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+Book 1
+PD: OS
+Subject: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (englisch)
+
+
+
+ Douglas Adams
+
+ The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
+
+
+=================================================================
+
+Douglas Adams The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
+Douglas Adams The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
+Douglas Adams Life, the Universe, and Everything
+Douglas Adams So long, and thanks for all the fish
+
+=================================================================
+
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
+
+for
+
+Jonny Brock and Clare Gorst
+
+and all other Arlingtonians
+
+for tea, sympathy, and a sofa
+
+=================================================================
+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 tum and a predilection for little
+fur hats.
+
+He was by no means a great warrior: in fact he was a nervous
+worried man. Today he was particularly nervous and worried
+because something had gone seriously wrong with his job - which
+was to see that Arthur Dent's house got cleared out of the way
+before the day was out.
+
+"Come off it, Mr Dent,", he said, "you can't win you know. You
+can't lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely." He tried to
+make his eyes blaze fiercely but they just wouldn't do it.
+
+Arthur lay in the mud and squelched at him.
+
+"I'm game," he said, "we'll see who rusts first."
+
+"I'm afraid you're going to have to accept it," said Mr Prosser
+gripping his fur hat and rolling it round the top of his head,
+"this bypass has got to be built and it's going to be built!"
+
+"First I've heard of it," said Arthur, "why's it going to be
+built?"
+
+Mr Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and
+put it away again.
+
+"What do you mean, why's it got to be built?" he said. "It's a
+bypass. You've got to build bypasses."
+
+Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point
+A to point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to
+point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point
+directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great
+about point A that so many people of point B are so keen to get
+there, and what's so great about point B that so many people of
+point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people
+would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted
+to be.
+
+Mr Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D wasn't anywhere in
+particular, it was just any convenient point a very long way from
+points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage at point
+D, with axes over the door, and spend a pleasant amount of time
+at point E, which would be the nearest pub to point D. His wife
+of course wanted climbing roses, but he wanted axes. He didn't
+know why - he just liked axes. He flushed hotly under the
+derisive grins of the bulldozer drivers.
+
+He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally
+uncomfortable on each. Obviously somebody had been appallingly
+incompetent and he hoped to God it wasn't him.
+
+Mr Prosser said: "You were quite entitled to make any suggestions
+or protests at the appropriate time you know."
+
+"Appropriate time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate time? The first I
+knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I
+asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no he'd
+come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me straight away of
+course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me
+a fiver. Then he told me."
+
+"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning
+office for the last nine month."
+
+"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see
+them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your
+way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually
+telling anybody or anything."
+
+"But the plans were on display ..."
+
+"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find
+them."
+
+"That's the display department."
+
+"With a torch."
+
+"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
+
+"So had the stairs."
+
+"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
+
+"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom
+of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a
+sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
+
+A cloud passed overhead. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent as he
+lay propped up on his elbow in the cold mud. It cast a shadow
+over Arthur Dent's house. Mr Prosser frowned at it.
+
+"It's not as if it's a particularly nice house," he said.
+
+"I'm sorry, but I happen to like it."
+
+"You'll like the bypass."
+
+"Oh shut up," said Arthur Dent. "Shut up and go away, and take
+your bloody bypass with you. You haven't got a leg to stand on
+and you know it."
+
+Mr Prosser's mouth opened and closed a couple of times while his
+mind was for a moment filled with inexplicable but terribly
+attractive visions of Arthur Dent's house being consumed with
+fire and Arthur himself running screaming from the blazing ruin
+with at least three hefty spears protruding from his back. Mr
+Prosser was often bothered with visions like these and they made
+him feel very nervous. He stuttered for a moment and then pulled
+himself together.
+
+"Mr Dent," he said.
+
+"Hello? Yes?" said Arthur.
+
+"Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much
+damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight
+over you?"
+
+"How much?" said Arthur.
+
+"None at all," said Mr Prosser, and stormed nervously off
+wondering why his brain was filled with a thousand hairy horsemen
+all shouting at him.
+
+By a curious coincidence, None at all is exactly how much
+suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his
+closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact
+from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from
+Guildford as he usually claimed.
+
+Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.
+
+This friend of his had first arrived on the planet some fifteen
+Earth years previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself
+into Earth society - with, it must be said, some success. For
+instance he had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out
+of work actor, which was plausible enough.
+
+He had made one careless blunder though, because he had skimped a
+bit on his preparatory research. The information he had gathered
+had led him to choose the name "Ford Prefect" as being nicely
+inconspicuous.
+
+He was not conspicuously tall, his features were striking but not
+conspicuously handsome. His hair was wiry and gingerish and
+brushed backwards from the temples. His skin seemed to be pulled
+backwards from the nose. There was something very slightly odd
+about him, but it was difficult to say what it was. Perhaps it
+was that his eyes didn't blink often enough and when you talked
+to him for any length of time your eyes began involuntarily to
+water on his behalf. Perhaps it was that he smiled slightly too
+broadly and gave people the unnerving impression that he was
+about to go for their neck.
+
+He struck most of the friends he had made on Earth as an
+eccentric, but a harmless one -- an unruly boozer with some
+oddish habits. For instance he would often gatecrash university
+parties, get badly drunk and start making fun of any
+astrophysicist he could find till he got thrown out.
+
+Sometimes he would get seized with oddly distracted moods and
+stare into the sky as if hypnotized until someone asked him what
+he was doing. Then he would start guiltily for a moment, relax
+and grin.
+
+"Oh, just looking for flying saucers," he would joke and everyone
+would laugh and ask him what sort of flying saucers he was
+looking for.
+
+"Green ones!" he would reply with a wicked grin, laugh wildly for
+a moment and then suddenly lunge for the nearest bar and buy an
+enormous round of drinks.
+
+Evenings like this usually ended badly. Ford would get out of his
+skull on whisky, huddle into a corner with some girl and explain
+to her in slurred phrases that honestly the colour of the flying
+saucers didn't matter that much really.
+
+Thereafter, staggering semi-paralytic down the night streets he
+would often ask passing policemen if they knew the way to
+Betelgeuse. The policemen would usually say something like,
+"Don't you think it's about time you went off home sir?"
+
+"I'm trying to baby, I'm trying to," is what Ford invariably
+replied on these occasions.
+
+In fact what he was really looking out for when he stared
+distractedly into the night sky was any kind of flying saucer at
+all. The reason he said green was that green was the traditional
+space livery of the Betelgeuse trading scouts.
+
+Ford Prefect was desperate that any flying saucer at all would
+arrive soon because fifteen years was a long time to get stranded
+anywhere, particularly somewhere as mindboggingly dull as the
+Earth.
+
+Ford wished that a flying saucer would arrive soon because he
+knew how to flag flying saucers down and get lifts from them. He
+knew how to see the Marvels of the Universe for less than thirty
+Altairan dollars a day.
+
+In fact, Ford Prefect was a roving researcher for that wholly
+remarkable book The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
+
+Human beings are great adaptors, and by lunchtime life in the
+environs of Arthur's house had settled into a steady routine. It
+was Arthur's accepted role to lie squelching in the mud making
+occasional demands to see his lawyer, his mother or a good book;
+it was Mr Prosser's accepted role to tackle Arthur with the
+occasional new ploy such as the For the Public Good talk, the
+March of Progress talk, the They Knocked My House Down Once You
+Know, Never Looked Back talk and various other cajoleries and
+threats; and it was the bulldozer drivers' accepted role to sit
+around drinking coffee and experimenting with union regulations
+to see how they could turn the situation to their financial
+advantage.
