first_half_corpus.txt

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable  end  of
the  western  spiral  arm  of  the Galaxy lies a small unregarded
yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two  million  miles
is  an  utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-
descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that  they  still
think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most
of  the  people  on  it were unhappy for pretty much of the time.
Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these
were  largely  concerned with the movements of small green pieces
of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't  the  small
green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people  were  mean,  and
most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a  big
mistake  in  coming  down  from the trees in the first place. And
some said that even the trees had been a bad move,  and  that  no
one should ever have left the oceans.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after  one  man
had  been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be
nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on  her  own  in  a
small  cafe  in  Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that
had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how  the
world  could  be  made  a  good and happy place. This time it was
right, it would work, and no one would  have  to  get  nailed  to
anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone  to  tell  anyone-
about  it,  a  terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea
was lost forever.

This is not her story.

But it is the story of that terrible stupid catastrophe and  some
of its consequences.

It is also the story of a book, a book called The  Hitch  Hiker's
Guide  to  the  Galaxy  -  not  an Earth book, never published on
Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or
heard of by any Earthman.

Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.

in fact it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out
of  the  great  publishing  houses  of  Ursa  Minor - of which no
Earthman had ever heard either.

Not only is it a wholly remarkable book,  it  is  also  a  highly
successful  one  -  more  popular  than  the  Celestial Home Care
Omnibus, better selling than Fifty More  Things  to  do  in  Zero
Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of
philosophical blockbusters Where God Went  Wrong,  Some  More  of
God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on  the  Outer  Eastern
Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted
the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the  standard  repository  of
all  knowledge  and  wisdom, for though it has many omissions and
contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly  inaccurate,
it  scores  over the older, more pedestrian work in two important
respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and  secondly  it  has  the  words
Don't Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its
extraordinary   consequences,   and   the  story   of  how  these
consequences are inextricably intertwined  with  this  remarkable
book begins very simply.

It begins with a house.



The house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village.
It  stood  on  its  own  and  looked  over a broad spread of West
Country farmland. Not a remarkable house by any means  -  it  was
about  thirty  years old, squattish, squarish, made of brick, and
had four windows set in the front of a size and proportion  which
more or less exactly failed to please the eye.

The only person for whom the house was in  any  way  special  was
Arthur  Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one
he lived in. He had lived in it for about three years, ever since
he  had  moved  out  of  London  because  it made him nervous and
irritable. He was about thirty as well,  dark  haired  and  never-
quite at ease with himself. The thing that used to worry him most
was the fact that people always used  to  ask  him  what  he  was
looking  so  worried  about.  He  worked  in local radio which he
always used to tell his friends was a lot more  interesting  than
they  probably  thought. It was, too - most of his friends worked
in advertising.

It hadn't properly registered with Arthur that the council wanted
to knock down his house and build an bypass instead.

At eight o'clock on Thursday  morning  Arthur  didn't  feel  very
good.  He  woke  up blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his
room, opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found his  slippers,  and
stomped off to the bathroom to wash.

Toothpaste on the brush - so. Scrub.

Shaving mirror - pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted it.  For  a
moment  it  reflected  a  second  bulldozer  through the bathroom
window. Properly adjusted, it reflected Arthur  Dent's  bristles.
He shaved them off, washed, dried, and stomped off to the kitchen
to find something pleasant to put in his mouth.

Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn.

The word bulldozer wandered through his  mind  for  a  moment  in
search of something to connect with.

The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one.

He stared at it.

"Yellow," he thought and stomped off back to his bedroom  to  get
dressed.

Passing the bathroom he stopped to drink a large glass of  water,
and  another.  He began to suspect that he was hung over. Why was
he hung over? Had he been drinking the night before? He  supposed
that  he must have been. He caught a glint in the shaving mirror.
"Yellow," he thought and stomped on to the bedroom.

He stood and thought. The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the  pub.  He
vaguely remembered being angry, angry about something that seemed
important. He'd been telling  people  about  it,  telling  people
about  it  at  great  length,  he  rather suspected: his clearest
visual recollection was of glazed looks on other people's  faces.
Something  about a new bypass he had just found out about. It had
been in the pipeline for months only no one seemed to have  known
about  it.  Ridiculous.  He  took  a swig of water. It would sort
itself out, he'd decided, no one wanted  a  bypass,  the  council
didn't have a leg to stand on. It would sort itself out.

God what a terrible hangover it had earned him though. He  looked
at  himself  in  the  wardrobe  mirror.  He stuck out his tongue.
"Yellow," he thought. The word yellow wandered through  his  mind
in search of something to connect with.

Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in  front
of a big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path.
Mr L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he  was
a carbon-based life form descended from an ape. More specifically
he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for  the  local  council.
Curiously  enough, though he didn't know it, he was also a direct
male-line  descendant  of  Genghis   Khan,   though   intervening
generations  and  racial  mixing had so juggled his genes that he
had  no  discernible  Mongoloid  characteristics,  and  the  only
vestiges  left  in  Mr  L  Prosser  of his mighty ancestry were a
pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for  little
fur hats.

He was by no means a great warrior: in  fact  he  was  a  nervous
worried  man.  Today  he  was  particularly  nervous  and worried
because something had gone seriously wrong with his job  -  which
was  to  see  that Arthur Dent's house got cleared out of the way
before the day was out.

"Come off it, Mr Dent,", he said, "you can't win  you  know.  You
can't  lie  in  front of the bulldozer indefinitely." He tried to
make his eyes blaze fiercely but they just wouldn't do it.

Arthur lay in the mud and squelched at him.

"I'm game," he said, "we'll see who rusts first."

"I'm afraid you're going to have to accept it," said  Mr  Prosser
gripping  his  fur  hat and rolling it round the top of his head,
"this bypass has got to be built and it's going to be built!"

"First I've heard of it," said Arthur,  "why's  it  going  to  be
built?"

Mr Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit,  then  stopped  and
put it away again.

"What do you mean, why's it got to be built?" he  said.  "It's  a
bypass. You've got to build bypasses."

Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from  point
A  to  point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to
point A very fast. People  living  at  point  C,  being  a  point
directly  in  between,  are often given to wonder what's so great
about point A that so many people of point B are so keen  to  get
there,  and  what's so great about point B that so many people of
point A are so keen to get there. They  often  wish  that  people
would  just  once and for all work out where the hell they wanted
to be.

Mr Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D  wasn't  anywhere  in
particular, it was just any convenient point a very long way from
points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage  at  point
D,  with  axes over the door, and spend a pleasant amount of time
at point E, which would be the nearest pub to point D.  His  wife
of  course  wanted  climbing roses, but he wanted axes. He didn't
know why - he  just  liked  axes.  He  flushed  hotly  under  the
derisive grins of the bulldozer drivers.

He shifted his weight from foot  to  foot,  but  it  was  equally
uncomfortable  on  each.  Obviously somebody had been appallingly
incompetent and he hoped to God it wasn't him.

Mr Prosser said: "You were quite entitled to make any suggestions
or protests at the appropriate time you know."

"Appropriate time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate time? The first I
knew  about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I
asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said  no  he'd
come  to  demolish  the house. He didn't tell me straight away of
course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged  me
a fiver. Then he told me."

"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning
office for the last nine month."

"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went  straight  round  to  see
them,  yesterday  afternoon.  You hadn't exactly gone out of your
way to call attention to them  had  you?  I  mean  like  actually
telling anybody or anything."

"But the plans were on display ..."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the  cellar  to  find
them."

"That's the display department."

"With a torch."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in  the  bottom
of  a  locked  filing  cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a
sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."

A cloud passed overhead. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent as  he
lay  propped  up  on  his elbow in the cold mud. It cast a shadow
over Arthur Dent's house. Mr Prosser frowned at it.

"It's not as if it's a particularly nice house," he said.

"I'm sorry, but I happen to like it."

"You'll like the bypass."

"Oh shut up," said Arthur Dent. "Shut up and go  away,  and  take
your  bloody  bypass  with you. You haven't got a leg to stand on
and you know it."

Mr Prosser's mouth opened and closed a couple of times while  his
mind  was  for  a  moment  filled  with inexplicable but terribly
attractive visions of Arthur Dent's  house  being  consumed  with
fire  and  Arthur himself running screaming from the blazing ruin
with at least three hefty spears protruding  from  his  back.  Mr
Prosser  was often bothered with visions like these and they made
him feel very nervous. He stuttered for a moment and then  pulled
himself together.

"Mr Dent," he said.

"Hello? Yes?" said Arthur.

"Some factual information for you. Have you  any  idea  how  much
damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight
over you?"

"How much?" said Arthur.

"None at  all,"  said  Mr  Prosser,  and  stormed  nervously  off
wondering why his brain was filled with a thousand hairy horsemen
all shouting at him.

By a curious  coincidence,  None  at  all  is  exactly  how  much
suspicion  the  ape-descendant  Arthur  Dent  had that one of his
closest friends was not descended from an ape, but  was  in  fact
from  a  small  planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from
Guildford as he usually claimed.

Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.

This friend of his had first arrived on the planet  some  fifteen
Earth  years  previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself
into Earth society - with, it must be  said,  some  success.  For
instance he had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out
of work actor, which was plausible enough.

He had made one careless blunder though, because he had skimped a
bit  on his preparatory research. The information he had gathered
had led him to choose the name "Ford  Prefect"  as  being  nicely
inconspicuous.

He was not conspicuously tall, his features were striking but not
conspicuously  handsome.  His  hair  was  wiry  and gingerish and
brushed backwards from the temples. His skin seemed to be  pulled
backwards  from  the  nose. There was something very slightly odd
about him, but it was difficult to say what it  was.  Perhaps  it
was  that  his eyes didn't blink often enough and when you talked
to him for any length of time your eyes  began  involuntarily  to
water  on  his behalf. Perhaps it was that he smiled slightly too
broadly and gave people the  unnerving  impression  that  he  was
about to go for their neck.

He struck most of  the  friends  he  had  made  on  Earth  as  an
eccentric,  but  a  harmless  one  --  an unruly boozer with some
oddish habits. For instance he would often  gatecrash  university
parties,   get   badly   drunk   and  start  making  fun  of  any
astrophysicist he could find till he got thrown out.

Sometimes he would get seized with  oddly  distracted  moods  and
stare  into the sky as if hypnotized until someone asked him what
he was doing. Then he would start guiltily for  a  moment,  relax
and grin.
"Oh, just looking for flying saucers," he would joke and everyone
would  laugh  and  ask  him  what  sort  of flying saucers he was
looking for.

"Green ones!" he would reply with a wicked grin, laugh wildly for
a  moment  and then suddenly lunge for the nearest bar and buy an
enormous round of drinks.

Evenings like this usually ended badly. Ford would get out of his
skull  on whisky, huddle into a corner with some girl and explain
to her in slurred phrases that honestly the colour of the  flying
saucers didn't matter that much really.

Thereafter, staggering semi-paralytic down the night  streets  he
would  often  ask  passing  policemen  if  they  knew  the way to
Betelgeuse. The  policemen  would  usually  say  something  like,
"Don't you think it's about time you went off home sir?"

"I'm trying to baby, I'm trying  to,"  is  what  Ford  invariably
replied on these occasions.

In fact what he  was  really  looking  out  for  when  he  stared
distractedly  into the night sky was any kind of flying saucer at
all. The reason he said green was that green was the  traditional
space livery of the Betelgeuse trading scouts.

Ford Prefect was desperate that any flying saucer  at  all  would
arrive soon because fifteen years was a long time to get stranded
anywhere, particularly somewhere as  mindboggingly  dull  as  the
Earth.

Ford wished that a flying saucer would  arrive  soon  because  he
knew  how to flag flying saucers down and get lifts from them. He
knew how to see the Marvels of the Universe for less than  thirty
Altairan dollars a day.

In fact, Ford Prefect was a roving  researcher  for  that  wholly
remarkable book The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Human beings are great adaptors, and by  lunchtime  life  in  the
environs  of Arthur's house had settled into a steady routine. It
was Arthur's accepted role to lie squelching in  the  mud  making
occasional  demands to see his lawyer, his mother or a good book;
it was Mr Prosser's accepted  role  to  tackle  Arthur  with  the
occasional  new  ploy  such  as the For the Public Good talk, the
March of Progress talk, the They Knocked My House Down  Once  You
Know,  Never  Looked  Back  talk and various other cajoleries and
threats; and it was the bulldozer drivers' accepted role  to  sit
around  drinking  coffee and experimenting with union regulations
to see how they could  turn  the  situation  to  their  financial
advantage.

The Earth moved slowly in its diurnal course.

The sun was beginning to dry out the mud Arthur lay in.

A shadow moved across him again.

"Hello Arthur," said the shadow.
Arthur looked up and squinting into the sun was startled  to  see
Ford Prefect standing above him.

"Ford! Hello, how are you?"

"Fine," said Ford, "look, are you busy?"

"Am I busy?" exclaimed Arthur. "Well, I've  just  got  all  these
bulldozers and things to lie in front of because they'll knock my
house down if I don't, but other  than  that  ...  well,  no  not
especially, why?"

They don't have sarcasm on Betelgeuse,  and  Ford  Prefect  often
failed  to notice it unless he was concentrating. He said, "Good,
is there anywhere we can talk?"

"What?" said Arthur Dent.

For a few seconds Ford seemed to ignore him, and  stared  fixedly
into  the sky like a rabbit trying to get run over by a car. Then
suddenly he squatted down beside Arthur.

"We've got to talk," he said urgently.

"Fine," said Arthur, "talk."

"And drink," said Ford. "It's vitally important that we talk  and
drink. Now. We'll go to the pub in the village."

He looked into the sky again, nervous, expectant.

"Look, don't you  understand?"  shouted  Arthur.  He  pointed  at
Prosser. "That man wants to knock my house down!"

Ford glanced at him, puzzled.

"Well he can do it while you're away can't he?" he asked.

"But I don't want him to!"

"Ah."

"Look, what's the matter with you Ford?" said Arthur.

"Nothing. Nothing's the matter. Listen to me - I've got  to  tell
you  the most important thing you've ever heard. I've got to tell
you now, and I've got to tell you in the saloon bar of the  Horse
and Groom."

"But why?"

"Because you are going to need a very stiff drink."

Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur was astonished to find that his
will  was  beginning  to  weaken. He didn't realize that this was
because of an old drinking game that Ford learned to play in  the
hyperspace  ports  that  served the madranite mining belts in the
star system of Orion Beta.
The game was not unlike the Earth game called  Indian  Wrestling,
and was played like this:

Two contestants would sit either side of a table, with a glass in
front of each of them.

Between them  would  be  placed  a  bottle  of  Janx  Spirit  (as
immortalized  in that ancient Orion mining song "Oh don't give me
none more of that Old Janx Spirit/ No, don't  you  give  me  none
more  of  that  Old  Janx Spirit/ For my head will fly, my tongue
will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die/ Won't you pour  me  one
more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit").

Each of the two contestants would then concentrate their will  on
the  bottle  and attempt to tip it and pour spirit into the glass
of his opponent - who would then have to drink it.

The bottle would then be  refilled.  The  game  would  be  played
again. And again.

Once you started to lose you would probably keep losing,  because
one  of  the  effects  of  Janx  spirit is to depress telepsychic
power.

As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the  final
loser  would  have  to  perform  a  forfeit,  which  was  usually
obscenely biological.

Ford Prefect usually played to lose.

Ford stared at Arthur, who began to think  that  perhaps  he  did
want to go to the Horse and Groom after all.

"But what about my house ...?" he asked plaintively.

Ford looked across to Mr Prosser, and suddenly a  wicked  thought
struck him.

"He wants to knock your house down?"

"Yes, he wants to build ..."

"And he can't because you're lying in front of the bulldozers?"

"Yes, and ..."

"I'm sure we can come to some arrangement,"  said  Ford.  "Excuse
me!" he shouted.

Mr Prosser (who was arguing with a spokesman  for  the  bulldozer
drivers  about  whether  or  not Arthur Dent constituted a mental
health hazard, and how much they  should  get  paid  if  he  did)
looked around. He was surprised and slightly alarmed to find that
Arthur had company.

"Yes? Hello?" he called. "Has Mr Dent come to his senses yet?"

"Can we for the moment," called Ford, "assume that he hasn't?"
"Well?" sighed Mr Prosser.

"And can we also assume," said  Ford,  "that  he's  going  to  be
staying here all day?"

"So?"

"So all your men are going to be standing around  all  day  doing
nothing?"

"Could be, could be ..."

"Well, if  you're  resigned  to  doing  that  anyway,  you  don't
actually need him to lie here all the time do you?"

"What?"

"You don't," said Ford patiently, "actually need him here."

Mr Prosser thought about this.

"Well no, not as  such...",  he  said,  "not  exactly  need  ..."
Prosser  was worried. He thought that one of them wasn't making a
lot of sense.

Ford said, "So if you would just like to take  it  as  read  that
he's  actually here, then he and I could slip off down to the pub
for half an hour. How does that sound?"

Mr Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty.

"That sounds perfectly reasonable," he said in a reassuring  tone
of voice, wondering who he was trying to reassure.

"And if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself  later  on,"
said Ford, "we can always cover up for you in return."

"Thank you very much," said Mr Prosser who no longer knew how  to
play  this  at  all,  "thank you very much, yes, that's very kind
..." He frowned, then smiled, then tried  to  do  both  at  once,
failed,  grasped hold of his fur hat and rolled it fitfully round
the top of his head. He could only assume that he had just won.

"So," continued Ford Prefect, "if you would  just  like  to  come
over here and lie down ..."

"What?" said Mr Prosser.

"Ah, I'm sorry," said Ford, "perhaps I hadn't made  myself  fully
clear.  Somebody's  got to lie in front of the bulldozers haven't
they? Or there won't be anything to stop  them  driving  into  Mr
Dent's house will there?"

"What?" said Mr Prosser again.

"It's very simple," said Ford, "my client, Mr Dent, says that  he
will  stop  lying  here in the mud on the sole condition that you
come and take over from him."
"What are you talking about?" said Arthur, but  Ford  nudged  him
with his shoe to be quiet.

"You want me," said Mr Prosser, spelling out this new thought  to
himself, "to come and lie there ..."

"Yes."

"In front of the bulldozer?"

"Yes."

"Instead of Mr Dent."

"Yes."

"In the mud."

"In, as you say it, the mud."

As soon as Mr Prosser realized  that  he  was  substantially  the
loser  after  all,  it  was  as if a weight lifted itself off his
shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew it. He sighed.

"In return for which you will take Mr Dent with you down  to  the
pub?"

"That's it," said Ford. "That's it exactly."

Mr Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped.

"Promise?"

"Promise," said Ford. He turned to Arthur.

"Come on," he said to him, "get up and let the man lie down."

Arthur stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream.

Ford beckoned to Prosser who sadly, awkwardly, sat  down  in  the
mud.  He  felt  that his whole life was some kind of dream and he
sometimes wondered whose it was and whether  they  were  enjoying
it. The mud folded itself round his bottom and his arms and oozed
into his shoes.

Ford looked at him severely.

"And no sneaky knocking down Mr Dent's house  whilst  he's  away,
alright?" he said.

"The mere thought," growled Mr Prosser,  "hadn't  even  begun  to
speculate,"  he  continued,  settling  himself  back,  "about the
merest possibility of crossing my mind."

He saw the bulldozer driver's  union  representative  approaching
and  let his head sink back and closed his eyes. He was trying to
marshal his arguments for proving that he did not now  constitute
a  mental  health  hazard  himself. He was far from certain about
this - his mind seemed to be full of noise,  horses,  smoke,  and
the  stench of blood. This always happened when he felt miserable
and put upon, and he  had  never  been  able  to  explain  it  to
himself.  In a high dimension of which we know nothing the mighty
Khan bellowed with rage, but Mr Prosser  only  trembled  slightly
and whimpered. He began to fell little pricks of water behind the
eyelids. Bureaucratic cock-ups,  angry  men  lying  in  the  mud,
indecipherable  strangers  handing  out inexplicable humiliations
and an unidentified army of horsemen laughing at him in his  head
- what a day.

What a day. Ford Prefect knew that it didn't  matter  a  pair  of
dingo's  kidneys  whether  Arthur's house got knocked down or not
now.

Arthur remained very worried.

"But can we trust him?" he said.

"Myself I'd trust him to the end of the Earth," said Ford.

"Oh yes," said Arthur, "and how far's that?"

"About twelve minutes away,"  said  Ford,  "come  on,  I  need  a
drink."




Here's what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about  alcohol.
It  says  that  alcohol is a colourless volatile liquid formed by
the fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect
on certain carbon-based life forms.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions  alcohol.  It
says  that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle
Blaster.

It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is  like
having  your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round
a large gold brick.

The Guide also tells you on which planets the best  Pan  Galactic
Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one
and what voluntary organizations exist to help  you  rehabilitate
afterwards.

The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself.

Take the juice from one bottle of that Ol' Janx Spirit, it says.

Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus  V
-  Oh that Santraginean sea water, it says. Oh those Santraginean
fish!!!

Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into  the  mixture
(it must be properly iced or the benzine is lost).

Allow four litres of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through  it,  in
memory of all those happy Hikers who have died of pleasure in the
Marshes of Fallia.

Over the back of a silver spoon  float  a  measure  of  Qualactin
Hypermint  extract,  redolent of all the heady odours of the dark
Qualactin Zones, subtle sweet and mystic.

Drop in the tooth of an Algolian  Suntiger.  Watch  it  dissolve,
spreading  the  fires of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of
the drink.

Sprinkle Zamphuor.

Add an olive.

Drink ... but ... very carefully ...

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy sells  rather  better  than
the Encyclopedia Galactica.

"Six pints of bitter," said Ford Prefect to  the  barman  of  the
Horse and Groom. "And quickly please, the world's about to end."

The barman of the Horse and Groom didn't  deserve  this  sort  of
treatment,  he  was a dignified old man. He pushed his glasses up
his nose and blinked at Ford Prefect. Ford ignored him and stared
out  of  the  window,  so the barman looked instead at Arthur who
shrugged helplessly and said nothing.

So the barman said, "Oh  yes  sir?  Nice  weather  for  it,"  and
started pulling pints.

He tried again.

"Going to watch the match this afternoon then?"

Ford glanced round at him.

"No, no point," he said, and looked back out of the window.

"What's that, foregone conclusion then you reckon sir?" said  the
barman. "Arsenal without a chance?"

"No, no," said Ford, "it's just that the world's about to end."

"Oh yes sir, so you said," said  the  barman,  looking  over  his
glasses  this  time  at  Arthur.  "Lucky escape for Arsenal if it
did."

Ford looked back at him, genuinely surprised.

"No, not really," he said. He frowned.

The barman breathed in heavily. "There you are sir,  six  pints,"
he said.

Arthur smiled at him wanly and  shrugged  again.  He  turned  and
smiled  wanly at the rest of the pub just in case any of them had
heard what was going on.
None of them had, and none of them could understand what  he  was
smiling at them for.

A man sitting next to Ford at the bar  looked  at  the  two  men,
looked  at the six pints, did a swift burst of mental arithmetic,
arrived at an answer he liked and grinned a stupid  hopeful  grin
at them.

"Get off," said Ford, "They're ours,"  giving  him  a  look  that
would have an Algolian Suntiger get on with what it was doing.

Ford slapped a five-pound note on the bar.  He  said,  "Keep  the
change."

"What, from a fiver? Thank you sir."

"You've got ten minutes left to spend it."

The barman simply decided to walk away for a bit.

"Ford," said Arthur, "would you please tell me what the  hell  is
going on?"

"Drink up," said Ford, "you've got three pints to get through."

"Three pints?" said Arthur. "At lunchtime?"

The man next to ford grinned and  nodded  happily.  Ford  ignored
him. He said, "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."

"Very deep," said  Arthur,  "you  should  send  that  in  to  the
Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you."

"Drink up."

"Why three pints all of a sudden?"

"Muscle relaxant, you'll need it."

"Muscle relaxant?"

"Muscle relaxant."

Arthur stared into his beer.

"Did I do anything wrong today,"  he  said,  "or  has  the  world
always  been  like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to
notice?"

"Alright," said Ford, "I'll try to  explain.  How  long  have  we
known each other?"

"How long?" Arthur thought. "Er, about five years, maybe six," he
said. "Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time."

"Alright," said Ford. "How would you react if I said that I'm not
from  Guildford  after  all, but from a small planet somewhere in
the vicinity of Betelgeuse?"
Arthur shrugged in a so-so sort of way.

"I don't know," he said, taking a pull of beer.  "Why  -  do  you
think it's the sort of thing you're likely to say?"

Ford gave up. It really wasn't worth  bothering  at  the  moment,
what with the world being about to end. He just said:

"Drink up."

He added, perfectly factually:

"The world's about to end."

Arthur gave the rest of the pub another wan smile.  The  rest  of
the  pub  frowned  at  him. A man waved at him to stop smiling at
them and mind his own business.

"This must be Thursday," said Arthur musing to  himself,  sinking
low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."




On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through
the  ionosphere  many  miles  above  the  surface  of the planet;
several somethings in fact,  several  dozen  huge  yellow  chunky
slablike  somethings,  huge as office buildings, silent as birds.
They soared with ease, basking in electromagnetic rays  from  the
star Sol, biding their time, grouping, preparing.

The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious  of  their
presence,  which  was just how they wanted it for the moment. The
huge yellow somethings went unnoticed at Goonhilly,  they  passed
over  Cape  Canaveral  without  a  blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank
looked straight through them - which was a pity  because  it  was
exactly  the  sort  of  thing  they'd  been looking for all these
years.

The only place they registered at all was on a small black device
called  a  Sub-Etha  Sens-O-Matic  which  winked  away quietly to
itself. It nestled in the darkness inside a leather satchel which
Ford Prefect wore habitually round his neck. The contents of Ford
Prefect's satchel were quite interesting in fact and  would  have
made any Earth physicist's eyes pop out of his head, which is why
he always concealed them by keeping a couple of dog-eared scripts
for plays he pretended he was auditioning for stuffed in the top.
Besides the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic  and  the  scripts  he  had  an
Electronic  Thumb - a short squat black rod, smooth and matt with
a couple of flat switches and dials at one end;  he  also  had  a
device  which looked rather like a largish electronic calculator.
This had about a hundred tiny flat press  buttons  and  a  screen
about  four  inches  square on which any one of a million "pages"
could be summoned  at  a  moment's  notice.  It  looked  insanely
complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic
cover it fitted into had the words Don't Panic printed on  it  in
large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was
in fact that most remarkable of all books ever to come out of the
great  publishing  corporations of Ursa Minor - The Hitch Hiker's
Guide to the Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the  form
of  a  micro  sub  meson  electronic component is that if it were
printed in normal book form, an interstellar  hitch  hiker  would
require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around
in.

Beneath that in Ford  Prefect's  satchel  were  a  few  biros,  a
notepad, and a largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say  on
the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most  massively  useful  thing  an
interstellar  hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical
value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across
the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant
marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling  the  heady  sea
vapours;  you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so
redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it  to  sail  a  mini
raft  down  the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-
hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or
to  avoid  the  gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a
mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it,
it  can't  see  you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can
wave your towel in emergencies  as  a  distress  signal,  and  of
course  dry  yourself  off  with it if it still seems to be clean
enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense  psychological  value.  For
some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a
hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically  assume
that  he  is  also  in  possession of a toothbrush, face flannel,
soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string,  gnat
spray,  wet  weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the
strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of  these  or  a
dozen  other  items  that the hitch hiker might accidentally have
"lost". What the strag will think is that any man who  can  hitch
the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle
against terrible odds, win through, and  still  knows  where  his
towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking  slang,  as  in
"Hey,  you  sass  that  hoopy  Ford  Prefect? There's a frood who
really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet,
have   sex  with;  hoopy:  really  together  guy;  frood:  really
amazingly together guy.)

Nestling quietly on top of the towel in Ford  Prefect's  satchel,
the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic began to wink more quickly. Miles above
the surface of the planet the huge yellow somethings began to fan
out.  At  Jodrell  Bank,  someone  decided it was time for a nice
relaxing cup of tea.

"You got a towel with you?" said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur.

Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him.

"Why? What, no  ...  should  I  have?"  He  had  given  up  being
surprised, there didn't seem to be any point any longer.

Ford clicked his tongue in irritation.

"Drink up," he urged.

At that moment the dull sound of a rumbling  crash  from  outside
filtered  through the low murmur of the pub, through the sound of
the jukebox, through the sound of the man next to Ford hiccupping
over the whisky Ford had eventually bought him.

Arthur choked on his beer, leapt to his feet.

"What's that?" he yelped.

"Don't worry," said Ford, "they haven't started yet."

"Thank God for that," said Arthur and relaxed.

"It's probably just your house being knocked  down,"  said  Ford,
drowning his last pint.

"What?" shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford's spell was broken.  Arthur
looked wildly around him and ran to the window.

"My God they are! They're knocking my house down. What  the  hell
am I doing in the pub, Ford?"

"It hardly makes any difference at this stage," said  Ford,  "let
them have their fun."

"Fun?" yelped Arthur. "Fun!" He quickly checked out of the window
again that they were talking about the same thing.

"Damn their fun!" he hooted and ran  out  of  the  pub  furiously
waving  a  nearly  empty beer glass. He made no friends at all in
the pub that lunchtime.

"Stop, you vandals! You home wreckers!" bawled Arthur. "You  half
crazed Visigoths, stop will you!"

Ford would have to go after him. Turning quickly to the barman he
asked for four packets of peanuts.

"There you are sir," said the barman, slapping the packets on the
bar, "twenty-eight pence if you'd be so kind."

Ford was very kind - he gave the barman another  five-pound  note
and told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then
looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a  momentary
sensation  that  he didn't understand because no one on Earth had
ever experienced it before. In moments  of  great  stress,  every
life  form  that  exists  gives  out a tiny sublimal signal. This
signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense  of
how far that being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is
never possible to be further than  sixteen  thousand  miles  from
your birthplace, which really isn't very far, so such signals are
too minute to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this  moment  under
great  stress,  and  he was born 600 light years away in the near
vicinity of Betelgeuse.

The  barman  reeled  for   a   moment,   hit   by   a   shocking,
incomprehensible sense of distance. He didn't know what it meant,
but he looked at Ford Prefect with a new sense of respect, almost
awe.

"Are you serious, sir?" he said in a small whisper which had  the
effect  of  silencing  the  pub.  "You think the world's going to
end?"

"Yes," said Ford.

"But, this afternoon?"

Ford had recovered himself. He was at his flippest.

"Yes,"  he  said  gaily,  "in  less  than  two  minutes  I  would
estimate."

The barman couldn't believe the conversation he was  having,  but
he couldn't believe the sensation he had just had either.

"Isn't there anything we can do about it then?" he said.

"No, nothing," said Ford, stuffing the peanuts into his pockets.

Someone in the hushed  bar  suddenly  laughed  raucously  at  how
stupid everyone had become.

The man sitting next to Ford was a bit sozzled by now.  His  eyes
waved their way up to Ford.

"I thought," he said, "that if the world was going to end we were
meant to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something."

"If you like, yes," said Ford.

"That's what they told us in the army," said  the  man,  and  his
eyes began the long trek back down to his whisky.

"Will that help?" asked the barman.

"No," said Ford and gave him a friendly smile.  "Excuse  me,"  he
said, "I've got to go." With a wave, he left.

The pub was silent for a moment longer, and then,  embarrassingly
enough,  the man with the raucous laugh did it again. The girl he
had dragged along to the pub with him had  grown  to  loathe  him
dearly  over the last hour or so, and it would probably have been
a great satisfaction to her to know that in a minute and  a  half
or so he would suddenly evaporate into a whiff of hydrogen, ozone
and carbon monoxide. However, when the moment came she  would  be
too busy evaporating herself to notice it.

The barman cleared his throat. He heard himself say:

"Last orders, please."
The huge yellow machines began  to  sink  downward  and  to  move
faster.

Ford knew they were there. This wasn't the way he had wanted it.

Running up the lane, Arthur had  nearly  reached  his  house.  He
didn't  notice  how cold it had suddenly become, he didn't notice
the wind, he didn't notice the sudden irrational squall of  rain.
He didn't notice anything but the caterpillar bulldozers crawling
over the rubble that had been his home.

"You barbarians!" he yelled. "I'll  sue  the  council  for  every
penny  it's  got!  I'll  have  you hung, drawn and quartered! And
whipped! And boiled ... until ...  until  ...  until  you've  had
enough."

Ford was running after him very fast. Very very fast.

"And then I'll do  it  again!"  yelled  Arthur.  "And  when  I've
finished  I  will  take  all  the little bits, and I will jump on
them!"

Arthur  didn't  notice  that  the  men  were  running  from   the
bulldozers;   he  didn't  notice  that  Mr  Prosser  was  staring
hectically into the sky. What Mr Prosser  had  noticed  was  that
huge   yellow  somethings  were  screaming  through  the  clouds.
Impossibly huge yellow somethings.

"And I will carry on  jumping  on  them,"  yelled  Arthur,  still
running,  "until  I get blisters, or I can think of anything even
more unpleasant to do, and then ..."

Arthur tripped, and fell headlong, rolled and landed flat on  his
back.  At last he noticed that something was going on. His finger
shot upwards.

"What the hell's that?" he shrieked.

Whatever it was raced across the  sky  in  monstrous  yellowness,
tore  the  sky apart with mind-buggering noise and leapt off into
the distance leaving the gaping air to shut behind it with a bang
that drove your ears six feet into your skull.

Another one followed and did the same thing only louder.

It's difficult to say exactly what the people on the  surface  of
the  planet  were doing now, because they didn't really know what
they were doing themselves. None of it made  a  lot  of  sense  -
running  into  houses, running out of houses, howling noiselessly
at the noise. All around the world  city  streets  exploded  with
people, cars slewed into each other as the noise fell on them and
then rolled off like a tidal wave over hills and valleys, deserts
and oceans, seeming to flatten everything it hit.

Only one man stood and  watched  the  sky,  stood  with  terrible
sadness in his eyes and rubber bungs in his ears. He knew exactly
what was happening and had known ever since his Sub-Etha  Sens-O-
Matic  had started winking in the dead of night beside his pillar
and woken him with a start. It was what he  had  waited  for  all
these  years,  but  when  he  had  deciphered  the signal pattern
sitting alone in his small dark room a coldness had  gripped  him
and squeezed his heart. Of all the races in all of the Galaxy who
could have come and said a big hello to planet Earth, he thought,
didn't it just have to be the Vogons.

Still he knew what he had to do.  As  the  Vogon  craft  screamed
through  the  air  high above him he opened his satchel. He threw
away a copy of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor  Dreamcoat,  he
threw away a copy of Godspell: He wouldn't need them where he was
going. Everything was ready, everything was prepared.

He knew where his towel was.

A sudden silence hit the Earth. If anything it was worse than the
noise. For a while nothing happened.

The great ships hung motionless in the air, over every nation  on
Earth.  Motionless  they  hung, huge, heavy, steady in the sky, a
blasphemy against nature. Many people went straight into shock as
their  minds  tried  to  encompass what they were looking at. The
ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.

And still nothing happened.

Then there was a slight whisper, a  sudden  spacious  whisper  of
open  ambient  sound.  Every hi fi set in the world, every radio,
every television, every cassette recorder,  every  woofer,  every
tweeter,  every  mid-range  driver  in  the  world quietly turned
itself on.

Every tin can, every dust bin, every  window,  every  car,  every
wine  glass,  every  sheet  of rusty metal became activated as an
acoustically perfect sounding board.

Before the Earth passed away it was going to be  treated  to  the
very  ultimate in sound reproduction, the greatest public address
system ever built.  But  there  was  no  concert,  no  music,  no
fanfare, just a simple message.

"People of Earth, your attention please," a voice  said,  and  it
was   wonderful.   Wonderful   perfect  quadrophonic  sound  with
distortion levels so low as to make a brave man weep.

"This is  Prostetnic  Vogon  Jeltz  of  the  Galactic  Hyperspace
Planning  Council," the voice continued. "As you will no doubt be
aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions  of  the
Galaxy  require  the  building  of  a  hyperspatial express route
through your star system, and regrettably your planet is  one  of
those  scheduled  for  demolition. The process will take slightly
less that two of your Earth minutes. Thank you."

The PA died away.

Uncomprehending terror settled on the watching people  of  Earth.
The  terror  moved  slowly through the gathered crowds as if they
were iron fillings on a sheet of board and a  magnet  was  moving
beneath  them. Panic sprouted again, desperate fleeing panic, but
there was nowhere to flee to.
Observing this, the Vogons turned on their PA again. It said:

"There's no point in acting  all  surprised  about  it.  All  the
planning  charts  and  demolition  orders have been on display in
your local planning department on Alpha  Centauri  for  fifty  of
your  Earth  years,  so  you've  had  plenty of time to lodge any
formal complaint and it's far too late to  start  making  a  fuss
about it now."

The PA fell silent again and its  echo  drifted  off  across  the
land. The huge ships turned slowly in the sky with easy power. On
the underside of each a hatchway opened, an empty black space.

By  this  time  somebody  somewhere  must  have  manned  a  radio
transmitter,  located a wavelength and broadcasted a message back
to the Vogon ships, to plead on behalf of the planet. Nobody ever
heard  what  they said, they only heard the reply. The PA slammed
back into life again. The voice was annoyed. It said:

"What do you mean  you've  never  been  to  Alpha  Centauri?  For
heaven's  sake mankind, it's only four light years away you know.
I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take  an  interest  in
local affairs that's your own lookout.

"Energize the demolition beams."

Light poured out into the hatchways.

"I don't know," said the  voice  on  the  PA,  "apathetic  bloody
planet, I've no sympathy at all." It cut off.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

There was a terrible ghastly noise.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

The Vogon Constructor fleet coasted away  into  the  inky  starry
void.




Far away on the opposite spiral arm of the Galaxy,  five  hundred
thousand  light  years  from  the  star  Sol,  Zaphod Beeblebrox,
President of the Imperial Galactic Government,  sped  across  the
seas  of  Damogran, his ion drive delta boat winking and flashing
in the Damogran sun.

Damogran the  hot;  Damogran  the  remote;  Damogran  the  almost
totally unheard of.

Damogran, secret home of the Heart of Gold.

The boat sped on across the water. It would be some  time  before
it   reached   its   destination  because  Damogran  is  such  an
inconveniently  arranged  planet.  It  consists  of  nothing  but
middling  to  large  desert  islands separated by very pretty but
annoyingly wide stretches of ocean.

The boat sped on.

Because of  this  topological  awkwardness  Damogran  has  always
remained  a  deserted  planet.  This is why the Imperial Galactic
Government chose Damogran for the Heart of Gold project,  because
it was so deserted and the Heart of Gold was so secret.

The boat zipped and skipped across the  sea,  the  sea  that  lay
between  the  main  islands of the only archipelago of any useful
size on the whole planet. Zaphod Beeblebrox was on his  way  from
the  tiny  spaceport  on  Easter Island (the name was an entirely
meaningless coincidence - in Galacticspeke,  easter  means  small
flat  and  light  brown)  to  the  Heart of Gold island, which by
another meaningless coincidence was called France.

One of the side effects of work on the Heart of Gold was a  whole
string of pretty meaningless coincidences.

But it was not in any way a coincidence that today,  the  day  of
culmination  of  the project, the great day of unveiling, the day
that the Heart  of  Gold  was  finally  to  be  introduced  to  a
marvelling Galaxy, was also a great day of culmination for Zaphod
Beeblebrox. It was for the sake of this day  that  he  had  first
decided  to  run  for  the  Presidency, a decision which had sent
waves of astonishment throughout the  Imperial  Galaxy  -  Zaphod
Beeblebrox?   President?  Not  the  Zaphod  Beeblebrox?  Not  the
President? Many had seen it as a clinching proof that  the  whole
of known creation had finally gone bananas.

Zaphod grinned and gave the boat an extra kick of speed.

Zaphod Beeblebrox,  adventurer,  ex-hippy,  good  timer,  (crook?
quite  possibly),  manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal
relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.

President?

No one had gone bananas, not in that way at least.

Only six people in the entire Galaxy understood the principle  on
which  the  Galaxy  was  governed, and they knew that once Zaphod
Beeblebrox had announced his intention to run as President it was
more  or  less  a  fait  accompli:  he  was  the ideal Presidency
fodder*.

What they completely failed to  understand  was  why  Zaphod  was
doing it.

He banked sharply, shooting a wild wall of water at the sun.

Today was the day; today was the day when they would realize what
Zaphod  had  been  up  to.  Today  was  what  Zaphod Beeblebrox's
Presidency was all  about.  Today  was  also  his  two  hundredth
birthday, but that was just another meaningless coincidence.

As he skipped his boat across the  seas  of  Damogran  he  smiled
quietly  to  himself  about  what a wonderful exciting day it was
going to be. He relaxed and spread his two arms lazily across the
seat back. He steered with an extra arm he'd recently fitted just
beneath his right one to help improve his ski-boxing.

"Hey," he cooed to himself, "you're a real cool boy you." But his
nerves sang a song shriller than a dog whistle.

The island of France was about  twenty  miles  long,  five  miles
across  the  middle, sandy and crescent shaped. In fact it seemed
to exist not so much as an island in its own right  as  simply  a
means  of  defining  the  sweep  and  curve  of  a huge bay. This
impression was heightened by the fact that the inner coastline of
the  crescent consisted almost entirely of steep cliffs. From the
top of the cliff the land sloped slowly down five  miles  to  the
opposite shore.

On top of the cliffs stood a reception committee.

It consisted in large part of the engineers and  researchers  who
had built the Heart of Gold - mostly humanoid, but here and there
were a few reptiloid atomineers, two or  three  green  slyph-like
maximegalacticans,  an  octopoid  physucturalist  or  two  and  a
Hooloovoo (a Hooloovoo is a super-intelligent shade of the  color
blue).  All except the Hooloovoo were resplendent in their multi-
colored ceremonial lab coats; the Hooloovoo had been  temporarily
refracted into a free standing prism for the occasion.

There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through  all  of
them.  Together  and between them they had gone to and beyond the
furthest limits of physical laws,  restructured  the  fundamental
fabric  of  matter,  strained,  twisted  and  broken  the laws of
possibility and impossibility, but still the greatest  excitement
of  all  seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash round his
neck. (An orange sash  was  what  the  President  of  the  Galaxy
traditionally  wore.) It might not even have made much difference
to them if they'd known exactly how much power the  President  of
the  Galaxy actually wielded: none at all. Only six people in the
Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic  President  was  not  to
wield power but to attract attention away from it.

Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.

The  crowd  gasped,  dazzled  by  sun  and  seemanship,  as   the
Presidential speedboat zipped round the headland into the bay. It
flashed and shone as  it  came  skating  over  the  sea  in  wide
skidding turns.

In fact it didn't need to touch the water at all, because it  was
supported  on  a  hazy  cushion  of  ionized atoms - but just for
effect it was fitted with thin finblades which could  be  lowered
into  the  water.  They  slashed sheets of water hissing into the
air, carved deep gashes into the sea  which  swayed  crazily  and
sank  back foaming into the boat's wake as it careered across the
bay.

Zaphod loved effect: it was what he was best at.

He twisted the wheel sharply, the boat slewed  round  in  a  wild
scything  skid beneath the cliff face and dropped to rest lightly
on the rocking waves.

Within seconds he ran out onto the deck and waved and grinned  at
over  three  billion  people.  The  three  billion people weren't
actually there, but they watched his every  gesture  through  the
eyes  of a small robot tri-D camera which hovered obsequiously in
the air nearby. The antics of the President always made amazingly
popular tri-D; that's what they were for.

He grinned again. Three billion and six people  didn't  know  it,
but today would be a bigger antic than anyone had bargained for.

The robot camera homed in for a close up on the more  popular  of
his  two  heads  and  he  waved again. He was roughly humanoid in
appearance except for the extra head  and  third  arm.  His  fair
tousled  hair  stuck  out  in  random  directions,  his blue eyes
glinted with something completely unidentifiable, and  his  chins
were almost always unshaven.

A twenty-foot-high transparent globe floated next  to  his  boat,
rolling  and  bobbing, glistening in the brilliant sun. Inside it
floated a wide semi-circular sofa  upholstered  in  glorious  red
leather:  the more the globe bobbed and rolled, the more the sofa
stayed perfectly still, steady as an upholstered rock. Again, all
done for effect as much as anything.

Zaphod stepped through the wall of the globe and relaxed  on  the
sofa.  He  spread his two arms lazily along the back and with the
third brushed some dust off his knee.  His  heads  looked  about,
smiling;  he put his feet up. At any moment, he thought, he might
scream.

Water boiled up beneath the bubble, it seethed and  spouted.  The
bubble  surged  into  the  air,  bobbing and rolling on the water
spout. Up, up it climbed, throwing stilts of light at the  cliff.
Up  it  surged  on  the  jet,  the water falling from beneath it,
crashing back into the sea hundreds of feet below.

Zaphod smiled, picturing himself.

A thoroughly ridiculous  form  of  transport,  but  a  thoroughly
beautiful one.

At the top of the cliff the globe wavered for a moment, tipped on
to  a railed ramp, rolled down it to a small concave platform and
riddled to a halt.

To tremendous applause  Zaphod  Beeblebrox  stepped  out  of  the
bubble, his orange sash blazing in the light.

The President of the Galaxy had arrived.

He waited for the applause to die down, then raised his hands  in
greeting.

"Hi," he said.

A government spider sidled up to him and  attempted  to  press  a
copy  of his prepared speech into his hands. Pages three to seven
of the original version were at the moment  floating  soggily  on
the  Damogran sea some five miles out from the bay. Pages one and
two had been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested Eagle  and  had
already  become  incorporated  into  an extraordinary new form of
nest which the eagle had invented. It was constructed largely  of
papier  m@ch@ and it was virtually impossible for a newly hatched
baby eagle to break out of it. The Damogran Frond  Crested  Eagle
had  heard of the notion of survival of the species but wanted no
truck with it.

Zaphod Beeblebrox would not be needing  his  set  speech  and  he
gently deflected the one being offered him by the spider.

"Hi," he said again.

Everyone beamed at him, or, at least, nearly everyone. He singled
out  Trillian from the crowd. Trillian was a gird that Zaphod had
picked up recently  whilst  visiting  a  planet,  just  for  fun,
incognito.  She  was  slim, darkish, humanoid, with long waves of
black hair, a full mouth,  an  odd  little  nob  of  a  nose  and
ridiculously  brown eyes. With her red head scarf knotted in that
particular way and her long flowing silky brown dress she  looked
vaguely  Arabic.  Not that anyone there had ever heard of an Arab
of course. The Arabs had very recently ceased to exist, and  even
when they had existed they were five hundred thousand light years
from Damogran. Trillian  wasn't  anybody  in  particular,  or  so
Zaphod  claimed.  She  just went around with him rather a lot and
told him what she thought of him.

"Hi honey," he said to her.

She flashed him a quick tight smile and  looked  away.  Then  she
looked  back  for  a  moment and smiled more warmly - but by this
time he was looking at something else.

"Hi," he said to a small knot of creatures  from  the  press  who
were standing nearby wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get
on with the quotes. He grinned at them  particularly  because  he
knew  that in a few moments he would be giving them one hell of a
quote.

The next thing he said though was not a lot of use to  them.  One
of  the  officials  of  the  party had irritably decided that the
President was clearly not in  a  mood  to  read  the  deliciously
turned  speech that had been written for him, and had flipped the
switch on the remote control device in his pocket. Away in  front
of  them  a  huge  white dome that bulged against the sky cracked
down in the middle, split, and slowly folded itself down into the
ground. Everyone gasped although they had known perfectly well it
was going to do that because they had built it that way.

Beneath it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred  and  fifty
metres  long,  shaped  like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white
and mindboggingly beautiful. At the heart of it,  unseen,  lay  a
small  gold  box which carried within it the most brain-wretching
device ever conceived, a device which made this  starship  unique
in  the  history of the galaxy, a device after which the ship had
been named - The Heart of Gold.
"Wow", said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold. There  wasn't
much else he could say.

He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press.

"Wow."

The crowd turned their faces back  towards  him  expectantly.  He
winked  at  Trillian who raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes
at him. She knew what he was about  to  say  and  thought  him  a
terrible showoff.

"That is really amazing," he said. "That really is truly amazing.
That is so amazingly amazing I think I'd like to steal it."

A marvellous Presidential quote, absolutely  true  to  form.  The
crowd  laughed  appreciatively,  the  newsmen  gleefully  punched
buttons on their Sub-Etha News-Matics and the President grinned.

As he grinned his heart screamed unbearably and he  fingered  the
small Paralyso-Matic bomb that nestled quietly in his pocket.

Finally he could bear it no more. He lifted his heads up  to  the
sky,  let out a wild whoop in major thirds, threw the bomb to the
ground and ran forward through the sea of suddenly frozen smiles.




Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was not a pleasant sight, even  for  other
Vogons.  His  highly  domed  nose  rose  high above a small piggy
forehead. His dark green rubbery skin was thick enough for him to
play  the game of Vogon Civil Service politics, and play it well,
and waterproof enough for him  to  survive  indefinitely  at  sea
depths of up to a thousand feet with no ill effects.

Not that he ever went swimming of course. His busy schedule would
not allow it. He was the way he was because billions of years ago
when the Vogons had first crawled out of  the  sluggish  primeval
seas  of  Vogsphere,  and  had  lain  panting  and heaving on the
planet's virgin shores... when the first rays of the bright young
Vogsol  sun  had shone across them that morning, it was as if the
forces of evolution ad simply given up on them  there  and  then,
had  turned  aside in disgust and written them off as an ugly and
unfortunate mistake. They never evolved again; they should  never
have survived.

The fact that they did is some kind  of  tribute  to  the  thick-
willed  slug-brained  stubbornness of these creatures. Evolution?
they said to themselves, Who needs it?, and what  nature  refused
to  do  for  them they simply did without until such time as they
were able to rectify the grosser anatomical  inconveniences  with
surgery.

Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet  Vogsphere  had  been
working  overtime  to  make  up  for  their earlier blunder. They
brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs,  which  the
Vogons  ate,  smashing  their  shells  with  iron  mallets;  tall
aspiring trees with breathtaking slenderness and colour which the
Vogons  cut  down and burned the crab meat with; elegant gazelle-
like creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which  the  Vogons
would  catch  and  sit  on. They were no use as transport because
their backs would snap instantly, but  the  Vogons  sat  on  them
anyway.

Thus the planet Vogsphere whiled away the unhappy millennia until
the  Vogons  suddenly  discovered  the principles of interstellar
travel. Within a  few  short  Vog  years  every  last  Vogon  had
migrated  to  the  Megabrantis  cluster, the political hub of the
Galaxy and now formed the  immensely  powerful  backbone  of  the
Galactic  Civil Service. They have attempted to acquire learning,
they have attempted to acquire style and  social  grace,  but  in
most  respects  the  modern  Vogon  is  little different from his
primitive forebears. Every year they import twenty-seven thousand
scintillating  jewelled  scuttling crabs from their native planet
and while away a happy drunken night smashing them to  bits  with
iron mallets.

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was a fairly typical Vogon in that he  was
thoroughly vile. Also, he did not like hitch hikers.

Somewhere in a small dark cabin buried deep in the intestines  of
Prostetnic   Vogon   Jeltz's   flagship,  a  small  match  flared
nervously. The owner of the match was not a Vogon,  but  he  knew
all  about  them  and  was right to be nervous. His name was Ford
Prefect*.

He looked about the cabin but  could  see  very  little;  strange
monstrous  shadows  loomed  and  leaped  with the tiny flickering
flame, but all was quiet. He breathed a silent thank you  to  the
Dentrassis.  The  Dentrassis  are an unruly tribe of gourmands, a
wild but pleasant bunch whom the Vogons  had  recently  taken  to
employing  as  catering  staff  on their long haul fleets, on the
strict understanding that  they  keep  themselves  very  much  to
themselves.

This suited the Dentrassis fine, because they loved Vogon  money,
which  is one of the hardest currencies in space, but loathed the
Vogons themselves. The only sort of Vogon a  Dentrassi  liked  to
see was an annoyed Vogon.

It was because of  this  tiny  piece  of  information  that  Ford
Prefect  was  not  now  a  whiff  of  hydrogen,  ozone and carbon
monoxide.

He heard a slight groan. By the light of the match he saw a heavy
shape  moving  slightly  on the floor. Quickly he shook the match
out, reached in his pocket, found what he  was  looking  for  and
took it out. He crouched on the floor. The shape moved again.

Ford Prefect said: "I bought some peanuts."

Arthur Dent moved, and groaned again, muttering incoherently.

"Here, have some," urged Ford,  shaking  the  packet  again,  "if
you've  never  been  through  a  matter  transference beam before
you've probably lost some salt and  protein.  The  beer  you  had
should have cushioned your system a bit."
"Whhhrrrr..." said Arthur Dent. He opened his eyes.

"It's dark," he said.

"Yes," said Ford Prefect, "it's dark."

"No light," said Arthur Dent. "Dark, no light."

One of the things  Ford  Prefect  had  always  found  hardest  to
understand  about  human  beings  was  their habit of continually
stating and repeating the obvious, as in  It's  a  nice  day,  or
You're  very  tall,  or  Oh  dear  you seem to have fallen down a
thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first  Ford  had  formed  a
theory  to  account  for  this strange behaviour. If human beings
don't keep  exercising  their  lips,  he  thought,  their  mouths
probably   seize  up.  After  a  few  months'  consideration  and
observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new  one.  If
they  don't  keep  on  exercising  their  lips, he thought, their
brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well
as  being  obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human
beings after all, but  he  always  remained  desperately  worried
about the terrible number of things they didn't know about.

"Yes," he agreed with Arthur, "no light."  He  helped  Arthur  to
some peanuts. "How do you feel?" he asked.

"Like a military academy," said  Arthur,  "bits  of  me  keep  on
passing out."

Ford stared at him blankly in the darkness.

"If I asked you where the hell  we  were,"  said  Arthur  weakly,
"would I regret it?"

Ford stood up. "We're safe," he said.

"Oh good," said Arthur.

"We're in a small galley  cabin,"  said  Ford,  "in  one  of  the
spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet."

"Ah," said Arthur, "this is obviously some strange usage  of  the
word safe that I wasn't previously aware of."

Ford struck another match to help him search for a light  switch.
Monstrous  shadows  leaped  and loomed again. Arthur struggled to
his feet and hugged himself apprehensively. Hideous alien  shapes
seemed  to  throng about him, the air was thick with musty smells
which sidled into his lungs without identifying themselves, and a
low irritating hum kept his brain from focusing.

"How did we get here?" he asked, shivering slightly.

"We hitched a lift," said Ford.

"Excuse me?" said Arthur. "Are you trying to tell me that we just
stuck  out  our  thumbs and some green bug-eyed monster stuck his
head out and said, Hi fellas, hop right in. I can take you as far
as the Basingstoke roundabout?"

"Well," said Ford, "the Thumb's an electronic sub-etha signalling
device,  the roundabout's at Barnard's Star six light years away,
but otherwise, that's more or less right."

"And the bug-eyed monster?"

"Is green, yes."

"Fine," said Arthur, "when can I get home?"

"You can't," said Ford Prefect, and found the light switch.

"Shade your eyes ..." he said, and turned it on.

Even Ford was surprised.

"Good grief," said Arthur, "is this  really  the  interior  of  a
flying saucer?"

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz heaved his unpleasant green body round the
control   bridge.   He   always   felt  vaguely  irritable  after
demolishing populated planets. He wished that someone would  come
and tell him that it was all wrong so that he could shout at them
and feel better. He flopped as heavily as  he  could  on  to  his
control  seat  in  the  hope  that  it  would  break and give him
something to be  genuinely  angry  about,  but  it  only  gave  a
complaining sort of creak.

"Go away!" he shouted at a young  Vogon  guard  who  entered  the
bridge  at  that  moment. The guard vanished immediately, feeling
rather relieved. He was glad it wouldn't now be him who delivered
the  report  they'd  just  received.  The  report was an official
release which said that a wonderful new form of  spaceship  drive
was  at  this moment being unveiled at a government research base
on Damogran which would henceforth make all hyperspatial  express
routes unnecessary.

Another door slid open, but this time the  Vogon  captain  didn't
shout  because it was the door from the galley quarters where the
Dentrassis prepared his meals. A meal would be most welcome.

A huge furry creature bounded through the  door  with  his  lunch
tray. It was grinning like a maniac.

Prostetnic Vogon  Jeltz  was  delighted.  He  knew  that  when  a
Dentrassi  looked  that  pleased  with itself there was something
going on somewhere on the ship  that  he  could  get  very  angry
indeed about.

Ford and Arthur stared about them.

"Well, what do you think?" said Ford.

"It's a bit squalid, isn't it?"

Ford  frowned  at  the  grubby  mattress,   unwashed   cups   and
unidentifiable bits of smelly alien underwear that lay around the
cramped cabin.

"Well, this is a working ship, you see," said  Ford.  "These  are
the Dentrassi sleeping quarters."

"I thought you said they were called Vogons or something."

"Yes," said Ford, "the Vogons run the ship,  the  Dentrassis  are
the cooks, they let us on board."

"I'm confused," said Arthur.

"Here, have a look at this," said Ford. He sat down on one of the
mattresses  and rummaged about in his satchel. Arthur prodded the
mattress nervously and then sat on it himself:  in  fact  he  had
very  little to be nervous about, because all mattresses grown in
the swamps of Squornshellous Zeta are very thoroughly killed  and
dried  before  being  put  to service. Very few have ever come to
life again.

Ford handed the book to Arthur.

"What is it?" asked Arthur.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a sort of  electronic
book.  It  tells  you everything you need to know about anything.
That's its job."

Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands.

"I like the cover," he said. "Don't Panic. It's the first helpful
or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day."

"I'll show you how it works," said  Ford.  He  snatched  it  from
Arthur who was still holding it as if it was a two-week-dead lark
and pulled it out of its cover.

"You press this button here you see  and  the  screen  lights  up
giving you the index."

A screen, about three inches by four, lit up and characters began
to flicker across the surface.

"You want to know about Vogons, so I enter  that  name  so."  His
fingers tapped some more keys. "And there we are."

The words Vogon Constructor Fleets flared  in  green  across  the
screen.

Ford pressed a large red button at the bottom of the  screen  and
words  began  to  undulate  across it. At the same time, the book
began to speak the entry as well in a still quiet measured voice.
This is what the book said.

"Vogon Constructor Fleets. Here is what to do if you want to  get
a  lift  from  a  Vogon:  forget  it.  They  are  one of the most
unpleasant races in the Galaxy --  not  actually  evil,  but  bad
tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even
lift a finger to save their own grandmothers  from  the  Ravenous
Bugblatter  Beast  of  Traal without orders signed in triplicate,
sent in, sent back, queried, lost,  found,  subjected  to  public
inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat and recycled
as firelighters.

"The best way to get a drink out of a  Vogon  is  to  stick  your
finger  down  his  throat, and the best way to irritate him is to
feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.

"On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you."

Arthur blinked at it.

"What a strange book. How did we get a lift then?"

"That's the point, it's out of date now," said Ford, sliding  the
book  back  into its cover. "I'm doing the field research for the
New Revised Edition, and one of the things I'll have  to  include
is  a  bit  about how the Vogons now employ Dentrassi cooks which
gives us a rather useful little loophole."

A pained expression crossed  Arthur's  face.  "But  who  are  the
Dentrassi?" he said.

"Great guys," said Ford. "They're the best  cooks  and  the  best
drink  mixers and they don't give a wet slap about anything else.
And they'll always help hitch hikers aboard, partly because  they
like  the company, but mostly because it annoys the Vogons. Which
is exactly the sort of thing  you  need  to  know  if  you're  an
impoverished  hitch  hiker  trying  to  see  the  marvels  of the
Universe for less than thirty Altairan Dollars a day. And  that's
my job. Fun, isn't it?"

Arthur looked lost.

"It's  amazing,"  he  said  and  frowned  at  one  of  the  other
mattresses.

"Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than  I
intended,"  said  Ford.  "I  came  for  a  week and got stuck for
fifteen years."

"But how did you get there in the first place then?"

"Easy, I got a lift with a teaser."

"A teaser?"

"Yeah."

"Er, what is ..."

"A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They
cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar
contact yet and buzz them."

"Buzz them?" Arthur began to feel that Ford was  enjoying  making
life difficult for him.
"Yeah", said Ford, "they buzz them. They find some isolated  spot
with  very  few  people around, then land right by some poor soul
whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in
front  of  him  wearing  silly antennae on their heads and making
beep beep noises. Rather childish really." Ford leant back on the
mattress  with his hands behind his head and looked infuriatingly
pleased with himself.

"Ford," insisted Arthur, "I don't know  if  this  sounds  like  a
silly question, but what am I doing here?"

"Well you know that," said Ford. "I rescued you from the Earth."

"And what's happened to the Earth?"

"Ah. It's been demolished."

"Has it," said Arthur levelly.

"Yes. It just boiled away into space."

"Look," said Arthur, "I'm a bit upset about that."

Ford frowned to himself and seemed to roll the thought around his
mind.

"Yes, I can understand that," he said at last.

"Understand that!" shouted Arthur. "Understand that!"

Ford sprang up.

"Keep looking at the book!" he hissed urgently.

"What?"

"Don't Panic."

"I'm not panicking!"

"Yes you are."

"Alright so I'm panicking, what else is there to do?"

"You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy's a
fun place. You'll need to have this fish in your ear."

"I beg your pardon?" asked Arthur, rather politely he thought.

Ford was holding up a small glass jar which quite clearly  had  a
small  yellow fish wriggling around in it. Arthur blinked at him.
He wished there was something simple and  recognizable  he  could
grasp hold of. He would have felt safe if alongside the Dentrassi
underwear, the piles of Squornshellous  mattresses  and  the  man
from  Betelgeuse  holding  up a small yellow fish and offering to
put it in his ear he had been able to see just a small packet  of
corn flakes. He couldn't, and he didn't feel safe.

Suddenly a violent noise leapt at them from  no  source  that  he
could  identify.  He  gasped in terror at what sounded like a man
trying to gargle whilst fighting off a pack of wolves.

"Shush!" said Ford. "Listen, it might be important."

"Im ... important?"

"It's the Vogon captain making an announcement on the T'annoy."

"You mean that's how the Vogons talk?"

"Listen!"

"But I can't speak Vogon!"

"You don't need to. Just put that fish in your ear."

Ford, with a lightning movement, clapped  his  hand  to  Arthur's
ear,  and  he  had  the  sudden  sickening  sensation of the fish
slithering deep into his aural  tract.  Gasping  with  horror  he
scrabbled  at  his ear for a second or so, but then slowly turned
goggle-eyed with wonder. He was experiencing the aural equivalent
of  looking  at  a  picture  of  two  black silhouetted faces and
suddenly seeing it as a picture of a  white  candlestick.  Or  of
looking  at  a  lot  of  coloured  dots on a piece of paper which
suddenly resolve themselves into the figure  six  and  mean  that
your  optician  is  going  to charge you a lot of money for a new
pair of glasses.

He was still listening to the howling gargles, he knew that, only
now  it  had  taken on the semblance of perfectly straightforward
English.

This is what he heard ...




"Howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl howl gargle  howl  gargle
howl  howl  gargle  gargle  howl gargle gargle gargle howl slurrp
uuuurgh should have a good time. Message repeats.  This  is  your
captain   speaking,   so  stop  whatever  you're  doing  and  pay
attention. First of all I see from our instruments that we have a
couple of hitchhikers aboard. Hello wherever you are. I just want
to make it totally clear that you  are  not  at  all  welcome.  I
worked  hard to get where I am today, and I didn't become captain
of a Vogon constructor ship simply so I could turn it into a taxi
service  for  a load of degenerate freeloaders. I have sent out a
search party, and as soon that they find you I will put  you  off
the ship. If you're very lucky I might read you some of my poetry
first.

"Secondly, we are about to jump into hyperspace for  the  journey
to  Barnard's  Star.  On  arrival  we  will  stay  in  dock for a
seventy-two hour refit, and no one's to  leave  the  ship  during
that time. I repeat, all planet leave is cancelled. I've just had
an unhappy love affair, so I don't see why  anybody  else  should
have a good time. Message ends."
The noise stopped.

Arthur discovered to his embarrassment that he was  lying  curled
up  in  a small ball on the floor with his arms wrapped round his
head. He smiled weakly.

"Charming man," he said. "I wish I had  a  daughter  so  I  could
forbid her to marry one ..."

"You wouldn't need to," said  Ford.  "They've  got  as  much  sex
appeal  as  a  road accident. No, don't move," he added as Arthur
began to uncurl himself, "you'd better be prepared for  the  jump
into hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk."

"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"

"You ask a glass of water."

Arthur thought about this.

"Ford," he said.

"Yeah?"

"What's this fish doing in my ear?"

"It's translating for you. It's a Babel fish. Look it up  in  the
book if you like."

He tossed over The Hitch Hiker's Guide to  the  Galaxy  and  then
curled  himself  up into a foetal ball to prepare himself for the
jump.

At that moment the bottom fell out of Arthur's mind.

His eyes turned inside out. His feet began to leak out of the top
of his head.

The room folded flat about  him,  spun  around,  shifted  out  of
existence and left him sliding into his own navel.

They were passing through hyperspace.

"The Babel fish," said The Hitch  Hiker's  Guide  to  the  Galaxy
quietly,  "is  small,  yellow  and  leech-like,  and probably the
oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on  brainwave  energy  not
from  its  carrier  but  from  those  around  it.  It absorbs all
unconscious mental frequencies  from  this  brainwave  energy  to
nourish  itself  with.  It  then  excretes  into  the mind of its
carrier a telepathic matrix formed  by  combining  the  conscious
thought  frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech
centres of the brain  which  has  supplied  them.  The  practical
upshot  of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear
you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form  of
language.  The  speech  patterns  you  actually  hear  decode the
brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your  Babel
fish.

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that  anything
so  mind\-bog\-gin\-gly useful could have evolved purely by chance that
some thin\-kers have chosen to see it as the  final  and  clinching
proof of the non-existence of God.

"The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I
exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am
nothing.'

"`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway,  isn't  it?
It  could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so
therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

"`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of  that,'  and  promptly
vanished in a puff of logic.

"`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for  an  encore  goes  on  to
prove  that  black  is  white and gets himself killed on the next
zebra crossing.

"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a  load  of
dingo's  kidneys,  but  that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a
small fortune when he used it as the central theme of  his  best-
selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.

"Meanwhile, the poor Babel  fish,  by  effectively  removing  all
barriers  to  communication between different races and cultures,
has caused more and bloddier  wars  than  anything  else  in  the
history of creation."

Arthur let out a low groan. He was horrified to discover that the
kick  through  hyperspace hadn't killed him. He was now six light
years from the place that the Earth would have been if  it  still
existed.

The Earth.

Visions of it swam sickeningly through his nauseated mind.  There
was  no  way  his  imagination could feel the impact of the whole
Earth having gone, it was too big. He  prodded  his  feelings  by
thinking  that  his parents and his sister had gone. No reaction.
He thought of all the people he had been close to.  No  reaction.
Then  he  thought  of  a  complete  stranger he had been standing
behind in the queue at the supermarket before and felt  a  sudden
stab  -  the  supermarket  was  gone,  everything in it was gone.
Nelson's Column had gone! Nelson's  Column  had  gone  and  there
would  be  no  outcry,  because  there was no one left to make an
outcry. From now on Nelson's Column only  existed  in  his  mind.
England  only  existed in his mind - his mind, stuck here in this
dank smelly  steel-lined  spaceship.  A  wave  of  claustrophobia
closed in on him.

England no longer existed. He'd got that - somehow he'd  got  it.
He  tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn't grasp
it. He decided to start smaller again.  New  York  has  gone.  No
reaction.  He'd  never  seriously believed it existed anyway. The
dollar, he thought, had sunk for ever. Slight tremor there. Every
Bogart  movie  has  been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave
him a nasty knock. McDonalds, he thought. There is no longer  any
such thing as a McDonald's hamburger.
He passed out. When he came round a second later he found he  was
sobbing for his mother.

He jerked himself violently to his feet.

"Ford!"

Ford looked up from where he was sitting in a corner  humming  to
himself. He always found the actual travelling-through-space part
of space travel rather trying.

"Yeah?" he said.

"If you're a researcher on this book thing and you were on Earth,
you must have been gathering material on it."

"Well, I was able to extend the original entry a bit, yes."

"Let me see what it says in this edition then, I've  got  to  see
it."

"Yeah OK." He passed it over again.

Arthur grabbed hold of it and tried to stop his hands shaking. He
pressed  the  entry for the relevant page. The screen flashed and
swirled and resolved into a page of print. Arthur stared at it.

"It doesn't have an entry!" he burst out.

Ford looked over his shoulder.

"Yes it does," he said, "down there, see at  the  bottom  of  the
screen,  just  under  Eccentrica  Gallumbits, the triple-breasted
whore of Eroticon 6."

Arthur followed Ford's finger, and saw where it was pointing. For
a moment it still didn't register, then his mind nearly blew up.

"What? Harmless? Is that all  it's  got  to  say?  Harmless!  One
word!"

Ford shrugged.

"Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and  only
a  limited  amount  of  space  in the book's microprocessors," he
said, "and no one knew much about the Earth of course."

"Well for God's sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit."

"Oh yes, well I managed to  transmit  a  new  entry  off  to  the
editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it's still an improvement."

"And what does it say now?" asked Arthur.

"Mostly harmless," admitted  Ford  with  a  slightly  embarrassed
cough.

"Mostly harmless!" shouted Arthur.
"What was that noise?" hissed Ford.

"It was me shouting," shouted Arthur.

"No! Shut up!" said Ford. I think we're in trouble."

"You think we're in trouble!"

Outside the door were the sounds of marching feet.

"The Dentrassi?" whispered Arthur.

"No, those are steel tipped boots," said Ford.

There was a sharp ringing rap on the door.

"Then who is it?" said Arthur.

"Well," said Ford, "if we're lucky it's just the Vogons  come  to
throw us in to space."

"And if we're unlucky?"

"If we're unlucky," said  Ford  grimly,  "the  captain  might  be
serious  in  his  threat  that  he's going to read us some of his
poetry first ..."




Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe.

The second worst is that  of  the  Azagoths  of  Kria.  During  a
recitation  by  their  Poet  Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his
poem "Ode To A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One
Midsummer   Morning"  four  of  his  audience  died  of  internal
haemorrhaging,  and  the  President  of  the  Mid-Galactic   Arts
Nobbling  Council  survived  by  gnawing one of his own legs off.
Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed"  by  the  poem's
reception,  and  was  about to embark on a reading of his twelve-
book epic entitled My Favourite Bathtime  Gurgles  when  his  own
major  intestine,  in  a  desperate  attempt  to  save  life  and
civilization, leapt straight up through his  neck  and  throttled
his brain.

The very worst poetry of all  perished  along  with  its  creator
Paula  Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England in
the destruction of the planet Earth.

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz smiled very slowly. This was done  not  so
much for effect as because he was trying to remember the sequence
of muscle movements. He had had a terribly  therapeutic  yell  at
his  prisoners  and was now feeling quite relaxed and ready for a
little callousness.

The prisoners sat in Poetry Appreciation  Chairs  --strapped  in.
Vogons  suffered  no  illusions as to the regard their works were
generally held in. Their early attempts at composition  had  been
part  of  bludgeoning  insistence  that  they  be  accepted  as a
properly evolved and cultured race, but now the only  thing  that
kept them going was sheer bloodymindedness.

The sweat stood out cold on Ford Prefect's brow, and  slid  round
the  electrodes strapped to his temples. These were attached to a
battery of electronic equipment - imagery intensifiers,  rhythmic
modulators,  alliterative  residulators  and simile dumpers - all
designed to heighten the experience of the  poem  and  make  sure
that not a single nuance of the poet's thought was lost.

Arthur Dent sat and quivered. He had no idea what he was in  for,
but  he  knew  that he hadn't liked anything that had happened so
far and didn't think things were likely to change.

The Vogon began to read - a  fetid  little  passage  of  his  own
devising.

"Oh frettled gruntbuggly ..." he  began.  Spasms  wracked  Ford's
body - this was worse than ever he'd been prepared for.

"... thy micturations are to me | As plurdled gabbleblotchits  on
a lurgid bee."

"Aaaaaaarggggghhhhhh!" went Ford Prefect, wrenching his head back
as  lumps  of  pain thumped through it. He could dimly see beside
him Arthur lolling and rolling  in  his  seat.  He  clenched  his
teeth.

"Groop I  implore  thee,"  continued  the  merciless  Vogon,  "my
foonting turlingdromes."

His  voice  was  rising  to  a  horrible  pitch  of   impassioned
stridency.    "And    hooptiously   drangle   me   with   crinkly
bindlewurdles,| Or I will rend thee in the  gobberwarts  with  my
blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!"

"Nnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyuuuuuuurrrrrrrggggggghhhhh!" cried Ford Prefect
and  threw  one  final spasm as the electronic enhancement of the
last line caught him full blast across the temples. He went limp.

Arthur lolled.

"Now Earthlings ..." whirred the Vogon (he didn't know that  Ford
Prefect  was  in  fact  from  a  small  planet in the vicinity of
Betelgeuse, and wouldn't have cared if he  had)  "I  present  you
with  a simple choice! Either die in the vacuum of space, or ..."
he paused for melodramatic effect, "tell me how good you  thought
my poem was!"

He threw himself backwards into a huge leathery  bat-shaped  seat
and watched them. He did the smile again.

Ford was rasping for breath. He rolled his dusty tongue round his
parched mouth and moaned.

Arthur said brightly: "Actually I quite liked it."

Ford turned and gaped. Here was an approach that had quite simply
not occurred to him.

The Vogon raised a surprised eyebrow  that  effectively  obscured
his nose and was therefore no bad thing.

"Oh good ..." he whirred, in considerable astonishment.

"Oh yes," said Arthur, "I thought that some of  the  metaphysical
imagery was really particularly effective."

Ford continued to stare at him, slowly  organizing  his  thoughts
around  this  totally  new  concept. Were they really going to be
able to bareface their way out of this?

"Yes, do continue ..." invited the Vogon.

"Oh ... and er ... interesting rhythmic devices  too,"  continued
Arthur,  "which  seemed to counterpoint the ... er ... er ..." He
floundered.

Ford leaped to his rescue, hazarding "counterpoint the surrealism
of  the underlying metaphor of the ... er ..." He floundered too,
but Arthur was ready again.

"... humanity of the ..."

"Vogonity," Ford hissed at him.

"Ah yes, Vogonity (sorry)  of  the  poet's  compassionate  soul,"
Arthur  felt  he  was  on  a  home  stretch now, "which contrives
through the medium of the  verse  structure  to  sublimate  this,
transcend   that,   and   come  to  terms  with  the  fundamental
dichotomies  of  the  other,"  (he  was  reaching  a   triumphant
crescendo ...) "and one is left with a profound and vivid insight
into ... into ... er ..." (... which suddenly gave out  on  him.)
Ford leaped in with the coup de gr@ce:

"Into whatever it was the poem was about!" he yelled. Out of  the
corner of his mouth: "Well done, Arthur, that was very good."

The Vogon perused them. For a moment his embittered  racial  soul
had  been  touched,  but he thought no - too little too late. His
voice took on the quality of a cat snagging brushed nylon.

"So what you're saying is that I write poetry because  underneath
my  mean  callous  heartless  exterior  I  really just want to be
loved," he said. He paused. "Is that right?"

Ford laughed a nervous laugh. "Well I mean yes," he said,  "don't
we all, deep down, you know ... er ..."

The Vogon stood up.

"No, well you're completely wrong," he said, "I just write poetry
to  throw  my  mean callous heartless exterior into sharp relief.
I'm going to throw you off  the  ship  anyway.  Guard!  Take  the
prisoners to number three airlock and throw them out!"

"What?" shouted Ford.
A huge young Vogon guard stepped forward and yanked them  out  of
their straps with his huge blubbery arms.

"You can't throw us into space," yelled Ford,  "we're  trying  to
write a book."

"Resistance is useless!" shouted the Vogon guard back at him.  It
was  the  first phrase he'd learnt when he joined the Vogon Guard
Corps.

The captain watched with detached amusement and then turned away.

Arthur stared round him wildly.

"I don't want to die now!" he yelled. "I've still got a headache!
I  don't  want  to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross
and wouldn't enjoy it!"

The guard grasped them both firmly round  the  neck,  and  bowing
deferentially  towards  his  captain's  back,  hoiked  them  both
protesting out of the bridge. A steel door closed and the captain
was  on  his  own  again. He hummed quietly and mused to himself,
lightly fingering his notebook of verses.

"Hmmmm," he said, "counterpoint the surrealism of the  underlying
metaphor  ..."  He  considered this for a moment, and then closed
the book with a grim smile.

"Death's too good for them," he said.

The long steel-lined corridor echoed to the feeble  struggles  of
the two humanoids clamped firmly under rubbery Vogon armpits.

"This is great," spluttered Arthur, "this is really terrific. Let
go of me you brute!"

The Vogon guard dragged them on.

"Don't you worry," said  Ford,  "I'll  think  of  something."  He
didn't sound hopeful.

"Resistance is useless!" bellowed the guard.

"Just don't say things  like  that,"  stammered  Ford.  "How  can
anyone  maintain  a  positive  mental  attitude  if you're saying
things like that?"

"My God," complained Arthur, "you're  talking  about  a  positive
mental  attitude  and you haven't even had your planet demolished
today. I woke up this morning and thought I'd have a nice relaxed
day,  do  a bit of reading, brush the dog ... It's now just after
four in the afternoon and I'm already  thrown  out  of  an  alien
spaceship six light years from the smoking remains of the Earth!"
He spluttered and gurgled as the Vogon tightened his grip.

"Alright," said Ford, "just stop panicking."

"Who said anything about panicking?"  snapped  Arthur.  "This  is
still  just  the  culture  shock. You wait till I've settled down
into the  situation  and  found  my  bearings.  Then  I'll  start
panicking."

"Arthur  you're  getting  hysterical.  Shut   up!"   Ford   tried
desperately  to  think, but was interrupted by the guard shouting
again.

"Resistance is useless!"

"And you can shut up as well!" snapped Ford.

"Resistance is useless!"

"Oh give it a rest," said Ford. He twisted his head till  he  was
looking straight up into his captor's face. A thought struck him.

"Do you really enjoy this sort of thing?" he asked suddenly.

The Vogon stopped dead and a look  of  immense  stupidity  seeped
slowly over his face.

"Enjoy?" he boomed. "What do you mean?"

"What I mean," said Ford, "is does it give you a full  satisfying
life? Stomping around, shouting, pushing people out of spaceships
..."

The Vogon stared up at the low steel  ceiling  and  his  eyebrows
almost  rolled  over  each  other.  His mouth slacked. Finally he
said, "Well the hours are good ..."

"They'd have to be," agreed Ford.

Arthur twisted his head to look at Ford.

"Ford, what are you doing?" he asked in an amazed whisper.

"Oh, just trying to take an interest in the world around me, OK?"
he said. "So the hours are pretty good then?" he resumed.

The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts  moiled  around
in the murky depths.

"Yeah," he said, "but now you come to mention  it,  most  of  the
actual  minutes  are  pretty lousy. Except ..." he thought again,
which required looking at the  ceiling  -  "except  some  of  the
shouting  I  quite  like."  He  filled  his  lungs  and bellowed,
"Resistance is ..."

"Sure, yes," interrupted Ford hurriedly, "you're good at that,  I
can  tell.  But if it's mostly lousy," he said, slowly giving the
words time to reach their mark, "then why do you do it?  What  is
it?  The  girls?  The  leather? The machismo? Or do you just find
that coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all  presents
an interesting challenge?"

"Er ..." said the guard, "er ... er ... I dunno. I think  I  just
sort of ... do it really. My aunt said that spaceship guard was a
good career for a young Vogon - you know, the uniform,  the  low-
slung stun ray holster, the mindless tedium ..."

"There you are  Arthur,"  said  Ford  with  the  air  of  someone
reaching  the  conclusion  of his argument, "you think you've got
problems."

Arthur rather thought he had. Apart from the unpleasant  business
with  his  home  planet  the  Vogon  guard had half-throttled him
already and he didn't like the sound of being thrown  into  space
very much.

"Try and understand his problem," insisted Ford. "Here he is poor
lad,  his  entire life's work is stamping around, throwing people
off spaceships ..."

"And shouting," added the guard.

"And shouting, sure," said Ford patting the blubbery arm  clamped
round  his  neck  in  friendly condescension, "... and he doesn't
even know why he's doing it!"

Arthur agreed this was very sad. He did this with a small  feeble
gesture, because he was too asphyxicated to speak.

Deep rumblings of bemusement came from the guard.

"Well. Now you put it like that I suppose ..."

"Good lad!" encouraged Ford.

"But  alright,"  went  on   the   rumblings,   "so   what's   the
alternative?"

"Well," said Ford, brightly but slowly, "stop doing it of course!
Tell  them,"  he went on, "you're not going to do it anymore." He
felt he had to add something to that,  but  for  the  moment  the
guard seemed to have his mind occupied pondering that much.

"Eerrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ..." said the  guard, 
"erm, well that doesn't sound that great to me."

Ford suddenly felt the moment slipping away.

"Now wait a minute," he said, "that's just  the  start  you  see,
there's more to it than that you see ..."

But at that moment the guard renewed his grip and  continued  his
original  purpose of lugging his prisoners to the airlock. He was
obviously quite touched.

"No, I think if it's all the same to you," he said,  "I'd  better
get you both shoved into this airlock and then go and get on with
some other bits of shouting I've got to do."

It wasn't all the same to Ford Prefect after all.

"Come on now ... but look!" he said, less slowly, less brightly.
"Huhhhhgggggggnnnnnnn  ..."  said  Arthur   without   any   clear
inflection.

"But hang on," pursued Ford, "there's music and art and things to
tell you about yet! Arrrggghhh!"

"Resistance is useless," bellowed the guard, and then added, "You
see  if  I  keep  it  up  I can eventually get promoted to Senior
Shouting Officer, and there aren't  usually  many  vacancies  for
non-shouting  and  non-pushing-people-about  officers, so I think
I'd better stick to what I know."

They had now  reached  the  airlock  -  a  large  circular  steel
hatchway  of  massive strength and weight let into the inner skin
of the craft. The guard operated a control and the hatchway swung
smoothly open.

"But thanks for taking an interest," said the Vogon  guard.  "Bye
now."  He  flung  Ford  and  Arthur through the hatchway into the
small  chamber  within.  Arthur  lay  panting  for  breath.  Ford
scrambled  round  and  flung  his  shoulder uselessly against the
reclosing hatchway.

"But listen," he shouted to the guard, "there's a whole world you
don't  know  anything about ... here how about this?" Desperately
he grabbed for the only bit of  culture  he  knew  offhand  -  he
hummed the first bar of Beethoven's Fifth.

