the thermosphere. Coke almost expected to see lines dividing the layers of air, the way they do in textbook graphs. But the real world was not so obvious. There were no borders separating each layer of the atmosphere. It just got progressively darker. By the time they reached the exosphere, outer space was inky black. The thing that struck Coke and Pep was how everything looked so clear. The stars didn't look like faraway, sparkly dots. They were so much brighter, like planets. They didn't twinkle; they glowed. There was no atmosphere to cloud one's vision. "We're astronauts," Pep said, marveling at the view of the earth from above. "It's beautiful," Coke said, gazing at the enormous blue marble with white swirling around it.

平流层的开始。在21英里处，平流层结束，中间层开始。 在大约49英里处，他们到达了热层。 可口可乐几乎期望看到空气层之间的线条，就像教科书上的图表那样。 但现实世界并没有这么明显。 大气层的每一层之间没有边界。 天色越来越暗。 当它们到达外逸层时，外层空间已经漆黑一片。 让可口可乐和佩普感到震惊的是，一切看起来如此清晰。 星星看起来不像遥远的光点。 它们非常明亮，就像行星一样。 它们不闪烁；他们闪闪发光。 没有什么气氛能蒙蔽人的视线。 “我们是宇航员，”佩普说，对从上面看到的地球感到惊奇。 “太美了，”科克凝视着巨大的蓝色弹珠说，弹珠周围有白色的漩涡。

"So much water!" Pep said. Her brother pointed out that the white swirls were clouds, ice, and snow. They could see the larger rivers, continents, and the lights of big cities. The earth seemed to get smaller as they rocketed away from it. "Where's the equator?" Pep asked. "The equator is an imaginary line, you dope," Coke said, without taking his eyes from the window. "It's not like there's a giant rubber band around the middle of the planet." Pep gasped for a moment when she suddenly realized they would need helmets and spacesuits to survive the airless world of outer space. But there were no helmets or spacesuits within sight.

“这么多水！”Pep说。 她哥哥指出，那些白色的漩涡是云、冰和雪。 他们可以看到更大的河流、大陆和大城市的灯光。 当他们飞离地球时，地球似乎变得越来越小。 “赤道在哪里？”Pep问道。 “赤道是一条想象出来的线，你这个笨蛋，”科克说，眼睛没有离开窗户。 “这并不像在地球中央有一个巨大的橡皮筋。” 佩普喘了口气，突然意识到他们需要头盔和宇航服才能在外太空这个没有空气的世界里生存下来。 但他们看不到头盔或太空服。

Since they had not dropped dead yet, the twins came to the logical conclusion that the aliens were capable of breathing oxygen just like we do, and had been pumping it into the ship. "Where do you think they're taking us?" Pep asked. "To their home planet, I guess." Pep's eyes felt watery and a single tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away with her sleeve. It was extremely possible that she would never see her home planet again. "What do you think Mom and Dad are doing right now?" she asked. "Sleeping," her brother replied. "Or maybe worrying about us." "That's what I'm doing too," Pep replied. "By now, they probably realize that we didn't come back to the motel room," Coke said, after thinking it over more analytically. "After they look around and don't find us, they'll call the police and report us missing. The cops will show up with dogs to search the woods. That's

由于他们还没有死亡，这对双胞胎得出了一个合乎逻辑的结论：外星人能够像我们一样呼吸氧气，并且已经把氧气泵进了飞船。 “你觉得他们要把我们带到哪里去？”Pep问道。 “我猜是回他们的母星吧。” 佩普的眼睛湿润了，一滴眼泪顺着脸颊滚落下来。 她用袖子把它擦掉了。 她极有可能再也见不到自己的母星了。 “你认为爸爸妈妈现在在做什么？”她问。 “睡觉，”她哥哥回答。 “或者是担心我们。” “我也在这么做，”佩普回答。 “到目前为止，他们可能已经意识到我们没有回到汽车旅馆的房间，”可口可乐在更仔细地思考之后说。 “他们四处找不到我们后，就会报警，报告我们失踪。 警察会带着警犬来搜查树林。 这是