+
+The Earth moved slowly in its diurnal course.
+
+The sun was beginning to dry out the mud Arthur lay in.
+
+A shadow moved across him again.
+
+"Hello Arthur," said the shadow.
+
+Arthur looked up and squinting into the sun was startled to see
+Ford Prefect standing above him.
+
+"Ford! Hello, how are you?"
+
+"Fine," said Ford, "look, are you busy?"
+
+"Am I busy?" exclaimed Arthur. "Well, I've just got all these
+bulldozers and things to lie in front of because they'll knock my
+house down if I don't, but other than that ... well, no not
+especially, why?"
+
+They don't have sarcasm on Betelgeuse, and Ford Prefect often
+failed to notice it unless he was concentrating. He said, "Good,
+is there anywhere we can talk?"
+
+"What?" said Arthur Dent.
+
+For a few seconds Ford seemed to ignore him, and stared fixedly
+into the sky like a rabbit trying to get run over by a car. Then
+suddenly he squatted down beside Arthur.
+
+"We've got to talk," he said urgently.
+
+"Fine," said Arthur, "talk."
+
+"And drink," said Ford. "It's vitally important that we talk and
+drink. Now. We'll go to the pub in the village."
+
+He looked into the sky again, nervous, expectant.
+
+"Look, don't you understand?" shouted Arthur. He pointed at
+Prosser. "That man wants to knock my house down!"
+
+Ford glanced at him, puzzled.
+
+"Well he can do it while you're away can't he?" he asked.
+
+"But I don't want him to!"
+
+"Ah."
+
+"Look, what's the matter with you Ford?" said Arthur.
+
+"Nothing. Nothing's the matter. Listen to me - I've got to tell
+you the most important thing you've ever heard. I've got to tell
+you now, and I've got to tell you in the saloon bar of the Horse
+and Groom."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because you are going to need a very stiff drink."
+
+Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur was astonished to find that his
+will was beginning to weaken. He didn't realize that this was
+because of an old drinking game that Ford learned to play in the
+hyperspace ports that served the madranite mining belts in the
+star system of Orion Beta.
+
+The game was not unlike the Earth game called Indian Wrestling,
+and was played like this:
+
+Two contestants would sit either side of a table, with a glass in
+front of each of them.
+
+Between them would be placed a bottle of Janx Spirit (as
+immortalized in that ancient Orion mining song "Oh don't give me
+none more of that Old Janx Spirit/ No, don't you give me none
+more of that Old Janx Spirit/ For my head will fly, my tongue
+will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die/ Won't you pour me one
+more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit").
+
+Each of the two contestants would then concentrate their will on
+the bottle and attempt to tip it and pour spirit into the glass
+of his opponent - who would then have to drink it.
+
+The bottle would then be refilled. The game would be played
+again. And again.
+
+Once you started to lose you would probably keep losing, because
+one of the effects of Janx spirit is to depress telepsychic
+power.
+
+As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the final
+loser would have to perform a forfeit, which was usually
+obscenely biological.
+
+Ford Prefect usually played to lose.
+
+Ford stared at Arthur, who began to think that perhaps he did
+want to go to the Horse and Groom after all.
+
+"But what about my house ...?" he asked plaintively.
+
+Ford looked across to Mr Prosser, and suddenly a wicked thought
+struck him.
+
+"He wants to knock your house down?"
+
+"Yes, he wants to build ..."
+
+"And he can't because you're lying in front of the bulldozers?"
+
+"Yes, and ..."
+
+"I'm sure we can come to some arrangement," said Ford. "Excuse
+me!" he shouted.
+
+Mr Prosser (who was arguing with a spokesman for the bulldozer
+drivers about whether or not Arthur Dent constituted a mental
+health hazard, and how much they should get paid if he did)
+looked around. He was surprised and slightly alarmed to find that
+Arthur had company.
+
+"Yes? Hello?" he called. "Has Mr Dent come to his senses yet?"
+
+"Can we for the moment," called Ford, "assume that he hasn't?"
+
+"Well?" sighed Mr Prosser.
+
+"And can we also assume," said Ford, "that he's going to be
+staying here all day?"
+
+"So?"
+
+"So all your men are going to be standing around all day doing
+nothing?"
+
+"Could be, could be ..."
+
+"Well, if you're resigned to doing that anyway, you don't
+actually need him to lie here all the time do you?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"You don't," said Ford patiently, "actually need him here."
+
+Mr Prosser thought about this.
+
+"Well no, not as such...", he said, "not exactly need ..."
+Prosser was worried. He thought that one of them wasn't making a
+lot of sense.
+
+Ford said, "So if you would just like to take it as read that
+he's actually here, then he and I could slip off down to the pub
+for half an hour. How does that sound?"
+
+Mr Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty.
+
+"That sounds perfectly reasonable," he said in a reassuring tone
+of voice, wondering who he was trying to reassure.
+
+"And if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself later on,"
+said Ford, "we can always cover up for you in return."
+
+"Thank you very much," said Mr Prosser who no longer knew how to
+play this at all, "thank you very much, yes, that's very kind
+..." He frowned, then smiled, then tried to do both at once,
+failed, grasped hold of his fur hat and rolled it fitfully round
+the top of his head. He could only assume that he had just won.
+
+"So," continued Ford Prefect, "if you would just like to come
+over here and lie down ..."
+
+"What?" said Mr Prosser.
+
+"Ah, I'm sorry," said Ford, "perhaps I hadn't made myself fully
+clear. Somebody's got to lie in front of the bulldozers haven't
+they? Or there won't be anything to stop them driving into Mr
+Dent's house will there?"
+
+"What?" said Mr Prosser again.
+
+"It's very simple," said Ford, "my client, Mr Dent, says that he
+will stop lying here in the mud on the sole condition that you
+come and take over from him."
+
+"What are you talking about?" said Arthur, but Ford nudged him
+with his shoe to be quiet.
+
+"You want me," said Mr Prosser, spelling out this new thought to
+himself, "to come and lie there ..."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In front of the bulldozer?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Instead of Mr Dent."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In the mud."
+
+"In, as you say it, the mud."
+
+As soon as Mr Prosser realized that he was substantially the
+loser after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his
+shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew it. He sighed.
+
+"In return for which you will take Mr Dent with you down to the
+pub?"
+
+"That's it," said Ford. "That's it exactly."
+
+Mr Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped.
+
+"Promise?"
+
+"Promise," said Ford. He turned to Arthur.
+
+"Come on," he said to him, "get up and let the man lie down."
+
+Arthur stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream.
+
+Ford beckoned to Prosser who sadly, awkwardly, sat down in the
+mud. He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he
+sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying
+it. The mud folded itself round his bottom and his arms and oozed
+into his shoes.
+
+Ford looked at him severely.
+
+"And no sneaky knocking down Mr Dent's house whilst he's away,
+alright?" he said.
+
+"The mere thought," growled Mr Prosser, "hadn't even begun to
+speculate," he continued, settling himself back, "about the
+merest possibility of crossing my mind."
+
+He saw the bulldozer driver's union representative approaching
+and let his head sink back and closed his eyes. He was trying to
+marshal his arguments for proving that he did not now constitute
+a mental health hazard himself. He was far from certain about
+this - his mind seemed to be full of noise, horses, smoke, and
+the stench of blood. This always happened when he felt miserable
+and put upon, and he had never been able to explain it to
+himself. In a high dimension of which we know nothing the mighty
+Khan bellowed with rage, but Mr Prosser only trembled slightly
+and whimpered. He began to fell little pricks of water behind the
+eyelids. Bureaucratic cock-ups, angry men lying in the mud,
+indecipherable strangers handing out inexplicable humiliations
+and an unidentified army of horsemen laughing at him in his head
+- what a day.