"Da da da dum! Doesn't that stir anything in you?"

"No," said the guard, "not really. But  I'll  mention  it  to  my
aunt."

If he said anything further after that it was lost. The  hatchway
sealed itself tight, and all sound was lost but the faint distant
hum of the ship's engines.

They were in a brightly polished cylindrical  chamber  about  six
feet in diameter and ten feet long.

"Potentially bright lad I thought," he said and  slumped  against
the curved wall.

Arthur was still lying in the curve of the  floor  where  he  had
fallen. He didn't look up. He just lay panting.

"We're trapped now aren't we?"

"Yes," said Ford, "we're trapped."

"Well didn't you think of anything? I thought you said  you  were
going to think of something. Perhaps you thought of something and
didn't notice."

"Oh yes, I thought of something," panted Ford. Arthur  looked  up
expectantly.

"But unfortunately," continued Ford, "it rather involved being on
the  other  side  of this airtight hatchway." He kicked the hatch
they'd just been through.

"But it was a good idea was it?"

"Oh yes, very neat."

"What was it?"

"Well I hadn't worked out the details yet. Not much point now  is
there?"

"So ... er, what happens next?"

"Oh, er, well the hatchway in front of us will open automatically
in  a  few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect
and asphyxicate. If you take a lungful of air with  you  you  can
last  for up to thirty seconds of course ..." said Ford. He stuck
his hands behind his back, raised his eyebrows and started to hum
an  old  Betelgeusian  battle  hymn. To Arthur's eyes he suddenly
looked very alien.

"So this is it," said Arthur, "we're going to die."

"Yes," said Ford, "except ... no! Wait  a  minute!"  he  suddenly
lunged  across  the  chamber at something behind Arthur's line of
vision. "What's this switch?" he cried.

"What? Where?" cried Arthur twisting round.

"No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to  die  after
all."

He slumped against the wall again and carried on  the  tune  from
where he left off.

"You know," said Arthur, "it's  at  times  like  this,  when  I'm
trapped  in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about
to die of asphyxication in deep space  that  I  really  wish  I'd
listened to what my mother told me when I was young."

"Why, what did she tell you?"

"I don't know, I didn't listen."

"Oh." Ford carried on humming.

"This is terrific," Arthur thought to himself,  "Nelson's  Column
has  gone,  McDonald's  have  gone, all that's left is me and the
words Mostly Harmless. Any second now all that will  be  left  is
Mostly  Harmless.  And yesterday the planet seemed to be going so
well."

A motor whirred.

A slight hiss built into a deafening roar of rushing air  as  the
outer  hatchway opened on to an empty blackness studded with tiny
impossibly bright points of light. Ford and  Arthur  popped  into
outer space like corks from a toy gun.




The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the  Galaxy  is  a  wholly  remarkable
book.  It  has  been compiled and recompiled many times over many
years  and  under  many  different   editorships.   It   contains
contributions   from   countless   numbers   of   travellers  and
researchers.

The introduction begins like this:

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how
vastly  hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's
a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just  peanuts
to space. Listen ..." and so on.

(After a while the style settles down a bit and it begins to tell
you  things  you  really  need  to  know,  like the fact that the
fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so  worried  about
the  cumulative  erosion  by ten billion visiting tourists a year
that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the  amount
you  excrete whilst on the planet is surgically removed from your
bodyweight when you leave: so every time you go to  the  lavatory
it is vitally important to get a receipt.)

To be fair though, when  confronted  by  the  sheer  enormity  of
distances   between   the   stars,  better  minds  than  the  one
responsible for the  Guide's  introduction  have  faltered.  Some
invite  you  to  consider  for a moment a peanut in reading and a
small walnut in Johannesburg, and other such dizzying concepts.

The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into
the human imagination.

Even light, which travels  so  fast  that  it  takes  most  races
thousands  of years to realize that it travels at all, takes time
to journey between the stars. It takes  eight  minutes  from  the
star  Sol to the place where the Earth used to be, and four years
more to arrive at Sol's nearest stellar neighbour, Alpha Proxima.

For light to reach the other side of the Galaxy, for it to  reach
Damogran for instance, takes rather longer: five hundred thousand
years.

The record for hitch hiking this  distance  is  just  under  five
years, but you don't get to see much on the way.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy says that  if  you  hold  a
lungful  of  air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for
about thirty seconds. However it goes on to say  that  what  with
space  being  the mind boggling size it is the chances of getting
picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two  to
the  power  of two hundred and sixty-seven thousand seven hundred
and nine to one against.

By a totally staggering coincidence that is  also  the  telephone
number of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good
party and met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get  off
with - she went off with a gatecrasher.
Though the planet Earth, the Islington  flat  and  the  telephone
have  all  now  been demolished, it is comforting to reflect that
they are all in some small way  commemorated  by  the  fact  that
twenty-nine seconds later Ford and Arthur were rescued.




A computer chatted to itself in alarm as it  noticed  an  airlock
open and close itself for no apparent reason.

This was because Reason was in fact out to lunch.

A hole had  just  appeared  in  the  Galaxy.  It  was  exactly  a
nothingth  of  a  second  long,  a nothingth of an inch wide, and
quite a lot of million light years from end to end.

As it closed up lots of paper hats and party balloons fell out of
it  and  drifted off through the universe. A team of seven three-
foot-high market analysts fell out of  it  and  died,  partly  of
asphyxication, partly of surprise.

Two hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs fell  out
of  it  too,  materializing in a large woobly heap on the famine-
struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system.

The whole Poghril tribe had died out from famine except  for  one
last man who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later.

The nothingth of a second for which the hole existed reverberated
backwards and forwards through time in a most improbable fashion.
Somewhere in the deeply remote past it  seriously  traumatized  a
small  random group of atoms drifting through the empty sterility
of space and made them cling together in the most extraordinarily
unlikely   patterns.   These  patterns  quickly  learnt  to  copy
themselves (this was part of what was  so  extraordinary  of  the
patterns)  and  went  on to cause massive trouble on every planet
they drifted on to. That was how life began in the Universe.

Five wild Event Maelstroms swirled in vicious storms of  unreason
and spewed up a pavement.

On the pavement lay Ford Prefect and  Arthur  Dent  gulping  like
half-spent fish.

"There you are," gasped Ford, scrabbling for a fingerhold on  the
pavement  as  it raced through the Third Reach of the Unknown, "I
told you I'd think of something."

"Oh sure," said Arthur, "sure."

"Bright idea of mine," said Ford, "to find  a  passing  spaceship
and get rescued by it."

The real universe arched sickeningly away beneath  them.  Various
pretend  ones  flitted  silently  by, like mountain goats. Primal
light exploded, splattering space-time as with gobbets of junket.
Time  blossomed,  matter  shrank  away.  The highest prime number
coalesced quietly in a corner and hid itself away for ever.

"Oh come off it," said  Arthur,  "the  chances  against  it  were
astronomical."

"Don't knock it, it worked," said Ford.

"What sort of ship are  we  in?"  asked  Arthur  as  the  pit  of
eternity yawned beneath them.

"I don't know," said Ford, "I haven't opened my eyes yet."

"No, nor have I," said Arthur.

The Universe jumped, froze, quivered and splayed out  in  several
unexpected directions.

Arthur  and  Ford  opened  their  eyes  and   looked   about   in
considerable surprise.

"Good god," said Arthur, "it looks just like  the  sea  front  at
Southend."

"Hell, I'm relieved to hear you say that," said Ford.

"Why?"

"Because I thought I must be going mad."

"Perhaps you are. Perhaps you only thought I said it."

Ford thought about this.

"Well, did you say it or didn't you?" he asked.

"I think so," said Arthur.

"Well, perhaps we're both going mad."

"Yes," said Arthur, "we'd be mad, all things considered, to think
this was Southend."

"Well, do you think this is Southend?"

"Oh yes."

"So do I."

"Therefore we must be mad."

"Nice day for it."

"Yes," said a passing maniac.

"Who was that?" asked Arthur

"Who - the man with the five heads and the elderberry  bush  full
of kippers?"
"Yes."

"I don't know. Just someone."

"Ah."

They both sat on the pavement and watched with a  certain  unease
as  huge  children bounced heavily along the sand and wild horses
thundered through the sky taking  fresh  supplies  of  reinforced
railings to the Uncertain Areas.

"You know,"  said  Arthur  with  a  slight  cough,  "if  this  is
Southend, there's something very odd about it ..."

"You mean the way the sea stays steady  and  the  buildings  keep
washing up and down?" said Ford. "Yes I thought that was odd too.
In fact," he continued as with a huge bang Southend split  itself
into  six equal segments which danced and span giddily round each
other in lewd  and  licentious  formation,  "there  is  something
altogether very strange going on."

Wild yowling noises of pipes and strings seared through the wind,
hot  doughnuts  popped out of the road for ten pence each, horrid
fish stormed out of the sky and Arthur and Ford decided to make a
run for it.

They plunged through heavy walls of sound, mountains  of  archaic 
thought,  valleys  of  mood music, bad shoe sessions and footling
bats and suddenly heard a girl's voice.

It sounded quite a sensible voice, but it just said, "Two to  the
power  of  one  hundred thousand to one against and falling," and
that was all.

Ford skidded down a beam of light and span round trying to find a
source  for  the  voice  but could see nothing he could seriously
believe in.

"What was that voice?" shouted Arthur.

"I don't know," yelled Ford, "I don't know.  It  sounded  like  a
measurement of probability."

"Probability? What do you mean?"

"Probability. You know, like two to one, three to  one,  five  to
four against. It said two to the power of one hundred thousand to
one against. That's pretty improbable you know."

A million-gallon vat of custard upended itself over them  without
warning.

"But what does it mean?" cried Arthur.

"What, the custard?"

"No, the measurement of probability!"

"I don't know. I don't know at all. I think we're on some kind of
spaceship."

"I can only assume," said Arthur, "that this is  not  the  first-
class compartment."

Bulges appeared in the fabric of space-time. Great ugly bulges.

"Haaaauuurrgghhh ..." said Arthur as he felt his  body  softening
and  bending in unusual directions. "Southend seems to be melting
away ... the stars are swirling ... a dustbowl ...  my  legs  are
drifting  off  into the sunset ... my left arm's come off too." A
frightening thought struck him: "Hell," he said, "how am I  going
to  operate  my digital watch now?" He wound his eyes desperately
around in Ford's direction.

"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."

Again came the voice.

"Two to the power of seventy-five thousand  to  one  against  and
falling."

Ford waddled around his pond in a furious circle.

"Hey, who are you," he quacked. "Where are you? What's  going  on
and is there any way of stopping it?"

"Please relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a  stewardess  in
an airliner with only one wing and two engines one of which is on
fire, "you are perfectly safe."

"But that's not the point!" raged Ford. "The point is that  I  am
now  a  perfectly  save penguin, and my colleague here is rapidly
running out of limbs!"

"It's alright, I've got them back now," said Arthur.

"Two to the power of fifty thousand to one against and  falling,"
said the voice.

"Admittedly," said Arthur, "they're longer than  I  usually  like
them, but ..."

"Isn't there anything," squawked Ford in avian  fury,  "you  feel
you ought to be telling us?"

The voice cleared its throat. A giant  petit  four  lolloped  off
into the distance.

"Welcome," the voice said, "to the Starship Heart of Gold."

The voice continued.

"Please do not be alarmed," it said, "by anything you see or hear
around you. You are bound to feel some initial ill effects as you
have been rescued from certain death at an improbability level of
two  to  the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand to one
against - possibly much higher. We are now cruising at a level of
two  to  the  power  of  twenty-five  thousand to one against and
falling, and we will be restoring normality just as  soon  as  we
are  sure  what  is normal anyway. Thank you. Two to the power of
twenty thousand to one against and falling."

The voice cut out.

Ford and Arthur were in a small luminous pink cubicle.

Ford was wildly excited.

"Arthur!" he said, "this is fantastic! We've been picked up by  a
ship  powered  by  the  Infinite  Improbability  Drive!  This  is
incredible! I  heard  rumors  about  it  before!  They  were  all
officially  denied, but they must have done it! They've built the
Improbability  Drive!  Arthur,  this  is   ...   Arthur?   What's
happening?"

Arthur had jammed himself against the door to the cubicle, trying
to  hold  it  closed,  but  it was ill fitting. Tiny furry little
hands were squeezing themselves through the cracks, their fingers
were inkstained; tiny voices chattered insanely.

Arthur looked up.

"Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of  monkeys  outside
who  want  to  talk  to  us  about this script for Hamlet they've
worked out."




The Infinite Improbability Drive is a  wonderful  new  method  of
crossing  vast  interstellar  distances  in a mere nothingth of a
second, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace.

It was discovered by a lucky chance, and then  developed  into  a
governable  form  of  propulsion  by  the  Galactic  Government's
research team on Damogran.

This, briefly, is the story of its discovery.

The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability
by  simply  hooking  the  logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-
Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter  suspended  in  a  strong
Brownian  Motion  producer  (say  a  nice hot cup of tea) were of
course well understood - and such generators were often  used  to
break  the  ice  at  parties  by  making all the molecules in the
hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left,
in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy.

Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand
for  this  -  partly  because it was a debasement of science, but
mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.

Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure  they
encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate
the infinite improbability  field  needed  to  flip  a  spaceship
across  the mind-paralysing distances between the furthest stars,
and in the end they grumpily announced that such  a  machine  was
virtually impossible.

Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep  up  the  lab
after  a  particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning
this way:

If,  he  thought  to  himself,  such  a  machine  is  a   virtual
impossibility,  then it must logically be a finite improbability.
So all I have to do in order to make one is to work  out  exactly
how   improbable   it  is,  feed  that  figure  into  the  finite
improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of  really  hot  tea
... and turn it on!

He did this, and was rather startled  to  discover  that  he  had
managed   to   create  the  long  sought  after  golden  Infinite
Improbability generator out of thin air.

It startled him even more when just  after  he  was  awarded  the
Galactic  Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched
by a rampaging mob of  respectable  physicists  who  had  finally
realized  that  the  one  thing  they really couldn't stand was a
smartass.




The Improbability-proof control cabin of the Heart of Gold looked
like  a  perfectly  conventional  spaceship  except  that  it was
perfectly clean because it was so new. Some of the control  seats
hadn't  had  the  plastic  wrapping  taken off yet. The cabin was
mostly  white,  oblong,  and  about  the  size  of   a   smallish
restaurant.  In  fact  it  wasn't  perfectly oblong: the two long
walls were raked round in a slight parallel curve,  and  all  the
angles  and  corners  were contoured in excitingly chunky shapes.
The truth of the matter is that it would have been a  great  deal
simpler  and  more  practical  to  build the cabin as an ordinary
three-dimensional oblong rom, but then the designers  would  have
got  miserable. As it was the cabin looked excitingly purposeful,
with large video screens ranged over  the  control  and  guidance
system  panels  on  the concave wall, and long banks of computers
set into the convex wall. In one corner a robot sat  humped,  its
gleaming  brushed steel head hanging loosely between its gleaming
brushed steel knees. It too was fairly new,  but  though  it  was
beautifully  constructed and polished it somehow looked as if the
various parts of its more or less humanoid body didn't quite  fit
properly.  In  fact  they fitted perfectly well, but something in
its bearing suggested that they might have fitted better.

Zaphod Beeblebrox paced nervously up and down the cabin, brushing
his  hands  over  pieces  of gleaming equipment and giggling with
excitement.

Trillian sat hunched over a  clump  of  instruments  reading  off
figures.  Her  voice  was  carried round the Tannoy system of the
whole ship.

"Five to one against and falling ..."  she  said,  "four  to  one
against  and  falling  ...  three  to  one  ...  two  ... one ...
probability factor of one to one ... we have normality, I  repeat
we  have  normality." She turned her microphone off - then turned
it back on, with a slight  smile  and  continued:  "Anything  you
still  can't  cope  with  is  therefore  your own problem. Please
relax. You will be sent for soon."

Zaphod burst out in annoyance: "Who are they Trillian?"

Trillian span her seat round to face him and shrugged.

"Just a couple of guys we seem to have picked up in open  space,"
she said. "Section ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha."

"Yeah, well that's a very  sweet  thought  Trillian,"  complained
Zaphod,   "but   do   you   really  think  it's  wise  under  the
circumstances? I mean, here we are on the run and everything,  we
must  have  the police of half the Galaxy after us by now, and we
stop to pick up hitch hikers. OK, so ten out of  ten  for  style,
but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?"

He tapped irritably at a control panel.  Trillian  quietly  moved
his  hand  before he tapped anything important. Whatever Zaphod's
qualities of mind might include - dash, bravado, conceit - he was
mechanically  inept  and  could  easily  blow the ship up with an
extravagant gesture. Trillian had come to suspect that  the  main
reason  why  he  had  had such a wild and successful life that he
never really understood the significance of anything he did.

"Zaphod," she said patiently, "they were floating unprotected  in
open space ... you wouldn't want them to have died would you?"

"Well, you know ... no. Not as such, but ..."

"Not as such? Not die as such? But?" Trillian cocked her head  on
one side.

"Well, maybe someone else might have picked them up later."

"A second later and they would have been dead."

"Yeah, so if you'd taken the trouble to think about the problem a
bit longer it would have gone away."

"You'd been happy to let them die?"

"Well, you know, not happy as such, but ..."

"Anyway," said Trillian, turning back to the controls, "I  didn't
pick them up."

"What do you mean? Who picked them up then?"

"The ship did."

"Huh?"

"The ship did. All by itself."

"Huh?"
"Whilst we were in Improbability Drive."

"But that's incredible."

"No Zaphod. Just very very improbable."

"Er, yeah."

"Look Zaphod," she said, patting his arm, "don't worry about  the
aliens.  They're  just  a  couple of guys I expect. I'll send the
robot down to get them and bring them up here. Hey Marvin!"

In the corner, the  robot's  head  swung  up  sharply,  but  then
wobbled  about imperceptibly.  It pulled itself up to its feet as
if it was about five pounds heavier that  it  actually  was,  and
made  what  an  outside  observer would have thought was a heroic
effort to cross the room. It stopped in  front  of  Trillian  and
seemed to stare through her left shoulder.

"I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed," it  said.
Its voice was low and hopeless.

"Oh God," muttered Zaphod and slumped into a seat.

"Well," said Trillian in a  bright  compassionate  tone,  "here's
something to occupy you and keep your mind off things."

"It won't work," droned Marvin, "I have  an  exceptionally  large
mind."

"Marvin!" warned Trillian.

"Alright," said Marvin, "what do you want me to do?"

"Go down to number two entry bay and bring the two aliens up here
under surveillance."

With a microsecond pause, and a finely calculated micromodulation
of  pitch and timbre - nothing you could actually take offence at
- Marvin managed to convey his utter contempt and horror  of  all
things human.

"Just that?" he said.

"Yes," said Trillian firmly.

"I won't enjoy it," said Marvin.

Zaphod leaped out of his seat.

"She's not asking you to enjoy it," he shouted, "just do it  will
you?"

"Alright," said Marvin like the tolling of a great cracked  bell,
"I'll do it."

"Good ..." snapped Zaphod, "great ... thank you ..."

Marvin turned and lifted his flat-topped triangular red  eyes  up
towards him.

"I'm not getting you down at all am I?" he said pathetically.

"No no Marvin," lilted Trillian, "that's just fine, really ..."

"I wouldn't like to think that I was getting you down."

"No, don't worry about that," the lilt continued, "you  just  act
as comes naturally and everything will be just fine."

"You're sure you don't mind?" probed Marvin.

"No no Marvin," lilted Trillian, "that's just  fine,  really  ...
just part of life."

"Marvin flashed him an electronic look.

"Life," said Marvin, "don't talk to me about life."

He turned hopelessly on his heel and lugged himself  out  of  the
cabin.  With  a  satisfied hum and a click the door closed behind
him

"I don't think I  can  stand  that  robot  much  longer  Zaphod,"
growled Trillian.

The Encyclopaedia Galactica  defines  a  robot  as  a  mechanical
apparatus  designed  to  do  the  work  of  a  man. The marketing
division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as
"Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With."

The Hitch Hiker's Guide  to  the  Galaxy  defines  the  marketing
division  of  the  Sirius  Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of
mindless jerks who'll be the first  against  the  wall  when  the
revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors
would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking  over
the post of robotics correspondent.

Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica  that
had  the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand
years in the future defined the marketing division of the  Sirius
Cybernetics  Corporation  as  "a bunch of mindless jerks who were
the first against the wall when the revolution came."

The pink cubicle had winked out of  existence,  the  monkeys  had
sunk away to a better dimension. Ford and Arthur found themselves
in the embarkation area of the ship. It was rather smart.

"I think the ship's brand new," said Ford.

"How can you tell?" asked  Arthur.  "Have  you  got  some  exotic
device for measuring the age of metal?"

"No, I just found this sales brochure lying on the floor. It's  a
lot of `the Universe can be yours' stuff. Ah! Look, I was right."

Ford jabbed at one of the pages and showed it to Arthur.
"It says: Sensational new breakthrough in Improbability  Physics.
As  soon  as  the  ship's drive reaches Infinite Improbability it
passes through every point in the Universe. Be the envy of  other
major governments. Wow, this is big league stuff."

Ford hunted excitedly through the technical specs  of  the  ship,
occasionally  gasping with astonishment at what he read - clearly
Galactic astrotechnology had moved ahead during the years of  his
exile.

Arthur listened for a short while, but being unable to understand
the  vast  majority  of  what Ford was saying he began to let his
mind  wander,  trailing  his  fingers  along  the  edge   of   an
incomprehensible  computer  bank,  he  reached out and pressed an
invitingly large red button on a nearby panel. The panel  lit  up
with  the  words  Please do not press this button again. He shook
himself.

"Listen," said  Ford,  who  was  still  engrossed  in  the  sales
brochure, "they make a big thing of the ship's cybernetics. A new
generation  of  Sirius   Cybernetics   Corporation   robots   and
computers, with the new GPP feature."

"GPP feature?" said Arthur. "What's that?"

"Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities."

"Oh," said Arthur, "sounds ghastly."

A voice behind them said, "It is." The voice was low and hopeless
and  accompanied  by a slight clanking sound. They span round and
saw an abject steel man standing hunched in the doorway.

"What?" they said.

"Ghastly," continued Marvin, "it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just
don't  even  talk about it. Look at this door," he said, stepping
through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he
mimicked  the style of the sales brochure. "All the doors in this
spaceship have a cheerful and  sunny  disposition.  It  is  their
pleasure  to  open for you, and their satisfaction to close again
with the knowledge of a job well done."

As the door closed behind them it became  apparent  that  it  did
indeed    have    a    satisfied   sigh-like   quality   to   it.
"Hummmmmmmyummmmmmm ah!" it said.

Marvin regarded it with cold loathing whilst his  logic  circuits
chattered with disgust and tinkered with the concept of directing
physical violence against it Further circuits cut in saying,  Why
bother?  What's  the point? Nothing is worth getting involved in.
Further circuits amused themselves  by  analysing  the  molecular
components  of the door, and of the humanoids' brain cells. For a
quick encore they measured the level of hydrogen emissions in the
surrounding  cubic  parsec  of  space and then shut down again in
boredom. A spasm of despair shook the robot's body as he turned.

"Come on," he droned, "I've been ordered to take you down to  the
bridge.  Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to
take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction?  'Cos  I
don't."

He turned and walked back to the hated door.

"Er, excuse me," said Ford following after him, "which government
owns this ship?"

Marvin ignored him.

"You watch this door," he muttered, "it's about to open again.  I
can   tell  by  the  intolerable  air  of  smugness  it  suddenly
generates."

With an ingratiating little whine the door slit  open  again  and
Marvin stomped through.

"Come on," he said.

The others followed quickly and the door  slit  back  into  place
with pleased little clicks and whirrs.

"Thank you the  marketing  division  of  the  Sirius  Cybernetics
Corporation,"  said Marvin and trudged desolately up the gleaming
curved corridor that stretched  out  before  them.  "Let's  build
robots  with  Genuine  People  Personalities," they said. So they
tried it out with me. I'm a personality prototype. You  can  tell
can't you?"

Ford and Arthur muttered embarrassed little disclaimers.

"I hate that door," continued Marvin. "I'm not getting  you  down
at all am I?"

"Which government ..." started Ford again.

"No government owns it," snapped the robot, "it's been stolen."

"Stolen?"

"Stolen?" mimicked Marvin.

"Who by?" asked Ford.

"Zaphod Beeblebrox."

Something extraordinary happened to Ford's face.  At  least  five
entirely separate and distinct expressions of shock and amazement
piled up on it in a jumbled mess. His left leg, which was in  mid
stride,  seemed to have difficulty in finding the floor again. He
stared at the robot and tried to entangle some dartoid muscles.

"Zaphod Beeblebrox ...?" he said weakly.

"Sorry, did I say something wrong?" said Marvin, dragging himself
on  regardless. "Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway
so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God I'm so  depressed.
Here's  another of those self-satisfied door. Life! Don't talk to
me about life."
"No one ever mentioned it," muttered Arthur irritably. "Ford, are
you alright?"

Ford stared at him. "Did that robot say  Zaphod  Beeblebrox?"  he
said.




A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the  Heart  of  Gold
cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of
himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate.  For  years
radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning
dials; then as  the  technology  became  more  sophisticated  the
controls  were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the
panels with your fingers; now all you had to  do  was  wave  your
hand  in  the  general  direction  of the components and hope. It
saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you
had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to
the same programme.

Zaphod waved a hand and the channel  switched  again.  More  gunk
music,  but this time it was a background to a news announcement.
The news was always heavily edited to  fit  the  rhythms  of  the
music.

"... and news brought to you here  on  the  sub-etha  wave  band,
broadcasting  around  the  galaxy  around  the clock," squawked a
voice, "and we'll be saying a big hello to all  intelligent  life
forms  everywhere  ... and to everyone else out there, the secret
is to bang the rocks together, guys. And of course, the big  news
story  tonight  is the sensational theft of the new Improbability
Drive prototype ship by none other than Galactic President Zaphod
Beeblebrox. And the question everyone's asking is ... has the big
Z finally flipped? Beeblebrox,  the  man  who  invented  the  Pan
Galactic  Gargle Blaster, ex-confidence trickster, once described
by Eccentrica Gallumbits as the Best Bang since the Big One,  and
recently  voted  the  Wort  Dressed  Sentinent Being in the Known
Universe for the seventh time ... has he got an answer this time?
We  asked his private brain care specialist Gag Halfrunt ..." The
music swirled and dived for a moment.  Another  voice  broke  in,
presumably  Halfrunt.  He  said: "Vell, Zaphod's jist zis guy you
know?" but got no further because an electric pencil flew  across
the  cabin  and  through  the  radio's on/off sensitive airspace.
Zaphod turned and glared at Trillian - she had thrown the pencil.

"Hey," he said, what do you do that for?"

Trillian was tapping her fingers on a screenful of figures.

"I've just thought of something," she said.

"Yeah? Worth interrupting a news bulletin about me for?"

"You hear enough about yourself as it is."

"I'm very insecure. We know that."
"Can we drop your ego for a moment? This is important."

"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it
caught and shot now." Zaphod glared at her again, then laughed.

"Listen," she said, "we picked up those couple of guys ..."

"What couple of guys?"

"The couple of guys we picked up."

"Oh, yeah," said Zaphod, "those couple of guys."

"We picked them up in sector ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha."

"Yeah?" said Zaphod and blinked.

Trillian said quietly, "Does that mean anything to you?"

"Mmmmm," said Zaphod, "ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha. ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha?"

"Well?" said Trillian.

"Er ... what does the Z mean?" said Zaphod.

"Which one?"

"Any one."

One  of  the  major  difficulties  Trillian  experienced  in  her
relationship  with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him
pretending to be stupid just  to  get  people  off  their  guard,
pretending  to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think
and wanted someone else to  do  it  for  him,  pretending  to  be
outrageously  stupid  to  hide  the  fact that he actually didn't
understand what was going on, and really being genuinely  stupid.
He  was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was
so - but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the
act.  He proffered people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.
This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely  stupid,  but
she could no longer be bothered to argue about it.

She sighed and punched up a star map on  the  visiscreen  so  she
could make it simple for him, whatever his reasons for wanting it
to be that way.

"There," she pointed, "right there."

"Hey ... Yeah!" said Zaphod.

"Well?" she said.

"Well what?"

Parts of the inside of her head screamed at other  parts  of  the
inside  of her head. She said, very calmly, "It's the same sector
you originally picked me up in."

He looked at her and then looked back at the screen.
"Hey, yeah," he said, "now that is wild. We  should  have  zapped
straight into the middle of the Horsehead Nebula. How did we come
to be there? I mean that's nowhere."

She ignored this.

"Improbability Drive," she said patiently. "You explained  it  to
me  yourself.  We  pass  through every point in the Universe, you
know that."

"Yeah, but that's one wild coincidence isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Picking someone up at that  point?  Out  of  the  whole  of  the
Universe  to choose from? That's just too ... I want to work this
out. Computer!"

The  Sirius  Cybernetics  Corporation  Shipboard  Computer  which
controlled   and  permeated  every  particle of the ship switched
into communication mode.

"Hi there!" it said brightly and simultaneously spewed out a tiny
ribbon  of ticker tape just for the record. The ticker tape said,
Hi there!

"Oh God," said Zaphod. He hadn't worked with  this  computer  for
long but had already learned to loathe it.

The computer continued, brash and cheery as  if  it  was  selling
detergent.

"I want you to know that whatever your problem, I am here to help
you solve it."

"Yeah yeah," said Zaphod. "Look, I think I'll just use a piece of
paper."

"Sure thing," said the computer, spilling out its message into  a
waste bin at the same time, "I understand. If you ever want ..."

"Shut up!" said Zaphod, and snatching up a pencil sat  down  next
to Trillian at the console.

"OK, OK ..." said the computer in a hurt tone of voice and closed
down its speech channel again.

Zaphod and Trillian pored over the figures that the Improbability
flight path scanner flashed silently up in front of them.

"Can we work out," said Zaphod, "from their point  of  view  what
the Improbability of their rescue was?"

"Yes, that's a constant", said Trillian, "two to the power of two
hundred  and  seventy-six  thousand seven hundred and nine to one
against."

"That's high. They're two lucky lucky guys."
"Yes."

"But relative to what we were doing when the ship picked them  up
..."

Trillian punched up the figures. They  showed  tow-to-the  power-
of-Infinity-minus-one  (an  irrational  number  that  only  has a
conventional meaning in Improbability physics).

"... it's pretty low," continued Zaphod with a slight whistle.

"Yes," agreed Trillian, and looked at him quizzically.

"That's one big whack  of  Improbability  to  be  accounted  for.
Something  pretty  improbable  has  got to show up on the balance
sheet if it's all going to add up into a pretty sum."

Zaphod scribbled a few sums,  crossed  them  out  and  threw  the
pencil away.

"Bat's dots, I can't work it out."

"Well?"

Zaphod knocked his two heads together in irritation  and  gritted
his teeth.

"OK," he said. "Computer!"

The voice circuits sprang to life again.

"Why hello there!" they said (ticker tape, ticker tape).  "All  I
want to do is make your day nicer and nicer and nicer ..."

"Yeah well shut up and work something out for me."

"Sure thing," chattered the computer,  "you  want  a  probability
forecast based on ..."

"Improbability data, yeah."

"OK," the  computer  continued.  "Here's  an  interesting  little
notion.  Did you realize that most people's lives are governed by
telephone numbers?"

A pained look crawled across one of Zaphod's faces and on to  the
other one.

"Have you flipped?" he said.

"No, but you will when I tell you that ..."

Trillian  gasped.  She  scrabbled   at   the   buttons   on   the
Improbability flight path screen.

"Telephone number?" she  said.  "Did  that  thing  say  telephone
number?"
Numbers flashed up on the screen.

The computer had paused politely, but now it continued.

"What I was about to say was that ..."

"Don't bother please," said Trillian.

"Look, what is this?" said Zaphod.

"I don't know," said Trillian, "but those aliens - they're on the
way  up  to the bridge with that wretched robot. Can we pick them
up on any monitor cameras?"




Marvin trudged on down the corridor, still moaning.

"... and then of course I've got this terrible pain  in  all  the
diodes down my left hand side ..."

"No?" said Arthur grimly as he walked along beside him. "Really?"

"Oh yes," said Marvin, "I mean I've asked for them to be replaced
but no one ever listens."

"I can imagine."

Vague whistling and humming noises were coming from  Ford.  "Well
well well," he kept saying to himself, "Zaphod Beeblebrox ..."

Suddenly Marvin stopped, and held up a hand.

"You know what's happened now of course?"

"No, what?" said Arthur, who didn't what to know.

"We've arrived at another of those doors."

There was a sliding door let  into  the  side  of  the  corridor.
Marvin eyed it suspiciously.

"Well?" said Ford impatiently. "Do we go through?"

"Do we go through?" mimicked Marvin. "Yes. This is  the  entrance
to the bridge. I was told to take you to the bridge. Probably the
highest demand that will be made on  my  intellectual  capacities
today I shouldn't wonder."

Slowly, with great loathing, he stepped towards the door, like  a
hunter stalking his prey. Suddenly it slid open.

"Thank you," it said, "for making a simple door very happy."

Deep in Marvin's thorax gears ground.

"Funny," he intoned funerally, "how  just  when  you  think  life
can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does."
He heaved himself through the  door  and  left  Ford  and  Arthur
staring  at each other and shrugging their shoulders. From inside
they heard Marvin's voice again.

"I suppose you want to see the aliens now," he said. "Do you want
me  to  sit  in  a  corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm
standing?"

"Yeah, just show them in would you Marvin?" came another voice.

Arthur looked at Ford and was astonished to see him laughing.

"What's ...?"

"Shhh," said Ford, "come in."

He stepped through into the bridge.

Arthur followed him in nervously and was astonished to see a  man
lolling  back  in  a  chair  with  his  feet on a control console
picking the teeth in his right-hand head with his left hand.  The
right-hand  head  seemed  to  be thoroughly preoccupied with this
task, but the  left-hand  one  was  grinning  a  broad,  relaxed,
nonchalant  grin.  The  number  of  things  that  Arthur couldn't
believe he was seeing was fairly large. His jaw flapped about  at
a loose end for a while.

The peculiar man waved a lazy wave at Ford and with an  appalling
affectation of nonchalance said, "Ford, hi, how are you? Glad you
could drop in."

Ford was not going to be outcooled.

"Zaphod," he drawled, "great to see you, you're looking well, the
extra arm suits you. Nice ship you've stolen."

Arthur goggled at him.

"You mean you know this guy?" he said, waving a  wild  finger  at
Zaphod.

"Know him!" exclaimed Ford, "he's ..." he paused, and decided  to
do the introductions the other way round.

"Oh, Zaphod, this is a friend of mine, Arthur Dent," he said,  "I
saved him when his planet blew up."

"Oh sure," said Zaphod, "hi Arthur, glad you could make it."  His
right-hand head looked round casually, said "hi" and went back to
having his teeth picked.

Ford carried on. "And Arthur," he said, "this is  my  semi-cousin
Zaphod Beeb ..."

"We've met," said Arthur sharply.

When you're cruising down the road  in  the  fast  lane  and  you
lazily  sail  past a few hard driving cars and are feeling pretty
pleased with yourself and  then  accidentally  change  down  from
fourth to first instead of third thus making your engine leap out
of your bonnet in a rather ugly mess, it tends to throw  you  off
your  stride  in  much  the  same way that this remark threw Ford
Prefect off his.

"Err ... what?"

"I said we've met."

Zaphod gave an  awkward  start  of  surprise  and  jabbed  a  gum
sharply.

"Hey ... er, have we? Hey ... er ..."

Ford rounded on Arthur with an angry flash in his  eyes.  Now  he
felt  he  was  back  on  home  ground he suddenly began to resent
having lumbered himself with this ignorant primitive who knew  as
much about the affairs of the Galaxy as an Ilford-based gnat knew
about life in Peking.

"What do you mean you've  met?"  he  demanded.  "This  is  Zaphod
Beeblebrox from Betelgeuse Five you know, not bloody Martin Smith
from Croydon."

"I don't care," said Arthur coldly. We've met, haven't we  Zaphod
Beeblebrox - or should I say ... Phil?"

"What!" shouted Ford.

"You'll have to remind me," said Zaphod. "I've a terrible  memory
for species."

"It was at a party," pursued Arthur.

"Yeah, well I doubt that," said Zaphod.

"Cool it will you Arthur!" demanded Ford.

Arthur would not be deterred. "A party six months ago.  On  Earth
... England ..."

Zaphod shook his head with a tight-lipped smile.

"London," insisted Arthur, "Islington."

"Oh," said Zaphod with a guilty start, "that party."

This wasn't fair on Ford at all. He looked backwards and forwards
between  Arthur and Zaphod. "What?" he said to Zaphod. "You don't
mean to say you've been on that miserable planet as well do you?"

"No, of course not," said Zaphod breezily. "Well, I may have just
dropped in briefly, you know, on my way somewhere ..."

"But I was stuck there for fifteen years!"

"Well I didn't know that did I?"
"But what were you doing there?"

"Looking about, you know."

"He gatecrashed a party," persisted Arthur, trembling with anger,
"a fancy dress party ..."

"It would have to be, wouldn't it?" said Ford.

"At this party," persisted Arthur, "was a girl ... oh well,  look
it  doesn't  matter  now.  The  whole  place has gone up in smoke
anyway ..."

"I wish you'd stop sulking about that bloody planet," said  Ford.
"Who was the lady?"

"Oh just somebody. Well alright, I wasn't doing  very  well  with
her. I'd been trying all evening. Hell, she was something though.
Beautiful, charming, devastatingly intelligent, at last  I'd  got
her  to  myself  for  a bit and was plying her with a bit of talk
when this friend of yours barges up and says Hey  doll,  is  this
guy  boring  you?  Why  don't  you talk to me instead? I'm from a
different planet." I never saw her again."

"Zaphod?" exclaimed Ford.

"Yes," said Arthur,  glaring  at  him  and  trying  not  to  feel
foolish. "He only had the two arms and the one head and he called
himself Phil, but ..."

"But you must admit he did turn out to be from  another  planet,"
said  Trillian  wandering  into  sight  at  the  other end of the
bridge. She gave Arthur a pleasant smile  which  settled  on  him
like  a ton of bricks and then turned her attention to the ship's
controls again.

There was silence  for  a  few  seconds,  and  then  out  of  the
scrambled mess of Arthur's brain crawled some words.

"Tricia McMillian?" he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Same as you," she said, "I hitched a  lift.  After  all  with  a
degree  in  Maths and another in astrophysics what else was there
to do? It was either that or the dole queue again on Monday."

"Infinity minus one," chattered the computer, "Improbability  sum
now complete."

Zaphod looked  about  him,  at  Ford,  at  Arthur,  and  then  at
Trillian.

"Trillian," he said, "is this sort of thing going to happen every
time we use the Improbability drive?"

"Very probably, I'm afraid," she said.




The Heart of Gold fled on silently through the  night  of  space,
now  on  conventional  photon drive. Its crew of four were ill at
ease knowing that they had been brought together not of their own
volition  or by simple coincidence, but by some curious principle
of physics - as if relationships between people were  susceptible
to  the  same  laws that governed the relationships between atoms
and molecules.

As the ship's artificial night closed in they were each  grateful
to  retire  to  separate  cabins  and  try  to  rationalize their
thoughts.

Trillian couldn't sleep. She sat on a couch and stared at a small
cage  which  contained  her  last and only links with Earth - two
white mice that she had insisted Zaphod let her  bring.  She  had
expected  not  to  see the planet again, but she was disturbed by
her negative  reaction to the  planet's  destruction.  It  seemed
remote  and  unreal and she could find no thoughts to think about
it. She watched the mice scurrying round  the  cage  and  running
furiously  in their little plastic treadwheels till they occupied
her whole attention. Suddenly she shook herself and went back  to
the  bridge  to  watch  over the tiny flashing lights and figures
that charted the ship's progress through the void. She wished she
knew what it was she was trying not to think about.

Zaphod couldn't sleep. He also wished he knew what it was that he
wouldn't  let  himself  think  about.  For  as  long  as he could
remember he'd suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being  not
all there. Most of the time he was able to put this thought aside
and not worry about it, but it had been re-awakened by the sudden
inexplicable  arrival of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent. Somehow it
seemed to conform to a pattern that he couldn't see.

Ford couldn't sleep. He was too excited about being back  on  the
road again. Fifteen years of virtual imprisonment were over, just
as he was finally beginning to give up hope. Knocking about  with
Zaphod for a bit promised to be a lot of fun, though there seemed
to be  something  faintly  odd  about  his  semi-cousin  that  he
couldn't put his finger on. The fact that he had become President
of the Galaxy was frankly astonishing, as was the manner  of  his
leaving the post. Was there a reason behind it? There would be no
point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have  a  reason  for
anything  he  did  at all: he had turned unfathomably into an art
form.  He  attacked  everything  in  life  with  a   mixture   of
extraordinary  genius  and  naive  incompetence  and it was often
difficult to tell which was which.

Arthur slept: he was terribly tired.

There was a tap at Zaphod's door. It slid open.

"Zaphod ...?"

"Yeah?"

"I think we just found what you came to look for."

"Hey, yeah?"
Ford gave up the attempt to sleep. In the corner of his cabin was
a  small  computer  screen and keyboard. He sat at it for a while
and tried to compose a new entry for the Guide on the subject  of
Vogons but couldn't think of anything vitriolic enough so he gave
that up too, wrapped a robe round himself and went for a walk  to
the bridge.

As he entered  he  was  surprised  to  see  two  figures  hunched
excitedly over the instruments.

"See? The ship's about to move into orbit," Trillian was  saying.
"There's  a  planet  out there. It's at the exact coordinates you
predicted."

Zaphod heard a noise and looked up.

"Ford!" he hissed. "Hey, come and take a look at this."

Ford went and had a look at  it.  It  was  a  series  of  figures
flashing over a screen.

"You recognize those Galactic coordinates?" said Zaphod.

"No."

"I'll give you a clue. Computer!"

"Hi gang!" enthused the computer. "This is getting real  sociable
isn't it?"

"Shut up," said Zaphod, "and show up the screens."

Light on the bridge sank. Pinpoints of light  played  across  the
consoles  and  reflected  in four pairs of eyes that stared up at
the external monitor screens.

There was absolutely nothing on them.

"Recognize that?" whispered Zaphod.

Ford frowned.

"Er, no," he said.

"What do you see?"

"Nothing."

"Recognize it?"

"What are you talking about?"

"We're in the Horsehead Nebula. One whole vast dark cloud."

"And I was meant to recognize that from a blank screen?"

"Inside a dark nebula is the only place in the Galaxy you'd see a
dark screen."
"Very good."

Zaphod laughed. He was  clearly  very  excited  about  something,
almost childishly so.

"Hey, this is really terrific, this is just far too much!"

"What's so great about being stuck in a dust cloud?" said Ford.

"What would you reckon to find here?" urged Zaphod.

"Nothing."

"No stars? No planets?"

"No."

"Computer!" shouted Zaphod, "rotate angle of vision through  one-
eighty degrees and don't talk about it!"

For a moment  it  seemed  that  nothing  was  happening,  then  a
brightness  glowed at the edge of the huge screen. A red star the
size of a small plate crept across it followed quickly by another
one  -  a  binary  system.  Then  a vast crescent sliced into the
corner of the picture - a red glare shading away  into  the  deep
black, the night side of the planet.

"I've found it!" cried Zaphod, thumping the console. "I've  found
it!"

Ford stared at it in astonishment.

"What is it?" he said.

"That ..." said Zaphod, "is the most improbable planet that  ever
existed."




(Excerpt from The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Page 634784,
Section 5a, Entry: Magrathea)

Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and  glorious
days  of  the  former  Galactic  Empire,  life was wild, rich and
largely tax free.

Mighty starships plied their way  between  exotic  suns,  seeking
adventure  and  reward  amongst  the furthest reaches of Galactic
space. In those days spirits were brave, the  stakes  were  high,
men  were  real  men,  women  were  real  women,  and small furry
creatures from Alpha Centauri were  real  small  furry  creatures
from  Alpha  Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to
do mighty deeds, to boldly split  infinitives  that  no  man  had
split before - and thus was the Empire forged.

Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was  perfectly
natural  and  nothing  to be ashamed of because no one was really
poor - at least no one worth speaking of. And for all the richest
and  most successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull
and niggly, and they began to imagine that this was therefore the
fault of the worlds they'd settled on - none of them was entirely
satisfactory: either the climate wasn't quite right in the  later
part  of  the afternoon, or the day was half an hour too long, or
the sea was exactly the wrong shade of pink.

And thus were created the conditions for a staggering new form of
specialist industry: custom-made luxury planet building. The home
of this industry was the  planet  Magrathea,  where  hyperspatial
engineers  sucked  matter through white holes in space to form it
into dream planets - gold planets, platinum planets, soft  rubber
planets  with lots of earthquakes - all lovingly made to meet the
exacting standards that the Galaxy's richest men  naturally  came
to expect.

But so successful was this venture  that  Magrathea  itself  soon
became  the richest planet of all time and the rest of the Galaxy
was reduced to abject poverty. And so the system broke down,  the
Empire  collapsed,  and  a  long  sullen  silence  settled over a
billion worlds, disturbed only by the pen scratchings of scholars
as  they laboured into the night over smug little treaties on the
value of a planned political economy.

Magrathea itself disappeared and its memory soon passed into  the
obscurity of legend.

In these enlightened days of course, no one believes  a  word  of
it.




Arthur awoke to the sound of argument and  went  to  the  bridge.
Ford was waving his arms about.

"You're crazy, Zaphod," he was saying, "Magrathea is  a  myth,  a
fairy  story, it's what parents tell their kids about at night if
they want them to grow up to become economists, it's ..."

"And that's what we are  currently  in  orbit  around,"  insisted
Zaphod.

"Look, I can't help what you may personally be in orbit  around,"
said Ford, "but this ship ..."

"Computer!" shouted Zaphod.

"Oh no ..."

"Hi there! This is Eddie your shipboard computer, and I'm feeling
just  great  guys,  and  I know I'm just going to get a bundle of
kicks out of any programme you care to run through me."

Arthur looked inquiringly at Trillian. She motioned him  to  come
on in but keep quiet.

"Computer,"  said  Zaphod,  "tell  us  again  what  our   present
trajectory is."
"A real pleasure feller," it burbled, "we are currently in  orbit
at an altitude of three hundred miles around the legendary planet
of Magrathea."

"Proving nothing," said Ford. "I wouldn't trust that computer  to
speak my weight."

"I can do that for you, sure," enthused  the  computer,  punching
out  more  tickertape.  "I  can  even  work  out  you personality
problems to ten decimal places if it will help."

Trillian interrupted.

"Zaphod," she said, "any minute now we will be swinging round  to
the daylight side of this planet," adding, "whatever it turns out
to be."

"Hey, what do you mean by that? The planet's where I predicted it
would be isn't it?"

"Yes, I know there's a planet there. I'm not arguing with anyone,
it's  just  that I wouldn't know Magrathea from any other lump of
cold rock. Dawn's coming up if you want it."

"OK, OK," muttered Zaphod, "let's at least give our eyes  a  good
time. Computer!"

"Hi there! What can I ..."

"Just shut up and give us a view of the planet again."

A dark featureless mass once more filled the screens - the planet
rolling away beneath them.

They watched for a moment in silence, but Zaphod was fidgety with
excitement.

"We are now traversing the night side ..." he said  in  a  hushed
voice. The planet rolled on.

"The surface of the planet is now three hundred miles beneath  us
..."  he  continued. He was trying to restore a sense of occasion
to what he felt should have been a great  moment.  Magrathea!  He
was piqued by Ford's sceptical reaction. Magrathea!

"In a few seconds," he continued, "we should see ... there!"

The moment carried itself. Even  the  most  seasoned  star  tramp
can't  help but shiver at the spectacular drama of a sunrise seen
from space, but a binary sunrise is one of  the  marvels  of  the
Galaxy.

Out of the utter blackness stabbed a  sudden  point  of  blinding
light.  It  crept  up  by slight degrees and spread sideways in a
thin crescent blade, and within seconds two  suns  were  visible,
furnaces  of  light,  searing  the black edge of the horizon with
white fire. Fierce shafts of colour  streaked  through  the  thin
atmosphere beneath them.
"The fires of dawn ... !" breathed  Zaphod.  "The  twin  suns  of
Soulianis and Rahm ... !"

"Or whatever," said Ford quietly.

"Soulianis and Rahm!" insisted Zaphod.

The suns blazed into the pitch of space and a low  ghostly  music
floated through the bridge: Marvin was humming ironically because
he hated humans so much.

As Ford gazed at the spectacle of light  before  them  excitement
burnt inside him, but only the excitement of seeing a strange new
planet, it was enough for him to see it as  it  was.  It  faintly
irritated him that Zaphod had to impose some ludicrous fantasy on
to the scene to make it work for him. All this Magrathea nonsense
seemed  juvenile.  Isn't  it  enough  to  see  that  a  garden is
beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the
bottom of it too?

All this Magrathea business seemed  totally  incomprehensible  to
Arthur. He edged up to Trillian and asked her what was going on.

"I only know what Zaphod's told me," she  whispered.  "Apparently
Magrathea  is  some  kind  of  legend  from way back which no one
seriously believes in. Bit like Atlantis on  Earth,  except  that
the legends say the Magratheans used to manufacture planets."

Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was  missing  something
important. Suddenly he realized what it was.

"Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.

More of the planet was unfolding beneath them  as  the  Heart  of
Gold  streaked along its orbital path. The suns now stood high in
the black sky, the  pyrotechnics  of  dawn  were  over,  and  the
surface of the planet appeared bleak and forbidding in the common
light of day - grey, dusty and only dimly  contoured.  It  looked
dead  and  cold  as a crypt. From time to time promising features
would appear on the distant horizon - ravines,  maybe  mountains,
maybe even cities - but as they approached the lines would soften
and blur into anonymity and nothing would transpire. The planet's
surface  was  blurred  by  time, by the slow movement of the thin
stagnant air that had crept across it for century upon century.

Clearly, it was very very old.

A moment of doubt came to Ford as he watched the  grey  landscape
move  beneath  them.  The immensity of time worried him, he could
feel it as a presence. He cleared his throat.

"Well, even supposing it is ..."

"It is," said Zaphod.

"Which it isn't," continued Ford.  "What  do  you  want  with  it
anyway? There's nothing there."
"Not on the surface," said Zaphod.

"Alright, just supposing there's something. I take it you're  not
here for the sheer industrial archaeology of it all. What are you
after?"

One of Zaphod's heads looked away. The other one looked round  to
see  what  the  first  was  looking  at, but it wasn't looking at
anything very much.

"Well," said Zaphod airily, "it's partly the curiosity, partly  a
sense  of  adventure,  but  mostly  I think it's the fame and the
money ..."

Ford glanced at him sharply. He got a very strong impression that
Zaphod hadn't the faintest idea why he was there at all.

"You know I don't like the look of  that  planet  at  all,"  said
Trillian shivering.

"Ah, take no notice," said Zaphod, "with half the wealth  of  the
former  Galactic  Empire  stored on it somewhere it can afford to
look frumpy."

Bullshit, thought Ford. Even supposing this was the home of  some
ancient civilization now gone to dust, even supposing a number of
exceedingly unlikely things, there was no way that vast treasures
of  wealth  were  going to be stored there in any form that would
still have meaning now. He shrugged.

"I think it's just a dead planet," he said.

"The suspense is killing me," said Arthur testily.

Stress and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all
parts  of  the  Galaxy,  and  it  is in order that this situation
should not in any way be exacerbated  that  the  following  facts
will now be revealed in advance.

The planet in question is in fact the legendary Magrathea.

The deadly missile attack shortly to be launched  by  an  ancient
automatic  defence  system  will result merely in the breakage of
three coffee cups and a  micecage,  the  bruising  of  somebody's
upper  arm, and the untimely creation and sudden demise of a bowl
of petunias and an innocent sperm whale.

In order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no
revelation  will yet be made concerning whose upper arm sustained
the bruise. This fact may safely be made the subject of  suspense
since it is of no significance whatsoever.




After a  fairly  shaky  start  to  the  day,  Arthur's  mind  was
beginning  to  reassemble  itself from the shellshocked fragments
the previous day had left him with. He had  found  a  Nutri-Matic
machine  which  had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a
liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike  tea.  The
way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was
pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the
subject's  taste  buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's
metabolism and then  sent  tiny  experimental  signals  down  the
neural  pathways  to  the taste centres of the subject's brain to
see what was likely to go down well. However, no one  knew  quite
why  it  did  this  because  it  invariably delivered a cupful of
liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike  tea.  The
Nutri-Matic   was   designed   and  manufactured  by  the  Sirius
Cybernetics Corporation whose complaints  department  now  covers
all  the  major  land  masses  of  the first three planets in the
Sirius Tau Star system.

Arthur drank the liquid and found it reviving. He glanced  up  at
the  screens again and watched a few more hundred miles of barren
greyness slide past.  It  suddenly  occurred  to  him  to  ask  a
question which had been bothering him.

"Is it safe?" he said.

"Magrathea's been dead for five million years," said Zaphod,  "of
course  it's  safe.  Even  the  ghosts will have settled down and
raised  families  by  now."  At  which  point   a   strange   and
inexplicable sound thrilled suddenly through the bridge - a noise
as of a distant fanfare; a hollow, reedy, insubstantial sound. It
preceded   a   voice   that   was   equally   hollow,  reedy  and
insubstantial. The voice said "Greetings to you ..."

Someone from the dead planet was talking to them.

"Computer!" shouted Zaphod.

"Hi there!"

"What the photon is it?"

"Oh, just some five-million-year-old tape that's being  broadcast
at us."

"A what? A recording?"

"Shush!" said Ford. "It's carrying on."

The  voice  was  old,  courteous,  almost   charming,   but   was
underscored with quite unmistakable menace.

"This is a recorded announcement," it said, "as I'm afraid  we're
all out at the moment. The commercial council of Magrathea thanks
you for your esteemed visit ..."

("A voice from ancient Magrathea!" shouted Zaphod. "OK, OK," said
Ford.)

"... but regrets," continued the voice, "that the  entire  planet
is  temporarily closed for business. Thank you. If you would care
to leave your name and the address of a planet where you  can  be
contacted, kindly speak when you hear the tone."
A short buzz followed, then silence.

"They want to get rid of us," said Trillian nervously.  "What  do
we do?"

"It's just a recording," said Zaphod. "We keep going.  Got  that,
computer?"

"I got it," said the computer and gave the ship an extra kick  of
speed.

They waited.

After a second or so came the fanfare once again,  and  then  the
voice.

"We would like to assure you that as  soon  as  our  business  is
resumed  announcements  will be made in all fashionable magazines
and colour supplements, when our clients will once again be  able
to  select  from  all that's best in contemporary geography." The
menace in the voice took on a sharper edge. "Meanwhile  we  thank
our  clients for their kind interest and would ask them to leave.
Now."

Arthur looked round the nervous faces of his companions.

"Well, I suppose we'd  better  be  going  then,  hadn't  we?"  he
suggested.

"Shhh!" said Zaphod. "There's absolutely nothing  to  be  worried
about."

"Then why's everyone so tense?"

"They're just interested!" shouted  Zaphod.  "Computer,  start  a
descent into the atmosphere and prepare for landing."

This time the fanfare was quite perfunctory, the voice distinctly
cold.

"It is most gratifying," it said, "that your enthusiasm  for  our
planet  continues  unabated,  and  so we would like to assure you
that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship  are
part  of  a  special  service  we  extend  to  all  of  our  most
enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of
course  merely  a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom
in future lives ... thank you."

The voice snapped off.

"Oh," said Trillian.

"Er ..." said Arthur.

"Well?" said Ford.

"Look," said Zaphod, "will you get it  into  your  heads?  That's
just  a  recorded message. It's millions of years old. It doesn't
apply to us, get it?"
"What," said Trillian quietly, "about the missiles?"

"Missiles? Don't make me laugh."

Ford tapped Zaphod on  the  shoulder  and  pointed  at  the  rear
screen.  Clear  in the distance behind them two silver darts were
climbing through the atmosphere towards the ship. A quick  change
of  magnification  brought  them into close focus - two massively
real rockets thundering through the sky. The suddenness of it was
shocking.

"I think they're going to have a very good  try  at  applying  to
us," said Ford.

Zaphod stared at them in astonishment.

"Hey this is terrific!" he said. "Someone down there is trying to
kill us!"

"Terrific," said Arthur.

"But don't you see what this means?"

"Yes. We're going to die."

"Yes, but apart from that."

"Apart from that?"

"It means we must be on to something!"

"How soon can we get off it?"

Second by second the image of the missiles on the  screen  became
larger.  They had swung round now on to a direct homing course so
that all that could be seen of them now was  the  warheads,  head
on.

"As a matter of interest," said Trillian, "what are we  going  to
do?"

"Just keep cool," said Zaphod.

"Is that all?" shouted Arthur.

"No, we're also going to ... er ... take  evasive  action!"  said
Zaphod  with  a  sudden  access of panic. "Computer, what evasive
action can we take?"

"Er, none I'm afraid, guys," said the computer.

"... or something," said Zaphod, "... er ..." he said.

"There  seems  to  be  something  jamming  my  guidance  system,"
explained   the   computer  brightly,  "impact  minus  forty-five
seconds. Please call me Eddie if it will help you to relax."

Zaphod tried  to  run  in  several  equally  decisive  directions
simultaneously. "Right!" he said. "Er ... we've got to get manual
control of this ship."

"Can you fly her?" asked Ford pleasantly.

"No, can you?"

"No."

"Trillian, can you?"

"No."

"Fine," said Zaphod, relaxing. "We'll do it together."

"I can't either," said Arthur, who felt it was time he  began  to
assert himself.

"I'd guessed that," said Zaphod. "OK computer, I want full manual
control now."

"You got it," said the computer.

Several large desk panels slid open and banks of control consoles
sprang  up  out of them, showering the crew with bits of expanded
polystyrene packaging and balls of  rolled-up  cellophane:  these
controls had never been used before.

Zaphod stared at them wildly.

"OK,  Ford,"  he  said,  "full  retro  thrust  and  ten   degrees
starboard. Or something ..."

"Good luck guys," chirped  the  computer,  "impact  minus  thirty
seconds ..."

Ford leapt to the  controls  -  only  a  few  of  them  made  any
immediate  sense  to  him  so he pulled those. The ship shook and
screamed as its guidance rocked jets tried to push it every which
way  simultaneously.  He  released half of them and the ship span
round in a tight arc  and  headed  back  the  way  it  had  come,
straight towards the oncoming missiles.

Air cushions ballooned out of the walls in an instant as everyone
was  thrown  against  them. For a few seconds the inertial forces
held them flattened and squirming for  breath,  unable  to  move.
Zaphod  struggled  and  pushed  in  manic desperation and finally
managed a savage kick at a small lever that formed  part  of  the
guidance system.

The lever snapped off. The  ship  twisted  sharply  and  rocketed
upwards.  The  crew  were hurled violently back across the cabin.
Ford's copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy smashed into
another  section  of the control console with the combined result
that the guide started to explain to anyone who cared  to  listen
about  the best ways of smuggling Antarean parakeet glands out of
Antares (an Antarean parakeet gland stuck on a small stick  is  a
revolting  but much sought after cocktail delicacy and very large
sums of money are often paid for them by  very  rich  idiots  who
want  to  impress  other very rich idiots), and the ship suddenly
dropped out of the sky like a stone.

It was of course more or less at this moment that one of the crew
sustained  a  nasty  bruise  to  the  upper  arm.  This should be
emphasized because, as had already  been  revealed,  they  escape
otherwise  completely unharmed and the deadly nuclear missiles do
not eventually hit the ship. The safety of the crew is absolutely
assured.

"Impact minus twenty seconds, guys ..." said the computer.

"Then turn the bloody engines back on!" bawled Zaphod.

"OK, sure thing, guys," said the computer. With a subtle roar the
engines  cut back in, the ship smoothly flattened out of its dive
and headed back towards the missiles again.

The computer started to sing.

"When you walk through the storm ..." it  whined  nasally,  "hold
your head up high ..."

Zaphod screamed at it to shut up, but his voice was lost  in  the
din   of  what  they  quite  naturally  assumed  was  approaching
destruction.

"And don't ... be afraid ... of the dark!" Eddie wailed.

The ship, in flattening out had in fact flattened out upside down
and  lying  on  the  ceiling  as  they  were  it  was now totally
impossible for any of the crew to reach the guidance systems.

"At the end of the storm ..." crooned Eddie.

The  two  missiles  loomed  massively  on  the  screens  as  they
thundered towards the ship.

"... is a golden sky ..."

But by an extraordinarily lucky chance they  had  not  yet  fully
corrected  their  flight paths to that of the erratically weaving
ship, and they passed right under it.

"And the sweet silver songs of the lark ... Revised  impact  time
fifteen seconds fellas ... Walk on through the wind ..."

The missiles banked round in a screeching arc  and  plunged  back
into pursuit.

"This is it," said  Arthur  watching  them.  "We  are  now  quite
definitely going to die aren't we?"

"I wish you'd stop saying that," shouted Ford.

"Well we are aren't we?"

"Yes."
"Walk on through the rain ..." sang Eddie.

A thought struck Arthur. He struggled to his feet.

"Why doesn't anyone turn on this Improbability Drive  thing?"  he
said. "We could probably reach that."

"What are you crazy?" said Zaphod.  "Without  proper  programming
anything could happen."

"Does that matter at this stage?" shouted Arthur.

"Though your dreams be tossed and blown ..." sand Eddie.

Arthur scrambled up on to one end of the excitingly chunky pieces
of  moulded  contouring  where  the  curve  of  the  wall met the
ceiling.

"Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart ..."

"Does anyone know why Arthur  can't  turn  on  the  Improbability
Drive?" shouted Trillian.

"And you'll never walk alone ... Impact minus five seconds,  it's
been  great knowing you guys, God bless ... You'll ne ... ver ...
walk ... alone!"

"I said," yelled Trillian, "does anyone know ..."

The next thing that happened  was  a  mid-mangling  explosion  of
noise and light.




And the next thing that happened after that was that the Heart of
Gold  continued  on  its  way  perfectly  normally  with a rather
fetchingly redesigned interior. It was somewhat larger, and  done
out  in delicate pastel shades of green and blue. In the centre a
spiral staircase, leading nowhere in particular, stood in a spray
of  ferns  and  yellow  flowers  and  next  to it a stone sundial
pedestal housed the main computer  terminal.  Cunningly  deployed
lighting  and  mirrors  created  the  illusion  of  standing in a
conservatory overlooking a wide stretch of exquisitely  manicured
garden.  Around  the  periphery  of  the  conservatory area stood
marble-topped tables on intricately beautiful wrought-iron  legs.
As  you  gazed  into the polished surface of the marble the vague
forms of instruments became visible, and as you touched them  the
instruments  materialized  instantly  under your hands. Looked at
from the correct angles the mirrors appeared to reflect  all  the
required  data  readouts, though it was far from clear where they
were reflected from. It was in fact sensationally beautiful.

Relaxing in a wickerwork sun chair, Zaphod Beeblebrox said, "What
the hell happened?"

"Well I was just saying," said Arthur lounging by  a  small  fish
pool,  "there's this Improbability Drive switch over here ..." he
waved at where it had been. There was a potted plant there now.
"But where are we?" said Ford  who  was  sitting  on  the  spiral
staircase,  a  nicely  chilled Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in his
hand.

"Exactly where we were, I think ..." said Trillian, as all  about
them  the  mirrors showed them an image of the blighted landscape
of Magrathea which still scooted along beneath them.

Zaphod leapt out of his seat.

"Then what's happened to the missiles?" he said.

A new and astounding image appeared in the mirrors.

"They would appear," said Ford doubtfully, "to have turned into a
bowl of petunias and a very surprised looking whale ..."

"At an Improbability Factor," cut in Eddie, who hadn't changed  a
bit, "of eight million seven hundred and sixty-seven thousand one
hundred and twenty-eight to one against."

Zaphod stared at Arthur.

"Did you think of that, Earthman?" he demanded.

"Well," said Arthur, "all I did was ..."

"That's very good thinking you know. Turn  on  the  Improbability
Drive for a second without first activating the proofing screens.
Hey kid you just saved our lives, you know that?"

"Oh," said Arthur, "well, it was nothing really ..."

"Was it?" said Zaphod. "Oh well, forget it  then.  OK,  computer,
take us in to land."

"But ..."

"I said forget it."

Another thing that got forgotten was the fact  that  against  all
probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence
several miles above the surface of an alien planet.

And since this is not a naturally tenable position for  a  whale,
this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms
with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to  terms
with not being a whale any more.

This is a complete record of its  thoughts  from  the  moment  it
began its life till the moment it ended it.

Ah ... ! What's happening? it thought.

Er, excuse me, who am I?

Hello?
Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?

What do I mean by who am I?

Calm down, get  a  grip  now  ...  oh!  this  is  an  interesting
sensation,  what  is  it?  It's  a  sort of ... yawning, tingling
sensation in my ... my  ...  well  I  suppose  I'd  better  start
finding  names  for  things if I want to make any headway in what
for the sake of what I shall call an argument I  shall  call  the
world, so let's call it my stomach.

Good. Ooooh, it's getting quite strong.  And  hey,  what's  about
this  whistling  roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going
to call my head? Perhaps I can call that ... wind! Is that a good
name?  It'll do ... perhaps I can find a better name for it later
when I've found out what it's for.  It  must  be  something  very
important  because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of
it. Hey! What's this thing? This ... let's call it a tail - yeah,
tail.  Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can't I?
Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn't seem to achieve very much but
I'll probably find out what it's for later on. Now - have I built
up any coherent picture of things yet?

No. Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so  much  to  find  out
about,  so  much  to  look  forward  to,  I'm  quite  dizzy  with
anticipation ...   Or is it the wind?

There really is a lot of that now isn't it?

And wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming towards  me  very
fast?  Very  very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big
wide sounding name like ... ow ... ound  ...  round  ...  ground!
That's it! That's a good name - ground!

I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through  the  mind  of
the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people
have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of  petunias
had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the
universe than we do now.




"Are we taking this robot  with  us?"  said  Ford,  looking  with
distaste at Marvin who was standing in an awkward hunched posture
in the corner under a small palm tree.

Zaphod glanced away from the mirror  screens  which  presented  a
pa\-no\-ra\-mic  view  of  the blighted landscape on which the Heart of
Gold had now landed.

"Oh, the Paranoid Android," he said. "Yeah, we'll take him."

"But what are supposed to do with a manically depressed robot?"

"You think you've  got  problems,"  said  Marvin  as  if  he  was
addressing  a newly occupied coffin, "what are you supposed to do
if you are a manically  depressed  robot?  No,  don't  bother  to
answer  that,  I'm fifty thousand times more intelligent than you
and even I don't know the answer. It gives  me  a  headache  just
trying to think down to your level."

Trillian burst in through the door from her cabin.

"My white mice have escaped!" she said.

An expression of deep worry and concern failed to cross either of
Zaphod's faces.

"Nuts to your white mice," he said.

Trillian glared an upset glare at him, and disappeared again.

It is possible that  her  remark  would  have  commanded  greater
attention  had  it been generally realized that human beings were
only the third most intelligent life form present on  the  planet
Earth,  instead  of (as was generally thought by most independent
observers) the second.

"Good afternoon boys."

The voice was oddly familiar,  but  oddly  different.  It  had  a
matriarchal  twang.  It  announced  itself  to  the  crew as they
arrived at the airlock hatchway that would let them  out  on  the
planet surface.

They looked at each other in puzzlement.

"It's the computer," explained Zaphod. "I discovered  it  had  an
emergency  back-up  personality  that  I  thought  might work out
better."

"Now this is going to be your first day  out  on  a  strange  new
planet,"  continued Eddie's new voice, "so I want you all wrapped
up snug and warm,  and  no  playing  with  any  naughty  bug-eyed
monsters."

Zaphod tapped impatiently on the hatch.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I think we might  be  better  off  with  a
slide rule."

"Right!" snapped the computer. "Who said that?"

"Will you open the exit  hatch  please,  computer?"  said  Zaphod
trying not to get angry.

"Not until whoever  said  that  owns  up,"  urged  the  computer,
stamping a few synapses closed.
"Oh God," muttered Ford, slumped against a bulkhead  and  started
to  count  to  ten.  He  was  desperately  worried  that  one day
sentinent life forms  would  forget  how  to  do  this.  Only  by
counting   could   humans   demonstrate   their  independence  of
computers.

"Come on," said Eddie sternly.

"Computer ..." began Zaphod ...

"I'm  waiting,"  interrupted  Eddie.  "I  can  wait  all  day  if
necessary ..."

"Computer ..." said Zaphod again, who had been trying to think of
some subtle piece of reasoning to put the computer down with, and
had decided not to bother competing with it on  its  own  ground,
"if  you  don't  open  that  exit  hatch  this moment I shall zap
straight off to your major data banks and reprogram  you  with  a
very large axe, got that?"

Eddie, shocked, paused and considered this.

Ford  carried  on  counting  quietly.  This  is  about  the  most
aggressive  thing  you  can  do  to a computer, the equivalent of
going up to a human being and saying Blood ...  blood  ...  blood
... blood ...

Finally Eddie said quietly,  "I  can  see  this  relationship  is
something  we're  all going to have to work at," and the hatchway
opened.

An icy wind ripped into them, they hugged themselves  warmly  and
stepped down the ramp on to the barren dust of Magrathea.

"It'll all end in tears, I know it," shouted Eddie after them and
closed the hatchway again.

A few minutes later he opened and closed the  hatchway  again  in
response to a command that caught him entirely by surprise.




Five figures wandered slowly over the blighted land. Bits  of  it
were  dullish  grey,  bits  of  it  dullish brown, the rest of it
rather less interesting to look  at.  It  was  like  a  dried-out
marsh,  now  barren of all vegetation and covered with a layer of
dust about an inch thick. It was very cold.

Zaphod was clearly rather depressed about it. He stalked  off  by
himself  and  was  soon lost to sight behind a slight rise in the
ground.

The wind stung Arthur's eyes and ears, and  the  stale  thin  air
clasped his throat. However, the thing stung most was his mind.

"It's fantastic ..." he said, and his own voice rattled his ears.
Sound carried badly in this thin atmosphere.
"Desolate hole if you ask me," said Ford. "I could have more  fun
in  a  cat  litter."  He  felt  a mounting irritation. Of all the
planets in all the star systems of all the  Galaxy  -  didn't  he
just  have  to turn up at a dump like this after fifteen years of
being a castaway? Not even  a  hot  dog  stand  in  evidence.  He
stooped  down  and  picked up a cold clot of earth, but there was
nothing underneath it worth crossing thousands of light years  to
look at.

"No," insisted Arthur, "don't you understand, this is  the  first
time  I've  actually stood on the surface of another planet ... a
whole alien world ...! Pity it's such a dump though."

Trillian hugged herself, shivered and  frowned.  She  could  have
sworn  she saw a slight and unexpected movement out of the corner
of her eye, but when she glanced in that direction all she  could
see  was the ship, still and silent, a hundred yards or so behind
them.

She was relieved when a second or so later they caught  sight  of
Zaphod  standing on top of the ridge of ground and waving to them
to come and join him.

He seemed to be excited, but they couldn't clearly hear  what  he
was saying because of the thinnish atmosphere and the wind.

As they approached the ridge of higher ground they  became  aware
that  it  seemed  to  be  circular - a crater about a hundred and
fifty yards wide. Round the outside of  the  crater  the  sloping
ground  was  spattered with black and red lumps. They stopped and
looked at a piece. It was wet. It was rubbery.

With horror they suddenly realized that it was fresh whalemeat.

At the top of the crater's lip they met Zaphod.

"Look," he said, pointing into the crater.

In the centre lay the exploded carcass of a  lonely  sperm  whale
that  hadn't  lived  long enough to be disappointed with its lot.
The silence was only disturbed by the slight  involuntary  spasms
of Trillian's throat.

"I suppose there's no point  in  trying  to  bury  it?"  murmured
Arthur, and then wished he hadn't.

"Come," said Zaphod and started back down into the crater.

"What, down there?" said Trillian with severe distaste.

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "come on, I've got something to show you."

"We can see it," said Trillian.

"Not that," said Zaphod, "something else. Come on."

They all hesitated.

"Come on," insisted Zaphod, "I've found a way in."
"In?" said Arthur in horror.

"Into the interior of the planet!  An  underground  passage.  The
force  of the whale's impact cracked it open, and that's where we
have to go. Where no man has trod these five million years,  into
the very depths of time itself ..."

Marvin started his ironical humming again.

Zaphod hit him and he shut up.

With little shudders of disgust they all followed Zaphod down the
incline  into  the  crater,  trying  very hard not to look at its
unfortunate creator.

"Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't
like it."

The ground had caved in where the whale had hit  it  revealing  a
network  of  galleries  and  passages,  now largely obstructed by
collapsed rubble and entrails. Zaphod had made a start clearing a
way into one of them, but Marvin was able to do it rather faster.
Dank air wafted out of its dark recesses, and as Zaphod  shone  a
torch into it, little was visible in the dusty gloom.

"According to the legends," he said, "the Magratheans lived  most
of their lives underground."

"Why's that?" said Arthur. "Did the surface become  too  polluted
or overpopulated?"

"No, I don't think so," said Zaphod. "I think  they  just  didn't
like it very much."

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" said Trillian  peering
nervously  into  the  darkness. "We've been attacked once already
you know."

"Look kid, I promise you the live population of  this  planet  is
nil  plus  the four of us, so come on, let's get on in there. Er,
hey Earthman ..."

"Arthur," said Arthur.

"Yeah could you just sort of keep this robot with you  and  guard
this end of the passageway. OK?"

"Guard?" said Arthur. "What from? You just said  there's  no  one
here."

"Yeah, well, just for safety, OK?" said Zaphod.

"Whose? Yours or mine?"

"Good lad. OK, here we go."

Zaphod scrambled down into the passage, followed by Trillian  and
Ford.
"Well I hope you all have a really  miserable  time,"  complained
Arthur.

"Don't worry," Marvin assured him, "they will."

In a few seconds they had disappeared from view.

Arthur stamped around in a huff, and then decided that a  whale's
graveyard is not on the whole a good place to stamp around in.

Marvin eyed him balefully for a moment, and then  turned  himself
off.

Zaphod marched quickly down the passageway, nervous as hell,  but
trying  to  hide  it by striding purposefully. He flung the torch
beam around. The walls were covered in dark tiles and  were  cold
to the touch, the air thick with decay.

"There, what did I tell you?"  he  said.  "An  inhabited  planet.
Magrathea,"  and  he  strode  on through the dirt and debris that
littered the tile floor.

Trillian was reminded  unavoidably  of  the  London  Underground,
though it was less thoroughly squalid.

At intervals along the walls the tiles gave way to large  mosaics
- simple angular patterns in bright colours. Trillian stopped and
studied one of them but could not interpret any  sense  in  them.
She called to Zaphod.

"Hey, have you any idea what these strange symbols are?"

"I think they're just strange symbols of some kind," said Zaphod,
hardly glancing back.

Trillian shrugged and hurried after him.

>From time to time a doorway led either to the left or right  into
smallish  chambers  which  Ford discovered to be full of derelict
computer equipment. He dragged Zaphod into one to  have  a  look.
Trillian followed.

"Look," said Ford, "you reckon this is Magrathea ..."

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "and we heard the voice, right?"

"OK, so I've bought the  fact  that  it's  Magrathea  -  for  the
moment.  What  you  have  so far said nothing about is how in the
Galaxy you found it. You didn't just look it up in a star  atlas,
that's for sure."

"Research.  Government  archives.  Detective  work.   Few   lucky
guesses. Easy."

"And then you stole the Heart of Gold to come  and  look  for  it
with?"

"I stole it to look for a lot of things."
"A lot of things?" said Ford in surprise. "Like what?"

"I don't know."

"What?"

"I don't know what I'm looking for."

"Why not?"

"Because ... because ... I think it might be because if I knew  I
wouldn't be able to look for them."

"What, are you crazy?"

"It's a  possibility  I  haven't  ruled  out  yet,"  said  Zaphod
quietly.  "I  only  know as much about myself as my mind can work
out under its current conditions. And its current conditions  are
not good."

For a long time nobody said anything as Ford gazed at Zaphod with
a mind suddenly full of worry.

"Listen old friend, if you want to ..." started Ford eventually.

"No, wait ... I'll tell you something," said Zaphod. "I freewheel
a lot. I get an idea to do something, and, hey, why not, I do it.
I reckon I'll  become  President  of  the  Galaxy,  and  it  just
happens, it's easy. I decide to steal this ship. I decide to look
for Magrathea, and it all just happens. Yeah, I work out  how  it
can  best  be  done,  right,  but  it always works out. It's like
having a Galacticredit card which keeps  on  working  though  you
never  send off the cheques. And then whenever I stop and think -
why did I want to do something? - how did I work out  how  to  do
it?  - I get a very strong desire just to stop thinking about it.
Like I have now. It's a big effort to talk about it."

Zaphod paused for a while. For a while there was silence. Then he
frowned  and  said,  "Last night I was worrying about this again.
About the fact that part of my mind  just  didn't  seem  to  work
properly.  Then it occurred to me that the way it seemed was that
someone else was using my mind to have good ideas  with,  without
telling  me  about  it.  I put the two ideas together and decided
that maybe that somebody had locked off part of my mind for  that
purpose, which was why I couldn't use it. I wondered if there was
a way I could check.

"I went to the ship's medical bay and  plugged  myself  into  the
encephelographic  screen.  I  went  through every major screening
test on both my heads - all the tests I had to go  through  under
government  medical  officers before my nomination for Presidency
could be properly  ratified.  They  showed  up  nothing.  Nothing
unexpected  at least. They showed that I was clever, imaginative,
irresponsible, untrustworthy,  extrovert,  nothing  you  couldn't
have  guessed.  And  no  other  anomalies. So I started inventing
further tests,  completely  at  random.  Nothing.  Then  I  tried
superimposing  the  results  from  one head on top of the results
from the other head. Still nothing. Finally I got silly,  because
I'd  given  it all up as nothing more than an attack of paranoia.
Last thing I did before I packed it in was take the  superimposed
picture and look at it through a green filter. You remember I was
always superstitious about the color green when I was  a  kid?  I
always wanted to be a pilot on one of the trading scouts?"

Ford nodded.

"And there it was," said Zaphod, "clear as day. A  whole  section
in  the middle of both brains that related only to each other and
not to anything else around them. Some bastard had cauterized all
the  synapses  and  electronically traumatised those two lumps of
cerebellum."

Ford stared at him, aghast. Trillian had turned white.

"Somebody did that to you?" whispered Ford.

"Yeah."

"But have you any idea who? Or why?"

"Why? I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was."

"You know? How do you know?"

"Because they left  their  initials  burnt  into  the  cauterized
synapses. They left them there for me to see."

Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl.

"Initials? Burnt into your brain?"

"Yeah."

"Well, what were they, for God's sake?"

Zaphod looked at him in silence  again  for  a  moment.  Then  he
looked away.

"Z.B.," he said.

At that moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them  and  gas
started to pour into the chamber.

"I'll tell you about it later," choked Zaphod as all three passed
out.




On the surface of Magrathea Arthur wandered about moodily.

Ford had thoughtfully left him his  copy  of  The  Hitch  Hiker's
Guide  to the Galaxy to while away the time with. He pushed a few
buttons at random.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a very  unevenly  edited
book and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors
like a good idea at the time.

One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly  relates
the  experiences  of  one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at
the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a  brilliant  academic
career  studying  ancient  philology, transformational ethics and
the wave harmonic theory  of  historical  perception,  and  then,
after  a  night  of  drinking  Pan  Galactic Gargle Blasters with
Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the  problem
of  what  had happened to all the biros he'd bought over the past
few years.

There followed a long period of painstaking research during which
he  visited  all  the  major  centres of biro loss throughout the
galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint little  theory  which
quite caught the public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the
cosmos,  he  said,  along  with  all  the  planets  inhabited  by
humanoids,    reptiloids,    fishoids,   walking   treeoids   and
superintelligent shades of the colour  blue,  there  was  also  a
planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this
planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping  away
quietly  through  wormholes  in  space to a world where they knew
they could enjoy  a  uniquely  biroid  lifestyle,  responding  to
highly  biro-oriented  stimuli,  and  generally  leading the biro
equivalent of the good life.

And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet
Voojagig  suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have
worked there for a while driving a  limousine  for  a  family  of
cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up,
wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax exile, which  is  the
usual  fate  reserved for those who are determined to make a fool
of themselves in public.

When one day an expedition was sent to  the  spatial  coordinates
that  Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a
small asteroid inhabited  by  a  solitary  old  man  who  claimed
repeatedly  that nothing was true, though he was later discovered
to be lying.

There did, however, remain the question of  both  the  mysterious
60,000  Altairan  dollars  paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank
account, and of  course  Zaphod  Beeblebrox's  highly  profitable
second-hand biro business.

Arthur read this, and put the book down.

The robot still sat there, completely inert.

Arthur got up and walked to the top  of  the  crater.  He  walked
around  the  crater.  He  watched two suns set magnificently over
Magrathea.

He went back down into the crater. He woke the robot  up  because
even  a  manically  depressed  robot  is  better  to talk to than
nobody.

"Night's falling," he said. "Look robot,  the  stars  are  coming
out."
>From the heart of a dark nebula it is possible to  see  very  few
stars, and only very faintly, but they were there to be seen.

The robot obediently looked at them, then looked back.

"I know," he said. "Wretched isn't it?"

"But that sunset! I've never seen anything like it in my  wildest
dreams  ...  the  two suns! It was like mountains of fire boiling
into space."

"I've seen it," said Marvin. "It's rubbish."

"We only ever had the one sun at  home,"  persevered  Arthur,  "I
came from a planet called Earth you know."

"I know," said Marvin, "you keep going on  about  it.  It  sounds
awful."

"Ah no, it was a beautiful place."

"Did it have oceans?"

"Oh yes," said Arthur with  a  sigh,  "great  wide  rolling  blue
oceans ..."

"Can't bear oceans," said Marvin.

"Tell me," inquired Arthur,  "do  you  get  on  well  with  other
robots?"

"Hate them," said Marvin. "Where are you going?"

Arthur couldn't bear any more. He had got up again.

"I think I'll just take another walk," he said.

"Don't blame you," said  Marvin  and  counted  five  hundred  and
ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a
second later.

Arthur slapped  his  arms  about  himself  to  try  and  get  his
circulation  a little more enthusiastic about its job. He trudged
back up the wall of the crater.

Because the atmosphere was so thin and because there was no moon,
nightfall  was very rapid and it was by now very dark. Because of
this, Arthur practically  walked  into  the  old  man  before  he
noticed him.




