DOUGLAS ADAMS


THE ULTIMATE
HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE

Complete & Unabridged


Contents:


Introduction: A Guide to the Guide
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Young Zaphod Plays It Safe
Mostly Harmless
Footnotes



Introduction: A GUIDE TO
THE GUIDE


Some unhelpful remarks from the author

The history of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is now so
complicated that every time I tell it I contradict myself, and whenever
I do get it right I'm misquoted. So the publication of this omnibus
edition seemed like a good opportunity to set the record straight - or
at least firmly crooked. Anything that is put down wrong here is, as far
as I'm concerned, wrong for good.

The idea for the title first cropped up while I was lying drunk in a
field in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1971. Not particularly drunk, just the
sort of drunk you get when you have a couple of stiff Gossers after
not having eaten for two days straight, on account of being a
penniless hitchhiker. We are talking of a mild inability to stand up.

I was traveling with a copy of the Hitch Hiker s Guide to Europe by
Ken Walsh, a very battered copy that I had borrowed from someone.

In fact, since this was 1971 and I still have the book, it must count as
stolen by now. I didn't have a copy of Europe on Five Dollars a Day (as
it then was) because I wasn't in that financial league.

Night was beginning to fall on my field as it spun lazily underneath
me. I was wondering where I could go that was cheaper than
Innsbruck, revolved less and didn't do the sort of things to me that
Innsbruck had done to me that afternoon. What had happened was
this. I had been walking through the town trying to find a particular
address, and being thoroughly lost I stopped to ask for directions
from a man in the street. I knew this mightn't be easy because I don't
speak German, but I was still surprised to discover just how much
difficulty I was having communicating with this particular man.
Gradually the truth dawned on me as we struggled in vain to
understand each other that of all the people in Innsbruck I could have
stopped to ask, the one I had picked did not speak English, did not
speak French and was also deaf and dumb. With a series of sincerely
apologetic hand movements, I disentangled myself, and a few



minutes later, on another street, I stopped and asked another man
who also turned out to be deaf and dumb, which was when I bought
the beers.

I ventured back onto the street. I tried again.

When the third man I spoke to turned out to be deaf and dumb
and also blind I began to feel a terrible weight settling on my
shoulders; wherever I looked the trees and buildings took on dark and
menacing aspects. I pulled my coat tightly around me and hurried
lurching down the street, whipped by a sudden gusting wind. I
bumped into someone and stammered an apology, but he was deaf
and dumb and unable to understand me. The sky loured. The
pavement seemed to tip and spin. If I hadn't happened then to duck
down a side street and pass a hotel where a convention for the deaf
was being held, there is every chance that my mind would have
cracked completely and I would have spent the rest of my life writing
the sort of books for which Kafka became famous and dribbling.

As it is I went to lie in a field, along with my Hitch Hiker's Guide to
Europe, and when the stars came out it occurred to me that if only
someone would write a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well, then
I for one would be off like a shot. Having had this thought I promptly
fell asleep and forgot about it for six years.

I went to Cambridge University. I took a number of baths-and a
degree in English. I worried a lot about girls and what had happened
to my bike. Later I became a writer and worked on a lot of things that
were almost incredibly successful but in fact just failed to see the light
of day. Other writers will know what I mean.

My pet project was to write something that would combine
comedy and science fiction, and it was this obsession that drove me
into deep debt and despair. No one was interested, except finally one
man a BBC radio producer named Simon Brett who had had the same
idea, comedy and science fiction. Although Simon only produced the
first episode before leaving the BBC to concentrate on his own writing
(he is best known in the United Stares for his excellent Charles Paris
detective novels), I owe him an immense debt of gratitude for simply
getting the thing to happen in the first place. He was succeeded by
the legendary Geoffrey Perkins.

In its original form the show was going to be rather different. I was
feeling a little disgruntled with the world at the time and had put



together about six different plots, each of which ended with the
destruction of the world in a different way, and for a different reason.
It was to be called "The Ends of the Earth "

While I was filling in the details of the first plot - in which the Earth
was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace express route - I
realized that I needed to have someone from another planet around
to tell the reader what was going on, to give the story the context it
needed. So I had to work out who he was and what he was doing on
the Earth.