+
+What a day. Ford Prefect knew that it didn't matter a pair of
+dingo's kidneys whether Arthur's house got knocked down or not
+now.
+
+Arthur remained very worried.
+
+"But can we trust him?" he said.
+
+"Myself I'd trust him to the end of the Earth," said Ford.
+
+"Oh yes," said Arthur, "and how far's that?"
+
+"About twelve minutes away," said Ford, "come on, I need a
+drink."
+
+=================================================================
+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 Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It
+says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle
+Blaster.
+
+It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like
+having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round
+a large gold brick.
+
+The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic
+Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one
+and what voluntary organizations exist to help you rehabilitate
+afterwards.
+
+The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself.
+
+Take the juice from one bottle of that Ol' Janx Spirit, it says.
+
+Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V
+- Oh that Santraginean sea water, it says. Oh those Santraginean
+fish!!!
+
+Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the mixture
+(it must be properly iced or the benzine is lost).
+
+Allow four litres of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it, in
+memory of all those happy Hikers who have died of pleasure in the
+Marshes of Fallia.
+
+Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin
+Hypermint extract, redolent of all the heady odours of the dark
+Qualactin Zones, subtle sweet and mystic.
+
+Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve,
+spreading the fires of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of
+the drink.
+
+Sprinkle Zamphuor.
+
+Add an olive.
+
+Drink ... but ... very carefully ...
+
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy sells rather better than
+the Encyclopedia Galactica.
+
+"Six pints of bitter," said Ford Prefect to the barman of the
+Horse and Groom. "And quickly please, the world's about to end."
+
+The barman of the Horse and Groom didn't deserve this sort of
+treatment, he was a dignified old man. He pushed his glasses up
+his nose and blinked at Ford Prefect. Ford ignored him and stared
+out of the window, so the barman looked instead at Arthur who
+shrugged helplessly and said nothing.
+
+So the barman said, "Oh yes sir? Nice weather for it," and
+started pulling pints.
+
+He tried again.
+
+"Going to watch the match this afternoon then?"
+
+Ford glanced round at him.
+
+"No, no point," he said, and looked back out of the window.
+
+"What's that, foregone conclusion then you reckon sir?" said the
+barman. "Arsenal without a chance?"
+
+"No, no," said Ford, "it's just that the world's about to end."
+
+"Oh yes sir, so you said," said the barman, looking over his
+glasses this time at Arthur. "Lucky escape for Arsenal if it
+did."
+
+Ford looked back at him, genuinely surprised.
+
+"No, not really," he said. He frowned.
+
+The barman breathed in heavily. "There you are sir, six pints,"
+he said.
+
+Arthur smiled at him wanly and shrugged again. He turned and
+smiled wanly at the rest of the pub just in case any of them had
+heard what was going on.
+
+None of them had, and none of them could understand what he was
+smiling at them for.
+
+A man sitting next to Ford at the bar looked at the two men,
+looked at the six pints, did a swift burst of mental arithmetic,
+arrived at an answer he liked and grinned a stupid hopeful grin
+at them.
+
+"Get off," said Ford, "They're ours," giving him a look that
+would have an Algolian Suntiger get on with what it was doing.
+
+Ford slapped a five-pound note on the bar. He said, "Keep the
+change."
+
+"What, from a fiver? Thank you sir."
+
+"You've got ten minutes left to spend it."
+
+The barman simply decided to walk away for a bit.
+
+"Ford," said Arthur, "would you please tell me what the hell is
+going on?"
+
+"Drink up," said Ford, "you've got three pints to get through."
+
+"Three pints?" said Arthur. "At lunchtime?"
+
+The man next to ford grinned and nodded happily. Ford ignored
+him. He said, "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
+
+"Very deep," said Arthur, "you should send that in to the
+Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you."
+
+"Drink up."
+
+"Why three pints all of a sudden?"
+
+"Muscle relaxant, you'll need it."
+
+"Muscle relaxant?"
+
+"Muscle relaxant."
+
+Arthur stared into his beer.
+
+"Did I do anything wrong today," he said, "or has the world
+always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to
+notice?"
+
+"Alright," said Ford, "I'll try to explain. How long have we
+known each other?"
+
+"How long?" Arthur thought. "Er, about five years, maybe six," he
+said. "Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time."
+
+"Alright," said Ford. "How would you react if I said that I'm not
+from Guildford after all, but from a small planet somewhere in
+the vicinity of Betelgeuse?"
+
+Arthur shrugged in a so-so sort of way.
+
+"I don't know," he said, taking a pull of beer. "Why - do you
+think it's the sort of thing you're likely to say?"
+
+Ford gave up. It really wasn't worth bothering at the moment,
+what with the world being about to end. He just said:
+
+"Drink up."
+
+He added, perfectly factually:
+
+"The world's about to end."
+
+Arthur gave the rest of the pub another wan smile. The rest of
+the pub frowned at him. A man waved at him to stop smiling at
+them and mind his own business.
+
+"This must be Thursday," said Arthur musing to himself, sinking
+low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
+
+=================================================================
+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 Hitch Hiker's
+Guide to the Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the form
+of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were
+printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitch hiker would
+require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around
+in.
+
+Beneath that in Ford Prefect's satchel were a few biros, a
+notepad, and a largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer.
+
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on
+the subject of towels.
+
+A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an
+interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical
+value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across
+the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant
+marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea
+vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so
+redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini
+raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-
+hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or
+to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a
+mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it,
+it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can
+wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of
+course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean
+enough.
+
+More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For
+some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a
+hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume
+that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel,
+soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat
+spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the
+strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a
+dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have
+"lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch
+the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle
+against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his
+towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
+
+Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking slang, as in
+"Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who
+really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet,
+have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really
+amazingly together guy.)
+
+Nestling quietly on top of the towel in Ford Prefect's satchel,
+the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic began to wink more quickly. Miles above
+the surface of the planet the huge yellow somethings began to fan
+out. At Jodrell Bank, someone decided it was time for a nice
+relaxing cup of tea.
+
+"You got a towel with you?" said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur.
+
+Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him.
+
+"Why? What, no ... should I have?" He had given up being
+surprised, there didn't seem to be any point any longer.
+
+Ford clicked his tongue in irritation.
+
+"Drink up," he urged.
+
+At that moment the dull sound of a rumbling crash from outside
+filtered through the low murmur of the pub, through the sound of
+the jukebox, through the sound of the man next to Ford hiccupping
+over the whisky Ford had eventually bought him.
+
+Arthur choked on his beer, leapt to his feet.
+
+"What's that?" he yelped.
+
+"Don't worry," said Ford, "they haven't started yet."
+
+"Thank God for that," said Arthur and relaxed.
+
+"It's probably just your house being knocked down," said Ford,
+drowning his last pint.
+
+"What?" shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford's spell was broken. Arthur
+looked wildly around him and ran to the window.
+
+"My God they are! They're knocking my house down. What the hell
+am I doing in the pub, Ford?"
+
+"It hardly makes any difference at this stage," said Ford, "let
+them have their fun."
+
+"Fun?" yelped Arthur. "Fun!" He quickly checked out of the window
+again that they were talking about the same thing.
+
+"Damn their fun!" he hooted and ran out of the pub furiously
+waving a nearly empty beer glass. He made no friends at all in
+the pub that lunchtime.