He was standing with his back to Arthur watching  the  very  last
glimmers  of light sink into blackness behind the horizon. He was
tallish, elderly and dressed in a single long grey robe. When  he
turned  his  face  was  thin  and distinguished, careworn but not
unkind, the sort of face you would  happily  bank  with.  But  he
didn't turn yet, not even to react to Arthur's yelp of surprise.

Eventually the last rays of the sun had vanished completely,  and
he  turned.  His  face  was still illuminated from somewhere, and
when Arthur looked for the source of the light he saw that a  few
yards away stood a small craft of some kind - a small hovercraft,
Arthur guessed. It shed a dim pool of light around it.

The man looked at Arthur, sadly it seemed.

"You choose a cold night to visit our dead planet," he said.

"Who ... who are you?" stammered Arthur.

The man looked away. Again a kind of sadness seemed to cross  his
face.

"My name is not important," he said.

He seemed to have something on his mind. Conversation was clearly
something he felt he didn't have to rush at. Arthur felt awkward.

"I ... er ... you startled me ..." he said, lamely.

The man looked  round  to  him  again  and  slightly  raised  his
eyebrows.

"Hmmmm?" he said.

"I said you startled me."

"Do not be alarmed, I will not harm you."

Arthur frowned at him. "But you shot at us! There  were  missiles
..." he said.

The man chuckled slightly.

"An automatic system," he said and gave a  small  sigh.  "Ancient
computers  ranged  in the bowels of the planet tick away the dark
millennia, and the ages hang heavy on their dusty data  banks.  I
think they take the occasional pot shot to relieve the monotony."

He looked gravely at Arthur and said, "I'm a great fan of science
you know."

"Oh ... er, really?" said Arthur, who was beginning to  find  the
man's curious, kindly manner disconcerting.

"Oh, yes," said the old man, and simply stopped talking again.

"Ah," said Arthur, "er ..." He had an odd felling of being like a
man  in  the  act  of  adultery who is surprised when the woman's
husband wanders into the room, changes his trousers, passes a few
idle remarks about the weather and leaves again.

"You seem ill at ease," said the old man with polite concern.

"Er, no ... well,  yes.  Actually  you  see,  we  weren't  really
expecting  to find anybody about in fact. I sort of gathered that
you were all dead or something ..."

"Dead?" said the old man. "Good gracious no, we have but slept."

"Slept?" said Arthur incredulously.

"Yes, through the economic recession you see," said the old  man,
apparently  unconcerned  about  whether  Arthur understood a word
he was talking about or not.

"Er, economic recession?"

"Well you see,  five  million  years  ago  the  Galactic  economy
collapsed, and seeing that custom-made planets are something of a
luxury commodity you see ..."

He paused and looked at Arthur.

"You know we built planets do you?" he asked solemnly.

"Well yes," said Arthur, "I'd sort of gathered ..."

"Fascinating trade," said the old man, and a  wistful  look  came
into  his  eyes,  "doing  the coastlines was always my favourite.
Used to have endless fun doing the little bits in fjords  ...  so
anyway,"  he said trying to find his thread again, "the recession
came and we decided it would save us a lot of bother if  we  just
slept  through  it.  So  we programmed the computers to revive us
when it was all over."

The man stifled a very slight yawn and continued.

"The computers were index linked to  the  Galactic  stock  market
prices  you  see, so that we'd all be revived when everybody else
had rebuilt the economy enough to  afford  our  rather  expensive
services."

Arthur, a regular Guardian reader, was deeply shocked at this.

"That's a pretty unpleasant way to behave isn't it?"

"Is it?" asked the old man mildly. "I'm sorry, I'm a bit  out  of
touch."

He pointed down into the crater.

"Is that robot yours?" he said.

"No," came a thin metallic voice from the crater, "I'm mine."

"If you'd call it a robot," muttered Arthur. "It's more a sort of
electronic sulking machine."

"Bring it," said the old man. Arthur was quite surprised to  hear
a  note  of  decision suddenly present in the old man's voice. He
called to Marvin who crawled up the slope making a  big  show  of
being lame, which he wasn't.
"On second thoughts," said the old man, "leave it here. You  must
come  with  me.  Great  things  are afoot." He turned towards his
craft which, though  no  apparent  signal  had  been  given,  now
drifted quietly towards them through the dark.

Arthur looked down at Marvin, who now made an equally big show of
turning  round  laboriously and trudging off down into the crater
again muttering sour nothings to himself.

"Come," called the old man, "come now or you will be late."

"Late?" said Arthur. "What for?"

"What is your name, human?"

"Dent. Arthur Dent," said Arthur.

"Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent," said the old man, sternly.
"It's  a  sort of threat you see." Another wistful look came into
his tired old eyes. "I've never been very good  at  them  myself,
but I'm told they can be very effective."

Arthur blinked at him.

"What an extraordinary person," he muttered to himself.

"I beg your pardon?" said the old man.

"Oh nothing, I'm sorry," said Arthur in embarrassment.  "Alright,
where do we go?"

"In my aircar," said the old man motioning Arthur to get into the
craft which had settled silently next to them. "We are going deep
into the bowels of the planet where even now our  race  is  being
revived from its five-million-year slumber. Magrathea awakes."

Arthur shivered involuntarily as he seated himself  next  to  the
old  man.  The  strangeness of it, the silent bobbing movement of
the craft as it soared into the night sky quite unsettled him.

He looked at the old man, his face illuminated by the  dull  glow
of tiny lights on the instrument panel.

"Excuse me," he said to him, "what is your name by the way?"

"My name?" said the old man, and the same  distant  sadness  came
into  his  face  again.  He  paused.  "My name," he said, "... is
Slartibartfast."

Arthur practically choked.

"I beg your pardon?" he spluttered.

"Slartibartfast," repeated the old man quietly.

"Slartibartfast?"

The old man looked at him gravely.
"I said it wasn't important," he said.

The aircar sailed through the night.




It is an important and popular fact that things  are  not  always
what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always
assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had
achieved  so  much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst
all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having
a  good  time.  But  conversely, the dolphins had always believed
that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely  the
same reasons.

Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known  of  the  impending
destruction  of  the  planet  Earth and had made many attempts to
alert mankind of the danger; but  most  of  their  communications
were  misinterpreted  as  amusing  attempts to punch footballs or
whistle for tidbits, so they eventually  gave  up  and  left  the
Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived.

The  last  ever  dolphin  message   was   misinterpreted   as   a
surprisingly  sophisticated  attempt  to  do  a double-backwards-
somersault through a hoop whilst whistling  the  "Star  Sprangled
Banner", but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for
all the fish.

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent
than  dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural
research laboratories running round inside wheels and  conducting
frighteningly  elegant  and  subtle  experiments on man. 

The  fact  that  once  again man  completely misinterpreted  this  
relationship was entirely according to these creatures' plans.




Silently the aircar coasted through the cold darkness,  a  single
soft  glow of light that was utterly alone in the deep Magrathean
night. It sped swiftly. Arthur's companion seemed sunk in his own
thoughts,  and  when  Arthur  tried  on  a couple of occasions to
engage him in conversation again he would simply reply by  asking
if he was comfortable enough, and then left it at that.

Arthur tried to gauge the speed at which  they  were  travelling,
but  the  blackness  outside  was  absolute and he was denied any
reference points. The sense of motion was so soft and  slight  he
could almost believe they were hardly moving at all.

Then a tiny glow of light appeared in the far distance and within
seconds  had  grown  so  much in size that Arthur realized it was
travelling towards them at a colossal speed, and he tried to make
out  what  sort  of  craft  it might be. He peered at it, but was
unable to discern any clear shape, and suddenly gasped  in  alarm
as  the  aircraft  dipped  sharply  and  headed downwards in what
seemed certain to be a collision course. Their relative  velocity
seemed  unbelievable,  and  Arthur had hardly time to draw breath
before it was all over. The next thing he was  aware  of  was  an
insane  silver  blur  that seemed to surround him. He twisted his
head sharply round and saw a small black point dwindling  rapidly
in  the  distance behind them, and it took him several seconds to
realize what had happened.

They had plunged into a tunnel in the ground. The colossal  speed
had  been  their  own  relative  to the glow of light which was a
stationary hole in the ground,  the  mouth  of  the  tunnel.  The
insane  blur  of  silver was the circular wall of the tunnel down
which they were shooting, apparently at several hundred miles  an
hour.

He closed his eyes in terror.

After a length of time which he made  no  attempt  to  judge,  he
sensed  a  slight  subsidence in their speed and some while later
became aware that they were gradually gliding to a gentle halt.

He opened his eyes again. They were still in the  silver  tunnel,
threading  and  weaving  their  way through what appeared to be a
crisscross  warren  of  converging  tunnels.  When  they  finally
stopped  it  was  in  a  small  chamber  of curved steel. Several
tunnels also had their terminus here, and at the farther  end  of
the  chamber  Arthur  could  see a large circle of dim irritating
light. It was irritating because it played tricks with the  eyes,
it was impossible to focus on it properly or tell how near or far
it was. Arthur guessed (quite wrongly) that  it  might  be  ultra
violet.

Slartibartfast turned and regarded Arthur  with  his  solemn  old
eyes.

"Earthman," he said, "we are now deep in the heart of Magrathea."

"How did you know I was an Earthman?" demanded Arthur.

"These things will become clear to you," said the old man gently,
"at  least,"  he  added  with slight doubt in his voice, "clearer
than they are at the moment."

He continued: "I should warn you that the chamber we are about to
pass  into  does  not  literally exist within our planet. It is a
little too ... large. We are about to pass through a gateway into
a vast tract of hyperspace. It may disturb you."

Arthur made nervous noises.

Slartibartfast  touched  a  button  and   added,   not   entirely
reassuringly. "It scares the willies out of me. Hold tight."

The car shot forward straight  into  the  circle  of  light,  and
suddenly  Arthur  had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked
like.

It wasn't infinity  in  fact.  Infinity  itself  looks  flat  and
uninteresting.  Looking  up  into  the  night sky is looking into
infinity   -   distance   is   incomprehensible   and   therefore
meaningless.  The  chamber  into  which  the  aircar  emerged was
anything but infinite, it was just very very big, so that it gave
the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself.

Arthur's senses bobbed and span, as, travelling  at  the  immense
speed  he  knew  the aircar attained, they climbed slowly through
the open air leaving the gateway through which they had passed an
invisible pinprick in the shimmering wall behind them.

The wall.

The wall defied the imagination - seduced it and defeated it. The
wall  was so paralysingly vast and sheer that its top, bottom and
sides passed away beyond the reach of sight. The  mere  shock  of
vertigo could kill a man.

The wall appeared perfectly flat. It would take the finest  laser
measuring  equipment  to detect that as it climbed, apparently to
infinity, as it dropped dizzily away, as it planed out to  either
side,  it also curved. It met itself again thirteen light seconds
away. In other words the wall  formed  the  inside  of  a  hollow
sphere, a sphere over three million miles across and flooded with
unimaginable light.

"Welcome," said Slartibartfast as the tiny  speck  that  was  the
aircar,  travelling  now at three times the speed of sound, crept
imperceptibly forward into the mindboggling space, "welcome,"  he
said, "to our factory floor."

Arthur stared about him in a kind  of  wonderful  horror.  Ranged
away  before  them,  at distances he could neither judge nor even
guess  at,  were  a  series  of  curious  suspensions,   delicate
traceries  of metal and light hung about shadowy spherical shapes
that hung in the space.

"This," said Slartibartfast,  "is  where  we  make  most  of  our
planets you see."

"You mean," said Arthur, trying to  form  the  words,  "you  mean
you're starting it all up again now?"

"No no, good heavens no," exclaimed the old man, "no, the  Galaxy
isn't  nearly  rich  enough  to  support  us  yet. No, we've been
awakened to perform just one extraordinary commission   for  very
...  special  clients from another dimension. It may interest you
... there in the distance in front of us."

Arthur followed the old man's finger, till he was  able  to  pick
out the floating structure he was pointing out. It was indeed the
only one of  the  many  structures  that  betrayed  any  sign  of
activity  about  it,  though  this was more a sublimal impression
than anything one could put one's finger on.

At the  moment  however  a  flash  of  light  arced  through  the
structure  and  revealed  in  stark relief the patterns that were
formed on the dark sphere  within.  Patterns  that  Arthur  knew,
rough blobby shapes that were as familiar to him as the shapes of
words, part of the furniture of his mind. For a  few  seconds  he
sat  in  stunned silence as the images rushed around his mind and
tried to find somewhere to settle down and make sense.
Part of his brain told him that he knew perfectly  well  what  he
was  looking  at  and  what the shapes represented whilst another
quite sensibly refused to  countenance  the  idea  and  abdicated
responsibility for any further thinking in that direction.

The flash came again, and this time there could be no doubt.

"The Earth ..." whispered Arthur.

"Well,  the  Earth  Mark  Two  in  fact,"   said   Slartibartfast
cheery. "We're making a copy from our original blueprints."

There was a pause.

"Are you trying  to  tell  me,"  said  Arthur,  slowly  and  with
control, "that you originally ... made the Earth?"

"Oh yes," said Slartibartfast. "Did you ever go to a place ...  I
think it was called Norway?"

"No," said Arthur, "no, I didn't."

"Pity," said Slartibartfast, "that was one of mine. Won an  award
you  know.  Lovely  crinkly edges. I was most upset to hear about
its destruction."

"You were upset!"

"Yes. Five minutes later and it wouldn't have mattered  so  much.
It was a quite shocking cock-up."

"Huh?" said Arthur.

"The mice were furious."

"The mice were furious?"

"Oh yes," said the old man mildly.

"Yes well so I expect were  the  dogs  and  cats  and  duckbilled
platypuses, but ..."

"Ah, but they hadn't paid for it you see, had they?"

"Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if  I  just
gave up and went mad now?"

For a while the aircar flew on in awkward silence. Then  the  old
man tried patiently to explain.

"Earthman, the planet you lived on was  commissioned,  paid  for,
and  run  by  mice.  It  was  destroyed  five  minutes before the
completion of the purpose for which it was built, and  we've  got
to build another one."

Only one word registered with Arthur.

"Mice?" he said.
"Indeed Earthman."

"Look, sorry - are we talking about the little white furry things
with  the  cheese fixation and women standing on tables screaming
in early sixties sit coms?"

Slartibartfast coughed politely.

"Earthman," he said, "it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of
speech.  Remember  I  have  been  asleep  inside  this  planet of
Magrathea for five million years and know little of  these  early
sixties  sit  coms  of  which you speak. These creatures you call
mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely
the  protrusion  into our dimension of vast hyperintelligent pan-
dimensional beings. The whole business with the  cheese  and  the
squeaking is just a front."

The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued.

"They've been experimenting on you I'm afraid."

Arthur thought about  this  for  a  second,  and  then  his  face
cleared.

"Ah no," he said, "I see the source of the misunderstanding  now.
No,  look  you  see,  what  happened  was  that  we  used  to  do
experiments  on  them.  They  were  often  used  in   behavioural
research, Pavlov and all that sort of stuff. So what happened was
hat the mice would be set all sorts of tests,  learning  to  ring
bells,  run  around  mazes and things so that the whole nature of
the learning process could be examined. From our observations  of
their  behaviour  we were able to learn all sorts of things about
our own ..."

Arthur's voice tailed off.

"Such subtlety ..." said Slartibartfast, "one has to admire it."

"What?" said Arthur.

"How better to disguise their real natures,  and  how  better  to
guide  your thinking. Suddenly running down a maze the wrong way,
eating the wrong bit of cheese, unexpectedly   dropping  dead  of
myxomatosis, - if it's finely calculated the cumulative effect is
enormous."

He paused for effect.

"You  see,  Earthman,  they  really   are   particularly   clever
hyperintelligent  pan-dimensional  beings. Your planet and people
have formed the matrix of an  organic  computer  running  a  ten-
million-year research programme ...

"Let me tell you the whole story. It'll take a little time."

"Time,"  said  Arthur  weakly,  "is  not  currently  one  of   my
problems."




There are of course many problems connected with life,  of  which
some  of  the  most  popular are Why are people born? Why do they
die? Why do they want to spend so much of  the  intervening  time
wearing digital watches?

Many many millions of years ago a race of  hyperintelligent  pan-
dimensional  beings  (whose  physical  manifestation in their own
pan-dimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own) got so fed
up  with  the  constant bickering about the meaning of life which
used to interrupt  their  favourite  pastime  of  Brockian  Ultra
Cricket  (a  curious  game which involved suddenly hitting people
for no readily apparent reason and then running away)  that  they
decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all.

And to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer
which  was  so  amazingly  intelligent  that even before the data
banks had been connected up it had started from I think therefore
I  am  and got as far as the existence of rice pudding and income
tax before anyone managed to turn it off.

It was the size of a small city.

Its main console was installed in a specially designed  executive
office,   mounted   on  an  enormous  executive  desk  of  finest
ultramahagony  topped  with  rich  ultrared  leather.  The   dark
carpeting   was  discreetly  sumptuous,  exotic  pot  plants  and
tastefully engraved prints of the principal computer  programmers
and  their  families  were deployed liberally about the room, and
stately windows looked out upon a tree-lined public square.

On  the  day  of  the  Great  On-Turning  two   soberly   dressed
programmers  with  brief  cases arrived and were shown discreetly
into the office.  They  were  aware  that  this  day  they  would
represent  their  entire  race  in  its greatest moment, but they
conducted themselves calmly and quietly as they seated themselves
deferentially  before the desk, opened their brief cases and took
out their leather-bound notebooks.

Their names were Lunkwill and Fook.

For a few moments they sat in  respectful  silence,  then,  after
exchanging  a quiet glance with Fook, Lunkwill leaned forward and
touched a small black panel.

The subtlest of hums indicated that the massive computer was  now
in  total  active mode. After a pause it spoke to them in a voice
rich resonant and deep.

It said: "What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought,  the
second  greatest  computer in the Universe of Time and Space have
been called into existence?"

Lunkwill and Fook glanced at each other in surprise.

 "Your task, O Computer ..." began Fook.
"No, wait a minute, this isn't right,"  said  Lunkwill,  worried.
"We distinctly designed this computer to be the greatest one ever
and we're not making do  with  second  best.  Deep  Thought,"  he
addressed  the  computer,  "are you not as we designed you to be,
the greatest most powerful computer in all time?"

"I  described  myself  as  the  second  greatest,"  intoned  Deep
Thought, "and such I am."

Another worried look passed between the two programmers. Lunkwill
cleared his throat.

"There must be some mistake," he said, "are you  not  a  greatest
computer  than the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the
atoms in a star in a millisecond?"

"The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with  unconcealed
contempt. "A mere abacus - mention it not."

"And are you  not,"  said  Fook  leaning  anxiously  forward,  "a
greater  analyst  than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh
Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the  trajectory
of  every  single  dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad
Beta sand blizzard?"

"A five-week sand blizzard?" said Deep  Thought  haughtily.  "You
ask  this  of  me  who  have contemplated the very vectors of the
atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest  me  not  with  this  pocket
calculator stuff."

The two programmers sat in uncomfortable silence  for  a  moment.
Then Lunkwill leaned forward again.

"But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant  than  the
Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus 12,
the Magic and Indefatigable?"

"The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler,"  said  Deep
Thought thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off
an Arcturan MegaDonkey - but only I could persuade it to go for a
walk afterwards."

"Then what," asked Fook, "is the problem?"

"There is no problem," said Deep Thought with magnificent ringing
tones.  "I am simply the second greatest computer in the Universe
of Space and Time."

"But the second?" insisted Lunkwill. "Why do you keep saying  the
second?   You're   surely  not  thinking  of  the  Multicorticoid
Perspicutron Titan Muller are you? Or  the  Pondermatic?  Or  the
..."

Contemptuous lights flashed across the computer's console.

"I spare not  a  single  unit  of  thought  on  these  cybernetic
simpletons!" he boomed. "I speak of none but the computer that is
to come after me!"
Fook was losing  patience.  He  pushed  his  notebook  aside  and
muttered, "I think this is getting needlessly messianic."

"You know nothing of future time," pronounced Deep Thought,  "and
yet  in  my  teeming  circuitry I can navigate the infinite delta
streams of future probability and see that  there  must  one  day
come  a  computer  whose  merest  operational parameters I am not
worthy to calculate, but which it will be my fate  eventually  to
design."

Fook sighed heavily and glanced across to Lunkwill.

"Can we get on and ask the question?" he said.

Lunkwill motioned him to wait.

"What computer is this of which you speak?" he asked.

"I will speak of it no further in this present time,"  said  Deep
Thought.  "Now. Ask what else of me you will that I may function.
Speak."

They shrugged at each other. Fook composed himself.

"O Deep Thought Computer," he said, "the task  we  have  designed
you  to  perform  is this. We want you to tell us ..." he paused,
"... the Answer!"

"The answer?" said Deep Thought. "The answer to what?"

"Life!" urged Fook.

"The Universe!" said Lunkwill.

"Everything!" they said in chorus.

Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection.

"Tricky," he said finally.

"But can you do it?"

Again, a significant pause.

"Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it."

"There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement."

"A simple answer?" added Lunkwill.

"Yes," said Deep Thought. "Life, the  Universe,  and  Everything.
There  is  an  answer.  But," he added, "I'll have to think about
it."

A sudden commotion destroyed the moment: the door flew  open  and
two  angry  men  wearing the coarse faded-blue robes and belts of
the Cruxwan University burst into the room, thrusting  aside  the
ineffectual flunkies who tried to bar their way.
"We demand  admission!"  shouted  the  younger  of  the  two  men
elbowing a pretty young secretary in the throat.

"Come on," shouted the older one, "you can't  keep  us  out!"  He
pushed a junior programmer back through the door.

"We demand that you can't keep us out!" bawled the  younger  one,
though  he was now firmly inside the room and no further attempts
were being made to stop him.

"Who are you?" said Lunkwill, rising angrily from his seat. "What
do you want?"

"I am Majikthise!" announced the older one.

"And I demand that I am Vroomfondel!" shouted the younger one.

Majikthise turned on Vroomfondel. "It's  alright,"  he  explained
angrily, "you don't need to demand that."

"Alright!" bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby  desk.  "I  am
Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What
we demand is solid facts!"

"No we don't!"  exclaimed  Majikthise  in  irritation.  "That  is
precisely what we don't demand!"

Scarcely pausing  for  breath,  Vroomfondel  shouted,  "We  don't
demand  solid  facts!  What we demand is a total absence of solid
facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!"

"But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook.

"We," said Majikthise, "are Philosophers."

"Though we may not be," said Vroomfondel waving a warning  finger
at the programmers.

"Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely  here
as  representatives  of  the  Amalgamated  Union of Philosophers,
Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and  we  want  this
machine off, and we want it off now!"

"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.

"I'll tell you  what  the  problem  is  mate,"  said  Majikthise,
"demarcation, that's the problem!"

"We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not
be the problem!"

"You just let the machines get on with  the  adding  up,"  warned
Majikthise,  "and  we'll  take care of the eternal verities thank
you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate.
Under  law  the  Quest  for  Ultimate  Truth is quite clearly the
inalienable  prerogative of your  working  thinkers.  Any  bloody
machine  goes  and  actually finds it and we're straight out of a
job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up  half  the
night  arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine
only goes and  gives  us  his  bleeding  phone  number  the  next
morning?"

"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand  rigidly  defined
areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Suddenly a stentorian voice boomed across the room.

"Might I make  an  observation  at  this  point?"  inquired  Deep
Thought.

"We'll go on strike!" yelled Vroomfondel.

"That's  right!"  agreed  Majikthise.  "You'll  have  a  national
Philosopher's strike on your hands!"

The hum level in the room suddenly increased as several ancillary
bass  driver  units,  mounted  in  sedately  carved and varnished
cabinet speakers around the room, cut in to give  Deep  Thought's
voice a little more power.

"All I wanted  to  say,"  bellowed  the  computer,  "is  that  my
circuits  are now irrevocably committed to calculating the answer
to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything -"
he  paused  and  satisfied  himself  that  he  now had everyone's
attention, before continuing more  quietly,  "but  the  programme
will take me a little while to run."

Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.

"How long?" he said.

"Seven and a half million years," said Deep Thought.

Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other.

"Seven and a half million years ...!" they cried in chorus.

"Yes," declaimed Deep Thought, "I said I'd have  to  think  about
it,  didn't  I? And it occurs to me that running a programme like
this is bound to create an enormous amount of  popular  publicity
for  the whole area of philosophy in general. Everyone's going to
have their own theories about what answer I'm eventually to  come
up  with,  and who better to capitalize on that media market than
you yourself? So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other
violently  enough  and  slagging  each  other  off in the popular
press, you can keep yourself on the gravy  train  for  life.  How
does that sound?"

The two philosophers gaped at him.

"Bloody  hell,"  said  Majikthise,  "now  that  is  what  I  call
thinking.  Here Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like
that?"

"Dunno," said Vroomfondel in an awed whisper, "think  our  brains
must be too highly trained Majikthise."

So saying, they turned on their heels and walked out of the  door
and into a lifestyle beyond their wildest dreams.




"Yes, very  salutary,"  said  Arthur,  after  Slartibartfast  had
related  the  salient  points  of  the story to him, "but I don't
understand what all this has got to do with the  Earth  and  mice
and things."

"That is but the first half of the story Earthman," said the  old
man.  "If  you  would  care to discover what happened seven and a
half millions later, on the great day of the Answer, allow me  to
invite  you  to  my  study  where  you  can experience the events
yourself on our Sens-O-Tape records. That  is  unless  you  would
care  to  take  a  quick stroll on the surface of New Earth. It's
only half completed I'm afraid - we haven't even finished burying
the  artificial dinosaur skeletons in the crust yet, then we have
the Tertiary and Quarternary Periods of the Cenozoic Era  to  lay
down, and ..."

"No thank you," said Arthur, "it wouldn't be quite the same."

"No," said Slartibartfast, "it  won't  be,"  and  he  turned  the
aircar round and headed back towards the mind-numbing wall.




Slartibartfast's study was a total mess, like the results  of  an
explosion  in  a  public  library.  The  old  man frowned as they
stepped in.

"Terribly unfortunate," he said, "a diode  blew  in  one  of  the
life-support  computers.  When  we  tried  to revive our cleaning
staff we discovered they'd been dead for nearly  thirty  thousand
years.  Who's  going to clear away the bodies, that's what I want
to know. Look why don't you sit yourself down over there and  let
me plug you in?"

He gestured Arthur towards a chair which looked as if it had been
made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus.

"It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus," explained the
old  man as he pottered about fishing bits of wire out from under
tottering piles of paper  and  drawing  instruments.  "Here,"  he
said,  "hold  these," and passed a couple of stripped wire end to
Arthur.

The instant he took hold of them a  bird  flew  straight  through
him.

He was suspended in mid-air and  totally  invisible  to  himself.
Beneath him was a pretty treelined city square, and all around it
as far as the eye could see were white concrete buildings of airy
spacious  design  but  somewhat  the  worse  for wear - many were
cracked and stained with rain. Today however the sun was shining,
a  fresh  breeze  danced  lightly  through the trees, and the odd
sensation  that  all  the  buildings  were  quietly  humming  was
probably  caused  by the fact that the square and all the streets
around it were thronged with cheerful excited people. Somewhere a
band  was playing, brightly coloured flags were fluttering in the
breeze and the spirit of carnival was in the air.

Arthur felt extraordinarily lonely stuck up in the air  above  it
all without so much as a body to his name, but before he had time
to reflect on this a voice rang out across the square and  called
for everyone's attention.

A man standing on a brightly dressed  dais  before  the  building
which  clearly dominated the square was addressing the crowd over
a Tannoy.

"O people waiting in the Shadow of Deep Thought!" he  cried  out.
"Honoured Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the Greatest
and Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe  has  ever  known
... The Time of Waiting is over!"

Wild cheers broke out amongst the  crowd.  Flags,  streamers  and
wolf whistles sailed through the air. The narrower streets looked
rather like centipedes rolled over on their backs and frantically
waving their legs in the air.

"Seven and a half million years our  race  has  waited  for  this
Great  and  Hopefully  Enlightening Day!" cried the cheer leader.
"The Day of the Answer!"

Hurrahs burst from the ecstatic crowd.

"Never again," cried the man, "never again will we wake up in the
morning  and  think Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it
really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and  go  to
work?  For today we will finally learn once and for all the plain
and simple answer to all these nagging little problems  of  Life,
the Universe and Everything!"

As the crowd erupted once again,  Arthur  found  himself  gliding
through the air and down towards one of the large stately windows
on the first floor of the building behind the dais from which the
speaker was addressing the crowd.

He experienced a moment's panic as  he  sailed  straight  through
towards  the  window,  which  passed when a second or so later he
found  he  had  gone  right  through  the  solid  glass   without
apparently touching it.

No one in the room remarked on his  peculiar  arrival,  which  is
hardly  surprising  as  he wasn't there. He began to realize that
the whole experience  was  merely  a  recorded  projection  which
knocked six-track seventy-millimetre into a cocked hat.

The room was much as Slartibartfast had described  it.  In  seven
and  a  half  million  years  it  had  been well looked after and
cleaned regularly every century or so. The ultramahagony desk was
worn  at  the edges, the carpet a little faded now, but the large
computer terminal sat in sparkling glory on  the  desk's  leather
top, as bright as if it had been constructed yesterday.
Two severely dressed men sat respectfully before the terminal and
waited.

"The time is nearly upon us," said one, and Arthur was  surprised
to  see a word suddenly materialize in thin air just by the man's
neck. The word was Loonquawl, and it flashed a  couple  of  times
and  the  disappeared again. Before Arthur was able to assimilate
this the other man spoke and the word  Phouchg  appeared  by  his
neck.

"Seventy-five thousand generations ago, our  ancestors  set  this
program in motion," the second man said, "and in all that time we
will be the first to hear the computer speak."

"An awesome prospect, Phouchg," agreed the first man, and  Arthur
suddenly   realized   that  he  was  watching  a  recording  with
subtitles.

"We are the ones who will hear," said Phouchg, "the answer to the
great question of Life ...!"

"The Universe ...!" said Loonquawl.

"And Everything ...!"

"Shhh," said Loonquawl with  a  slight  gesture,  "I  think  Deep
Thought is preparing to speak!"

There was a moment's expectant pause whilst panels slowly came to
life  on  the  front  of  the  console. Lights flashed on and off
experimentally and settled down into a  businesslike  pattern.  A
soft low hum came from the communication channel.

"Good morning," said Deep Thought at last.

"Er ... Good morning, O Deep Thought," said Loonquawl  nervously,
"do you have ... er, that is ..."

"An answer for you?" interrupted Deep Thought majestically. "Yes.
I have."

The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not  been
in vain.

"There really is one?" breathed Phouchg.

"There really is one," confirmed Deep Thought.

"To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the  Universe  and
Everything?"

"Yes."

Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had
been  a  preparation  for  it, they had been selected at birth as
those who would witness  the  answer,  but  even  so  they  found
themselves gasping and squirming like excited children.

"And you're ready to give it to us?" urged Loonquawl.
"I am."

"Now?"

"Now," said Deep Thought.

They both licked their dry lips.

"Though I don't think," added Deep Thought, "that you're going to
like it."

"Doesn't matter!" said Phouchg. "We must know it! Now!"

"Now?" inquired Deep Thought.

"Yes! Now ..."

"Alright," said the computer and settled into silence again.  The
two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable.

"You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought.

"Tell us!"

"Alright," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the  Great  Question
..."

"Yes ...!"

"Of Life, the Universe and Everything ..." said Deep Thought.

"Yes ...!"

"Is ..." said Deep Thought, and paused.

"Yes ...!"

"Is ..."

"Yes ...!!!...?"

"Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.




It was a long time before anyone spoke.

Out of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea  of  tense
expectant faces down in the square outside.

"We're going to get lynched aren't we?" he whispered.

"It was a tough assignment," said Deep Thought mildly.

"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've  got  to  show
for seven and a half million years' work?"
"I checked it very thoroughly,"  said  the  computer,  "and  that
quite  definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite
honest with you, is that you've never  actually  known  what  the
question is."

"But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate  Question  of  Life,
the Universe and Everything!" howled Loonquawl.

"Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one  who  suffers  fools
gladly, "but what actually is it?"

A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the
computer and then at each other.

"Well, you know, it's just Everything ... Everything ..." offered
Phouchg weakly.

"Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So  once  you  do  know  what  the
question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."

"Oh terrific," muttered Phouchg flinging aside his  notebook  and
wiping away a tiny tear.

"Look, alright, alright," said Loonquawl, "can  you  just  please
tell us the Question?"

"The Ultimate Question?"

"Yes!"

"Of Life, the Universe, and Everything?"

"Yes!"

Deep Thought pondered this for a moment.

"Tricky," he said.

"But can you do it?" cried Loonquawl.

Deep Thought pondered this for another long moment.

Finally: "No," he said firmly.

Both men collapsed on to their chairs in despair.

"But I'll tell you who can," said Deep Thought.

They both looked up sharply.

"Who?" "Tell us!"

Suddenly Arthur began to feel his apparently  non-existent  scalp
begin  to  crawl as he found himself moving slowly but inexorably
forward towards the console, but it was only a dramatic  zoom  on
the part of whoever had made the recording he assumed.

"I speak of none other than the computer that is  to  come  after
me,"  intoned  Deep  Thought,  his voice regaining its accustomed
declamatory  tones.  "A   computer   whose   merest   operational
parameters  I  am not worthy to calculate - and yet I will design
it for you. A computer which can calculate the  Question  to  the
Ultimate   Answer,   a  computer  of  such  infinite  and  subtle
complexity that organic  life  itself  shall  form  part  of  its
operational  matrix.  And  you yourselves shall take on new forms
and go down into the computer to  navigate  its  ten-million-year
program!  Yes!  I shall design this computer for you. And I shall
name it also unto you. And it shall be called ... The Earth."

Phouchg gaped at Deep Thought.

"What a dull name," he said and great incisions appeared down the
length  of  his  body.  Loonquawl too suddenly sustained horrific
gashed from nowhere. The Computer console blotched  and  cracked,
the  walls  flickered  and  crumbled and the room crashed upwards
into its own ceiling ...

Slartibartfast was standing in front of Arthur  holding  the  two
wires.

"End of the tape," he explained.




"Zaphod! Wake up!"

"Mmmmmwwwwwerrrrr?"

"Hey come on, wake up."

"Just let me stick to what I'm good at,  yeah?"  muttered  Zaphod
and rolled away from the voice back to sleep.

"Do you want me to kick you?" said Ford.

"Would it give you a lot of pleasure?" said Zaphod, blearily.

"No."

"Nor me. So what's the point? Stop  bugging  me."  Zaphod  curled
himself up.

"He got a double dose of the gas," said Trillian looking down  at
him, "two windpipes."

"And stop talking," said Zaphod,  "it's  hard  enough  trying  to
sleep  anyway.  What's  the matter with the ground? It's all cold
and hard."

"It's gold," said Ford.

With an amazingly  balletic  movement  Zaphod  was  standing  and
scanning  the  horizon,  because that was how far the gold ground
stretched in every direction,  perfectly  smooth  and  solid.  It
gleamed  like  ...  it's  impossible  to say what it gleamed like
because nothing in the Universe gleams in quite the same way that
a planet of solid gold does.
"Who put all that there?" yelped Zaphod, goggle-eyed.

"Don't get excited," said Ford, "it's only a catalogue."

"A who?"

"A catalogue," said Trillian, "an illusion."

"How can you say that?" cried Zaphod, falling to  his  hands  and
knees  and staring at the ground. He poked it and prodded it with
his fingernail. It was very heavy and very  slightly  soft  -  he
could  mark  it  with his fingernail. It was very yellow and very
shiny, and when he breathed on it his breath evaporated off it in
that  very  peculiar  and  special way that breath evaporates off
solid gold.

"Trillian and I came round a while ago," said Ford.  "We  shouted
and  yelled  till  somebody came and then carried on shouting and
yelling till they got fed up and put us in their planet catalogue
to keep us busy till they were ready to deal with us. This is all
Sens-O-Tape."

Zaphod stared at him bitterly.

"Ah, shit," he said, "you wake me up from my own  perfectly  good
dream to show me somebody else's." He sat down in a huff.

"What's that series of valleys over there?" he said.

"Hallmark," said Ford. "We had a look."

"We didn't wake you earlier," said Trillian. "The last planet was
knee deep in fish."

"Fish?"

"Some people like the oddest things."

"And before that," said Ford, "we  had  platinum.  Bit  dull.  We
thought you'd like to see this one though."

Seas of light glared at them in one  solid  blaze  wherever  they
looked.

"Very pretty," said Zaphod petulantly.

In the sky a huge green catalogue number appeared.  It  flickered
and changed, and when they looked around again so had the land.

As with one voice they all went, "Yuch."

The sea was purple. The beach they were on was composed  of  tiny
yellow  and  green pebbles - presumably terribly precious stones.
The mountains in the distance seemed soft and undulating with red
peaks.  Nearby  stood  a  solid  silver beach table with a frilly
mauve parasol and silver tassles.

In the sky a huge sign appeared, replacing the catalogue  number.
It  said,  Whatever  your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We
are not proud.

And five hundred entirely naked women dropped out of the  sky  on
parachutes.

In a moment the scene vanished and  left  them  in  a  springtime
meadow full of cows.

"Ow!" said Zaphod. "My brains!"

"You want to talk about it?" said Ford.

"Yeah, OK," said Zaphod, and all three sat down and  ignored  the
scenes that came and went around them.

"I figure this," said Zaphod. "Whatever happened to  my  mind,  I
did  it.  And I did it in such a way that it wouldn't be detected
by the government screening tests. And I wasn't to know  anything
about it myself. Pretty crazy, right?"

The other two nodded in agreement.

"So I reckon, what's so secret that I can't let  anybody  know  I
know  it,  not  the Galactic Government, not even myself? And the
answer is I don't  know.  Obviously.  But  I  put  a  few  things
together  and  I can begin to guess. When did I decide to run for
President? Shortly after the death of President Yooden Vranx. You
remember Yooden, Ford?"

"Yeah," said Ford, "he was that guy we met when we were kids, the
Arcturan  captain. He was a gas. He gave us conkers when you bust
your way into his megafreighter. Said you were the  most  amazing
kid he'd ever met."

"What's all this?" said Trillian.

"Ancient history," said Ford, "when  we  were  kids  together  on
Betelgeuse. The Arcturan megafreighters used to carry most of the
bulky trade between the Galactic Centre and the outlying  regions
The  Betelgeuse  trading  scouts used to find the markets and the
Arcturans would supply them. There was  a  lot  of  trouble  with
space  pirates  before they were wiped out in the Dordellis wars,
and the megafreighters had to be equipped with the most fantastic
defence  shields known to Galactic science. They were real brutes
of ships, and huge. In orbit round a planet  they  would  eclipse
the sun.

"One day, young Zaphod here decides to raid  one.  On  a  tri-jet
scooter designed for stratosphere work, a mere kid. I mean forget
it, it was crazier than a mad monkey. I went along for  the  ride
because  I'd  got  some  very safe money on him not doing it, and
didn't want him coming back with fake evidence. So what  happens?
We  got  in  his  tri-jet  which  he had souped up into something
totally other, crossed three parsecs in a matter of  weeks,  bust
our  way  into a megafreighter I still don't know how, marched on
to the bridge waving toy pistols and demanded conkers.  A  wilder
thing  I have not known. Lost me a year's pocket money. For what?
Conkers."
"The captain was this really amazing  guy,  Yooden  Vranx,"  said
Zaphod.  "He  gave us food, booze - stuff from really weird parts
of the Galaxy - lots of conkers of course, and we  had  just  the
most  incredible  time.  Then  he  teleported  us  back. Into the
maximum security wing of Betelgeuse state prison. He was  a  cool
guy. Went on to become President of the Galaxy."

Zaphod paused.

The scene around them was  currently  plunged  into  gloom.  Dark
mists   swirled   round   them   and  elephantine  shapes  lurked
indistinctly in the shadows. The air was occasionally  rent  with
the  sounds  of  illusory beings murdering other illusory beings.
Presumably enough people must have liked this sort  of  thing  to
make it a paying proposition.

"Ford," said Zaphod quietly.

"Yeah?"

"Just before Yooden died he came to see me."

"What? You never told me."

"No."

"What did he say? What did he come to see you about?"

"He told me about the Heart of Gold.  It  was  his  idea  that  I
should steal it."

"His idea?"

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "and the only possible way  of  stealing  it
was to be at the launching ceremony."

Ford gaped at him in astonishment for a moment, and  then  roared
with laughter.

"Are you telling me," he said,  "that  you  set  yourself  up  to
become President of the Galaxy just to steal that ship?"

"That's it," said Zaphod with the sort of  grin  that  would  get
most people locked away in a room with soft walls.

"But why?" said Ford. "What's so important about having it?"

"Dunno," said Zaphod, "I think if I'd consciously known what  was
so  important about it and what I would need it for it would have
showed up on the brain screening tests and  I  would  never  have
passed.  I  think  Yooden  told me a lot of things that are still
locked away."

"So you think you went and mucked about inside your own brain  as
a result of Yooden talking to you?"

"He was a hell of a talker."
"Yeah, but Zaphod old mate, you want to look after  yourself  you
know."

Zaphod shrugged.

"I mean, don't you have any inkling of the reasons for all this?"
asked Ford.

Zaphod thought hard about this and doubts  seemed  to  cross  his
minds.

"No," he said at last, "I don't seem to be  letting  myself  into
any of my secrets. Still," he added on further reflection, "I can
understand that. I wouldn't trust myself  further  than  I  could
spit a rat."

A moment later, the last planet in the  catalogue  vanished  from
beneath them and the solid world resolved itself again.

They were sitting in a  plush  waiting  room  full  of  glass-top
tables and design awards.

A tall Magrathean man was standing in front of them.

"The mice will see you now," he said.




"So there you have it," said Slartibartfast, making a feeble  and
perfunctory  attempt  to clear away some of the appalling mess of
his study. He picked up a paper from the top of a pile, but  then
couldn't  think  of anywhere else to put it, so he but it back on
top of the original pile which promptly fell over. "Deep  Thought
designed the Earth, we built it and you lived on it."

"And the Vogons came and destroyed it  five  minutes  before  the
program was completed," added Arthur, not unbitterly.

"Yes," said the old man, pausing to  gaze  hopelessly  round  the
room.  "Ten  million  years  of  planning and work gone just like
that. Ten million years, Earthman ... can you  conceive  of  that
kind  of  time  span?  A  galactic civilization could grow from a
single worm five times over in that time. Gone." He paused.

"Well that's bureaucracy for you," he added.

"You know," said Arthur thoughtfully, "all this explains a lot of
things.  All  through my life I've had this strange unaccountable
feeling that something was going on in the world, something  big,
even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was."

"No," said the old man, "that's just perfectly  normal  paranoia.
Everyone in the Universe has that."

"Everyone?" said Arthur. "Well, if everyone has that  perhaps  it
means  something!  Perhaps somewhere outside the Universe we know
..."
"Maybe. Who cares?" said Slartibartfast  before  Arthur  got  too
excited. "Perhaps I'm old and tired," he continued, "but I always
think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are
so  absurdly  remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the
sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design
coastlines. I got an award for Norway."

He rummaged around in a pile of debris and  pulled  out  a  large
perspex  block  with his name on it and a model of Norway moulded
into it.

"Where's the sense in that?" he said. "None that I've  been  able
to  make  out.  I've  been  doing  fjords  in  all my life. For a
fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award."

He turned it over in his hands with a shrug and tossed  it  aside
carelessly,  but  not  so  carelessly  that  it  didn't  land  on
something soft.

"In this replacement Earth we're building they've given me Africa
to  do and of course I'm doing it with all fjords again because I
happen to like them, and I'm old fashioned enough to  think  that
they  give a lovely baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me
it's not equatorial enough. Equatorial!" He gave a hollow  laugh.
"What  does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things
of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day."

"And are you?"

"No. That's where it all falls down of course."

"Pity," said Arthur with sympathy. "It sounded like quite a  good
lifestyle otherwise."

Somewhere on the wall a small white light flashed.

"Come," said Slartibartfast, "you are  to  meet  the  mice.  Your
arrival  on the planet has caused considerable excitement. It has
already been hailed, so I gather, as the  third  most  improbable
event in the history of the Universe."

"What were the first two?"

"Oh, probably just coincidences," said Slartibartfast carelessly.
He opened the door and stood waiting for Arthur to follow.

Arthur glanced around him once more, and then down at himself, at
the sweaty dishevelled clothes he had been lying in the mud in on
Thursday morning.

"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," he
muttered to himself.

"I beg your pardon?" said the old man mildly.

"Oh nothing," said Arthur, "only joking."




It is of course well known that careless talk  costs  lives,  but
the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.

For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said "I seem  to  be
having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," a freak wormhole
opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum  and  carried
his  words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of
space to a distant Galaxy where strange and warlike  beings  were
poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.

The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.

A dreadful silence  fell  across  the  conference  table  as  the
commander  of  the  Vl'hurgs,  resplendent  in his black jewelled
battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G'Gugvuntt  leader  squatting
opposite  him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with
a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers  poised  to
unleash  electric death at his single word of command, challenged
the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.

The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and  at  that
very  moment  the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty
with my lifestyle drifted across the conference table.

Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the  most  dreadful
insult  imaginable,  and  there  was  nothing  for it but to wage
terrible war for centuries.

Eventually of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated  over
a  few  thousand  years, it was realized that the whole thing had
been a ghastly mistake, and so the  two  opposing  battle  fleets
settled  their  few  remaining  differences  in order to launch a
joint attack on our own Galaxy - now positively identified as the
source of the offending remark.

For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across  the  empty
wastes  of  space  and  finally  dived  screaming on to the first
planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth -  where
due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet
was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in  the
history  of  the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on
all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.

"It's just life," they say.

A short aircar trip brought Arthur and the old  Magrathean  to  a
doorway.  They  left  the  car  and  went through the door into a
waiting room full of  glass-topped  tables  and  perspex  awards.
Almost  immediately,  a light flashed above the door at the other
side of the room and they entered.

"Arthur! You're safe!" a voice cried.

"Am I?" said Arthur, rather startled. "Oh good."

The lighting was rather subdued and it took him a moment or so to
see  Ford,  Trillian  and  Zaphod  sitting  round  a  large table
beautifully decked out with exotic dishes, strange sweetmeats and
bizarre fruits. They were stuffing their faces.

"What happened to you?" demanded Arthur.

"Well," said Zaphod, attacking a boneful of grilled muscle,  "our
guests  here have been gassing us and zapping our minds and being
generally weird and have now given us a rather nice meal to  make
it  up  to us. Here," he said hoiking out a lump of evil smelling
meat from a bowl, "have some Vegan Rhino's cutlet. It's delicious
if you happen to like that sort of thing."

"Hosts?" said Arthur. "What hosts? I don't see any ..."

A small voice said, "Welcome to lunch, Earth creature."

Arthur glanced around and suddenly yelped.

"Ugh!" he said. "There are mice on the table!"

There was an awkward silence  as  everyone  looked  pointedly  at
Arthur.

He was busy staring at two white mice sitting in what looked like
whisky  glasses  on  the  table. He heard the silence and glanced
around at everyone.

"Oh!" he said, with sudden realization. "Oh, I'm sorry, I  wasn't
quite prepared for ..."

"Let me introduce you," said  Trillian.  "Arthur  this  is  Benji
mouse."

"Hi," said one of the mice. His whiskers stroked what  must  have
been  a  touch  sensitive panel on the inside of the whisky-glass
like affair, and it moved forward slightly.

"And this is Frankie mouse."

The other mouse said, "Pleased to meet you," and did likewise.

Arthur gaped.

"But aren't they ..."

"Yes," said Trillian, "they are the mice I brought with  me  from
the Earth."

She looked him in the eye and  Arthur  thought  he  detected  the
tiniest resigned shrug.

"Could you pass me that bowl of grated Arcturan Megadonkey?"  she
said.

Slartibartfast coughed politely.

"Er, excuse me," he said.
"Yes, thank you Slartibartfast," said Benji mouse  sharply,  "you
may go."

"What? Oh ... er, very well," said the old  man,  slightly  taken
aback, "I'll just go and get on with some of my fjords then."

"Ah, well in fact that won't be necessary," said  Frankie  mouse.
"It  looks  very much as if we won't be needing the new Earth any
longer." He swivelled his pink little eyes. "Not now that we have
found  a native of the planet who was there seconds before it was
destroyed."

"What?" cried Slartibartfast, aghast. "You can't mean that!  I've
got a thousand glaciers poised and ready to roll over Africa!"

"Well perhaps you can take a  quick  skiing  holiday  before  you
dismantle them," said Frankie, acidly.

"Skiing holiday!" cried the old man. "Those glaciers are works of
art!  Elegantly  sculptured  contours,  soaring pinnacles of ice,
deep majestic ravines! It would be sacrilege to go skiing on high
art!"

"Thank you Slartibartfast," said  Benji  firmly.  "That  will  be
all."

"Yes sir," said the old man coldly, "thank you very  much.  Well,
goodbye  Earthman,"  he said to Arthur, "hope the lifestyle comes
together."

With a brief nod to the rest of the company he turned and  walked
sadly out of the room.

Arthur stared after him not knowing what to say.

"Now," said Benji mouse, "to business."

Ford and Zaphod clinked their glasses together.

"To business!" they said.

"I beg your pardon?" said Benji.

Ford looked round.

"Sorry, I thought you were proposing a toast," he said.

The  two  mice  scuttled  impatiently  around  in   their   glass
transports.  Finally  they  composed  themselves, and Benji moved
forward to address Arthur.

"Now, Earth creature," he said, "the situation we have in  effect
is  this.  We  have,  as you know, been more or less running your
planet for the last ten million  years  in  order  to  find  this
wretched thing called the Ultimate Question."

"Why?" said Arthur, sharply.

"No - we already thought of that one," said Frankie interrupting,
"but  it doesn't fit the answer. Why? - Forty-Two ... you see, it
doesn't work."

"No," said Arthur, "I mean why have you been doing it?"

"Oh, I see," said Frankie. "Well, eventually just habit I  think,
to be brutally honest. And this is more or less the point - we're
sick to the teeth with the whole thing, and the prospect of doing
it all over again on account of those whinnet-ridden Vogons quite
frankly gives me the screaming heeby jeebies,  you  know  what  I
mean? It was by the merest lucky chance that Benji and I finished
our particular job and left the planet early for a quick holiday,
and  have since manipulated our way back to Magrathea by the good
offices of your friends."

"Magrathea is a gateway back to our own dimension," put in Benji.

"Since when," continued his murine colleague,  "we  have  had  an
offer  of  a quite enormously fat contract to do the 5D chat show
and lecture circuit back in  our  own  dimensional  neck  of  the
woods, and we're very much inclined to take it."

"I would, wouldn't you Ford?" said Zaphod promptingly.

"Oh yes," said Ford, "jump at it, like a shot."

Arthur glanced at them, wondering what all this  was  leading  up
to.

"But we've got to have a product you see," said Frankie, "I  mean
ideally  we  still  need  the  Ultimate  Question in some form or
other."

Zaphod leaned forward to Arthur.

"You see," he said, "if they're just sitting there in the  studio
looking  very  relaxed  and,  you know, just mentioning that they
happen to know the Answer to Life, the Universe  and  Everything,
and  then  eventually  have to admit that in fact it's Forty-two,
then the show's probably quite short. No follow-up, you see."

"We have to have something that sounds good," said Benji.

"Something that sounds  good?"  exclaimed  Arthur.  "An  Ultimate
Question that sounds good? From a couple of mice?"

The mice bristled.

"Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity  of  pure  research,
yes  the  pursuit  of  truth  in all its forms, but there comes a
point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that if  there's  any
real  truth,  it's  that the entire multi-dimensional infinity of
the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.
And  if  it  comes  to  a choice between spending yet another ten
million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking
the  money  and  running,  then  I  for  one  could  do  with the
exercise," said Frankie.

"But ..." started Arthur, hopelessly.
"Hey, will you get this, Earthman," interrupted Zaphod. "You  are
a last generation product of that computer matrix, right, and you
were there right up to the moment your  planet  got  the  finger,
yeah?"

"Er ..."

"So  your  brain  was  an  organic  part   of   the   penultimate
configuration  of  the  computer  programme,"  said  Ford, rather
lucidly he thought.

"Right?" said Zaphod.

"Well," said Arthur doubtfully. He wasn't aware  of  ever  having
felt  an organic part of anything. He had always seen this as one
of his problems.

"In other words," said Benji, steering his curious little vehicle
right  over  to Arthur, "there's a good chance that the structure
of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain - so we
want to buy it off you."

"What, the question?" said Arthur.

"Yes," said Ford and Trillian.

"For lots of money," said Zaphod.

"No, no," said Frankie, "it's the brain we want to buy."

"What!"

"I  thought  you   said   you   could   just   read   his   brain
electronical\-ly," pro\-tes\-ted Ford.

"Oh yes," said Frankie, "but we'd have to get it out first.  It's
got to be prepared."

"Treated," said Benji.

"Diced."

"Thank you," shouted Arthur, tipping up  his  chair  and  backing
away from the table in horror.

"It could always be replaced," said  Benji  reasonably,  "if  you
think it's important."

"Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie,  "a  simple  one  would
suffice."

"A simple one!" wailed Arthur.

"Yeah," said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have  to
program  it  to  say What? and I don't understand and Where's the
tea? - who'd know the difference?"

"What?" cried Arthur, backing away still further.
"See what I mean?" said Zaphod and howled with  pain  because  of
something that Trillian did at that moment.

"I'd notice the difference," said Arthur.

"No you wouldn't," said Frankie mouse, "you'd be  programmed  not
to."

Ford made for the door.

"Look, I'm sorry, mice old lads," he said. "I don't  think  we've
got a deal."

"I rather think we have to have a deal," said the mice in chorus,
all  the  charm  vanishing  fro  their piping little voices in an
instant. With a tiny whining shriek their  two  glass  transports
lifted  themselves  off  the  table,  and  swung  through the air
towards Arthur, who  stumbled  further  backwards  into  a  blind
corner, utterly unable to cope or think of anything.

Trillian grabbed him desperately by the arm and tried to drag him
towards  the door, which Ford and Zaphod were struggling to open,
but Arthur was dead weight - he seemed hypnotized by the airborne
rodents swooping towards him.

She screamed at him, but he just gaped.

With one more yank, Ford and Zaphod got the  door  open.  On  the
other  side  of  it  was a small pack of rather ugly men who they
could only assume were the heavy mob of Magrathea. Not only  were
they ugly themselves, but the medical equipment they carried with
them was also far from pretty. They charged.

So - Arthur was about to have his head  cut  open,  Trillian  was
unable to help him, and Ford and Zaphod were about to be set upon
by several thugs a great deal heavier and more sharply armed than
they were.

All in all it was extremely fortunate that at that  moment  every
alarm on the planet burst into an earsplitting din.




"Emergency! Emergency!" blared the klaxons throughout  Ma\-gra\-thea.
"Hos\-tile  ship  has  landed on planet. Armed intruders in section
8A. Defence stations, defence stations!"

The two mice sniffed irritably round the fragments of their glass
transports where they lay shattered on the floor.

"Damnation," muttered Frankie mouse,  "all  that  fuss  over  two
pounds of Earthling brain." He scuttled round and about, his pink
eyes flashing, his fine white coat bristling with static.

"The only thing  we  can  do  now,"  said  Benji,  crouching  and
stroking his whiskers in thought, "is to try and fake a question,
invent one that will sound plausible."
"Difficult," said Frankie. He thought. "How about  What's  yellow
and dangerous?"

Benji considered this for a moment.

"No, no good," he said. "Doesn't fit the answer."

They sank into silence for a few seconds.

"Alright," said Benji. "What do you get if you  multiply  six  by
seven?"

"No, no, too  literal,  too  factual,"  said  Frankie,  "wouldn't
sustain the punters' interest."

Again they thought.

Then Frankie said: "Here's a thought. How many roads must  a  man
walk down?"

"Ah," said Benji. "Aha, now that does sound promising!" He rolled
the  phrase  around  a little. "Yes," he said, "that's excellent!
Sounds very  significant  without  actually  tying  you  down  to
meaning  anything  at  all.  How many roads must a man walk down?
Forty-two. Excellent, excellent, that'll fox 'em.  Frankie  baby,
we are made!"

They performed a scampering dance in their excitement.

Near them on the floor lay several rather ugly men who  had  been
hit about the head with some heavy design awards.

Half a mile away, four figures pounded up a corridor looking  for
a  way out. They emerged into a wide open-plan computer bay. They
glanced about wildly.

"Which way do you reckon Zaphod?" said Ford.

"At a wild guess, I'd say down here," said  Zaphod,  running  off
down  to  the  right between a computer bank and the wall. As the
others started after him he was brought up short by a  Kill-O-Zap
energy  bolt  that cracked through the air inches in front of him
and fried a small section of adjacent wall.

A voice on a loud hailer said,  "OK  Beeblebrox,  hold  it  right
there. We've got you covered."

"Cops!" hissed Zaphod, and span around in a crouch. "You want  to
try a guess at all, Ford?"

"OK, this way," said Ford, and  the  four  of  them  ran  down  a
gangway between two computer banks.

At the end of the gangway appeared a heavily armoured and  space-
suited figure waving a vicious Kill-O-Zap gun.

"We don't want to shoot you, Beeblebrox!" shouted the figure.
"Suits me fine!" shouted Zaphod back and dived down  a  wide  gap
between two data process units.

The others swerved in behind him.

"There are two of them," said Trillian. "We're cornered."

They squeezed  themselves  down  in  an  angle  between  a  large
computer data bank and the wall.

They held their breath and waited.

Suddenly the air exploded with energy  bolts  as  both  the  cops
opened fire on them simultaneously.

"Hey, they're shooting at us," said Arthur, crouching in a  tight
ball, "I thought they said they didn't want to do that."

"Yeah, I thought they said that," agreed Ford.

Zaphod stuck a head up for a dangerous moment.

"Hey," he said, "I thought you said you didn't want to shoot us!"
and ducked again.

They waited.

After a moment a voice replied, "It isn't easy being a cop!"

"What did he say?" whispered Ford in astonishment.

"He said it isn't easy being a cop."

"Well surely that's his problem isn't it?"

"I'd have thought so."

Ford shouted out, "Hey listen! I think we've got enough  problems
on  our  own  having  you  shooting  at us, so if you could avoid
laying your problems on us as well, I  think  we'd  all  find  it
easier to cope!"

Another pause, and then the loud hailer again.

"Now see here, guy," said the voice on the loud  hailer,  "you're
not dealing with any dumb two-bit trigger-pumping morons with low
hairlines, little piggy eyes and no conversation, we're a  couple
of  intelligent caring guys that you'd probably quite like if you
met us socially! I don't go around gratuitously  shooting  people
and  then  bragging  about  it  afterwards in seedy space-rangers
bars, like some cops I could mention! I go around shooting people
gratuitously  and then I agonize about it afterwards for hours to
my girlfriend!"

"And I write novels!" chimed in the other cop. "Though I  haven't
had  any  of  them  published yet, so I better warn you, I'm in a
meeeean mood!"

Ford's eyes popped halfway out of their sockets. "Who  are  these
guys?" he said.

"Dunno," said Zaphod, "I think I  preferred  it  when  they  were
shooting."

"So are you going to come  quietly,"  shouted  one  of  the  cops
again, "or are you going to let us blast you out?"

"Which would you prefer?" shouted Ford.

A millisecond later the air about them started to fry  again,  as
bolt  after  bolt  of  Kill-O-Zap hurled itself into the computer
bank in front of them.

The  fusillade  continued  for  several  seconds  at   unbearable
intensity.

When it stopped, there were a few seconds of  near  quietness  ad
the echoes died away.

"You still there?" called one of the cops.

"Yes," they called back.

"We didn't enjoy doing that at all," shouted the other cop.

"We could tell," shouted Ford.

"Now, listen to this, Beeblebrox, and you better listen good!"

"Why?" shouted Back Zaphod.

"Because," shouted the cop, "it's going to be  very  intelligent,
and  quite  interesting  and  humane!  Now  either  you  all give
yourselves up now and let us beat you up a bit, though  not  very
much  of  course  because  we  are  firmly  opposed  to  needless
violence, or we blow up this entire planet and  possibly  one  or
two others we noticed on our way out here!"

"But that's crazy!" cried Trillian. "You wouldn't do that!"

"Oh yes we would," shouted the cop, "wouldn't we?" he  asked  the
other one.

"Oh yes, we'd have to, no question," the other one called back.

"But why?" demanded Trillian.

"Because there are some things you have to do even if you are  an
enlightened  liberal  cop  who  knows  all  about sensitivity and
everything!"

"I just don't believe these guys,"  muttered  Ford,  shaking  his
head.

One cop shouted to the other, "Shall we shoot them  again  for  a
bit?"

"Yeah, why not?"
They let fly another electric barrage.

The heat and noise was quite fantastic. Slowly, the computer bank
was  beginning  to  disintegrate. The front had almost all melted
away, and thick rivulets of molten metal were winding  their  way
back towards where they were squatting. They huddled further back
and waited for the end.




But the end never came, at least not then.

Quite suddenly  the  barrage  stopped,  and  the  sudden  silence
afterwards  was  punctuated  by a couple of strangled gurgles and
thuds.

The four stared at each other.

"What happened?" said Arthur.

"They stopped," said Zaphod with a shrug.

"Why?"

"Dunno, do you want to go and ask them?"

"No."

They waited.

"Hello?" called out Ford.

No answer.

"That's odd."

"Perhaps it's a trap."

"They haven't the wit."

"What were those thuds?"

"Dunno."

They waited for a few more seconds.

"Right," said Ford, "I'm going to have a look."

He glanced round at the others.

"Is no one going to  say,  No  you  can't  possibly,  let  me  go
instead?"

They all shook their heads.

"Oh well," he said, and stood up.
For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, after a second or so, nothing  continued  to  happen.  Ford
peered  through  the  thick  smoke  that was billowing out of the
burning computer.

Cautiously he stepped out into the open.

Still nothing happened.

Twenty yards away he  could  dimly  see  through  the  smoke  the
space-suited  figure  of  one  of  the  cops.  He  was lying in a
crumpled heap on the ground. Twenty yards in the other  direction
lay the second man. No one else was anywhere to be seen.

This struck Ford as being extremely odd.

Slowly, nervously, he walked towards the first one. The body  lay
reassuringly  still  as  he  approached  it, and continued to lie
reassuringly still as he reached it and put his foot down on  the
Kill-O-Zap gun that still dangled from its limp fingers.

He reached down and picked it up, meeting no resistance.

The cop was quite clearly dead.

A quick examination revealed him to be from Blagulon Kappa  -  he
was  a  methane-breathing  life form, dependent on his space suit
for survival in the thin oxygen atmosphere of Magrathea.

The tiny life-support system computer on  his  backpack  appeared
unexpectedly to have blown up.

Ford poked around  in  it  in  considerable  astonishment.  These
miniature suit computers usually had the full back-up of the main
computer back on the ship, with which they were  directly  linked
through  the  sub-etha.  Such  a  system  was  fail-safe  in  all
circumstances other than total feedback  malfunction,  which  was
unheard of.

He hurried over to the other prone figure,  and  discovered  that
exactly the same impossible thing had happened to him, presumably
simultaneously.

He called  the  others  over  to  look.  They  came,  shared  his
astonishment, but not his curiosity.

"Let's get shot out of this hole," said Zaphod. "If whatever  I'm
supposed  to be looking for is here, I don't want it." He grabbed
the  second  Kill-O-Zap  gun,  blasted   a   perfectly   harmless
accounting computer and rushed out into the corridor, followed by
the others. He very nearly blasted hell out  of  an  aircar  that
stood waiting for them a few yards away.

The aircar was empty, but Arthur recognized it  as  belonging  to
Slartibartfast.

It had a note from him pinned to part of  its  sparse  instrument
panel.  The note had an arrow drawn on it, pointing at one of the
controls.

It said, This is probably the best button to press.




The aircar rocketed them at speeds in excess of R17  through  the
steel  tunnels  that  lead  out onto the appalling surface of the
planet which was now in the grip of  yet  another  drear  morning
twilight. Ghastly grey lights congealed on the land.

R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of  travel
that  is  consistent  with health, mental wellbeing and not being
more than say five minutes  late.  It  is  therefore  clearly  an
almost  infinitely  variable  figure  according to circumstances,
since the first two factors vary not only with speed taken as  an
absolute,  but  also  with  awareness of the third factor. Unless
handled with tranquility this equation can result in considerable
stress, ulcers and even death.

R17 is not a fixed velocity, but it is clearly far too fast.

The aircar flung  itself  through  the  air  at  R17  and  above,
deposited  them  next to the Heart of Gold which stood starkly on
the frozen ground like a bleached bone,  and  then  precipitately
hurled  itself  back  in  the  direction  whence  they  had come,
presumably on important business of its own.

Shivering, the four of them stood and looked at the ship.

Beside it stood another one.

It was  the  Blagulon  Kappa  policecraft,  a  bulbous  sharklike
affair, slate green in colour and smothered with black stencilled
letters of  varying  degrees  of  size  and  unfriendliness.  The
letters  informed  anyone  who cared to read them as to where the
ship was from, what section of the police it was assigned to, and
where the power feeds should be connected.

It seemed somehow unnaturally dark and silent, even  for  a  ship
whose  two-man  crew  was  at that moment lying asphyxicated in a
smoke-filled chamber several miles beneath the ground. It is  one
of  those curious things that is impossible to explain or define,
but one can sense when a ship is completely dead.

Ford could sense it and found it most mysterious - a ship and two
policemen   seemed  to  have  gone  spontaneously  dead.  In  his
experience the Universe simply didn't work like that.

The other three could sense it too,  but  they  could  sense  the
bitter  cold  even  more  and hurried back into the Heart of Gold
suffering from an acute attack of no curiosity.

Ford stayed, and went to examine the Blagulon ship. As he walked,
he  nearly  tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down in
the cold dust.

"Marvin!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing?"
"Don't feel you have to take any notice of me,  please,"  came  a
muffled drone.

"But how are you, metalman?" said Ford.

"Very depressed."

"What's up?"

"I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."

"Why," said Ford squatting down beside him  and  shivering,  "are
you lying face down in the dust?"

"It's a very effective  way  of  being  wretched,"  said  Marvin.
"Don't pretend you want to talk to me, I know you hate me."

"No I don't."

"Yes you do, everybody does.  It's  part  of  the  shape  of  the
Universe.  I only have to talk to somebody and they begin to hate
me. Even robots hate me. If you just ignore me I expect  I  shall
probably go away."

He jacked himself up to his feet and stood resolutely facing  the
opposite direction.

"That  ship  hated  me,"  he  said  dejectedly,  indicating   the
policecraft.

"That ship?" said Ford in sudden excitement.  "What  happened  to
it? Do you know?"

"It hated me because I talked to it."

"You talked to it?" exclaimed Ford. "What do you mean you  talked
to it?"

"Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I  went  and  plugged
myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer
at great length and explained my view of  the  Universe  to  it,"
said Marvin.

"And what happened?" pressed Ford.

"It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back  to  the
Heart of Gold.




That night, as the Heart of Gold was busy  putting  a  few  light
years  between  itself  and  the Horsehead Nebula, Zaphod lounged
under the small palm tree on the bridge trying to bang his  brain
into  shape  with  massive Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters; Ford and
Trillian sat in a corner discussing life and matters arising from
it; and Arthur took to his bed to flip through Ford's copy of The
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Since he was going to live  in
the  place,  he reasoned, he'd better start finding out something
about it.

He came across this entry.

It said: 'The History of every major Galactic Civilization  tends
to  pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of
Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How,
Why and Where phases.

"For instance, the first phase is characterized by  the  question
How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the
third by the question Where shall we have lunch?"

He got no further before the ship's intercom buzzed into life.

"Hey Earthman? You hungry kid?" said Zaphod's voice.

"Er, well yes, a little peckish I suppose," said Arthur.

"OK baby, hold tight," said Zaphod. "We'll take in a  quick  bite
at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."


 What's President? 

President:  full  title  President  of  the  Imperial  Galactic
Government.

The term Imperial is kept though it is now  an  anachronism.  The
hereditary  Emperor  is  nearly  dead  and  has  been so for many
centuries. In the last moments of his dying coma he was locked in
a   statis  field  which  keeps  him  in  a  state  of  perpetual
unchangingness. All his heirs are now long dead, and  this  means
that without any drastic political upheaval, power has simply and
effectively moved a rung or two down the ladder, and is now  seen
to  be  vested  in a body which used to act simply as advisers to
the Emperor -  an  elected  Governmental  assembly  headed  by  a
President  elected  by that assembly. In fact it vests in no such
place.

The President in particular is very much a figurehead - he wields
no  real  power  whatsoever.  He  is  apparently  chosen  by  the
government, but the qualities he is required to display  are  not
those  of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this
reason the President is always a controversial choice, always  an
infuriating  but  fascinating  character. His job is not to wield
power but to draw attention  away  from  it.  On  those  criteria
Zaphod  Beeblebrox  is  one of the most successful Presidents the
Galaxy has ever had -  he  has  already  spent  two  of  his  ten
Presidential  years  in  prison  for  fraud. Very very few people
realize that the President and the Government have  virtually  no
power  at  all, and of these very few people only six know whence
ultimate political power is wielded. Most of the others  secretly
believe that the ultimate decision-making process is handled by a
computer. They couldn't be more wrong.

 About Ford Perfect 

Ford Prefect's original name is only pronuncible in an  obscure
Betelgeusian  dialect,  now  virtually  extinct  since  the Great
Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758 which wiped out
all  the  old  Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven. Ford's
father was the only man on the entire planet to survive the Great
Collapsing  Hrung  disaster, by an extraordinary coincidence that
he was never able satisfactorily to explain. The whole episode is
shrouded  in  deep mystery: in fact no one ever knew what a Hrung
was nor why  it  had  chosen  to  collapse  on  Betelgeuse  Seven
particularly.  Ford's  father,  magnanimously  waving  aside  the
clouds of suspicion that had inevitably settled around him,  came
to  live  on  Betelgeuse  Five  where he both fathered and uncled
Ford; in memory of his now dead race he  christened  him  in  the
ancient Praxibetel tongue.

Because Ford never learned to say his original name,  his  father
eventually  died  of  shame, which is still a terminal disease in
some parts of the Galaxy. The other kids at school nicknamed  him
Ix,  which  in the language of Betelgeuse Five translates as "boy
who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a  Hrung  is,  nor
why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven".

There is a theory which states  that  if  ever  anyone  discovers
exactly  what  the  Universe  is  for and why it is here, it will
instantly disappear  and  be  replaced  by  something  even  more
bizarre and inexplicable.

{Another Introduction}

There is another  theory  which  states  that  this  has  already
happened.




The story so far:

In the beginning the Universe was created.

This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded
as a bad move.

Many races believe that it was  created  by  some  sort  of  God,
though  the  Jatravartid  people of Viltvodle VI believe that the
entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose  of  a  being
called the Great Green Arkleseizure.

The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear  of  the  time  they
call  The  Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue
creatures with more than  fifty  arms  each,  who  are  therefore
unique  in  being  the  only race in history to have invented the
aerosol deodorant before the wheel.

However, the  Great  Green  Arkleseizure  Theory  is  not  widely
accepted  outside  Viltvodle  VI  and  so, the Universe being the
puzzling place it is, other  explanations  are  constantly  being
sought.

For instance, a race of hyperintelligent  pan-dimensional  beings
once  built  themselves  a  gigantic  supercomputer  called  Deep
Thought to calculate once and for all the Answer to the  Ultimate
Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

For seven and a half million years,  Deep  Thought  computed  and
calculated,  and in the end announced that the answer was in fact
Forty-two - and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built
to find out what the actual question was.

And this computer, which was called the Earth, was so large  that
it  was  frequently  mistaken  for  a  planet - especially by the
strange ape-like beings who roamed its surface,  totally  unaware
that they were simply part of a gigantic computer program.
And this is very odd, because  without  that  fairly  simple  and
obvious  piece  of  knowledge,  nothing that ever happened on the
Earth could possibly make the slightest bit of sense.

Sadly however, just before the critical moment  of  readout,  the
Earth  was unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way - so
they claimed - for a new hyperspace bypass, and so  all  hope  of
discovering a meaning for life was lost for ever.

Or so it would seem.

Two of there strange, ape-like creatures survived.

Arthur Dent escaped at the very last moment because an old friend
of  his,  Ford  Prefect,  suddenly  turned out to be from a small
planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he
had  hitherto  claimed;  and,  more  to the point, he knew how to
hitch rides on flying saucers.

Tricia McMillian - or Trillian  -  had  skipped  the  planet  six
months  earlier with Zaphod Beeblebrox, the then President of the
Galaxy.

Two survivors.

They are  all  that  remains  of  the  greatest  experiment  ever
conducted - to find the Ultimate Question and the Ultimate Answer
of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

And, less than half a million miles from where their starship  is
drifting lazily through the inky blackness of space, a Vogon ship
is moving slowly towards them.




Like all Vogon ships it looked as if it  had  been  not  so  much
designed  as  congealed. The unpleasant yellow lumps and edifices
which protuded from it at unsightly angles would have  disfigured
the  looks  of  most  ships,  but  in  this  case  that was sadly
impossible. Uglier things have been spotted in the skies, but not
by reliable witnesses.

In fact to see anything much uglier than a Vogon ship  you  would
have  to go inside and look at a Vogon. If you are wise, however,
this is precisely what you will avoid doing because  the  average
Vogon  will not think twice before doing something so pointlessly
hideous to you that you will wish you had never been  born  -  or
(if  you  are  a clearer minded thinker) that the Vogon had never
been born.

In fact, the average Vogon probably  wouldn't  even  think  once.
They are simple-minded, thick-willed, slug-brained creatures, and
thinking is not really something they are cut out for. Anatomical
analysis  of  the  Vogon  reveals that its brain was originally a
badly deformed, misplaced and dyspeptic liver. The fairest  thing
you  can  say about them, then, is that they know what they like,
and  what  they  like  generally  involves  hurting  people  and,
wherever possible, getting very angry.

One  thing  they  don't  like  is  leaving  a  job  unfinished  -
particularly this Vogon, and particularly - for various reasons -
this job.

This Vogon was Captain Prostetnic Vogon  Jeltz  of  the  Galactic
Hyperspace Planning Council, and he was it who had had the job of
demolishing the so-called "planet" Earth.

He heaved his monumentally vile body round  in  his  ill-fitting,
slimy seat and stared at the monitor screen on which the starship
Heart of Gold was being systematically scanned.

It mattered little to him  that  the  Heart  of  Gold,  with  its
Infinite   Improbability   Drive,  was  the  most  beautiful  and
revolutionary ship ever built.  Aesthetics  and  technology  were
closed  books  to  him  and, had he had his way, burnt and buried
books as well.

It mattered even less to him that Zaphod Beeblebrox  was  aboard.
Zaphod  Beeblebrox  was  now  the ex-President of the Galaxy, and
though every police force in the Galaxy  was  currently  pursuing
both  him  and  this  ship  he  had  stolen,  the  Vogon  was not
interested.

He had other fish to fry.

It has been said that Vogons are not above a little  bribery  and
corruption  in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds,
and this was certainly true in his case. When he heard the  words
"integrity"  or "moral rectitude", he reached for his dictionary,
and when he heard the chink of ready money in large quantities he
reached for the rule book and threw it away.

In seeking so implacably the destruction of  the  Earth  and  all
that therein lay he was moving somewhat above and beyond the call
of his professional duty. There was even some doubt as to whether
the  said  bypass  was actually going to be built, but the matter
had been glossed over.

He grunted a repellent grunt of satisfaction.

"Computer," he croaked, "get me my brain care specialist  on  the
line."

Within a few seconds the face of Gag  Halfrunt  appeared  on  the
screen,  smiling  the  smile  of  a man who knew he was ten light
years away from the Vogon  face  he  was  looking  at.  Mixed  up
somewhere in the smile was a glint of irony too. Though the Vogon
persistently  referred  to  him  as  "my   private   brain   care
specialist"  there was not a lot of brain to take care of, and it
was in fact Halfrunt who was employing the Vogon. He  was  paying
him  an  awful lot of money to do some very dirty work. As one of
the Galaxy's most prominent and successful psychiatrists, he  and
a  consortium  of  his colleagues were quite prepared to spend an
awful lot of money when it  seemed  that  the  entire  future  of
psychiatry might be at stake.
"Well," he said, "hello my Captain of Vogons Prostetnic, and  how
are we feeling today?"

The Vogon captain told him that in the  last  few  hours  he  had
wiped out nearly half his crew in a disciplinary exercise.

Halfrunt's smile did not flicker for an instant.

"Well," he said, "I think this is perfectly normal behaviour  for
a  Vogon,  you  know?  The natural and healthy channelling of the
aggressive instincts into acts of senseless violence."

"That," rumbled the Vogon, "is what you always say."

"Well again," said Halfrunt, "I  think  that  this  is  perfectly
normal  behaviour  for  a psychiatrist. Good. We are clearly both
very well adjusted in our mental attitudes today.  Now  tell  me,
what news of the mission?"

"We have located the ship."

"Wonderful," said Halfrunt, "wonderful! and the occupants?"

"The Earthman is there."

"Excellent! And ...?"

"A female from the same planet. They are the last."

"Good, good," beamed Halfrunt, "Who else?"

"The man Prefect."

"Yes?"

"And Zaphod Beeblebrox."

For an instant Halfrunt's smile flickered.

"Ah yes," he said,  "I  had  been  expecting  this.  It  is  most
regrettable."

"A personal friend?"  inquired  the  Vogon,  who  had  heard  the
expression somewhere once and decided to try it out.

"Ah, no," said Halfrunt, "in my profession you know,  we  do  not
make personal friends."

"Ah," grunted the Vogon, "professional detachment."

"No," said Halfrunt cheerfully, "we just don't have the knack."

He paused. His mouth continued to smile,  but  his  eyes  frowned
slightly.

"But Beeblebrox, you know," he  said,  "he  is  one  of  my  most
profitable clients. He had personality problems beyond the dreams
of analysts."
He toyed with this thought a little before reluctantly dismissing
it.

"Still," he said, "you are ready for your task?"

"Yes."

"Good. Destroy the ship immediately."

"What about Beeblebrox?"

"Well," said Halfrunt brightly,  "Zaphod's  just  this  guy,  you
know?"

He vanished from the screen.

The Vogon Captain pressed a communicator button  which  connected
him with the remains of his crew.

"Attack," he said.

At that  precise  moment  Zaphod  Beeblebrox  was  in  his  cabin
swearing  very loudly. Two hours ago, he had said that they would
go for a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe,
whereupon  he  had had a blazing row with the ship's computer and
stormed off to his cabin shouting that  he  would  work  out  the
Improbability factors with a pencil.

The Heart of Gold's Improbability Drive made it the most powerful
and  unpredictable  ship  in  existence.  There  was  nothing  it
couldn't do, provided you knew exactly how improbable it was that
the thing you wanted it to do would ever happen.

He had stolen it when, as President, he was meant to be launching
it.  He  didn't know exactly why he had stolen it, except that he
liked it.

He didn't know why he had become President of the Galaxy,  except
that it seemed a fun thing to be.

He did know that there were better reasons than these,  but  that
they were buried in a dark, locked off section of his two brains.
He wished the dark, locked off section of his two brains would go
away  because  they  occasionally  surfaced  momentarily  and put
strange thoughts into the light, fun sections  of  his  mind  and
tried to deflect him from what he saw as being the basic business
of his life, which was to have a wonderfully good time.

At the moment he was not having a wonderfully good time.  He  had
run out of patience and pencils and was feeling very hungry.

"Starpox!" he shouted.

At that same precise moment, Ford Prefect was in  mid  air.  This
was  not  because  of  anything  wrong with the ship's artificial
gravity field, but because he was  leaping  down  the  stair-well
which  led to the ship's personal cabins. It was a very high jump
to do in one bound and he landed awkwardly, stumbled,  recovered,
raced  down  the  corridor  sending a couple of miniature service
robots flying, skidded round the corner, burst into Zaphod's door
and explained what was on his mind.

"Vogons," he said.

A short while before this, Arthur Dent had set out from his cabin
in  search  of  a cup of tea. It was not a quest he embarked upon
with a great deal of optimism., because he  knew  that  the  only
source  of hot drinks on the entire ship was a benighted piece of
equipment produced by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. It  was
called  a  Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer, and he had encountered
it before.

It claimed  to  produce  the  widest  possible  range  of  drinks
personally  matched to the tastes and metabolism of whoever cared
to use it. When put to the test, however, it invariably  produced
a  plastic  cup  filled  with  a  liquid that was almost, but nit
quite, entirely unlike tea.

He attempted to reason with the thing.

"Tea," he said.

"Share and Enjoy," the machine replied and provided him with  yet
another cup of the sickly liquid.

He threw it away.

"Share and enjoy," the machine repeated  and  provided  him  with
another one.

"Share and Enjoy" is the company motto of the  hugely  successful
Sirius  Cybernetics  Corporation  Complaints  division, which now
covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is
the  only  part  of  the  Corporation  to have shown a consistent
profit in recent years.

The motto  stands  -  or  rather  stood  -  in  three  mile  high
illuminated  letters  near the Complaints Department spaceport on
Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly  after  it
was  erected,  the  ground  beneath the letters caved in and they
dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of  many
talented young complaints executives - now deceased.

The protruding upper halves of the letters  now  appear,  in  the
local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig", and are no
longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.

Arthur threw away a sixth cup of the liquid.

"Listen, you machine," he said, "you claim you can synthesize any
drink  in  existence,  so  why  do  you  keep  giving me the same
undrinkable stuff?"

"Nutrition and pleasurable  sense  data,"  burbled  the  machine.
"Share and Enjoy."

"It tastes filthy!"
"If you have enjoyed the experience of this drink," continued the
machine, "why not share it with your friends?"

"Because," said Arthur tartly, "I want to keep them. Will you try
to comprehend what I'm telling you? That drink ..."

"That  drink,"  said  the  machine  sweetly,  "was   individually
tailored  to  meet  your  personal requirements for nutrition and
pleasure."

"Ah," said Arthur, "so I'm a masochist on diet am I?"

"Share and Enjoy."

"Oh shut up."

"Will that be all?"

Arthur decided to give up.

"Yes," he said.

Then he decided he'd be dammed if he'd give up.

"No," he said, "look, it's very, very simple ... all I  want  ...
is a cup of tea. You are going to make one for me. Keep quiet and
listen."

And he sat. He told the Nutri-Matic about India, he told it about
China,  he  told  it  about Ceylon. He told it about broad leaves
drying in the sun. He told it about silver teapots.  He  told  it
about  summer afternoons on the lawn. He told it about putting in
the milk before the tea so it wouldn't get scalded. He even  told
it (briefly) about the history of the East India Company.

"So that's it, is it?" said the Nutri-Matic when he had finished.