I decided to call him Ford Prefect. (This was a joke that missed
American audiences entirely, of course, since they had never heard of
the rather oddly named little car, and many thought it was a typing
error for Perfect.) I explained in the text that the minimal research my
alien character had done before arriving on this planet had led him to
think that this name would be "nicely inconspicuous." He had simply
mistaken the dominant life form.

So how would such a mistake arise? I remembered when I used to
hitchhike through Europe and would often find that the information
or advice that came my way was out of date or misleading in some
way. Most of it, of course, just came from stories of other people's
travel experiences.

At that point the title The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
suddenly popped back into my mind from wherever it had been
hiding all this time. Ford, I decided, would be a researcher who
collected data for the Guide. As soon as I started to develop this
particular notion, it moved inexorably to the center of the story, and
the rest, as the creator of the original Ford Prefect would say, is bunk.

The story grew in the most convoluted way, as many people will be
surprised to learn. Writing episodically meant that when I finished
one episode I had no idea about what the next one would contain.
When, in the twists and turns of the plot, some event suddenly
seemed to illuminate things that had gone before, I was as surprised
as anyone else.

I think that the BBC's attitude toward the show while it was in
production was very similar to that which Macbeth had toward
murdering people - initial doubts, followed by cautious enthusiasm
and then greater and greater alarm at the sheer scale of the
undertaking and still no end in sight. Reports that Geoffrey and I and



the sound engineers were buried in a subterranean studio for weeks
on end, taking as long to produce a single sound effect as other
people took to produce an entire series (and stealing everybody else's
studio time in which to do so), were all vigorously denied but
absolutely true.

The budget of the series escalated to the point that it could have
practically paid for a few seconds of Dallas. If the show hadn't
worked...

The first episode went out on BBC Radio 4 at 10 30 P.M. on
Wednesday, March 8, 1978, in a huge blaze of no publicity at all. Bats
heard it. The odd dog barked.

After a couple of weeks a letter or two trickled in. So - someone
out there had listened. People I Balked to seemed to like Marvin the
Paranoid Android, whom I had written in as a one - scene joke and
had only developed further at Geoffrey's insistence.

Then some publishers became interested, and I was commissioned
by Pan Books in England to write up the series in book form. After a
lot of procrastination and hiding and inventing excuses and having
baths, I managed to get about two-thirds of it done. At this point they
said, very pleasantly and politely, that I had already passed ten
deadlines, so would I please just finish the page I was on and let them
have the damn thing.

Meanwhile, I was busy trying to write another series and was also
writing and script editing the TV series "Dr. Who," because while it
was all very pleasant to have your own radio series, especially one
that somebody had written in to say they had heard, it didn't exactly
buy you lunch.

So that was more or less the situation when the book The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was published in England in
September 1979 and appeared on the Sunday Times mass market
best-seller list at number one and just stayed there. Clearly,
somebody had been listening.

This is where things start getting complicated, and this is what I
was asked, in writing this Introduction, to explain. The Guide has
appeared in so many forms - books, radio, a television series, records
and soon to be a major motion picture - each time with a different
story line that even its most acute followers have become baffled at
times.



Here then is a breakdown of the different versions - not including
the various stage versions, which haven't been seen in the States and
only complicate the matter further.

The radio series began in England in March 1978. The first series
consisted of six programs, or "fits" as they were called. Fits 1 thru 6.
Easy. Later that year, one more episode was recorded and broadcast,
commonly known as the Christmas episode. It contained no reference
of any kind to Christmas. It was called the Christmas episode because
it was first broadcast on December 24, which is not Christmas Day.
After this, things began to get increasingly complicated.

In the fall of 1979, the first Hitchhiker book was published in
England, called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was a
substantially expanded version of the first four episodes of the radio
series, in which some of the characters behaved in entirely different
ways and others behaved in exactly the same ways but for entirely
different reasons, which amounts to the same thing but saves
rewriting the dialogue.

At roughly the same time a double record album was released,
which was, by contrast, a slightly contracted version of the first four
episodes of the radio series. These were not the recordings that were
originally broadcast but wholly new recordings of substantially the
same scripts. This was done because we had used music off
gramophone records as incidental music for the series, which is fine
on radio, but makes commercial release impossible.

In January 1980, five new episodes of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy" were broadcast on BBC Radio, all in one week, bringing
the total number to twelve episodes.