+
+"Stop, you vandals! You home wreckers!" bawled Arthur. "You half
+crazed Visigoths, stop will you!"
+
+Ford would have to go after him. Turning quickly to the barman he
+asked for four packets of peanuts.
+
+"There you are sir," said the barman, slapping the packets on the
+bar, "twenty-eight pence if you'd be so kind."
+
+Ford was very kind - he gave the barman another five-pound note
+and told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then
+looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a momentary
+sensation that he didn't understand because no one on Earth had
+ever experienced it before. In moments of great stress, every
+life form that exists gives out a tiny sublimal signal. This
+signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of
+how far that being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is
+never possible to be further than sixteen thousand miles from
+your birthplace, which really isn't very far, so such signals are
+too minute to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this moment under
+great stress, and he was born 600 light years away in the near
+vicinity of Betelgeuse.
+
+The barman reeled for a moment, hit by a shocking,
+incomprehensible sense of distance. He didn't know what it meant,
+but he looked at Ford Prefect with a new sense of respect, almost
+awe.
+
+"Are you serious, sir?" he said in a small whisper which had the
+effect of silencing the pub. "You think the world's going to
+end?"
+
+"Yes," said Ford.
+
+"But, this afternoon?"
+
+Ford had recovered himself. He was at his flippest.
+
+"Yes," he said gaily, "in less than two minutes I would
+estimate."
+
+The barman couldn't believe the conversation he was having, but
+he couldn't believe the sensation he had just had either.
+
+"Isn't there anything we can do about it then?" he said.
+
+"No, nothing," said Ford, stuffing the peanuts into his pockets.
+
+Someone in the hushed bar suddenly laughed raucously at how
+stupid everyone had become.
+
+The man sitting next to Ford was a bit sozzled by now. His eyes
+waved their way up to Ford.
+
+"I thought," he said, "that if the world was going to end we were
+meant to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something."
+
+"If you like, yes," said Ford.
+
+"That's what they told us in the army," said the man, and his
+eyes began the long trek back down to his whisky.
+
+"Will that help?" asked the barman.
+
+"No," said Ford and gave him a friendly smile. "Excuse me," he
+said, "I've got to go." With a wave, he left.
+
+The pub was silent for a moment longer, and then, embarrassingly
+enough, the man with the raucous laugh did it again. The girl he
+had dragged along to the pub with him had grown to loathe him
+dearly over the last hour or so, and it would probably have been
+a great satisfaction to her to know that in a minute and a half
+or so he would suddenly evaporate into a whiff of hydrogen, ozone
+and carbon monoxide. However, when the moment came she would be
+too busy evaporating herself to notice it.
+
+The barman cleared his throat. He heard himself say:
+
+"Last orders, please."
+
+The huge yellow machines began to sink downward and to move
+faster.
+
+Ford knew they were there. This wasn't the way he had wanted it.
+
+Running up the lane, Arthur had nearly reached his house. He
+didn't notice how cold it had suddenly become, he didn't notice
+the wind, he didn't notice the sudden irrational squall of rain.
+He didn't notice anything but the caterpillar bulldozers crawling
+over the rubble that had been his home.
+
+"You barbarians!" he yelled. "I'll sue the council for every
+penny it's got! I'll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And
+whipped! And boiled ... until ... until ... until you've had
+enough."
+
+Ford was running after him very fast. Very very fast.
+
+"And then I'll do it again!" yelled Arthur. "And when I've
+finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on
+them!"
+
+Arthur didn't notice that the men were running from the
+bulldozers; he didn't notice that Mr Prosser was staring
+hectically into the sky. What Mr Prosser had noticed was that
+huge yellow somethings were screaming through the clouds.
+Impossibly huge yellow somethings.
+
+"And I will carry on jumping on them," yelled Arthur, still
+running, "until I get blisters, or I can think of anything even
+more unpleasant to do, and then ..."
+
+Arthur tripped, and fell headlong, rolled and landed flat on his
+back. At last he noticed that something was going on. His finger
+shot upwards.
+
+"What the hell's that?" he shrieked.
+
+Whatever it was raced across the sky in monstrous yellowness,
+tore the sky apart with mind-buggering noise and leapt off into
+the distance leaving the gaping air to shut behind it with a bang
+that drove your ears six feet into your skull.
+
+Another one followed and did the same thing only louder.
+
+It's difficult to say exactly what the people on the surface of
+the planet were doing now, because they didn't really know what
+they were doing themselves. None of it made a lot of sense -
+running into houses, running out of houses, howling noiselessly
+at the noise. All around the world city streets exploded with
+people, cars slewed into each other as the noise fell on them and
+then rolled off like a tidal wave over hills and valleys, deserts
+and oceans, seeming to flatten everything it hit.
+
+Only one man stood and watched the sky, stood with terrible
+sadness in his eyes and rubber bungs in his ears. He knew exactly
+what was happening and had known ever since his Sub-Etha Sens-O-
+Matic had started winking in the dead of night beside his pillar
+and woken him with a start. It was what he had waited for all
+these years, but when he had deciphered the signal pattern
+sitting alone in his small dark room a coldness had gripped him
+and squeezed his heart. Of all the races in all of the Galaxy who
+could have come and said a big hello to planet Earth, he thought,
+didn't it just have to be the Vogons.
+
+Still he knew what he had to do. As the Vogon craft screamed
+through the air high above him he opened his satchel. He threw
+away a copy of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, he
+threw away a copy of Godspell: He wouldn't need them where he was
+going. Everything was ready, everything was prepared.
+
+He knew where his towel was.
+
+A sudden silence hit the Earth. If anything it was worse than the
+noise. For a while nothing happened.
+
+The great ships hung motionless in the air, over every nation on
+Earth. Motionless they hung, huge, heavy, steady in the sky, a
+blasphemy against nature. Many people went straight into shock as
+their minds tried to encompass what they were looking at. The
+ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
+
+And still nothing happened.
+
+Then there was a slight whisper, a sudden spacious whisper of
+open ambient sound. Every hi fi set in the world, every radio,
+every television, every cassette recorder, every woofer, every
+tweeter, every mid-range driver in the world quietly turned
+itself on.
+
+Every tin can, every dust bin, every window, every car, every
+wine glass, every sheet of rusty metal became activated as an
+acoustically perfect sounding board.
+
+Before the Earth passed away it was going to be treated to the
+very ultimate in sound reproduction, the greatest public address
+system ever built. But there was no concert, no music, no
+fanfare, just a simple message.
+
+"People of Earth, your attention please," a voice said, and it
+was wonderful. Wonderful perfect quadrophonic sound with
+distortion levels so low as to make a brave man weep.
+
+"This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace
+Planning Council," the voice continued. "As you will no doubt be
+aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the
+Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route
+through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of
+those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly
+less that two of your Earth minutes. Thank you."
+
+The PA died away.
+
+Uncomprehending terror settled on the watching people of Earth.
+The terror moved slowly through the gathered crowds as if they
+were iron fillings on a sheet of board and a magnet was moving
+beneath them. Panic sprouted again, desperate fleeing panic, but
+there was nowhere to flee to.
+
+Observing this, the Vogons turned on their PA again. It said:
+
+"There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the
+planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in
+your local planning department on Alpha Centauri for fifty of
+your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any
+formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss
+about it now."
+
+The PA fell silent again and its echo drifted off across the
+land. The huge ships turned slowly in the sky with easy power. On
+the underside of each a hatchway opened, an empty black space.