"Yes," said Arthur, "that is what I want."

"You want the taste of dried leaves boiled in water?"

"Er, yes. With milk."

"Squirted out of a cow?"

"Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose ..."

"I'm going to need some help with this  one,"  said  the  machine
tersely.  All  the cheerful burbling had dropped out of its voice
and it now meant business.

"Well, anything I can do," said Arthur.

"You've done quite enough," the Nutri-Matic informed him.

It summoned up the ship's computer.

"Hi there!" said the ship's computer.
The Nutri-Matic explained about tea to the ship's  computer.  The
computer  boggled, linked logic circuits with the Nutri-Matic and
together they lapsed into a grim silence.

Arthur watched and  waited  for  a  while,  but  nothing  further
happened.

He thumped it, but still nothing happened.

Eventually he gave up and wandered up to the bridge.

In the empty wastes of space,  the  Heart  of  Gold  hung  still.
Around  it blazed the billion pinpricks of the Galaxy. Towards it
crept the ugly yellow lump of the Vogon ship.




"Does anyone have a kettle?" Arthur asked as he walked on to  the
bridge, and instantly began to wonder why Trillian was yelling at
the computer to talk to her, Ford was thumping it and Zaphod  was
kicking  it,  and  also  why there was a nasty yellow lump on the
vision screen.

He put down the empty cup he was  carrying  and  walked  over  to
them.

"Hello?" he said.

At that moment Zaphod flung himself over to the  polished  marble
surfaces  that  contained  the  instruments  that  controlled the
conventional photon drive. They materialized  beneath  his  hands
and  he  flipped over to manual control. He pushed, he pulled, he
pressed and he swore. The photon drive gave a sickly  judder  and
cut out again.

"Something up?" said Arthur.

"Hey, didja hear that?" muttered Zaphod as he leapt now  for  the
manual  controls of the Infinite Improbability Drive, "the monkey
spoke!"

The Improbability Drive gave two small whines and then  also  cut
out.

"Pure history,  man,"  said  Zaphod,  kicking  the  Improbability
Drive, "a talking monkey!"

"If you're upset about something ..." said Arthur.

"Vogons!" snapped Ford, "we're under attack!"

Arthur gibbered.

"Well what are you doing? Let's get out of here!"

"Can't. Computer's jammed."

"Jammed?"
"It says all its circuits are occupied. There's no power anywhere
in the ship."

Ford moved away from the computer terminal, wiped a sleeve across
his forehead and slumped back against the wall.

"Nothing we can do," he said. He glared at nothing  and  bit  his
lip.

When Arthur had been a boy at school, long before the  Earth  had
been demolished, he had used to play football. He had not been at
all good at it, and his particular speciality  had  been  scoring
own goals in important matches. Whenever this happened he used to
experience a peculiar tingling round the back of  his  neck  that
would  slowly  creep  up across his cheeks and heat his brow. The
image of mud and grass and lots of little jeering  boys  flinging
it at him suddenly came vividly to his mind at this moment.

A peculiar tingling  sensation  at  the  back  of  his  neck  was
creeping up across his cheeks and heating his brow.

He started to speak, and stopped.

He started to speak again and stopped again.

Finally he managed to speak.

"Er," he said. He cleared his throat.

"Tell me," he continued, and said it so nervously that the others
all  turned to stare at him. He glanced at the approaching yellow
blob on the vision screen.

"Tell me,"  he  said  again,  "did  the  computer  say  what  was
occupying it? I just ask out of interest ..."

Their eyes were riveted on him.

"And, er ... well that's it really, just asking."

Zaphod put out a hand and held Arthur by the scruff of the neck.

"What have you done to it, Monkeyman?" he breathed.

"Well," said Arthur, "nothing in fact. It's just that I  think  a
short while ago it was trying to work out how to ..."

"Yes?"

"Make me some tea."

"That's right guys," the computer sang out suddenly, "just coping
with  that  problem right now, and wow, it's a biggy. Be with you
in a while." It lapsed back into a silence that was only  matched
for sheer intensity by the silence of the three people staring at
Arthur Dent.

As if to relieve the tension, the Vogons  chose  that  moment  to
start firing.

The ship shook, the  ship  thundered.  Outside,  the  inch  thick
force-shield  around  it  blistered,  crackled and spat under the
barrage of a dozen 30-Megahurt Definit-Kil Photrazon Cannon,  and
looked  as if it wouldn't be around for long. Four minutes is how
long Ford Prefect gave it."Three minutes and fifty  seconds,"  he
said a short while later.

"Forty-five seconds,"  he  added  at  the  appropriate  time.  He
flicked  idly  at  some  useless  switches,  then  gave Arthur an
unfriendly look.

"Dying for a cup of tea, eh?" he said. "Three minutes  and  forty
seconds."

"Will you stop counting!" snarled Zaphod.

"Yes," said Ford  Prefect,  "in  three  minutes  and  thirty-five
seconds."

Aboard the Vogon ship, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was puzzled. He had
expected  a  chase,  he  had  expected  an  exciting grapple with
tractor beams, he had expected  to  have  to  use  the  specially
installed Sub-Cyclic Normality Assert-i-Tron to counter the Heart
of  Gold's  Infinite  Improbability  Drive,  but  the  Sub-Cyclic
Normality  Assert-i-Tron  lay  idle as the Heart of Gold just sat
there and took it.

A dozen 30-Megahurt Definit-Kil  Photrazon  Cannon  continued  to
blaze  away at the Heart of Gold, and still it just sat there and
took it.

He tested every sensor at his disposal to see if  there  was  any
subtle trickery afoot, but no subtle trickery was to be found.

He didn't know about the tea of course.

Nor did he know exactly how the occupants of the  Heart  of  Gold
were  spending  the last three minutes and thirty seconds of life
they had left to spend.

Quite how Zaphod Beeblebrox arrived at  the  idea  of  holding  a
seance at this point is something he was never quite clear on.

Obviously the subject of death  was  in  the  air,  but  more  as
something to be avoided than harped upon.

Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at  the  prospect  of
being  reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought
that they might just feel the same  way  about  him  and,  what's
more,  be  able  to  do  something about helping to postpone this
reunion.

Or again it might just have been one of  the  strange  promptings
that  occasionally  surfaced from that dark area of his mind that
he had inexplicably locked off prior to becoming President of the
Galaxy.
"You want to talk to your great grandfather?" boggled Ford.

"Yeah."

"Does it have to be now?"

The ship continued to shake  and  thunder.  The  temperature  was
rising.  The  light  was  getting  dimmer  -  all  the energy the
computer didn't require for thinking about tea was  being  pumped
into the rapidly fading force-field.

"Yeah!" insisted Zaphod. "Listen Ford, I think he may be able  to
help us."

"Are you sure you mean think? Pick your words with care."

"Suggest something else we can do."

"Er, well ..."

"OK,  round  the  central  console.  Now.  Come   on!   Trillian,
Monkeyman, move."

They clustered round the central console in confusion,  sat  down
and,  feeling  exceptionally  foolish, held hands. With his third
hand Zaphod turned off the lights.

Darkness gripped the ship.

Outside, the thunderous roar of the Definit-Kil cannon  continued
to rip at the force-field.

"Concentrate," hissed Zaphod, "on his name."

"What is it?" asked Arthur.

"Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth."

"What?"

"Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. Concentrate!"

"The Fourth?"

"Yeah. Listen,  I'm  Zaphod  Beeblebrox,  my  father  was  Zaphod
Beeblebrox the Second, my grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third
..."

"What?"

"There was an accident with a contraceptive and a  time  machine.
Now concentrate!"

"Three minutes," said Ford Prefect.

"Why," said Arthur Dent, "are we doing this?"

"Shut up," suggested Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Trillian said nothing. What, she thought, was there to say?

The only light on the bridge came from two dim red triangles in a
far  corner  where  Marvin  the  Paranoid  Android  sat  slumped,
ignoring all  and  ignored  by  all,  in  a  private  and  rather
unpleasant world of his own.

Round  the  central  console  four  figures  hunched   in   tight
concentration  trying  to  blot  from  their minds the terrifying
shuddering of the ship and the fearful roar that  echoed  through
it.

They concentrated.

Still they concentrated.

And still they concentrated.

The seconds ticked by.

On Zaphod's brow stood beads of sweat,  first  of  concentration,
then of frustration and finally of embarrassment.

At last he let out a cry of anger, snatched back his  hands  from
Trillian and Ford and stabbed at the light switch.

"Ah, I was beginning to think you'd never turn  the  lights  on,"
said  a  voice.  "No,  not too bright please, my eyes aren't what
they once were."

Four figures jolted upright in their seats.  Slowly  they  turned
their  heads  to  look,  though  their  scalps  showed a distinct
propensity to try and stay in the same place.

"Now. Who disturbs me at this time?" said the small, bent,  gaunt
figure  standing  by  the  sprays  of  fern at the far end of the
bridge. His two small wispy-haired heads looked so  ancient  that
it  seemed  they  might  hold  dim  memories  of the birth of the
galaxies themselves. One lolled in sleep, but the other  squinted
sharply  at  them.  If his eyes weren't what they once were, they
must once have been diamond cutters.

Zaphod stuttered nervously for a moment. He  gave  the  intricate
little  double  nod which is the traditional Betelgeusian gesture
of familial respect.

"Oh ... er, hi Great Granddad ..." he breathed.

The little old  figure  moved  closer  towards  them.  He  peered
through  the  dim light. He thrust out a bony finger at his great
grandson.

"Ah," he snapped. "Zaphod Beeblebrox. The last of our great line.
Zaphod Beeblebrox the Nothingth."

"The First."

"The Nothingth," spat the figure.  Zaphod  hated  his  voice.  It
always  seemed  to  him  to  screech  like fingernails across the
blackboard of what he liked to think of as his soul.

He shifted awkwardly in his seat.

"Er, yeah," he muttered, "Er, look, I'm really  sorry  about  the
flowers,  I  meant to send them along, but you know, the shop was
fresh out of wreaths and ..."

"You forget!" snapped Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth.

"Well ..."

"Too busy. Never think of other people. The living  are  all  the
same."

"Two minutes, Zaphod," whispered Ford in an awed whisper.

Zaphod fidgeted nervously.

"Yeah, but I did mean to send them," he said. "And I'll write  to
my  great grandmother as well, just as soon as we get out of this
..."

"Your great  grandmother,"  mused  the  gaunt  little  figure  to
himself.

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "Er, how is she? Tell you what, I'll go  and
see her. But first we've just got to ..."

"Your late great grandmother and I are very well," rasped  Zaphod
Beeblebrox the Fourth.

"Ah. Oh."

"But very disappointed in you, young Zaphod ..."

"Yeah well ..." Zaphod felt strangely powerless to take charge of
this  conversation,  and  Ford's heavy breathing at his side told
him that the seconds were ticking away fast. The  noise  and  the
shaking  had  reached terrifying proportions. He saw Trillian and
Arthur's faces white and unblinking in the gloom.

"Er, Great Grandfather ..."

"We've been following your progress with considerable despondency
..."

"Yeah, look, just at the moment you see ..."

"Not to say contempt!"

"Could you sort of listen for a moment ..."

"I mean what exactly are you doing with your life?"

"I'm being attacked by a Vogon fleet!" cried Zaphod.  It  was  an
exaggeration,  but  it was his only opportunity so far of getting
the basic point of the exercise across.
"Doesn't surprise me in the least," said the  little  old  figure
with a shrug.

"Only  it's  happening  right  now  you  see,"  insisted   Zaphod
feverishly.

The spectral ancestor nodded, picked up the cup Arthur  Dent  had
brought in and looked at it with interest.

"Er ... Great Granddad ..."

"Did you know," interrupting the ghostly  figure,  fixing  Zaphod
with  a  stern  look,  "that Betelgeuse Five has developed a very
slight eccentricy in its orbit?"

Zaphod didn't and found the information hard  to  concentrate  on
what with all the noise and the imminence of death and so on.

"Er, no ... look," he said.

"Me spinning in my grave!" barked the ancestor.  He  slammed  the
cup  down  and pointed a quivering, stick-like see-through finger
at Zaphod.

"Your fault!" he screeched.

"One minute thirty," muttered Ford, his head in his hands.

"Yeah, look Great Granddad, can you actually help because ..."

"Help?" exclaimed the old man as if he'd been asked for a stoat.

"Yeah, help, and like, now, because otherwise ..."

"Help!" repeated the old man as if he'd been asked for a  lightly
grilled stoat in a bun with French fries. He stood amazed.

"You go swanning your way round the Galaxy  with  your  ..."  the
ancestor  waved  a  contemptuous  hand,  "with  your disreputable
friends, too busy to put flowers on my grave, plastic ones  would
have  done,  would  have been quite appropriate from you, but no.
Too busy. Too modern. Too sceptical  -  till  you  suddenly  find
yourself  in  a bit of a fix and come over suddenly all astrally-
minded!"

He shook his head - carefully, so as not to disturb  the  slumber
of the other one, which was already becoming restive.

"Well, I don't know, young Zaphod," he continued, "I  think  I'll
have to think about this one."

"One minute ten," said Ford hollowly.

Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth peered at him curiously.

"Why does that man keep talking in numbers?" he said.

"Those numbers," said Zaphod tersely, "are  the  time  we've  got
left to live."
"Oh," said his great grandfather. He grunted to himself. "Doesn't
apply to me, of course," he said and moved off to a dimmer recess
of the bridge in search of something else to poke around at.

Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and  wondered
if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it.

"Great Grandfather," he said, "It applies to  us!  We  are  still
alive, and we are about to lose our lives."

"Good job too."

"What?"

"What use is your life to anyone? When I  think  of  what  you've
made of it the phrase `pig's ear' comes irresistibly to my mind."

"But I was President of the Galaxy, man!"

"Huh," muttered his ancestor, "And what kind of a job is that for
a Beeblebrox?"

"Hey, what? Only President you know! Of the whole Galaxy!"

"Conceited little megapuppy."

Zaphod blinked in bewilderment.

"Hey, er, what are you at, man? I mean Great Grandfather."

The hunched up little figure stalked up to his great grandson and
tapped  him sternly on the knee. This had the effect of reminding
Zaphod that he was talking to a ghost because he  didn't  feel  a
thing.

"You know and I know what being President  means,  young  Zaphod.
You  know because you've been it, and I know because I'm dead and
it gives one such a wonderfully uncluttered perspective. We  have
a saying up here. `Life is wasted on the living.'"

"Yeah," said Zaphod bitterly, "very good. Very deep. Right now  I
need aphorisms like I need holes in my heads."

"Fifty seconds," grunted Ford Prefect.

"Where was I?" said Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth.

"Pontificating," said Zaphod Beeblebrox.

"Oh yes."

"Can this guy," muttered Ford quietly  to  Zaphod,  "actually  in
fact help us?"

"Nobody else can," whispered Zaphod.

Ford nodded despondently.
"Zaphod!" the ghost was saying,  "you  became  President  of  the
Galaxy for a reason. Have you forgotten?"

"Could we go into this later?"

"Have you forgotten!" insisted the ghost.

"Yeah! Of course I forgot! I had  to  forget.  They  screen  your
brain when you get the job you know. If they'd found my head full
of tricksy ideas I'd have been right out  on  the  streets  again
with  nothing  but  a  fat pension, secretarial staff, a fleet of
ships and a couple of slit throats."

"Ah," nodded the ghost in satisfaction, "then you do remember!"

He paused for a moment.

"Good," he said and the noise stopped.

"Forty-eight seconds," said Ford. He looked again  at  his  watch
and tapped it. He looked up.

"Hey, the noise has stopped," he said.

A mischievous twinkle gleamed in the ghost's hard little eyes.

"I've slowed down time for a moment," he said, "just for a moment
you understand. I would hate you to miss all I have to say."

"No, you listen to me, you  see-through  old  bat,"  said  Zaphod
leaping  out  of his chair, "A - thanks for stopping time and all
that, great, terrific, wonderful, but  B  -  no  thanks  for  the
homily, right? I don't know what this great think I'm meant to be
doing is, and it looks to me as if I was supposed  not  to  know.
And I resent that, right?

"The old me knew. The old me cared. Fine, so far so hoopy. Except
that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own
brain - my own brain - and locked off  the  bits  that  knew  and
cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it. I
wouldn't be able to go and be President, and I wouldn't  be  able
to steal this ship, which must be the important thing.

"But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't  he,  by
changing  my  brain? OK, that was his choice. This new me has its
own choices to make, and by a strange coincidence  those  choices
involve  not  knowing  and  not  caring  about  this  big number,
whatever it is. That's what he wanted, that's what he got.

"Except this old self of mine tried to leave himself in  control,
leaving orders for me in the bit of my brain he locked off. Well,
I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear  them.  That's  my
choice. I'm not going to be anybody's puppet, particularly not my
own."

Zaphod banged the console in fury, oblivious  to  the  dumbfolded
looks he was attracting.

"The old me  is  dead!"  he  raved,  "Killed  himself!  The  dead
shouldn't hang about trying to interfere with the living!"

"And yet you summon me up to help you out of a scrape," said  the
ghost.

"Ah," said Zaphod, sitting down  again,  "well  that's  different
isn't it?"

He grinned at Trillian, weakly.

"Zaphod," rasped the apparition, "I think the only reason I waste
my  breath  on  you is that being dead I don't have any other use
for it."

"OK," said Zaphod, "why don't you tell me what the big secret is.
Try me."

"Zaphod, you knew when you were President of the Galaxy,  as  did
Yooden Vranx before you, that the President is nothing. A cipher.
Somewhere in the shadows behind is another man, being, something,
with  ultimate  power. That man, or being, or something, you must
find - the man who controls this  Galaxy,  and  -  we  suspect  -
others. Possibly the entire Universe."

"Why?"

"Why?" exclaimed an astonished ghost, "Why? Look around you  lad,
does it look to you as if it's in very good hands?"

"It's alright."

The old ghost glowered at him.

"I will not argue with you. You will simply take this ship,  this
Improbability  Drive  ship to where it is needed. You will do it.
Don't think you can escape your purpose. The Improbability  Field
controls you, you are in its grip. What's this?"

He was standing tapping at one of  the  terminals  of  Eddie  the
Shipboard Computer. Zaphod told him.

"What's it doing?"

"It is trying," said Zaphod with wonderful  restraint,  "to  make
tea."

"Good," said his great  grandfather,  "I  approve  of  that.  Now
Zaphod,  "he  said, turning and wagging a finger at him, "I don't
know if you are really capable of succeeding in your job. I think
you will not be able to avoid it. However, I am too long dead and
too tired to care as much as I did. The  principal  reason  I  am
helping  you  now  is that I couldn't bear the thought of you and
your modern friends slouching about up here. Understood?"

"Yeah, thanks a bundle."

"Oh, and Zaphod?"

"Er, yeah?"
"If you ever find you need help again, you  know,  if  you're  in
trouble, need a hand out of a tight corner ..."

"Yeah?"

"Please don't hesitate to get lost."

Within the space of one second, a bolt of light flashed from  the
wizened  old  ghost's  hands to the computer, the ghost vanished,
the bridge filled with billowing smoke  and  the  Heart  of  Gold
leapt  an  unknown  distance  through  the dimensions of time and
space.




Ten light years away, Gag Halfrunt jacked up his smile by several
notches.  As he watched the picture on his vision screen, relayed
across the sub-ether from the bridge of the Vogon  ship,  he  saw
the final shreds of the Heart of Gold's force-shield ripped away,
and the ship itself vanish in a puff of smoke.

Good, he thought.

The end of the last stray survivors  of  the  demolition  he  had
ordered on the planet Earth, he thought.

The final end of this dangerous (to the  psychiatric  profession)
and subversive (also to the psychiatric profession) experiment to
find the Question to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe,
and Everything, he thought.

There would be some celebration with his fellows tonight, and  in
the  morning  they would meet again their unhappy, bewildered and
highly profitable patients, secure  in  the  knowledge  that  the
Meaning  of  Life  would  not  now be, once and for all, well and
truly sorted out, he thought.

"Family's always embarrassing isn't it?" said Ford to  Zaphod  as
the smoke began to clear.

He paused, then looked about.

"Where's Zaphod?" he said.

Arthur and Trillian looked about  blankly.  They  were  pale  and
shaken and didn't know where Zaphod was.

"Marvin?" said Ford, "Where's Zaphod?"

A moment later he said:

"Where's Marvin?"

The robot's corner was empty.

The ship was  utterly  silent.  It  lay  in  thick  black  space.
Occasionally  it  rocked  and  swayed. Every instrument was dead,
every vision screen was dead. They  consulted  the  computer.  It
said:

"I  regret  that  I  have  been   temporarily   closed   to   all
communication. Meanwhile, here is some light music."

They turned off the light music.

They searched every corner of the ship in increasing bewilderment
and  alarm. Everywhere was dead and silent. Nowhere was there any
trace of Zaphod or of Marvin.

One of the last areas they checked was the small bay in which the
Nutri-Matic machine was located.

On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was  a
small  tray,  on  which  sat three bone china cups and saucers, a
bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot  full  of  the  best  tea
Arthur had ever tasted, and a small printed note saying "Wait".




Ursa Minor Beta is, some say, one of the most appalling places in
the known Universe.

Although it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny  and  more
full  of  wonderfully  exciting  people  than a pomegranate is of
pips, it can hardly be insignificant that when a  recent  edition
of  Playbeing  magazine headlined an article with the words "When
you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you  are  tired  of  life",  the
suicide rate quadrupled overnight.

Not that there are any nights on Ursa Minor Beta.

It is a West Zone planet which by an  inexplicable  and  somewhat
suspicious  freak  of topography consists almost entirely of sub-
tropical coastline. By an equally suspicious  freak  of  temporal
relastatics,  it  is nearly always Saturday afternoon just before
the beach bars close.

No adequate explanation for this has been  forthcoming  from  the
dominant  lifeforms  on  Ursa Minor Beta, who spend most of their
time attempting to achieve  spiritual  enlightenment  by  running
round  swimming  pools, and inviting Investigation Officials form
the Galactic Geo-Temporal Control Board to "have a  nice  diurnal
anomaly".

There is only one city on Ursa  Minor  Beta,  and  that  is  only
called  a city because the swimming pools are slightly thicker on
the ground there than elsewhere.

If you approach Light City by air - and there is no other way  of
approaching  it,  no roads, no port facilities - if you don't fly
they don't want to see you in Light City - you will  see  why  it
has  this  name. Here the sun shines brightest of all, glittering
on the  swimming  pools,  shimmering  on  the  white,  palm-lined
boulevards,  glistening  on  the healthy bronzed specks moving up
and down them, gleaming off the villas,  the  hazy  airpads,  the
beach bars and so on.

Most particularly it shines  on  a  building,  a  tall  beautiful
building  consisting  of two thirty-storey white towers connected
by a bridge half-way up their length.

The building is the home of a book, and was  built  here  on  the
proceeds  of  an  extraordinary copyright law suit fought between
the book's editors and a breakfast cereal company.

The book is a guide book, a travel book.

It is one of the most remarkable, certainly the most  successful,
books  ever  to  come out of the great publishing corporations of
Ursa Minor - more popular than Life Begins at  Five  Hundred  and
Fifty,  better selling than The Big Bang Theory - A Personal View
by Eccentrica Gallumbits (the triple breasted whore  of  Eroticon
Six)   and  more  controversial  than  Oolon  Colluphid's  latest
blockbusting title Everything You Never Wanted To Know About  Sex
But Have Been Forced To Find Out.

(And in many of the  more  relaxed  civilizations  on  the  Outer
Eastern  Rim  of  the  Galaxy,  it  has long surplanted the great
Encyclopaedia  Galactica  as  the  standard  repository  of   all
knowledge  and  wisdom,  for  though  it  has  many omissions and
contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly  inaccurate,
it  scores  over  the  older  and  more  pedestrian  work  in two
important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper,  and  secondly
it has the words Don't Panic printed in large friendly letters on
its cover.)

It is of course that invaluable companion for all those who  want
to  see  the  marvels  of the known Universe for less than thirty
Altairan Dollars a day - The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

If you stood with your back to the main  entrance  lobby  of  the
Guide  offices  (assuming  you had landed by now and freshened up
with a quick dip and shower) and then walked east, you would pass
along  the  leafy  shade of Life Boulevard, be amazed by the pale
golden colour of  the  beaches  stretching  away  to  your  left,
astounded  by the mind-surfers floating carelessly along two feet
above the waves as if  it  was  nothing  special,  surprised  and
eventually  slightly  irritated  by the giant palm trees that hum
toneless nothings throughout the daylight hours, in  other  words
continuously.

If you then walked to the end of Life Boulevard you  would  enter
the  Lalamatine  district  of  shops,  bolonut trees and pavement
cafes where the UM-Betans come to relax after a hard  afternoon's
relaxation  on the beach. The Lalamatine district is one of those
very few areas which doesn't enjoy a perpetual Saturday afternoon
-  it  enjoys  instead  the  cool  of  a perpetual early Saturday
evening. Behind it lie the night clubs.

If, on this particular day, afternoon, stretch of  eveningtime  -
call  it  what  you will - you had approached the second pavement
cafe on the right you would have seen  the  usual  crowd  of  UM-
Betans  chatting,  drinking,  looking  very relaxed, and casually
glancing at each other's watches to see how expensive they were.
You would also have seen a couple of rather  dishevelled  looking
hitch-hikers  from  Algol who had recently arrived on an Arcturan
Megafreighter aboard which they had been roughing it  for  a  few
days.  They  were  angry  and  bewildered  to discover that here,
within sight of the Hitch Hiker's Guide building itself, a simple
glass  of  fruit juice cost the equivalent of over sixty Altairan
dollars.

"Sell out," one of them said, bitterly.

If at that moment you had then looked at the next table  but  one
you  would  have  seen Zaphod Beeblebrox sitting and looking very
startled and confused.

The reason for his confusion was that five seconds earlier he had
been sitting on the bridge of the starship Heart of Gold.

"Absolute sell out," said the voice again.

Zaphod looked nervously out of the corners of his eyes at the two
dishevelled  hitch-hikers  at  the next table. Where the hell was
he? How had he got there? Where was his ship? His hand  felt  the
arm  of  the chair on which he was sitting, and then the table in
front of him. They seemed solid enough. He sat very still.

"How can they sit and write a guide for hitch-hikers in  a  place
like this?" continued the voice. "I mean look at it. Look at it!"

Zaphod was looking at it. Nice place, he thought. But where?  And
why?

He fished in his pocket for his two pairs of sunglasses.  In  the
same  pocket  he  felt  a  hard smooth, unidentified lump of very
heavy metal. He pulled it out and looked at it. He blinked at  it
in  surprise. Where had he got that? He returned it to his pocket
and put on the sunglasses, annoyed to  discover  that  the  metal
object  had  scratched  one  of the lenses. Nevertheless, he felt
much more comfortable with them on. They were a  double  pair  of
Joo  Janta  200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, which
had been specially designed to  help  people  develop  a  relaxed
attitude  to  danger.  At  the  first  hint  of trouble they turn
totally black and thus prevent  you  from  seeing  anything  that
might alarm you.

Apart from the scratch the lenses were  clear.  He  relaxed,  but
only a little bit.

The angry hitch-hiker  continued  to  glare  at  his  monstrously
expensive fruit juice.

"Worst thing that ever happened to  the  Guide,  moving  to  Ursa
Minor  Beta," he grumbled, "they've all gone soft. You know, I've
even   heard  that   they've  created  a   whole   electronically
synthesized  Universe  in one of their offices so they can go and
research stories during the day and still go to  parties  in  the
evening. Not that day and evening mean much in this place."

Ursa Minor Beta, thought Zaphod. At least he knew  where  he  was
now.  He assumed that this must be his great grandfather's doing,
but why?

Much to his annoyance, a thought popped into  his  mind.  It  was
very  clear  and  very distinct, and he had now come to recognize
these thoughts for what they were. His  instinct  was  to  resist
them.  They  were  the  pre-ordained promptings from the dark and
locked off parts of his mind.

He sat still and ignored the thought furiously. It nagged at him.
He ignored it. It nagged at him. He ignored it. It nagged at him.
He gave in to it.

What the hell, he thought, go with the flow. He  was  too  tired,
confused  and  hungry  to  resist.  He  didn't even know what the
thought meant.




"Hello? Yes? Megadodo Publications, home  of  the  Hitch  Hiker's
Guide  to  the  Galaxy,  the  most totally remarkable book in the
whole of the known Universe, can I  help  you?"  said  the  large
pink-winged  insect into one of the seventy phones lined up along
the vast chrome expanse of the reception desk in the foyer of the
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy offices. It fluttered its wings
and  rolled  its  eyes.  It  glared  at  all  the  grubby  people
cluttering  up  the  foyer, soiling the carpets and leaving dirty
handmarks on the upholstery. It  adored  working  for  the  Hitch
Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it just wished there was some way of
keeping all the hitch-hikers  away.  Weren't  they  meant  to  be
hanging  round dirty spaceports or something? It was certain that
it had read something somewhere in the book about the  importance
of  hanging  round  dirty  spaceports. Unfortunately most of them
seemed to come and hang around in this  nice  clean  shiny  foyer
after  hanging around in extremely dirty spaceports. And all they
ever did was complain. It shivered its wings.

"What?" it said into the phone. "Yes, I passed on your message to
Mr  Zarniwoop, but I'm afraid he's too cool to see you right now.
He's on an intergalactic cruise."

It waved a petulant tentacle at one of the grubby people who  was
angrily  trying  to  engage  its attention. The petulant tentacle
directed the angry person to look at the notice on  the  wall  to
its left and not to interrupt an important phone call.

"Yes," said the insect, "he is in his  office,  but  he's  on  an
intergalactic  cruise. Thank you so much for calling." It slammed
down the phone.

"Read the notice," it said to the angry man  who  was  trying  to
complain  about one of the more ludicrous and dangerous pieces of
misinformation contained in the book.

The Hitch  Hiker's  Guide  to  the  Galaxy  is  an  indispensable
companion  to  all those who are keen to make sense of life in an
infinitely complex and confusing Universe, for though  it  cannot
hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does at least
make the reassuring claim, that where it is inaccurate it  is  at
least  definitely  inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it's
always reality that's got it wrong.

This  was  the  gist  of  the  notice.  It  said  "The  Guide  is
definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate."

This has led to some interesting consequences. For instance, when
the  Editors  of the Guide were sued by the families of those who
had died as a result of taking the  entry  on  the  planet  Traal
literally  (it said "Ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very
good meal for visiting tourists" instead of "Ravenous  Bugblatter
beasts  often  make  a very good meal of visiting tourists") they
claimed that the first version  of  the  sentence  was  the  more
aesthetically  pleasing,  summoned  a  qualified  poet to testify
under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty and hoped  thereby
to  prove that the guilty party was Life itself for failing to be
either beautiful or true. The judges concurred, and in  a  moving
speech  held  that Life itself was in contempt of court, and duly
confiscated it from all those there present before going  off  to
enjoy a pleasant evening's ultragolf.

Zaphod Beeblebrox entered the foyer. He strode up to  the  insect
receptionist.

"OK," he said, "Where's Zarniwoop? Get me Zarniwoop."

"Excuse me, sir?" said the insect icily. It did not  care  to  be
addressed in this manner.

"Zarniwoop. Get him, right? Get him now."

"Well, sir," snapped the fragile little creature, "if  you  could
be a little cool about it ..."

"Look," said Zaphod, "I'm up  to  here  with  cool,  OK?  I'm  so
amazingly  cool  you  could  keep  a side of meat inside me for a
month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my  pelvis.  Now
will you move before you blow it?"

"Well, if you'd let me explain, sir," said the insect tapping the
most  petulant  of all the tentacles at its disposal, "I'm afraid
that  isn't  possible  right  now  as  Mr  Zarniwoop  is  on   an
intergalactic cruise."

Hell, thought Zaphod.

"When he's going to be back?" he said.

"Back sir? He's in his office."

Zaphod paused while he tried to sort this particular thought  out
in his mind. He didn't succeed.

"This cat's on an intergalactic cruise ...  in  his  office?"  He
leaned forward and gripped the tapping tentacle.

"Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird  me.  I
get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal."
"Well, just who do you think you are, honey?" flounced the insect
quivering its wings in rage, "Zaphod Beeblebrox or something?"

"Count the heads," said Zaphod in a low rasp.

The insect blinked at him. It blinked at him again.

"You are Zaphod Beeblebrox?" it squeaked.

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "but don't shout it out or they'll all  want
one."

"The Zaphod Beeblebrox?"

"No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn't you  hear  I  come  in  six
packs?"

The insect rattled its tentacles together in agitation.

"But sir," it squealed, "I just  heard  on  the  sub-ether  radio
report. It said that you were dead ..."

"Yeah, that's right," said Zaphod, "I just haven't stopped moving
yet. Now. Where do I find Zarniwoop?"

"Well, sir, his office is on the fifteenth floor, but ..."

"But he's on an intergalactic cruise, yeah, yeah, how do I get to
him."

"The newly  installed  Sirius  Cybernetics  Corporation  Vertical
People Transporters are in the far corner sir. But sir ..."

Zaphod was turning to go. He turned back.

"Yeah?" he said.

"Can I ask you why you want to see Mr Zarniwoop?"

"Yeah," said Zaphod, who was unclear on this  point  himself,  "I
told myself I had to."

"Come again sir?"

Zaphod leaned forward, conspirationally.

"I just materialized out of thin air in one of  your  cafes,"  he
said,  "as  a  result  of  an argument with the ghost of my great
grandfather. No sooner had I got there that my former  self,  the
one  that  operated on my brain, popped into my head and said `Go
see Zarniwoop'. I have never heard of the  cat.  That  is  all  I
know.  That  and the fact that I've got to find the man who rules
the Universe."

He winked.

"Mr Beeblebrox, sir," said the insect in awed wonder, "you're  so
weird you should be in movies."
"Yeah," said Zaphod patting the thing on a glittering pink  wing,
"and you, baby, should be in real life."

The insect paused for a moment to recover from its agitation  and
then reached out a tentacle to answer a ringing phone.

A metal hand restrained it.

"Excuse me," said the owner of the metal hand  in  a  voice  that
would  have  made  an  insect  of  a more sentimental disposition
collapse in tears.

This was not such an insect, and it couldn't stand robots.

"Yes, sir," it snapped, "can I help you?"

"I doubt it," said Marvin.

"Well in that case, if you'll just excuse  me  ..."  Six  of  the
phones  were  now  ringing. A million things awaited the insect's
attention.

"No one can help me," intoned Marvin.

"Yes, sir, well ..."

"Not that anyone tried of course."  The  restraining  metal  hand
fell  limply  by  Marvin's  side.  His  head  hung  forward  very
slightly.

"Is that so," said the insect tartly.

"Hardly worth anyone's while to help a menial robot is it?"

"I'm sorry, sir, if ..."

"I mean where's the percentage in being  kind  or  helpful  to  a
robot if it doesn't have any gratitude circuits?"

"And you don't have any?" said the insect, who didn't seem to  be
able to drag itself out of this conversation.

"I've never had occasion to find out," Marvin informed it.

"Listen, you miserable heap of maladjusted metal ..."

"Aren't you going to ask me what I want?"

The insect paused. Its long thin tongue darted out and licked its
eyes and darted back again.

"Is it worth it?" it asked.

"Is anything?" said Marvin immediately.

"What ... do ... you ... want?"

"I'm looking for someone."
"Who?" hissed the insect.

"Zaphod Beeblebrox," said Marvin, "he's over there."

The insect shook with rage. It could hardly speak.

"Then why did you ask me?" it screamed.

"I just wanted something to talk to," said Marvin.

"What!"

"Pathetic isn't it?"

With a grinding of gears  Marvin  turned  and  trundled  off.  He
caught  up  with  Zaphod  approaching  the elevators. Zaphod span
round in astonishment.

"Hey ... Marvin!" he said, "Marvin! How did you get here?"

Marvin was forced to say something which came very hard to him.

"I don't know," he said.

"But ..."

"One moment I was sitting in your ship  feeling  very  depressed,
and   the  next  moment  I  was  standing  here  feeling  utterly
miserable. An Improbability Field I expect."

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "I expect  my  great  grandfather  sent  you
along to keep me company."

"Thanks a bundle grandad," he added to himself under his breath.

"So, how are you?" he said aloud.

"Oh, fine," said Marvin, "if you happen to like  being  me  which
personally I don't."

"Yeah, yeah," said Zaphod as the elevator doors opened.

"Hello," said the elevator sweetly, "I am to be your elevator for
this  trip  to  the floor of your choice. I have been designed by
the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation to take you,  the  visitor  to
the  Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, into these their offices.
If you enjoy your ride, which will be swift and pleasurable, then
you may care to experience some of the other elevators which have
recently been installed  in  the  offices  of  the  Galactic  tax
department,  Boobiloo  Baby  Foods  and  the  Sirian State Mental
Hospital, where many ex-Sirius Cybernetics Corporation executives
will  be  delighted  to  welcome your visits, sympathy, and happy
tales of the outside world."

"Yeah," said Zaphod, stepping into  it,  "what  else  do  you  do
besides talk?"

"I go up," said the elevator, "or down."
"Good," said Zaphod, "We're going up."

"Or down," the elevator reminded him.

"Yeah, OK, up please."

There was a moment of silence.

"Down's very nice," suggested the elevator hopefully.

"Oh yeah?"

"Super."

"Good," said Zaphod, "Now will you take us up?"

"May I ask you," inquired the  elevator  in  its  sweetest,  most
reasonable  voice,  "if  you've  considered all the possibilities
that down might offer you?"

Zaphod knocked one of his  heads  against  the  inside  wall.  He
didn't  need  this,  he thought to himself, this of all things he
had no need of. He hadn't asked to be here. If he  was  asked  at
this moment where he would like to be he would probably have said
he would like to be lying  on  the  beach  with  at  least  fifty
beautiful  women and a small team of experts working out new ways
they could be nice to him, which was his usual reply. To this  he
would  probably have added something passionate on the subject of
food.

One thing he didn't want to be doing was chasing  after  the  man
who  ruled  the Universe, who was only doing a job which he might
as well keep at, because if  it  wasn't  him  it  would  only  be
someone  else.  Most  of  all he didn't want to be standing in an
office block arguing with an elevator.

"Like what other possibilities?" he asked wearily.

"Well," the voice trickled on like honey  on  biscuits,  "there's
the basement, the microfiles, the heating system ... er ..."

It paused.

"Nothing particularly  exciting,"  it  admitted,  "but  they  are
alternatives."

"Holy Zarquon," muttered Zaphod, "did I ask for an existentialist
elevator?" he beat his fists against the wall.

"What's the matter with the thing?" he spat.

"It doesn't want to go up," said Marvin  simply,  "I  think  it's
afraid."

"Afraid?" cried Zaphod, "Of what?  Heights?  An  elevator  that's
afraid of heights?"

"No," said the elevator miserably, "of the future ..."
"The future?" exclaimed Zaphod, "What  does  the  wretched  thing
want, a pension scheme?"

At that moment a commotion broke out in the reception hall behind
them.  From  the  walls  around  them  came the sound of suddenly
active machinery.

"We can all see into the future," whispered the elevator in  what
sounded like terror, "it's part of our programming."

Zaphod looked out  of  the  elevator  -  an  agitated  crowd  had
gathered round the elevator area, pointing and shouting.

Every elevator in the building was coming down, very fast.

He ducked back in.

"Marvin," he said, "just get this elevator go up will you?  We've
got to get to Zarniwoop."

"Why?" asked Marvin dolefully.

"I don't know," said Zaphod, "but when I find  him,  he'd  better
have a very good reason for me wanting to see him."

Modern elevators are strange and complex  entities.  The  ancient
electric  winch and "maximum-capacity-eight-persons" jobs bear as
much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy  Vertical
People  Transporter  as a packet of mixed nuts does to the entire
west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital.

This  is  because  they  operate  on  the  curios  principle   of
"defocused  temporal  perception".  In  other words they have the
capacity to see dimly into the immediate  future,  which  enables
the  elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before
you  knew  you  wanted  it,  thus  eliminating  all  the  tedious
chatting,   relaxing,   and   making  friends  that  people  were
previously forced to do whist waiting for elevators.

Not unnaturally, many  elevators  imbued  with  intelligence  and
precognition   became   terribly  frustrated  with  the  mindless
business of going up and down, up and down, experimented  briefly
with  the  notion  of  going  sideways,  as a sort of existential
protest, demanded participation in  the  decision-making  process
and finally took to squatting in basements sulking.

An impoverished hitch-hiker visiting any planets  in  the  Sirius
star  system  these  days  can  pick  up  easy money working as a
counsellor for neurotic elevators.

At the fifteenth floor the elevator doors opened quickly.

"Fifteenth," said the elevator, "and  remember,  I'm  only  doing
this because I like your robot."

Zaphod and Marvin bundled out of  the  elevator  which  instantly
snapped its doors shut and dropped as fast as its mechanism would
take it.
Zaphod looked around warily. The corridor was deserted and silent
and  gave  no  clue as to where Zarniwoop might be found. All the
doors that led off the corridor were closed and unmarked.

They were standing close to the bridge which led across from  one
tower  of  the  building to the other. Through a large window the
brilliant sun of Ursa Minor Beta threw blocks of light  in  which
danced small specks of dust. A shadow flitted past momentarily.

"Left in the lurch by a lift," muttered Zaphod, who  was  feeling
at his least jaunty.

They both stood and looked in both directions.

"You know something?" said Zaphod to Marvin.

"More that you can possibly imagine."

"I'm dead certain this building  shouldn't  be  shaking,"  Zaphod
said.

It was just a light tremor through the soles of his  feet  -  and
another  one.  In  the  sunbeams  the  flecks of dust danced more
vigorously. Another shadow flitted past.

Zaphod looked at the floor.

"Either," he said, not very confidently, "they've got some  vibro
system for toning up your muscles while you work, or ..."

He walked across to the window and suddenly stumbled  because  at
that  moment  his  Joo  Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive
sunglasses had turned utterly black. A large shadow flitted  past
the window with a sharp buzz.

Zaphod ripped off his sunglasses, and as he did so  the  building
shook with a thunderous roar. He leapt to the window.

"Or," he said, "this building's being bombed!"

Another roar cracked through the building.

"Who in the Galaxy would want  to  bomb  a  publishing  company?"
asked  Zaphod,  but  never  heard  Marvin's reply because at that
moment the building shook with another bomb attack. He  tried  to
stagger back to the elevator - a pointless manoeuvre he realized,
but the only one he could think of.

Suddenly, at the end of the corridor leading at right angles from
this  one,  he caught sight of a figure as it lunged into view, a
man. The man saw him.

"Beeblebrox, over here!" he shouted.

Zaphod eyed him with distrust as another bomb  blast  rocked  the
building.

"No," called Zaphod, "Beeblebrox over here! Who are you?"
"A friend!" shouted back the man. He ran towards Zaphod.

"Oh yeah?" said Zaphod, "Anyone's friend in particular,  or  just
generally well disposed of people?"

The man raced along the corridor, the floor bucking  beneath  his
feet   like   an  excited  blanket.  He  was  short,  stocky  and
weatherbeaten and his clothes looked  as  if  they'd  been  twice
round the Galaxy and back with him in them.

"Do you know," Zaphod shouted in his ear when he  arrived,  "your
building's being bombed?"

The man indicated his awareness.

It suddenly stopped being light. Glancing round at the window  to
see   why,  Zaphod  gaped  as  a  huge  sluglike,  gunmetal-green
spacecraft crept through the air  past  the  building.  Two  more
followed it.

"The government you deserted is out to get you,  Zaphod,"  hissed
the man, "they've sent a squadron of Frogstar Fighters."

"Frogstar Fighters!" muttered Zaphod, "Zarquon!"

"You get the picture?"

"What are Frogstar Fighters?" Zaphod was sure he'd heard  someone
talk  about  them  when  he was President, but he never paid much
attention to official matters.

The man was pulling him back through a door. He  went  with  him.
With  a  searing  whine  a  small  black  spider-like object shot
through the air and disappeared down the corridor.

"What was that?" hissed Zaphod.

"Frogstar Scout robot class A out looking for you," said the man.

"Hey yeah?"

"Get down!"

>From the opposite  direction  came  a  larger  black  spider-like
object. It zapped past them.

"And that was ...?"

"A Frogstar Scout robot class B out looking for you."

"And that?" said Zaphod, as a third one seared through the air.

"A Frogstar Scout robot class C out looking for you."

"Hey," chuckled Zaphod to himself, "pretty stupid robots eh?"

>From over the bridge came a  massive  rumbling  hum.  A  gigantic
black  shape was moving over it from the opposite tower, the size
and shape of a tank.

"Holy photon, what's that?"

"A tank," said the man, "Frogstar Scout robot class D come to get
you."

"Should we leave?"

"I think we should."

"Marvin!" called Zaphod.

"What do you want?"

Marvin rose from a pile of rubble further down the  corridor  and
looked at them.

"You see that robot coming towards us?"

Marvin looked at the gigantic black shape edging forward  towards
them over the bridge. He looked down at his own small metal body.
He looked back up at the tank.

"I suppose you want me to stop it," he said.

"Yeah."

"Whilst you save your skins."

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "get in there!"

"Just so long," said Marvin, "as I know where I stand."

The man tugged at Zaphod's arm, and Zaphod followed him off  down
the corridor.

A point occurred to him about this.

"Where are we going?" he said.

"Zarniwoop's office."

"Is this any time to keep an appointment?"

"Come on."




Marvin stood at the end of the bridge corridor.  He  was  not  in
fact  a  particularly small robot. His silver body gleamed in the
dusty sunbeams and shook with the  continual  barrage  which  the
building was still undergoing.

He did, however, look pitifully small as the gigantic black  tank
rolled  to  a  halt in front of him. The tank examined him with a
probe. The probe withdrew.
Marvin stood there.

"Out of my way little robot," growled the tank.

"I'm afraid," said Marvin, "that I've  been  left  here  to  stop
you."

The probe extended again for a quick recheck. It withdrew again.

"You? Stop me?" roared the tank. "Go on!"

"No, really I have," said Marvin simply.

"What are you armed with?" roared the tank in disbelief.

"Guess," said Marvin.

The tank's engines  rumbled,  its  gears  ground.  Molecule-sized
electronic  relays  deep in its micro-brain flipped backwards and
forwards in consternation.

"Guess?" said the tank.

Zaphod and the as yet unnamed man lurched up one corridor, down a
second  and  along  a  third.  The building continued to rock and
judder and this puzzled  Zaphod.  If  they  wanted  to  blow  the
building up, why was it taking so long?

With difficulty they reached one of a number of totally anonymous
unmarked doors and heaved at it. With a sudden jolt it opened and
they fell inside.

All this way, thought Zaphod, all this  trouble,  all  this  not-
lying-on-the-beach-having-a-wonderful-time,   and   for  what?  A
single chair, a single desk and a  single  dirty  ashtray  in  an
undecorated  office.  The  desk, apart from a bit of dancing dust
and single, revolutionary form of paper clip, was empty.

"Where," said Zaphod, "is Zarniwoop?" feeling  that  his  already
tenuous  grasp  of the point of this whole exercise was beginning
to slip.

"He's on an intergalactic cruise," said the man.

Zaphod tried to size the man up. Earnest type, he thought, not  a
barrel  of  laughs.  He  probably apportioned a fair whack of his
time to running up and  down  heaving  corridors,  breaking  down
doors and making cryptic remarks in empty offices.

"Let me introduce myself," the man said, "My name is Roosta,  and
this is my towel."

"Hello Roosta," said Zaphod.

"Hello, towel," he added as Roosta held out to him a rather nasty
old flowery towel. Not knowing what to do with it, he shook it by
the corner.

Outside the window, one of  the  huge  slug-like,  gunmetal-green
spaceships growled past.

"Yes, go on," said Marvin to the  huge  battle  machine,  "you'll
never guess."

"Errmmm  ..."  said  the  machine,  vibrating  with  unaccustomed
thought, "laser beams?"

Marvin shook his head solemnly.

"No," muttered the machine in  its  deep  guttural  rumble,  "Too
obvious. Anti-matter ray?" it hazarded.

"Far too obvious," admonished Marvin.

"Yes," grumbled the machine, somewhat abashed, "Er ... how  about
an electron ram?"

This was new to Marvin.

"What's that?" he said.

"One of these," said the machine with enthusiasm.

>From its turret emerged a sharp prong which spat a single  lethal
blaze  of  light.  Behind Marvin a wall roared and collapsed as a
heap of dust. The dust billowed briefly, then settled.

"No," said Marvin, "not one of those."

"Good though, isn't it?"

"Very good," agreed Marvin.

"I  know,"  said  the  Frogstar  battle  machine,  after  another
moment's  consideration,  "you must have one of those new Xanthic
Re-Structron Destabilized Zenon Emitters!"

"Nice, aren't they?" said Marvin.

"That's what you've got?" said the machine in considerable awe.

"No," said Marvin.

"Oh," said the machine, disappointed, "then it must be ..."

"You're thinking along the wrong  lines,"  said  Marvin,  "You're
failing  to  take  into  account  something  fairly  basic in the
relationship between men and robots."

"Er, I know," said the battle machine, "is it ..." it tailed  off
into thought again.

"Just think," urged Marvin, "they left me,  an  ordinary,  menial
robot,  to stop you, a gigantic heavy-duty battle machine, whilst
they ran off to save themselves. What do  you  think  they  would
leave me with?"

"Oooh, er," muttered the machine in alarm, "something pretty damn
devastating I should expect."

"Expect!" said Marvin, "oh yes, expect. I'll tell you  what  they
gave me to protect myself with shall I@"

"Yes, alright," said the battle machine, bracing itself.

"Nothing," said Marvin.

There was a dangerous pause.

"Nothing?" roared the battle machine.

"Nothing at all," intoned Marvin  dismally,  "not  an  electronic
sausage."

The machine heaved about with fury.

"Well, doesn't that just take the biscuit!" it roared,  "Nothing,
eh? Just don't think, do they?"

"And me," said Marvin in a soft low voice,  "with  this  terrible
pain in all the diodes down my left side."

"Makes you spit, doesn't it?"

"Yes," agreed Marvin with feeling.

"Hell that makes me angry," bellowed  the  machine,  "think  I'll
smash that wall down!"

The electron ram stabbed out another searing blaze of  light  and
took out the wall next to the machine.

"How do you think I feel?" said Marvin bitterly.

"Just ran off and left you, did they?" the machine thundered.

"Yes," said Marvin.

"I think I'll shoot down their bloody ceiling as well!" raged the
tank.

It took out the ceiling of the bridge.

"That's very impressive," murmured Marvin.

"You ain't seeing nothing yet," promised the machine, "I can take
out this floor too, no trouble!"

It took out the floor, too.

"Hell's bells!"  the  machine  roared  as  it  plummeted  fifteen
storeys and smashed itself to bits on the ground below.

"What a depressingly stupid machine,"  said  Marvin  and  trudged
away.




"So, do we just sit here, or what?" said Zaphod angrily, "what do
these guys out here want?"

"You, Beeblebrox," said Roosta, "they're going to take you to the
Frogstar - the most totally evil world in the Galaxy."

"Oh, yeah?" said Zaphod. "They'll have to come and get me first."

"They have come and got you,"  said  Roosta,  "look  out  of  the
window."

Zaphod looked, and gaped.

"The ground's going away!" he gasped, "where are they taking  the
ground?"

"They're taking the building," said Roosta, "we're airborne."

Clouds streaked past the office window.

Out in the open air again Zaphod could see the ring of dark green
Frogstar  Fighters  round  the  uprooted tower of the building. A
network of force beams radiated in from them and held  the  tower
in a firm grip.

Zaphod shook his head in perplexity.

"What have I done to deserve this?"  he  said,  "I  walk  into  a
building, they take it away."

"It's not what you've done they're worried about,"  said  Roosta,
"it's what you're going to do."

"Well don't I get a say in that?"

"You did, years ago. You'd better hold on, we're in  for  a  fast
and bumpy journey."

"If I ever meet myself," said Zaphod, "I'll hit myself so hard  I
won't know what's hit me."

Marvin trudged in through the door, looked at Zaphod  accusingly,
slumped in a corner and switched himself off.

On the bridge of the Heart of Gold, all was silent. Arthur stared
at  the  rack  in  front of him and thought. He caught Trillian's
eyes as she looked at him inquiringly.  He  looked  back  at  the
rack.

Finally he saw it.

He picked up five small plastic squares  and  laid  them  on  the
board that lay just in front of the rack.

The five squares had on them the five letters E, X, Q, U  and  I.
He laid them next to the letters S, I, T, E.
"Exquisite," he said, "on a triple word score.  Scores  rather  a
lot I'm afraid."

The ship bumped and scattered some of the letters for  the  'n'th
time.

Trillian sighed and started to sort them out again.

Up and down the silent corridors echoed Ford Prefect's feet as he
stalked the ship thumping dead instruments.

Why did the ship keep shaking? he thought.

Why did it rock and sway?

Why could he not find out where they were?

Where, basically, were they?

The left-hand tower of the Hitch  Hiker's  Guide  to  the  Galaxy
offices  streaked  through  interstellar  space  at a speed never
equalled either before or since by any other office block in  the
Universe.

In a room halfway up it, Zaphod Beeblebrox strode angrily.

Roosta sat on the edge of  the  desk  doing  some  routine  towel
maintenance.

"Hey, where did you say this building was  flying  to?"  demanded
Zaphod.

"The Frogstar," said Roosta, "the most totally evil place in  the
Universe."

"Do they have food there?" said Zaphod.

"Food? You're going to the  Frogstar  and  you're  worried  about
whether they got food?"

"Without food I may not make it to the Frogstar."

Out of the window, they could  see  nothing  but  the  flickering
light  of  the  force  beams,  and vague green streaks which were
presumably the distorted shapes of the Frogstar Fighters. At this
speed, space itself was invisible, and indeed unreal.

"Here, suck this," said Roosta, offering Zaphod his towel.

Zaphod stared at him as if he expected a cuckoo to  leap  out  of
his forehead on a small spring.

"It's soaked in nutrients," explained Roosta.

"What are you, a messy eater or something?" said Zaphod.

"The yellow stripes are high in  protein,  the  green  ones  have
vitamin  B  and  C  complexes,  the  little  pink flowers contain
wheatgerm extracts."
Zaphod took and looked at it in amazement.

"What are the brown stains?" he asked.

"Bar-B-Q sauce," said Roosta, "for when I get sick of wheatgerm."

Zaphod sniffed it doubtfully.

Even more doubtfully, he sucked a corner. He spat it out again.

"Ugh," he stated.

"Yes," said Roosta, "when I've had to suck  that  end  I  usually
need to suck the other end a bit too."

"Why," asked Zaphod suspiciously, "what's in that?"

"Anti-depressants," said Roosta.

"I've gone right off this towel, you know," said  Zaphod  handing
it back.

Roosta took it back from him, swung himself off the desk,  walked
round it, sat in the chair and put his feet up.

"Beeblebrox," he said, sticking his hands behind his head,  "have
you any idea what's going to happen to you on the Frogstar?"

"They're going to feed me?" hazarded Zaphod hopefully.

"They're going  to  feed  you,"  said  Roosta,  "into  the  Total
Perspective Vortex!"

Zaphod had never heard of this. He believed that he had heard  of
all  the  fun  things in the Galaxy, so he assumed that the Total
Perspective Vortex was not fun. He asked what it was.

"Only," said Roosta, "the most savage psychic torture a sentinent
being can undergo."

Zaphod nodded a resigned nod.

"So," he said, "no food, huh?"

"Listen!" said Roosta urgently, "you can kill a man, destroy  his
body, break his spirit, but only the Total Perspective Vortex can
annihilate a man's soul! The treatment  lasts  seconds,  but  the
effect lasts the rest of your life!"

"You ever had  a  Pan  Galactic  Gargle  Blaster?"  asked  Zaphod
sharply.

"This is worse."

"Phreeow!" admitted Zaphod, much impressed.

"Any idea why these guys might want to do this to me?" he added a
moment later.
"They believe it will be the best way of destroying you for ever.
They know what you're after."

"Could they drop me a note and let me know as well?"

"You know," said Roosta, "you know, Beeblebrox. You want to  meet
the man who rules the Universe."

"Can he cook?" said Zaphod. On reflection he added:

"I doubt if he can. If he could cook  a  good  meal  he  wouldn't
worry about the rest of the Universe. I want to meet a cook."

Roosta sighed heavily.

"What are you doing here anyway?" demanded  Zaphod,  "what's  all
this got to so with you?"

"I'm just one  of  those  who  planned  this  thing,  along  with
Zarniwoop,  along  with  Yooden  Vranx,  along  with  your  great
grandfather, along with you, Beeblebrox."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. I was told you  had  changed,  I  didn't  realize  how
much."

"But ..."

"I am here to do one job. I will do it before I leave you."

"What job, man, what are you talking about?"

"I will do it before I leave you."

Roosta lapsed into an impenetrable silence.

Zaphod was terribly glad.




The air around the second planet of the Frogstar system was stale
and unwholesome.

The dank winds that swept continually over its surface swept over
salt  flats,  dried  up marshland, tangled and rotting vegetation
and the crumbling remains of ruined cities. No life moved  across
its  surface.  The ground, like that of many planets in this part
of the Galaxy, had long been deserted.

The howl of the wind was desolate enough as it gusted through the
old  decaying  houses  of  the cities; it was more desolate as it
whipped about the bottoms of the tall black  towers  that  swayed
uneasily  here  and there about the surface of this world. At the
top of these  towers  lived  colonies  of  large,  scraggy,  evil
smelling  birds, the sole survivors of the civilization that once
lived here.
The howl of the wind was at its most desolate, however,  when  it
passed  over a pimple of a place set in the middle of a wide grey
plain on the outskirts of the largest of the abandoned cities.

This pimple of a place was the thing that had earned  this  world
the  reputation  of  being  the  most  totally  evil place in the
Galaxy. From without it was simply a steel dome about thirty feet
across. From within it was something more monstrous than the mind
can comprehend.

About a hundred yards or so away, and  separated  from  it  by  a
pockmarked and blasted stretch of the most barren land imaginable
was what would probably have to be described as a landing pad  of
sorts. That is to say that scattered over a largish area were the
ungainly hulks of two or three dozen crash-landed buildings.

Flitting over and around these buildings was a mind, a mind  that
was waiting for something.

The mind directed its attention into the  air,  and  before  very
long  a  distant  speck appeared, surrounded by a ring of smaller
specks.

The larger speck was the left-hand tower  of  the  Hitch  Hiker's
Guide  to  the  Galaxy  office  building,  descending through the
stratosphere of Frogstar World B.

As it descended, Roosta suddenly  broke  the  long  uncomfortable
silence that had grown up between the two men.

He stood up and gathered his towel into a bag. He said:

"Beeblebrox, I will now do the job I was sent here to do."

Zaphod looked up at him from where he was  sitting  in  a  corner
sharing unspoken thoughts with Marvin.

"Yeah?" he said.

"The building  will  shortly  be  landing.  When  you  leave  the
building, do not go out of the door," said Roosta, "go out of the
window."

"Good luck," he added, and walked out of the  door,  disappearing
from Zaphod's life as mysteriously as he had entered it.

Zaphod leapt up and tried the door, but Roosta had already looked
it. He shrugged and returned to the corner.

Two minutes later, the building  crashlanded  amongst  the  other
wreckage. Its escort of Frogstar Fighters deactivated their force
beams and soared off into the air again, bound for Frogstar World
A,  an  altogether  more  congenial  spot.  They  never landed on
Frogstar World B. No one did. No one ever walked on  its  surface
other than the intended victims of the Total Perspective Vortex.

Zaphod was badly shaken by the crash. He lay for a while  in  the
silent  dusty  rubble to which most of the room had been reduced.
He felt that he was at the lowest ebb he had ever reached in  his
life.  He  felt  bewildered,  he  felt  lonely,  he felt unloved.
Eventually he felt he ought to get whatever it was over with.

He looked around the cracked and broken room. The wall had  split
round the door frame, and the door hung open. The window, by some
miracle was closed and unbroken. For a while he  hesitated,  then
he  thought  that  if  his  strange and recent companion had been
through all that he had been through just to tell him what he had
told  him, then there must be a good reason for it. With Marvin's
help he got the window  open.  Outside  it,  the  cloud  of  dust
aroused  by  the crash, and the hulks of the other buildings with
which this one was surrounded, effectively prevented Zaphod  from
seeing anything of the world outside.

Not that this concerned him unduly. His main concern was what  he
saw  when he looked down. Zarniwoop's office was on the fifteenth
floor. The building had landed at  a  tilt  of  about  forty-five
degrees, but still the descent looked heart-stopping.

Eventually, stung by the continuous series of contemptuous  looks
that  Marvin appeared to be giving him, he took a deep breath and
clambered out on to the steeply inclined side  of  the  building.
Marvin  followed him, and together they began to crawl slowly and
painfully down the fifteen floors that separated  them  from  the
ground.

As he crawled, the dank air and dust choked his lungs,  his  eyes
smarted and the terrifying distance down made his heads spin.

The occasional remark from Marvin of the order of  "This  is  the
sort  of  thing  you  lifeforms  enjoy  is  it?  I ask merely for
information," did little to improve his state of mind.

About half-way down the  side  of  the  shattered  building  they
stopped to rest. It seemed to Zaphod as he lay there panting with
fear and exhaustion that Marvin seemed a mite more cheerful  than
usual.  Eventually  he  realized  this  wasn't so. The robot just
seemed cheerful in comparison with his own mood.

A large, scraggy black bird  came  flapping  through  the  slowly
settling  clouds  of  dust and, stretching down its scrawny legs,
landed on an inclined window ledge a couple of yards from Zaphod.
It folded its ungainly wings and teetered awkwardly on its perch.

Its wingspan must have been something like six feet, and its head
and  neck  seemed  curiously large for a bird. Its face was flat,
the beak underdeveloped, and half-way along the underside of  its
wings the vestiges of something handlike could be clearly seen.

In fact, it looked almost human.

It turned its heavy eyes on Zaphod and  clicked  its  beak  in  a
desultory fashion.

"Go away," said Zaphod.

"OK," muttered the bird morosely and flapped off  into  the  dust
again.
Zaphod watched its departure in bewilderment.

"Did that bird just talk to me?" he asked  Marvin  nervously.  He
was  quite  prepared to believe the alternative explanation, that
he was in fact hallucinating.

"Yes," confirmed Marvin.

"Poor souls," said a deep, ethereal voice in Zaphod's ear.

Twisting round violently to find the source of the  voice  nearly
caused  Zaphod to fall off the building. He grabbed savagely at a
protruding window fitting and cut his hand on  it.  He  hung  on,
breathing heavily.

The voice had no visible source  whatever  -  there  was  no  one
there. Nevertheless, it spoke again.

"A tragic history behind them, you know. A terrible blight."

Zaphod looked wildly about. The voice  was  deep  and  quiet.  In
other circumstances it would even be described as soothing. There
is,  however,  nothing  soothing  about  being  addressed  by   a
disembodied  voice  out of nowhere, particularly if you are, like
Zaphod Beeblebrox, not at your best  and  hanging  from  a  ledge
eight storeys up a crashed building.

"Hey, er ..." he stammered.

"Shall I tell you their story?" inquired the voice quietly.

"Hey, who are you?" panted Zaphod. "Where are you?"

"Later then, perhaps," murmured the voice. "I am Gargravarr. I am
the Custodian of the Total Perspective Vortex."

"Why can't I see ..."

"You  will  find  your  progress  down   the   building   greatly
facilitated,"  the  voice lifted, "if you move about two yards to
your left. Why don't you try it?"

Zaphod looked and  saw  a  series  of  short  horizontal  grooves
leading  all the way down the side of the building. Gratefully he
shifted himself across to them.

"Why don't I see you again at the bottom?" said the voice in  his
ear, and as it spoke it faded.

"Hey," called out Zaphod, "Where are you ..."

"It'll only take a couple of minutes ..."  said  the  voice  very
faintly.

"Marvin," said Zaphod earnestly to the robot squatting dejectedly
next to him, "Did a ... did a voice just ..."

"Yes," Marvin replied tersely.
Zaphod nodded. He took out his Peril Sensitive Sunglasses  again.
They  were  completely black, and by now quite badly scratched by
the unexpected metal object in his pocket. He  put  them  on.  He
would  find  his  way  down  the  building more comfortably if he
didn't actually have to look at what he was doing.

Minutes  later  he  clambered  over  the   ripped   and   mangled
foundations   of   the  building  and,  once  more  removing  his
sunglasses, he dropped to the ground.

Marvin joined him a moment or so later and lay face down  in  the
dust and rubble, from which position he seemed too disinclined to
move.

"Ah, there you are," said the voice  suddenly  in  Zaphod's  ear,
"excuse  me  leaving  you  like  that,  it's  just  that I have a
terrible head for heights. At least," it added wistfully, "I  did
have a terrible head for heights."

Zaphod looked around slowly and carefully, just to see if he  had
missed  something  which might be the source of the voice. All he
saw, however, was the dust, the rubble and the towering hulks  of
the encircling buildings.

"Hey, er, why can't I see you?" he said, "why aren't you here?"

"I am here," said the voice slowly, "my body wanted to  come  but
it's  a  bit  busy  at  the moment. Things to do, people to see."
After what seemed like a sort of ethereal  sigh  it  added,  "You
know how it is with bodies."

Zaphod wasn't sure about this.

"I thought I did," he said.

"I only hope it's gone for a rest  cure,"  continued  the  voice,
"the  way  it's  been  living  recently  it  must  be on its last
elbows."

"Elbows?" said Zaphod, "don't you mean last legs?"

The  voice  said  nothing  for  a  while.  Zaphod  looked  around
uneasily.  He  didn't  know  if it was gone or was still there or
what it was doing. Then the voice spoke again.

"So, you are to be put into the Vortex, yes?"

"Er, well," said Zaphod with a very poor attempt at  nonchalance,
"this  cat's  in  no hurry, you know. I can just slouch about and
take in a look at the local scenery, you know?"

"Have you seen the local scenery?" asked the voice of Gargravarr.

"Er, no."

Zaphod clambered over the rubble, and rounded the corner  of  one
of the wrecked buildings that was obscuring his view.
He looked out at the landscape of Frogstar World B.

"Ah, OK," he said, "I'll just sort of slouch about then."

"No," said Gargravarr, "the Vortex is ready for you now. You must
come. Follow me."

"Er, yeah?" said Zaphod, "and how am I meant to do that?"

"I'll hum for you," said Gargravarr, "follow the humming."

A soft keening sound drifted through the air, a pale,  sad  sound
that  seemed  to  be  without  any  kind of focus. It was only by
listening very carefully that  Zaphod  was  able  to  detect  the
direction  from which it was coming. Slowly, dazedly, he stumbled
off in its wake. What else was there to do?




The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big
place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend
to ignore.

Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their  own
devising, and this is what most beings in fact do.

For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies  the
large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire "intelligent" population
of which lives permanently in one fairly small  and  crowded  nut
tree. In which tree they are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny
speculative articles in the bark on  the  meaning  of  life,  the
futility  of  death  and the importance of birth control, fight a
few extremely minor wars, and  eventually  die  strapped  to  the
underside of some of the less accessible outer branches.

In fact the only Oglaroonians who ever leave their tree are those
who  are  hurled  out  of  it  for the heinous crime of wondering
whether any of the other trees might  be  capable  of  supporting
life at all, or indeed whether the other trees are anything other
than illusions brought on by eating too many Oglanuts.

Exotic though this behaviour may seem, there is no life  form  in
the  Galaxy  which  is  not in some way guilty of the same thing,
which is why the Total Perspective Vortex is as  horrific  as  it
is.

For when you are put into the  Vortex  you  are  given  just  one
momentary   glimpse   of  the  entire  unimaginable  infinity  of
creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic
dot on a microscopic dot, which says "You are here."

The grey plain  stretched  before  Zaphod,  a  ruined,  shattered
plain. The wind whipped wildly over it.

Visible in the middle was the steel pimple  of  the  dome.  This,
gathered  Zaphod,  was  where  he  was  going. This was the Total
Perspective Vortex.
As he stood and gazed bleakly at it, a  sudden  inhuman  wail  of
terror  emanated  from  it as of a man having his soul burnt from
his body. It screamed above the wind and died away.

Zaphod started with fear and his blood seemed to turn  to  liquid
helium.

"Hey, what was that?" he muttered voicelessly.

"A recording," said Gargravarr, "of the last man who was  put  in
the  Vortex.  It  is  always played to the next victim. A sort of
prelude."

"Hey, it really sounds bad ..." stammered  Zaphod,  "couldn't  we
maybe  slope  off  to  a party or something for a while, think it
over?"

"For all I know," said Gargravarr's ethereal voice, "I'm probably
at  one. My body that is. It goes to a lot of parties without me.
Says I only get in the way. Hey ho."

"What is all this with your body?" said Zaphod, anxious to  delay
whatever it was that was going to happen to him.

"Well, it's ... it's busy you know," said Gargravarr hesitantly.

"You mean it's got a mind of its own?" said Zaphod.

There was a long and  slightly  chilly  pause  before  Gargravarr
spoke again.

"I have to say," he replied eventually, "that I find that  remark
in rather poor taste."

Zaphod muttered a bewildered and embarrassed apology.

"No matter," said Gargravarr, "you weren't to know."

The voice fluttered unhappily.

"The truth is," it continued in  tones  which  suggested  he  was
trying  very hard to keep it under control, "the truth is that we
are currently undergoing a period of legal  trial  separation.  I
suspect it will end in divorce."

The voice was still again, leaving Zaphod with no idea of what to
say. He mumbled uncertainly.

"I think we are probably not very well suited,"  said  Gargravarr
again  at  length,  "we  never  seemed to be happy doing the same
things. We  always  had  the  greatest  arguments  over  sex  and
fishing.  Eventually  we  tried to combine the two, but that only
led to disaster, as you can probably imagine.  And  now  my  body
refuses to let me in. It won't even see me ..."

He paused again, tragically. The wind whipped across the plain.

"It says I only inhibit it. I pointed out  that  in  fact  I  was
meant  to  inhibit it, and it said that that was exactly the sort
of smart alec remark that got right up a body's left nostril, and
so we left it. It will probably get custody of my forename."

"Oh ..." said Zaphod faintly, "and what's that?"

"Pizpot," said the voice, "My name is Pizpot Gargravarr. Says  it
all really doesn't it?"

"Errr ..." said Zaphod sympathetically.

"And that is why  I,  as  a  disembodied  mind,  have  this  job,
Custodian  of the Total Perspective Vortex. No one will ever walk
on the ground of this planet. Except the victims of the Vortex  -
they don't really count I'm afraid."

"Ah ..."

"I'll tell you the story. Would you like to hear it?"

"Er ..."

"Many years ago this was  a  thriving,  happy  planet  -  people,
cities  shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of
these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than  one  might
have  thought  necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of
these shoe shops were increasing.  It's  a  well  known  economic
phenomenon  but  tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe
shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and  the  worse
and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear,
the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the  more
the  shops  proliferated,  until  the  whole economy of the place
passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event  Horizon,  and  it
became  no  longer  economically possible to build anything other
than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of  the
population  died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic
instability mutated into birds - you've seen one of  them  -  who
cursed  their feet, cursed the ground, and vowed that none should
walk on it again. Unhappy lot. Come,  I  must  take  you  to  the
Vortex."

Zaphod shook his head in bemusement and stumbled  forward  across
the plain.

"And you," he said, "you come from this hellhole pit do you?"

"No no," said Gargravarr, taken aback, "I come from the  Frogstar
World C. Beautiful place. Wonderful fishing. I flit back there in
the evenings. Though all  I  can  do  now  is  watch.  The  Total
Perspective  Vortex  is  the  only  thing on this planet with any
function. It was built here because no  one  else  wanted  it  on
their doorstep."

At that moment another dismal scream  rent  the  air  and  Zaphod
shuddered.

"What can do that to a guy?" he breathed.

"The Universe,"  said  Gargravarr  simply,  "the  whole  infinite
Universe. The infinite suns, the infinite distances between them,
and yourself an invisible dot on  an  invisible  dot,  infinitely
small."

"Hey, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox,  man,  you  know,"  muttered  Zaphod
trying to flap the last remnants of his ego.

Gargravarr made no reply, but merely resumed his mournful humming
till  they  reached the tarnished steel dome in the middle of the
plain.

As they reached it, a door hummed open in the side,  revealing  a
small darkened chamber within.

"Enter," said Gargravarr.

Zaphod started with fear.

"Hey, what, now?" he said.

"Now."

Zaphod peered nervously inside. The chamber was  very  small.  It
was  steel-lined  and  there was hardly space in it for more than
one man.

"It ... er ... it doesn't look like any kind of  Vortex  to  me,"
said Zaphod.

"It isn't," said Gargravarr, "it's just the elevator. Enter."

With infinite trepidation Zaphod stepped into it. He was aware of
Gargravarr being in the elevator with him, though the disembodied
man was not for the moment speaking.

The elevator began its descent.

"I must get myself into  the  right  frame  of  mind  for  this,"
muttered Zaphod.

"There is no right frame of mind," said Gargravarr sternly.

"You really know how to make a guy feel inadequate."

"I don't. The Vortex does."

At the bottom of the shaft, the rear of the  elevator  opened  up
and  Zaphod stumbled out into a smallish, functional, steel-lined
chamber.

At the far side of it stood a  single  upright  steel  box,  just
large enough for a man to stand in.

It was that simple.

It connected to a small pile of components and instruments via  a
single thick wire.

"Is that it?" said Zaphod in surprise.
"That is it."

Didn't look too bad, thought Zaphod.

"And I get in there do I?" said Zaphod.

"You get in there," said Gargravarr, "and I'm afraid you must  do
it now."

"OK, OK," said Zaphod.

He opened the door of the box and stepped in.

Inside the box he waited.

After five seconds there was a click, and the entire Universe was
there in the box with him.




The Total Perspective Vortex derives its  picture  of  the  whole
Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.

To explain - since every piece of matter in the  Universe  is  in
some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe,
it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of  creation  -
every  sun,  every  planet,  their  orbits, their composition and
their economic and social history from, say, one small  piece  of
fairy cake.

The  man  who  invented  the  Total  Perspective  Vortex  did  so
basically in order to annoy his wife.

Trin Tragula - for that was his name - was a dreamer, a  thinker,
a  speculative  philosopher  or,  as  his  wife would have it, an
idiot.

And she would nag him incessantly about  the  utterly  inordinate
amount  of  time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over
the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of
pieces of fairy cake.

"Have some sense of proportion!"  she  would  say,  sometimes  as
often as thirty-eight times in a single day.

And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex - just to show her.

And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as  extrapolated
from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his
wife: so that when he turned it on she saw  in  one  instant  the
whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.

To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock  completely  annihilated  her
brain;  but  to  his  satisfaction he realized that he had proved
conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this
size,  then  the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of
proportion.
The door of the Vortex swung open.

>From his disembodied mind Gargravarr watched dejectedly.  He  had
rather  liked  Zaphod Beeblebrox in a strange sort of way. He was
clearly a man of many qualities, even if  they  were  mostly  bad
ones.

He waited for him to flop forwards out of the box,  as  they  all
did.

Instead, he stepped out.

"Hi!" he said.

"Beeblebrox ..." gasped Gargravarr's mind in amazement.

"Could I have a drink please?" said Zaphod.

"You ... you ... have been in the Vortex?" stammered Gargravarr.

"You saw me, kid."

"And it was working?"

"Sure was."

"And you saw the whole infinity of creation?"

"Sure. Really neat place, you know that?"

Gargravarr's mind was reeling in astonishment. Had his body  been
with  him  it  would have sat down heavily with its mouth hanging
open.

"And you saw yourself," said Gargravarr, "in relation to it all?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah."

"But ... what did you experience?"

Zaphod shrugged smugly.

"It just told me what I knew all the time. I'm a really  terrific
and great guy. Didn't I tell you, baby, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox!"

His gaze passed over the machinery which powered the  vortex  and
suddenly stopped, startled.

He breathed heavily.

"Hey," he said, "is that really a piece of fairy cake?"

He ripped the small piece of confectionery from the sensors  with
which it was surrounded.

"If I told you how much I needed this," he  said  ravenously,  "I
wouldn't have time to eat it."

He ate it.




 A short while later he was  running  across  the  plain  in  the
direction of the ruined city.

The dank air wheezed heavily  in  his  lungs  and  he  frequently
stumbled  with  the  exhaustion  he  was still feeling. Night was
beginning to fall too, and the rough ground was treacherous.

The elation of his recent experience was still with  him  though.
The  whole Universe. He had seen the whole Universe stretching to
infinity around him - everything. And with it had come the  clear
and  extraordinary knowledge that he was the most important thing
in it. Having a conceited ego is one thing. Actually  being  told
by a machine is another.

He didn't have time to reflect on this matter.

Gargravarr had told him that he would have to alert  his  masters
as  to  what  had  happened,  but that he was prepared to leave a
decent interval before doing so. Enough time for Zaphod to make a
break and find somewhere to hide.

What he was going to do he didn't know, but feeling that  he  was
the most important person in the Universe gave him the confidence
to believe that something would turn up.

Nothing else on this blighted planet could give him much  grounds
for optimism.

He ran on, and soon reached the outskirts of the abandoned city.

He walked along cracked and gaping  roads  riddled  with  scrawny
weeds,  the  holes  filled  with  rotting shoes. The buildings he
passed were so crumbled and decrepit  he  thought  it  unsafe  to
enter any of them. Where could he hide? He hurried on.

After a while the remains of a wide sweeping road  led  off  from
the  one down which he was walking, and at its end lay a vast low
building,  surrounded  with  sundry  smaller  ones,   the   whole
surrounded  by the remains of a perimeter barrier. The large main
building still seemed reasonably solid, and Zaphod turned off  to
see if it might provide him with ... well with anything.

He approached the building. Along one side of it - the  front  it
would  seem  since  it  faced  a wide concreted apron area - were
three gigantic doors, maybe sixty feet high. The far one of these
was open, and towards this, Zaphod ran.

Inside, all was gloom, dust and confusion. Giant cobwebs lay over
everything.  Part  of  the  infrastructure  of  the  building had
collapsed, part of the rear  wall  had  caved  in,  and  a  thick
choking dust lay inches over the floor.

Through the heavy gloom huge shapes loomed, covered with debris.

The  shapes  were  sometimes  cylindrical,   sometimes   bulbous,
sometimes  like  eggs,  or rather cracked eggs. Most of them were
split open or falling apart, some were mere skeletons.

They were all spacecraft, all derelict.

Zaphod wandered in frustration among the hulks. There was nothing
here  that  remotely  approached  the  serviceable. Even the mere
vibration  of  his  footsteps  caused  one  precarious  wreck  to
collapse further into itself.

Towards the rear of the  building  lay  one  old  ship,  slightly
larger  than  the others, and buried beneath even deeper piles of
dust and cobwebs. Its outline, however, seemed  unbroken.  Zaphod
approached it with interest, and as he did so, he tripped over an
old feedline.

He tried  to  toss  the  feedline  aside,  and  to  his  surprise
discovered that it was still connected to the ship.

To his utter astonishment he realized that the feedline was  also
humming slightly.

He stared at the ship in disbelief, and then  back  down  at  the
feedline in his hands.

He tore off his jacket and threw it aside. Crawling along on  his
hands  and  knees  he followed the feedline to the point where it
connected with the ship. The connection was sound, and the slight
humming vibration was more distinct.

His heart was beating fast. He wiped away some grime and laid  an
ear  against  the  ship's  side.  He  could  only  hear  a faint,
indeterminate noise.

He rummaged feverishly amongst the debris lying on the floor  all
about  him  and  found  a  short  length  of  tubing,  and a non-
biodegradable plastic cup. Out  of  this  he  fashioned  a  crude
stethoscope and placed it against the side of the ship.

What he heard made his brains turn somersaults.

The voice said:

"Transtellar Cruise Lines would like to apologize  to  passengers
for  the  continuing  delay  to  this  flight.  We  are currently
awaiting the loading of  our  complement  of  small  lemon-soaked
paper  napkins  for  your comfort, refreshment and hygiene during
the journey. Meanwhile we thank you for your patience. The  cabin
crew will shortly be serving coffee and biscuits again."

Zaphod staggered backwards, staring wildly at the ship.

He walked around for a few moments in a  daze.  In  so  doing  he
suddenly  caught  sight of a giant departure board still hanging,
but by only one support, from  the  ceiling  above  him.  It  was
covered   with   grime,  but  some  of  the  figures  were  still
discernible.

Zaphod's eyes searched amongst the figures, then made some  brief
calculations. His eyes widened.

"Nine hundred years ..." he breathed to  himself.  That  was  how
late the ship was.

Two minutes later he was on board.

As he stepped out of the airlock, the air that  greeted  him  was
cool and fresh - the air conditioning was still working.

The lights were still on.

He moved out of the small entrance chamber into  a  short  narrow
corridor and stepped nervously down it.

Suddenly a door opened and a figure stepped out in front of him.

"Please return to your seat sir,"  said  the  android  stewardess
and,  turning her back on him, she walked on down the corridor in
front of him.

When his heart had started beating again  he  followed  her.  She
opened the door at the end of the corridor and walked through.

He followed her through the door.

They were now in the passenger  compartment  and  Zaphod's  heart
stopped still again for a moment.

In every seat sat a passenger, strapped into his or her seat.

The passengers' hair was long and unkempt, their fingernails were
long, the men wore beards.

All of them were quite clearly alive - but sleeping.

Zaphod had the creeping horrors.

He walked slowly down the aisle as in a dream. By the time he was
half-way  down  the  aisle,  the stewardess had reached the other
end. She turned and spoke.

"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen," she said  sweetly,  "Thank
you  for  bearing  with  us  during this slight delay. We will be
taking off as soon as we possibly can. If you would like to  wake
up now I will serve you coffee and biscuits."

There was a slight hum.

At that moment, all the passengers awoke.

They awoke screaming and clawing at their straps and life support
systems  that held them tightly in their seats. They screamed and
bawled and hollered till Zaphod thought his ears would shatter.

They struggled and writhed as the stewardess patiently  moved  up
the  aisle placing a small cup of coffee and a packet of biscuits
in front of each one of them.
Then one of them rose from his seat.

He turned and looked at Zaphod.

Zaphod's skin was crawling all over his body as if it was  trying
to get off. He turned and ran from the bedlam.

He plunged through the door and back into the corridor.

The man pursued him.

He raced in a frenzy to the end  of  the  corridor,  through  the
entrance  chamber  and  beyond.  He  arrived  on the flight deck,
slammed and bolted the door behind him. He leant back against the
door breathing hard.

Within seconds, a hand started beating on the door.

>From somewhere on the flight deck a metallic voice addressed him.

"Passengers are not allowed on the flight deck. Please return  to
your seat, and wait for the ship to take off. Coffee and biscuits
are being served. This is your autopilot speaking. Please  return
to your seat."