In the fall of 1980, the second Hitchhiker book was published in
England, around the same time that Harmony Books published the
first book in the United States. It was a very substantially reworked,
reedited and contracted version of episodes 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, S and 6
(in that order) of the radio series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy." In case that seemed too straightforward, the book was called
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, because it included the
material from radio episodes of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy," which was set in a restaurant called Milliways, otherwise
known as the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.



At roughly the same time, a second record album was made
featuring a heavily rewritten and expanded version of episodes 5 and
6 of the radio series. This record album was also called The Restaurant
at the End of the Universe.

Meanwhile, a series of six television episodes of "The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy" was made by the BBC and broadcast in January
1981. This was based, more or less, on the first six episodes of the
radio series. In other words, it incorporated most of the book The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the second half of the book The
Restaurant at be End of the Universe. Therefore, though it followed
the basic structure of the radio series, it incorporated revisions from
the books, which didn't.

In January 1982 Harmony Books published The Restaurant at the
End of the Universe in the United States.

In the summer of 1982, a third Hitchhiker book was published
simultaneously in England and the United States, called Life, the
Universe and Everything. This was not based on anything that had
already been heard or seen on radio or television. In fact it flatly
contradicted episodes 7, 8, 9,10, I 1 and 12 of the radio series. These
episodes of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," you will
remember, had already been incorporated in revised form in the book
called The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

At this point I went to America to write a film screenplay which was
completely inconsistent with most of what has gone on so far, and
since that film was then delayed in the making (a rumor currently has
it that filming will start shortly before the Last Trump), I wrote a
fourth and last book in the trilogy, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
This was published in Britain and the USA in the fall of 1984 and it
effectively contradicted everything to date, up to and including itself.

As if this all were not enough I wrote a computer game for Infocom
called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which bore only fleeting
resemblances to anything that had previously gone under that title,
and in collaboration with Geoffrey Perkins assembled The Hitchhiker s
Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts (published in England
and the USA in 1985). Now this was an interesting venture. The book
is, as the title suggests, a collection of all the radio scripts, as
broadcast, and it is therefore the only example of one Hitchhiker
publication accurately and consistently reflecting another. I feel a



little uncomfortable with this - which is why the introduction to that
book was written after the final and definitive one you are now
reading and, of course, flatly contradicts it.

People often ask me how they can leave the planet, so I have
prepared some brief notes.

How to Leave the Planet

1. Phone NASA. Their phone number is (713) 483-3111. Explain that
it's very important that you get away as soon as possible.

2. If they do not cooperate, phone any friend you may have in the
White House-(202) 456-1414-to have a word on your behalf with the
guys at NASA.

3. If you don't have any friends in the White House, phone the
Kremlin (ask the overseas operator for 0107-095-295-9051). They
don't have any friends there either (at least, none to speak of), but
they do seem to have a little influence, so you may as well try.

4. If that also fails, phone the Pope for guidance. His telephone
number is 011-39-6-6982, and I gather his switchboard is infallible.

5. If all these attempts fail, flag down a passing flying saucer and
explain that de's vitally important you get away before your phone bill
arrives.


Douglas Adams
Los Angeles 1983 and
London 1985/1986



DOUGLAS ADAMS


THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO

THE GALAXY


For Jonny Brock and Clare Gorst
and all other Arlingtonians
for tea, sympathy, and a sofa



Preface


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.



Chapter 1


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 turn
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 Hitchhiker'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 Florse 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.

"Fie 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.
Fie was surprised and slightly alarmed to find that Arthur had
company.

"Yes? Flello?" he called. "Flas 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."



Chapter 2


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 Hitchhiker'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 01' 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 Hitchhiker'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."



Chapter 3


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 Hitchhiker'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 Hitchhiker'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?" Fie 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!" Fie 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. Fie 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. Fie 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. Fie 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. Fie 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. Flis 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. Flowever, when the moment came she would be too busy
evaporating herself to notice it.

The barman cleared his throat. Fie 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. Fie
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. Fie 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.



Chapter 4


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 fodderl.

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 paper 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 girl 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.



Chapter 5


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
had 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 hitchhikers.

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 Prefect2.

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 hitchhikers 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 Altai ran 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."