+
+By this time somebody somewhere must have manned a radio
+transmitter, located a wavelength and broadcasted a message back
+to the Vogon ships, to plead on behalf of the planet. Nobody ever
+heard what they said, they only heard the reply. The PA slammed
+back into life again. The voice was annoyed. It said:
+
+"What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? For
+heaven's sake mankind, it's only four light years away you know.
+I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in
+local affairs that's your own lookout.
+
+"Energize the demolition beams."
+
+Light poured out into the hatchways.
+
+"I don't know," said the voice on the PA, "apathetic bloody
+planet, I've no sympathy at all." It cut off.
+
+There was a terrible ghastly silence.
+
+There was a terrible ghastly noise.
+
+There was a terrible ghastly silence.
+
+The Vogon Constructor fleet coasted away into the inky starry
+void.
+
+=================================================================
+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
+fodder*.
+
+What they completely failed to understand was why Zaphod was
+doing it.
+
+He banked sharply, shooting a wild wall of water at the sun.
+
+Today was the day; today was the day when they would realize what
+Zaphod had been up to. Today was what Zaphod Beeblebrox's
+Presidency was all about. Today was also his two hundredth
+birthday, but that was just another meaningless coincidence.
+
+As he skipped his boat across the seas of Damogran he smiled
+quietly to himself about what a wonderful exciting day it was
+going to be. He relaxed and spread his two arms lazily across the
+seat back. He steered with an extra arm he'd recently fitted just
+beneath his right one to help improve his ski-boxing.
+
+"Hey," he cooed to himself, "you're a real cool boy you." But his
+nerves sang a song shriller than a dog whistle.
+
+The island of France was about twenty miles long, five miles
+across the middle, sandy and crescent shaped. In fact it seemed
+to exist not so much as an island in its own right as simply a
+means of defining the sweep and curve of a huge bay. This
+impression was heightened by the fact that the inner coastline of
+the crescent consisted almost entirely of steep cliffs. From the
+top of the cliff the land sloped slowly down five miles to the
+opposite shore.
+
+On top of the cliffs stood a reception committee.
+
+It consisted in large part of the engineers and researchers who
+had built the Heart of Gold - mostly humanoid, but here and there
+were a few reptiloid atomineers, two or three green slyph-like
+maximegalacticans, an octopoid physucturalist or two and a
+Hooloovoo (a Hooloovoo is a super-intelligent shade of the color
+blue). All except the Hooloovoo were resplendent in their multi-
+colored ceremonial lab coats; the Hooloovoo had been temporarily
+refracted into a free standing prism for the occasion.
+
+There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through all of
+them. Together and between them they had gone to and beyond the
+furthest limits of physical laws, restructured the fundamental
+fabric of matter, strained, twisted and broken the laws of
+possibility and impossibility, but still the greatest excitement
+of all seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash round his
+neck. (An orange sash was what the President of the Galaxy
+traditionally wore.) It might not even have made much difference
+to them if they'd known exactly how much power the President of
+the Galaxy actually wielded: none at all. Only six people in the
+Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to
+wield power but to attract attention away from it.
+
+Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.
+
+The crowd gasped, dazzled by sun and seemanship, as the
+Presidential speedboat zipped round the headland into the bay. It
+flashed and shone as it came skating over the sea in wide
+skidding turns.
+
+In fact it didn't need to touch the water at all, because it was
+supported on a hazy cushion of ionized atoms - but just for
+effect it was fitted with thin finblades which could be lowered
+into the water. They slashed sheets of water hissing into the
+air, carved deep gashes into the sea which swayed crazily and
+sank back foaming into the boat's wake as it careered across the
+bay.
+
+Zaphod loved effect: it was what he was best at.
+
+He twisted the wheel sharply, the boat slewed round in a wild
+scything skid beneath the cliff face and dropped to rest lightly
+on the rocking waves.
+
+Within seconds he ran out onto the deck and waved and grinned at
+over three billion people. The three billion people weren't
+actually there, but they watched his every gesture through the
+eyes of a small robot tri-D camera which hovered obsequiously in
+the air nearby. The antics of the President always made amazingly
+popular tri-D; that's what they were for.
+
+He grinned again. Three billion and six people didn't know it,
+but today would be a bigger antic than anyone had bargained for.
+
+The robot camera homed in for a close up on the more popular of
+his two heads and he waved again. He was roughly humanoid in
+appearance except for the extra head and third arm. His fair
+tousled hair stuck out in random directions, his blue eyes
+glinted with something completely unidentifiable, and his chins
+were almost always unshaven.
+
+A twenty-foot-high transparent globe floated next to his boat,
+rolling and bobbing, glistening in the brilliant sun. Inside it
+floated a wide semi-circular sofa upholstered in glorious red
+leather: the more the globe bobbed and rolled, the more the sofa
+stayed perfectly still, steady as an upholstered rock. Again, all
+done for effect as much as anything.
+
+Zaphod stepped through the wall of the globe and relaxed on the
+sofa. He spread his two arms lazily along the back and with the
+third brushed some dust off his knee. His heads looked about,
+smiling; he put his feet up. At any moment, he thought, he might
+scream.
+
+Water boiled up beneath the bubble, it seethed and spouted. The
+bubble surged into the air, bobbing and rolling on the water
+spout. Up, up it climbed, throwing stilts of light at the cliff.
+Up it surged on the jet, the water falling from beneath it,
+crashing back into the sea hundreds of feet below.
+
+Zaphod smiled, picturing himself.
+
+A thoroughly ridiculous form of transport, but a thoroughly
+beautiful one.
+
+At the top of the cliff the globe wavered for a moment, tipped on
+to a railed ramp, rolled down it to a small concave platform and
+riddled to a halt.
+
+To tremendous applause Zaphod Beeblebrox stepped out of the
+bubble, his orange sash blazing in the light.
+
+The President of the Galaxy had arrived.
+
+He waited for the applause to die down, then raised his hands in
+greeting.
+
+"Hi," he said.
+
+A government spider sidled up to him and attempted to press a
+copy of his prepared speech into his hands. Pages three to seven
+of the original version were at the moment floating soggily on
+the Damogran sea some five miles out from the bay. Pages one and
+two had been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested Eagle and had
+already become incorporated into an extraordinary new form of
+nest which the eagle had invented. It was constructed largely of
+papier m@ch@ and it was virtually impossible for a newly hatched
+baby eagle to break out of it. The Damogran Frond Crested Eagle
+had heard of the notion of survival of the species but wanted no
+truck with it.
+
+Zaphod Beeblebrox would not be needing his set speech and he
+gently deflected the one being offered him by the spider.
+
+"Hi," he said again.
+
+Everyone beamed at him, or, at least, nearly everyone. He singled
+out Trillian from the crowd. Trillian was a gird that Zaphod had
+picked up recently whilst visiting a planet, just for fun,
+incognito. She was slim, darkish, humanoid, with long waves of
+black hair, a full mouth, an odd little nob of a nose and
+ridiculously brown eyes. With her red head scarf knotted in that
+particular way and her long flowing silky brown dress she looked
+vaguely Arabic. Not that anyone there had ever heard of an Arab
+of course. The Arabs had very recently ceased to exist, and even
+when they had existed they were five hundred thousand light years
+from Damogran. Trillian wasn't anybody in particular, or so
+Zaphod claimed. She just went around with him rather a lot and
+told him what she thought of him.
+
+"Hi honey," he said to her.
+
+She flashed him a quick tight smile and looked away. Then she
+looked back for a moment and smiled more warmly - but by this
+time he was looking at something else.
+
+"Hi," he said to a small knot of creatures from the press who
+were standing nearby wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get
+on with the quotes. He grinned at them particularly because he
+knew that in a few moments he would be giving them one hell of a
+quote.