Zaphod said nothing. He  breathed  hard,  behind  him,  the  hand
continued to knock on the door.

"Please return to your seat," repeated the autopilot. "Passengers
are not allowed on the flight deck."

"I'm not a passenger," panted Zaphod.

"Please return to your seat."

"I am not a passenger!" shouted Zaphod again.

"Please return to your seat."

"I am not a ... hello, can you hear me?"

"Please return to your seat."

You're the autopilot?" said Zaphod.

"Yes," said the voice from the flight console.

"You're in charge of this ship?"

"Yes," said the voice again, "there has been a delay.  Passengers
are  to  be  kept  temporarily  in suspended animation, for their
comfort and convenience. Coffee and  biscuits  are  being  served
every  year,  after  which  passengers  are returned to suspended
animation for their continued comfort and convenience.  Departure
will take place when the flight stores are complete. We apologize
for the delay."

Zaphod moved away from the door, on which the  pounding  had  now
ceased. He approached the flight console.
"Delay?" he cried, "Have you seen the world  outside  this  ship?
It's  a  wasteland,  a desert. Civilization's been and gone, man.
There  are  no  lemon-soaked  paper  napkins  on  the  way   from
anywhere!"

"The statistical likelihood," continued the autopilot primly, "is
that  other  civilizations  will  arise.  There  will  one day be
lemon-soaked paper napkins. Till  then  there  will  be  a  short
delay. Please return to your seat."

"But ..."

But at that moment the door opened. Zaphod span round to see  the
man  who  had  pursued  him  standing  there.  He carried a large
briefcase. He was smartly dressed, and his hair was short. He had
no beard and no long fingernails.

"Zaphod Beeblebrox," he said, "My name is  Zarniwoop.  I  believe
you wanted to see me."

Zaphod Beeblebrox wittered. His mouths said  foolish  things.  He
dropped into a chair.

"Oh man, oh man, where did you spring from?" he said.

"I've been waiting here for you," he said in a businesslike tone.

He put the briefcase down and sat in another chair.

"I am glad you followed instructions," he  said,  "I  was  a  bit
nervous  that  you  might  have left my office by the door rather
than the window. Then you would have been in trouble."

Zaphod shook his heads at him and burbled.

"When  you  entered  the  door  of  my  office,  you  entered  my
electronically  synthesized  Universe," he explained, "if you had
left by the door you would have been back in the  real  one.  The
artificial one works from here."

He patted the briefcase smugly.

Zaphod glared at him with resentment and loathing.

"What's the difference?" he muttered.

"Nothing," said Zarniwoop, "they are identical. Oh - except  that
I think the Frogstar Fighters are grey in the real Universe."

"What's going on?" spat Zaphod.

"Simple," said Zarniwoop. His self assurance  and  smugness  made
Zaphod seethe.

"Very simple," repeated Zarniwoop, "I discovered the  coordinated
at  which  this  man  could  be  found  -  the  man who rules the
Universe, and discovered that  his  world  was  protected  by  an
Unprobability  field.  To  protect  my  secret  -  and myself - I
retreated to the safety of this totally artificial  Universe  and
hid  myself  away  in  a  forgotten  cruise  liner. I was secure.
Meanwhile, you and I ..."

"You and I?" said Zaphod angrily, "you mean I knew you?"

"Yes," said Zarniwoop, "we knew each other well."

"I had no taste," said Zaphod and resumed a sullen silence.

"Meanwhile,  you  and  I  arranged  that  you  would  steal   the
Improbability  Drive  ship  -  the only one which could reach the
ruler's world - and bring it to me here. This you have now done I
trust,  and  I  congratulate you." He smiled a tight little smile
which Zaphod wanted to hit with a brick.

"Oh, and in case you  were  wondering,"  added  Zarniwoop,  "this
Universe  was  created  specifically  for you to come to. You are
therefore the most important person in this Universe.  You  would
never," he said with an even more brickable smile, "have survived
the Total Perspective Vortex in the real one. Shall we go?"

"Where?" said Zaphod sullenly. He felt collapsed.

"To your ship. The Heart of Gold. You did bring it I trust?"

"No."

"Where is your jacket?"

Zaphod looked at him in mystification.

"My jacket? I took it off. It's outside."

"Good, we will go and find it."

Zarniwoop stood up and gestured to Zaphod to follow him.

Out in the entrance chamber again, they could hear the screams of
the passengers being fed coffee and biscuits.

"It has not been a pleasant experience  waiting  for  you,"  said
Zarniwoop.

"Not pleasant for you!" bawled Zaphod, "How do you think ..."

Zarniwoop held up a silencing finger as the hatchway swung  open.
A few feet away from them they could see Zaphod's jacket lying in
the debris.

"A very remarkable  and  very  powerful  ship,"  said  Zarniwoop,
"watch."

As they watched, the pocket on the  jacket  suddenly  bulged.  It
split, it ripped. The small metal model of the Heart of Gold that
Zaphod had been bewildered to discover in his pocket was growing.

It grew, it continued to grow. It reached, after two minutes, its
full size.
"At an Improbability Level," said Zarniwoop, "of ... oh  I  don't
know, but something very large."

Zaphod swayed.

"You mean I had it with me all the time?"

"Zarniwoop smiled. He lifted up his briefcase and opened it.

He twisted a single switch inside it.

"Goodbye artificial Universe," he said, "hello real one!"

The scene before them shimmered briefly - and reappeared  exactly
as before.

"You see?" said Zarniwoop, "exactly the same."

 "You mean," repeated Zaphod tautly, "that I had it with  me  all
the time?"

"Oh yes," said Zarniwoop, "of course. That was the whole point."

"That's it," said Zaphod, "you can count me out, from  hereon  in
you  can count me out. I've had all I want of this. You play your
own games."

"I'm afraid you cannot leave," said Zarniwoop, "you are  entwined
in the Improbability field. You cannot escape."

He smiled the smile that Zaphod had wanted to hit and  this  time
Zaphod hit it.




Ford Prefect bounded up to the bridge of the Heart of Gold.

"Trillian!  Arthur!"  he  shouted,  "it's  working!  The   ship's
reactivated!"

Trillian and Arthur were asleep on the floor.

"Come on you guys, we're going off, we're off," he  said  kicking
them awake.

"Hi there guys!" twittered the computer, "it's really great to be
back  with you again, I can tell you, and I just want to say that
..."

"Shut up," said Ford, "tell us where the hell we are."

"Frogstar World B, and man it's a dump," said Zaphod  running  on
to the bridge, "hi, guys, you must be so amazingly glad to see me
you don't even find words to tell me what a cool frood I am."

"What a what?" said Arthur blearily, picking himself up from  the
floor and not taking any of this in.
"I know how you feel," said Zaphod, "I'm  so  great  even  I  get
tongue-tied talking to myself. Hey it's good to see you Trillian,
Ford, Monkeyman. Hey, er, computer ...?"

"Hi there, Mr Beeblebrox sir, sure is a great honor to ..."

"Shut up and get us out of here, fast fast fast."

"Sure thing, fella, where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere, doesn't matter," shouted Zaphod,  "yes  it  does!"  he
said again, "we want to go to the nearest place to eat!"

"Sure thing," said the computer happily and a  massive  explosion
rocket the bridge.

When Zarniwoop entered a minute or so later with a black eye,  he
regarded the four wisps of smoke with interest.




Four inert bodies sank through spinning blackness.  Consciousness
had  died, cold oblivion pulled the bodies down and down into the
pit of unbeing. The roar of silence echoed dismally  around  them
and  they  sank at last into a dark and bitter sea of heaving red
that slowly engulfed them, seemingly for ever.

After what seemed an eternity the sea receded and left them lying
on  a  cold  hard  shore, the flotsam and jetsam of the stream of
Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Cold spasms shook them, lights danced  sickeningly  around  them.
The  cold  hard  shore  tipped  and span and then stood still. It
shone darkly - it was a very highly polished cold hard shore.

A green blur watched them disapprovingly.

It coughed.

"Good evening,  madam,  gentlemen,"  it  said,  "do  you  have  a
reservation?"

Ford Prefect's consciousness snapped back  like  elastic,  making
his brain smart. He looked up woozily at the green blur.

"Reservation?" he said weakly. "Yes, sir," said the green blur.

"Do you need a reservation for the afterlife?"

In so far as it is possible for a green blur to arch its eyebrows
disdainfully, this is what the green blur now did.

"Afterlife, sir?" it said.

Arthur Dent was grappling with  his  consciousness  the  way  one
grapples with a lost bar of soap in the bath.
"Is this the afterlife?" he stammered.

"Well I assume so," said Ford Prefect trying to  work  out  which
way was up. He tested the theory that it must lie in the opposite
direction from the cold hard shore on which  he  was  lying,  and
staggered to what he hoped were his feet.

"I mean," he said, swaying gently, "there's no way we could  have
survived that blast is there?"

"No," muttered Arthur. He had raised himself on to his elbows but
it didn't seem to improve things. He slumped down again.

"No," said Trillian, standing up, "no way at all."

A dull hoarse gurgling sound came from the floor. It  was  Zaphod
Beeblebrox  attempting to speak. "I certainly didn't survive," he
gurgled, "I was a total goner. Wham bang and that was it."

"Yeah, thanks to you," said Ford, "We didn't stand a  chance.  We
must have been blown to bits. Arms, legs everywhere."

"Yeah," said Zaphod struggling noisily to his feet.

"If the lady and gentlemen would like to order drinks  ..."  said
the green blur, hovering impatiently beside them.

"Kerpow, splat," continued Zaphod, "instantaneously  zonked  into
our  component molecules. Hey, Ford," he said, identifying one of
the slowly solidifying blurs around him, "did you get that  thing
of your whole life flashing before you?"

"You got that too?" said Ford, "your whole life?"

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "at least I assume it was mine.  I  spent  a
lot of time out of my skulls you know."

He looked at around him at the various shapes that were  at  last
becoming  proper  shapes  instead of vague and wobbling shapeless
shapes.

"So ..." he said.

"So what?" said Ford.

"So here we are," said Zaphod hesitantly, "lying dead ..."

"Standing," Trillian corrected him.

"Er, standing dead," continued Zaphod, "in this desolate ..."

"Restaurant," said Arthur Dent who had got to his feet and  could
now, much to his surprise, see clearly. That is to say, the thing
that surprised him was not that he could see, but what  he  could
see.

"Here we are," continued Zaphod doggedly, "standing dead in  this
desolate ..."
"Five star ..." said Trillian.

"Restaurant," concluded Zaphod.

"Odd isn't it?" said Ford.

"Er, yeah."

"Nice chandeliers though," said Trillian.

They looked about themselves in bemusement.

"It's not so much an afterlife," said Arthur,  "more  a  sort  of
apres vie."

The chandeliers were in fact a little on the flashy side and  the
low  vaulted  ceiling from which they hung would not, in an ideal
Universe, have been painted in  that  particular  shade  of  deep
turquoise,  and  even  if  it  had  been  it  wouldn't  have been
highlighted by concealed moodlighting. This is not,  however,  an
ideal  Universe,  as  was  further  evidenced by the eye-crossing
patterns of the inlaid marble floor, and the  way  in  which  the
fronting  for  the  eighty-yard  long  marble-topped bar had been
made. The fronting for the eighty-yard long marble-topped bar had
been  made  by stitching together nearly twenty thousand Antarean
Mosaic Lizard skins, despite the fact that  the  twenty  thousand
lizards concerned had needed them to keep their insides in.

A few smartly dressed creatures were lounging casually at the bar
or  relaxing  in the richly coloured body-hugging seats that were
deployed here and there about  the  bar  area.  A  young  Vl'Hurg
officer  and  his  green  steaming  young lady passed through the
large smoked glass doors at the far  end  of  the  bar  into  the
dazzling light of the main body of the Restaurant beyond.

Behind Arthur was a large curtained bay window. He  pulled  aside
the  corner  of  the  curtain and looked out at a landscape which
under normal circumstances would have given Arthur  the  creeping
horrors.  These  were not, however, normal circumstances, for the
thing that froze his blood and made his skin try to crawl up  his
back and off the top of his head was the sky. The sky was ...

An attendant flunkey politely drew the curtain back into place.

"All in good time, sir," he said.

Zaphod's eyes flashed.

"Hey, hang about you dead guys," he said, "I think we're  missing
some ultra-important thing here you know. Something somebody said
and we missed it."

Arthur was profoundly relieved to turn his attention from what he
had just seen.

He said, "I said it was a sort of apres ..."

"Yeah, and don't you wish you hadn't?" said Zaphod, "Ford?"
"I said it was odd."

"Yeah, shrewd but dull, perhaps it was ..."

"Perhaps," interrupted the  green  blur  who  had  by  this  time
resolved  into  the  shape  of  a small wizened dark-suited green
waiter, "perhaps you would care to discuss the matter over drinks
..."

"Drinks!" cried Zaphod, "that was it! See what you  miss  if  you
don't stay alert."

"Indeed sir,"  said  the  waiter  patiently.  "If  the  lady  and
gentlemen would care to order drinks before dinner ..."

"Dinner!" Zaphod exclaimed with passion,  "Listen,  little  green
person,  my  stomach could take you home and cuddle you all night
for the mere idea."

"... and the Universe," concluded the waiter, determined  not  to
be  deflected  on  his home stretch, "will explode later for your
pleasure."

Ford's head swivelled towards him. He spoke with feeling.

"Wow," he said, "What sort of drinks do you serve in this place?"

The waiter laughed a polite little waiter's laugh.

"Ah," he said, "I think sir has perhaps misunderstood me."

"Oh, I hope not," breathed Ford.

The waiter coughed a polite little waiter's cough.

"It is not unusual for our customers to be a  little  disoriented
by the time journey," he said, "so if I might suggest ..."

"Time journey?" said Zaphod.

"Time journey?" said Ford.

"Time journey?" said Trillian.

"You mean this isn't the afterlife?" said Arthur.

The waiter smiled a polite little waiter's smile. He  had  almost
exhausted  his  polite little waiter repertoire and would soon be
slipping into his role of a rather  tight  lipped  and  sarcastic
little waiter.

"Afterlife sir?" he said, "No sir."

"And we're not dead?" said Arthur.

The waiter tightened his lips.

"Aha, ha," he said, "Sir is most  evidently  alive,  otherwise  I
would not attempt to serve sir."
In an extraordinary gesture  which  is  pointless  attempting  to
describe,  Zaphod  Beeblebrox slapped both his foreheads with two
of his arms and one of his thighs with the other.

"Hey guys," he said, "This  is  crazy.  We  finally  did  it.  We
finally got to where we were going. This is Milliways!"

"Yes sir," said the waiter, laying on the patience with a trowel,
"this is Milliways - the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."

"End of what?" said Arthur.

"The  Universe,"  repeated   the   waiter,   very   clearly   and
unnecessarily distinctly.

"When did that end?" said Arthur.

"In just a few minutes, sir," said the waiter.  He  took  a  deep
breath.  He  didn't  need  to do this since his body was supplied
with the peculiar assortment of gases it  required  for  survival
from  a  small  intravenous device strapped to his leg. There are
times, however, when whatever your metabolism you have to take  a
deep breath.

"Now, if you would care to order drinks at  last,"  he  said,  "I
will then show you to your table."

Zaphod grinned two manic grins, sauntered over  to  the  bar  and
bought most of it.




The Restaurant at the End of the Universe  is  one  of  the  most
extraordinary  ventures in the entire history of catering. It has
been built on the fragmented remains of ... it will be  built  on
the fragmented ... that is to say it will have been built by this
time, and indeed has been -

One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not  that
of  accidentally  becoming your own father or mother. There is no
problem involved in becoming your own father  or  mother  that  a
broadminded  and  well-adjusted  family can't cope with. There is
also no problem about changing the course of history - the course
of  history  does  not change because it all fits together like a
jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things
they  were  supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the
end.

The major problem is quite simply one of grammar,  and  the  main
work  to  consult in this matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time
Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will  tell  you
for  instance  how to describe something that was about to happen
to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping  forward
two  days  in  order  to  avoid  it.  The event will be described
differently according to whether you are talking  about  it  from
the  standpoint  of  your  own  natural  time, from a time in the
further future, or a time in the  further  past  and  is  further
complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations whilst
you are actually travelling from one time  to  another  with  the
intention of becoming your own father or mother.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semi-Conditionally Modified
Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up:
and in fact in later editions of the book all  the  pages  beyond
this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

The Hitch Hikers Guide to the  Galaxy  skips  lightly  over  this
tangle  of  academic  abstraction,  pausing only to note that the
term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was  discovered
not to be.

To resume:

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe  is  one  of  the  most
extraordinary ventures in the entire history of catering.

It is built on the fragmented remains  of  an  eventually  ruined
planet  which  is (wioll haven be) enclosed in a vast time bubble
and projected forward in time to the precise moment of the End of
the Universe.

This is, many would say, impossible.

In it, guests take (willan on-take) their places at table and eat
(willan on-eat) sumptuous meals whilst watching (willing watchen)
the whole of creation explode around them.

This is, many would say, equally impossible.

You can arrive (mayan arivan on-when) for any  sitting  you  like
without  prior  (late fore-when) reservation because you can book
retrospectively, as it were when you return  to  your  own  time.
(you  can have on-book haventa forewhen presooning returningwenta
retrohome.)

This is, many would now insist, absolutely impossible.

At the Restaurant you can meet and dine with  (mayan  meetan  con
with  dinan  on  when)  a fascinating cross-section of the entire
population of space and time.

This, it can be explained patiently, is also impossible.

You can visit it as many times as you like  (mayan  on-visit  re-
onvisiting  ... and so on - for further tense-corrections consult
Dr Streetmentioner's book) and be sure of never meeting yourself,
because of the embarrassment this usually causes.

This, even if the rest were true, which  it  isn't,  is  patently
impossible, say the doubters.

All you have to do is deposit one penny in a savings  account  in
your  own  era,  and  when  you  arrive  at  the  End of Time the
operation of compound interest means that the  fabulous  cost  of
your meal has been paid for.
This, many claim, is not merely impossible  but  clearly  insane,
which  is  why  the  advertising executives of the star system of
Bastablon  came  up  with  this  slogan:  "If  you've  done   six
impossible  things  this  morning,  why  not  round  it  off with
breakfast  at  Milliways,  the  Restaurant  at  the  End  of  the
Universe?"




At the bar, Zaphod was rapidly becoming as tired as a  newt.  His
heads  knocked  together and his smiles were coming out of synch.
He was miserably happy.

"Zaphod," said Ford, "whilst  you're  still  capable  of  speech,
would  you  care  to tell me what the photon happened? Where have
you been? Where have we been?  Small  matter,  but  I'd  like  it
cleared up."

Zaphod's left head sobered up, leaving his right to sink  further
into the obscurity of drink.

"Yeah," he said, "I've been around. They want me to find the  man
who  rules  the Universe, but I don't care to meet him. I believe
the man can't cook."

His left head watched his right head saying this and then nodded.

"True," it said, "have another drink."

Ford had another Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the drink which has
been  described  as  the  alcoholic  equivalent  of  a  mugging -
expensive and bad for  the  head.  Whatever  had  happened,  Ford
decided, he didn't really care too much.

"Listen Ford," said Zaphod, "everything's cool and froody."

"You mean everything's under control."

"No," said Zaphod, "I do not  mean  everything's  under  control.
That  would  not  be  cool  and  froody. If you want to know what
happened let's just say I had the whole situation in  my  pocket.
OK?"

Ford shrugged.

Zaphod giggled into his drink. It frothed up over the side of the
glass and started to eat its way into the marble bar top.

A wild-skinned sky-gypsy  approached  them  and  played  electric
violin at them until Zaphod gave him a lot of money and he agreed
to go away again.

The gypsy approached Arthur and Trillian sitting in another  part
of the bar.

"I don't know what this place is," said Arthur, "but I  think  it
gives me the creeps."
"Have another drink," said Trillian, "Enjoy yourself."

"Which?" said Arthur, "the two are mutually exclusive."

"Poor Arthur, you're not really cut out for this life are you?"

"You call this life?"

"You're beginning to sound like Marvin."

"Marvin's the clearest thinker I know. How do you think  we  make
this violinist go away?"

The waiter approached.

"Your table is ready," he said.

Seen  from  the  outside,  which  it  never  is,  the  Restaurant
resembles  a  giant  glittering  starfish  beached on a forgotten
rock. Each of  its  arms  houses  the  bars,  the  kitchens,  the
forcefield  generators which protect the entire structure and the
decayed planet on which it sits,  and  the  Time  Turbines  which
slowly  rock  the  whole affair backwards and forwards across the
crucial moment.

In the centre sits the gigantic golden dome,  almost  a  complete
globe,  and  it  was into this area that Zaphod, Ford, Arthur and
Trillian now passed.

At least five tons of glitter alone had gone into it before them,
and  covered every available surface. The other surfaces were not
available  because  they  were  already  encrusted  with  jewels,
precious  sea  shells  from Santraginus, gold leaf, mosaic tiles,
lizard skins and  a  million  unidentifiable  embellishments  and
decorations.  Glass glittered, silver shone, gold gleamed, Arthur
Dent goggled.

"Wowee," said Zaphod, "Zappo."

"Incredible!" breathed Arthur, "the people ... ! The  things  ...
!"

"The things," said Ford Prefect quietly, "are also people."

"The people ..." resumed Arthur, "the ... other people ..."

"The lights ... !" said Trillian.

"The tables ..." said Arthur.

"The clothes ... !" said Trillian.

The waiter thought they sounded like a couple of bailiffs.

"The End of the Universe is very popular," said Zaphod  threading
his  way  unsteadily  through  the throng of tables, some made of
marble, some of rich ultra-mahagony, some even of  platinum,  and
at  each  a party of exotic creatures chatting amongst themselves
and studying menus.
"People like to dress up for it," continued Zaphod, "Gives  it  a
sense of occasion."

The tables were fanned out in a large  circle  around  a  central
stage  area where a small band were playing light music, at least
a thousand tables was Arthur's guess,  and  interspersed  amongst
them  were  swaying palms, hissing fountains, grotesque statuary,
in short all the paraphernalia common to  all  Restaurants  where
little  expense  has  been  spared to give the impression that no
expense has been spared. Arthur glanced around, half expecting to
see someone making an American Express commercial.

Zaphod lurched into Ford, who lurched back into Zaphod.

"Wowee," said Zaphod.

"Zappo," said Ford.

"My great granddaddy must have really screwed up  the  computer's
works,  you  know,"  said  Zaphod,  "I  told it to take us to the
nearest place to eat and it sends us to the End of the  Universe.
Remind me to be nice to it one day."

He paused.

"Hey, everybody's here you know. Everybody who was anybody."

"Was?" said Arthur.

"At the End of the Universe you have to  use  the  past  tense  a
lot,"  said  Zaphod,  "'cos  everything's been done you know. Hi,
guys," he called out to a nearby party of giant iguana lifeforms,
"How did you do?"

"Is that Zaphod Beeblebrox?" asked one iguana of another iguana.

"I think so," replied the second iguana.

"Well doesn't that just take the biscuit," said the first iguana.

"Funny old thing, life," said the second iguana.

"It's what you make of it," said the first and they  lapsed  back
into  silence.  They  were  waiting  for the greatest show in the
Universe.

"Hey, Zaphod," said Ford, grabbing for his arm and, on account of
the  third  Pan  Galactic  Gargle  Blaster, missing. He pointed a
swaying finger.

"There's an old mate of mine," he said,  "Hotblack  Desiato!  See
the man at the platinum table with the platinum suit on?"

Zaphod tried to follow Ford's finger with his eyes  but  it  made
him feel dizzy. Finally he saw.

"Oh yeah," he said, then recognition came a moment later.  "Hey,"
he said, "did that guy ever make it megabig! Wow, bigger than the
biggest thing ever. Other than me."

"Who's he supposed to be?" asked Trillian.

"Hotblack Desiato?" said Zaphod in astonishment, "you don't know?
You never heard of Disaster Area?"

"No," said Trillian, who hadn't.

"The biggest," said Ford, "loudest ..."

"Richest ..." suggested Zaphod.

"... rock band in the history of ..." he searched for the word.

"... history itself," said Zaphod.

"No," said Trillian.

"Zowee," said Zaphod, "here we are at the End of the Universe and
you haven't even lived yet. Did you miss out."

He led her off to where the waiter had been waiting all this time
at the table. Arthur followed them feeling very lost and alone.

Ford waded off through the throng to renew an old acquaintance.

"Hey, er, Hotblack," he called out, "how you doing? Great to  see
you  big boy, how's the noise? You're looking great, really very,
very fat and unwell. Amazing." He slapped the man on the back and
was mildly surprised that it seemed to elict no response. The Pan
Galactic Gargle Blasters swirling round inside him  told  him  to
plunge on regardless.

"Remember the old days?" he said, "We used to  hang  out,  right?
The   Bistro  Illegal,  remember?  Slim's  Throat  Emporium?  The
Evildrome Boozarama, great days eh?"

Hotblack Desiato offered no opinion as to whether they were great
days or not. Ford was not perturbed.

"And when we were hungry we'd pose as public  health  inspectors,
you  remember  that?  And go around confiscating meals and drinks
right? Till we got food poisoning. Oh, and then  there  were  the
long  nights  of talking and drinking in those smelly rooms above
the Cafe Lou in Gretchen Town, New Betel, and you were always  in
the  next  room  trying to write songs on your ajuitar and we all
hated them. And you said you didn't care,  and  we  said  we  did
because  we  hated  them  so much." Ford's eyes were beginning to
mist over.

"And you said you didn't  want  to  be  a  star,"  he  continued,
wallowing  in  nostalgia,  "because you despised the star system.
And we said, Hadra and Sulijoo and me, that we didn't  think  you
had the option. And what do you do now? You buy star systems!"

He turned and solicited the attention of those at nearby tables.

"Here," he said, "is a man who buys star systems!"
Hotblack Desiato made no attempt either to confirm or  deny  this
fact, and the attention of the temporary audience waned rapidly.

"I think someone's drunk," muttered a purple bush-like being into
his wine glass.

Ford staggered slightly, and sat down heavily on the chair facing
Hotblack Desiato.

"What's that number you do?" he  said,  unwisely  grabbing  at  a
bottle  for  support and tipping it over - into a nearby glass as
it happened. Not to waste a happy accident, he drained the glass.

"That really huge number," he continued, "how does it go? `Bwarm!
Bwarm!  Baderr!!'  something, and in the stage act you do it ends
up with this ship crashing right into the sun, and  you  actually
do it!"

Ford crashed his fist into his other hand to illustrate this feat
graphically. He knocked the bottle over again.

"Ship! Sun! Wham bang!" he  cried.  "I  mean  forget  lasers  and
stuff,  you  guys are into solar flares and real sunburn! Oh, and
terrible songs."

His eyes followed the stream of liquid glugging out of the bottle
on to the table. Something ought to be done about it, he thought.

"Hey, you want a drink?" he said.  It  began  to  sink  into  his
squelching mind that something was missing from this reunion, and
that the missing something was in some  way  connected  with  the
fact  that  the fat man sitting opposite him in the platinum suit
and the silvery trilby had not yet said "Hi, Ford" or  "Great  to
see you after all this time," or in fact anything at all. More to
the point he had not yet even moved.

"Hotblack?" said Ford.

A large meaty hand landed on his shoulder from behind and  pushed
him aside. He slid gracelessly off his seat and peered upwards to
see if he could spot the owner of  this  discourteous  hand.  The
owner  was not hard to spot, on account of his being something of
the order of seven feet tall and not slightly built with  it.  In
fact  he was built the way one builds leather sofas, shiny, lumpy
and with lots of solid stuffing. The suit into  which  the  man's
body  had been stuffed looked as if it's only purpose in life was
to demonstrate how difficult it was to get this sort of body into
a  suit.  The face had the texture of an orange and the colour of
an apple, but there the resemblance to anything sweet ended.

"Kid ..." said a voice which emerged from the man's mouth  as  if
it had been having a really rough time down in his chest.

"Er, yeah?" said Ford conversationally. He staggered back to  his
feet  again  and was disappointed that the top of his head didn't
come further up the man's body.

"Beat it," said the man.
"Oh yeah?" said Ford, wondering how wise he was being,  "and  who
are you?"

The man considered this for a moment. He  wasn't  used  to  being
asked  this sort of question. Nevertheless, after a while he came
up with an answer.

"I'm the guy who's telling you to beat it," he said, "before  you
get it beaten for you."

"Now listen," said Ford nervously - he wished his head would stop
spinning,  settle down and get to grips with the situation - "Now
listen," he continued, "I am one of Hotblack's oldest friends and
..."

He glanced at Hotblack Desiato, who still hadn't moved so much as
an eyelash.

"... and ..." said Ford again, wondering what  would  be  a  good
word to say after "and".

The large man came up with a whole sentence to go after "and". He
said it.

"And I am Mr Desiato's bodyguard," it went, "and I am responsible
for his body, and I am not responsible for yours, so take it away
before it gets damaged."

"Now wait a minute," said Ford.

"No minutes!" boomed  the  bodyguard,  "no  waiting!  Mr  Desiato
speaks to no one!"

"Well perhaps you'd let him say what he thinks about  the  matter
himself," said Ford.

"He speaks to no one!" bellowed the bodyguard.

Ford glanced anxiously at Hotblack again and was forced to  admit
to  himself  that  the  bodyguard seemed to have the facts on his
side. There was still not the slightest  sign  of  movement,  let
alone keen interest in Ford's welfare.

"Why?" said Ford, "What's the matter with him?"

The bodyguard told him.




The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a
plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally
held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy,  but  in
fact  the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers
judge that the best sound balance is usually  to  be  heard  from
within  large  concrete  bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the
stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments  by
remote  control  from  within a heavily insulated spaceship which
stays in orbit around the planet - or more  frequently  around  a
completely different planet.

Their songs are on the whole very simple and  mostly  follow  the
familiar  theme  of  boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery
moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.

Many worlds have now banned their act altogether,  sometimes  for
artistic  reasons,  but  most  commonly because the band's public
address  system  contravenes  local  strategic  arms  limitations
treaties.

This has not, however, stopped their earnings from  pushing  back
the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research
accountant   has   recently   been   appointed    Professor    of
Neomathematics  at  the University of Maximegalon, in recognition
of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax
Returns,  in  which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-
time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.

Ford staggered  back  to  the  table  where  Zaphod,  Arthur  and
Trillian were sitting waiting for the fun to begin.

"Gotta have some food," said Ford.

"Hi, Ford," said Zaphod, "you speak to the big noise boy?"

Ford waggled his head noncommittally.

"Hotblack? I sort of spoke to him, yeah."

"What'd he say?"

"Well, not a lot really. He's ... er ..."

"Yeah?"

"He's spending a year dead for  tax  reasons.  I've  got  to  sit
down."

He sat down.

The waiter approached.

"Would you like to see the menu?" he said, "or would you like  to
meet the Dish of the Day?"

"Huh?" said Ford.

"Huh?" said Arthur.

"Huh?" said Trillian.

"That's cool," said Zaphod, "we'll meet the meat."

In a small room in one of the arms of the  Restaurant  complex  a
tall,  thin,  gangling figure pulled aside a curtain and oblivion
looked him in the face.
It was not a pretty face, perhaps because oblivion had looked him
in  it  so  many times. It was too long for a start, the eyes too
sunken and too hooded, the cheeks too hollow, his lips  were  too
thin and too long, and when they parted his teeth looked too much
like a recently polished bay window.  The  hands  that  held  the
curtain  were  long  and  thin too: they were also cold. They lay
lightly along the folds of the curtain and  gave  the  impression
that if he didn't watch them like a hawk they would crawl away of
their own accord and do something unspeakable in a corner.

He let the curtain drop and the terrible light that had played on
his  features went off to play somewhere more healthy. He prowled
around his small chamber like a mantis contemplating an evening's
preying,  finally settling on a rickety chair by a trestle table,
where he leafed through a few sheets of jokes.

A bell rang.

He pushed the thin sheaf of papers aside and stood up. His  hands
brushed  limply  over  some  of  the one million rainbow-coloured
sequins with which his jacket was  festooned,  and  he  was  gone
through the door.

In the Restaurant the lights dimmed, the band quickened its pace,
a single spotlight stabbed down into the darkness of the stairway
that led up to the centre of the stage.

Up the stairs bounded bounded a tall brilliantly coloured figure.
He  burst  on to the stage, tripped lightly up to the microphone,
removed it from its stand with one swoop of his  long  thin  hand
and  stood  for  a  moment  bowing left and right to the audience
acknowledging their applause  and  displaying  to  them  his  bay
window.  He  waved to his particular friends in the audience even
though there weren't any there, and waited for  the  applause  to
die down.

He held up his hand and smiled a smile that stretched not  merely
from  ear  to  ear, but seemed to extend some way beyond the mere
confines of his face.

"Thank you ladies and gentlemen!" he cried, "thank you very much.
Thank you so much."

He eyed them with a twinkling eye.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "The Universe as we know it  has
now  been  in existence for over one hundred and seventy thousand
million billion years and will be ending in a little over half an
hour. So, welcome one and all to Milliways, the Restaurant at the
End of the Universe!"

With a gesture he deftly conjured another  round  of  spontaneous
applause. With another gesture he cut it.

"I  am  your  host  for  tonight,"  he  said,  "my  name  is  Max
Quordlepleen  ..."  (Everybody  knew  this,  his  act  was famous
throughout the known  Galaxy,  but  he  said  it  for  the  fresh
applause  it  generated, which he acknowledged with a disclaiming
smile and wave.) "... and I've just come straight from  the  very
very other end of time, where I've been hosting a show at the Big
Bang Burger Bar - where I can tell you we  had  a  very  exciting
evening  ladies  and  gentlemen  -  and  I will be with you right
through this historic occasion, the End of History itself!"

Another burst of applause died away quickly as the lights  dimmed
down   further.   On   every  table  candles  ignited  themselves
spontaneously, eliciting a slight gasp from all  the  diners  and
wreathing them in a thousand tiny flickering lights and a million
intimate shadows. A tremor of  excitement  thrilled  through  the
darkened Restaurant as the vast golden dome above them began very
very slowly to dim, to darken, to fade.

Max's voice was hushed as he continued.

"So, ladies and gentlemen," he breathed, "the  candles  are  lit,
the  band  plays  softly, and as the force-shielded dome above us
fades into transparency, revealing a dark  and  sullen  sky  hung
heavy  with  the  ancient light of livid swollen stars, I can see
we're all in for a fabulous evening's apocalypse!"

Even the soft tootling of the band faded away  as  stunned  shock
descended on all those who had not seen this sight before.

A monstrous, grisly light poured in on them,

- a hideous light,

- a boiling, pestilential light,

- a light that would have disfigured hell.

The Universe was coming to an end.

For a few  interminable  seconds  the  Restaurant  span  silently
through the raging void. Then Max spoke again.

"For those of you who ever hoped to see the light at the  end  of
the tunnel," he said, "this is it."

The band struck up again.

"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen," cried Max, "I'll be back  with
you again in just a moment, and meanwhile I leave you in the very
capable hands of Mr Reg Nullify and his  cataclysmic  Combo.  Big
hand please ladies and gentlemen for Reg and the boys!"

The baleful turmoil of the skies continued.

Hesitantly the audience began to clap and after a  moment  or  so
normal  conversation  resumed. Max began his round of the tables,
swapping jokes, shouting with laughter, earning his living.

A large dairy animal  approached  Zaphod  Beeblebrox's  table,  a
large  fat  meaty  quadruped of the bovine type with large watery
eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating
smile on its lips.

"Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I
am  the  main  Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my
body?" It  harrumphed  and  gurgled  a  bit,  wriggled  its  hind
quarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at
them.

Its gaze was met by looks of startled  bewilderment  from  Arthur
and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger
from Zaphod Beeblebrox.

"Something off  the  shoulder  perhaps?"  suggested  the  animal,
"Braised in a white wine sauce?"

"Er, your shoulder?" said Arthur in a horrified whisper.

"But naturally my shoulder, sir," mooed the  animal  contentedly,
"nobody else's is mine to offer."

Zaphod leapt to his feet and started  prodding  and  feeling  the
animal's shoulder appreciatively.

"Or the rump is very  good,"  murmured  the  animal.  "I've  been
exercising  it  and  eating  plenty of grain, so there's a lot of
good meat there." It gave  a  mellow  grunt,  gurgled  again  and
started to chew the cud. It swallowed the cud again.

"Or a casserole of me perhaps?" it added.

"You mean this animal actually wants us  to  eat  it?"  whispered
Trillian to Ford.

"Me?" said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes,  "I  don't  mean
anything."

"That's  absolutely  horrible,"  exclaimed  Arthur,   "the   most
revolting thing I've ever heard."

"What's the problem Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring  his
attention to the animal's enormous rump.

"I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing here inviting
me to," said Arthur, "it's heartless."

"Better than eating an animal that doesn't  want  to  be  eaten,"
said Zaphod.

"That's not the point," Arthur protested. Then he  thought  about
it  for  a  moment. "Alright," he said, "maybe it is the point. I
don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just ... er
..."

The Universe raged about him in its death throes.

"I think I'll just have a green salad," he muttered.

"May I urge you to consider my liver?" asked the animal, "it must
be  very  rich  and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself
for months."

"A green salad," said Arthur emphatically.
"A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly
at Arthur.

"Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I  shouldn't  have
green salad?"

"Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables  that  are  very
clear  on  that  point. Which is why it was eventually decided to
cut through the whole tangled problem and breed  an  animal  that
actually  wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly
and distinctly. And here I am."

It managed a very slight bow.

"Glass of water please," said Arthur.

"Look," said Zaphod, "we want to eat, we don't  want  to  make  a
meal  of  the  issues.  Four  rare  steaks  please, and hurry. We
haven't eaten in five hundred and  seventy-six  thousand  million
years."

The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle.

"A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good,"  it  said,
"I'll just nip off and shoot myself."

He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur.

"Don't worry, sir," he said, "I'll be very humane."

It waddled unhurriedly off into the kitchen.

A matter of minutes later  the  waiter  arrived  with  four  huge
steaming  steaks.  Zaphod  and  Ford  wolfed  straight  into them
without a second's hesitation. Trillian paused, then shrugged and
started into hers.

Arthur stared at his feeling slightly ill.

"Hey, Earthman," said Zaphod with a malicious grin  on  the  face
that wasn't stuffing itself, "what's eating you?"

And the band played on.

All around the Restaurant people and things relaxed and  chatted.
The  air  was  filled  with  talk  of this and that, and with the
mingled scents of exotic plants, extravagant foods and  insidious
wines.  For  an  infinite  number of miles in every direction the
universal  cataclysm  was  gathering  to  a  stupefying   climax.
Glancing at his watch, Max returned to the stage with a flourish.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen," he beamed, "is  everyone  having
one last wonderful time?"

"Yes," called out the sort of people  who  call  out  "yes"  when
comedians ask them if they're having a wonderful time.

"That's wonderful," enthused Max, "absolutely wonderful.  And  as
the  photon storms gather in swirling crowds around us, preparing
to tear apart the last of the red hot suns,  I  know  you're  all
going  to  settle back and enjoy with me what I know we will find
all an immensely exciting and terminal experience."

He paused. He caught the audience with a glittering eye.

"Believe me, ladies and gentlemen,"  he  said,  "there's  nothing
penultimate about this one."

He paused again. Tonight his timing was  immaculate.  Time  after
time  he had done this show, night after night. Not that the word
night had any meaning here at the extremity of  time.  All  there
was  was  the  endless  repetition  of  the  final moment, as the
Restaurant  rocked  slowly  forward  over  the  brink  of  time's
furthest edge - and back again. This "night" was good though, the
audience was writhing in the palm of his sickly hand.  His  voice
dropped. They had to strain to hear him.

"This," he said, "really is the absolute end, the final  chilling
desolation, in which the whole majestic sweep of creation becomes
extinct. This ladies and gentlemen is the proverbial `it'."

He dropped his voice still lower. In the stillness, a  fly  would
not have dared cleat its throat.

"After this,"  he  said,  "there  is  nothing.  Void.  Emptiness.
Oblivion. Absolute nothing ..."

His eyes glittered again - or did they twinkle?"

"Nothing ... except of course for the sweet trolley, and  a  fine
selection of Aldebaran liqueurs!"

The band gave him a musical sting. He wished  they  wouldn't,  he
didn't  need  it, not an artist of his calibre. He could play the
audience like his own musical instrument. They were laughing with
relief. He followed on.

"And for once," he cried cheerily, "you don't need to worry about
having  a  hangover  in  the morning - because there won't be any
more mornings!"

He beamed at his happy, laughing audience. He glanced up  at  the
sky,  going  through  the  same dead routine every night, but his
glance was only for a fraction of a second. He trusted it  to  do
its job, as one professional trusts another.

"And now," he said, strutting about the stage, "at  the  risk  of
putting a damper on the wonderful sense of doom and futility here
this evening, I would like to welcome a few parties."

He pulled a card from his pocket.

"Do we have ..." he put up a hand to hold back the cheers, "Do we
have  a  party here from the Zansellquasure Flamarion Bridge Club
from beyond the Vortvoid of Qvarne? Are they here?"

A rousing cheer came from the back, but he pretended not to hear.
He peered around trying to find them.

"Are they here?" he asked again, to elict a louder cheer.

He got it, as he always did.

"Ah, there they are. Well, last bids  lads  -  and  no  cheating,
remember this is a very solemn moment."

He lapped up the laughter.

"And do we also have, do we have ... a  party  of  minor  deities
from the Halls of Asgard?"

Away to his right came  a  rumble  of  thunder.  Lightning  arced
across  the  stage.  A  small group of hairy men with helmets sat
looking very pleased with themselves, and raised their glasses to
him.

Hasbeens, he thought to himself.

"Careful with that hammer, sir," he said.

They did their trick with the lightning again. Max  gave  them  a
very thin lipped smile.

"And thirdly," he said, "thirdly a party of  Young  Conservatives
from Sirius B, are they here?"

A party of smartly dressed young dogs stopped throwing  rolls  at
each  other  and started throwing rolls at the stage. They yapped
and barked unintelligibly.

"Yes," said Max, "well this is all your fault, you realize that?"

"And finally," said Max, quieting the audience down  and  putting
on  his  solemn  face,  "finally  I  believe we have with us here
tonight, a party of believers, very devout  believers,  from  the
Church of the Second Coming of the Great Prophet Zarquon."

There were about twenty of them, sitting right out on the edge of
the  floor, ascetically dressed, sipping mineral water nervously,
and staying apart from the festivities. They blinked  resentfully
as the spotlight was turned on them.

"There they are," said Max, "sitting there,  patiently.  He  said
he'd  come again, and he's kept you waiting a long time, so let's
hope he's hurrying fellas, because he's only  got  eight  minutes
left!"

The party of  Zarquon's  followers  sat  rigid,  refusing  to  be
buffeted  by  the waves of uncharitable laughter which swept over
them.

Max restrained his audience.

"No, but seriously though folks,  seriously  though,  no  offence
meant.  No,  I know we shouldn't make fun of deeply held beliefs,
so I think a big hand please for the Great Prophet Zarquon ..."
The audience clapped respectfully.

"... wherever he's got to!"

He blew a kiss to the  stony-faced  party  and  returned  to  the
centre of the stage.

He grabbed a tall stool and sat on it.

"It's marvellous though," he rattled on, "to see so many  of  you
here  tonight  -  no isn't it though? Yes, absolutely marvellous.
Because I know that so many of you come here time and time again,
which  I  think is really wonderful, to come and watch this final
end of everything, and then return home to your own eras ...  and
raise  families,  strive  for  new  and  better  societies, fight
terrible wars for what you know to be right ... it  really  gives
one  hope  for  the future of all lifekind. Except of course," he
waved at the blitzing turmoil above and  around  them,  "that  we
know it hasn't got one ..."

Arthur turned to Ford - he hadn't quite got this place worked out
in his mind.

"Look, surely," he said, "if the Universe is  about  to  end  ...
don't we go with it?"

Ford gave him a three-Pan-Galactic-Gargle-Blaster look, in  other
words a rather unsteady one.

"No," he said, "look," he said, "as soon as you  come  into  this
dive you get held in this sort of amazing force-shielded temporal
warp thing. I think."

"Oh," said Arthur. He turned his attention back to a bowl of soup
he'd managed to get from the waiter to replace his steak.

"Look," said Ford, "I'll show you."

He grabbed at a napkin off the table and fumbled hopelessly  with
it.

"Look," he said  again,  "imagine  this  napkin,  right,  as  the
temporal Universe, right? And this spoon as a transductional mode
in the matter curve ..."

It took him a while to say this last part, and  Arthur  hated  to
interrupt him.

"That's the spoon I was eating with," he said.

"Alright," said Ford, "imagine this spoon ..." he found  a  small
wooden spoon on a tray of relishes, "this spoon ..." but found it
rather tricky to pick up, "no, better still this fork ..."

"Hey would you let go of my fork?" snapped Zaphod.

"Alright," said Ford, "alright, alright. Why don't we say ... why
don't we say that this wine glass is the temporal Universe ..."
"What, the one you've just knocked on the floor?"

"Did I do that?"

"Yes."

"Alright," said Ford, "forget that. I mean ... I mean,  look,  do
you know - do you know how the Universe actually began for a kick
off?"

"Probably not," said Arthur, who wished he'd  never  embarked  on
any of this.

"Alright," said Ford, "imagine this. Right. You  get  this  bath.
Right. A large round bath. And it's made of ebony."

"Where from?" said Arthur, "Harrods was destroyed by the Vogons."

"Doesn't matter."

"So you keep saying."

"Listen."

"Alright."

"You get this bath, see? Imagine you've got this bath.  And  it's
ebony. And it's conical."

"Conical?" said Arthur, "What sort of ..."

"Shhh!" said Ford. "It's conical. So what you do is, you see, you
fill it with fine white sand, alright? Or sugar. Fine white sand,
and/or sugar. Anything. Doesn't matter. Sugar's  fine.  And  when
it's full, you pull the plug out ... are you listening?"

"I'm listening."

"You pull the plug out, and it all just twirls away, twirls  away
you see, out of the plughole."

"I see."

"You don't see. You don't see at all. I haven't got to the clever
bit yet. You want to hear the clever bit?"

"Tell me the clever bit."

"I'll tell you the clever bit."

Ford thought for a moment, trying to remember what the clever bit
was.

"The clever bit," he said, "is this. You film it happening."

"Clever."

"That's not the clever bit. This is the clever  bit,  I  remember
now  that this is the clever bit. The clever bit is that you then
thread the film in the projector ... backwards!"

"Backwards?"

"Yes. Threading it backwards is definitely  the  clever  bit.  So
then,  you  just sit and watch it, and everything just appears to
spiral upwards out of the plughole and fill the bath. See?"

"And that's how the Universe began is it?" said Arthur.

"No," said Ford, "but it's a marvellous way to relax."

He reached for his wine glass.

"Where's my wine glass?" he said.

"It's on the floor."

"Ah."

Tipping back his chair to look for it,  Ford  collided  with  the
small  green  waiter  who  was  approaching  the table carrying a
portable telephone.

Ford excused himself to the waiter explaining that it was because
he was extremely drunk.

The waiter said that that was quite alright and that he perfectly
understood.

Ford thanked the waiter for his kind indulgence, attempted to tug
his forelock, missed by six inches and slid under the table.

"Mr Zaphod Beeblebrox?" inquired the waiter.

"Er, yeah?" said Zaphod, glancing up from his third steak.

"There is a phone call for you."

"Hey, what?"

"A phone call, sir."

"For me? Here? Hey, but who knows where I am?"

One of his minds raced. The other dawdled lovingly over the  food
it was still shovelling in.

"Excuse me if I carry on, won't you?" said his  eating  head  and
carried on.

There were now so many people  after  him  he'd  lost  count.  He
shouldn't  have  made  such a conspicuous entrance. Hell, why not
though, he thought. How do you know you're having fun if  there's
no one watching you have it?

"Maybe  someone  here  tipped  off  the  Galactic  Police,"  said
Trillian. "Everyone saw you come in."
"You mean they want to arrest me over the  phone?"  said  Zaphod,
"Could be. I'm a pretty dangerous dude when I'm concerned."

"Yeah," said a voice from under the table, "you go to  pieces  so
fast people get hit by the shrapnel."

"Hey, what is this, Judgment Day?" snapped Zaphod.

"Do we get to see that as well?" asked Arthur nervously.

"I'm in no hurry," muttered Zaphod, "OK, so who's the cat on  the
phone?"  He kicked Ford. "Hey get up there, kid," he said to him,
"I may need you."

"I am not," said the  waiter,  "personally  acquainted  with  the
metal gentlemen in question, sir ..."

"Metal?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you say metal?"

"Yes, sir. I said that I am not personally  acquainted  with  the
metal gentleman in question ..."

"OK, carry on."

"But I am informed that he has been awaiting your  return  for  a
considerable number of millennia. It seems you left here somewhat
precipitately."

"Left here?" said Zaphod, "are you being strange?  We  only  just
arrived here."

"Indeed, sir," persisted the waiter  doggedly,  "but  before  you
arrived here, sir, I understand that you left here."

Zaphod tried this in one brain, then in the other.

"You're saying," he said, "that before we arrived here,  we  left
here?"

This is going to be a long night, thought the waiter.

"Precisely, sir," he said.

"Put your analyst on danger money, baby," advised Zaphod.

"No, wait a minute," said Ford, emerging above table level again,
"where exactly is here?"

"To be absolutely exact sir, it is Frogstar World B."

"But we just left there," protested Zaphod, "we  left  there  and
came to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."

"Yes, sir," said the waiter, feeling that he  was  now  into  the
home  stretch  and  running well, "the one was constructed on the
ruins of the other."

"Oh," said Arthur brightly, "you mean we've travelled in time but
not in space."

"Listen you semi-evolved simian," cut in Zaphod, "go climb a tree
will you?"

Arthur bristled.

"Go bang your heads together four-eyes," he advised Zaphod.

"No, no," the waiter said to Zaphod,  "your  monkey  has  got  it
right, sir."

Arthur stuttered in fury and said  nothing  apposite,  or  indeed
coherent.

"You jumped forward ... I believe five  hundred  and  seventy-six
thousand million years whilst staying in exactly the same place,"
explained the waiter. He smiled. He had a wonderful feeling  that
he  had  finally  won  through  against  what  had  seemed  to be
insuperable odds.

"That's it!" said Zaphod, "I got it. I told the computer to  send
us  to the nearest place to eat, that's exactly what it did. Give
or take five hundred and seventy-six thousand million  years,  we
never moved. Neat."

They all agreed this was very neat.

"But who," said Zaphod, "is the cat on the phone?"

"Whatever happened to Marvin?" said Trillian.

Zaphod clapped his hands to his heads.

"The Paranoid Android! I left him moping about on Frogstar B."

"When was this?"

"Well, er, five hundred and seventy-six  thousand  million  years
ago I suppose," said Zaphod, "Hey, er, hand me the rap-rod, Plate
Captain."

The little waiter's  eyebrows  wandered  about  his  forehead  in
confusion.

"I beg your pardon, sir?" he said.

"The phone, waiter," said Zaphod, grabbing it off him. "Shee, you
guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off."

"Indeed, sir."

"Hey, Marvin, is that you?" said Zaphod into the phone, "How  you
doing, kid?"
There was a long pause before a thin low voice came up the line.

"I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed," it said.

Zaphod cupped his hands over the phone.

"It's Marvin," he said.

"Hey, Marvin," he said into the  phone  again,  "we're  having  a
great  time. Food, wine, a little personal abuse and the Universe
going foom. Where can we find you?"

Again the pause.

"You don't have to pretend to be interested in me you know," said
Marvin at last, "I know perfectly well I'm only a menial robot."

"OK, OK," said Zaphod, "but where are you?"

"`Reverse primary thrust, Marvin,' that's what they  say  to  me,
`open  airlock number three, Marvin. Marvin, can you pick up that
piece of paper?' Can I pick up that piece of paper!  Here  I  am,
brain the size of a planet and they ask me to ..."

"Yeah, yeah," sympathized Zaphod hardly at all.

"But I'm quite used to being humiliated," droned Marvin,  "I  can
even go and stick my head in a bucket of water if you like. Would
you like me to go and stick my head in a bucket  of  water?  I've
got one ready. Wait a minute."

"Er, hey, Marvin ..." interrupted Zaphod, but it  was  too  late.
Sad little clunks and gurgles came up the line.

"What's he saying?" asked Trillian.

"Nothing," said Zaphod, "he just phoned up to wash  his  head  at
us."

"There," said Marvin, coming back on the line and bubbling a bit,
"I hope that gave satisfaction ..."

"Yeah, yeah," said Zaphod, "now will you please tell us where you
are?"

"I'm in the car park," said Marvin.

"The car park?" said Zaphod, "what are you doing there?"

"Parking cars, what else does one do in a car park?"

"OK, hang in there, we'll be right down."

In one movement Zaphod leapt to his feet, threw  down  the  phone
and wrote "Hotblack Desiato" on the bill.

"Come on guys," he said, "Marvin's in the car park. Let's get  on
down."
"What's he doing in the car park?" asked Arthur.

"Parking cars, what else? Dum dum."

"But what about the End of  the  Universe?  We'll  miss  the  big
moment."

"I've seen it. It's rubbish," said Zaphod, "nothing  but  a  gnab
gib."

"A what?"

"Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let's get zappy."

Few of the other diners paid them any attention  as  they  weaved
their  way  through  the  Restaurant to the exit. Their eyes were
riveted on the horror of the skies.

"An interesting effect to watch for," Max was telling  them,  "is
in  the  upper  left-hand  quadrant of the sky, where if you look
very carefully you can see the star system Hastromil boiling away
into the ultra-violet. Anyone here from Hastromil?"

There were one or two slightly hesitant cheers from somewhere  at
the back.

"Well," said Max beaming cheerfully at them, "it's  too  late  to
worry about whether you left the gas on now."




The main reception foyer was almost empty but  Ford  nevertheless
weaved his way through it.

Zaphod grasped him firmly by the arm and manoeuvred  him  into  a
cubicle standing to one side of the entrance hall.

"What are you doing to him?" asked Arthur.

"Sobering him up," said Zaphod and pushed a  coin  into  a  slot.
Lights flashed, gases swirled.

"Hi," said Ford stepping  out  a  moment  later,  "where  are  we
going?"

"Down to the car park, come on."

"What about the personnel Time Teleports?"  said  Ford,  "Get  us
straight back to the Heart of Gold."

"Yeah, but I've cooled on that ship. Zarniwoop  can  have  it.  I
don't want to play his games. Let's see what we can find."

A  Sirius   Cybernetics   Corporation   Happy   Vertical   People
Transporter  took  them  down deep into the substrata beneath the
Restaurant. They were glad to see  it  had  been  vandalized  and
didn't try to make them happy as well as take them down.
At the bottom of the shaft the lift doors opened and a  blast  of
cold stale air hit them.

The first thing they saw on leaving the lift was a long  concrete
wall with over fifty doors in it offering lavatory facilities for
all of fifty major lifeforms. Nevertheless, like every  car  park
in  the  Galaxy  throughout the entire history of car parks, this
car park smelt predominantly of impatience.

They turned a corner and found themselves  on  a  moving  catwalk
that traversed a vast cavernous space that stretched off into the
dim distance.

It was divided off into bays each of which contained a space ship
belonging  to  one  of  the  diners  upstairs,  some smallish and
utilitarian  mass  production   models,   others   vast   shining
limoships, the playthings of the very rich.

Zaphod's eyes sparkled with something that may or  may  not  have
been  avarice  as  he  passed  over them. In fact it's best to be
clear on this point - avarice is definitely what it was.

"There he is," said Trillian, "Marvin, down there."

They looked where she was pointing. Dimly they could see a  small
metal  figure listlessly rubbing a small rag on one remote corner
of a giant silver suncruiser.

At short intervals along the  moving  catwalk,  wide  transparent
tubes  led  down  to  floor level. Zaphod stepped off the catwalk
into one and  floated  gently  downwards.  The  others  followed.
Thinking  back  to  this  later,  Arthur  Dent thought it was the
single most enjoyable experience of his travels in the Galaxy.

"Hey, Marvin," said Zaphod striding over towards  to  him,  "Hey,
kid, are we pleased to see you."

Marvin turned, and in so far as it  is  possible  for  a  totally
inert metal face to look reproachfully, this is what it did.

"No you're not," he said, "no one ever is."

"Suit yourself," said Zaphod and turned away to ogle  the  ships.
Ford went with him.

Only Trillian and Arthur actually went up to Marvin.

"No, really we are," said Trillian and patted him in a  way  that
he  disliked  intensely,  "hanging around waiting for us all this
time."

"Five hundred and seventy-six thousand  million,  three  thousand
five  hundred  and  seventy-nine  years," said Marvin, "I counted
them."

"Well, here we are now," said Trillian, felling - quite correctly
in Marvin's view - that it was a slightly foolish thing to say.

"The first ten million years were the worst," said  Marvin,  "and
the  second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third
million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit
of decline."

He paused just long enough to make them feel they  ought  to  say
something, and then interrupted.

"It's the people you meet in this job that really get you  down,"
he said and paused again.

Trillian cleared her throat.

"Is that ..."

"The best conversation I had was over forty million  years  ago,"
continued Marvin.

Again the pause.

"Oh d ..."

"And that was with a coffee machine."

He waited.

"That's a ..."

"You don't like talking to me do  you?"  said  Marvin  in  a  low
desolate tone.

Trillian talked to Arthur instead.

Further down the chamber Ford  Prefect  had  found  something  of
which he very much liked the look, several such things in fact.

"Zaphod," he said in a quiet voice, "just look at some  of  these
little star trolleys ..."

Zaphod looked and liked.

The craft they were looking at  was  in  fact  pretty  small  but
extraordinary, and very much a rich kid's toy. It was not much to
look at. It resembled nothing so  much  as  a  paper  dart  about
twenty  feet  long made of thin but tough metal foil. At the rear
end was a small horizontal two-man cockpit. It had a tiny  charm-
drive  engine,  which  was  not capable of moving it at any great
speed. The thing it did have, however, was a heat-sink.

The heat-sink had a mass of some two thousand  billion  tons  and
was  contained  within a black hole mounted in an electromagnetic
field situated half-way along the length of the  ship,  and  this
heat-sink  enabled  the  craft  to  be manoeuvred to within a few
miles of a yellow sun, there to catch and ride the  solar  flares
that burst out from its surface.

Flare-riding is one of the most exotic and exhilarating sports in
existence,  and  those who can dare and afford it are amongst the
most  lionized  men  in  the  Galaxy.  It  is  also   of   course
stupefyingly  dangerous  -  those who don't die riding invariably
die of sexual exhaustion at one of  the  Daedalus  Club's  Apres-
Flare parties.

Ford and Zaphod looked and passed on.

"And this baby," said Ford, "the tangerine star  buggy  with  the
black sunbusters ..."

Again, the star buggy was a small ship - a totally  misnamed  one
in   fact,   because   the  one  thing  it  couldn't  manage  was
interstellar distances. Basically it was a sporty  planet  hopper
dolled  up to something it wasn't. Nice lines though. They passed
on.

The next one was a big one and thirty yards long - a coach  built
limoship  and  obviously  designed  with one aim in mind, that of
making the beholder sick with envy. The paintwork  and  accessory
detail  clearly  said  "Not  only am I rich enough to afford this
ship, I am also rich enough not to take  it  seriously."  It  was
wonderfully hideous.

"Just look at  it,"  said  Zaphod,  "multi-cluster  quark  drive,
perspulex running boards. Got to be a Lazlar Lyricon custom job."

He examined every inch.

"Yes," he said,  "look,  the  infra-pink  lizard  emblem  on  the
neutrino cowling. Lazlar's trade mark. The man has no shame."

"I was passed by one of these  mothers  once,  out  by  the  Axel
Nebula,"  said  Ford,  "I  was going flat out and this thing just
strolled  past  me,  star  drive  hardly   ticking   over.   Just
incredible."

Zaphod whistled appreciatively.

"Ten seconds later", said Ford, "it  smashed  straight  into  the
third moon of Jaglan Beta."

"Yeah, right?"

"Amazing looking ship though. Looks like a  fish,  moves  like  a
fish, steers like a cow."

Ford looked round the other side.

"Hey, come and see," he called out, "there's a big mural  painted
on  this  side. A bursting sun - Disaster Area's trade mark. This
must be Hotblack's ship. Lucky old bugger. They do this  terrible
song  you know which ends with a stuntship crashing into the sun.
Meant to be  an  amazing  spectacle.  Expensive  in  stunt  ships
though."

Zaphod's attention  however  was  elsewhere.  His  attention  was
riveted on the ship standing next to Hotblack Desiato's limo. His
mouths hung open.

"That," he said, "that ... is really bad for the eyes ..."
Ford looked. He too stood astonished.

It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon,
twenty  yards  long,  very  clean, very sleek. There was just one
remarkable thing about it.

"It's so ... black!" said Ford Prefect, "you can hardly make  out
its shape ... light just seems to fall into it!"

Zaphod said nothing. He had simply fallen in love.

The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost  impossible
to tell how close you were standing to it.

"Your eyes just slide off it ..." said Ford in wonder. It was  an
emotional moment. He bit his lip.

Zaphod moved forward to it, slowly, like a  man  possessed  -  or
more  accurately  like  a  man  who  wanted  to possess. His hand
reached out to stroke it. His hand stopped. His hand reached  out
to stroke it again. His hand stopped again.

"Come and feel the surface," he said in a hushed voice.

Ford put his hand out to feel it. His hand stopped.

"You ... you can't ..." he said.

"See?" said Zaphod, "it's just totally frictionless. This must be
one mother of a mover ..."

He turned to look at Ford seriously. At least, one of  his  heads
did - the other stayed gazing in awe at the ship.

"What do you reckon, Ford?" he said.

"You mean ... er ..." Ford looked over his  shoulder.  "You  mean
stroll off with it? You think we should?"

"No."

"Nor do I."

"But we're going to, aren't we?"

"How can we not?"

They gazed a little longer, till Zaphod suddenly  pulled  himself
together.

"We better shift soon," he said. "In a moment or so the  Universe
will  have  ended and all the Captain Creeps will be pouring down
here to find their bourge-mobiles."

"Zaphod," said Ford.

"Yeah?"

"How do we do it?"
"Simple," said Zaphod. He turned. "Marvin!" he called.

Slowly, laboriously, and  with  a  million  little  clanking  and
creaking  noises  that  he had learned to simulate, Marvin turned
round to answer the summons.

"Come on over here," said Zaphod, "We've got a job for you."

Marvin trudged towards them.

"I won't enjoy it," he said.

"Yes you will,"  enthused  Zaphod,  "there's  a  whole  new  life
stretching out ahead of you."

"Oh, not another one," groaned Marvin.

"Will you shut up and listen!" hissed Zaphod, "this time  there's
going to be excitement and adventure and really wild things."

"Sounds awful," Marvin said.

"Marvin! All I'm trying to ask you ..."

"I suppose you want me to open this spaceship for you?"

"What? Er ... yes. Yeah, that's right," said Zaphod  jumpily.  He
was keeping at least three eyes on the entrance. Time was short.

"Well I wish you'd just tell me rather  than  try  to  engage  my
enthusiasm," said Marvin, "because I haven't got one."

He walked on up to the ship, touched it,  and  a  hatchway  swung
open.

Ford and Zaphod stared at the opening.

"Don't mention it," said Marvin, "Oh,  you  didn't."  He  trudged
away again.

Arthur and Trillian clustered round.

"What's happening?" asked Arthur.

"Look at this," said Ford, "look at the interior of this ship."

"Weirder and weirder," breathed Zaphod.

"It's black," said Ford, "Everything in it is just totally  black
..."

In the Restaurant, things were fast approaching the moment  after
which there wouldn't be any more moments.

All eyes were fixed on the dome, other  than  those  of  Hotblack
Desiato's  bodyguard,  which  were  looking  intently at Hotblack
Desiato,  and  those  of  Hotblack  Desiato  himself  which   the
bodyguard had closed out of respect.
The bodyguard leaned forward over the table. Had Hotblack Desiato
been  alive,  he probably would have deemed this a good moment to
lean back, or even go for a short walk. His bodyguard was  not  a
man  which improved with proximity. On account of his unfortunate
condition, however, Hotblack Desiato remained totally inert.

"Mr Desiato, sir?" whispered the bodyguard. Whenever he spoke, it
looked  as  if  the  muscles  on  either  side  of his mouth were
clambering over each other to get out of the way.

"Mr Desiato? Can you hear me?"

Hotblack Desiato, quit naturally, said nothing.

"Hotblack?" hissed the bodyguard.

Again,  quite  naturally,  Hotblack  Desiato   did   not   reply.
Supernaturally, however, he did.

On the table in front of him a wine glass  rattled,  and  a  fork
rose  an  inch  or so and tapped against the glass. It settled on
the table again.

The bodyguard gave a satisfied grunt.

"It's time we get going, Mr  Desiato,"  muttered  the  bodyguard,
"don't want to get caught in the rush, not in your condition. You
want to get to the next gig nice and relaxed. There was a  really
big  audience  for  it.  One of the best. Kakrafoon. Five-hundred
seventy-six thousand and two million years ago. Had you will have
been looking forward to it?"

The fork rose again, waggled in a non-committal sort of  way  and
dropped again.

"Ah, come on," said the  bodyguard,  "it's  going  to  have  been
great.  You  knocked 'em cold." The bodyguard would have given Dr
Dan Streetmentioner an apoplectic attack.

"The black ship going into the sun always gets 'em, and  the  new
one's  a  beauty.  Be  real sorry to see it go. If we get on down
there, I'll set the black ship autopilot and we'll cruise off  in
the limo. OK?"

The fork  tapped  once  in  agreement,  and  the  glass  of  wine
mysteriously emptied itself.

The  bodyguard  wheeled  Hotblack  Desiato's  chair  out  of  the
Restaurant.

"And now," cried Max from the centre of the  stage,  "the  moment
you've  all  been  waiting  for!" He flung his arms into the air.
Behind him, the band went into a frenzy of percussion and rolling
synthochords.  Max  had  argued with them about this but they had
claimed it was in their contract that that's what they would  do.
His agent would have to sort it out.

"The skies begin to boil!" he cried. "Nature collapses  into  the
screaming void! In twenty seconds' time, the Universe itself will
be at an end! See where the light of infinity bursts in upon us!"

The hideous fury of destruction blazed about them - and  at  that
moment  a  still  small  trumpet  sounded  as  from  an  infinite
distance. Max's eyes swivelled round to glare at the  band.  None
of  them seemed to be playing a trumpet. Suddenly a wisp of smoke
was swirling and shimmering on the stage next to him. The trumpet
was joined by more trumpets. Over five hundred times Max had done
this show, and nothing like this had  ever  happened  before.  He
drew  back  in alarm from the swirling smoke, and as he did so, a
figure slowly materialized inside, the figure of an ancient  man,
bearded,  robed and wreathed in light. In his eyes were stars and
on his brow a golden crown.

"What's this?" whispered Max, wild-eyed, "what's happening?"

At the back of the Restaurant  the  stony-faced  party  from  the
Church  of  the  Second Coming of the Great Prophet Zarquon leapt
ecstatically to their feet chanting and crying.

Max blinked in amazement. He threw up his arms to the audience.

"A big hand please, ladies and gentlemen," he hollered, "for  the
Great Prophet Zarquon! He has come! Zarquon has come again!"

Thunderous applause broke out as Max strode across the stage  and
handed his microphone to the Prophet.

Zarquon coughed. He peered round at the assembled gathering.  The
stars  in  his  eyes  blinked uneasily. He handled the microphone
with confusion.

"Er ..." he said, "hello. Er, look, I'm sorry  I'm  a  bit  late.
I've  had  the most ghastly time, all sorts of things cropping up
at the last moment."

He seemed nervous of the expectant  awed  hush.  He  cleared  his
throat.

"Er, how are we for time?" he said, "have I just got a min-"

And so the Universe ended.




One of the major selling point of that wholly  remarkable  travel
book,  the  Hitch  Hiker's  Guide  to  the Galaxy, apart from its
relative cheapness and the fact that it has the words Don't Panic
written   in   large  friendly  letters  on  its  cover,  is  its
compendious and occasionally accurate  glossary.  The  statistics
relating  to the geo-social nature of the Universe, for instance,
are deftly set out between pages nine  hundred  and  thirty-eight
thousand  and  twenty-four  and  nine  hundred  and  thirty-eight
thousand and twenty-six; and the simplistic style in  which  they
are  written  is  partly  explained by the fact that the editors,
having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information  off
the back of a packet of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it
with a few footnoted in order  to  avoid  prosecution  under  the
incomprehensibly tortuous Galactic Copyright laws.

It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the
book  backwards  in  time  through  a  temporal  warp,  and  then
successfully sued the breakfast cereal company  for  infringement
of the same laws.

Here is a sample:

The Universe - some information to help you live in it.

\begin{center}
\begin{itemize}
\item[Area: Infinite.]

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this  definition  of
the word "Infinite".

Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some.  Much
bigger  than  that  in  fact, really amazingly immense, a totally
stunning size, "wow, that's big", time. Infinity is just  so  big
that  by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic
multiplied by colossal multiplied by  staggeringly  huge  is  the
sort of concept we're trying to get across here.

\item[Imports: None.]

It is impossible to import things into an  infinite  area,  there
being no outside to import things in from.

\item[Exports: None.]

See imports.

\item[Population: None.]

It is known that there are an infinite number of  worlds,  simply
because  there  is an infinite amount of space for them to be in.
However, not every one of them  is  inhabited.  Therefore,  there
must  be  a  finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number
divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes  no  odds,  so
the  average population of all the planets in the Universe can be
said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of  the
whole  Universe  is  also  zero, and that any people you may meet
from  time  to  time  are  merely  the  products  of  a  deranged
imagination.

\item[Monetary Units: None.]

In fact there are three  freely  convertible  currencies  in  the
Galaxy,  but none of them count. The Altairan Dollar has recently
collapsed, the Flaninian Pobble Bead  is  only  exchangeable  for
other  Flaninian  Pobble  Beads,  and the Triganic Pu has its own
very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis  to  one
Pu  is  simple  enough,  but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber
coin six thousand eight hundred miles across each  side,  no  one
has  ever  collected  enough  to  own  one  Pu.  Ningis  are  not
negotiable currency because the Galactibanks refuse  to  deal  in
fiddling  small change. From this basic premise it is very simple
to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged
imagination.

\item[Art: None.]

The function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and there
simply isn't a mirror big enough - see point one.

\item[Sex: None.]

Well, in fact there is an awful lot of this, largely  because  of
the total lack of money, trade, banks, art, or anything else that
might keep all the non-existent people of the Universe occupied.

However, it is not worth embarking on a long discussion of it now
because   it   really   is   terribly  complicated.  For  further
information  see  Guide  Chapters  seven,  nine,   ten,   eleven,
fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one to eighty-four
inclusive, and in fact most of the rest of the Guide.

\end{itemize}
\end{center}



The  Restaurant  continued  existing,  but  everything  else  had
stopped.  Temporal  relastatics  held  it  and  protected it in a
nothingness that wasn't merely a vacuum, it was simply nothing  -
there was nothing in which a vacuum could be said to exist.

The force-shielded dome had once again been rendered opaque,  the
party  was  over,  the  diners were leaving, Zarquon had vanished
along with the rest of  the  Universe,  the  Time  Turbines  were
preparing to pull the Restaurant back across the brink of time in
readiness for the lunch sitting, and Max Quordlepleen was back in
his  small  curtained  dressing room trying to raise his agent on
the tempophone.

In the car park stood the black ship, closed and silent.

In to the car park came the late Mr Hotblack  Desiato,  propelled
along the moving catwalk by his bodyguard.

They descended one of the tubes. As they approached the  limoship
a  hatchway  swung  down from its side, engaged the wheels of the
wheelchair and drew it inside. The bodyguard followed, and having
seen  his  boss  safely connected up to his death-support system,
moved up to the  small  cockpit.  Here  he  operated  the  remote
control  system  which  activated the autopilot in the black ship
lying next to the limo,  thus  causing  great  relief  to  Zaphod
Beeblebrox  who  had  been trying to start the thing for over ten
minutes.

The black ship glided smoothly forward out of  its  bay,  turned,
and  moved  down the central causeway swiftly and quietly. At the
end it accelerated rapidly, flung itself into the temporal launch
chamber and began the long journey back into the distant past.

The Milliways Lunch Menu quotes, by permission,  a  passage  from
the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The passage is this:

The History of every major Galactic Civilization  tends  to  pass
through   three   distinct  and  recognizable  phases,  those  of
Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How,
Why and Where phases.

For instance, the first phase is characterized  by  the  question
"How  can  we  eat?", the second by the question "Why do we eat?"
and the third by the question, "Where shall we have lunch?"

The Menu goes on to suggest that Milliways, the Restaurant at the
End  of the Universe, would be a very agreeable and sophisticated
answer to that third question.

What it doesn't go on to say is that though it will usually  take
a  large civilization many thousands of years to pass through the
How, Why and Where phases, small social groupings under stressful
conditions can pass through them with extreme rapidity.

"How are we doing?" said Arthur Dent.

"Badly," said Ford Prefect.

"Where are we going?" said Trillian.

"I don't know," said Zaphod Beeblebrox.

"Why not?" demanded Arthur Dent.

"Shut up," suggested Zaphod Beeblebrox and Ford Prefect.

"Basically,  what  you're  trying  to  say,"  said  Arthur  Dent,
ignoring this suggestion, "is that we're out of control."

The ship was rocking and swaying sickeningly as Ford  and  Zaphod
tried to wrest control from the autopilot. The engined howled and
whined like tired children in a supermarket.

"It's the wild colour scheme that freaks me," said  Zaphod  whose
love  affair  with this ship had lasted almost three minutes into
the flight, "Every time you try to  operate  on  of  these  weird
black  controls that are labelled in black on a black background,
a little black light lights up black to let you know you've  done
it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?"

The walls of the swaying cabin were also black, the  ceiling  was
black,  the  seats  -  which  were  rudimentary  since  the  only
important trip this ship was designed  for  was  supposed  to  be
unmanned   -  were  black,  the  control  panel  was  black,  the
instruments were black, the little screws that held them in place
were  black,  the thin tufted nylon floor covering was black, and
when they had lifted up a corner of it they had  discovered  that
the foam underlay also was black.

"Perhaps whoever designed it had eyes that responded to different
wavelengths," offered Trillian.

"Or didn't have much imagination," muttered Arthur.

"Perhaps," said Marvin, "he was feeling very depressed."
In fact, though they weren't to  know  it,  the  decor  had  been
chosen in honour of its owner's sad, lamented, and tax-deductible
condition.

The ship gave a particularly sickening lurch.

"Take it easy," pleaded Arthur, "you're making me space sick."

"Time sick,"  said  Ford,  "we're  plummeting  backwards  through
time."

"Thank you," said Arthur, "now I think I really am  going  to  be
ill."

"Go ahead," said Zaphod, "we could do with a little colour  about
this place."

"This is meant to be a polite after-dinner conversation  is  it?"
snapped Arthur.

Zaphod left the controls for Ford to figure out, and lurched over
to Arthur.

"Look, Earthman," he said angrily,  "you've  got  a  job  to  do,
right? The Question to the Ultimate Answer, right?"

"What, that thing?" said Arthur, "I thought we'd forgotten  about
that."

"Not me, baby. Like the mice said, it's worth a lot of  money  in
the  right quarters. And it's all locked up in that head thing of
yours."

"Yes but ..."

"But nothing! Think about it. The Meaning of  Life!  We  get  our
fingers  on  that  we  can  hold every shrink in the Galaxy up to
ransom, and that's worth a bundle. I owe mine a mint."

Arthur took a deep breath without much enthusiasm.

"Alright," he said, "but where do we start? How  should  I  know?
They  say  the Ultimate Answer or whatever is Forty-two, how am I
supposed to know what the question is? It could  be  anything.  I
mean, what's six times seven?"

Zaphod looked at him hard for a moment. Then his eyes blazed with
excitement.

"Forty-two!" he cried.

Arthur wiped his palm across his forehead.

"Yes," he said patiently," I know that."

Zaphod's faces fell.

"I'm just saying that the question could  be  anything  at  all,"
said Arthur, "and I don't see how I am meant to know."
"Because," hissed Zaphod, "you were there when  your  planet  did
the big firework."

"We have a thing on Earth ..." began Arthur.

"Had," corrected Zaphod.

"... called tact. Oh never mind. Look, I just don't know."

A low voice echoed dully round the cabin.

"I know," said Marvin.

Ford called out from the controls he was still fighting a  losing
battle with.

"Stay out of this Marvin," he said, "this is organism talk."

"It's printed in the Earthman's  brainwave  patterns,"  continued
Marvin, "but I don't suppose you'll be very interested in knowing
that."

"You mean," said Arthur, "you mean you can see into my mind?"

"Yes," said Marvin.

Arthur stared in astonishment.

"And ...?" he said.

"It amazes me how you can manage to live in anything that small."

"Ah," said Arthur, "abuse."

"Yes," confirmed Marvin.

"Ah, ignore him," said Zaphod, "he's only making it up."

"Making it up?" said Marvin, swivelling his head in a  parody  of
astonishment,  "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad
enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."

"Marvin," said Trillian in the gentle, kindly voice that only she
was  still  capable  of  assuming  in talking to this misbegotten
creature, "if you knew all along, why then didn't you tell us?"

Marvin's head swivelled back to her.

"You didn't ask," he said simply.

"Well, we're asking you now, metal man," said Ford, turning round
to look at him.

At that moment the ship suddenly stopped rocking and swaying, the
engine pitch settled down to a gentle hum.

"Hey, Ford," said Zaphod, "that sounds good. Have you worked  out
the controls of this boat?"
"No," said Ford, "I just stopped fiddling with them. I reckon  we
just go to wherever this ship is going and get off it fast."

"Yeah, right," said Zaphod.

"I could tell you weren't really interested," murmured Marvin  to
himself and slumped into a corner and switched himself off.

"Trouble is," said Ford, "that the one instrument in  this  while
ship  that  is giving any reading is worrying me. If it is what I
think it is, and if it's saying what I think  it's  saying,  then
we've  already  gone too far back into the past. Maybe as much as
two million years before our own time."

Zaphod shrugged.

"Time is bunk," he said.

"I wonder who this ship belongs to anyway," said Arthur.

"Me," said Zaphod.

"No. Who it really belongs to."

"Really me," insisted Zaphod, "look, property  is  theft,  right?
Therefore theft is property. Therefore this ship is mine, OK?"

"Tell the ship that," said Arthur.

Zaphod strode over to the console.

"Ship," he said, banging on the panels, "this is your  new  owner
speaking to ..."

He got no further. Several things happened at once.

The ship dropped out fo time travel mode and re-emerged into real
space.

All the controls on the console, which had been shut down for the
time trip now lit up.

A  large  vision  screen  above  the  console  winked  into  life
revealing a wide starscape and a single very large sun dead ahead
of them.

None of these things, however, were responsible for the fact that
Zaphod was at the same moment hurled bodily backwards against the
rear of the cabin, as were all the others.

They were hurled back by a single thunderous clap of  noise  that
thuddered  out  of  the  monitor  speakers surrounding the vision
screen.




Down on the dry, red world of Kakrafoon, in  the  middle  of  the
vast  Rudlit Desert, the stage technicians were testing the sound
system.

That is to say, the sound system was in the desert, not the stage
technicians.  They had retreated to the safety of Disaster Area's
giant control ship which hung in orbit some  four  hundred  miles
above  the surface of the planet, and they were testing the sound
system from there. Anyone within five miles of the speaker  silos
wouldn't have survived the tuning up.

If Arthur Dent had been within five miles of  the  speaker  silos
then  his  expiring thought would have been that in both size and
shape the sound rig closely resembled Manhattan. Risen out of the
silos,  the  neutron  phase  speaker  stacks  towered monstrously
against the sky, obscuring the banks of  plutonium  reactors  and
seismic amps behind them.

Buried deep in concrete bunkers beneath the city of speakers  lay
the instruments that the musicians would control from their ship,
the massive photon-ajuitar, the bass detonator and  the  Megabang
drum complex.

It was going to be a noisy show.

Aboard the giant control  ship,  all  was  activity  and  bustle.
Hotblack  Desiato's  limoship,  a  mere  tadpole  beside  it, had
arrived  and  docked,  and  the  lamented  gentleman  was   being
transported  down  the  high vaulted corridors to meet the medium
who was going to interpret his psychic impulses on to the ajuitar
keyboard.

A doctor, a  logician  and  a  marine  biologist  had  also  just
arrived,  flown  in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try
to reason with the lead singer who  had  locked  himself  in  the
bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till
it could be proved conclusively to him that he wasn't a fish. The
bass  player was busy machine-gunning his bedroom and the drummer
was nowhere on board.

Frantic inquiries led to the discovery that he was standing on  a
beach  on Santraginus V over a hundred light years away where, he
claimed, he had been happy over half an hour now and had found  a
small stone that would be his friend.

The band's manager was profoundly relieved. It meant that for the
seventeenth  time  on  this  tour  the drums would be played by a
robot and that therefore the timing of the cymbalistics would  be
right.

The sub-ether was buzzing with the communications  of  the  stage
technicians  testing  the  speaker channels, and this it was that
was being relayed to the interior of the black ship.

Its dazed occupants lay against the back wall of the  cabin,  and
listened to the voices on the monitor speakers.

"OK, channel nine on  power,"  said  a  voice,  "testing  channel
fifteen ..."
Another thumping crack of noise walloped through the ship.

"Channel fifteen AOK," said another voice.

A third voice cut in.

"The black stunt ship is now in position," it said, "it's looking
good. Gonna be a great sundive. Stage computer on line?"

A computer voice answered.

"On line," it said.

"Take control of the black ship."

"Black ship locked into trajectory programme, on standby."

"Testing channel twenty."

Zaphod leaped across the cabin and switched  frequencies  on  the
sub-ether  receiver  before  the  next mind-pulverizing noise hit
them. He stood there quivering.

"What," said Trillian in  a  small  quiet  voice,  "does  sundive
mean?"

"It means," said Marvin, "that the ship os going to dive into the
sun.  Sun  ...  Dive. It's very simple to understand. What do you
expect if you steal Hotblack Desiato's stunt ship?"

"How do you know ..." said Zaphod in a voice that  would  make  a
Vegan  snow  lizard feel chilly, "that this is Hotblack Desiato's
stuntship?"

"Simple," said Marvin, "I parked it for him."

"The why ... didn't ... you ... tell us!"

"You said you wanted excitement and  adventure  and  really  wild
things."

"This is awful," said Arthur unnecessarily  in  the  pause  which
followed.

"That's what I said," confirmed Marvin.

On a different frequency, the sub-ether receiver had picked up  a
public broadcast, which now echoed round the cabin.