"Flas 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. Fie wished
there was something simple and recognizable he could grasp hold of.
Fie 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. Fie couldn't, and he
didn't feel safe.

Suddenly a violent noise leapt at them from no source that he
could identify. Fie 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...



Chapter 6


"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 Hitchhiker'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 Hitchhiker'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
mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some
thinkers 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. Fie 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." FHe passed it over again.

Arthur grabbed hold of it and tried to stop his hands shaking. FHe
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? Flarmless? Is that all it's got to say? Flarmless! 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.

FHe 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..."



Chapter 7


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. Fie 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 grace:

"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. Fie hummed quietly and mused to himself, lightly fingering his
notebook of verses.

"Hmmmm," he said, "counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying
metaphor..." Fie 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." Fie didn't
sound hopeful.

"Resistance is useless!" bellowed the guard.

"Just don't say things like that," stammered Ford. "Flow 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.



Chapter 8


The Hitchhiker'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 Hitchhiker'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.



Chapter 9


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."



Chapter 10


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.



Chapter 11


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
hitchhikers. 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 Hitchhiker'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. Flere 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."

Fie 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. Fie 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. Flere'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.



Chapter 12


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 Worst
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: "Well, 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 ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha."

"Yeah?" said Zaphod and blinked.

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

"Mmmmm," said Zaphod, "ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha. ZZ9 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 two-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?"



Chapter 13


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."

Fie 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."

Fie 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. FHis
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." FHis
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.



Chapter 14


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."



Chapter 15


(Excerpt from The Hitchhiker'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.



Chapter 16


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."

"Fley, 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.



Chapter 17


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. Fie 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 FHitchhiker'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.



Chapter 18


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 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.



Chapter 19


"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
panoramic 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
response to a command that caught him entirely by surprise.



Chapter 20


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? Flow 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.



Chapter 21


On the surface of Magrathea Arthur wandered about moodily.

Ford had thoughtfully left him his copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy to while away the time with. He pushed a few buttons at
random.

The Hitchhiker'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 superintendent 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.



Chapter 22


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.



Chapter 23


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.



Chapter 24


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 cheerfully.
"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 corns?"

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 corns 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."



Chapter 25


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.



Chapter 26


"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.



Chapter 27


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.




Chapter 28


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.



Chapter 29


"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. Fie was a gas. Fie 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. "Fie 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.



Chapter 30


"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."



Chapter 31


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
hosts 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 Mega don key?"
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,
"Nl 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 electronically,"
protested 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.



Chapter 32


"Emergency! Emergency!" blared the klaxons throughout
Magrathea. "Hostile 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 BackZaphod.

"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.



Chapter 33


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.



Chapter 34


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.



Chapter 35


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 Hitchhiker'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."



DOUGLAS ADAMS


THE RESTAURANT AT THE
END OF THE UNIVERSE


To Jane and James
with many thanks

to Geoffrey Perkins for achieving the Improbable
to Paddy Kingsland, Lisa Braun and Alick Hale Munro for helping
him

to John Lloyd for his help with the original Milliways script
to Simon Brett for starting the whole thing off

to the Paul Simon album One Trick Pony which I played incessantly
while writing this book. Five years is far too long

And with very special thanks to Jacqui Graham for infinite patience,
kindness and food in adversity


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.

There is another theory which states that this has already
happened.



Chapter 1


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.



Chapter 2


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.



Chapter 3


"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. Fie 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. Fie 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 Fleart of Gold's Infinite
Improbability Drive, but the Sub-Cyclic Normality Assert-i-Tron lay idle
as the Fleart of Gold just sat there and took it.

A dozen 30-Megahurt Definit-Kil Photrazon Cannon continued to
blaze away at the Fleart of Gold, and still it just sat there and took it.

Fie tested every sensor at his disposal to see if there was any subtle
trickery afoot, but no subtle trickery was to be found.

Fie didn't know about the tea of course.

Nor did he know exactly how the occupants of the Fleart 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. Fie 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. Flave you forgotten?"

"Could we go into this later?"

"Flave 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!"

Fie paused for a moment.

"Good," he said and the noise stopped.

"Forty-eight seconds," said Ford. Fie looked again at his watch and
tapped it. Fie looked up.

"Fley, 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.



Chapter 4


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".



Chapter 5


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 Hitchhiker'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 Hitchhiker'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.