+
+The next thing he said though was not a lot of use to them. One
+of the officials of the party had irritably decided that the
+President was clearly not in a mood to read the deliciously
+turned speech that had been written for him, and had flipped the
+switch on the remote control device in his pocket. Away in front
+of them a huge white dome that bulged against the sky cracked
+down in the middle, split, and slowly folded itself down into the
+ground. Everyone gasped although they had known perfectly well it
+was going to do that because they had built it that way.
+
+Beneath it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred and fifty
+metres long, shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white
+and mindboggingly beautiful. At the heart of it, unseen, lay a
+small gold box which carried within it the most brain-wretching
+device ever conceived, a device which made this starship unique
+in the history of the galaxy, a device after which the ship had
+been named - The Heart of Gold.
+
+"Wow", said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold. There wasn't
+much else he could say.
+
+He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press.
+
+"Wow."
+
+The crowd turned their faces back towards him expectantly. He
+winked at Trillian who raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes
+at him. She knew what he was about to say and thought him a
+terrible showoff.
+
+"That is really amazing," he said. "That really is truly amazing.
+That is so amazingly amazing I think I'd like to steal it."
+
+A marvellous Presidential quote, absolutely true to form. The
+crowd laughed appreciatively, the newsmen gleefully punched
+buttons on their Sub-Etha News-Matics and the President grinned.
+
+As he grinned his heart screamed unbearably and he fingered the
+small Paralyso-Matic bomb that nestled quietly in his pocket.
+
+Finally he could bear it no more. He lifted his heads up to the
+sky, let out a wild whoop in major thirds, threw the bomb to the
+ground and ran forward through the sea of suddenly frozen smiles.
+
+=================================================================
+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 ad simply given up on them there and then,
+had turned aside in disgust and written them off as an ugly and
+unfortunate mistake. They never evolved again; they should never
+have survived.
+
+The fact that they did is some kind of tribute to the thick-
+willed slug-brained stubbornness of these creatures. Evolution?
+they said to themselves, Who needs it?, and what nature refused
+to do for them they simply did without until such time as they
+were able to rectify the grosser anatomical inconveniences with
+surgery.
+
+Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been
+working overtime to make up for their earlier blunder. They
+brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, which the
+Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall
+aspiring trees with breathtaking slenderness and colour which the
+Vogons cut down and burned the crab meat with; elegant gazelle-
+like creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons
+would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because
+their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them
+anyway.
+
+Thus the planet Vogsphere whiled away the unhappy millennia until
+the Vogons suddenly discovered the principles of interstellar
+travel. Within a few short Vog years every last Vogon had
+migrated to the Megabrantis cluster, the political hub of the
+Galaxy and now formed the immensely powerful backbone of the
+Galactic Civil Service. They have attempted to acquire learning,
+they have attempted to acquire style and social grace, but in
+most respects the modern Vogon is little different from his
+primitive forebears. Every year they import twenty-seven thousand
+scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs from their native planet
+and while away a happy drunken night smashing them to bits with
+iron mallets.
+
+Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was a fairly typical Vogon in that he was
+thoroughly vile. Also, he did not like hitch hikers.
+
+Somewhere in a small dark cabin buried deep in the intestines of
+Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz's flagship, a small match flared
+nervously. The owner of the match was not a Vogon, but he knew
+all about them and was right to be nervous. His name was Ford
+Prefect*.
+
+He looked about the cabin but could see very little; strange
+monstrous shadows loomed and leaped with the tiny flickering
+flame, but all was quiet. He breathed a silent thank you to the
+Dentrassis. The Dentrassis are an unruly tribe of gourmands, a
+wild but pleasant bunch whom the Vogons had recently taken to
+employing as catering staff on their long haul fleets, on the
+strict understanding that they keep themselves very much to
+themselves.
+
+This suited the Dentrassis fine, because they loved Vogon money,
+which is one of the hardest currencies in space, but loathed the
+Vogons themselves. The only sort of Vogon a Dentrassi liked to
+see was an annoyed Vogon.
+
+It was because of this tiny piece of information that Ford
+Prefect was not now a whiff of hydrogen, ozone and carbon
+monoxide.
+
+He heard a slight groan. By the light of the match he saw a heavy
+shape moving slightly on the floor. Quickly he shook the match
+out, reached in his pocket, found what he was looking for and
+took it out. He crouched on the floor. The shape moved again.
+
+Ford Prefect said: "I bought some peanuts."
+
+Arthur Dent moved, and groaned again, muttering incoherently.
+
+"Here, have some," urged Ford, shaking the packet again, "if
+you've never been through a matter transference beam before
+you've probably lost some salt and protein. The beer you had
+should have cushioned your system a bit."
+
+"Whhhrrrr..." said Arthur Dent. He opened his eyes.
+
+"It's dark," he said.
+
+"Yes," said Ford Prefect, "it's dark."
+
+"No light," said Arthur Dent. "Dark, no light."
+
+One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to
+understand about human beings was their habit of continually
+stating and repeating the obvious, as in It's a nice day, or
+You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a
+thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first Ford had formed a
+theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings
+don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths
+probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and
+observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If
+they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their
+brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well
+as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human
+beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried
+about the terrible number of things they didn't know about.
+
+"Yes," he agreed with Arthur, "no light." He helped Arthur to
+some peanuts. "How do you feel?" he asked.
+
+"Like a military academy," said Arthur, "bits of me keep on
+passing out."
+
+Ford stared at him blankly in the darkness.
+
+"If I asked you where the hell we were," said Arthur weakly,
+"would I regret it?"
+
+Ford stood up. "We're safe," he said.
+
+"Oh good," said Arthur.
+
+"We're in a small galley cabin," said Ford, "in one of the
+spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet."
+
+"Ah," said Arthur, "this is obviously some strange usage of the
+word safe that I wasn't previously aware of."
+
+Ford struck another match to help him search for a light switch.
+Monstrous shadows leaped and loomed again. Arthur struggled to
+his feet and hugged himself apprehensively. Hideous alien shapes
+seemed to throng about him, the air was thick with musty smells
+which sidled into his lungs without identifying themselves, and a
+low irritating hum kept his brain from focusing.
+
+"How did we get here?" he asked, shivering slightly.
+
+"We hitched a lift," said Ford.
+
+"Excuse me?" said Arthur. "Are you trying to tell me that we just
+stuck out our thumbs and some green bug-eyed monster stuck his
+head out and said, Hi fellas, hop right in. I can take you as far
+as the Basingstoke roundabout?"
+
+"Well," said Ford, "the Thumb's an electronic sub-etha signalling
+device, the roundabout's at Barnard's Star six light years away,
+but otherwise, that's more or less right."
+
+"And the bug-eyed monster?"
+
+"Is green, yes."
+
+"Fine," said Arthur, "when can I get home?"
+
+"You can't," said Ford Prefect, and found the light switch.
+
+"Shade your eyes ..." he said, and turned it on.
+
+Even Ford was surprised.
+
+"Good grief," said Arthur, "is this really the interior of a
+flying saucer?"
+
+Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz heaved his unpleasant green body round the
+control bridge. He always felt vaguely irritable after
+demolishing populated planets. He wished that someone would come
+and tell him that it was all wrong so that he could shout at them
+and feel better. He flopped as heavily as he could on to his
+control seat in the hope that it would break and give him
+something to be genuinely angry about, but it only gave a
+complaining sort of creak.