"... fine weather  for  the  concert  here  this  afternoon.  I'm
standing  here in front of the stage," the reporter lied, "in the
middle of the Rudlit Desert, and with the  aid  of  hyperbinoptic
glasses  I  can  just  about  make out the huge audience cowering
there on the horizon all around me. Behind me the speaker  stacks
rise  like  a  sheer  cliff  face,  and  high above me the sun is
shining away and  doesn't  know  what's  going  to  hit  it.  The
environmentalist  lobby  do know what's going to hit it, and they
claim that the  concert  will  cause  earthquakes,  tidal  waves,
hurricanes,  irreparable  damage  to  the atmosphere, and all the
usual things that environmentalists usually go on about.

"But I've just had a report that  a  representative  of  Disaster
Area  met  with  the environmentalists at lunchtime, and had them
all shot, so nothing now lies in the way of ..."

Zaphod switched it off. He turned to Ford.

"You know what I'm thinking?" he said.

"I think so," said Ford.

"Tell me what you think I'm thinking."

"I think you're thinking it's time we get off this ship."

"I think you're right," said Zaphod.

"I think you're right," said Ford.

"How?" said Arthur.

"Quiet," said Ford and Zaphod, "we're thinking."

"So this is it," said Arthur, "we're going to die."

"I wish you'd stop saying that," said Ford.

It is worth repeating at this point the theories  that  Ford  had
come  up  with,  on  his  first  encounter  with human beings, to
account for their  peculiar  habit  of  continually  stating  and
restating  the  very  very  obvious,  as it 'It's a nice day," or
"You're very tall," or "So this is it, we're going to die."

His first theory was that if human beings didn't keep  exercising
their lips, their mouths probably seized up.

After a few months of observation he had come up  with  a  second
theory,  which  was this - "If human beings don't keep exercising
their lips, their brains start working."

In fact, this  second  theory  is  more  literally  true  of  the
Belcebron people of Kakrafoon.

The  Belcebron  people  used  to  cause  great   resentment   and
insecurity  amongst  neighboring  races  by being one of the most
enlightened, accomplished, and above all quiet  civilizations  in
the Galaxy.

As a  punishment  for  this  behaviour,  which  was  held  to  be
offensively  self  righteous and provocative, a Galactic Tribunal
inflicted on  them  that  most  cruel  of  all  social  diseases,
telepathy.   Consequently,   in   order   to  prevent  themselves
broadcasting every slightest thought that crossed their minds  to
anyone  within  a  five  mile  radius, they now have to talk very
loudly and continuously about the weather, their little aches and
pains,  the match this afternoon and what a noisy place Kakrafoon
had suddenly become.
Another method of temporarily blotting out their minds is to play
host to a Disaster Area concert.

The timing of the concert was critical.

The ship had to begin its dive before the concert began in  order
to  hit  the  sun six minutes and thirty-seven seconds before the
climax of the song to which it related, so that the light of  the
solar flares had time to travel out to Kakrafoon.

The ship had already been diving for several minutes by the  time
that   Ford  Prefect  had  completed  his  search  of  the  other
compartments of the black ship. He burst back into the cabin.

The sun of Kakrafoon loomed  terrifyingly  large  on  the  vision
screen,  its  blazing  white  inferno  of  fusing hydrogen nuclei
growing moment by moment as the ship plunged  onwards,  unheeding
the  thumping and banging of Zaphod's hands on the control panel.
Arthur and Trillian had the fixed expressions  of  rabbits  on  a
night   road  who  think  that  the  best  way  of  dealing  with
approaching headlights is to stare them out.

Zaphod span round, wild-eyed.

"Ford," he said, "how many escape capsules are there?"

"None," said Ford.

Zaphod gibbered.

"Did you count them?" he yelled.

"Twice," said Ford, "did you manage to raise the  stage  crew  on
the radio?"

"Yeah," said Zaphod, bitterly, "I said there were a  whole  bunch
of people on board, and they said to say `hi' to everybody."

Ford goggled.

"Didn't you tell them who we were?"

"Oh yeah. They said it was a great  honour.  That  and  something
about a restaurant bill and my executors."

Ford pushed Arthur aside and  leaned  forward  over  the  control
console.

"Does none of this function?" he said savagely.

"All overridden."

"Smash the autopilot."

"Find it first. Nothing connects."

There was a moment's cold silence.

Arthur was stumbling round the back  of  the  cabin.  He  stopped
suddenly.

"Incidentally," he said, "what does teleport mean?"

Another moment passed.

Slowly, the others turned to face him.

"Probably the wrong moment to ask," said  Arthur,  "It's  just  I
remember  hearing  you  use the word a short while ago and I only
bring it up because ..."

"Where," said Ford Prefect quietly, "does it say teleport?"

"Well, just over here in fact," said Arthur, pointing at  a  dark
control  box  in  the  rear  of  the  cabin, "Just under the word
`emergency', above the word `system' and beside the  sign  saying
`out of order'."

In the pandemonium that instantly followed, the  only  action  to
follow  was  that of Ford Prefect lunging across the cabin to the
small black box that Arthur had indicated and stabbing repeatedly
at the single small black button set into it.

A  six-foot  square  panel  slid  open  beside  it  revealing   a
compartment which resembled a multiple shower unit that had found
a new function in life as  an  electrician's  junk  store.  Half-
finished  wiring  hung  from  the  ceiling, a jumble of abandoned
components lay strewn on the floor,  and  the  programming  panel
lolled  out  of  the cavity in the wall into which it should have
been secured.

A junior Disaster Area accountant, visiting  the  shipyard  where
this  ship  was  being  constructed,  had demanded to know of the
works foreman  why  the  hell  they  were  fitting  an  extremely
expensive  teleport  into  a  ship  which  only had one important
journey to make, and that unmanned.  The  foreman  had  explained
that  the  teleport  was available at a ten per cent discount and
the accountant  had  explained  that  this  was  immaterial;  the
foreman  had  explained that it was the finest, most powerful and
sophisticated teleport that money could buy  and  the  accountant
had  explained that the money did not wish to buy it; the foreman
had explained that people would still need to enter and leave the
ship  and  the  accountant  had explained that the ship sported a
perfectly serviceable door; the foreman had  explained  that  the
accountant  could  go  and  boil  his head and the accountant had
explained to the foreman that the thing approaching  him  rapidly
from  his left was a knuckle sandwich. After the explanations had
been concluded, work  was  discontinued  on  the  teleport  which
subsequently  passed  unnoticed on the invoice as "Sund. explns."
at five times the price.

"Hell's donkeys," muttered Zaphod as he  and  Ford  attempted  to
sort through the tangle of wiring.

After a moment or so Ford told him to stand  back.  He  tossed  a
coin  into  the  teleport  and  jiggled  a  switch on the lolling
control panel. With  a  crackle  and  spit  of  light,  the  coin
vanished.
"That much of  it  works,"  said  Ford,  "however,  there  is  no
guidance  system. A matter transference teleport without guidance
programming could put you ... well, anywhere."

The sun of Kakrafoon loomed huge on the screen.

"Who cares," said Zaphod, "we go where we go."

"And," said Ford, "there is no autosystem. We  couldn't  all  go.
Someone would have to stay and operate it."

A solemn moment shuffled past. The sun loomed larger and larger.

"Hey, Marvin kid," said Zaphod brightly, "how you doing?"

"Very badly I suspect," muttered Marvin.

A shortish while later,  the  concert  on  Kakrafoon  reached  an
unexpected climax.

The black ship with its single morose  occupant  had  plunged  on
schedule  into  the  nuclear  furnace  of  the sun. Massive solar
flares licked out from it millions of miles into space, thrilling
and  in a few cases spilling the dozen or so Flare Riders who had
been coasting close to the surface of the sun in anticipation  of
the moment.

Moments before the flare light  reached  Kakrafoon  the  pounding
desert  cracked  along  a  deep  faultline.  A  huge and hitherto
undetected underground river lying far beneath the surface gushed
to  the  surface  to be followed seconds later by the eruption of
millions of tons of boiling lava that  flowed  hundreds  of  feet
into the air, instantaneously vaporizing the river both above and
below the surface in an explosion that echoed to the far side  of
the world and back again.

Those - very few - who witnessed the  event  and  survived  swear
that  the  whole hundred thousand square miles of the desert rose
into the air like a mile-thick pancake, flipped itself  over  and
fell  back  down. At that precise moment the solar radiation from
the flares filtered through the clouds  of  vaporized  water  and
struck the ground.

A year later, the hundred thousand square mile desert  was  thick
with  flowers.  The structure of the atmosphere around the planet
was subtly altered. The sun blazed less harshly  in  the  summer,
the cold bit less bitterly in the winter, pleasant rain fell more
often,  and  slowly  the  desert  world  of  Kakrafoon  became  a
paradise.  Even  the  telepathic  power  with which the people of
Kakrafoon had been cursed was permanently dispersed by the  force
of the explosion.

A spokesman for Disaster Area - the  one  who  had  had  all  the
environmentalists  shot  - was later quoted as saying that it had
been "a good gig".

Many people spoke movingly of the healing powers of music. A  few
sceptical  scientists  examined  the  records  of the events more
closely, and claimed that they had discovered faint vestiges of a
vast  artificially induced Improbability Field drifting in from a
nearby region of space.




Arthur woke up and instantly regretted it.  Hangovers  he'd  had,
but  never  anything on this scale. This was it, this was the big
one, this was the ultimate pits. Matter  transference  beams,  he
decided,  were  not as much fun as, say, a good solid kick in the
head.

Being for the moment unwilling to  move  on  account  of  a  dull
stomping  throb  he was experiencing, he lay a while and thought.
The  trouble  with  most  forms  of  transport,  he  thought,  is
basically  one of them not being worth all the bother. On Earth -
when there had been an Earth, before it was  demolished  to  make
way for a new hyperspace bypass - the problem had been with cars.
The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky  slime
from  out  of  the  ground where it had been safely hidden out of
harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke  to
fill  the  air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed
to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from
one place to another - particularly when the place you arrived at
had probably become, as a result of this,  very  similar  to  the
place  you  had  left,  i.e.  covered with tar, full of smoke and
short of fish.

And what about matter transference beams? Any form  of  transport
which  involved  tearing  you  apart atom by atom, flinging those
atoms through the sub-ether, and then jamming them back  together
again  just  when  they were getting their first taste of freedom
for years had to be bad news.

Many people had thought exactly this before Arthur Dent  and  had
even  gone  to the lengths of writing songs about it. Here is one
that used regularly to be chanted  by  huge  crowds  outside  the
Sirius   Cybernetics  Corporation  Teleport  Systems  factory  on
Happi-Werld III:

Aldebaran's great, OK,

Algol's pretty neat,

Betelgeuse's pretty girls,

Will knock you off your feet.

They'll do anything you like,

Real fast and then real slow,

But if you have to take me apart to get me there,

Then I don't want to go.

Singing,
Take me apart, take me apart,

What a way to roam,

And if you have to take me apart to get me there,

I'd rather stay at home.

Sirius is paved with gold

So I've heard it said

By nuts who then go on to say

"See Tau before you're dead."

I'll gladly take the high road

Or even take the low,

But if you have to take me apart to get me there,

Then I, for one, won't go.

Singing,

Take me apart, take me apart, You must be off your head,

And if you try to take me apart to get me there,

I'll stay right here in bed.


I teleported home one night,

With Ron and Sid and Meg,

Ron stole Meggie's heart away,

And I got Sidney's leg.

Arthur felt the waves of pain  slowly  receding,  though  he  was
still aware of a dull stomping throb. Slowly, carefully, he stood
up.

"Can you hear a dull stomping throb?" said Ford Prefect.

Arthur span round  and  wobbled  uncertainly.  Ford  Prefect  was
approaching looking red eyed and pasty.

"Where are we?" gasped Arthur.

Ford looked around. They were standing in a long curving corridor
which  stretched out of sight in both directions. The outer steel
wall - which was painted in that sickly shade of pale green which
they  use  in  schools,  hospitals and mental asylums to keep the
inmates subdued - curved over the tops of their  heads  where  it
met  the inner perpendicular wall which, oddly enough was covered
in dark brown hessian wall weave. The floor  was  of  dark  green
ribbed rubber.

Ford moved over to a very thick dark transparent panel set in the
outer  wall.  It was several layers deep, yet through it he could
see pinpoints of distant stars.

"I think we're in a spaceship of some kind," he said.

Down the corridor came the sound of a dull stomping throb.

"Trillian?" called Arthur nervously, "Zaphod?"

Ford shrugged.

"Nowhere about," he said, "I've looked. They could  be  anywhere.
An  unprogrammed  teleport  can  throw  you  light  years  in any
direction. Judging by  the  way  I  feel  I  should  think  we've
travelled a very long way indeed."

"How do you feel?"

"Bad."

"Do you think they're ..."

"Where they are, how they are, there's no way we can know and  no
way we can do anything about it. Do what I do."

"What?"

"Don't think about it."

Arthur turned this thought over in his mind, reluctantly saw  the
wisdom  of  it,  tucked  it  up  and  put it away. He took a deep
breath.

"Footsteps!" exclaimed Ford suddenly.

"Where?"

"That noise. That stomping throb. Pounding feet. Listen!"

Arthur listened. The noise echoed round the corridor at them from
an  indeterminate  distance. It was the muffled sound of pounding
footsteps, and it was noticeably louder.

"Let's move," said Ford sharply. They both moved  -  in  opposite
directions.

"Not that way," said Ford, "that's where they're coming from."

"No it's not," said Arthur, "They're coming from that way."

"They're not, they're ..."

They both stopped. They both turned. They both listened intently.
They both agreed with each other. They both set off into opposite
directions again.
Fear gripped them.

>From both directions the noise was getting louder.

A few yards to their left another corridor ran at right angles to
the inner wall. They ran to it and hurried along it. It was dark,
immensely long and,  as  they  passed  down  it,  gave  them  the
impression that it was getting colder and colder. Other corridors
gave off it to the left  and  right,  each  very  dark  and  each
subjecting them to sharp blasts of icy air as they passed.

They stopped for a moment in alarm. The further down the corridor
they went, the louder became the sound of pounding feet.

They pressed themselves back against the cold wall  and  listened
furiously.  The  cold,  the  dark and the drumming of disembodied
feet was getting to them badly. Ford shivered,  partly  with  the
cold,  but partly with the memory of stories his favourite mother
used to tell him when he was a mere slip of a Betelgeusian, ankle
high  to  an  Arcturan  Megagrasshopper:  stories  of dead ships,
haunted hulks that roamed restlessly round the  obscurer  regions
of  deep  space  infested  with demons or the ghosts of forgotten
crews; stories too of incautious travellers who found and entered
such  ships;  stories  of  ...  -  then Ford remembered the brown
hessian wall weave in  the  first  corridor  and  pulled  himself
together.  However ghosts and demons may choose to decorate their
death hulks, he thought to himself, he would lay  any  money  you
liked it wasn't with hessian wall weave. He grasped Arthur by the
arm.

"Back the way we came,"  he  said  firmly  and  they  started  to
retrace their steps.

A moment later they leap like startled lizards down  the  nearest
corridor  junction  as  the  owners of the drumming feet suddenly
hove into view directly in front of them.

Hidden behind the corner they goggled in amazement as  about  two
dozen  overweight  men and women pounded past them in track suits
panting and wheezing in a manner that would make a heart  surgeon
gibber.

Ford Prefect stared after them.

"Joggers!" he hissed, as the sound of their feet echoed  away  up
and down the network of corridors.

"Joggers?" whispered Arthur Dent.

"Joggers," said Ford prefect with a shrug.

The corridor they were concealed in was not like the  others.  It
was  very  short,  and ended at a large steel door. Ford examined
it, discovered the opening mechanism and pushed it wide.

The first thing that hit their eyes was what  appeared  to  be  a
coffin.

And the next four thousand nine hundred  and  ninety-nine  things
that hit their eyes were also coffins.




The vault was low ceilinged, dimly lit and gigantic. At  the  far
end,  about  three  hundred  yards away an archway let through to
what appeared to be a similar chamber, similarly occupied.

Ford Prefect let out a low whistle as he stepped down on  to  the
floor of the vault.

"Wild," he said.

"What's so great about  dead  people?"  asked  Arthur,  nervously
stepping down after him.

"Dunno," said Ford, "Let's find out shall we?"

On  closer  inspection  the  coffins  seemed  to  be  more   like
sarcophagi.  They  stood about waist high and were constructed of
what appeared to be white marble, which is almost certainly  what
it  was  -  something  that only appeared to be white marble. The
tops were semi-translucent,  and  through  them  could  dimly  be
perceived  the  features  of  their  late and presumably lamented
occupants. They were humanoid, and had clearly left the  troubles
of  whatever  world  it  was  they came from far behind them, but
beyond that little else could be discerned.

Rolling slowly round the  floor  between  the  sarcophagi  was  a
heavy,  oily  white  gas  which  Arthur at first thought might be
there to give the place a little atmosphere until  he  discovered
that  it also froze his ankles. The sarcophagi too were intensely
cold to the touch.

Ford suddenly crouched down beside  one  of  them.  He  pulled  a
corner  of  his  towel  out  of  his  satchel  and started to rub
furiously at something.

"Look, there's a plaque on this one,"  he  explained  to  Arthur,
"It's frosted over."

He rubbed the frost clear and examined the  engraved  characters.
To  Arthur  they  looked like the footprints of a spider that had
had one too many of whatever it is that spiders have on  a  night
out,  but  Ford  instantly  recognized  an early form of Galactic
Eezeereed.

"It says `Golgafrincham Ark Fleet, Ship B, Hold Seven,  Telephone
Sanitizer Second Class' - and a serial number."

"A  telephone  sanitizer?"  said  Arthur,   "a   dead   telephone
sanitizer?"

"Best kind."

"But what's he doing here?"

Ford peered through the top at the figure within.
"Not a lot," he said, and suddenly flashed one of those grins  of
his  which  always  made  people think he'd been overdoing things
recently and should try to get some rest.

He scampered over to another sarcophagus. A moment's brisk  towel
work and he announced:

"This one's a dead hairdresser. Hoopy!"

The next sarcophagus revealed itself to be the last resting place
of an advertising account executive; the one after that contained
a second-hand car salesman, third class.

An inspection hatch let into the  floor  suddenly  caught  Ford's
attention, and he squatted down to unfasten it, thrashing away at
the clouds of freezing gas that threatened to envelope him.

A thought occurred to Arthur.

"If these are just coffins," he  said,  "Why  are  they  kept  so
cold?"

"Or, indeed, why are they kept anyway,"  said  Ford  tugging  the
hatchway  open.  The  gas poured down through it. "Why in fact is
anyone going to all the  trouble  and  expense  of  carting  five
thousand dead bodies through space?"

"Ten thousand," said Arthur,  pointing  at  the  archway  through
which the next chamber was dimly visible.

Ford stuck his head down through the floor hatchway. He looked up
again.

"Fifteen thousand," he said, "there's another lot down there."

"Fifteen million," said a voice.

"That's a lot," said Ford, "A lot a lot."

"Turn around slowly," barked the voice, "and put your  hands  up.
Any other move and I blast you into tiny tiny bits."

"Hello?" said Ford, turning round slowly, putting  his  hands  up
and not making any other move.

"Why," said Arthur Dent, "isn't anyone ever pleased to see us?"

Standing silhouetted  in  the  doorway  through  which  they  had
entered the vault was the man who wasn't pleased to see them. His
displeasure was communicated  partly  by  the  barking  hectoring
quality  of his voice and partly by the viciousness with which he
waved a long silver Kill-O-Zap gun at them. The designer  of  the
gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. "Make
it evil," he'd been told. "Make it totally clear  that  this  gun
has  a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone
standing at the wrong end that things are going badly  for  them.
If  that  means  sticking  all  sort  of  spikes  and  prongs and
blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a  gun  for
hanging  over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it
is a gun for going out and making people miserable with."

Ford and Arthur looked at the gun unhappily.

The man with the gun moved from the door and circled round  them.
As  he  came  into  the  light  they could see his black and gold
uniform on which the buttons were so highly  polished  that  they
shone  with  an  intensity  that  would  have made an approaching
motorist flash his lights in annoyance.

He gestured at the door.

"Out," he said. People who can supply that amount of  fire  power
don't  need  to  supply  verbs as well. Ford and Arthur went out,
closely followed by the wrong end of the Kill-O-Zap gun  and  the
buttons.

Turning into  the  corridor  they  were  jostled  by  twenty-four
oncoming  joggers,  now  showered  and changed, who swept on past
them into the vault. Arthur turned to watch them in confusion.

"Move!" screamed their captor.

Arthur moved.

Ford shrugged and moved.

In the vault the joggers went  to  twenty-four  empty  sarcophagi
along  the  side  wall,  opened  them,  climbed in, and fell into
twenty-four dreamless sleeps.




"Er, captain ..."

"Yes, Number One?"

"Just heard a sort of report thingy from Number Two."

"Oh, dear."

High up in the bridge of the ship, the Captain  stared  out  into
the infinite reaches of space with mild irritation. From where he
reclined beneath a wide domed bubble  he  could  see  before  and
above  them  the  vast  panorama of stars through which they were
moving - a panorama that had thinned  out  noticably  during  the
course  of  the  voyage.  Turning and looking backwards, over the
vast two-mile bulk of the ship he could see the far  denser  mass
of  stars  behind  them which seemed to form almost a solid band.
This was the view through the Galactic  centre  from  which  they
were  travelling,  and indeed had been travelling for years, at a
speed that he couldn't quite remember at the moment, but he  knew
it  was  terribly fast. It was something approaching the speed of
something or other, or was it three times the speed of  something
else? Jolly impressive anyway. He peered into the bright distance
behind the ship, looking for something. He  did  this  every  few
minutes or so, but never found what he was looking for. He didn't
let it worry him  though.  The  scientist  chaps  had  been  very
insistent  that  everything  was  going  to  be perfectly alright
providing nobody panicked and everybody got on and did their  bit
in an orderly fashion.

He wasn't panicking. As far as he was  concerned  everything  was
going  splendidly.  He dabbed at his shoulder with a large frothy
sponge. It crept back into his mind that he  was  feeling  mildly
irritated  about something. Now what was all that about? A slight
cough alerted him to the fact that the ship's first  officer  was
still standing nearby.

Nice chap, Number One. Not of the very  brightest,  had  the  odd
spot  of  difficulty  doing  up  his  shoe  laces, but jolly good
officer material for all that. The Captain wasn't a man to kick a
chap  when  he  was  bending over trying to do up his shoe laces,
however long it took him.  Not  like  that  ghastly  Number  Two,
strutting  about  all  over  the  place,  polishing  his buttons,
issuing reports  every  hour:  "Ship's  still  moving,  Captain."
"Still   on   course,   Captain."   "Oxygen  levels  still  being
maintained, Captain." "Give it a miss," was the  Captain's  vote.
Ah  yes,  that  was  the  thing  that had been irritating him. He
peered down at Number One.

"Yes, Captain, he was shouting something or  other  about  having
found some prisoners ..."

The Captain thought about this. Seemed pretty  unlikely  to  him,
but he wasn't one to stand in his officers' way.

"Well, perhaps that'll keep him happy for a bit," he said,  "He's
always wanted some."

Ford Prefect and  Arthur  Dent  trudged  onwards  up  the  ship's
apparently  endless  corridors.  Number  Two  marched behind them
barking the occasional order about not making any false moves  or
trying  any  funny  stuff.  They seemed to have passed at least a
mile of continuous brown hessian wall weave. Finally they reached
a large steel door which slid open when Number Two shouted at it.

They entered.

To the eyes of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, the most  remarkable
thing  about  the  ship's  bridge was not the fifty foot diameter
hemispherical dome  which  covered  it,  and  through  which  the
dazzling  display of stars shone down on them: to people who have
eaten at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, such  wonders
are  commonplace. Nor was it the bewildering array of instruments
that crowded the long circumferential wall around them. To Arthur
this  was  exactly what spaceships were traditionally supposed to
look like, and  to  Ford  it  looked  thoroughly  antiquated:  it
confirmed his suspicions that Disaster Area's stuntship had taken
them back at least a million, if not two  million,  years  before
their own time.

No, the thing that really caught them off balance was the bath.

The bath stood on a six foot pedestal of rough  hewn  blue  water
crystal  and  was of a baroque monstrosity not often seen outside
the Maximegalon Museum  of  Diseased  Imaginings.  An  intestinal
jumble  of  plumbing had been picked out in gold leaf rather than
decently buried at midnight in an unmarked grave;  the  taps  and
shower attachment would have made a gargoyle jump.

As the dominant centrepiece of a starship bridge it was  terribly
wrong,  and it was with the embittered air of a man who knew this
that Number Two approached it.

"Captain, sir!" he shouted through clenched teeth -  a  difficult
trick but he'd had years during which to perfect it.

A large genial face and a genial foam covered arm popped up above
the rim of the monstrous bath.

"Ah, hello, Number  Two,"  said  the  Captain,  waving  a  cheery
sponge, "having a nice day?"

Number Two snapped even further to attention than he already was.

"I have brought you the prisoners I located in freezer bay seven,
sir!" he yapped.

Ford and Arthur coughed in confusion.

"Er ... hello," they said.

The Captain beamed at them. So Number Two had really  found  some
prisoners. Well, good for him, thought the Captain, nice to see a
chap doing what he's best at.

"Oh, hello there," he said to them, "Excuse me  not  getting  up,
having  a quick bath. Well, jynnan tonnyx all round then. Look in
the fridge Number one."

"Certainly sir."

It is a curious fact, and one to which no  one  knows  quite  how
much  importance  to attach, that something like 85% of all known
worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced,  have
invented  a  drink  called  jynnan  tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or
jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or  more  variations  on
the  same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same,
and vary between the Sivolvian "chinanto/mnigs" which is ordinary
water   server  at  slightly  above  room  temperature,  and  the
Gagrakackan "tzjin-anthony-ks" which  kills  cows  at  a  hundred
paces;  and  in  fact  the one common factor between all of them,
beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they  were
all  invented  and named before the worlds concerned made contact
with any other worlds.

What can be made of this fact? It exists in total  isolation.  As
far  as  any  theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is
right  off  the  graph,  and  yet  it  persists.  Old  structural
linguists  get  very  angry when young structural linguists go on
about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about  it
and  stay  up late at night convinced that they are very close to
something  of  profound  importance,  and  end  up  becoming  old
structural  linguists  before their time, getting very angry with
the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided  and
unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend
too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.

Number Two stood before  the  Captain's  bathtub  trembling  with
frustration.

"Don't you want to interrogate the prisoners sir?" he squealed.

The Captain peered at him in bemusement.

"Why on Golgafrincham should I want to do that?" he asked.

"To get information out of them, sir! To find out why  they  came
here!"

"Oh no, no, no," said the Captain, "I expect they just dropped in
for a quick jynnan tonnyx, don't you?"

"But sir, they're my prisoners! I must interrogate them!"

The Captain looked at them doubtfully.

"Oh all right," he said, "if you must. Ask them what they want to
drink."

A hard cold gleam came into Number Two's eyes. He advanced slowly
on Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent.

"All right, you scum," he growled, "you  vermin  ..."  He  jabbed
Ford with the Kill-O-Zap gun.

"Steady on, Number Two," admonished the Captain gently.

"What do you want to drink!!!" Number Two screamed.

"Well the jynnan tonnyx sounds very nice to me," said Ford, "What
about you Arthur?"

Arthur blinked.

"What? Oh, er, yes," he said.

"With ice or without?" bellowed Number Two.

"Oh, with please," said Ford.

"Lemon??!!"

"Yes please," said Ford, "and do you have  any  of  those  little
biscuits? You know, the cheesy ones?"

"I'm asking  the  questions!!!!"  howled  Number  Two,  his  body
quaking with apoplectic fury.

"Er, Number Two ..." said the Captain softly.

"Sir?!"
"Push off, would you, there's a good chap. I'm trying to  have  a
relaxing bath."

Number Two's eyes narrowed and  became  what  are  known  in  the
Shouting  and  Killing  People  trade  as  cold  slits,  the idea
presumably being to give your opponent the  impression  that  you
have  lost  your  glasses or are having difficulty keeping awake.
Why this is frightening is an, as yet, unresolved problem.

He advanced on the captain, his (Number Two's) mouth a thin  hard
line.  Again,  tricky  to know why this is understood as fighting
behaviour. If, whilst wandering through the jungle of Traal,  you
were  suddenly to come upon the fabled Ravenous Bugblatter Beast,
you would have reason to be grateful if its mouth was a thin hard
line  rather  than,  as it usually is, a gaping mass of slavering
fangs.

"May I remind you sir," hissed Number Two at the  Captain,  "that
you have now been in that bath for over three years?!" This final
shot delivered, Number Two spun on his heel and stalked off to  a
corner to practise darting eye movements in the mirror.

The Captain squirmed in his bath. He gave  Ford  Prefect  a  lame
smile.

"Well you need to relax a lot in a job like mine," he said.

Ford slowly lowered his hands. It provoked  no  reaction.  Arthur
lowered his.

Treading very slowly and carefully, Ford moved over to  the  bath
pedestal. He patted it.

"Nice," he lied.

He wondered if it was safe to grin. Very slowly and carefully, he
grinned. It was safe.

"Er ..." he said to the Captain.

"Yes?" said the Captain.

"I wonder," said Ford, "could I ask you actually what your job is
in fact?"

A hand tapped him on the shoulder. He span round.

It was the first officer.

"Your drinks," he said.

"Ah, thank you," said Ford.  He  and  Arthur  took  their  jynnan
tonnyx.  Arthur  sipped  his,  and  was  surprised to discover it
tasted very like a whisky and soda.

"I mean, I couldn't help noticing," said Ford, also taking a sip,
"the bodies. In the hold."

"Bodies?" said the Captain in surprise.
Ford paused and thought  to  himself.  Never  take  anything  for
granted,  he  thought.  Could it be that the Captain doesn't know
he's got fifteen million dead bodies on his ship?

The Captain was nodding cheerfully at him. He also appeared to be
playing with a rubber duck.

Ford looked around. Number Two was staring at him in the  mirror,
but  only  for  an instant: his eyes were constantly on the move.
The first officer was just standing there holding the drinks tray
and smiling benignly.

"Bodies?" said the Captain again.

Ford licked his lips.

"Yes," he said, "All those dead telephone sanitizers and  account
executives, you know, down in the hold."

The Captain stared at him. Suddenly he threw back  his  head  and
laughed.

"Oh they're not dead," he said, "Good Lord no, no they're frozen.
They're going to be revived."

Ford did something he very rarely did. He blinked.

Arthur seemed to come out of a trance.

"You mean you've got a hold  full  of  frozen  hairdressers?"  he
said.

"Oh yes," said the  Captain,  "Millions  of  them.  Hairdressers,
tired  TV  producers,  insurance  salesmen,  personnel  officers,
security  guards,   public   relations   executives,   management
consultants,  you  name  them.  We're  going  to colonize another
planet."

Ford wobbled very slightly.

"Exciting isn't it?" said the Captain.

"What, with that lot?" said Arthur.

"Ah, now don't misunderstand me," said the Captain,  "we're  just
one  of  the  ships  in the Ark Fleet. We're the `B' Ark you see.
Sorry, could I just ask you to run a bit more hot water for me?"

Arthur obliged, and a cascade of pink frothy water swirled around
the bath. The Captain let out a sigh of pleasure.

"Thank you so much my dear fellow. Do  help  yourselves  to  more
drinks of course."

Ford tossed down his  drink,  took  the  bottle  from  the  first
officer's tray and refilled his glass to the top.

"What," he said, "is a `B' Ark?"
"This is," said the Captain, and swished the foamy  water  around
joyfully with the duck.

"Yes," said Ford, "but ..."

"Well what happened you see was," said the Captain, "our  planet,
the world from which we have come, was, so to speak, doomed."

"Doomed?"

"Oh yes. So what everyone  thought  was,  let's  pack  the  whole
population  into  some  giant  spaceships  and  go  and settle on
another planet."

Having told this much of  his  story,  he  settled  back  with  a
satisfied grunt.

"You mean a less doomed one?" promoted Arthur.

"What did you say dear fellow?"

"A less doomed planet. You were going to settle on."

"Are going to settle on, yes. So it was decided  to  build  three
ships,  you  see, three Arks in Space, and ... I'm not boring you
am I?"

"No, no," said Ford firmly, "it's fascinating."

"You know it's  delightful,"  reflected  the  Captain,  "to  have
someone else to talk to for a change."

Number Two's eyes darted feverishly about the room again and then
settled  back  on  the  mirror,  like  a  pair  of  flies briefly
distracted from their favourite prey of months old meat.

"Trouble with a long journey like this," continued  the  Captain,
"is  that  you  end up just talking to yourself a lot, which gets
terribly boring because half the time you know what you're  going
to say next."

"Only half the time?" asked Arthur in surprise.

The Captain thought for a moment.

"Yes, about half I'd say. Anyway - where's the soap?"  He  fished
around and found it.

"Yes, so anyway," he resumed, "the idea was that into  the  first
ship,  the  `A'  ship,  would  go  all the brilliant leaders, the
scientists, the great artists, you know, all the  achievers;  and
into  the third, or `C' ship, would go all the people who did the
actual work, who made things and did things, and  then  into  the
`B'  ship - that's us - would go everyone else, the middlemen you
see."

He smiled happily at them.
"And we were sent off first," he concluded, and hummed  a  little
bathing tune.

The little bathing tune, which had been composed for him  by  one
of  his world's most exciting and prolific jingle writer (who was
currently asleep in  hold  thirty-six  some  nine  hundred  yards
behind  them)  covered  what would otherwise have been an awkward
moment of silence.  Ford  and  Arthur  shuffled  their  feet  and
furiously avoided each other's eyes.

"Er ..." said Arthur after a moment, "what exactly  was  it  that
was wrong with your planet then?"

"Oh, it was doomed, as I said," said the Captain, "Apparently  it
was  going  to  crash  into the sun or something. Or maybe it was
that the moon was going to crash into us. Something of the  kind.
Absolutely terrifying prospect whatever it was."

"Oh," said the first officer suddenly, "I thought it was that the
planet was going to be invaded by a gigantic swarm of twelve foot
piranha bees. Wasn't that it?"

Number Two span around, eyes ablaze with a cold hard  light  that
only comes with the amount of practise he was prepared to put in.

"That's not what I was told!" he hissed, "My  commanding  officer
told  me  that  the entire planet was in imminent danger of being
eaten by an enormous mutant star goat!"

"Oh really ..." said Ford Prefect.

"Yes! A monstrous creature from the pit  of  hell  with  scything
teeth  ten  thousand  miles  long, breath that would boil oceans,
claws that could tear continents from  their  roots,  a  thousand
eyes  that  burned  like  the sun, slavering jaws a million miles
across, a monster such as you have never ... never ... ever ..."

"And they made sure they  sent  you  lot  off  first  did  they?"
inquired Arthur.

"Oh yes," said the Captain, "well everyone said,  very  nicely  I
thought,  that it was very important for morale to feel that they
would be arriving on a planet where they could be sure of a  good
haircut and where the phones were clean."

"Oh yes," agreed Ford, "I can see that would be  very  important.
And the other ships, er ... they followed on after you did they?"

For a moment the Captain did not answer. He twisted round in  his
bath  and  gazed backwards over the huge bulk of the ship towards
the bright galactic centre. He squinted  into  the  inconceivable
distance.

"Ah. Well it's funny you should say that," he  said  and  allowed
himself a slight frown at Ford Prefect, "because curiously enough
we haven't heard a peep out of them since we left five years  ago
... but they must be behind us somewhere."

He peered off into the distance again.
Ford peered with him and gave a thoughtful frown.

"Unless of course," he said softly, "they were eaten by the  goat
..."

"Ah yes ..." said the Captain with a  slight  hesitancy  creeping
into  his  voice,  "the  goat ..." His eyes passed over the solid
shapes of the instruments and computers that  lined  the  bridge.
They  winked  away innocently at him. He stared out at the stars,
but none of them said a word. He glanced at his first and  second
officers,  but  they  seemed  lost  in  their  own thoughts for a
moment. He glanced at Ford Prefect who  raised  his  eyebrows  at
him.

"It's a funny thing you know," said the Captain at last, "but now
that I actually come to tell the story to someone else ... I mean
does it strike you as odd Number Two?"

"Errrrrrrrrrrr ..." said Number Two.

"Well," said Ford, "I can see that you've got  a  lot  of  things
you're going to talk about, so, thanks for the drinks, and if you
could sort of drop us off at the nearest convenient planet ..."

"Ah, well that's a little difficult you see," said  the  Captain,
"because   our  trajectory  thingy  was  preset  before  we  left
Golgafrincham, I think partly because  I'm  not  very  good  with
figures ..."

"You mean we're stuck here on this ship?" exclaimed Ford suddenly
losing patience with the whole charade, "When are you meant to be
reaching this planet you're meant to be colonizing?"

"Oh, we're nearly there I think," said the Captain,  "any  second
now.  It's  probably time I was getting out of this bath in fact.
Oh, I don't know though, why stop just when I'm enjoying it?"

"So we're actually going to land in a minute?"

"Well not so much land, in fact, not actually land  as  such,  no
... er ..."

"What are you talking about?" said Ford sharply.

"Well," said the Captain,  picking  his  way  through  the  words
carefully,  "I  think as far as I can remember we were programmed
to crash on it."

"Crash?" shouted Ford and Arthur.

"Er, yes," said the Captain, "yes, it's all part of  the  plan  I
think.  There  was  a  terribly  good reason for it which I can't
quite remember at the moment. It was something  to  with  ...  er
..."

Ford exploded.

"You're a load of useless bloody loonies!" he shouted.
"Ah yes, that was it," beamed the Captain, "that was the reason."




The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say  about  the
planet  of  Golgafrincham:  It  is  a  planet with an ancient and
mysterious history, rich in legend, red, and  occasionally  green
with  the  blood  of those who sought in times gone by to conquer
her; a land of parched and barren landscapes, of sweet and sultry
air  heady  with  the  scent of the perfumed springs that trickle
over its hot and dusty rocks  and  nourish  the  dark  and  musty
lichens   beneath;  a  land  of  fevered  brows  and  intoxicated
imaginings, particularly amongst those who taste the  lichens;  a
land  also  of  cool  and  shaded thoughts amongst those who have
learnt to forswear the lichens and find a tree to sit beneath;  a
land  also of steel and blood and heroism; a land of the body and
of the spirit. This was its history.

And  in  all  this  ancient  and  mysterious  history,  the  most
mysterious  figures  of all were without doubt those of the Great
Circling Poets of Arium. These Circling Poets  used  to  live  in
remote  mountain  passes  where  they would lie in wait for small
bands of unwary travellers, circle round them, and throw rocks at
them.

And when the travellers cried out, saying why didn't they go away
and  get  on  with writing some poems instead of pestering people
with all this rock-throwing business, they would  suddenly  stop,
and  then  break  into  one  of the seven hundred and ninety-four
great  Song  Cycles  of  Vassilian.  These  songs  were  all   of
extraordinary beauty, and even more extraordinary length, and all
fell into exactly the same pattern.

The first part of each song would tell how there once went  forth
from the City of Vassilian a party of five sage princes with four
horses. The princes, who are of course  brave,  noble  and  wise,
travel widely in distant lands, fought giant ogres, pursue exotic
philosophies, take tea  with  weird  gods  and  rescue  beautiful
monsters  from ravening princesses before finally announcing that
they have achieved enlightenment and that  their  wanderings  are
therefore accomplished.

The second, and much longer, part of each song would then tell of
all  their bickerings about which one of them is going to have to
walk back.

All this lay in the planet's remote  past.  It  was,  however,  a
descendant  of  one  of  these  eccentric  poets who invented the
spurious tales of impending doom  which  enabled  the  people  of
Golgafrincham  to  rid  themselves  of an entire useless third of
their population. The other two-thirds stayed firmly at home  and
lived  full,  rich  and  happy lives until they were all suddenly
wiped  out  by  a  virulent  disease  contracted  from  a   dirty
telephone.




That night the ship crash-landed on to an  utterly  insignificant
little  green-blue planet which circled a small unregarded yellow
sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end  of  the
Western spiral arm of the Galaxy.

In  the  hours  preceding  the  crash  Ford  Prefect  had  fought
furiously  but  in  vain  to unlock the controls of the ship from
their pre-ordained flight path. It had quickly become apparent to
him  that  the  ship  had  been  programmed to convey its payload
safely, in uncomfortably, to its new home but to  cripple  itself
beyond repair in the process.

Its  screaming,  blazing  descent  through  the  atmosphere   had
stripped away most of its superstructure and outer shielding, and
its final inglorious bellyflop into a murky swamp  had  left  its
crew  only  a  few  hours  of darkness during which to revive and
offload its deep-frozen and unwanted cargo for the ship began  to
settle  almost  at once, slowly upending its gigantic bulk in the
stagnant slime. Once or twice during the  night  it  was  starkly
silhouetted  against the sky as burning meteors - the detritus of
its descent - flashed across the sky.

In the grey pre-dawn light it let out an obscene  roaring  gurgle
and sank for ever into the stinking depths.

When the sun came up that morning it shed its thin  watery  light
over  a  vast  area  heaving  with  wailing  hairdressers, public
relations executives, opinion pollsters and the rest, all clawing
their way desperately to dry land.

A less strong minded sun would probably have gone  straight  back
down again, but it continued to climb its way through the sky and
after a while the influence of its warming  rays  began  to  have
some restoring effect on the feebly struggling creatures.

Countless numbers had, unsurprisingly, been lost to the swamp  in
the  night, and millions more had been sucked down with the ship,
but those that survived still numbered hundreds of thousands  and
as  the  day  wore  on  they  crawled  out  over  the surrounding
countryside, each looking for a few square feet of  solid  ground
on which to collapse and recover from their nightmare ordeal.

Two figures moved further afield.

>From a nearby hillside Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent  watched  the
horror of which they could not feel a part.

"Filthy dirty trick to pull," muttered Arthur.

Ford scraped a stick along the ground and shrugged.

"An imaginative solution to a problem I'd have thought," he said.

"Why can't people just  learn  to  live  together  in  peace  and
harmony?" said Arthur.

Ford gave a loud, very hollow laugh.
"Forty-two!" he said with a malicious grin,  "No,  doesn't  work.
Never mind."

Arthur looked at him as if he'd gone mad and, seeing  nothing  to
indicate  the  contrary,  realized  that  it  would  be perfectly
reasonable to assume that this had in fact happened.

"What do you think will happen to them  all?"  he  said  after  a
while.

"In an infinite Universe anything can happen," said  Ford,  "Even
survival. Strange but true."

A curious look came  into  his  eyes  as  they  passed  over  the
landscape  and  then  settles  again on the scene of misery below
them.

"I think they'll manage for a while," he said.

Arthur looked up sharply.

"Why do you say that?" he said.

Ford shrugged.

"Just a hunch," he said, and refused to be drawn to  any  further
questions.

"Look," he said suddenly.

Arthur followed his pointing finger. Down amongst  the  sprawling
masses  a figure was moving - or perhaps lurching would be a more
accurate description. He appeared to be carrying something on his
shoulder.  As he lurched from prostrate form to prostrate form he
seemed to wave whatever the something was at them  in  a  drunken
fashion. After a while he gave up the struggle and collapsed in a
heap.

Arthur had no idea what this was meant to mean to him.

"Movie camera," said Ford. "Recording the historic movement."

"Well, I don't know about you," said Ford again after  a  moment,
"but I'm off."

He sat a while in silence.

After a while this seemed to require comment.

"Er, when you say you're off, what do  you  mean  exactly?"  said
Arthur.

"Good question," said Ford, "I'm getting total silence."

Looking over his shoulder Arthur saw that he was  twiddling  with
knobs  on  a small box. Ford had already introduced this box as a
Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic, but Arthur had merely nodded absently  and
not  pursued  the  matter. In his mind the Universe still divided
into two parts - the Earth, and everything else. The Earth having
been  demolished  to  make  way for a new hyperspace bypass meant
that this view of things was a little lopsided, but Arthur tended
to cling to that lopsidedness as being his last remaining contact
with his home. Sub-Etha  Sens-O-Matics  belonged  firmly  in  the
"everything else" category.

"Not a sausage," said Ford, shaking the thing.

Sausage, thought Arthur to himself as he gazed listlessly at  the
primitive  world about him, what I wouldn't give for a good Earth
sausage.

"Would you believe," said Ford in exasperation, "that  there  are
no transmissions of any kind within light years of this benighted
tip? Are you listening to me?"

"What?" said Arthur.

"We're in trouble," said Ford.

"Oh," said Arthur. This sounded like month-old news to him.

"Until we pick up anything on  this  machine,"  said  Ford,  "our
chances of getting off this planet are zero. It may be some freak
standing wave effect in the planet's magnetic field  -  in  which
case  we  just  travel  round  and  round  till  we  find a clear
reception area. Coming?"

He picked up his gear and strode off.

Arthur looked down the hill. The man with the  movie  camera  had
struggled  back  up  to  his feet just in time to film one of his
colleagues collapsing.

Arthur picked a blade of grass and strode off after Ford.




"I trust you had a pleasant meal?" said Zarniwoop to  Zaphod  and
Trillian  as  they  rematerialized  on the bridge of the starship
Heart of Gold and lay panting on the floor.

Zaphod opened some eyes and glowered at him.

"You," he spat. He staggered to his feet and stomped off to  find
a chair to slump into. He found one and slumped into it.

"I  have  programmed  the   computer   with   the   Improbability
Coordinates  pertinent  to our journey," said Zarniwoop, "we will
arrive there very shortly. Meanwhile, why  don't  you  relax  and
prepare yourself for the meeting?"

Zaphod said nothing. He got up again and marched over to a  small
cabinet from which he pulled a bottle of old Janx spirit. He took
a long pull at it.

"And when this is all done," said Zaphod  savagely,  "it's  done,
alright?  I'm  free  to go and do what the hell I like and lie on
beaches and stuff?"

"It depends what transpires from the meeting," said Zarniwoop.

"Zaphod, who is this man?" said Trillian shakily, wobbling to her
feet, "What's he doing here? Why's he on our ship?"

"He's a very stupid man," said Zaphod, "who wants to meet the man
who rules the Universe."

"Ah," said Trillian taking the bottle  from  Zaphod  and  helping
herself, "a social climber."




The major problem - one of the  major  problems,  for  there  are
several - one of the many major problems with governing people is
that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who  manages  to  get
people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most
want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the  summary:  anyone  who  is  capable  of  getting
themselves  made  President should on no account be allowed to do
the job. To summarize the summary of the summary:  people  are  a
problem.

And so this is the situation we find: a  succession  of  Galactic
Presidents  who  so  much  enjoy  the fun and palaver of being in
power that they very rarely notice that they're not.

And somewhere in the shadows behind them - who?

Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed
to?




On a small obscure world somewhere in the middle  of  nowhere  in
particular - nowhere, that is, that could ever be found, since it
is protected by a vast field of unprobability to which  only  six
men in this galaxy have a key - it was raining.

It was bucketing down, and had been for hours. It beat the top of
the sea into a mist, it pounded the trees, it churned and slopped
a stretch of scrubby land near the sea into a mudbath.

The rain pelted and danced on the corrugated  iron  roof  of  the
small  shack  that  stood  in the middle of this patch of scrubby
land. It obliterated the small rough pathway that  led  from  the
shack  down  to  the seashore and smashed apart the neat piles of
interesting shells which had been placed there.

The noise of the rain on the roof  of  the  shack  was  deafening
within,  but  went  largely  unnoticed  by  its  occupant,  whose
attention was otherwise engaged.
He was a tall shambling man with rough straw-coloured  hair  that
was damp from the leaking roof. His clothes were shabby, his back
was hunched, and his eyes, though open, seemed closed.

In his shack was an old  beaten-up  armchair,  an  old  scratched
table,  an old mattress, some cushions and a stove that was small
but warm.

There was also an old and slightly weatherbeaten  cat,  and  this
was  currently  the  focus  of  the  man's attention. He bent his
shambling form over it.

"Pussy, pussy, pussy," he said, "coochicoochicoochicoo ...  pussy
want his fish? Nice piece of fish ... pussy want it?"

The  cat  seemed  undecided  on  the  matter.  It  pawed   rather
condescendingly at the piece of fish the man was holding out, and
then got distracted by a piece of dust on the floor.

"Pussy not eat his fish, pussy get thin and waste away, I think,"
said the man. Doubt crept into his voice.

"I imagine this is what will happen," he said,  "but  how  can  I
tell?"

He proffered the fish again.

"Pussy think," he said, "eat fish or not eat fish. I think it  is
better if I don't get involved." He sighed.

"I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so  who
am I to judge?"

He left the fish on the floor for the cat,  and  retired  to  his
seat.

"Ah, I seem to see you eating it," he said at last,  as  the  cat
exhausted  the  entertainment  possibilities of the speck of dust
and pounced on to the fish.

"I like it when I see you eat the fish," said the  man,  "because
in my mind you will waste away if you don't."

He picked up from the table a piece of paper and the  stub  of  a
pencil.  He  held one in one hand and the other in the other, and
experimented with the different ways of bringing  them  together.
He tried holding the pencil under the paper, then over the paper,
then next to the paper. He tried wrapping  the  paper  round  the
pencil, he tried rubbing the stubby end of the pencil against the
paper and then he tried rubbing  the  sharp  end  of  the  pencil
against  the paper. It made a mark, and he was delighted with the
discovery, as he was every day. He picked  up  another  piece  of
paper  from  the table. This had a crossword on it. He studied it
briefly and filled in a couple of clues before losing interest.

He tried sitting on one of his hands and  was  intrigued  by  the
feel of the bones of his hip.

"Fish come from far away," he said, "or so  I'm  told.  Or  so  I
imagine  I'm  told. When the men come, or when in my mind the men
come in their six black ships, do they come  in  your  mind  too?
What do you see pussy?"

He looked at the cat, which was more concerned with  getting  the
fish  down  as  rapidly  as  possible  than  it  was  with  these
speculations.

"And when I hear their questions, do you hear questions? What  do
their  voices mean to you? Perhaps you just think they're singing
songs to you." He reflected on this, and  saw  the  flaw  in  the
supposition.

"Perhaps they are singing songs to you," he  said,  "and  I  just
think they're asking me questions."

He paused again. Sometimes he would pause for days, just  to  see
what it was like.

"Do you think they came today?" he said, "I do.  There's  mud  on
the  floor,  cigarettes  and whisky on the table, fish on a plate
for you and a memory  of  them  in  my  mind.  Hardly  conclusive
evidence  I  know,  but  then all evidence is circumstantial. And
look what else they've left me."

He reached over to the table and pulled some things off it.

"Crosswords, dictionaries, and a calculator."

He played with the calculator for an hour, whilst the cat went to
sleep  and  the rain outside continued to pour. Eventually he put
the calculator aside.

"I think I must be right in thinking they ask me  questions,"  he
said,  "To  come  all that way and leave all these things for the
privilege  of  singing  songs  to  you  would  be  very   strange
behaviour. Or so it seems to me. Who can tell, who can tell."

>From the table he picked up a cigarette and lit it with  a  spill
from the stove. He inhaled deeply and sat back.

"I think I saw another ship in the sky today," he said  at  last.
"A  big  white one. I've never seen a big white one, just the six
black ones. And the six green ones. And the others who  say  they
come  from  so far away. Never a big white one. Perhaps six small
black ones can look like one big  white  one  at  certain  times.
Perhaps  I  would  like  a  glass of whisky. Yes, that seems more
likely."

He stood up and found a glass that was lying on the floor by  the
mattress.  He  poured in a measure from his whisky bottle. He sat
again.

"Perhaps some other people are coming to see me," he said.

A hundred yards away, pelted by  the  torrential  rain,  lay  the
Heart of Gold.

Its hatchway opened, and three  figures  emerged,  huddling  into
themselves to keep the rain off their faces.

"In there?" shouted Trillian above the noise of the rain.

"Yes," said Zarniwoop.

"That shack?"

"Yes."

"Weird," said Zaphod.

"But it's in the middle of nowhere," said Trillian, "we must have
come  to  the  wrong  place.  You  can't rule the Universe from a
shack."

They hurried through the pouring rain, and arrived, wet  through,
at the door. They knocked. They shivered.

The door opened.

"Hello?" said the man.

"Ah, excuse me," said Zarniwoop, "I have reason to believe ..."

"Do you rule the Universe?" said Zaphod.

The man smiled at him.

"I try not to," he said, "Are you wet?"

Zaphod looked at him in astonishment.

"Wet?" he cried, "Doesn't it look as if we're wet?"

"That's how it looks to me," said the  man,  "but  how  you  feel
about  it  might  be  an altogether different matter. If you feel
warmth makes you dry, you'd better come in."

They went in.

They  looked  around  the  tiny  shack,  Zarniwoop  with   slight
distaste, Trillian with interest, Zaphod with delight.

"Hey, er ..." said Zaphod, "what's your name?"

The man looked at them doubtfully.

"I don't know. Why, do you think I should have one? It seems very
odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name."

He invited Trillian to sit in the chair. He sat on  the  edge  of
the  chair, Zarniwoop leaned stiffly against the table and Zaphod
lay on the mattress.

"Wowee!" said Zaphod, "the seat of power!" He tickled the cat.

"Listen," said Zarniwoop, "I must ask you some questions."
"Alright," said the man kindly, "you can sing to my  cat  if  you
like."

"Would he like that?" asked Zaphod.

"You'd better ask him," said the man.

"Does he talk?" said Zaphod.

"I have no memory of him talking," said the man, "but I  am  very
unreliable."

Zarniwoop pulled some notes out of a pocket.

"Now," he said, "you do rule the Universe, do you?"

"How can I tell?" said the man.

Zarniwoop ticked off a note on the paper.

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Ah," said the man, "this is a question about the past is it?"

Zarniwoop looked at him in puzzlement. This wasn't  exactly  what
he had been expecting.

"Yes," he said.

"How can I tell," said the man, "that the past  isn't  a  fiction
designed  to  account  for  the  discrepancy between my immediate
physical sensations and my state of mind?"

Zarniwoop stared at him. The steam began to rise from his  sodden
clothes.

"So you answer all questions like this?" he said.

The man answered quickly.

"I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say
things. More I cannot say."

Zaphod laughed happily.

"I'll drink to that," he said and pulled out the bottle  of  Janx
spirit.  He  leaped  up and handed the bottle to the ruler of the
Universe, who took it with pleasure.

"Good on you, great ruler," he said, "tell it like it is."

"No, listen to me," said Zarniwoop, "people come to you do  they?
In ships ..."

"I think so," said the man. He handed the bottle to Trillian.

"And they ask you," said Zarniwoop, "to take decisions for  them?
About  people's lives, about worlds, about economies, about wars,
about everything going on out there in the Universe?"
"Out there?" said the man, "out where?"

"Out there!" said Zarniwoop pointing at the door.

"How can you tell there's  anything  out  there,"  said  the  man
politely, "the door's closed."

The rain continued to pound the roof. Inside  the  shack  it  was
warm.

"But  you  know  there's  a  whole  Universe  out  there!"  cried
Zarniwoop.  "You can't dodge your responsibilities by saying they
don't exist!"

The ruler of  the  Universe  thought  for  a  long  while  whilst
Zarniwoop quivered with anger.

"You're very sure of your facts," he said at  last,  "I  couldn't
trust  the thinking of a man who takes the Universe - if there is
one - for granted."

Zarniwoop still quivered, but was silent.

"I only decide about my Universe," continued the man quietly. "My
Universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay."

"But don't you believe in anything?"

The man shrugged and picked up his cat.

"I don't understand what you mean," he said.

"You don't understand that what you decide in this shack of yours
affects  the  lives  and fates of millions of people? This is all
monstrously wrong!"

"I don't know. I've never met all these people you speak of.  And
neither,  I  suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear.
It is folly to say you know what is happening  to  other  people.
Only  they  know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of
their own eyes and ears."

Trillian said:

"I think I'm just popping outside for a moment."

She left and walked into the rain.

"Do you believe other people exist?" insisted Zarniwoop.

"I have no opinion. How can I say?"

"I'd better see what's up with Trillian," said Zaphod and slipped
out.

Outside, he said to her:

"I think the Universe is in pretty good hands, yeah?"
"Very good," said Trillian. They walked off into the rain.

Inside, Zarniwoop continued.

"But don't you understand that people live or die on your word?"

The ruler of the Universe waited for as long as he could. When he
heard  the faint sound of the ship's engines starting he spoke to
cover it.

"It's nothing to do with me," he said, "I am  not  involved  with
people. The Lord knows I am not a cruel man."

"Ah!" barked Zarniwoop, "you  say  `The  Lord'.  You  believe  in
something!"

"My cat," said the man benignly, picking it up and  stroking  it,
"I call him The Lord. I am kind to him."

"Alright," said Zarniwoop, pressing home his point, "How  do  you
know  he  exists?  How  do  you  know he knows you to be kind, or
enjoys what he thinks of as your kindness?"

"I don't," said the man with a smile, "I have no idea. It  merely
pleases  me  to  behave  in a certain way to what appears to be a
cat. Do you behave any differently? Please, I think I am tired."

Zarniwoop heaved a thoroughly dissatisfied sigh and looked about.

"Where are the other two?" he said suddenly.

"What other two?" said the ruler of the Universe,  settling  back
into his chair and refilling his whisky glass.

"Beeblebrox and the girl! The two who were here!"

"I remember no one. The past is a fiction to account for ..."

"Stuff it," snapped Zarniwoop and ran out into  the  rain.  There
was  no  ship.  The rain continued to churn the mud. There was no
sign to show where the ship had been. He hollered into the  rain.
He turned and ran back to the shack and found it locked.

The ruler of the Universe dozed lightly in  his  chair.  After  a
while  he  played  with  the  pencil  and the paper again and was
delighted when he discovered how to make a mark with the  one  on
the  other.  Various noises continued outside, but he didn't know
whether they were real or not. He then talked to his table for  a
week to see how it would react.




The stars came out that night, dazzling in their  brilliance  and
clarity.  Ford and Arthur had walked more miles than they had any
means of judging and finally stopped to rest. The night was  cool
and  balmy,  the  air  pure,  the  Sub-Etha  Sens.O.Matic totally
silent.
A wonderful stillness hung over the world, a magical  calm  which
combined with the soft fragrances of the woods, the quiet chatter
of insects and the brilliant light of the stars to  soothe  their
jangled spirits. Even Ford Prefect, who had seen more worlds than
he could count on a long afternoon, was moved to wonder  if  this
was  the  most  beautiful he had ever seen. All that day they had
passed through rolling green hills and  valleys,  richly  covered
with grasses, wild scented flowers and tall thickly leaved trees,
the sun had warmed them, light breezes had kept  them  cool,  and
Ford  Prefect  had  checked his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic at less and
less  frequent  intervals,  and  had  exhibited  less  and   less
annoyance  at its continued silence. He was beginning to think he
liked it here.

Cool though the night air was they slept soundly and  comfortably
in  the  open  and awoke a few hours later with the light dewfall
feeling refreshed but hungry. Ford had stuffed some  small  rolls
into  his  satchel  at  Milliways  and they breakfasted off those
before moving on.

So far they had wandered purely at random, but  now  they  struck
out  firmly eastwards, feeling that if they were going to explore
this world they should have some clear idea  of  where  they  had
come from and where they were going.

Shortly before noon they had  their  first  indication  that  the
world  they  had  landed  on  was  not an uninhabited one: a half
glimpsed face amongst the trees, watching them.  It  vanished  at
the  moment  they  both saw it, but the image they were both left
with was of a humanoid creature, curious  to  see  them  but  not
alarmed.  Half an hour later they glimpsed another such face, and
ten minutes after that another.

A minute later they stumbled into a  wide  clearing  and  stopped
short.

Before them in the middle of the clearing stood a group of  about
two  dozen  men and women. They stood still and quiet facing Ford
and Arthur. Around some of the women huddled some small  children
and  behind  the  group was a ramshackle array of small dwellings
made of mud and branches.

Ford and Arthur held their breath.

The tallest of the men stood a little over five feet  high,  they
all  stooped  forward  slightly,  had  longish  arms  and  lowish
foreheads, and clear bright eyes with which they stared  intently
at the strangers.

Seeing that they carried no weapons  and  made  no  move  towards
them, Ford and Arthur relaxed slightly.

For a while the two groups simply stared at each  other,  neither
side   making  any  move.  The  natives  seemed  puzzled  by  the
intruders, and whilst they showed no sign of aggression they were
quite clearly not issuing any invitations.

For a full two minutes nothing continued to happen.
After two minutes Ford decided it was time something happened.

"Hello," he said.

The women drew their children slightly closer to them.

The men made hardly any discernible  move  and  yet  their  whole
disposition  made it clear that the greeting was not welcome - it
was not resented in any great degree, it was just not welcome.

One of the men, who had been standing  slightly  forward  of  the
rest of the group and who might therefore have been their leader,
stepped forward. His face was quiet and calm, almost serene.

"Ugghhhuuggghhhrrrr uh uh ruh uurgh," he said quietly.

This caught Arthur by surprise. He had grown so used to receiving
an  instantaneous  and  unconscious  translation of everything he
heard via the Babel Fish lodged in his ear that he had ceased  to
be  aware  of it, and he was only reminded of its presence now by
the fact that it didn't seem to  be  working.  Vague  shadows  of
meaning  had  flickered  at  the  back of his mind, but there was
nothing he could get any firm grasp on. He guessed, correctly  as
it happens, that these people had as yet evolved no more than the
barest rudiments  of  language,  and  that  the  Babel  Fish  was
therefore  powerless  to  help.  He  glanced  at  Ford,  who  was
infinitely more experienced in these matters.

"I think," said Ford out of the corner of his mouth, "he's asking
us if we'd mind walking on round the edge of the village."

A moment later, a gesture from the man-creature seemed to confirm
this.

"Ruurgggghhhh  urrgggh;  urgh  urgh  (uh  ruh)   rruurruuh   ug,"
continued the man-creature.

"The general gist," said Ford, "as far as I can make out, is that
we are welcome to continue our journey in any way we like, but if
we would walk round his village rather than through it  it  would
make them all very happy."

"So what do we do?"

"I think we make them happy," said Ford.

Slowly and watchfully they walked  round  the  perimeter  of  the
clearing.  This  seemed to go down very well with the natives who
bowed to them very slightly and then went about their business.

Ford and Arthur continued their journey through the wood.  A  few
hundred  yards  past the clearing they suddenly came upon a small
pile  of  fruit  lying  in  their  path  -  berries  that  looked
remarkably  like  raspberries  and blackberries, and pulpy, green
skinned fruit that looked remarkably like pears.

So far they had steered clear of the fruit and berries  they  had
seen, though the trees and bushed were laden with them.
"Look at it this way," Ford Prefect had said, "fruit and  berries
on  strange  planets  either  make  you  live  or  make  you die.
Therefore the point at which to start toying with  them  is  when
you're  going  to  die if you don't. That way you stay ahead. The
secret of healthy hitch-hiking is to eat junk food."

They looked at the pile that lay in their path with suspicion. It
looked so good it made them almost dizzy with hunger.

"Look at it this way," said Ford, "er ..."

"Yes?" said Arthur.

"I'm trying to think of a way of looking at it which means we get
to eat it," said Ford.

The leaf-dappled sun gleamed on the  pulp  skins  of  the  things
which looked like pears. The things which looked like raspberries
and strawberries were fatter and riper than any Arthur  had  ever
seen, even in ice cream commercials.

"Why don't we eat them and think about it afterwards?" he said.

"Maybe that's what they want us to do."

"Alright, look at it this way ..."

"Sounds good so far."

"It's there for us to eat. Either it's good or it's  bad,  either
they  want  to  feed us or to poison us. If it's poisonous and we
don't eat it they'll just attack us some other way. If  we  don't
eat, we lose out either way."

"I like the way you're thinking," said Ford, "Now eat one."

Hesitantly, Arthur picked up one of those things that looked like
pears.

"I always thought that about the  Garden  of  Eden  story,"  said
Ford.

"Eh?"

"Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?"

"Yes of course I do."

"Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and
says do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise
surprise, they eat it  and  he  leaps  out  from  behind  a  bush
shouting  `Gotcha'.  It wouldn't have made any difference if they
hadn't eaten it."

"Why not?"

"Because if you're dealing with somebody  who  has  the  sort  of
mentality  which  likes  leaving hats on the pavement with bricks
under them you know perfectly well they won't  give  up.  They'll
get you in the end."

"What are you talking about?"

"Never mind, eat the fruit."

"You know, this place almost looks like the Garden of Eden."

"Eat the fruit."

"Sounds quite like it too."

Arthur took a bite from the thing which looked like a pear.

"It's a pear," he said.

A few moments later, when they had eaten the  lot,  Ford  Prefect
turned round and called out.

"Thank you. Thank you very much," he called, "you're very kind."

They went on their way.

For the next fifty miles of their journey eastward they  kept  on
finding  the  occasional  gift  of fruit lying in their path, and
though they once or twice had a quick glimpse of  a  native  man-
creature amongst the trees, they never again made direct contact.
They decided they rather liked a race of people who made it clear
that they were grateful simply to be left alone.

The fruit and berries stopped after fifty miles, because that was
where the sea started.

Having no pressing calls on their time  they  built  a  raft  and
crossed  the  sea. It was reasonably calm, only about sixty miles
wide and they had a reasonably pleasant crossing,  landing  in  a
country that was at least as beautiful as the one they had left.

Life was, in short, ridiculously easy and for a  while  at  least
they  were  able  to  cope  with  the problems of aimlessness and
isolation by deciding  to  ignore  them.  When  the  craving  for
company  became  too  great they would know where to find it, but
for the moment they were happy to feel  that  the  Golgafrinchans
were hundreds of miles behind them.

Nevertheless, Ford Prefect began to use his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic
more often again. Only once did he pick up a signal, but that was
so faint and from such enormous distance that  it  depressed  him
more than the silence that had otherwise continued unbroken.

On a whim they turned northwards. After weeks of travelling  they
came to another sea, built another raft and crossed it. This time
it was harder going,  the  climate  was  getting  colder.  Arthur
suspected  a streak of masochism in Ford Prefect - the increasing
difficulty of the journey seemed to give him a sense  of  purpose
that was otherwise lacking. He strode onwards relentlessly.

Their journey northwards  brought  them  into  steep  mountainous
terrain  of breathtaking sweep and beauty. The vast, jagged, snow
covered peaks ravished their senses. The cold began to bite  into
their bones.

They wrapped themselves in  animal  skins  and  furs  which  Ford
Prefect  acquired by a technique he once learned from a couple of
ex-Pralite monks running a Mind-Surfing resort in  the  Hills  of
Hunian.

The galaxy is littered with ex-Pralite monks, all  on  the  make,
because the mental control techniques the Order have evolved as a
form of devotional discipline are,  frankly,  sensational  -  and
extraordinary  numbers  of  monks leave the Order just after they
have finished their devotional training and just before they take
their final vows to stay locked in small metal boxes for the rest
of their lives.

Ford's technique seemed to consist mainly of standing still for a
while and smiling.

After a while an animal - a deer perhaps - would appear from  out
of  the  trees  and  watch him cautiously. Ford would continue to
smile at it, his eyes would soften and shine, and he  would  seem
to radiate a deep and universal love, a love which reached out to
embrace all of creation. A wonderful quietness would  descend  on
the  surrounding countryside, peaceful and serene, emanating from
this transfigured man. Slowly the deer would  approach,  step  by
step,  until  it  was almost nuzzling him, whereupon Ford Prefect
would reach out to it and break its neck.

"Pheromone control," he said it was, "you just have to  know  how
to generate the right smell."




A few days after landing in this  mountainous  land  they  hit  a
coastline  which swept diagonally before them from the south-west
to the north-east,  a  coastline  of  monumental  grandeur:  deep
majestic ravines, soaring pinnacles of ice - fjords.

For two further days they scrambled and climbed  over  the  rocks
and glaciers, awe-struck with beauty.

"Arthur!" yelled Ford suddenly.

It was the afternoon of the second day. Arthur was sitting  on  a
high rock watching the thundering sea smashing itself against the
craggy promontories.

"Arthur!" yelled Ford again.

Arthur looked to  where  Ford's  voice  had  come  from,  carried
faintly in the wind.

Ford had gone to examine a glacier, and Arthur  found  him  there
crouching  by  the  solid  wall  of  blue  ice. He was tense with
excitement - his eyes darted up to meet Arthur's.
"Look," he said, "look!"

Arthur looked. He saw the solid wall of blue ice.

"Yes," he said, "it's a glacier. I've already seen it."

"No," said Ford, "you've looked  at  it,  you  haven't  seen  it.
Look!"

Ford was pointing deep into the heart of the ice.

Arthur peered - he saw nothing but vague shadows.

"Move back from it," insisted Ford, "look again."

Arthur moved back and looked again.

"No," he said, and shrugged. "What am I supposed  to  be  looking
for?"

And suddenly he saw it.

"You see it?"

He saw it.

His mouth started to speak, but his brain decided it  hadn't  got
anything  to say yet and shut it again. His brain then started to
contend with the problem of what  his  eyes  told  it  they  were
looking  at,  but  in  doing so relinquished control of the mouth
which promptly fell open again. Once more gathering up  the  jaw,
his  brain  lost  control  of  his  left hand which then wandered
around in an aimless fashion. For a second or so the brain  tried
to  catch  the  left  hand  without  letting  go of the mouth and
simultaneously tried to think about what was buried in  the  ice,
which  is probably why the legs went and Arthur dropped restfully
to the ground.

The thing that had been causing  all  this  neural  upset  was  a
network  of shadows in the ice, about eighteen inches beneath the
surface. Looked at it from the right angle they resolved into the
solid  shapes of letters from an alien alphabet, each about three
feet  high;  and  for  those,  like  Arthur,  who  couldn't  read
Magrathean  there  was  above  the  letters the outline of a face
hanging in the ice.

It was an old face, thin  and  distinguished,  careworn  but  not
unkind.

It was the face of the man who had won an award for designing the
coastline they now knew themselves to be standing on.




A thin whine filled the air. It whirled and  howled  through  the
trees  upsetting  the squirrels. A few birds flew off in disgust.
The noise danced and skittered round the clearing. It whooped, it
rasped, it generally offended.
The  Captain,  however,  regarded  the  lone  bagpiper  with   an
indulgent  eye. Little could disturb his equanimity; indeed, once
he had got over  the  loss  of  his  gorgeous  bath  during  that
unpleasantness  in the swamp all those months ago he had begun to
find his new life remarkably congenial. A hollow had been scooped
out  of  a  large rock which stood in the middle of the clearing,
and in this he would bask daily whilst attendants  sloshed  water
over  him.  Not particularly warm water, it must be said, as they
hadn't yet worked out a way of heating it. Never mind, that would
come,  and  in  the  meantime  search  parties  were scouring the
countryside far and wide for a hot spring, preferably  one  in  a
nice leafy glade, and if it was near a soap mine - perfection. To
those who said that they had  a  feeling  soap  wasn't  found  in
mines,  the Captain had ventured to suggest that perhaps that was
because no one had looked hard enough, and this  possibility  had
been reluctantly acknowledged.

No, life was very pleasant, and the greatest thing about  it  was
that  when the hot spring was found, complete with leafy glade en
suite,  and  when  in  the  fullness  of  time   the   cry   came
reverberating  across  the  hills  that  the  soap  mine had been
located and was producing five hundred cakes a day  it  would  be
more pleasant still. It was very important to have things to look
forward to.

Wail, wail, screech, wail, howl, honk, squeak went the  bagpipes,
increasing  the  Captain's  already  considerable pleasure at the
thought that any moment now they might stop. That  was  something
he looked forward to as well.

What else was pleasant, he asked himself? Well, so  many  things:
the  red  and gold of the trees, now that autumn was approaching;
the peaceful chatter of scissors a few feet from his bath where a
couple  of  hairdressers were exercising their skills on a dozing
art director and his assistant; the sunlight gleaming off the six
shiny  telephones  lined up along the edge of his rock-hewn bath.
The only thing nicer than a phone that didn't ring all  the  time
(or  indeed  at all) was six phones that didn't ring all the time
(or indeed at all).

Nicest of all was the happy murmur of all the hundreds of  people
slowly  assembling  in  the  clearing  around  him  to  watch the
afternoon committee meeting.

The Captain punched his rubber duck playfully on  the  beak.  The
afternoon committee meetings were his favourite.

Other eyes watched the assembling crowds. High in a tree  on  the
edge  of the clearing squatted Ford Prefect, lately returned from
foreign climes. After his six  month  journey  he  was  lean  and
healthy,  his  eyes  gleamed,  he  wore a reindeer-skin coat; his
beard was as thick and his face  as  bronzed  as  a  country-rock
singer's.

He and Arthur Dent  had  been  watching  the  Golgafrinchans  for
almost a week now, and Ford had decided to stir things up a bit.

The clearing was now full. Hundreds  of  men  and  women  lounged
around,  chatting,  eating  fruit,  playing  cards  and generally
having a fairly relaxed time of it. Their track  suits  were  now
all  dirty  and  even  torn, but they all had immaculately styled
hair. Ford was puzzled to see that many of them had stuffed their
track  suits  full of leaves and wondered if this was meant to be
some form of insulation against the coming  winter.  Ford's  eyes
narrowed. They couldn't be interested in botany of a sudden could
they?

In the middle of these  speculations  the  Captain's  voice  rose
above the hubbub.

"Alright," he said, "I'd like to call this meeting to  some  sort
of  order  if  that's  at  all  possible.  Is  that  alright with
everybody?" He smiled genially. "In a  minute.  When  you're  all
ready."

The talking gradually died away and  the  clearing  fell  silent,
except  for  the  bagpiper  who  seemed  to  be  in some wild and
uninhabitable musical world of his own. A few  of  those  in  his
immediate  vicinity  threw  some  leaves to him. If there was any
reason for this then it escaped Ford Prefect for the moment.

A small group of people had clustered round the Captain  and  one
of  them  was clearly beginning to speak. He did this by standing
up, clearing his throat and then gazing off into the distance  as
if  to  signify  to  the  crowd  that  he would be with them in a
minute.

The crowd of course were riveted and all  turned  their  eyes  on
him.

A moment of silence followed, which Ford judged to be  the  right
dramatic moment to make his entry. The man turned to speak.

Ford dropped down out of the tree.

"Hi there," he said.

The crowd swivelled round.

"Ah my dear fellow," called out the Captain, "Got any matches  on
you? Or a lighter? Anything like that?"

"No," said Ford, sounding a little deflated. It wasn't what  he'd
prepared.  He  decided  he'd  better  be a little stronger on the
subject.

"No I haven't," he continued, "No matches. Instead  I  bring  you
news ..."

"Pity," said the Captain, "We've all run out you see. Haven't had
a hot bath in weeks."

Ford refused to be headed off.

"I bring you news," he said, "of a discovery that might  interest
you."
"Is it on the agenda?" snapped the man whom Ford had interrupted.

Ford smiled a broad country-rock singer smile.

"Now, come on," he said.

"Well I'm sorry," said  the  man  huffily,  "but  speaking  as  a
management  consultant  of many years' standing, I must insist on
the importance of observing the committee structure."

Ford looked round the crowd.

"He's mad you know," he said, "this is a prehistoric planet."

"Address the chair!" snapped the management consultant.

"There isn't chair," explained Ford, "there's only a rock."

The management consultant decided that  testiness  was  what  the
situation now called for.

"Well, call it a chair," he said testily.

"Why not call it a rock?" asked Ford.

"You  obviously  have  no  conception,"   said   the   management
consultant,  not  abandoning  testiness  in  favour  of  good old
fashioned hauteur, "of modern business methods."

"And you have no conception of where you are," said Ford.

A girl with a strident voice leapt to her feet and used it.

"Shut up, you two," she said, "I want to table a motion."

"You mean boulder a motion," tittered a hairdresser.

"Order, order!" yapped the management consultant.

"Alright," said Ford, "let's see how you are doing."  He  plonked
himself  down  on  the  ground  to see how long he could keep his
temper.

The Captain made a sort of conciliatory harrumphing noise.

"I would like to call to order," he said  pleasantly,  "the  five
hundred  and  seventy-third meeting of the colonization committee
of Fintlewoodlewix ..."

Ten seconds, thought Ford as he leapt to his feet again.

"This is futile," he exclaimed, "five hundred  and  seventy-three
committee meetings and you haven't even discovered fire yet!"

"If you would care," said the girl with the strident  voice,  "to
examine the agenda sheet ..."

"Agenda rock," trilled the hairdresser happily.
"Thank you, I've made that point," muttered Ford.

"... you ... will ... see ..." continued the girl  firmly,  "that
we  are  having  a report from the hairdressers' Fire Development
Sub-Committee today."

"Oh ... ah -" said the hairdresser with a sheepish look which  is
recognized  the  whole  Galaxy  over  as  meaning  "Er, will next
Tuesday do?"

"Alright," said Ford, rounding on him, "what have you done?  What
are you going to do? What are your thoughts on fire development?"

"Well I don't know," said the hairdresser, "All they gave me  was
a couple of sticks ..."

"So what have you done with them?"

Nervously, the hairdresser fished  in  his  track  suit  top  and
handed over the fruits of his labour to Ford.

Ford held them up for all to see.

"Curling tongs," he said.

The crowd applauded.

"Never mind," said Ford, "Rome wasn't burnt in a day."

The crowd hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about, but
they loved it nevertheless. They applauded.

"Well, you're obviously being totally naive of course," said  the
girl,  "When  you've  been  in marketing as long as I have you'll
know that before any new product can be developed it  has  to  be
properly  researched. We've got to find out what people want from
fire, how they relate to it, what sort of image it has for them."

The crowd were tense. They  were  expecting  something  wonderful
from Ford.

"Stick it up your nose," he said.

"Which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know,"  insisted
the girl, "Do people want fire that can be applied nasally?"

"Do you?" Ford asked the crowd.

"Yes!" shouted some.

"No!" shouted others happily.

They didn't know, they just thought it was great.

"And the wheel," said the Captain, "What about this wheel thingy?
It sounds a terribly interesting project."

"Ah," said the marketing  girl,  "Well,  we're  having  a  little
difficulty there."
"Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford,  "Difficulty?  What  do  you  mean,
difficulty?  It's  the  single  simplest  machine  in  the entire
Universe!"

The marketing girl soured him with a look.

"Alright, Mr Wiseguy," she said, "you're so clever, you  tell  us
what colour it should have."

The crowd went wild. One up to the home team, they thought.  Ford
shrugged his shoulders and sat down again.

"Almighty Zarquon," he said, "have none of you done anything?"

As if in answer to his question there was  a  sudden  clamour  of
noise  from  the  entrance  to  the  clearing. The crowd couldn't
believe the  amount  of  entertainment  they  were  getting  this
afternoon: in marched a squad of about a dozen men dressed in the
remnants of their  Golgafrincham  3rd  Regiment  dress  uniforms.
About  half  of  them still carried Kill-O-Zap guns, the rest now
carried spears which they struck together as they  marched.  They
looked  bronzed,  healthy,  and utterly exhausted and bedraggled.
They clattered to a halt and banged to  attention.  One  of  them
fell over and never moved again.

"Captain, sir!" cried Number Two - for  he  was  their  leader  -
"Permission to report sir!"

"Yes, alright Number Two, welcome back and all that. Find any hot
springs?" said the Captain despondently.

"No sir!"

"Thought you wouldn't."

Number Two strode through the crowd and presented arms before the
bath.

"We have discovered another continent!"

"When was this?"

"It lies across the sea ..." said Number Two, narrowing his  eyes
significantly, "to the east!"

"Ah."

Number Two turned to face the crowd. He raised his gun above  his
head. This is going to be great, thought the crowd.

"We have declared war on it!"

Wild abandoned cheering broke out in all corners of the  clearing
- this was beyond all expectation.

"Wait a minute," shouted Ford Prefect, "wait a minute!"

He leapt to his feet and demanded silence. After a while  he  got
it,  or  at  least  the  best silence he could hope for under the
circumstances: the  circumstances  were  that  the  bagpiper  was
spontaneously composing a national anthem.

"Do we have to have the piper?" demanded Ford.

"Oh yes," said the Captain, "we've given him a grant."

Ford considered opening this  idea  up  for  debate  but  quickly
decided that that way madness lay. Instead he slung a well judged
rock at the piper and turned to face Number Two.

"War?" he said.

"Yes!" Number Two gazed contemptuously at Ford Prefect.

"On the next continent?"

"Yes! Total warfare! The war to end all wars!"

"But there's no one even living there yet!"

Ah, interesting, thought the crowd, nice point.

Number Two's gaze hovered undisturbed. In this respect  his  eyes
were  like  a  couple  of mosquitos that hover purposefully three
inches from your nose and refuse to be deflected by arm thrashes,
fly swats or rolled newspapers.

"I know that," he said, "but there will be one day!  So  we  have
left an open-ended ultimatum."

"What?"

"And blown up a few military installations."

The Captain leaned forward out of his bath.

"Military installations Number Two?" he said.

For a moment the eyes wavered.

"Yes sir, well  potential  military  installations.  Alright  ...
trees."

The moment of uncertainty passed - his eyes flickered like  whips
over his audience.

"And," he roared, "we interrogated a gazelle!"

He flipped his Kill-O-Zap gun smartly under his arm  and  marched
off  through  the pandemonium that had now erupted throughout the
ecstatic crowd. A few steps was all  he  managed  before  he  was
caught up and carried shoulder high for a lap of honour round the
clearing.

Ford sat and idly tapped a couple of stones together.

"So what else have you done?" he inquired after the  celebrations
had died down.

"We have started a culture," said the marketing girl.

"Oh yes?" said Ford.

"Yes. One of our film producers is already making  a  fascinating
documentary about the indigenous cavemen of the area."

"They're not cavemen."

"They look like cavemen."

"Do they live in caves?"

"Well ..."

"They live in huts."

"Perhaps they're having their caves redecorated,"  called  out  a
wag from the crowd.

Ford rounded on him angrily.

"Very funny," he said, "but have you noticed that  they're  dying
out?"

On their journey back,  Ford  and  Arthur  had  come  across  two
derelict  villages  and  the bodies of many natives in the woods,
where they had crept away to die. Those  that  still  lived  were
stricken  and listless, as if they were suffering some disease of
the spirit rather than the body. They moved sluggishly  and  with
an infinite sadness. Their future had been taken away from them.

"Dying out!" repeated Ford. "Do you know what that means?"

"Er ... we shouldn't sell them any life  insurance?"  called  out
the wag again.

Ford ignored him, and appealed to the whole crowd.

"Can you try and understand," he  said,  "that  it's  just  since
we've arrived that they've started dying out!"

"In fact that comes over terribly well in this  film,"  said  the
marketing  girl,  "and just gives it that poignant twist which is
the hallmark of the really great documentary. The producer's very
committed."

"He should be," muttered Ford.

"I gather," said the girl, turning to address the Captain who was
beginning  to nod off, "that he wants to make one about you next,
Captain."