Chapter 6


"Hello? Yes? Megadodo Publications, home of the Hitchhiker'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 Hitchhiker'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
Hitchhiker'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 Hitchhiker'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 Hitchhiker'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. Fie 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."



Chapter 7


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.



Chapter 8


"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 Hitchhiker'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.

"Flere, 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. Fie 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. Fie believed that he had heard of
all the fun things in the Galaxy, so he assumed that the Total
Perspective Vortex was not fun. Fie 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.



Chapter 9


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 Hitchhiker'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 locked
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?



Chapter 10


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.



Chapter 11


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.



Chapter 12


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.



Chapter 13


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.



Chapter 14


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. Fie 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. Fie 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 VI'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.



Chapter 15


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 Hitchhikers 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?"



Chapter 16


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 a nd
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."

Fie paused.

"Fley, 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. FHi, guys," he
called out to a nearby party of giant iguana lifeforms, "Flow 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.

"Fley, Zaphod," said Ford, grabbing for his arm and, on account of
the third Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, missing. Fie 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. "Fley,"
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.



Chapter 17


The Hitchhiker'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 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 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 clear 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, "HI 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."

Fie 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."



Chapter 18


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, feeling - 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."

Fie 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.

"Fley, 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
Flotblack'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. FHis attention was
riveted on the ship standing next to Flotblack Desiato's limo. FHis
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.



Chapter 19


One of the major selling point of that wholly remarkable travel
book, the Hitchhiker'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.

l~Area: Infinite.

The Hitchhiker'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.



2~lmports: None.


It is impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no
outside to import things in from.

3~Exports: None.

See imports.

4~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.

5~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.


6~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.

7~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.



Chapter 20


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 Hitchhiker'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 of 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.



Chapter 21


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/ 1 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. Fie 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 percent 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.




Chapter 22


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 offish
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.

... and so on. Another favorite song was much shorter:

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
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."

"Flow 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. Fie 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. Flowever 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. Fie
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.



Chapter 23


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. Fie 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.



Chapter 24


"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?!!" NumberTwo 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 NumberTwo.

"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."

Flaving 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. Fie twisted round in his
bath and gazed backwards over the huge bulk of the ship towards the
bright galactic centre. Fie 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."

Fie 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..." Flis eyes passed over the solid shapes of the
instruments and computers that lined the bridge. They winked away
innocently at him. Fie stared out at the stars, but none of them said a
word. Fie glanced at his first and second officers, but they seemed lost
in their own thoughts for a moment. Fie 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."



Chapter 25


The Hitchhiker'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.



Chapter 26


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. Fie 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."

Fie 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.



Chapter 27


"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."



Chapter 28


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?



Chapter 29


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 offish 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.



Chapter 30


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. Fie 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. Flalf 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.

"Flello," 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. Fie 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. Fie 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 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.

Flaving 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. Fie 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."



Chapter 31


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. Fie was tense with excitement
- his eyes darted up to meet Arthur's.

"Look," he said, "look!"

Arthur looked. Fie 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?"


Fie 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.



Chapter 32


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." Fie 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."

"Fie 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."

"Fle'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."

Fie 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.

Fie 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."



Chapter 33


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 child. 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."

Fie went over to where the apemen creatures were rummaging
listlessly with the stone letters. Fie 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. FHistory is
never altered you see, it just fits together like a jigsaw. Funny old
thing, life, isn't it?"

Fie 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."



Chapter 34


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 Hitchhiker'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.



DOUGLAS ADAMS


LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND
EVERYTHING

for Sally



Chapter 1


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-lpdenu."

"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.



Chapter 2


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."

Fie 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 FHitchhiker'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." FHe smiled weakly. Fie 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.



Chapter 3


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



"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. Fie 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."

"AnS...?"

"... 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.

"Flello, 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. Fie 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.

Fie 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.



Chapter 4


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. Fie 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 Fleart
of Gold seem like an electric pram.

Fie swung himself off the couch. Fie brushed himself down. Fie
looked at Arthur who was singing quietly to himself. Fie looked at the
screen and recognized nothing. Fie looked at Slartibartfast.

"Flow 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 Hitchhiker'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 luck 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 polio 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.



Chapter 5


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.



Chapter 6


"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.



Chapter 7


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 would
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.