+
+"Go away!" he shouted at a young Vogon guard who entered the
+bridge at that moment. The guard vanished immediately, feeling
+rather relieved. He was glad it wouldn't now be him who delivered
+the report they'd just received. The report was an official
+release which said that a wonderful new form of spaceship drive
+was at this moment being unveiled at a government research base
+on Damogran which would henceforth make all hyperspatial express
+routes unnecessary.
+
+Another door slid open, but this time the Vogon captain didn't
+shout because it was the door from the galley quarters where the
+Dentrassis prepared his meals. A meal would be most welcome.
+
+A huge furry creature bounded through the door with his lunch
+tray. It was grinning like a maniac.
+
+Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was delighted. He knew that when a
+Dentrassi looked that pleased with itself there was something
+going on somewhere on the ship that he could get very angry
+indeed about.
+
+Ford and Arthur stared about them.
+
+"Well, what do you think?" said Ford.
+
+"It's a bit squalid, isn't it?"
+
+Ford frowned at the grubby mattress, unwashed cups and
+unidentifiable bits of smelly alien underwear that lay around the
+cramped cabin.
+
+"Well, this is a working ship, you see," said Ford. "These are
+the Dentrassi sleeping quarters."
+
+"I thought you said they were called Vogons or something."
+
+"Yes," said Ford, "the Vogons run the ship, the Dentrassis are
+the cooks, they let us on board."
+
+"I'm confused," said Arthur.
+
+"Here, have a look at this," said Ford. He sat down on one of the
+mattresses and rummaged about in his satchel. Arthur prodded the
+mattress nervously and then sat on it himself: in fact he had
+very little to be nervous about, because all mattresses grown in
+the swamps of Squornshellous Zeta are very thoroughly killed and
+dried before being put to service. Very few have ever come to
+life again.
+
+Ford handed the book to Arthur.
+
+"What is it?" asked Arthur.
+
+"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a sort of electronic
+book. It tells you everything you need to know about anything.
+That's its job."
+
+Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands.
+
+"I like the cover," he said. "Don't Panic. It's the first helpful
+or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day."
+
+"I'll show you how it works," said Ford. He snatched it from
+Arthur who was still holding it as if it was a two-week-dead lark
+and pulled it out of its cover.
+
+"You press this button here you see and the screen lights up
+giving you the index."
+
+A screen, about three inches by four, lit up and characters began
+to flicker across the surface.
+
+"You want to know about Vogons, so I enter that name so." His
+fingers tapped some more keys. "And there we are."
+
+The words Vogon Constructor Fleets flared in green across the
+screen.
+
+Ford pressed a large red button at the bottom of the screen and
+words began to undulate across it. At the same time, the book
+began to speak the entry as well in a still quiet measured voice.
+This is what the book said.
+
+"Vogon Constructor Fleets. Here is what to do if you want to get
+a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most
+unpleasant races in the Galaxy -- not actually evil, but bad
+tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even
+lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous
+Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate,
+sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public
+inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat and recycled
+as firelighters.
+
+"The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your
+finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is to
+feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
+
+"On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you."
+
+Arthur blinked at it.
+
+"What a strange book. How did we get a lift then?"
+
+"That's the point, it's out of date now," said Ford, sliding the
+book back into its cover. "I'm doing the field research for the
+New Revised Edition, and one of the things I'll have to include
+is a bit about how the Vogons now employ Dentrassi cooks which
+gives us a rather useful little loophole."
+
+A pained expression crossed Arthur's face. "But who are the
+Dentrassi?" he said.
+
+"Great guys," said Ford. "They're the best cooks and the best
+drink mixers and they don't give a wet slap about anything else.
+And they'll always help hitch hikers aboard, partly because they
+like the company, but mostly because it annoys the Vogons. Which
+is exactly the sort of thing you need to know if you're an
+impoverished hitch hiker trying to see the marvels of the
+Universe for less than thirty Altairan Dollars a day. And that's
+my job. Fun, isn't it?"
+
+Arthur looked lost.
+
+"It's amazing," he said and frowned at one of the other
+mattresses.
+
+"Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I
+intended," said Ford. "I came for a week and got stuck for
+fifteen years."
+
+"But how did you get there in the first place then?"
+
+"Easy, I got a lift with a teaser."
+
+"A teaser?"
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"Er, what is ..."
+
+"A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They
+cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar
+contact yet and buzz them."
+
+"Buzz them?" Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making
+life difficult for him.
+
+"Yeah", said Ford, "they buzz them. They find some isolated spot
+with very few people around, then land right by some poor soul
+whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in
+front of him wearing silly antennae on their heads and making
+beep beep noises. Rather childish really." Ford leant back on the
+mattress with his hands behind his head and looked infuriatingly
+pleased with himself.
+
+"Ford," insisted Arthur, "I don't know if this sounds like a
+silly question, but what am I doing here?"
+
+"Well you know that," said Ford. "I rescued you from the Earth."
+
+"And what's happened to the Earth?"
+
+"Ah. It's been demolished."
+
+"Has it," said Arthur levelly.
+
+"Yes. It just boiled away into space."
+
+"Look," said Arthur, "I'm a bit upset about that."
+
+Ford frowned to himself and seemed to roll the thought around his
+mind.
+
+"Yes, I can understand that," he said at last.
+
+"Understand that!" shouted Arthur. "Understand that!"
+
+Ford sprang up.
+
+"Keep looking at the book!" he hissed urgently.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Don't Panic."
+
+"I'm not panicking!"
+
+"Yes you are."
+
+"Alright so I'm panicking, what else is there to do?"
+
+"You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy's a
+fun place. You'll need to have this fish in your ear."
+
+"I beg your pardon?" asked Arthur, rather politely he thought.
+
+Ford was holding up a small glass jar which quite clearly had a
+small yellow fish wriggling around in it. Arthur blinked at him.
+He wished there was something simple and recognizable he could
+grasp hold of. He would have felt safe if alongside the Dentrassi
+underwear, the piles of Squornshellous mattresses and the man
+from Betelgeuse holding up a small yellow fish and offering to
+put it in his ear he had been able to see just a small packet of
+corn flakes. He couldn't, and he didn't feel safe.
+
+Suddenly a violent noise leapt at them from no source that he
+could identify. He gasped in terror at what sounded like a man
+trying to gargle whilst fighting off a pack of wolves.
+
+"Shush!" said Ford. "Listen, it might be important."
+
+"Im ... important?"
+
+"It's the Vogon captain making an announcement on the T'annoy."
+
+"You mean that's how the Vogons talk?"
+
+"Listen!"
+
+"But I can't speak Vogon!"
+
+"You don't need to. Just put that fish in your ear."
+
+Ford, with a lightning movement, clapped his hand to Arthur's
+ear, and he had the sudden sickening sensation of the fish
+slithering deep into his aural tract. Gasping with horror he
+scrabbled at his ear for a second or so, but then slowly turned
+goggle-eyed with wonder. He was experiencing the aural equivalent
+of looking at a picture of two black silhouetted faces and
+suddenly seeing it as a picture of a white candlestick. Or of
+looking at a lot of coloured dots on a piece of paper which
+suddenly resolve themselves into the figure six and mean that
+your optician is going to charge you a lot of money for a new
+pair of glasses.
+
+He was still listening to the howling gargles, he knew that, only
+now it had taken on the semblance of perfectly straightforward
+English.
+
+This is what he heard ...
+
+=================================================================
+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 Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and then
+curled himself up into a foetal ball to prepare himself for the
+jump.
+
+At that moment the bottom fell out of Arthur's mind.
+
+His eyes turned inside out. His feet began to leak out of the top
+of his head.