"Oh really?" he said, coming to with  a  start,  "that's  awfully
nice."

"He's got a very strong angle on it,  you  know,  the  burden  of
responsibility, the loneliness of command ..."

The Captain hummed and hahed about this for a moment.

"Well, I wouldn't overstress  that  angle,  you  know,"  he  said
finally, "one's never alone with a rubber duck."

He held the duck aloft and it got an appreciative round from  the
crowd.

All the while, the Management  Consultant  had  been  sitting  in
stony silence, his finger tips pressed to his temples to indicate
that he was waiting and would wait all day if it was necessary.

At this point he decided he would not wait all day after all,  he
would merely pretend that the last half hour hadn't happened.

He rose to his feet.

"If," he said tersely, "we could for a  moment  move  on  to  the
subject of fiscal policy ..."

"Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect, "Fiscal policy!"

The Management Consultant gave him a look that  only  a  lungfish
could have copied.

"Fiscal policy ..." he repeated, "that is what I said."

"How can you have money," demanded Ford, "if none of you actually
produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know."

"If you would allow me to continue ..."

Ford nodded dejectedly.

"Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as
legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich."

Ford  stared  in  disbelief  at  the  crowd  who  were  murmuring
appreciatively  at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves
with which their track suits were stuffed.

"But we have also," continued  the  Management  Consultant,  "run
into  a  small  inflation problem on account of the high level of
leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current  going
rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's
peanut."

Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The  Management  Consultant
waved them down.

"So in  order  to  obviate  this  problem,"  he  continued,  "and
effectively  revaluate  the  leaf,  we  are  about to embark on a
massive defoliation campaign, and  ...  er,  burn  down  all  the
forests.  I  think  you'll all agree that's a sensible move under
the circumstances."

The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for  a  second  or
two  until  someone  pointed out how much this would increase the
value of the leaves in  their  pockets  whereupon  they  let  out
whoops  of  delight and gave the Management Consultant a standing
ovation.  The  accountants  amongst  them  looked  forward  to  a
profitable Autumn.

"You're all mad," explained Ford Prefect.

"You're absolutely barmy," he suggested.

"You're a bunch of raving nutters," he opined.

The tide of opinion started to turn against him. What had started
out  as  excellent  entertainment  had  now, in the crowd's view,
deteriorated into mere abuse, and since this  abuse  was  in  the
main directed at them they wearied of it.

Sensing this shift in the wind, the marketing girl turned on him.

"Is it perhaps in order," she demanded, "to inquire  what  you've
been  doing  all these months then? You and that other interloper
have been missing since the day we arrived."

"We've been on a journey," said Ford, "We went to  try  and  find
out something about this planet."

"Oh," said the girl archly, "doesn't  sound  very  productive  to
me."

"No? Well have I got news for you, my love.  We  have  discovered
this planet's future."

Ford waited for this statement to have its effect. It didn't have
any. They didn't know what he was talking about.

He continued.

"It doesn't matter a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys what  you  all
choose  to  do  from  now on. Burn down the forests, anything, it
won't make a scrap of difference. Your future history has already
happened.  Two million years you've got and that's it. At the end
of that time your race will be dead, gone and  good  riddance  to
you. Remember that, two million years!"

The crowd muttered to itself in annoyance. People as rich as they
had  suddenly  become shouldn't be obliged to listen to this sort
of gibberish. Perhaps they could tip the fellow a leaf or two and
he would go away.

They didn't need to bother. Ford was already stalking out of  the
clearing,  pausing  only  to shake his head at Number Two who was
already firing his Kill-O-Zap gun into some neighbouring trees.

He turned back once.

"Two million years!" he said and laughed.

"Well," said the Captain with a soothing smile, "still time for a
few  more baths. Could someone pass me the sponge? I just dropped
it over the side."




A mile or so away through the wood, Arthur Dent  was  too  busily
engrossed with what he was doing to hear Ford Prefect approach.

What he was doing was rather curious, and this is what it was: on
a  wide  flat  piece  of rock he had scratched out the shape of a
large square, subdivided into one hundred and sixty-nine  smaller
squares, thirteen to a side.

Furthermore he had collected together a pile of smallish flattish
stones  and  scratched  the shape of a letter on to each. Sitting
morosely round the rock were a  couple  of  the  surviving  local
native  men  whom Arthur Dent was trying to introduce the curious
concept embodied in these stones.

So far they had not done well. They had attempted to eat some  of
them,  bury  others  and  throw the rest of them away. Arthur had
finally encouraged one of them to lay a couple of stones  on  the
board  he  had  scratched  out, which was not even as far as he'd
managed to get the day before. Along with the rapid deterioration
in   the  morale  of  these  creatures,  there  seemed  to  be  a
corresponding deterioration in their actual intelligence.

In an attempt to egg them along,  Arthur  set  out  a  number  of
letters  on  the  board  himself, and then tried to encourage the
natives to add some more themselves.

It was not going well.

Ford watched quietly from beside a nearby tree.

"No," said Arthur to one of the natives  who  had  just  shuffled
some  of  the  letters  round  in  a fit of abysmal dejection, "Q
scores ten you see, and it's on a triple word score, so ... look,
I've  explained the rules to you ... no no, look please, put down
that  jawbone  ...  alright,  we'll  start  again.  And  try   to
concentrate this time."

Ford leaned his elbow against the tree and his hand  against  his
head.

"What are you doing, Arthur?" he asked quietly.

Arthur looked up with a start. He suddenly had a feeling that all
this  might  look  slightly  foolish. All he knew was that it had
worked like a dream on him when he was a chid.  But  things  were
different then, or rather would be.

"I'm trying to teach the cavemen to play Scrabble," he said.

"They're not cavemen," said Ford.

"They look like cavemen."

Ford let it pass.
"I see," he said.

"It's uphill work," said Arthur wearily, "the only word they know
is grunt and they can't spell it."

He sighed and sat back.

"What's that supposed to achieve?" asked Ford.

"We've got to encourage them to evolve! To develop!" Arthur burst
out  angrily.  He  hoped  that  the weary sigh and then the anger
might do  something  to  counteract  the  overriding  feeling  of
foolishness  from which he was currently suffering. It didn't. He
jumped to his feet.

"Can you imagine what a world would be like descended from  those
... cretins we arrived with?" he said.

"Imagine?" said Ford, rising his  eyebrows.  "We  don't  have  to
imagine. We've seen it."

"But ..." Arthur waved his arms about hopelessly.

"We've seen it," said Ford, "there's no escape."

Arthur kicked at a stone.

"Did you tell them what we've discovered?" he asked.

"Hmmmm?" said Ford, not really concentrating.

"Norway,"  said  Arthur,  "Slartibartfast's  signature   in   the
glacier. Did you tell them?"

"What's the point?" said Ford, "What would it mean to them?"

"Mean?" said Arthur, "Mean?  You  know  perfectly  well  what  it
means. It means that this planet is the Earth! It's my home! It's
where I was born!"

"Was?" said Ford.

"Alright, will be."

"Yes, in two million years' time. Why don't you tell  them  that?
Go  and  say to them, `Excuse me, I'd just like to point out that
in two million years' time I will be born just a few  miles  from
here.'  See  what  they  say. They'll chase you up a tree and set
fire to it."

Arthur absorbed this unhappily.

"Face it," said Ford, "those zeebs over there are your ancestors,
not these poor creatures here."

He went  over  to  where  the  apemen  creatures  were  rummaging
listlessly with the stone letters. He shook his head.
"Put the Scrabble away, Arthur," he  said,  "it  won't  save  the
human  race,  because this lot aren't going to be the human race.
The human race is currently sitting round a  rock  on  the  other
side of this hill making documentaries about themselves."

Arthur winced.

"There must be something we can do," he said. A terrible sense of
desolation  thrilled  through his body that he should be here, on
the Earth, the Earth which had lost its future  in  a  horrifying
arbitrary  catastrophe  and which now seemed set to lose its past
as well.

"No," said Ford, "there's nothing we can do. This doesn't  change
the  history  of  the  Earth, you see, this is the history of the
Earth. Like it or leave it, the Golgafrinchans are the people you
are  descended  from.  in two million years they get destroyed by
the Vogons. History is  never  altered  you  see,  it  just  fits
together like a jigsaw. Funny old thing, life, isn't it?"

He picked up the letter Q and hurled it into a distant pivet bush
where it hit a young rabbit. The rabbit hurtled off in terror and
didn't stop till it was set upon and eaten by a fox which  choked
on  one  of  its  bones  and  died  on the bank of a stream which
subsequently washed it away.

During the following weeks Ford Prefect swallowed his  pride  and
struck  up  a  relationship  with a girl who had been a personnel
officer on Golgafrincham, and he  was  terribly  upset  when  she
suddenly  passed  away  as a result of drinking water from a pool
that had been polluted by the body of a dead fox. The only  moral
it  is  possible to draw from this story is that one should never
throw the letter Q into a pivet bush, but unfortunately there are
times when it is unavoidable.

Like most of the really crucial things in  life,  this  chain  of
events  was completely invisible to Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent.
They were looking sadly at one of the  natives  morosely  pushing
the other letters around.

"Poor bloody caveman," said Arthur.

"They're not ..."

"What?"

"Oh never mind."

The wretched creature let out a pathetic howling noise and banged
on the rock.

"It's all been a bit of waste of time for them, hasn't it?"  said
Arthur.

"Uh uh urghhhhh," muttered the native  and  banged  on  the  rock
again.

"They've been outevolved by telephone sanitizers."
"Urgh, gr gr, gruh!" insisted the native, continuing to  bang  on
the rock.

"Why does he keep banging on the rock?" said Arthur.

"I think he probably wants you to Scrabble with him again,"  said
Ford, "he's pointing at the letters."

"Probably spelt crzjgrdwldiwdc again, poor  bastard.  I  keep  on
telling him there's only one g in crzjgrdwldiwdc."

The native banged on the rock again.

They looked over his shoulder.

Their eyes popped.

There amongst the jumble of letters were eight that had been laid
out in a clear straight line.

They spelt two words.

The words were these:

"Forty-Two."

"Grrrurgh guh guh," explained the native. He  swept  the  letters
angrily  away  and  went and mooched under a nearby tree with his
colleague.

Ford and Arthur stared at him. Then they stared at each other.

"Did that say what I thought it said?" they  both  said  to  each
other.

"Yes," they both said.

"Forty-two," said Arthur.

"Forty-two," said Ford.

Arthur ran over to the two natives.

"What are you trying to tell us?" he shouted. "What's it supposed
to mean?"

One of them rolled over on the ground, kicked his legs up in  the
air, rolled over again and went to sleep.

The other bounded up the tree and threw horse chestnuts  at  Ford
Prefect.  Whatever  it was they had to say, they had already said
it.

"You know what this means," said Ford.

"Not entirely."

"Forty-two is the number Deep Thought gave as being the  Ultimate
Answer."
"Yes."

And the Earth is the computer Deep Thought designed and built  to
calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer."

"So we are led to believe."

"And organic life was part of the computer matrix."

"If you say so."

"I do say so. That means that these natives, these apemen are  an
integral  part  of  the  computer  program,  and  that we and the
Golgafrinchans are not."

"But the  cavemen  are  dying  out  and  the  Golgafrinchans  are
obviously set to replace them."

"Exactly. So do you see what this means?"

"What?"

"Cock up," said Ford Prefect.

Arthur looked around him.

"This planet is having a pretty bloody time of it," he said.

Ford puzzled for a moment.

"Still, something must have come out of it,"  he  said  at  last,
"because  Marvin  said  he could see the Question printed in your
brain wave patterns."

"But ..."

"Probably the wrong one, or a distortion of  the  right  one.  It
might  give us a clue though if we could find it. I don't see how
we can though."

They moped about for a bit. Arthur sat on the ground and  started
pulling  up bits of grass, but found that it wasn't an occupation
he could get deeply  engrossed  in.  It  wasn't  grass  he  could
believe  in, the trees seemed pointless, the rolling hills seemed
to be rolling to nowhere and the future seemed just a  tunnel  to
be crawled through.

Ford fiddled with his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic. It  was  silent.  He
sighed and put it away.

Arthur picked up one of the  letter  stones  from  his  home-made
Scrabble  set.  It  was a T. He sighed and out it down again. The
letter he put down next to it was an I. That spelt IT. He  tossed
another couple of letters next to them They were an S and an H as
it  happened.  By  a  curious  coincidence  the  resulting   word
perfectly  expressed the way Arthur was feeling about things just
then.  He  stared  at  it  for  a  moment.  He  hadn't  done   it
deliberately,  it  was just a random chance. His brain got slowly
into first gear.

"Ford," he said suddenly, "look, if that Question is  printed  in
my  brain  wave  patterns  but I'm not consciously aware of it it
must be somewhere in my unconscious."

"Yes, I suppose so."

"There might be  a  way  of  bringing  that  unconscious  pattern
forward."

"Oh yes?"

"Yes, by introducing some random element that can  be  shaped  by
that pattern."

"Like how?"

"Like by pulling Scrabble letters out of a bag blindfolded."

Ford leapt to his feet.

"Brilliant!" he said. He tugged his towel out of his satchel  and
with a few deft knots transformed it into a bag.

"Totally mad," he said, "utter nonsense. But we'll do it  because
it's brilliant nonsense. Come on, come on."

The sun passed respectfully behind  a  cloud.  A  few  small  sad
raindrops fell.

They piled together all the remaining letters  and  dropped  them
into the bag. They shook them up.

"Right," said Ford, "close your eyes. Pull them out. Come on come
on, come on."

Arthur closed his eyes and plunged his hand into the towelful  of
stones. He jiggled them about, pulled out four and handed them to
Ford. Ford laid them along the ground in the order he got them.

"W," said Ford, "H, A, T ... What!"

He blinked.

"I think it's working!" he said.

Arthur pushed three more at him.

"D, O, Y ... Doy. Oh perhaps it isn't working," said Ford.

"Here's the next three."

"O, U, G ... Doyoug ... It's not making sense I'm afraid."

Arthur pulled another two from the bag. Ford put them in place.

"E, T, doyouget ... Do you get!" shouted Ford,  "it  is  working!
This is amazing, it really is working!"
"More here." Arthur was throwing them out feverishly as  fast  as
he could go.

"I, F," said Ford, "Y, O, U, ... M, U, L, T, I, P, L, Y, ... What
do  you  get if you multiply, ... S, I, X, ... six, B, Y, by, six
by ... what do you get if you multiply six by ... N, I, N, E, ...
six by nine ..." He paused. "Come on, where's the next one?"

"Er, that's the lot," said Arthur, "that's all there were."

He sat back, nonplussed.

He rooted around again in the knotted up towel but there were  no
more letters.

"You mean that's it?" said Ford.

"That's it."

"Six by nine. Forty-two."

"That's it. That's all there is."




The sun came out and beamed cheerfully at them. A  bird  sang.  A
warm  breeze wafted through the trees and lifted the heads of the
flowers, carrying their scent away through the woods.  An  insect
droned  past  on  its way to do whatever it is that insects do in
the late afternoon. The sound of voices lilted through the  trees
followed  a  moment later by two girls who stopped in surprise at
the sight of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent apparently lying on the
ground in agony, but in fact rocking with noiseless laughter.

"No, don't go," called Ford Prefect between gasps, "we'll be with
you in a moment."

"What's the matter?" asked one of the girls. She was  the  taller
and  slimmer  of  the two. On Golgafrincham she had been a junior
personnel officer, but hadn't liked it much.

Ford pulled himself together.

"Excuse  me,"  he  said,  "hello.  My  friend  and  I  were  just
contemplating the meaning of life. Frivolous exercise."

"Oh it's you," said the girl, "you made a bit of a  spectacle  of
yourself  this  afternoon. You were quite funny to begin with but
you did bang on a bit."

"Did I? Oh yes."

"Yes, what was all that for?" asked the  other  girl,  a  shorter
round-faced  girl  who  had  been  an  art  director  for a small
advertising company on Golgafrincham. Whatever the privations  of
this  world  were,  she  went  to  sleep  every  night profoundly
grateful for the fact that  whatever  she  had  to  face  in  the
morning  it wouldn't be a hundred almost identical photographs of
moodily lit tubes of toothpaste.

"For? For nothing. Nothing's for  anything,"  said  Ford  Prefect
happily.  "Come  and  join  us. I"m Ford, this is Arthur. We were
just about to do nothing at all for a while but it can wait."

The girls looked at them doubtfully.

"I'm Agda," said the tall one, "this is Mella."

"Hello Agda, hello Mella," said Ford.

"Do you talk at all?" said Mella to Arthur.

"Oh, eventually," said Arthur with a smile, "but not as  much  as
Ford."

"Good."

There was a slight pause.

"What did you mean," asked Agda, "about only having  two  million
years? I couldn't make sense of what you were saying."

"Oh that," said Ford, "it doesn't matter."

"It's just that the world gets  demolished  to  make  way  for  a
hyperspace  bypass,"  said  Arthur  with a shrug, "but that's two
million years away, and anyway it's just Vogons doing what Vogons
do."

"Vogons?" said Mella.

"Yes, you wouldn't know them."

"Where'd you get this idea from?"

"It really doesn't matter. It's just like a dream from the  past,
or the future." Arthur smiled and looked away.

"Does it worry you that you don't talk any kind of sense?"  asked
Agda.

"Listen, forget it,"  said  Ford,  "forget  all  of  it.  Nothing
matters. Look, it's a beautiful day, enjoy it. The sun, the green
of the hills, the river down in the valley, the burning trees."

"Even if it's only a dream, it's a pretty  horrible  idea,"  said
Mella, "destroying a world just to make a bypass."

"Oh, I've heard of worse," said Ford, "I read of one  planet  off
in  the  seventh  dimension  that got used as a ball in a game of
intergalactic bar billiards. Got potted  straight  into  a  black
hole. Killed ten billion people."

"That's mad," said Mella.

"Yes, only scored thirty points too."
Agda and Mella exchanged glances.

"Look," said Agda, "there's a party after the  committee  meeting
tonight. You can come along if you like."

"Yeah, OK," said Ford.

"I'd like to," said Arthur.

Many hours later Arthur and Mella sat and watched the  moon  rise
over the dull red glow of the trees.

"That story about the world being destroyed ..." began Mella.

"In two million years, yes."

"You say it as if you really think it's true."

"Yes, I think it is. I think I was there."

She shook her head in puzzlement.

"You're very strange," she said.

"No, I'm very ordinary," said  Arthur,  "but  some  very  strange
things  have happened to me. You could say I'm more differed from
than differing."

"And that other world your friend talked about, the one that  got
pushed into a black hole."

"Ah, that I don't know about. It sounds like something  from  the
book."

"What book?"

Arthur paused.

"The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy," he said at last.

"What's that?"

"Oh, just something I threw into the river this evening. I  don't
think I'll be wanting it any more," said Arthur Dent.

The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of  Arthur
Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.

It wasn't just that the cave was cold, it wasn't just that it was
damp  and smelly. It was the fact that the cave was in the middle
of Islington and there wasn't a bus due for two million years.

Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in,  as  Arthur
Dent  could  testify,  having  been lost in both time and space a
good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.

He was stranded in prehistoric Earth as the result of  a  complex
sequence of events which had involved him being alternately blown
up and insulted in more bizarre regions of  the  Galaxy  than  he
ever  dreamt  existed,  and  though his life had now turned very,
very, very quiet, he was still feeling jumpy.

He hadn't been blown up now for five years.

Since he had hardly seen anyone since he  and  Ford  Prefect  had
parted  company four years previously, he hadn't been insulted in
all that time either.

Except just once.

It had happened on a spring evening about two years previously.

He was returning to his cave just a little  after  dusk  when  he
became  aware  of  lights  flashing eerily through the clouds. He
turned and stared, with  hope  suddenly  clambering  through  his
heart. Rescue. Escape. The castaway's impossible dream - a ship.

And as he watched, as he stared in wonder and excitement, a  long
silver  ship  descended  through  the  warm evening air, quietly,
without fuss, its long legs  unlocking  in  a  smooth  ballet  of
technology.

It alighted gently on the ground, and  what  little  hum  it  had
generated died away, as if lulled by the evening calm.

A ramp extended itself.

Light streamed out.

A tall figure appeared silhouetted in  the  hatchway.  It  walked
down the ramp and stood in front of Arthur.

"You're a jerk, Dent," it said simply.

It was alien, very alien. It had a  peculiar  alien  tallness,  a
peculiar alien flattened head, peculiar slitty little alien eyes,
extravagantly draped golden ropes with a peculiarly alien  collar
design,  and  pale  grey-green alien skin which had about it that
lustrous shine which most grey-green faces can only acquire  with
plenty of exercise and very expensive soap.

Arthur boggled at it.

It gazed levelly at him.

Arthur's first sensations of hope and trepidation  had  instantly
been  overwhelmed by astonishment, and all sorts of thoughts were
battling for the use of his vocal chords at this moment.

"Whh ...?" he said.

"Bu ... hu ... uh ..." he added.

"Ru ... ra ... wah ... who?" he managed finally to say and lapsed
into  a  frantic  kind  of silence. He was feeling the effects of
having not said anything to anybody  for  as  long  as  he  could
remember.

The alien creature frowned briefly and consulted what appeared to
be some species of clipboard which he was holding in his thin and
spindly alien hand.

"Arthur Dent?" it said.

Arthur nodded helplessly.

"Arthur Philip Dent?" pursued the alien in a  kind  of  efficient
yap.

"Er ... er ... yes ... er ... er," confirmed Arthur.

"You're a jerk," repeated the alien, "a complete asshole."

"Er ..."

The creature nodded to itself, made a peculiar alien tick on  its
clipboard and turned briskly back towards the ship.
"Er ..." said Arthur desperately, "er ..."

"Don't give me that!" snapped the alien. It marched up the  ramp,
through  the  hatchway  and  disappeared  into the ship. The ship
sealed itself. It started to make a low throbbing hum.

"Er, hey!" shouted Arthur, and started to run helplessly  towards
it.

"Wait a minute!" he called. "What is this? What? Wait a minute!"

The ship rose, as if shedding its weight  like  a  cloak  to  the
ground,  and  hovered  briefly.  It  swept  strangely up into the
evening sky. It passed up through the clouds,  illuminating  them
briefly,  and then was gone, leaving Arthur alone in an immensity
of land dancing a helplessly tiny little dance.

"What?" he screamed. "What? What? Hey, what? Come back  here  and
say that!"

He jumped and danced until his legs trembled,  and  shouted  till
his  lungs  rasped. There was no answer from anyone. There was no
one to hear him or speak to him.

The alien ship was already thundering towards the  upper  reaches
of  the  atmosphere, on its way out into the appalling void which
separates the very few things there are in the Universe from each
other.

Its occupant, the alien with  the  expensive  complexion,  leaned
back  in  its  single seat. His name was Wowbagger the Infinitely
Prolonged. He was a man with a purpose. Not a very good  purpose,
as  he  would have been the first to admit, but it was at least a
purpose and it did at least keep him on the move.

Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was --indeed, is - one of  the
Universe's very small number of immortal beings.

Those who are born immortal instinctively know how to  cope  with
it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed he had come to hate
them, the load of serene bastards. He  had  had  his  immortality
thrust  upon  him  by  an unfortunate accident with an irrational
particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber  bands.
The  precise details of the accident are not important because no
one has ever managed to duplicate the exact  circumstances  under
which  it  happened,  and  many people have ended up looking very
silly, or dead, or both, trying.

Wowbagger closed his eyes in a grim  and  weary  expression,  put
some light jazz on the ship's stereo, and reflected that he could
have made it if it hadn't been for Sunday afternoons,  he  really
could have done.

To begin with it was fun, he  had  a  ball,  living  dangerously,
taking  risks,  cleaning  up on high-yield long-term investments,
and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody.

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't  cope  with,
and  that  terrible  listlessness which starts to set in at about
2.55, when you know  that  you've  had  all  the  baths  you  can
usefully  have that day, that however hard you stare at any given
paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it,  or  use
the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as
you stare at the clock the hands will  move  relentlessly  on  to
four  o'clock,  and  you  will enter the long dark teatime of the
soul.

So things began to pall for him. The merry smiles he used to wear
at other people's funerals began to fade. He began to despise the
Universe in general, and everyone in it in particular.

This was the point at which he conceived his purpose,  the  thing
which  would  drive  him  on,  and which, as far as he could see,
would drive him on forever. It was this.

He would insult the Universe.

That  is,  he  would  insult  everybody  in   it.   Individually,
personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided
to grit his teeth over) in alphabetical order.

When people protested to him, as they sometimes  had  done,  that
the plan was not merely misguided but actually impossible because
of the number of people being born and dying  all  the  time,  he
would  merely  fix  them  with  a steely look and say, "A man can
dream can't he?"

And so he started out. He equipped a spaceship that was built  to
last   with  the  computer  capable  of  handling  all  the  data
processing involved in keeping track of the entire population  of
the  known  Universe and working out the horrifically complicated
routes involved.

His ship fled through the inner orbits of the  Sol  star  system,
preparing  to  slingshot  round the sun and fling itself out into
interstellar space.

"Computer," he said.

"Here," yipped the computer.

"Where next?"

"Computing that."

Wowbagger gazed for a moment at the fantastic  jewellery  of  the
night,  the  billions  of  tiny  diamond  worlds  that dusted the
infinite darkness with light. Every one, every single one, was on
his  itinerary.  Most  of  them  he would be going to millions of
times over.

He imagined for a moment his itinerary connecting up all the dots
in  the  sky  like  a child's numbered dots puzzle. He hoped that
from some vantage point in the Universe it might be seen to spell
a very, very rude word.

The computer beeped tunelessly to indicate that it  had  finished
its calculations.
"Folfanga," it said. It beeped.

"Fourth world of the Folfanga system," it  continued.  It  beeped
again.

"Estimated journey time, three weeks," it continued  further.  It
beeped again.

"There to meet with a small slug," it beeped, "of  the  genus  A-
Rth-Urp-Hil-Ipdenu."

"I believe," it added, after  a  slight  pause  during  which  it
beeped, "that you had decided to call it a brainless prat."

Wowbagger grunted. He watched the majesty of creation outside his
window for a moment or two.

"I think I'll take a nap," he said, and then added, "what network
areas are we going to be passing through in the next few hours?"

The computer beeped.

"Cosmovid, Thinkpix and Home Brain Box," it said, and beeped.

"Any movies I haven't seen thirty thousand times already?"

"No."

"Uh."

"There's Angst in  Space.  You've  only  seen  that  thirty-three
thousand five hundred and seventeen times."

"Wake me for the second reel."

The computer beeped.

"Sleep well," it said.

The ship fled on through the night.

Meanwhile, on Earth, it began to pour with rain and  Arthur  Dent
sat  in his cave and had one of the most truly rotten evenings of
his entire life, thinking of things he could  have  said  to  the
alien and swatting flies, who also had a rotten evening.

The next day he made himself a pouch out of rabbit  skin  because
he thought it would be useful to keep things in.




This morning, two years later than that, was sweet  and  fragrant
as  he  emerged from the cave he called home until he could think
of a better name for it or find a better cave.

Though his throat was sore again from his early morning  yell  of
horror,  he  was suddenly in a terrifically good mood. He wrapped
his dilapidated dressing gown tightly around him  and  beamed  at
the bright morning.

The air was clear and scented, the breeze flitted lightly through
the tall grass around his cave, the birds were chirruping at each
other, the butterflies were  flitting  about  prettily,  and  the
whole  of  nature seemed to be conspiring to be as pleasant as it
possibly could.

It wasn't all the pastoral delights that were making Arthur  feel
so  cheery, though. He had just had a wonderful idea about how to
cope with the terrible  lonely  isolation,  the  nightmares,  the
failure  of  all  his  attempts  at  horticulture,  and the sheer
futurelessness and futility  of  his  life  here  on  prehistoric
Earth, which was that he would go mad.

He beamed again and took a bite out of a  rabbit  leg  left  over
from  his  supper.  He  chewed happily for a few moments and then
decided formally to announce his decision.

He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the  fields
and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in
his hair. He spread his arms out wide.

"I will go mad!" he announced.

"Good idea," said Ford Prefect, clambering down from the rock  on
which he had been sitting.

Arthur's brain somersaulted. His jaw did press-ups.

"I went mad for a while," said Ford, "did me no end of good."

"You see," said Ford, "- ..."

"Where have you been?" interrupted Arthur, now that his head  had
finished working out.

"Around," said Ford, "around and about." He grinned  in  what  he
accurately  judged  to  be an infuriating manner. "I just took my
mind off the hook for a bit. I reckoned that if the world  wanted
me badly enough it would call back. It did."

 He took out of his now terribly battered and dilapidated satchel
his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic.

"At least," he said, "I think it did. This has been playing up  a
bit."  He  shook it. "If it was a false alarm I shall go mad," he
said, "again."

Arthur shook his head and sat down. He looked up.

"I thought you must be dead ..." he said simply.

"So did I for a while," said Ford, "and then I decided  I  was  a
lemon  for  a couple of weeks. A kept myself amused all that time
jumping in and out of a gin and tonic."

Arthur cleared his throat, and then did it again.
"Where," he said, "did you ...?"

"Find a gin and tonic?" said Ford brightly. "I found a small lake
that  thought  it  was  a gin and tonic, and jumped in and out of
that. At least, I think it thought it was a gin and tonic."

"I may," he added with a grin which  would  have  sent  sane  men
scampering into trees, "have been imagining it."

He waited for a reaction from Arthur, but Arthur knew better than
that.

"Carry on," he said levelly.

"The point is, you see," said Ford, "that there is  no  point  in
driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might
just as well give in and save your sanity for later."

"And this is you sane again, is it?" said Arthur. "I  ask  merely
for information."

"I went to Africa," said Ford.

"Yes?"

"Yes."

"What was that like?"

"And this is your cave is it?" said Ford.

"Er, yes," said Arthur. He felt very strange. After  nearly  four
years  of  total  isolation he was so pleased and relieved to see
Ford that he could almost cry. Ford was, on the  other  hand,  an
almost immediately annoying person.

"Very nice," said Ford, in reference to Arthur's cave. "You  must
hate it."

Arthur didn't bother to reply.

"Africa was very interesting," said Ford, "I behaved  very  oddly
there."

He gazed thoughtfully into the distance.

"I took up being cruel to animals," he said airily.  "But  only,"
he added, "as a hobby."

"Oh yes," said Arthur, warily.

"Yes," Ford assured him. "I won't disturb you  with  the  details
because they would -"

"What?"

"Disturb you. But you  may  be  interested  to  know  that  I  am
singlehandedly  responsible  for  the evolved shape of the animal
you came to know in later centuries as a giraffe. And I tried  to
learn to fly. Do you believe me?"

"Tell me," said Arthur.

"I'll tell you later. I'll just mention that the Guide says ..."

"The ...?"

"Guide. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You remember?"

"Yes. I remember throwing it in the river."

"Yes," said Ford, "but I fished it out."

"You didn't tell me."

"I didn't want you to throw it in again."

"Fair enough," admitted Arthur. "It says?"

"What?"

"The Guide says?"

"The Guide says there is an art to flying," said Ford, "or rather
a  knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the
ground and miss." He smiled weakly. He pointed at  the  knees  of
his  trousers  and held his arms up to show the elbows. They were
all torn and worn through.

"I haven't done very well so far," he  said.  He  stuck  out  his
hand. "I'm very glad to see you again, Arthur," he added.

Arthur  shook  his  head  in  a  sudden  access  of  emotion  and
bewilderment.

"I haven't seen anyone for years," he said, "not  anyone.  I  can
hardly  even  remember  how  to speak. I keep forgetting words. I
practise you see. I practise by talking to  ...  talking  to  ...
what  are  those  things  people think you're mad if you talk to?
Like George the Third."

"Kings?" suggested Ford.

"No, no," said Arthur. "The things he  used  to  talk  to.  We're
surrounded  by  them  for  heaven's  sake.  I've planted hundreds
myself. They all died. Trees! I practise  by  talking  to  trees.
What's that for?"

Ford still had his hand stuck  out.  Arthur  looked  at  it  with
incomprehension.

"Shake," prompted Ford.

Arthur did, nervously at first, as if it might turn out to  be  a
fish.  Then  he  grasped  it  vigorously  with  both  hands in an
overwhelming flood of relief. He shook it and shook it.
After a while Ford found it necessary to disengage. They  climbed
to  the  top  of  a nearby outcrop of rock and surveyed the scene
around them.

"What happened to the Golgafrinchans?" asked Ford.

Arthur shrugged.

"A lot of them didn't make it  through  the  winter  three  years
ago,"  he said, "and the few who remained in the spring said they
needed a holiday and set off on a raft. History  says  that  they
must have survived ..."

"Huh," said Ford, "well well." He stuck his hands on his hips and
looked  round again at the empty world. Suddenly, there was about
Ford a sense of energy and purpose.

"We're going," he said excitedly, and shivered with energy.

"Where? How?" said Arthur.

"I don't know," said Ford, "but I just  feel  that  the  time  is
right. Things are going to happen. We're on our way."

He lowered his voice to a whisper.

"I have detected," he said, "disturbances in the wash."

He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite
like  the  wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point,
but the wind was busy fooling around with some  leaves  a  little
way off.

Arthur asked him to repeat what  he  had  just  said  because  he
hadn't quite taken his meaning. Ford repeated it.

"The wash?" said Arthur.

"The space-time wash," said Ford, and as the  wind  blew  briefly
past at that moment, he bared his teeth into it.

Arthur nodded, and then cleared his throat.

"Are we talking about," he asked cautiously, "some sort of  Vogon
laundromat, or what are we talking about?"

"Eddies," said Ford, "in the space-time continuum."

"Ah," nodded Arthur, "is he? Is he?" He pushed his hands into the
pocket  of  his  dressing  gown and looked knowledgeably into the
distance.

"What?" said Ford.

"Er, who," said Arthur, "is Eddy, then, exactly?"

Ford looked angrily at him.

"Will you listen?" he snapped.
"I have been listening," said Arthur,  "but  I'm  not  sure  it's
helped."

Ford grasped him by the lapels of his dressing gown and spoke  to
him as slowly and distinctly and patiently as if he were somebody
from a telephone company accounts department.

"There seem ..." he said, "to be some pools  ..."  he  said,  "of
instability ..." he said, "in the fabric ..." he said ...

Arthur looked foolishly at the cloth of his dressing  gown  where
Ford  was  holding it. Ford swept on before Arthur could turn the
foolish look into a foolish remark.

"... in the fabric of space-time," he said.

"Ah, that," said Arthur.

"Yes, that," confirmed Ford.

They stood there alone on a hill on prehistoric Earth and  stared
each other resolutely in the face.

"And it's done what?" said Arthur.

"It," said Ford, "has developed pools of instability."

"Has it?" said Arthur, his eyes not wavering for a moment.

"It has," said Ford with a similar degree of ocular immobility.

"Good," said Arthur.

"See?" said Ford.

"No," said Arthur.

There was a quiet pause.

"The difficulty with this conversation," said Arthur after a sort
of  pondering  look  had  crawled  slowly  across his face like a
mountaineer negotiating a tricky  outcrop,  "is  that  it's  very
different  from  most  of  the ones I've had of late. Which, as I
explained, have mostly been with trees. They weren't  like  this.
Except  perhaps  some  of  the  ones  I've  had  with  elms which
sometimes get a bit bogged down."

"Arthur," said Ford.

"Hello? Yes?" said Arthur.

"Just believe everything I tell you, and it  will  all  be  very,
very simple."

"Ah, well I'm not sure I believe that."

They sat down and composed their thoughts.
Ford got out his  Sub-Etha  Sens-O-Matic.  It  was  making  vague
humming noises and a tiny light on it was flickering faintly.

"Flat battery?" said Arthur.

"No," said Ford, "there is a moving disturbance in the fabric  of
space-time, an eddy, a pool of instability, and it's somewhere in
our vicinity."

"Where?"

Ford moved the device in  a  slow  lightly  bobbing  semi-circle.
Suddenly the light flashed.

"There!" said Ford, shooting out his  arm.  "There,  behind  that
sofa!"

Arthur looked. Much to his surprise, there was a velvet  paisley-
covered  Chesterfield  sofa  in  the  field  in front of them. He
boggled intelligently at it. Shrewd  questions  sprang  into  his
mind.

"Why," he said, "is there a sofa in that field?"

"I told you!" shouted Ford, leaping to his feet. "Eddies  in  the
space-time continuum!"

"And this is his sofa, is it?" asked Arthur,  struggling  to  his
feet  and,  he  hoped,  though  not  very  optimistically, to his
senses.

"Arthur!" shouted Ford at him, "that sofa is there because of the
space-time  instability  I've  been trying to get your terminally
softened brain to get to grips with. It's been washed out of  the
continuum,  it's space-time jetsam, it doesn't matter what it is,
we've got to catch it, it's our only way out of here!"

He scrambled rapidly down the rocky outcrop and made  off  across
the field.

"Catch it?" muttered Arthur, then frowned in bemusement as he saw
that  the Chesterfield was lazily bobbing and wafting away across
the grass.

With a whoop of utterly unexpected delight he leapt down the rock
and  plunged  off  in  hectic  pursuit  of  Ford  Prefect and the
irrational piece of furniture.

They  careered  wildly  through  the  grass,  leaping,  laughing,
shouting  instructions  to  each other to head the thing off this
way or that way. The sun shone dreamily  on  the  swaying  grass,
tiny field animals scattered crazily in their wake.

Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day  was  for
once  working  out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes
ago he had decided he would  go  mad,  and  now  he  was  already
chasing  a  Chesterfield  sofa  across  the fields of prehistoric
Earth.
The sofa bobbed this way and that and seemed simultaneously to be
as solid as the trees as it drifted past some of them and hazy as
a billowing dream as it floated like a ghost through others.

Ford and Arthur pounded chaotically after it, but it  dodged  and
weaved  as  if following its own complex mathematical topography,
which it was. Still they pursued, still it danced and  span,  and
suddenly   turned  and  dipped  as  if  crossing  the  lip  of  a
catastrophe graph, and they were practically on top of it. With a
heave and a shout they leapt on it, the sun winked out, they fell
through a sickening nothingness, and emerged unexpectedly in  the
middle  of  the  pitch  at Lord's Cricked Ground, St John's Wood,
London, towards the end of the last Test Match of the  Australian
Series  in  the year 198-, with England needing only twenty-eight
runs to win.




Important facts from Galactic history, number one:

(Reproduced from the Siderial Daily Mentioner's Book  of  popular
Galactic History.)

The night sky over the planet Krikkit is  the  least  interesting
sight in the entire Universe.




It was a charming and delightful day at Lord's as Ford and Arthur
tumbled  haphazardly  out  of  a  space-time  anomaly and hit the
immaculate turf rather hard.

The applause of the crowd was tremendous. It wasn't for them, but
instinctively  they bowed anyway, which was fortunate because the
small red heavy ball which the crowd actually had been applauding
whistled  mere millimetres over Arthur's head. In the crowd a man
collapsed.

They threw themselves back to the ground  which  seemed  to  spin
hideously around them.

"What was that?" hissed Arthur.

"Something red," hissed Ford back at him.

"Where are we?"

"Er, somewhere green."

"Shapes," muttered Arthur. "I need shapes."

The applause of the crowd had been rapidly succeeded by gasps  of
astonishment,  and  the awkward titters of hundreds of people who
could not yet make up their minds about whether to  believe  what
they had just seen or not.

"This your sofa?" said a voice.
"What was that?" whispered Ford.

Arthur looked up.

"Something blue," he said.

"Shape?" said Ford.

Arthur looked again.

"It is shaped,"  he  hissed  at  Ford,  with  his  brow  savagely
furrowing, "like a policeman."

They remained crouched there for a few moments, frowning  deeply.
The  blue  thing  shaped like a policeman tapped them both on the
shoulders.

"Come on, you two," the shape said, "let's be having you."

These words had an electrifying effect on Arthur. He leapt to his
feet  like  an author hearing the phone ring and shot a series of
startled glanced at the panorama around him  which  had  suddenly
settled down into something of quite terrifying ordinariness.

"Where did you get this from?" he yelled at the policeman shape.

"What did you say?" said the startled shape.

"This is Lord's Cricket Ground, isn't it?" snapped Arthur. "Where
did  you  find  it,  how did you get it here? I think," he added,
clasping his hand to his brow, "that I had better calm down."  He
squatted down abruptly in front of Ford.

"It is a policeman," he said, "What do we do?"

Ford shrugged.

"What do you want to do?" he said.

"I want you," said Arthur, "to tell me that I have been  dreaming
for the last five years."

Ford shrugged again, and obliged.

"You've been dreaming for the last five years," he said.

Arthur got to his feet.

"It's all right, officer," he said. "I've been dreaming  for  the
last five years. Ask him," he added, pointing at Ford, "he was in
it."

Having said this, he sauntered off towards the edge of the pitch,
brushing  down  his  dressing  gown. He then noticed his dressing
gown and stopped. He stared  at  it.  He  flung  himself  at  the
policeman.

"So where did I get these clothes from?" he howled.
He collapsed and lay twitching on the grass.

Ford shook his head.

"He's had a bad two million years," he said to the policeman, and
together  they  heaved  Arthur on to the sofa and carried him off
the  pitch  and  were  only  briefly  hampered  by   the   sudden
disappearance of the sofa on the way.

Reaction to all this from the crowd were many and  various.  Most
of them couldn't cope with watching it, and listened to it on the
radio instead.

"Well, this is an interesting incident, Brian,"  said  one  radio
commentator  to  another.  "I  don't  think  there  have been any
mysterious materializations on the pitch since, oh since, well  I
don't think there have been any - have there? - that I recall?"

"Edgbaston, 1932?"

"Ah, now what happened then ..."

"Well, Peter, I think it was Canter facing Willcox coming  up  to
bowl from the pavilion end when a spectator suddenly ran straight
across the pitch."

There was a pause while the first commentator considered this.

"Ye ... e ... s ..." he said, "yes, there's nothing actually very
mysterious  about that, is there? He didn't actually materialize,
did he? Just ran on."

"No, that's true,  but  he  did  claim  to  have  seen  something
materialize on the pitch."

"Ah, did he?"

"Yes. An alligator, I think, of some description."

"Ah. And had anyone else noticed it?"

"Apparently not. And no one was  able  to  get  a  very  detailed
description  from  him,  so  only the most perfunctory search was
made."

"And what happened to the man?"

"Well, I think someone offered to take him off and give him  some
lunch,  but he explained that he'd already had a rather good one,
so the matter was dropped and Warwickshire  went  on  to  win  by
three wickets."

"So, not very like this current instance. For those of you who've
just  tuned  in,  you  may be interested to know that, er ... two
men, two rather scruffily attired men, and  indeed  a  sofa  -  a
Chesterfield I think?"

"Yes, a Chesterfield."
"Have just materialized here in  the  middle  of  Lord's  Cricket
Ground.  But I don't think they meant any harm, they've been very
good-natured about it, and ..."

"Sorry, can I interrupt you a moment Peter and say that the  sofa
has just vanished."

"So it has. Well, that's one mystery less. Still, it's definitely
one  for the record books I think, particularly occurring at this
dramatic moment in play, England  now  needing  only  twenty-four
runs  to  win  the  series.  The men are leaving the pitch in the
company of a police officer, and I think everyone's settling down
now and play is about to resume."

"Now, sir," said the policeman after  they  had  made  a  passage
through the curious crowd and laid Arthur's peacefully inert body
on a blanket, "perhaps you'd care to tell me who you  are,  where
you come from, and what that little scene was all about?"

Ford looked at the ground for a moment as  if  steadying  himself
for  something,  then  he straightened up and aimed a look at the
policeman which hit him with the full force of every inch of  the
six  hundred  light-years' distance between Earth and Ford's home
near Betelgeuse.

"All right," said Ford, very quietly, "I'll tell you."

"Yes,  well,  that  won't  be  necessary,"  said  the   policeman
hurriedly,  "just  don't  let whatever  it was happen again." The
policeman turned around and wandered off in search of anyone  who
wasn't from Betelgeuse. Fortunately, the ground was full of them.

Arthur's consciousness  approached  his  body  as  from  a  great
distance,  and  reluctantly.  It had had some bad times in there.
Slowly,  nervously,  it  entered  and  settled  down  in  to  its
accustomed position.

Arthur sat up.

"Where am I?" he said.

"Lord's Cricket Ground," said Ford.

"Fine," said Arthur, and his consciousness stepped out again  for
a quick breather. His body flopped back on the grass.

Ten minutes later, hunched over a cup of tea in  the  refreshment
tent, the colour started to come back to his haggard face.

"How're you feeling?" said Ford.

"I'm home," said Arthur hoarsely. He closed his eyes and greedily
inhaled  the  steam  from  his tea as if it was - well, as far as
Arthur was concerned, as if it was tea, which it was.

"I'm home," he repeated, "home. It's  England,  it's  today,  the
nightmare is over." He opened his eyes again and smiled serenely.
"I'm where I belong," he said in an emotional whisper.
"There are two things I fell which I should tell you," said Ford,
tossing a copy of the Guardian over the table at him.

"I'm home," said Arthur.

"Yes," said Ford. "One is," he said pointing at the date  at  the
top of the paper, "that the Earth will be demolished in two days'
time."

"I'm home," said Arthur. "Tea," he said, "cricket," he added with
pleasure,  "mown grass, wooden benches, white linen jackets, beer
cans ..."

Slowly he began to focus on the newspaper. He cocked his head  on
one side with a slight frown.

"I've seen that one before," he said. His eyes wandered slowly up
to the date, which Ford was idly tapping at. His face froze for a
second or two and then began to do that  terribly  slow  crashing
trick which Arctic ice-floes do so spectacularly in the spring.

"And the other thing," said Ford, "is that you appear to  have  a
bone in your beard." He tossed back his tea.

Outside the refreshment tent, the sun  was  shining  on  a  happy
crowd.  It  shone  on  white  hats and red faces. It shone on ice
lollies and melted them. It shone on the tears of small  children
whose  ice  lollies  had just melted and fallen off the stick. It
shone on the trees, it flashed  off  whirling  cricket  bats,  it
gleamed  off  the  utterly  extraordinary object which was parked
behind the  sight-screens  and  which  nobody  appeared  to  have
noticed.  It  beamed  on Ford and Arthur as they emerged blinking
from the refreshment tent and surveyed the scene around them.

Arthur was shaking.

"Perhaps," he said, "I should ..."

"No," said Ford sharply.

"What?" said Arthur.

"Don't try and phone yourself up at home."

"How did you know ...?"

Ford shrugged.

"But why not?" said Arthur.

"People who talk to themselves on the phone," said  Ford,  "never
learn anything to their advantage."

"But ..."

"Look," said Ford. He picked up an imaginary phone and dialled an
imaginary dial.
"Hello?" he said into the imaginary mouthpiece. "Is  that  Arthur
Dent?  Ah,  hello,  yes. This is Arthur Dent speaking. Don't hang
up."

He looked at the imaginary mouthpiece in disappointment.

"He hung up," he said, shrugged,  and  put  the  imaginary  phone
neatly back on its imaginary hook.

"This is not my first temporal anomaly," he added.

A glummer look replaced the already glum look  on  Arthur  Dent's
face.

"So we're not home and dry," he said.

"We could not even be  said,"  replied  Ford,  "to  be  home  and
vigorously towelling ourselves off."

The game continued. The bowler approached the wicket at a lope, a
trot,  and  then  a run. He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms
and legs, out of  which  flew  a  ball.  The  batsman  swung  and
thwacked  it  behind  him  over  the  sight-screens.  Ford's eyes
followed the trajectory of the ball and  jogged  momentarily.  He
stiffened.  He looked along the flight path of the ball again and
his eyes twitched again.

"This isn't my towel," said Arthur,  who  was  rummaging  in  his
rabbit-skin bag.

"Shhh," said Ford. He screwed his eyes up in concentration.

"I had a Golgafrinchan jogging towel," continued Arthur, "it  was
blue with yellow stars on it. This isn't it."

"Shhh," said Ford again. He covered one eye and looked  with  the
other.

"This one's pink," said Arthur, "it isn't yours is it?"

"I would like you to shut up about your towel," said Ford.

"It isn't my towel," insisted Arthur, "that is  the  point  I  am
trying to ..."

"And the time at which I would like you to  shut  up  about  it,"
continued Ford in a low growl, "is now."

"All right," said Arthur, starting to  stuff  it  back  into  the
primitively  stitched  rabbit-skin  bag.  "I  realize  that it is
probably not important in the cosmic scale of things,  it's  just
odd,  that's  all.  A  pink towel suddenly, instead of a blue one
with yellow stars."

Ford was beginning to behave  rather  strangely,  or  rather  not
actually beginning to behave strangely but beginning to behave in
a way which was strangely different from the other  strange  ways
in  which  he more regularly behaved. What he was doing was this.
Regardless of the bemused stares it was provoking from his fellow
members  of the crowd gathered round the pitch, he was waving his
hands in sharp movements across his  face,  ducking  down  behind
some  people,  leaping  up behind others, then standing still and
blinking a lot. After a moment or two of this he started to stalk
forward   slowly  and  stealthily  wearing  a  puzzled  frown  of
concentration, like a leopard that's not sure whether  it's  just
seen  a  half-empty tin of cat food half a mile away across a hot
and dusty plain.

"This isn't my bag either," said Arthur suddenly.

Ford's spell of concentration was broken. He  turned  angrily  on
Arthur.

"I  wasn't  talking  about  my  towel,"   said   Arthur.   "We've
established  that  that  isn't  mine. It's just that the bag into
which I was putting the towel which is not mine is also not mine,
though it is extraordinarily similar. Now personally I think that
that is extremely odd, especially as  the  bag  was  one  I  made
myself  on  prehistoric  Earth. These are also not my stones," he
added, pulling a few flat grey stones out  of  the  bag.  "I  was
making  a  collection of interesting stones and these are clearly
very dull ones."

A roar of excitement thrilled through the crowd  and  obliterated
whatever  it  was  that  Ford  said  in  reply  to  this piece of
information. The cricket ball which  had  excited  this  reaction
fell  out  of the sky and dropped neatly into Arthur's mysterious
rabbit-skin bag.

"Now I would say that that was also a very curious  event,"  said
Arthur,  rapidly  closing  the bag and pretending to look for the
ball on the ground.

"I don't think  it's  here,"  he  said  to  the  small  boys  who
immediately  clustered  round  him  to  join  in  the search, "it
probably rolled off somewhere. Over there I expect."  He  pointed
vaguely  in the direction in which he wished they would push off.
One of the boys looked at him quizzically.

"You all right?" said the boy.

"No," said Arthur.

"Then why you got a bone in your beard?" said the boy.

"I'm training it to like being wherever it's put." Arthur  prided
himself  on  saying this. It was, he thought, exactly the sort of
thing which would entertain and stimulate young minds.

"Oh," said the small boy,  putting  his  head  to  one  side  and
thinking about it. "What's your name?"

"Dent," said Arthur, "Arthur Dent."

"You're a jerk, Dent," said the boy, "a  complete  asshole."  The
boy  looked past him at something else, to show that he wasn't in
any  particular  hurry  to  run  away,  and  then  wandered   off
scratching  his  nose.  Suddenly Arthur remembered that the Earth
was going to be demolished again in two days' time, and just this
once didn't feel too bad about it.

Play resumed with a new ball, the sun continued to shine and Ford
continued to jump up and down shaking his head and blinking.

"Something's on your mind, isn't it?" said Arthur.

"I think," said Ford in a tone  of  voice  which  Arthur  by  now
recognized    as    one    which   presaged   something   utterly
unintelligible, "that there's an SEP over there."

He pointed. Curiously enough, the direction he pointed in was not
the  one  in  which  he  was  looking.  Arthur  looked in the one
direction, which was towards the sight-screens, and in the  other
which  was  at  the  field  of  play.  He nodded, he shrugged. He
shrugged again.

"A what?" he said.

"An SEP."

"An S ...?"

"... EP."

"And what's that?"

"Somebody Else's Problem."

"Ah, good," said Arthur and relaxed. He had no idea what all that
was about, but at least it seemed to be over. It wasn't.

"Over there," said Ford, again pointing at the sight-screens  and
looking at the pitch.

"Where?" said Arthur.

"There!" said Ford.

"I see," said Arthur, who didn't.

"You do?" said Ford.

"What?" said Arthur.

"Can you see," said Ford patiently, "the SEP?"

"I thought you said that was somebody else's problem."

"That's right."

Arthur nodded slowly,  carefully  and  with  an  air  of  immense
stupidity.

"And I want to know," said Ford, "if you can see it."

"You do?"
"Yes."

"What," said Arthur, "does it look like?"

"Well, how should I know, you fool?" shouted Ford.  "If  you  can
see it, you tell me."

Arthur experienced that dull throbbing sensation just behind  the
temples which was a hallmark of so many of his conversations with
Ford. His brain lurked like a frightened  puppy  in  its  kennel.
Ford took him by the arm.

"An SEP," he said, "is something that we can't see, or don't see,
or  our  brain  doesn't  let  us  see, because we think that it's
somebody else's problem. That's what SEP means.  Somebody  Else's
Problem.  The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If
you look at  it  directly  you  won't  see  it  unless  you  know
precisely  what  it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise
out of the corner of your eye."

"Ah," said Arthur, "then that's why ..."

"Yes," said Ford, who knew what Arthur was going to say.

"... you've been jumping up and ..."

"Yes."

"... down, and blinking ..."

"Yes."

"... and ..."

"I think you've got the message."

"I can see it," said Arthur, "it's a spaceship."

For a moment Arthur was stunned by the reaction  this  revelation
provoked. A roar erupted from the crowd, and from every direction
people were running, shouting, yelling, tumbling over each  other
in  a  tumult  of confusion. He stumbled back in astonishment and
glanced fearfully around. Then he glanced around  again  in  even
greater astonishment.

"Exciting, isn't it?" said an apparition. The apparition  wobbled
in  front  of  Arthur's  eyes,  though the truth of the matter is
probably that  Arthur's  eyes  were  wobbling  in  front  of  the
apparition. His mouth wobbled as well.

"W ... w ... w ... w ..." his mouth said.

"I think your team have just won," said the apparition.

"W ... w ... w ... w ..." repeated Arthur,  and  punctuated  each
wobble  with  a  prod at Ford Prefect's back. Ford was staring at
the tumult in trepidation.

"You are English, aren't you?" said the apparition.
"W ... w ... w ... w ... yes" said Arthur.

"Well, your team, as I say, have just won. The  match.  It  means
they  retain the Ashes. You must be very pleased. I must say, I'm
rather fond of cricket, though I  wouldn't  like  anyone  outside
this planet to hear me saying that. Oh dear no."

The apparition gave what looked  as  if  it  might  have  been  a
mischievous  grin,  but  it  was hard to tell because the sun was
directly behind him, creating a blinding halo round his head  and
illuminating  his  silver  hair  and  beard  in  a  way which was
awesome, dramatic and hard to reconcile with mischievous grins.

"Still," he said, "it'll all be over in a couple of  days,  won't
it?  Though  as  I said to you when we last met, I was very sorry
about that. Still, whatever will have been, will have been."

Arthur tried to speak, but  gave  up  the  unequal  struggle.  He
prodded Ford again.

"I thought something terrible had happened," said Ford, "but it's
just  the  end  of  the  game.  We  ought  to get out. Oh, hello,
Slartibartfast, what are you doing here?"

"Oh, pottering, pottering," said the old man gravely.

"That your ship? Can you give us a lift anywhere?"

"Patience, patience," the old man admonished.

"OK," said Ford. "It's  just  that  this  planet's  going  to  be
demolished pretty soon."

"I know that," said Slartibartfast.

"And, well, I just wanted to make that point," said Ford.

"The point is taken."

And if you feel that you really want to  hang  around  a  cricket
pitch at this point ..."

"I do."

"Then it's your ship."

"It is."

"I suppose." Ford turned away sharply at this point.

"Hello, Slartibartfast," said Arthur at last.

"Hello, Earthman," said Slartibartfast.

"After all," said Ford, "we can only die once."

The old man ignored this and stared keenly on to the pitch,  with
eyes  that  seemed  alive  with  expressions that had no apparent
bearing on what was happening out there. What was  happening  was
that  the crowd was gathering itself into a wide circle round the
centre of the pitch. What Slartibartfast  saw  in  it,  he  alone
knew.

Ford was humming something. It was  just  one  note  repeated  at
intervals.  He was hoping that somebody would ask him what he was
humming, but nobody did. If anybody had asked him he  would  have
said  he  was humming the first line of a Noel Coward song called
"Mad About the Boy" over and over again. It would then have  been
pointed out to him that he was only singing one note, to which he
would have replied that for  reasons  which  he  hoped  would  be
apparent, he was omitting the "about the boy" bit. He was annoyed
that nobody asked.

"It's just," he burst out at last, "that if we don't go soon,  we
might  get  caught  in  the  middle  of it all again. And there's
nothing that  depresses  me  more  than  seeing  a  planet  being
destroyed.  Except  possibly  still  being on it when it happens.
Or," he added in an undertone, "hanging around cricket matches."

"Patience," said Slartibartfast again. "Great things are afoot."

"That's what you said last time we met," said Arthur.

"They were," said Slartibartfast.

"Yes, that's true," admitted Arthur.

All, however, that seemed to be afoot  was  a  ceremony  of  some
kind.  It was being specially staged for the benefit of tv rather
than the spectators, and all they  could  gather  about  it  from
where they were standing was what they heard from a nearby radio.
Ford was aggressively uninterested.

He fretted as he heard it explained that the Ashes were about  to
be  presented to the Captain of the English team out there on the
pitch, fumed when told that this was because  they  had  now  won
them  for  the  nth time, positively barked with annoyance at the
information that the Ashes were the remains of a  cricket  stump,
and  when, further to this, he was asked to contend with the fact
that the cricket stump in question had been burnt  in  Melbourne,
Australia, in 1882, to signify the "death of English cricket", he
rounded on Slartibartfast, took a deep breath, but didn't have  a
chance  to  say anything because the old man wasn't there. He was
marching out on to the pitch with terrible purpose in  his  gait,
his  hair, beard and robes swept behind him, looking very much as
Moses would have looked if Sinai had been a well-cut lawn instead
of, as it is more usually represented, a fiery smoking mountain.

"He said to meet him at his ship," said Arthur.

"What in the name of zarking fardwarks is the  old  fool  doing?"
exploded Ford.

"Meeting us at his ship in two minutes," said Arthur with a shrug
which  indicated  total  abdication  of thought. They started off
towards it. Strange sounds reached their ears. They tried not  to
listen,  but  could  not  help  noticing  that Slartibartfast was
querulously demanding that he be given the silver urn  containing
the  Ashes,  as  they  were,  he said, "vitally important for the
past, present and future safety of the Galaxy", and that this was
causing wild hilarity. They resolved to ignore it.

What happened next they could not ignore. With  a  noise  like  a
hundred  thousand  people  saying "wop", a steely white spaceship
suddenly seemed to create  itself  out  of  nothing  in  the  air
directly  above  the  cricket  pitch and hung there with infinite
menace and a slight hum.

Then for a while it did nothing, as if it expected  everybody  to
go  about  their  normal  business  and  not mind it just hanging
there.

Then it did something quite extraordinary. Or rather,  it  opened
up  and  let something quite extraordinary come out of it, eleven
quite extraordinary things.

They were robots, white robots.

What was most extraordinary about them was that they appeared  to
have come dressed for the occasion. Not only were they white, but
they carried what appeared to be cricket bats, and not only that,
but  they also carried what appeared to be cricket balls, and not
only that but they wore white ribbing pads round the lower  parts
of  their  legs.  These  last  were  extraordinary  because  they
appeared to contain jets which allowed these curiously  civilized
robots  to  fly  down  from their hovering spaceship and start to
kill people, which is what they did

"Hello," said Arthur, "something seems to be happening."

"Get to the ship," shouted Ford. "I don't want to know,  I  don't
want to see, I don't want to hear," he yelled as he ran, "this is
not my planet, I didn't choose to be here, I don't  want  to  get
involved,  just  get  me out of here, and get me to a party, with
people I can relate to!"

Smoke and flame billowed from the pitch.

"Well, the supernatural brigade certainly  seems  to  be  out  in
force here today ..." burbled a radio happily to itself.

"What I need," shouted Ford, by way of  clarifying  his  previous
remarks,  "is  a  strong drink and a peer-group." He continued to
run, pausing only for a moment to grab Arthur's arm and drag  him
along  with him. Arthur had adopted his normal crisis role, which
was to stand with his mouth hanging open and let it all wash over
him.

"They're playing cricket," muttered Arthur, stumbling along after
Ford.  "I  swear they are playing cricket. I do not know why they
are doing this, but that is what they are doing. They're not just
killing  people,  they're  sending  them  up," he shouted, "Ford,
they're sending us up!"

It would have been hard to  disbelieve  this  without  knowing  a
great  deal  more Galactic history than Arthur had so far managed
to pick up in his travels. The ghostly but  violent  shapes  that
could  be seen moving within the thick pall of smoke seemed to be
performing a series of bizarre parodies of batting  strokes,  the
difference  being  that  every  ball  they struck with their bats
exploded wherever it landed. The very  first  one  of  these  had
dispelled  Arthur's  initial reaction, that the whole thing might
just be a publicity stunt by Australian margarine manufacturers.

And then, as suddenly as it had all started,  it  was  over.  The
eleven  white  robots  ascended  through  the seething cloud in a
tight formation, and with a few last flashes of flame entered the
bowels  of  their hovering white ship, which, with the noise of a
hundred thousand people saying "foop", promptly vanished into the
thin air out of which it had wopped.

For a moment there was a terrible stunned silence, and  then  out
of  the  drifting smoke emerged the pale figure of Slartibartfast
looking even more like Moses because in spite  of  the  continued
absence  of  the  mountain  he was at least now striding across a
fiery and smoking well-mown lawn.

He stared wildly about him until he saw the hurrying  figures  of
Arthur  Dent  and  Ford  Prefect  forcing  their  way through the
frightened crowd which was for the moment busy stampeding in  the
opposite  direction.  The  crowd  was  clearly thinking to itself
about what an unusual day this was turning out  to  be,  and  not
really knowing which way, if any, to turn.

Slartibartfast was gesturing urgently  at  Ford  and  Arthur  and
shouting at them, as the three of them gradually converged on his
ship, still parked behind the sight-screens and still  apparently
unnoticed  by  the  crowd  stampeding  past it who presumably had
enough of their own problems to cope with at that time.

"They've garble warble farble!"  shouted  Slartibartfast  in  his
thin tremulous voice.

"What did he say?" panted Ford as he elbowed his way onwards.

Arthur shook his head.

"`They've ...' something or other," he said.

"They've table warble farble!" shouted Slartibartfast again.

Ford and Arthur shook their heads at each other.

"It sounds urgent," said Arthur. He stopped and shouted.

"What?"

"They've  garble  warble  fashes!"  cried  Slartibartfast,  still
waving at them.

"He says," said Arthur, "that they've taken the  Ashes.  That  is
what I think he says." They ran on.

"The ...?" said Ford.
"Ashes," said Arthur tersely. "The burnt  remains  of  a  cricket
stump.  It's  a  trophy.  That  ..."  he  was  panting,  "is  ...
apparently ... what they ... have come and taken." He  shook  his
head very slightly as if he was trying to get his brain to settle
down lower in his skull.

"Strange thing to want to tell us," snapped Ford.

"Strange thing to take."

"Strange ship."

They had arrived at it. The second strangest thing about the ship
was  watching  the  Somebody  Else's  Problem field at work. They
could now clearly see the ship for what  it  was  simply  because
they  knew  it  was  there.  It was quite apparent, however, that
nobody else could. This wasn't because it was actually  invisible
or  anything  hyper-impossible like that. The technology involved
in making anything invisible is so infinitely complex  that  nine
hundred  and  ninety-nine  thousand  million,  nine  hundred  and
ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand,  nine
hundred and ninety-nine times out of a billion it is much simpler
and more effective just to take the thing away and do without it.
The  ultra-famous  sciento-magician  Effrafax of Wug once bet his
life that, given a year, he could render the  great  megamountain
Magramal entirely invisible.

Having spent most of the year jiggling around with  immense  Lux-
O-Valves and Refracto-Nullifiers and Spectrum-Bypass-O-Matics, he
realized, with nine hours to go, that he wasn't going to make it.

So, he and  his  friends,  and  his  friends'  friends,  and  his
friends'  friends'  friends,  and  his friends' friends' friends'
friends, and some rather less good friends of theirs who happened
to  own  a  major  stellar  trucking  company, put in what now is
widely recognized as being the hardest night's work  in  history,
and,  sure  enough,  on the following day, Magramal was no longer
visible. Effrafax lost his bet - and therefore his life -  simply
because some pedantic adjudicating official noticed (a) that when
walking around the area that Magramal ought to be he didn't  trip
over  or break his nose on anything, and (b) a suspicious-looking
extra moon.

The Somebody Else's  Problem  field  is  much  simpler  and  more
effective, and what's more can be run for over a hundred years on
a single torch battery. This is because  it  relies  on  people's
natural  disposition  not  to  see  anything  they don't want to,
weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted  the
mountain  pink  and  erected  a  cheap and simple Somebody Else's
Problem field on it, then  people  would  have  walked  past  the
mountain,  round  it, even over it, and simply never have noticed
that the thing was there.

And this is precisely what was  happening  with  Slartibartfast's
ship.  It  wasn't  pink, but if it had been, that would have been
the least of its visual problems and people were simply  ignoring
it like anything.

The most extraordinary thing about it was  that  it  looked  only
partly  like  a  spaceship with guidance fins, rocket engines and
escape hatches and so on, and a great deal like a  small  upended
Italian bistro.

Ford and Arthur  gazed  up  at  it  with  wonderment  and  deeply
offended sensibilities.

"Yes, I know," said Slartibartfast, hurrying up to them  at  that
point,  breathless and agitated, "but there is a reason. Come, we
must go. The ancient nightmare is come again. Doom  confronts  us
all. We must leave at once."

"I fancy somewhere sunny," said Ford.

Ford and Arthur followed Slartibartfast into the ship and were so
perplexed  by  what  they  saw  inside  it that they were totally
unaware of what happened next outside.

A spaceship, yet another one, but  this  one  sleek  and  silver,
descended  from  the  sky on to the pitch, quietly, without fuss,
its long legs unlocking in a smooth ballet of technology.

It landed gently. It extended a short  ramp.  A  tall  grey-green
figure  marched  briskly  out  and  approached  the small knot of
people who were gathered in the centre of the  pitch  tending  to
the  casualties  of  the recent bizarre massacre. It moved people
aside with quiet, understated authority, and came at  last  to  a
man  lying  in  a desperate pool of blood, clearly now beyond the
reach of any Earthly medicine, breathing, coughing his last.  The
figure knelt down quietly beside him.

"Arthur Philip Deodat?" asked the figure.

The man, with horrified confusion in eyes, nodded feebly.

"You're a no-good dumbo  nothing,"  whispered  the  creature.  "I
thought you should know that before you went."




Important facts from Galactic history, number two:

(Reproduced from the Siderial Daily Mentioner's Book  of  popular
Galactic History.)

Since this  Galaxy  began,  vast  civilizations  have  risen  and
fallen,  risen  and  fallen,  risen and fallen so often that it's
quite tempting to think that life in the Galaxy must be

(a) something akin to seasick - space-sick,  time  sick,  history
sick or some such thing, and

(b) stupid.




It seemed to Arthur as if the whole sky suddenly just stood aside
and let them through.

It seemed to him that the atoms of his brain and the atoms of the
cosmos were streaming through each other.

It seemed to him that he was blown on the wind of  the  Universe,
and that the wind was him.

It seemed to him that he was one of the thoughts of the  Universe
and that the Universe was a thought of his.

It seemed to the people at Lord's  Cricket  Ground  that  another
North  London  restaurant had just come and gone as they so often
do, and that this was Somebody Else's Problem.

"What happened?" whispered Arthur in considerable awe.

"We took off," said Slartibartfast.

Arthur lay in startled stillness on the  acceleration  couch.  He
wasn't   certain  whether  he  had  just  got  space-sickness  or
religion.

"Nice mover," said Ford in an unsuccessful  attempt  to  disguise
the   degree   to   which   he   had   been   impressed  by  what
Slartibartfast's ship had just done, "shame about the decor."

For a moment or two the old man didn't reply. He was  staring  at
the  instruments  with  the  air  of one who is trying to convert
fahrenheit to centigrade in his head whilst his house is  burning
down.  Then  his  brow  cleared and he stared for a moment at the
wide  panoramic  screen  in  front  of  him,  which  displayed  a
bewildering  complexity  of  stars  streaming like silver threads
around them.

His lips moved as if he was trying to spell  something.  Suddenly
his  eyes  darted  in alarm back to his instruments, but then his
expression merely subsided into a steady frown. He looked back up
at  the  screen.  He felt his own pulse. His frown deepened for a
moment, then he relaxed.

"It's a mistake to try  and  understand  mathematics,"  he  said,
"they only worry me. What did you say?"

"Decor," said Ford. "Pity about it."

"Deep in the  fundamental  heart  of  mind  and  Universe,"  said
Slartibartfast, "there is a reason."

Ford glanced sharply around. He clearly thought this  was  taking
an optimistic view of things.

The interior of the flight deck was dark green,  dark  red,  dark
brown,  cramped and moodily lit. Inexplicably, the resemblance to
a small Italian bistro had failed to end at the  hatchway.  Small
pools  of light picked out pot plants, glazed tiles and all sorts
of little unidentifiable brass things.

Rafia-wrapped bottles lurked hideously in the shadows.
The instruments which  had  occupied  Slartibartfast's  attention
seemed  to  be mounted in the bottom of bottles which were set in
concrete.

Ford reached out and touched it.

Fake concrete. Plastic. Fake bottles set in fake concrete.

The fundamental heart of mind and Universe  can  take  a  running
jump,  he thought to himself, this is rubbish. On the other hand,
it could not be denied that the way the ship had moved  made  the
Heart of Gold seem like an electric pram.

He swung himself off the  couch.  He  brushed  himself  down.  He
looked at Arthur who was singing quietly to himself. He looked at
the screen and recognized nothing. He looked at Slartibartfast.

"How far did we just travel?" he said.

"About ..." said Slartibartfast, "about two  thirds  of  the  way
across  the Galactic disc, I would say, roughly. Yes, roughly two
thirds, I think."

"It's a strange thing," said Arthur quietly,  "that  the  further
and  faster  one  travels  across  the  Universe,  the more one's
position in it seems to be largely immaterial, and one is  filled
with a profound, or rather emptied of a ..."

"Yes, very strange," said Ford. "Where are we going?"

"We are going," said  Slartibartfast,  "to  confront  an  ancient
nightmare of the Universe."

"And where are you going to drop us off?"

"I will need your help."

"Tough. Look, there's somewhere you can take us where we can have
fun, I'm trying to think of it, we can get drunk and maybe listen
to some extremely evil music. Hold on, I'll look it up."  He  dug
out  his copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and tipped
through those parts of the index primarily concerned with sex and
drugs and rock and roll.

"A curse has arisen from the mists of time," said Slartibartfast.

"Yes,  I  expect  so,"  said  Ford.  "Hey,"  he  said,   lighting
accidentally  on  one  particular  reference  entry,  "Eccentrica
Gallumbits, did you ever meet her? The triple-breasted  whore  of
Eroticon Six. Some people say her erogenous zones start some four
miles from her actual body. Me, I disagree, I say five."

"A curse," said Slartibartfast, "which will engulf the Galaxy  in
fire  and  destruction,  and  possibly  bring  the  Universe to a
premature doom. I mean it," he added.

"Sounds like a bad time," said Ford, "with  look  I'll  be  drunk
enough  not to notice. Here," he said, stabbing his finger at the
screen of the Guide, "would be a really wicked place to go, and I
think  we  should. What do you say, Arthur? Stop mumbling mantras
and pay attention. There's important stuff you're missing here."

Arthur pushed himself up from his couch and shook his head.

"Where are we going?" he said.

"To confront an ancient night-"

"Can it," said Ford. "Arthur, we are going out into the Galaxy to
have some fun. Is that an idea you can cope with?"

"What's Slartibartfast looking so anxious about?" said Arthur.

"Nothing," said Ford.

"Doom,"  said  Slartibartfast.  "Come,"  he  added,  with  sudden
authority, "there is much I must show and tell you."

He walked towards  a  green  wrought-iron  spiral  staircase  set
incomprehensibly  in the middle of the flight deck and started to
ascend. Arthur, with a frown, followed.

Ford slung the Guide sullenly back into his satchel.

"My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland  and  a
natural  deficiency in moral fibre," he muttered to himself, "and
that I am therefore excused from saving Universes."

Nevertheless, he stomped up the stairs behind them.

What they found upstairs was just stupid, or so  it  seemed,  and
Ford  shook  his  head,  buried his face in his hands and slumped
against a pot plant, crushing it against the wall.

"The   central   computational   area,"    said    Slartibartfast
unperturbed,  "this is where every calculation affecting the ship
in any way is performed. Yes I know what it looks like, but it is
in  fact a complex four-dimensional topographical map of a series
of highly complex mathematical functions."

"It looks like a joke," said Arthur.

"I know what it looks like," said Slartibartfast, and  went  into
it.  As  he  did  so,  Arthur had a sudden vague flash of what it
might mean, but he refused to believe it. The Universe could  not
possibly  work  like  that, he thought, cannot possibly. That, he
thought to himself, would be as absurd as ... he terminated  that
line of thinking. Most of the really absurd things he could think
of had already happened.

And this was one of them.

It was a large glass cage, or box - in fact a room.

In it was a table, a long one. Around it were  gathered  about  a
dozen  chairs,  of the bentwood style. On it was a tablecloth - a
grubby,  red  and  white  check  tablecloth,  scarred  with   the
occasional   cigarette  burn,  each,  presumably,  at  a  precise
calculated mathematical position.

And on the tablecloth sat some half-eaten Italian  meals,  hedged
about with half-eaten breadsticks and half-drunk glasses of wine,
and toyed with listlessly by robots.

It was  all  completely  artificial.  The  robot  customers  were
attended  by  a  robot  waiter,  a  robot wine waiter and a robot
maetre  d'.  The  furniture  was   artificial,   the   tablecloth
artificial, and each particular piece of food was clearly capable
of exhibiting all the mechanical characteristics of, say, a pollo
sorpreso, without actually being one.

And all participated in a  little  dance  together  -  a  complex
routine  involving the manipulation of menus, bill pads, wallets,
cheque books, credit cards, watches, pencils and  paper  napkins,
which  seemed  to be hovering constantly on the edge of violence,
but never actually getting anywhere.

Slartibartfast hurried in, and then appeared to pass the time  of
day  quite  idly  with  the maetre d', whilst one of the customer
robots, an autorory, slid slowly under the table, mentioning what
he intended to do to some guy over some girl.

Slartibartfast took over the seat which had been thus vacated and
passed a shrewd eye over the menu. The tempo of the routine round
the table seemed  somehow  imperceptibly  to  quicken.  Arguments
broke  out,  people  attempted  to  prove things on napkins. They
waved fiercely at each  other,  and  attempted  to  examine  each
other's pieces of chicken. The waiter's hand began to move on the
bill pad more quickly than a human hand could  manage,  and  then
more quickly than a human eye could follow. The pace accelerated.
Soon, an extraordinary and insistent politeness  overwhelmed  the
group, and seconds later it seemed that a moment of consensus was
suddenly achieved. A new vibration thrilled through the ship.

Slartibartfast emerged from the glass room.

"Bistromathics," he said. "The most powerful computational  force
known   to   parascience.  Come  to  the  Room  of  Informational
Illusions."

He swept past and carried them bewildered in his wake.




The Bistromatic Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing  vast
interstellar  distances  without all that dangerous mucking about
with Improbability Factors.

Bistromathics  itself  is  simply  a  revolutionary  new  way  of
understanding the behaviour of numbers. Just as Einstein observed
that time was not an absolute  but  depended  on  the  observer's
movement  in  space,  and  that  space  was  not an absolute, but
depended on the  observer's  movement  in  time,  so  it  is  now
realized  that  numbers  are  not  absolute,  but  depend  on the
observer's movement in restaurants.
The first non-absolute number is the number of  people  for  whom
the  table  is  reserved. This will vary during the course of the
first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then  bear  no
apparent  relation  to the number of people who actually turn up,
or to the number of people who subsequently join them  after  the
show/match/party/gig,  or  to the number of people who leave when
they see who else has turned up.

The second non-absolute number is  the  given  time  of  arrival,
which   is  now  known  to  be  one  of  those  most  bizarre  of
mathematical concepts,  a  recipriversexcluson,  a  number  whose
existence  can  only  be  defined  as  being  anything other than
itself. In other words, the given time  of  arrival  is  the  one
moment  of  time at which it is impossible that any member of the
party will arrive. Recipriversexclusons now play a vital part  in
many  branches of maths, including statistics and accountancy and
also form the basic  equations  used  to  engineer  the  Somebody
Else's Problem field.

The third and most mysterious piece of  non-absoluteness  of  all
lies in the relationship between the number of items on the bill,
the cost of each item, the number of people  at  the  table,  and
what they are each prepared to pay for. (The number of people who
have actually brought any money is only a sub-phenomenon in  this
field.)

The baffling discrepancies which used  to  occur  at  this  point
remained  uninvestigated for centuries simply because no one took
them seriously. They were at the time put down to such things  as
politeness,    rudeness,    meanness,    flashness,    tiredness,
emotionality,  or  the  lateness  of  the  hour,  and  completely
forgotten  about on the following morning. They were never tested
under  laboratory  conditions,  of  course,  because  they  never
occurred  in  laboratories  -  not  in  reputable laboratories at
least.

And so it was only with the advent of pocket computers  that  the
startling truth became finally apparent, and it was this:

Numbers written  on  restaurant  bills  within  the  confines  of
restaurants  do  not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers
written on any other pieces of paper in any other  parts  of  the
Universe.

This  single  fact  took  the  scientific  world  by  storm.   It
completely  revolutionized  it.  So many mathematical conferences
got held in such good restaurants that many of the  finest  minds
of a generation died of obesity and heart failure and the science
of maths was put back by years.

Slowly, however,  the  implications  of  the  idea  began  to  be
understood.  To  begin with it had been too stark, too crazy, too
much what the man in the street would have said, "Oh yes, I could
have  told  you that," about. Then some phrases like "Interactive
Subjectivity Frameworks" were invented, and everybody was able to
relax and get on with it.

The small groups of monks who had taken  up  hanging  around  the
major  research  institutes  singing strange chants to the effect
that the Universe was only a figment of its own imagination  were
eventually given a street theatre grant and went away.




"In space travel, you see," said Slartibartfast,  as  he  fiddled
with some instruments in the Room of Informational Illusions, "in
space travel ..."

He stopped and looked about him.

The Room of Informational Illusions was a  welcome  relief  after
the visual monstrosities of the central computational area. There
was nothing in it. No information, no illusions, just themselves,
white  walls  and a few small instruments which looked as if they
were meant to plug into something which  Slartibartfast  couldn't
find.

"Yes?" urged Arthur. He had picked up Slartibartfast's  sense  of
urgency but didn't know what to do with it.

"Yes what?" said the old man.

"You were saying?"

Slartibartfast looked at him sharply.

"The numbers," he said, "are awful." He resumed his search.

Arthur nodded wisely to himself. After a while he  realized  that
this  wasn't  getting  him anywhere and decided that he would say
"what?" after all.

"In space travel," repeated Slartibartfast, "all the numbers  are
awful."

Arthur nodded again and looked round to Ford for help,  but  Ford
was practising being sullen and getting quite good at it.

"I was only," said Slartibartfast with a sigh,  "trying  to  save
you the trouble of asking me why all the ship's computations were
being done on a waiter's bill pad."

Arthur frowned.

"Why," he said, "were all the ship's computations being done on a
wait-"

He stopped.

Slartibartfast said, "Because in space travel all the numbers are
awful."

He could tell that he wasn't getting his point across.

"Listen," he said. "On a waiter's bill  pad  numbers  dance.  You
must have encountered the phenomenon."
"Well ..."

"On a waiter's  bill  pad,"  said  Slartibartfast,  "reality  and
unreality  collide  on such a fundamental level that each becomes
the other and anything is possible, within certain parameters."

"What parameters?"

"It's impossible to say," said  Slartibartfast.  "That's  one  of
them.  Strange  but  true.  At  least,  I think it's strange," he
added, "and I'm assured that it's true."

At that moment he located the slot in the wall for which  he  had
been  searching,  and  clicked the instrument he was holding into
it.

"Do not be alarmed," he said, and then suddenly darted an alarmed
look at himself, and lunged back, "it's ..."

They didn't hear what he said, because at that  moment  the  ship
winked  out  of  existence  around them and a starbattle-ship the
size of a small Midlands  industrial  city  plunged  out  of  the
sundered night towards them, star lasers ablaze.

They gaped, pop-eyed, and were unable to scream.




Another world, another day, another dawn.

The early morning's thinnest sliver of light appeared silently.

Several billion trillion  tons  of  superhot  exploding  hydrogen
nuclei  rose  slowly above the horizon and managed to look small,
cold and slightly damp.

There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there  is  the
possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath.

The moment passed as it regularly  did  on  Squornshellous  Zeta,
without incident.

The mist clung to the surface of the  marshes.  The  swamp  trees
were  grey with it, the tall reeds indistinct. It hung motionless
like held breath.

Nothing moved.

There was silence.

The sun struggled feebly with the mist, tried to impart a  little
warmth  here,  shed  a  little light there, but clearly today was
going to be just another long haul across the sky.

Nothing moved.

Again, silence.
Nothing moved.

Silence.

Very often on Squornshellous Zeta, whole days would  go  on  like
this, and this was indeed going to be one of them.

Fourteen hours later the sun sank hopelessly beneath the opposite
horizon with a sense of totally wasted effort.

And a few hours later it reappeared, squared  its  shoulders  and
started on up the sky again.

This time, however, something was happening. A mattress had  just
met a robot.

"Hello, robot," said the mattress.

"Bleah," said the robot and continued what it  was  doing,  which
was walking round very slowly in a very tiny circle.

"Happy?" said the mattress.

The robot stopped and looked at the mattress.  It  looked  at  it
quizzically.  It  was  clearly  a very stupid mattress. It looked
back at him with wide eyes.

After what it had calculated to ten significant decimal places as
being the precise length of pause most likely to convey a general
contempt for all things mattressy, the robot  continued  to  walk
round in tight circles.

"We could have a conversation," said  the  mattress,  "would  you
like that?"

It was a large mattress, and probably one of quite high  quality.
Very  few things actually get manufactured these days, because in
an infinitely large Universe such as, for instance,  the  one  in
which  we live, most things one could possibly imagine, and a lot
of things one would rather not,  grow  somewhere.  A  forest  was
discovered  recently  in  which  most  of  the trees grew ratchet
screwdrivers as fruit.  The life  cycle  of  ratchet  screwdriver
fruit  it  quite  interesting.  Once picked it needs a dark dusty
drawer in which it can lie undisturbed for years. Then one  night
it  suddenly hatches, discards its outer skin which crumbles into
dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable little metal object
with  flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a sort of hole
for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows
what  it  is  supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite
wisdom, is presumably working on it.

No one really knows what mattresses are meant to gain from  their
lives  either.  They are large, friendly, pocket-sprung creatures
which live quiet private lives in the marshes  of  Squornshellous
Zeta.  Many  of  them get caught, slaughtered, dried out, shipped
out and slept on. None of them seem to mind and all of  them  are
called Zem.
"No," said Marvin.

"My name," said the mattress,  "is  Zem.  We  could  discuss  the
weather a little."

Marvin paused again in his weary circular plod.

"The dew," he observed, "has clearly fallen with  a  particularly
sickening thud this morning."

He resumed his  walk,  as  if  inspired  by  this  conversational
outburst  to  fresh  heights of gloom and despondency. He plodded
tenaciously. If he had had teeth he would have  gritted  them  at
this point. He hadn't. He didn't. The mere plod said it all.

The mattress flolloped around. This is a  thing  that  only  live
mattresses in swamps are able to do, which is why the word is not
in more common usage. It flolloped in a sympathetic  sort of way,
moving  a  fairish  body  of  water  as  it did so. It blew a few
bubbles up through the  water  engagingly.  Its  blue  and  white
stripes  glistened briefly in a sudden feeble ray of sun that had
unexpectedly made it through the mist, causing  the  creature  to
bask momentarily.

Marvin plodded.

"You have something on your mind, I  think,"  said  the  mattress
floopily.

"More  than  you  can  possibly  imagine,"  dreaded  Marvin.  "My
capacity  for mental activity of all kinds is as boundless as the
infinite reaches  of  space  itself.  Except  of  course  for  my
capacity for happiness."

Stomp, stomp, he went.

"My capacity for happiness," he added,  "you  could  fit  into  a
matchbox without taking out the matches first."

The mattress globbered. This is the noise made by a live,  swamp-
dwelling  mattress  that  is  deeply moved by a story of personal
tragedy. The word  can  also,  according  to  The  Ultra-Complete
Maximegalon  Dictionary  of  Every  Language Ever, mean the noise
made by the Lord High Sanvalvwag of Hollop on discovering that he
has  forgotten  his  wife's birthday for the second year running.
Since there was only ever one Lord High Sanvalvwag of Hollop, and
he  never  married,  the  word is only ever used in a negative or
speculative sense,  and  there  is  an  ever-increasing  body  of
opinion   which   holds   that   The  Ultra-Complete  Maximegalon
Dictionary is not worth the fleet of lorries it takes to cart its
microstored  edition  around in. Strangely enough, the dictionary
omits the word "floopily", which simply means "in the  manner  of
something which is floopy".

The mattress globbered again.

"I sense a deep dejection in your diodes," it  vollued  (for  the
meaning  of  the  word  "vollue",  buy  a  copy of Squornshellous
Swamptalk at any remaindered bookshop, or alternatively  buy  The
Ultra-Complete  Maximegalon Dictionary, as the University will be
very glad to get it off their  hands  and  regain  some  valuable
parking   lots),   "and   it  saddens  me.  You  should  be  more
mattresslike. We live quiet retired lives in the swamp, where  we
are  content  to  flollop  and vollue and regard the wetness in a
fairly floopy manner. Some of us are killed, but all  of  us  are
called Zem, so we never know which and globbering is thus kept to
a minimum. Why are you walking in circles?"

"Because my leg is stuck," said Marvin simply.

"It seems to me," said the mattress  eyeing  it  compassionately,
"that it is a pretty poor sort of leg."

"You are right," said Marvin, "it is."

"Voon," said the mattress.

"I expect so," said Marvin, "and I also expect that you find  the
idea of a robot with an artificial leg pretty amusing. You should
tell your friends Zem and Zem when you see  them  later;  they'll
laugh,  if  I know them, which I don't of course - except insofar
as I know all organic life forms, which is  much  better  than  I
would wish to. Ha, but my life is but a box of wormgears."

He stomped around again in his tiny circle, around his thin steel
peg-leg which revolved in the mud but seemed otherwise stuck.

"But why do you just keep walking  round  and  round?"  said  the
mattress.

"Just to make the point," said Marvin, and continued,  round  and
round.

"Consider it  made,  my  dear  friend,"  flurbled  the  mattress,
"consider it made."

"Just another million years," said Marvin,  "just  another  quick
million. Then I might try it backwards. Just for the variety, you
understand."

The mattress could feel deep in his innermost spring pockets that
the robot dearly wished to be asked how long he had been trudging
in this futile and  fruitless  manner,  and  with  another  quiet
flurble he did so.

"Oh, just over the one-point-five-million mark, just over,"  said
Marvin airily. "Ask me if I ever get bored, go on, ask me."

The mattress did.

Marvin  ignored  the  question,  he  merely  trudged  with  added
emphasis.

"I  gave  a  speech  once,"  he  said  suddenly,  and  apparently
unconnectedly. "You may not instantly see why I bring the subject
up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I
am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than
you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."
"Er, five," said the mattress.

"Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?"

The mattress was much impressed by this and realized that it  was
in  the  presence  of a not unremarkable mind. It willomied along
its entire length, sending excited  little  ripples  through  its
shallow algae-covered pool.

It gupped.

"Tell me," it urged, "of the speech you once made, I long to hear
it."

"It was received very badly," said  Marvin,  "for  a  variety  of
reasons.  I  delivered  it," he added, pausing to make an awkward
humping sort of gesture with his not-exactly-good  arm,  but  his
arm which was better than the other one which was dishearteningly
welded to his left side, "over there, about a mile distance."

He was pointing as well as he  could  manage,  and  he  obviously
wanted to make it totally clear that this was as well as he could
manage, through the mist, over the reeds, to a part of the  marsh
which looked exactly the same as every other part of the marsh.

"There," he repeated. "I was  somewhat  of  a  celebrity  at  the
time."

Excitement gripped the mattress. It had never heard  of  speeches
being  delivered  on  Squornshellous  Zeta,  and certainly not by
celebrities. Water spattered off it as a thrill  glurried  across
its back.

It did something which  mattresses  very  rarely  bother  to  do.
Summoning  every  bit of its strength, it reared its oblong body,
heaved it up into the air and held it quivering there for  a  few
seconds  whilst  it peered through the mist over the reeds at the
part of the marsh which Marvin had indicated, observing,  without
disappointment,  that it was exactly the same as every other part
of the marsh. The effort was too much, and it flodged  back  into
its pool, deluging Marvin with smelly mud, moss and weeds.

"I was a celebrity," droned the robot sadly, "for a  short  while
on  account  of my miraculous and bitterly resented escape from a
fate almost as good as death in the heart of a blazing  sun.  You
can  guess  from  my  condition," he added, "how narrow my escape
was. I was rescued by a scrap-metal merchant, imagine that.  Here
I am, brain the size of ... never mind."

He trudged savagely for a few seconds.

"He it was who fixed me up with this leg. Hateful, isn't  it?  He
sold  me to a Mind Zoo. I was the star exhibit. I had to sit on a
box and tell my story whilst people told me to cheer up and think
positive. `Give us a grin, little robot,' they would shout at me,
`give us a little chuckle.' I would explain to them that  to  get
my  face  to  grin wold take a good couple of hours in a workshop
with a wrench, and that went down very well."
"The speech," urged the mattress. "I long to hear of  the  speech
you gave in the marshes."

"There was a bridge built across the marshes.  A  cyberstructured
hyperbridge,  hundreds  of  miles in length, to carry ion-buggies
and freighters over the swamp."

"A bridge?" quirruled the mattress. "Here in the swamp?"

"A bridge," confirmed Marvin, "here in the swamp. It was going to
revitalize  the  economy of the Squornshellous System. They spent
the entire economy of the Squornshellous System building it. They
asked me to open it. Poor fools."

It began to rain a little, a fine spray slid through the mist.

"I stood on the platform. For hundreds of miles in front  of  me,
and hundreds of miles behind me, the bridge stretched."

"Did it glitter?" enthused the mattress.

"It glittered."

"Did it span the miles majestically?"

"It spanned the miles majestically."

"Did it stretch like a silver thread far out into  the  invisible
mist?"

"Yes," said Marvin. "Do you want to hear this story?"

"I want to hear your speech," said the mattress.

"This is what I said. I said, `I would like to say that it  is  a
very  great  pleasure,  honour  and privilege for me to open this
bridge, but I can't because my lying  circuits  are  all  out  of
commission.  I  hate  and  despise  you  all.  I now declare this
hapless cyberstructure open to the unthinkable abuse of  all  who
wantonly  cross  her.'  And  I  plugged  myself  into the opening
circuits."

Marvin paused, remembering the moment.

The mattress flurred  and  glurried.  It  flolloped,  gupped  and
willomied, doing this last in a particularly floopy way.

"Voon," it wurfed at last. "And it was a magnificent occasion?"

"Reasonably magnificent.  The  entire  thousand-mile-long  bridge
spontaneously  folded  up  its  glittering spans and sank weeping
into the mire, taking everybody with it."

There was  a  sad  and  terrible  pause  at  this  point  in  the
conversation  during  which  a  hundred  thousand  people  seemed
unexpectedly to say "wop" and a team of  white  robots  descended
from  the  sky like dandelion seeds drifting on the wind in tight
military formation. For a sudden violent  moment  they  were  all
there,  in  the swamp, wrenching Marvin's false leg off, and then
they were gone again in their ship, which said "foop".

"You see the sort of thing I have to contend with?"  said  Marvin
to the gobbering mattress.

Suddenly, a moment later, the robots were back again for  another
violent  incident, and this time when they left, the mattress was
alone in the swamp.  He  flolloped  around  in  astonishment  and
alarm.  He  almost lurgled in fear. He reared himself to see over
the reeds, but there was nothing to  see,  just  more  reeds.  He
listened,  but  there  was  no  sound  on the wind beyond the now
familiar sound of half-crazed etymologists calling  distantly  to
each other across the sullen mire.




The body of Arthur Dent span.

The Universe shattered into a million glittering fragments around
it,  and  each  particular  shard span silently through the void,
reflecting on its silver surface some single searing holocaust of
fire and destruction.

And then the blackness behind the  Universe  exploded,  and  each
particular piece of blackness was the furious smoke of hell.

And the nothingness behind  the  blackness  behind  the  Universe
erupted,  and  behind the nothingness behind the blackness behind
the shattered Universe was at last the dark figure of an  immense
man speaking immense words.

"These, then,"  said  the  figure,  speaking  from  an  immensely
comfortable   chair,   "were   the  Krikkit  Wars,  the  greatest
devastation  ever  visited  upon  our  Galaxy.  What   you   have
experienced ..."

Slartibartfast floated past, waving.

"It's just a documentary," he called out. "This  is  not  a  good
bit. Terribly sorry, trying to find the rewind control ..."

"... is what billions of billions of innocent ..."

"Do not," called out  Slartibartfast  floating  past  again,  and
fiddling furiously with the thing that he had stuck into the wall
of the Room of Informational Illusions  and  which  was  in  fact
still stuck there, "agree to buy anything at this point."

"... people, creatures, your fellow beings ..."

Music swelled - again, it was immense music, immense chords.  And
behind the man, slowly, three tall pillars began to emerge out of
the immensely swirling mist.

"... experienced, lived through - or, more often, failed to  live
through.  Think  of that, my friends. And let us not forget - and
in just a moment I shall be able to suggest a way which will help
us  always to remember - that before the Krikkit Wars, the Galaxy
was that rare and wonderful thing a happy Galaxy!"

The music was going bananas with immensity at this point.

"A Happy Galaxy, my friends, as represented by the symbol of  the
Wikkit Gate!"

The three pillars stood out clearly  now,  three  pillars  topped
with two cross pieces in a way which looked stupefyingly familiar
to Arthur's addled brain.

"The three pillars," thundered the man. "The Steel  Pillar  which
represented the Strength and Power of the Galaxy!"

Searchlights seared out and danced crazy dances up and  down  the
pillar on the left which was, clearly, made of steel or something
very like it. The music thumped and bellowed.

"The Perspex Pillar," announced the man, "representing the forces
of Science and Reason in the Galaxy!"

Other searchlights played exotically up and down  the  righthand,
transparent  pillar  creating  dazzling  patterns within it and a
sudden inexplicable craving  for  ice-cream  in  the  stomach  of
Arthur Dent.

"And,"  the  thunderous  voice  continued,  "the  Wooden  Pillar,
representing  ..."  and  here his voice became just very slightly
hoarse with wonderful  sentiments,  "the  forces  of  Nature  and
Spirituality."

The lights picked out the central pillar. The music moved bravely
up into the realms of complete unspeakability.

"Between them supporting," the voice rolled on,  approaching  its
climax,  "the  Golden  Bail  of Prosperity and the Silver Bail of
Peace!"

The whole structure was now flooded with dazzling lights, and the
music  had  now,  fortunately,  gone far beyond the limits of the
discernible. At the top of the three pillars the two  brilliantly
gleaming  bails sat and dazzled. There seemed to be girls sitting
on top of them, or maybe they were meant to be angels. Angels are
usually represented as wearing more than that, though.

Suddenly there was a dramatic hush in what was  presumably  meant
to be the Cosmos, and a darkening of the lights.

"There is not a world," thrilled the man's expert voice,  "not  a
civilized  world  in  the Galaxy where this symbol is not revered
even today. Even  in  primitive  worlds  it  persists  in  racial
memories.  This  it was that the forces of Krikkit destroyed, and
this it is that now locks  their  world  away  till  the  end  of
eternity!"

And with a flourish, the man produced in his hands a model of the
Wikkit  gate.  Scale  was  terribly  hard  to judge in this whole
extraordinary spectacle, but the model looked as if it must  have
been about three feet high.

"Not the original key, of course. That, as  everyone  knows,  was
destroyed,  blasted  into  the ever-whirling eddies of the space-
time continuum and lost for ever. This is a  remarkable  replica,
hand-tooled   by  skilled  craftsmen,  lovingly  assembled  using
ancient craft secrets into a memento you will be proud to own, in
memory  of  those  who  fell,  and in tribute to the Galaxy - our
Galaxy - which they died to defend ..."

Slartibartfast floated past again at this moment.

"Found it," he said. "We can lose all this  rubbish.  Just  don't
nod, that's all."

"Now, let us bow our heads in payment," intoned  the  voice,  and
then said it again, much faster and backwards.

Lights came and went, the pillars  disappeared,  the  man  gabled
himself backwards into nothing, the Universe snappily reassembled
itself around them.

"You get the gist?" said Slartibartfast.

"I'm astonished," said Arthur, "and bewildered."

"I was asleep," said Ford, who floated into view at  this  point.
"Did I miss anything?"

They found themselves once again teetering rather rapidly on  the
edge  of  an  agonizingly  high  cliff. The wind whipped out from
their faces and across a bay on which the remains of one  of  the
greatest  and most powerful space battle-fleets ever assembled in
the Galaxy was briskly burning itself back  into  existence.  The
sky  was  a sullen pink, darkening via a rather curious colour to
blue and upwards to black. Smoke billowed down out of  it  at  an
incredible lick.

Events were now passing back by them almost  too  quickly  to  be
distinguished,  and when, a short while later, a huge starbattle-
ship rushed away from them as if they'd  said  "boo",  they  only
just recognized it as the point at which they had come in.

But now things were too rapid, a video-tactile blur which brushed
and  jiggled them through centuries of galactic history, turning,
twisting, flickering. The sound was a mere thin thrill.

Periodically through the thickening jumble of events they  sensed
appalling  catastrophes,  deep  horrors,  cataclysmic shocks, and
these were always associated with certain recurring  images,  the
only  images  which  ever  stood out clearly from the avalance of
tumbling history: a wicket gate, a  small  hard  red  ball,  hard
white  robots,  and  also something less distinct, something dark
and cloudy.

But there was also another sensation which rose  clearly  out  of
the thrilling passage of time.

Just as a slow series of clicks when speeded  up  will  lose  the
definition  of  each  individual  click and gradually take on the
quality of a sustained and rising tone, so a series of individual
impressions here took on the quality of a sustained emotion - and
yet not an emotion. If it  was  an  emotion,  it  was  a  totally
emotionless  one.  It was hatred, implacable hatred. It was cold,
not like ice is cold, but like a wall is cold. It was impersonal,
not as a randomly flung fist in a crowd is impersonal, but like a
computer-issued parking summons is impersonal. And it was  deadly
- again, not like a bullet or a knife is deadly, but like a brick
wall across a motorway is deadly.

And just as a rising tone will change in character  and  take  on
harmonics  as it rises, so again, this emotionless emotion seemed
to rise to an unbearable if unheard scream and suddenly seemed to
be a scream of guilt and failure.

And suddenly it stopped.

They were left standing on a quiet hilltop on a tranquil evening.

The sun was setting.

All around them softly undulating green  countryside  rolled  off
gently  into  the distance. Birds sang about what they thought of
it all, and the general opinion seemed to be good. A  little  way
away  could  be heard the sound of children playing, and a little
further away than the apparent source of that sound could be seen
in the dimming evening light the outlines of a small town.

The town appeared to consist mostly of fairly low buildings  made
of white stone. The skyline was of gentle pleasing curves.

The sun had nearly set.

As if out of nowhere, music began.  Slartibartfast  tugged  at  a
switch and it stopped.

A voice said, "This ..." Slartibartfast tugged at a switch and it
stopped.

"I will tell you about it," he said quietly.

The place was peaceful.  Arthur  felt  happy.  Even  Ford  seemed
cheerful.  They  walked a short way in the direction of the town,
and the Informational Illusion of  the  grass  was  pleasant  and
springy  under  their feet, and the Informational Illusion of the
flowers smelt sweet  and  fragrant.  Only  Slartibartfast  seemed
apprehensive and out of sorts.

He stopped and looked up.

It suddenly occurred to Arthur that, coming as this  did  at  the
end,  so to speak, or rather the beginning of all the horror they
had just blurredly experienced, something nasty must be about  to
happen.  He  was  distressed  to think that something nasty could
happen to somewhere as idyllic as this. He too glanced up.  There
was nothing in the sky.

"They're not about  to  attack  here,  are  they?"  he  said.  He
realized that this was merely a recording he was walking through,
but he still felt alarmed.

"Nothing is about to attack here," said Slartibartfast in a voice
which  unexpectedly  trembled with emotion. "This is where it all
started. This is the place itself. This is Krikkit."

He stared up into the sky.

The sky, from one horizon to another, from  east  to  west,  from
north to south, was utterly and completely black.




Stomp stomp.

Whirrr.

"Pleased to be of service."

"Shut up."

"Thank you."

Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp.

Whirrr.

"Thank you for making a simple door very happy."

"Hope your diodes rot."

"Thank you. Have a nice day."

Stomp stomp stomp stomp.

Whirrr.

"It is my pleasure to open for you ..."

"Zark off."

"... and my satisfaction to close again with the knowledge  of  a
job well done."

"I said zark off."

"Thank you for listening to this message."

Stomp stomp stomp stomp.

"Wop."

Zaphod stopped stomping. He had been stomping around the Heart of
Gold  for  days, and so far no door had said "wop" to him. He was
fairly certain that no door had said "wop" to him now. It was not
the  sort  of  thing  doors said. Too concise. Furthermore, there
were not enough doors. It sounded as if a hundred thousand people
had  said "wop", which puzzled him because he was the only person
on the ship.

It was dark. Most of the ship's non-essential systems were closed
down. It was drifting in a remote area of the Galaxy, deep in the
inky blackness of space. So  which  particular  hundred  thousand
people  would  turn up at this point and say a totally unexpected
"wop"?

He looked about him, up the corridor and down  the  corridor.  It
was  all  in  deep  shadow.  There were just the very dim pinkish
outlines of the  doors  which  glowed  in  the  dark  and  pulsed
whenever they spoke, though he had tried every way he could think
of of stopping them.

The lights were off so that his heads could avoid looking at each
other,  because  neither  of  them  was  currently a particularly
engaging sight, and nor had they been since he had made the error
of looking into his soul.

It had indeed been an error. It had been  late  one  night  -  of
course.

It had been a difficult day - of course.

There had been soulful music playing on the ship's sound system -
of course.

And he had, of course, been slightly drunk.

In other words, all the usual conditions which bring on a bout of
soul-searching  had  applied,  but  it had, nevertheless, clearly
been an error.

Standing now, silent and alone in the dark corridor he remembered
the  moment  and  shivered.  His  one head looked one way and his
other the other and each decided that the other was  the  way  to
go.

He listened but could hear nothing.

All there had been was the "wop".

It seemed an awfully long way to bring an awfully large number of
people just to say one word.

He started nervously to edge his way  in  the  direction  of  the
bridge.  There  at  least  he  would  feel in control. He stopped
again. The way he was feeling he didn't think he was  an  awfully
good person to be in control.

The  first  shock  of  that  moment,  thinking  back,  had   been
discovering that he actually had a soul.

In fact he'd always more or less assumed that he had  one  as  he
had  a  full  complement  of  everything  else, and indeed two of
somethings, but suddenly actually to encounter the thing  lurking
there deep within him had giving him a severe jolt.
And then to discover (this was the second shock) that  it  wasn't
the  totally wonderful object which he felt a man in his position
had a natural right to expect had jolted him again.

Then he had thought about what his position actually was and  the
renewed  shock had nearly made him spill his drink. He drained it
quickly before anything serious  happened  to  it.  He  then  had
another  quick one to follow the first one down and check that it
was all right.

"Freedom," he said aloud.

Trillian came on to the bridge at that  point  and  said  several
enthusiastic things on the subject of freedom.

"I can't cope with it," he said darkly, and sent  a  third  drink
down  to  see why the second hadn't yet reported on the condition
of the first. He looked uncertainly at both of her and  preferred
the one on the right.

He poured a drink down his other throat with  the  plan  that  it
would head the previous one off at the pass, join forces with it,
and together they would get the second to pull  itself  together.
Then  all  three  would  go off in search of the first, give it a
good talking to and maybe a bit of a sing as well.

He felt uncertain as to whether the fourth drink  had  understood
all  that, so he sent down a fifth to explain the plan more fully
and a sixth for moral support.

"You're drinking too much," said Trillian.

His heads collided trying to sort out the four of  her  he  could
now  see  into  a  whole  position.  He gave up and looked at the
navigation screen and was astonished to see  a  quite  phenomenal
number of stars.

"Excitement and adventure and really wild things," he muttered.

"Look," she said in a sympathetic tone of  voice,  and  sat  down
near  him, "it's quite understandable that you're going to feel a
little aimless for a bit."

He boggled at her. He had never seen anyone sit on their own  lap
before.

"Wow," he said. He had another drink.

"You've finished the mission you've been on for years."

"I haven't been on it. I've tried to avoid being on it."

"You've still finished it."

He grunted. There seemed to be a terrific party going on  in  his
stomach.

"I think it finished me," he said. "Here I am, Zaphod Beeblebrox,
I  can  go anywhere, do anything. I have the greatest ship in the
know sky, a girl with whom things seem to be working  out  pretty
well ..."

"Are they?"

"As far as I can tell I'm not an expert in personal relationships
..."

Trillian raised her eyebrows.

"I am," he added, "one hell of a guy, I can do  anything  I  want
only I just don't have the faintest idea what."

He paused.

"One thing," he further added, "has suddenly ceased  to  lead  to
another"  -  in  contradiction  of which he had another drink and
slid gracelessly off his chair.

Whilst he slept it off, Trillian did a  little  research  in  the
ship's copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It had some
advice to offer on drunkenness.

"Go to it," it said, "and good luck."

It was cross-referenced to the entry concerning the size  of  the
Universe and ways of coping with that.

Then she found the entry on Han Wavel, an exotic holiday  planet,
and one of the wonders of the Galaxy.

Han Wavel is a world which consists largely  of  fabulous  ultra-
luxury  hotels  and casinos, all of which have been formed by the
natural erosion of wind and rain.

The chances of this happening are more or less  one  to  infinity
against.  Little  is known of how this came about because none of
the geophysicists, probability statisticians,  meteoranalysts  or
bizzarrologists who are so keen to research it can afford to stay
there.

Terrific, thought Trillian to herself, and within a few hours the
great white running-shoe ship was slowly powering down out of the
sky beneath a hot brilliant sun towards a brightly coloured sandy
spaceport.  The  ship  was  clearly  causing  a  sensation on the
ground, and Trillian  was  enjoying  herself.  She  heard  Zaphod
moving around and whistling somewhere in the ship.

"How are you?" she said over the general intercom.

"Fine," he said brightly, "terribly well."

"Where are you?"

"In the bathroom."

"What are you doing?"

"Staying here."
After an hour or two it became plain that he  meant  it  and  the
ship returned to the sky without having once opened its hatchway.

"Heigh ho," said Eddie the Computer.

Trillian nodded patiently, tapped her fingers a couple  of  times
and pushed the intercom switch.

"I think that enforced fun is probably not what you need at  this
point."

"Probably not," replied Zaphod from wherever he was.

"I think a bit of physical challenge would help draw you  out  of
yourself."

"Whatever you think, I think," said Zaphod.

"Recreational  Impossibilities"  was  a  heading   which   caught
Trillian's  eye  when,  a short while later, she sat down to flip
through the Guide again, and as  the  Heart  of  Gold  rushed  at
improbable speeds in an indeterminate direction, she sipped a cup
of something undrinkable from the Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser  and
read about how to fly.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has  this  to  say  on  the
subject of flying.

There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying.

The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself  at  the  ground
and miss.

Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.

The first part is easy.

All it requires is simply the ability to throw  yourself  forward
with  all  your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's
going to hurt.

That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.

Most people fail to miss the  ground,  and  if  they  are  really
trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it
fairly hard.

Clearly, it's the second point, the missing, which  presents  the
difficulties.

One problem is that you have to  miss  the  ground  accidentally.
It's  no  good  deliberately intending to miss the ground because
you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by
something  else  when  you're  halfway  there, so that you are no
longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about  how
much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.

It is notoriously difficult to prise  your  attention  away  from
these  three  things  during  the  split  second you have at your
disposal.  Hence  most  people's  failure,  and  their   eventual
disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.

If,  however,  you  are  lucky  enough  to  have  your  attention
momentarily  distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous
pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or
personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinity, or by
suddenly spotting an extremely rare species  of  beetle  crawling
along  a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the
ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches  above  it
in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.

This is a moment for superb and delicate concentration.

Bob and float, float and bob.

Ignore all considerations of  your  own  weight  and  simply  let
yourself waft higher.

Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this  point  because
they are unlikely to say anything helpful.

They are most likely to say something along the lines  of,  "Good
God, you can't possibly be flying!"

It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly
be right.

Waft higher and higher.

Try a few swoops, gentle ones at  first,  then  drift  above  the
treetops breathing regularly.

Do not wave at anybody.

When you have done this a few times you will find the  moment  of
distraction rapidly becomes easier and easier to achieve.

You will then learn all sorts of things about how to control your
flight,  your  speed, your manoeuvrability, and the trick usually
lies in not thinking too hard about whatever you want to do,  but
just allowing it to happen as if it was going to anyway.

You will also learn how to land properly, which is something  you
will  almost  certainly cock up, and cock up badly, on your first
attempt.

There are private flying  clubs  you  can  join  which  help  you
achieve the all-important moment of distraction. They hire people
with surprising bodies or opinions to leap out from behind bushes
and  exhibit  and/or  explain  them  at  the crucial moments. Few
genuine hitch-hikers will be able to afford to join these  clubs,
but some may be able to get temporary employment at them.

Trillian read this longingly, but reluctantly decided that Zaphod
wasn't  really  in the right frame of mind for attempting to fly,
or for walking  through  mountains  or  for  trying  to  get  the
Brantisvogan  Civil  Service  to  acknowledge a change-of-address
card, which were  the  other  things  listed  under  the  heading
"Recreational Impossibilities".

Instead, she flew the ship to Allosimanius  Syneca,  a  world  of
ice,  snow, mind-hurtling beauty and stunning cold. The trek from
the snow plains of  Liska  to  the  summit  of  the  Ice  Crystal
Pyramids  of  Sastantua is long and gruelling, even with jet skis
and a team of Syneca Snowhounds, but the view  from  the  top,  a
view which takes in the Stin Glacier Fields, the shimmering Prism
Mountains and the far ethereal dancing icelights,  is  one  which
first  freezes  the  mind and then slowly releases it to hitherto
unexperienced horizons of beauty, and  Trillian,  for  one,  felt
that  she  could do with a bit of having her mind slowly released
to hitherto unexperienced horizons of beauty.

They went into a low orbit.

There lay the silverwhite beauty of Allosimanius  Syneca  beneath
them.

Zaphod stayed in bed with one head stuck under a pillow  and  the
other doing crosswords till late into the night.

Trillian nodded patiently again, counted to a  sufficiently  high
number, and told herself that the important thing now was just to
get Zaphod talking.

She prepared, by dint  of  deactivating  all  the  robot  kitchen
synthomatics,  the  most  fabulously  delicious  meal  she  could
contrive -  delicately  oiled  meals,  scented  fruits,  fragrant
cheeses, fine Aldebaran wines.

She carried it through to him and asked if he felt  like  talking
things through.

"Zark off," said Zaphod.

Trillian nodded patiently to herself, counted to an  even  higher
number,  tossed  the  tray lightly aside, walked to the transport
room and just teleported herself the hell out of his life.

She  didn't  even  programme  any  coordinates,  she  hadn't  the
faintest  idea  where she was going, she just went - a random row
of dots flowing through the Universe.

"Anything," she said to herself as  she  left,  "is  better  than
this."

"Good job too," muttered  Zaphod  to  himself,  turned  over  and
failed to go to sleep.

The next day he restlessly paced the empty corridors of the ship,
pretending  not to look for her, though he knew she wasn't there.
He ignored the computer's querulous demands to know just what the
hell  was  going on around here by fitting a small electronic gag
across a pair of its terminals.

After a while he began to turn down the lights. There was nothing
to see. Nothing was about to happen.
Lying in bed one night - and night was now  virtually  continuous
on  the ship - he decided to pull himself together, to get things
into some kind of perspective. He sat up sharply and  started  to
pull  clothes  on.  He  decided that there must be someone in the
Universe feeling  more  wretched,  miserable  and  forsaken  than
himself, and he determined to set out and find him.

Halfway to the bridge it occurred to him that it might be Marvin,
and he returned to bed.

It was a few hours later than this, as he stomped  disconsolately
about  the darkened corridors swearing at cheerful doors, that he
heard the "wop" said, and it made him very nervous.

He leant tensely against the corridor wall and frowned like a man
trying  to  unbend  a  corkscrew  by  telekinesis.  He  laid  his
fingertips against the wall and felt an  unusual  vibration.  And
now  he  could  quite  clearly hear slight noises, and could hear
where they were coming from - they were coming from the bridge.

"Computer?" he hissed.

"Mmmm?" said the computer terminal nearest him, equally quietly.

"Is there someone on this ship?"

"Mmmmm," said the computer.

"Who is it?"

Mmmmm mmm mmmmm," said the computer.

"What?"

"Mmmmm mmmm mm mmmmmmmm."

Zaphod buried one of his faces in two of his hands.

"Oh, Zarquon," he muttered to himself.  Then  he  stared  up  the
corridor  towards  the entrance to the bridge in the dim distance
from which more and purposeful noises were coming, and  in  which
the gagged terminals were situated.

"Computer," he hissed again.

"Mmmmm?"

"When I ungag you ..."

"Mmmmm."

"Remind me to punch myself in the mouth."

"Mmmmm mmm?"

"Either one. Now just tell me this. One for yes, two for  no.  Is
it dangerous?"
"Mmmmm."

"It is?"

"Mmmm."

"You didn't just go `mmmm' twice?"

"Mmmm mmmm."

"Hmmmm."

He inched his way up the  corridor  as  if  he  would  rather  be
yarding his way down it, which was true.

He was within two yards  of  the  door  to  the  bridge  when  he
suddenly  realized  to his horror that it was going to be nice to
him, and he stopped dead. He hadn't been able  to  turn  off  the
doors' courtesy voice circuits.

This doorway to the bridge was  concealed  from  view  within  it
because of the excitingly chunky way in which the bridge had been
designed to  curve  round,  and  he  had  been  hoping  to  enter
unobserved.

He leant despondently back against the wall again and  said  some
words which his other head was quite shocked to hear.

He peered at the dim pink outline of  the  door,  and  discovered
that in the darkness of the corridor he could just about make out
the Sensor Field which extended out into the  corridor  and  told
the  door  when there was someone there for whom it must open and
to whom it must make a cheery and pleasant remark.

He pressed himself hard back against the wall and  edged  himself
towards  the  door,  flattening  his chest as much as he possibly
could to avoid brushing against the very, very dim  perimeter  of
the  field.  He  held  his  breath,  and congratulated himself on
having lain in bed sulking for the  last  few  days  rather  than
trying  to work out his feelings on chest expanders in the ship's
gym.

He then realized he was going to have to speak at this point.

He took a series of  very  shallow  breaths,  and  then  said  as
quickly  and  as  quietly as he could, "Door, if you can hear me,
say so very, very quietly."

Very, very quietly, the door murmured, "I can hear you."

"Good. Now, in a moment, I'm going to ask you to open.  When  you
open I do not want you to say that you enjoyed it, OK?"

"OK."

"And I don't want you to say to me that I have made a simple door
very  happy,  or that it is your pleasure to open for me and your
satisfaction to close again with the  knowledge  of  a  job  well
done, OK?"
"OK."

"And I do not want you to ask me to have a nice day, understand?"

"I understand."

"OK," said Zaphod, tensing himself, "open now."

The door slid open quietly. Zaphod slipped quietly  through.  The
door closed quietly behind him.

"Is that the way you like it, Mr Beeblebrox?" said the  door  out
loud.

"I want you to imagine," said Zaphod to the group of white robots
who  swung  round  to stare at him at that point, "that I have an
extremely powerful Kill-O-Zap blaster pistol in my hand."

There was an  immensely  cold  and  savage  silence.  The  robots
regarded  him  with  hideously  dead eyes. They stood very still.
There was something intensely  macabre  about  their  appearance,
especially  to Zaphod who had never seen one before or even known
anything about them. The Krikkit Wars  belonged  to  the  ancient
past  of  the  Galaxy,  and  Zaphod  had  spent most of his early
history lessons plotting how he was going to have  sex  with  the
girl  in  the  cybercubicle  next  to him, and since his teaching
computer had been an integral part of this plot it had eventually
had  all its history circuits wiped and replaced with an entirely
different set of ideas  which  had  then  resulted  in  it  being
scrapped  and sent to a home for Degenerate Cybermats, whither it
was followed by the girl who had inadvertently fallen  deeply  in
love  with  the  unfortunate  machine,  with  the result (a) that
Zaphod never got near her and (b) that he missed out on a  period
of  ancient  history that would have been of inestimable value to
him at this moment.

He stared at them in shock.

It was impossible to explain why,  but  their  smooth  and  sleek
white bodies seemed to be the utter embodiment of clean, clinical
evil. From their hideously dead eyes to their  powerful  lifeless
feet,  they  were  clearly  the calculated product of a mind that
wanted simply to kill. Zaphod gulped in cold fear.

They had been dismantling part of the rear bridge wall,  and  had
forced  a  passage through some of the vital innards of the ship.
Through the tangled wreckage Zaphod could see, with a further and
worse  sense of shock, that they were tunnelling towards the very
heart of the ship, the heart of the Improbability Drive that  had
been  so  mysteriously created out of thin air, the Heart of Gold
itself.

The robot closest to him was regarding him in such a  way  as  to
suggest  that  it  was  measuring  every smallest particle of his
body, mind and capability. And when it spoke, what it said seemed
to  bear this impression out. Before going on to what it actually
said, it is worth recording at this point  that  Zaphod  was  the
first  living  organic being to hear one of these creatures speak
for something over  ten  billion  years.  If  he  had  paid  more
attention  to his ancient history lessons and less to his organic
being, he might have been more impressed by this honour.

The robot's voice was like its body, cold, sleek and lifeless. It
had  almost  a  cultured  rasp to it. It sounded as ancient as it
was.

It said, "You do have a Kill-O-Zap blaster pistol in your hand."

Zaphod didn't know what it  meant  for  a  moment,  but  then  he
glanced down at his own hand and was relieved to see that what he
had found clipped to a  wall  bracket  was  indeed  what  he  had
thought it was.

"Yeah," he said in a kind  of  relieved  sneer,  which  is  quite
tricky,  "well,  I  wouldn't  want  to  overtax your imagination,
robot." For a while nobody said  anything,  and  Zaphod  realized
that the robots were obviously not here to make conversation, and
that it was up to him.

"I can't help noticing that you have parked your ship,"  he  said
with  a  nod  of  one  of his heads in the appropriate direction,
"through mine."

There was no denying this. Without regard for any kind of  proper
dimensional  behaviour  they  had  simply materialized their ship
precisely where they wanted it to be, which  meant  that  it  was
simply  locked  through the Heart of Gold as if they were nothing
more than two combs.

Again, they made no response to this, and Zaphod wondered if  the
conversation  would gather any momentum if he phrased his part of
it in the form of questions.

"... haven't you?" he added.

"Yes," replied the robot."

"Er, OK," said Zaphod. "So what are you cats doing here?"

Silence.

"Robots," said Zaphod, "what are you robots doing here?"

"We have come," rasped the robot, "for the Gold of the Bail."

Zaphod nodded. He waggled his gun to invite further  elaboration.
The robot seemed to understand this.

"The Gold Bail is part of the Key we seek," continued the  robot,
"to release our Masters from Krikkit."

Zaphod nodded again. He waggled his gun again.

"The Key," continued the robot simply, "was disintegrated in time
and space. The Golden Bail is embedded in the device which drives
your ship. It will be reconstituted in the Key. Our Masters shall
be released. The Universal Readjustment will continue."
Zaphod nodded again.

"What are you talking about?" he said.

A slightly pained expression seemed to cross the robot's  totally
expressionless  face.  He  seemed  to be finding the conversation
depressing.

"Obliteration," it said. "We seek  the  Key,"  it  repeated,  "we
already  have the Wooden Pillar, the Steel Pillar and the Perspex
Pillar. In a moment we will have the Gold Bail ..."

"No you won't."

"We will," stated the robot.

"No you won't. It makes my ship work."

"In a moment," repeated the robot patiently, "we  will  have  the
Gold Bail ..."

"You will not," said Zaphod.

"And then we must go," said the robot, in all seriousness, "to  a
party."

"Oh," said Zaphod, startled. "Can I come?"

"No," said the robot. "We are going to shoot you."

"Oh yeah?" said Zaphod, waggling his gun.

"Yes," said the robot, and they shot him.

Zaphod was so surprised that they had to shoot him  again  before
he fell down.




"Shhh," said Slartibartfast. "Listen and watch."

Night had now fallen on ancient Krikkit. The  sky  was  dark  and
empty. The only light was coming from the nearby town, from which
pleasant convivial sounds were drifting quietly  on  the  breeze.
They  stood  beneath  a  tree  from which heady fragrances wafted
around them. Arthur squatted and felt the Informational  Illusion
of  the  soil  and  the grass. He ran it through his fingers. The
soil seemed heavy and rich, the grass  strong.  It  was  hard  to
avoid  the impression that this was a thoroughly delightful place
in all respects.

The sky was, however, extremely blank and  seemed  to  Arthur  to
cast  a  certain  chill  over the otherwise idyllic, if currently
invisible, landscape. Still, he supposed, it's a question of what
you're used to.

He felt  a tap on his shoulder and looked up. Slartibartfast  was
quietly  directing his attention to something down the other side
of the hill. He looked and  could  just  see  some  faint  lights
dancing and waving, and moving slowly in their direction.

As they came nearer, sounds became audible too, and soon the  dim
lights  and  noises  resolved  themselves  into  a small group of
people who were walking home across the hill towards the town.

They walked quite near the watchers beneath  the  tree,  swinging
lanterns  which  made soft and crazy lights dance among the trees
and grass, chattering contentedly, and actually  singing  a  song
about  how terribly nice everything was, how happy they were, how
much they enjoyed working on the farm, and how pleasant it was to
be  going  home  to  see their wives and children, with a lilting
chorus to the effect that the flowers were smelling  particularly
nice at this time of year and that it was a pity the dog had died
seeing as it liked them so much. Arthur could almost imagine Paul
McCartney  sitting  with  his  feet  up  by  the fire on evening,
humming it to Linda and wondering what to buy with the  proceeds,
and thinking probably Essex.

"The Masters of Krikkit," breathed Slartibartfast  in  sepulchral
tones.

Coming, as it did, so hard upon the heels  of  his  own  thoughts
about  Essex this remark caused Arthur a moment's confusion. Then
the logic of the situation imposed itself on his scattered  mind,
and  he  discovered  that he still didn't understand what the old
man meant.

"What?" he said.

"The Masters of Krikkit," said Slartibartfast again, and  if  his
breathing  had  been sepulchral before, this time he sounded like
someone in Hades with bronchitis.

Arthur peered at the group and tried to make sense of what little
information he had at his disposal at this point.

The people in the group were clearly alien, if only because  they
seemed  a  little tall, thin, angular and almost as pale as to be
white, but otherwise they appeared remarkably pleasant; a  little
whimsical  perhaps, one wouldn't necessarily want to spend a long
coach journey with them, but the point was that if they  deviated
in any way from being good straightforward people it was in being
perhaps too nice rather than not nice enough.  So  why  all  this
rasping  lungwork  from  Slartibartfast  which  would  seem  more
appropriate to a radio commercial for one of  those  nasty  films
about chainsaw operators taking their work home with them?

Then, this Krikkit angle was a tough one, too.  He  hadn't  quite
fathomed the connection between what he knew as cricket, and what
...

Slartibartfast interrupted his train of thought at this point  as
if sensing what was going through his mind.

"The game you know as cricket," he  said,  and  his  voice  still
seemed  to  be  wandering lost in subterranean passages, "is just
one of those curious freaks  of  racial  memory  which  can  keep
images  alive in the mind aeons after their true significance has
been lost in the mists of time. Of all the races on  the  Galaxy,
only  the  English  could  possibly revive the memory of the most
horrific wars ever to sunder the Universe and transform  it  into
what I'm afraid is generally regarded as an incomprehensibly dull
and pointless game.

"Rather fond of it myself," he added, "but in most people's  eyes
you  have  been  inadvertently  guilty  of the most grotesque bad
taste. Particularly the bit about the little red ball hitting the
wicket, that's very nasty."

"Um," said Arthur with a reflective frown to  indicate  that  his
cognitive  synapses  were coping with this as best as they could,
"um."

"And  these,"  said  Slartibartfast,  slipping  back  into  crypt
guttural  and  indicating  the  group  of Krikkit men who had now
walked past them, "are the ones who started it all, and  it  will
start tonight. Come, we will follow, and see why."

They slipped out from  underneath  the  tree,  and  followed  the
cheery party along the dark hill path. Their natural instinct was
to tread quietly and  stealthily  in  pursuit  of  their  quarry,
though,   as   they   were  simply  walking  through  a  recorded
Informational Illusion, they could as easily  have  been  wearing
euphoniums  and  woad  for all the notice their quarry would have
taken of them.

Arthur noticed that a couple of members of  the  party  were  now
singing  a  different  song. It came lilting back to them through
the soft night air, and was a sweet romantic ballad  which  would
have netted McCartney Kent and Sussex and enabled him to put in a
fair offer for Hampshire.

"You must surely know," said Slartibartfast to Ford, "what it  is
that is about to happen?"

"Me?" said Ford. "No."

"Did you not learn Ancient  Galactic  History  when  you  were  a
child?"

"I was in the cybercubicle behind Zaphod,"  said  Ford,  "it  was
very  distracting.  Which  isn't  to say that I didn't learn some
pretty stunning things."

At this point Arthur noticed a curious feature to the  song  that
the party were singing. The middle eight bridge, which would have
had  McCartney  firmly  consolidated  in  Winchester  and  gazing
intently  over  the  Test  Valley to the rich pickings of the New
Forest beyond,  had  some  curious  lyrics.  The  songwriter  was
referring to meeting with a girl not "under the moon" or "beneath
the stars" but "above the grass", which struck  Arthur  a  little
prosaic.  Then  he  looked up again at the bewildering black sky,
and had the distinct feeling that there was  an  important  point
here,  if  only he could grasp what it was. It gave him a feeling
of being alone in the Universe, and he said so.

"No," said Slartibartfast, with a slight quickening of his  step,
"the  people  of Krikkit have never thought to themselves `We are
alone in the Universe.' They are surrounded by a huge Dust Cloud,
you  see,  their  single  sun with its single world, and they are
right out on the utmost eastern edge of the  Galaxy.  Because  of
the  Dust  Cloud there has never been anything to see in the sky.
At night it is totally blank, During the day there  is  the  sun,
but  you  can't  look  directly  at  that so they don't. They are
hardly aware of the sky. It's as if they had a blind  spot  which
extended 180 degrees from horizon to horizon.

"You see, the reason why they have never thought `We are alone in
the  Universe'  is  that  until tonight they don't know about the
Universe. Until tonight."

He moved on, leaving the words ringing in the air behind him.

"Imagine," he said, "never even thinking `We  are  alone'  simply
because  it  has  never occurred to you to think that there's any
other way to be."

He moved on again.

"I'm afraid this is going to be a little unnerving," he added.

As he spoke, they became aware of a very thin roaring scream high
up  in  the  sightless  sky  above  them. They glanced upwards in
alarm, but for a moment or two could see nothing.

Then Arthur noticed that the people in the party in front of them
had heard the noise, but that none of them seemed to know what to
so  with  it.   They   were   glancing   around   themselves   in
consternation,  left,  right,  forwards,  backwards,  even at the
ground. It never occurred to them to look upwards.

The profoundness of the shock and  horror  they  emanated  a  few
moments  later  when  the  burning  wreckage  of a spaceship came
hurtling and screaming out of the sky and crashed  about  half  a
mile  from where they were standing was something that you had to
be there to experience.

Some speak of the Heart of Gold in  hushed  tones,  some  of  the
Starship Bistromath.

Many speak of the legendary  and  gigantic  Starship  Titanic,  a
majestic  and  luxurious  cruise-liner  launched  from  the great
shipbuilding asteroid complexes of Artifactovol some hundreds  of
years ago now, and with good reason.

It was  sensationally  beautiful,  staggeringly  huge,  and  more
pleasantly  equipped than any ship in what now remains of history
(see note below on the Campaign for Real Time)  but  it  had  the
misfortune to be built in the very earliest days of Improbability
Physics,  long  before  this  difficult  and  cussed  branch   of
knowledge was fully, or at all, understood.

The designers and engineers decided, in their innocence, to build
a  prototype  Improbability  Field  into  it,  which  was  meant,
supposedly, to ensure that  it  was  Infinitely  Improbable  that
anything would ever go wrong with any part of the ship.

They did not realize that because  of  the  quasi-reciprocal  and
circular  nature of all Improbability calculations, anything that
was Infinitely Improbable was  actually  very  likely  to  happen
almost immediately.

The Starship Titanic was a monstrously pretty  sight  as  it  lay
beached  like  a silver Arcturan Megavoidwhale amongst the laser-
lit tracery of its construction gantries, a  brilliant  cloud  of
pins   and   needles  of  light  against  the  deep  interstellar
blackness; but when launched, it did not even manage to  complete
its  very  first  radio  message  -  an SOS - before undergoing a
sudden and gratuitous total existence failure.

However, the same event which saw the disastrous failure  of  one
science  in its infancy also witnessed the apotheosis of another.
It was conclusively proven that more  people  watched  the  tri-d
coverage  of  the  launch  than actually existed at the time, and
this has now been recognized as the greatest achievement ever  in
the science of audience research.

Another spectacular media event of that time  was  the  supernova
which  the  star Ysllodins underwent a few hours later. Ysllodins
is the star around which most of  the  Galaxy's  major  insurance
underwriters live, or rather lived.

But whilst these spaceships, and other great ones which  come  to
mind,  such  as  the Galactic Fleet Battleships - the GSS Daring,
the GSS Audacy and the GSS Suicidal Insanity - are all spoken  of
with  awe,  pride,  enthusiasm,  affection,  admiration,  regret,
jealousy, resentment, in fact most of the better known  emotions,
the one which regularly commands the most actual astonishment was
Krikkit One, the first spaceship ever  built  by  the  people  of
Krikkit. This is not because it was a wonderful ship. It wasn't.

It was a crazy piece of near junk. It looked as if  it  had  been
knocked up in somebody's backyard, and this was in fact precisely
where it had been knocked up. The  astonishing  thing  about  the
ship  was  not  that  it was one well (it wasn't) but that it was
done at all. The period of time which  had  elapsed  between  the
moment  that  the people of Krikkit had discovered that there was
such a thing as space and the launching of their first  spaceship
was almost exactly a year.

Ford Prefect was extremely grateful, as he strapped  himself  in,
that  this  was  just another Informational Illusion, and that he
was therefore completely safe. In real life it wasn't a  ship  he
would have set foot in for all the rice wine in China. "Extremely
rickety" was one phrase which sprang to mind, and "Please  may  I
get out?" was another.

"This is going to fly?" said Arthur, giving gaunt looks,  at  the
lashed-together  pipework  and wiring which festooned the cramped
interior of the ship.

Slartibartfast  assured  him  that  it  would,  that  they   were
perfectly  safe  and  that  it  was  all  going  to  be extremely
instructive and not a little harrowing.

Ford and Arthur decided just to relax and be harrowed.

"Why not," said Ford, "go mad?"

In front of  them  and,  of  course,  totally  unaware  of  their
presence  for  the  very  good  reason that they weren't actually
there, were the three pilots. They had also constructed the ship.
They  had  been  on  the  hill  path that night singing wholesome
heartwarming songs. Their brains had been very slightly turned by
the  nearby  crash  of  the alien spaceship. They had spent weeks
stripping every tiniest last secret out of the wreckage  of  that
burnt-up  spaceship,  all  the  while  singing lilting spaceship-
stripping ditties. They had then built their own  ship  and  this
was  it.  This  was their ship, and they were currently singing a
little  song  about  that  too,  expressing  the  twin  joys   of
achievement  and ownership. The chorus was a little poignant, and
told of their sorrow that their work  had  kept  them  such  long
hours  in  the  garage,  away from the company of their wives and
children, who had missed them terribly but had kept them cheerful
by  bringing  them  continual stories of how nicely the puppy was
growing up.

Pow, they took off.

They roared into the sky like a ship that knew precisely what  it
was doing.

"No way," said Ford a while later after they had  recovered  from
the  shock  of  acceleration,  and  were  climbing  up out of the
planet's atmosphere, "no way," he repeated, "does  anyone  design
and  build a ship like this in a year, no matter how motivated. I
don't believe it. Prove it to me and I still won't  believe  it."
He  shook  his  head thoughtfully and gazed out of a tiny port at
the nothingness outside it.

The trip passed uneventfully  for  a  while,  and  Slartibartfast
fastwound them through it.

Very quickly, therefore, they arrived at the inner  perimeter  of
the  hollow,  spherical Dust Cloud which surrounded their sun and
home planet, occupying, as it were, the next orbit out.

It was more as if there was a gradual change in the  texture  and
consistency of space. The darkness seemed now to thrum and ripple
past them. It was a very cold darkness, a very  blank  and  heavy
darkness, it was the darkness of the night sky of Krikkit.

The coldness and heaviness and blankness of it took a  slow  grip
on  Arthur's  heart, and he felt acutely aware of the feelings of
the Krikkit pilots which hung in the  air  like  a  thick  static
charge.  They  were  now  on  the very boundary of the historical
knowledge of their race. This was the  very  limit  beyond  which
none  of  them  had ever speculated, or even known that there was
any speculation to be done.

The darkness of the cloud buffeted at the ship.  Inside  was  the
silence  of  history.  Their  historic mission was to find out if
there was anything or anywhere on the other side of the sky, from
which the wrecked spaceship could have come, another world maybe,
strange and incomprehensible  though  this  thought  was  to  the
enclosed minds of those who had lived beneath the sky of Krikkit.

History was gathering itself to deliver another blow.

Still  the  darkness  thrummed  at  them,  the  blank   enclosing
darkness.  It  seemed  closer  and  closer,  thicker and thicker,
heavier and heavier. And suddenly it was gone.

They flew out of the cloud.

They saw the staggering jewels of the  night  in  their  infinite
dust and their minds sang with fear.

For a while they flew on, motionless against the starry sweep  of
the  Galaxy,  itself motionless against the infinite sweep of the
Universe. And then they turned round.

"It'll have to go," the men of Krikkit said as they  headed  back
for home.

On the way back they sang a  number  of  tuneful  and  reflective
songs  on  the  subjects  of  peace,  justice, morality, culture,
sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms.




"So  you  see,"  said   Slartibartfast,   slowly   stirring   his
artificially  constructed  coffee,  and thereby also stirring the
whirlpool interfaces between real and unreal numbers, between the
interactive perceptions of mind and Universe, and thus generating
the restructured matrices  of  implicitly  enfolded  subjectivity
which  allowed  his  ship to reshape the very concept of time and
space, "how it is."

"Yes," said Arthur.

"Yes," said Ford.

"What do I do," said Arthur, "with this piece of chicken?"

Slartibartfast glanced at him gravely.

"Toy with it," he said, "toy with it."

He demonstrated with his own piece.

Arthur did so, and felt  the  slight  tingle  of  a  mathematical
function  thrilling  through  the  chicken  leg as it moved four-
dimensionally through what Slartibartfast  had  assured  him  was
five-dimensional space.

"Overnight,"  said  Slartibartfast,  "the  whole  population   of
Krikkit   was   transformed   from  being  charming,  delightful,
intelligent ..."

"... if whimsical ..." interpolated Arthur.

"...  ordinary  people,"  said  Slartibartfast,  "into  charming,
delightful, intelligent ..."

"... whimsical ..."

"... manic xenophobes. The idea of a  Universe  didn't  fit  into
their  world picture, so to speak. They simply couldn't cope with
it. And so, charmingly, delightfully, intelligently,  whimsically
if you like, they decided to destroy it. What's the matter now?"

"I don't like the wine very much," said Arthur sniffing it.

"Well, send it back. It's all part of the mathematics of it."

Arthur did so. He didn't like  the  topography  of  the  waiter's
smile, but he'd never liked graphs anyway.

"Where are we going?" said Ford.

"Back   to   the   Room   of   Informational   Illusions,"   said
Slartibartfast,   rising   and   patting   his   mouth  with  the
mathematical representation of a paper napkin,  "for  the  second
half."




"The people of Krikkit,"  said  His  High  Judgmental  Supremacy,
Judiciary  Pag,  LIVR  (the  Learned, Impartial and Very Relaxed)
Chairman of the Board of Judges at the Krikkit War Crimes  Trial,
"are,  well,  you  know, they're just a bunch of real sweet guys,
you know, who just happen to want to kill everybody. Hell, I feel
the same way some mornings. Shit.

"OK," he continued, swinging his feet up on to the bench in front
of  him  and pausing a moment to pick a thread off his Ceremonial
Beach Loafers, "so you  wouldn't  necessarily  want  to  share  a
Galaxy with these guys."

This was true.

The Krikkit attack on the Galaxy had been stunning. Thousands and
thousands  of  huge  Krikkit  warships  had leapt suddenly out of
hyperspace and simultaneously attacked thousands and thousands of
major  worlds, first seizing vital material supplies for building
the next wave, and  then  calmly  zapping  those  worlds  out  of
existence.

The Galaxy, which had been enjoying a period of unusual peace and
prosperity  at  the  time,  reeled like a man getting mugged in a
meadow.

"I mean," continued Judiciary Pag, gazing round the  ultra-modern
(this  was  ten billion years ago, when "ultra-modern" meant lots
of stainless steel and  brushed  concrete)  and  huge  courtroom,
"these guys are just obsessed."

This too was true, and is the only  explanation  anyone  has  yet
managed to come up with for the unimaginable speed with which the
people of Krikkit had pursued their new and  absolute  purpose  -
the destruction of everything that wasn't Krikkit.

It is also the only  explanation  for  their  bewildering  sudden
grasp  of  all  the  hypertechnology  involved  in building their
thousands of spaceships,  and  their  millions  of  lethal  white
robots.

These had really struck terror into the hearts  of  everyone  who
had  encountered  them  -  in most cases, however, the terror was
extremely short-lived, as was the person experiencing the terror.
They  were  savage,  single-minded  flying  battle machines. They
wielded formidable multifunctional battleclubs which,  brandished
one  way, would knock down buildings and, brandished another way,
fired blistering Omni-Destructo Zap Rays and, brandished a  third
way,  launched  a hideous arsenal of grenades, ranging from minor
incendiary devices  to  Maxi-Slorta  Hypernuclear  Devices  which
could take out a major sun. Simply striking the grenades with the
battleclubs simultaneously primed them, and  launched  them  with
phenomenal  accuracy  over  distances  ranging from mere yards to
hundreds of thousands of miles.

"OK," said Judiciary Pag again, "so we won." He paused and chewed
a  little  gum. "We won," he repeated, "but that's no big deal. I
mean a medium-sized galaxy against one little world, and how long
did it take us? Clerk of the Court?"

"M'lud?" said the severe little man in black, rising.

"How long, kiddo?"

"It is a trifle difficult, m'lud, to be precise in  this  matter.
Time and distance ..."

"Relax, guy, be vague."

"I hardly like to be vague, m'lud, over such a ..."

"Bite the bullet and be it."

The Clerk of the Court blinked at him. It  was  clear  that  like
most  of the Galactic legal profession he found Judiciary Pag (or
Zipo Bibrok 5 / 108, as his private name was known, inexplicably,
to  be) a rather distressing figure. He was clearly a bounder and
a cad. He seemed to think that the fact that he was the possessor
of  the  finest  legal mind ever discovered gave him the right to
behave exactly as he liked, and unfortunately he appeared  to  be
right.

"Er, well, m'lud, very approximately, two  thousand  years,"  the
Clerk murmured unhappily.

"And how many guys zilched out?"

"Two grillion, m'lud." The Clerk sat down. A  hydrospectic  photo
of  him  at  this  point would have revealed that he was steaming
slightly.

Judiciary Pag gazed once more around the courtroom, wherein  were
assembled  hundreds  of  the very highest officials of the entire
Galactic administration, all  in  their  ceremonial  uniforms  or
bodies,  depending  on  metabolism  and  custom. Behind a wall of
Zap-Proof Crystal stood a representative group of the  people  of
Krikkit,  looking  with  calm,  polite loathing at all the aliens
gathered to pass judgment on them. This was  the  most  momentous
occasion in legal history, and Judiciary Pag knew it.

He took out his chewing gum and stuck it under his chair.

"That's a whole lotta stiffs," he said quietly.

The grim silence in the courtroom  seemed  in  accord  with  this
view.

"So, like I said, these are a bunch of really sweet guys, but you
wouldn't  want  to  share a Galaxy with them, not if they're just
gonna keep at it, not if they're  not  gonna  learn  to  relax  a
little.  I  mean it's just gonna be continual nervous time, isn't
it, right? Pow, pow, pow,  when  are  they  next  coming  at  us?
Peaceful  coexistence is just right out, right? Get me some water
somebody, thank you."

He sat back and sipped reflectively.

"OK," he said, "hear me, hear me. It's,  like,  these  guys,  you
know,  are  entitled  to  their  own  view  of  the Universe. And
according to their view,  which  the  Universe  forced  on  them,
right,  they  did  right. Sounds crazy, but I think you'll agree.
They believe in ..."

He consulted a piece of paper which he found in the  back  pocket
of his Judicial jeans.

"They believe  in  `peace,  justice,  morality,  culture,  sport,
family life, and the obliteration of all other life forms'."

He shrugged.

"I've heard a lot worse," he said.

He scratched his crotch reflectively.

"Freeeow," he said. He took another sip of water, then held it up
to the light and frowned at it. He twisted it round.

"Hey, is there something in this water?" he said.

"Er, no, m'lud," said the Court Usher who had brought it to  him,
rather nervously.

"Then take it away," snapped Judiciary Pag, "and put something in
it. I got an idea."

He pushed away the glass and leaned forward.
"Hear me, hear me," he said.

The solution was brilliant, and went like this:

The planet of Krikkit was to be enclosed  for  perpetuity  in  an
envelope  of  Slo-Time,  inside  which life would continue almost
infinitely  slowly.  All  light  would  be  deflected  round  the
envelope  so  that  it  would  remain invisible and impenetrable.
Escape from the envelope would be utterly  impossible  unless  it
were locked from the outside.

When the rest of the Universe came to its  final  end,  when  the
whole  of  creation  reached  its  dying  fall  (this was all, of
course, in the days before it was  known  that  the  end  of  the
Universe  would  be  a spectacular catering venture) and life and
matter ceased to exist, then the planet of Krikkit  and  its  sun
would  emerge  from its Slo-Time envelope and continue a solitary
existence, such as it craved, in the twilight  of  the  Universal
void.

The Lock would be on an asteroid which  would  slowly  orbit  the
envelope.

The key would be the symbol of the Galaxy - the Wikkit Gate.

By the time the applause in the court had  died  down,  Judiciary
Pag was already in the Sens-O-Shower with a rather nice member of
the jury that he'd slipped a note to half an hour earlier.




Two months later, Zipo Bibrok 5 / 108 had cut the bottoms off his
Galactic  State  jeans, and was spending part of the enormous fee
his judgments commanded lying on a jewelled beach having  Essence
of  Qualactin rubbed into his back by the same rather nice member
of  the  jury.  She  was  a  Soolfinian  girl  from  beyond   the
Cloudworlds  of  Yaga.  She had skin like lemon silk and was very
interested in legal bodies.

"Did you hear the news?" she said.

"Weeeeelaaaaah!" said Zipo Bibrok 5 / 108, and you would have had
to have been there to know exactly why he said this. None of this
was on the tape of Informational Illusions, and is all  based  on
hearsay.

"No,"  he  added,  when  the  thing  that  had   made   him   say
"Weeeeelaaaaah"  had  stopped  happening. He moved his body round
slightly to catch the first rays of the  third  and  greatest  of
primeval  Vod's  three  suns  which  was  now  creeping  over the
ludicrously beautiful horizon, and the  sky  now  glittered  with
some of the greatest tanning power ever known.

A fragrant breeze wandered up from the quiet sea,  trailed  along
the  beach,  and drifted back to sea again, wondering where to go
next. On a mad impulse it went up to the beach again. It  drifted
back to sea.
"I hope it isn't good news," muttered Zipo Bibrok 5 / 108,  "'cos
I don't think I could bear it."

"Your Krikkit judgment was carried  out  today,"  said  the  girl
sumptuously.  There  was  no  need  to say such a straightforward
thing sumptuously, but she went ahead and did it  anyway  because
it  was  that  sort  of day. "I heard it on the radio," she said,
"when I went back to the ship for the oil."

"Uhuh," muttered Zipo and rested his head back  on  the  jewelled
sand.

"Something happened," she said.

"Mmmm?"

"Just after the Slo-Time envelope  was  locked,"  she  said,  and
paused  a  moment  from  rubbing  in the Essence of Qualactin, "a
Krikkit warship which had been missing presumed destroyed  turned
out  to be just missing after all. It appeared and tried to seize
the Key."

Zipo sat up sharply.

"Hey, what?" he said.

"it's all right," she said in a voice which would have calmed the
Big  Bang down. "Apparently there was a short battle. The Key and
the warship were disintegrated and blasted  into  the  space-time
continuum. Apparently they are lost for ever."

She smiled, and ran a little more Essence of Qualactin on to  her
fingertips. He relaxed and lay back down.

"Do what you did a moment or two ago," he murmured.

"That?" she said.

"No, no," he said, "that."

She tried again.

"That?" she asked.

"Weeeeelaaaaah!"

Again, you had to be there.

The fragrant breeze drifted up from the sea again.

A magician wandered along the beach, but no one needed him.




"Nothing  is  lost  for  ever,"  said  Slartibartfast,  his  face
flickering  redly  in  the  light  of  the candle which the robot
waiter was trying to take away,  "except  for  the  Cathedral  of
Chalesm."

"The what?" said Arthur with a start.

"The Cathedral of  Chalesm,"  repeated  Slartibartfast.  "It  was
during  the course of my researches at the Campaign for Real Time
that I ..."

"The what?" said Arthur again.

The old man paused and gathered his thoughts, for what  he  hoped
would  be one last onslaught on his story. The robot waiter moved
through the space-time matrices  in  a  way  which  spectacularly
combined  the  surly  with  the obsequious, made a snatch for the
candle and got it. They had had the bill, had argued convincingly
about  who  had  had  the cannelloni and how many bottles of wine
they had had, and, as Arthur had been dimly  aware,  had  thereby
successfully manoeuvred the ship out of subjective space and into
a parking orbit round  a  strange  planet.  The  waiter  was  now
anxious to complete his part of the charade and clear the bistro.

"All will become clear," said Slartibartfast.

"When?"

"In a minute. Listen. The time streams  are  now  very  polluted.
There's a lot of muck floating about in them, flotsam and jetsam,
and more and more of  it  is  now  being  regurgitated  into  the
physical world. Eddies in the space-time continuum, you see."

"So I hear," said Arthur.

"Look, where are we going?" said Ford,  pushing  his  chair  back
from the table with impatience. "Because I'm eager to get there."

"We are going," said Slartibartfast in a  slow,  measured  voice,
"to  try  to prevent the war robots of Krikkit from regaining the
whole of the Key they need to unlock the planet of  Krikkit  from
the  Slo-Time  envelope  and  release  the rest of their army and
their mad Masters."

"It's just," said Ford, "that you mentioned a party."

"I did," said Slartibartfast, and hung his head.

He realized that it had been a mistake, because the  idea  seemed
to  exercise  a  strange and unhealthy fascination on the mind of
Ford Prefect. The more that Slartibartfast  unravelled  the  dark
and tragic story of Krikkit and its people, the more Ford Prefect
wanted to drink a lot and dance with girls.

The old man felt that he should  not  have  mentioned  the  party
until  he  absolutely had to. But there it was, the fact was out,
and Ford Prefect had attached himself to it the way  an  Arcturan
Megaleach  attaches  itself  to its victim before biting his head
off and making off with his spaceship.

"When," said Ford eagerly, "do we get there?"
"When I've finished telling you why we have to go there."

"I know why I'm going," said Ford, and leaned back, sticking  his
hands  behind  his  head.  He  gave  one of his smiles which made
people twitch.

Slartibartfast had hoped for an easy retirement.

He  had  been  planning  to  learn  to  play   the   octraventral
heebiephone  -  a pleasantly futile task, he knew, because he had
the wrong number of mouths.

He had also been planning to write an eccentric and  relentlessly
inaccurate monograph on the subject of equatorial fjords in order
to set the record wrong about  one  or  two  matters  he  saw  as
important.

Instead, he had somehow got talked into doing some part-time work
for  the  Campaign  for  Real Time and had started to take it all
seriously for the first time in his life.  As  a  result  he  now
found  himself  spending  his fast-declining years combating evil
and trying to save the Galaxy.

He found it exhausting work and sighed heavily.

"Listen," he said, "at Camtim ..."

"What?" said Arthur.

"The Campaign for Real Time, which I will tell you about later. I
noticed that five pieces of jetsam which had in relatively recent
times plopped back into existence seemed  to  correspond  to  the
five  pieces of the missing Key. Only two I could trace exactly -
the Wooden Pillar, which appeared on your planet, and the  Silver
Bail.  It  seems to be at some sort of party. We must go there to
retrieve it before the Krikkit robots find it, or who knows  what
may hap?"

"No," said Ford firmly. "We must go to  the  party  in  order  to
drink a lot and dance with girls."

"But haven't you understood everything I ...?"

"Yes," said Ford, with a sudden and unexpected fierceness,  "I've
understood  it  all  perfectly well. That's why I want to have as
many drinks and dance with as many girls as possible while  there
are still any left. If everything you've shown us is true ..."

"True? Of course it's true."

"... then we don't stand a whelk's chance in a supernova."

"A what?" said Arthur sharply again. He had  been  following  the
conversation  doggedly up to this point, and was keen not to lose
the thread now.

"A whelk's chance in a supernova," repeated Ford  without  losing
momentum. "The ..."
"What's a whelk got to do with a supernova?" said Arthur.

"It doesn't," said Ford levelly, "stand a chance in one."

He paused to see if the matter was now cleared  up.  The  freshly
puzzled  looks  clambering  across Arthur's face told him that it
wasn't.

"A supernova," said Ford as quickly and as clearly as  he  could,
"is  a  star which explodes at almost half the speed of light and
burns with the brightness of a billion suns and then collapses as
a  super-heavy  neutron  star.  It's  a star which burns up other
stars, got it? Nothing stands a chance in a supernova."

"I see," said Arthur.

"The ..."

"So why a whelk particularly?"

"Why not a whelk? Doesn't matter."

Arthur accepted this, and Ford continued, picking  up  his  early
fierce momentum as best he could.

"The  point  is,"  he  said,  "that  people  like  you  and   me,
Slartibartfast, and Arthur - particularly and especially Arthur -
are just dilletantes, eccentrics, layabouts, fartarounds  if  you
like."

Slartibartfast  frowned,  partly  in  puzzlement  and  partly  in
umbrage. He started to speak.

"- ..." is as far as he got.

"We're not obsessed by anything, you see," insisted Ford.

"..."

"And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against  obsession.
They care, we don't. They win."

"I care about lots of things,"  said  Slartibartfast,  his  voice
trembling   partly   with   annoyance,   but   partly  also  with
uncertainty.

"Such as?"

"Well," said  the  old  man,  "life,  the  Universe.  Everything,
really. Fjords."

"Would you die for them?"

"Fjords?" blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. "No."

"Well then."

"Wouldn't see the point, to be honest."
"And I still  can't  see  the  connection,"  said  Arthur,  "with
whelks."

Ford could feel the conversation slipping out of his control, and
refused to be sidetracked by anything at this point.

"The point is," he hissed, "that we are not obsessive people, and
we don't stand a chance against ..."

"Except for your sudden obsession with whelks,"  pursued  Arthur,
"which I still haven't understood."

"Will you please leave whelks out of it?"

"I will if you will," said Arthur. "You brought the subject up."

"It was an error," said Ford, "forget them. The point is this."

He leant forward and rested his  forehead  on  the  tips  of  his
fingers.

"What was I talking about?" he said wearily.

"Let's just go down to  the  party,"  said  Slartibartfast,  "for
whatever reason." He stood up, shaking his head.

"I think that's what I was trying to say," said Ford.

For some unexplained reason, the teleport cubicles  were  in  the
bathroom.




Time travel is increasingly regarded  as  a  menace.  History  is
being polluted.

The Encyclopedia Galactica has much to  say  on  the  theory  and
practice  of  time  travel,  most of which is incomprehensible to
anyone who hasn't spent at least four lifetimes studying advanced
hypermathematics,  and  since it was impossible to do this before
time travel was invented, there is a certain amount of  confusion
as  to  how  the  idea  was  arrived  at  in the first place. One
rationalization of this problem states that time travel  was,  by
its  very  nature,  discovered  simultaneously  at all periods of
history, but this is clearly bunk.

The trouble is that a lot of history is now quite clearly bunk as
well.

Here is an example. It may not seem to be  an  important  one  to
some  people,  but  to  others  it  is  crucial.  It is certainly
significant in that it was the  single  event  which  caused  the
Campaign  for Real Time to be set up in the first place (or is it
last? It depends which way round you see  history  as  happening,
and this too is now an increasingly vexed question).

There is, or was, a poet. His name was Lallafa, and he wrote what
are  widely  regarded  throughout  the Galaxy as being the finest
poems in existence, the Songs of the Long Land.

They are/were unspeakably wonderful. That is to say, you couldn't
speak  very  much  of them at once without being so overcome with
emotion, truth and a sense of wholeness  and  oneness  of  things
that  you wouldn't pretty soon need a brisk walk round the block,
possibly pausing at a bar on the way back for a  quick  glass  of
perspective and soda. They were that good.

Lallafa had lived in the forests of the Long Lands  of  Effa.  He
lived there, and he wrote his poems there. He wrote them on pages
made of dried habra leaves, without the benefit of  education  or
correcting fluid. He wrote about the light in the forest and what
he thought about that. He wrote about the darkness in the forest,
and  what  he thought about that. He wrote about the girl who had
left him and precisely what he thought about that.

Long after his death his poems were found and wondered over. News
of   them  spread  like  morning  sunlight.  For  centuries  they
illuminated and watered the lives  of  many  people  whose  lives
might otherwise have been darker and drier.

Then, shortly after the invention  of  time  travel,  some  major
correcting  fluid  manufacturers wondered whether his poems might
have been better still if he had had access to some  high-quality
correcting  fluid, and whether he might be persuaded to say a few
words on that effect.

They travelled the time waves, they found him, they explained the
situation  -  with  some  difficulty  -  to  him,  and did indeed
persuade him. In fact they persuaded him to such an  effect  that
he  became extremely rich at their hands, and the girl about whom
he was otherwise destined to write which such precision never got
around  to  leaving him, and in fact they moved out of the forest
to a rather nice pad in town and he frequently  commuted  to  the
future to do chat shows, on which he sparkled wittily.

He never got around to writing the poems, of course, which was  a
problem,   but   an  easily  solved  one.  The  manufacturers  of
correcting fluid simply packed him off for a week somewhere  with
a  copy of a later edition of his book and a stack of dried habra
leaves to copy them out on to, making the odd deliberate  mistake
and correction on the way.

Many people now say that the poems are suddenly worthless. Others
argue  that  they  are  exactly  the same as they always were, so
what's changed? The first people say that that isn't  the  point.
They aren't quite sure what the point is, but they are quite sure
that that isn't it. They set up the Campaign for Real Time to try
to  stop this sort of thing going on. Their case was considerably
strengthened  by  the  fact  that  a  week  after  they  had  set
themselves  up,  news broke that not only had the great Cathedral
of Chalesm been pulled down in order to build a new ion refinery,
but  that the construction of the refinery had taken so long, and
had had to extend so far back into the past in order to allow ion
production  to  start  on time, that the Cathedral of Chalesm had
now never been built in the first place. Picture postcards of the
cathedral suddenly became immensely valuable.

So a lot of history is now gone for ever. The Campaign  for  Real
Timers  claim  that  just  as  easy travel eroded the differences
between one country  and  another,  and  between  one  world  and
another,  so  time  travel is now eroding the differences between
one age and another. "The past," they say, "is now truly  like  a
foreign country. They do things exactly the same there."




Arthur materialized, and did so with all the customary staggering
about  and  clasping at his throat, heart and various limbs which
he still indulged himself  in  whenever  he  made  any  of  these
hateful  and  painful materializations that he was determined not
to let himself get used to.

He looked around for the others.

They weren't there.

He looked around for the others again.

They still weren't there.

He closed his eyes.

He opened them

He looked around for the others.

They obstinately persisted in their absence.

He closed his eyes again, preparatory to making  this  completely
futile  exercise  once more, and because it was only then, whilst
his eyes were closed, that his brain began to register  what  his
eyes  had  been looking at whilst they were open, a puzzled frown
crept across his face.

So he opened his eyes again to check  his  facts  and  the  frown
stayed put.

If anything, it intensified, and got a good firm  grip.  If  this
was  a  party  it  was  a  very  bad  one,  so bad, in fact, that
everybody else had left. He abandoned this  line  of  thought  as
futile.  Obviously  this  wasn't  a  party.  It  was a cave, or a
labyrinth, or a tunnel of  something  -  there  was  insufficient
light  to tell. All was darkness, a damp shiny darkness. The only
sounds were the  echoes  of  his  own  breathing,  which  sounded
worried.  He coughed very slightly, and then had to listen to the
thin ghostly echo of his  cough  trailing  away  amongst  winding
corridors and sightless chambers, as of some great labyrinth, and
eventually returning to him via the same unseen corridors, as  if
to say ... "Yes?"

This happened to every slightest noise he made, and  it  unnerved
him.  He  tried to hum a cheery tune, but by the time it returned
to him it was a hollow dirge and he stopped.

His mind  was  suddenly  full  of  images  from  the  story  that
Slartibartfast had been telling him. He half-expected suddenly to
see lethal white robots step silently from the shadows  and  kill
him.  He  caught  his breath. They didn't. He let it go again. He
didn't know what he did expect.

Someone or something, however, seemed to be expecting him, for at
that  moment  there lit up suddenly in the dark distance an eerie
green neon sign.

It said, silently:

You have been Diverted

The sign flicked off again, in a way which Arthur was not at  all
certain  he  liked.  It  flicked  off with a sort of contemptuous
flourish. Arthur then tried to assure himself that this was  just
a  ridiculous  trick of his imagination. A neon sign is either on
or off, depending on whether it has electricity  running  through
it  or  not.  There  was  no  way, he told himself, that it could
possibly effect the transition from one state to the other with a
contemptuous  flourish. He hugged himself tightly in his dressing
gown and shivered, nevertheless.

The neon sign in the depths now suddenly lit up, bafflingly, with
just three dots and a comma. Like this:


Only in green neon.

It was trying, Arthur realized after staring at this  perplexedly
for  a  second  or  two, to indicate that there was more to come,
that the sentence was not complete. Trying with almost superhuman
pedantry, he reflected. Or at least, inhuman pedantry.

The sentence then completed itself with these two words:

Arthur Dent.

He reeled. He steadied himself to have another clear look at  it.
It still said Arthur Dent, so he reeled again.

Once again, the sign flicked off, and left him  blinking  in  the
darkness  with  just the dim red image of his name jumping on his
retina.

Welcome, the sign now suddenly said.

After a moment, it added:

I Don't Think.

The stone-cold fear which had been hovering about Arthur all this
time,  waiting for its moment, recognized that its moment had now
come and pounced on him. He tried to fight  it  off.  He  dropped
into  a kind of alert crouch that he had once seen somebody do on
television, but it must have been someone with stronger knees. He
peered huntedly into the darkness.

"Er, hello?" he said.
He cleared his throat and said it again, more loudly and  without
the  "er".  At some distance down the corridor it seemed suddenly
as if somebody started to beat on a bass drum.

He listened to it for a few seconds and realized that it was just
his heart beating.

He listened for a few seconds more and realized  that  it  wasn't
his heart beating, it was somebody down the corridor beating on a
bass drum.

Beads of sweat formed on his brow, tensed themselves,  and  leapt
off.  He  put a hand out on the floor to steady his alert crouch,
which wasn't holding up very well. The sign changed itself again.
It said:

Do Not be Alarmed.

After a pause, it added:

Be Very Very Frightened, Arthur Dent.

Once again it flicked off. Once again it left  him  in  darkness.
His  eyes seemed to be popping out of his head. He wasn't certain
if this was because they were trying to see more clearly,  or  if
they simply wanted to leave at this point.

"Hello?" he said again, this time trying to put a note of  rugged
and aggressive self-assertion into it. "Is anyone there?"

There was no reply, nothing.

This unnerved Arthur Dent even more than a reply would have done,
and  he  began  to  back away from the scary nothingness. And the
more he backed away, the more scared he became. After a while  he
realized that the reason for this was because of all the films he
had seen in which the hero backs further and  further  away  from
some imagined terror in front of him, only to bump into it coming
up from behind.

Just then it suddenly  occurred  to  him  to  turn  round  rather
quickly.

There was nothing there.

Just blackness.

This really unnerved him, and he started to back away from  that,
back the way he had come.

After doing this for a short while it suddenly  occurred  to  him
that  he  was  now  backing  towards  whatever it was he had been
backing away from in the first place.

This, he couldn't help thinking, must be a foolish thing  to  do.
He  decided  he  would be better off backing the way he had first
been backing, and turned around again.
It turned out at this point that his second impulse had been  the
correct  one,  because there was an indescribably hideous monster
standing quietly behind him. Arthur  yawed  wildly  as  his  skin
tried  to  jump  one  way  and his skeleton the other, whilst his
brain tried to work out which of his ears it most wanted to crawl
out of.

"Bet you weren't expecting to see me again,"  said  the  monster,
which  Arthur  couldn't help thinking was a strange remark for it
to make, seeing as he had never met the creature before. He could
tell  that he hadn't met the creature before from the simple fact
that he was able to sleep at nights. It was ... it was ... it was
...

Arthur blinked at it. It stood very still. It did look  a  little
familiar.

A terrible cold calm came over him as he realized  that  what  he
was looking at was a six-foot-high hologram of a housefly.

He wondered why anybody would  be  showing  him  a  six-foot-high
hologram  of  a housefly at this time. He wondered whose voice he
had heard.

It was a terribly realistic hologram.

It vanished.

"Or perhaps you remember me better," said the voice suddenly, and
it  was a deep, hollow malevolent voice which sounded like molten
tar glurping out of a  drum  with  evil  on  its  mind,  "as  the
rabbit."

With a sudden ping,  there  was  a  rabbit  there  in  the  black
labyrinth  with  him,  a  huge,  monstrously,  hideously soft and
lovable rabbit - an image again, but one on  which  every  single
soft and lovable hair seemed like a real and single thing growing
in its soft and lovable coat. Arthur was startled to see his  own
reflection  in its soft and lovable unblinking and extremely huge
brown eyes.

"Born in darkness," rumbled the voice, "raised in  darkness.  One
morning  I  poked  my head for the first time into the bright new
world and got it split open by what felt suspiciously  like  some
primitive instrument made of flint.

"Made by you, Arthur Dent, and wielded by you. Rather hard  as  I
recall.

"You turned my skin into a bag for keeping interesting stones in.
I  happen  to  know that because in my next life I came back as a
fly again and you swatted me. Again. Only this time  you  swatted
me with the bag you'd made of my previous skin.

"Arthur Dent, you are not merely a cruel and heartless  man,  you
are also staggeringly tactless."

The voice paused whilst Arthur gawped.
"I see you have lost the bag,"  said  the  voice.  "Probably  got
bored with it, did you?"

Arthur shook his head helplessly. He wanted to  explain  that  he
had  been  in  fact  very fond of the bag and had looked after it
very well and had taken it with him wherever he  went,  but  that
somehow  every  time he travelled anywhere he seemed inexplicably
to end up with the wrong bag and that, curiously enough, even  as
they stood there he was just noticing for the first time that the
bag he had with him at the moment appeared  to  be  made  out  of
rather nasty fake leopard skin, and wasn't the one he'd had a few
moments ago before he arrived in this whatever place it was,  and
wasn't  one  he  would  have  chosen himself and heaven knew what
would be in it as it wasn't his, and he would  much  rather  have
his  original  bag  back,  except  that he was of course terribly
sorry for having  so  peremptorily  removed  it,  or  rather  its
component  parts,  i.e. the rabbit skin, from its previous owner,
viz. the rabbit whom he currently had the  honour  of  attempting
vainly to address.

All he actually managed to say was "Erp".