+
+The room folded flat about him, spun around, shifted out of
+existence and left him sliding into his own navel.
+
+They were passing through hyperspace.
+
+"The Babel fish," said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
+quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the
+oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not
+from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all
+unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to
+nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its
+carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious
+thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech
+centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical
+upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear
+you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of
+language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the
+brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel
+fish.
+
+"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything
+so 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. He always found the actual travelling-through-space part
+of space travel rather trying.
+
+"Yeah?" he said.
+
+"If you're a researcher on this book thing and you were on Earth,
+you must have been gathering material on it."
+
+"Well, I was able to extend the original entry a bit, yes."
+
+"Let me see what it says in this edition then, I've got to see
+it."
+
+"Yeah OK." He passed it over again.
+
+Arthur grabbed hold of it and tried to stop his hands shaking. He
+pressed the entry for the relevant page. The screen flashed and
+swirled and resolved into a page of print. Arthur stared at it.
+
+"It doesn't have an entry!" he burst out.
+
+Ford looked over his shoulder.
+
+"Yes it does," he said, "down there, see at the bottom of the
+screen, just under Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted
+whore of Eroticon 6."
+
+Arthur followed Ford's finger, and saw where it was pointing. For
+a moment it still didn't register, then his mind nearly blew up.
+
+"What? Harmless? Is that all it's got to say? Harmless! One
+word!"
+
+Ford shrugged.
+
+"Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and only
+a limited amount of space in the book's microprocessors," he
+said, "and no one knew much about the Earth of course."
+
+"Well for God's sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit."
+
+"Oh yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the
+editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it's still an improvement."
+
+"And what does it say now?" asked Arthur.
+
+"Mostly harmless," admitted Ford with a slightly embarrassed
+cough.
+
+"Mostly harmless!" shouted Arthur.
+
+"What was that noise?" hissed Ford.
+
+"It was me shouting," shouted Arthur.
+
+"No! Shut up!" said Ford. I think we're in trouble."
+
+"You think we're in trouble!"
+
+Outside the door were the sounds of marching feet.
+
+"The Dentrassi?" whispered Arthur.
+
+"No, those are steel tipped boots," said Ford.
+
+There was a sharp ringing rap on the door.
+
+"Then who is it?" said Arthur.
+
+"Well," said Ford, "if we're lucky it's just the Vogons come to
+throw us in to space."
+
+"And if we're unlucky?"
+
+"If we're unlucky," said Ford grimly, "the captain might be
+serious in his threat that he's going to read us some of his
+poetry first ..."
+
+=================================================================
+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. He had had a terribly therapeutic yell at
+his prisoners and was now feeling quite relaxed and ready for a
+little callousness.
+
+The prisoners sat in Poetry Appreciation Chairs --strapped in.
+Vogons suffered no illusions as to the regard their works were
+generally held in. Their early attempts at composition had been
+part of bludgeoning insistence that they be accepted as a
+properly evolved and cultured race, but now the only thing that
+kept them going was sheer bloodymindedness.
+
+The sweat stood out cold on Ford Prefect's brow, and slid round
+the electrodes strapped to his temples. These were attached to a
+battery of electronic equipment - imagery intensifiers, rhythmic
+modulators, alliterative residulators and simile dumpers - all
+designed to heighten the experience of the poem and make sure
+that not a single nuance of the poet's thought was lost.
+
+Arthur Dent sat and quivered. He had no idea what he was in for,
+but he knew that he hadn't liked anything that had happened so
+far and didn't think things were likely to change.
+
+The Vogon began to read - a fetid little passage of his own
+devising.
+
+"Oh frettled gruntbuggly ..." he began. Spasms wracked Ford's
+body - this was worse than ever he'd been prepared for.
+
+"... thy micturations are to me | As plurdled gabbleblotchits on
+a lurgid bee."
+
+"Aaaaaaarggggghhhhhh!" went Ford Prefect, wrenching his head back
+as lumps of pain thumped through it. He could dimly see beside
+him Arthur lolling and rolling in his seat. He clenched his
+teeth.
+
+"Groop I implore thee," continued the merciless Vogon, "my
+foonting turlingdromes."
+
+His voice was rising to a horrible pitch of impassioned
+stridency. "And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly
+bindlewurdles,| Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my
+blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!"
+
+"Nnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyuuuuuuurrrrrrrggggggghhhhh!" cried Ford Prefect
+and threw one final spasm as the electronic enhancement of the
+last line caught him full blast across the temples. He went limp.
+
+Arthur lolled.
+
+"Now Earthlings ..." whirred the Vogon (he didn't know that Ford
+Prefect was in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of
+Betelgeuse, and wouldn't have cared if he had) "I present you
+with a simple choice! Either die in the vacuum of space, or ..."
+he paused for melodramatic effect, "tell me how good you thought
+my poem was!"
+
+He threw himself backwards into a huge leathery bat-shaped seat
+and watched them. He did the smile again.
+
+Ford was rasping for breath. He rolled his dusty tongue round his
+parched mouth and moaned.
+
+Arthur said brightly: "Actually I quite liked it."
+
+Ford turned and gaped. Here was an approach that had quite simply
+not occurred to him.
+
+The Vogon raised a surprised eyebrow that effectively obscured
+his nose and was therefore no bad thing.
+
+"Oh good ..." he whirred, in considerable astonishment.
+
+"Oh yes," said Arthur, "I thought that some of the metaphysical
+imagery was really particularly effective."
+
+Ford continued to stare at him, slowly organizing his thoughts
+around this totally new concept. Were they really going to be
+able to bareface their way out of this?
+
+"Yes, do continue ..." invited the Vogon.
+
+"Oh ... and er ... interesting rhythmic devices too," continued
+Arthur, "which seemed to counterpoint the ... er ... er ..." He
+floundered.
+
+Ford leaped to his rescue, hazarding "counterpoint the surrealism
+of the underlying metaphor of the ... er ..." He floundered too,
+but Arthur was ready again.
+
+"... humanity of the ..."
+
+"Vogonity," Ford hissed at him.
+
+"Ah yes, Vogonity (sorry) of the poet's compassionate soul,"
+Arthur felt he was on a home stretch now, "which contrives
+through the medium of the verse structure to sublimate this,
+transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental
+dichotomies of the other," (he was reaching a triumphant
+crescendo ...) "and one is left with a profound and vivid insight
+into ... into ... er ..." (... which suddenly gave out on him.)
+Ford leaped in with the coup de gr@ce:
+
+"Into whatever it was the poem was about!" he yelled. Out of the
+corner of his mouth: "Well done, Arthur, that was very good."
+
+The Vogon perused them. For a moment his embittered racial soul
+had been touched, but he thought no - too little too late. His
+voice took on the quality of a cat snagging brushed nylon.
+
+"So what you're saying is that I write poetry because underneath
+my mean callous heartless exterior I really just want to be
+loved," he said. He paused. "Is that right?"
+
+Ford laughed a nervous laugh. "Well I mean yes," he said, "don't
+we all, deep down, you know ... er ..."
+
+The Vogon stood up.
+
+"No, well you're completely wrong," he said, "I just write poetry
+to throw my mean callous heartless exterior into sharp relief.
+I'm going to throw you off the ship anyway. Guard! Take the
+prisoners to number three airlock and throw them out!"
+
+"What?" shouted Ford.
+
+A huge young Vogon guard stepped forward and yanked them out of
+their straps with his huge blubbery arms.
+
+"You can't throw us into space," yelled Ford, "we're trying to
+write a book."
+
+"Resistance is useless!" shouted the Vogon guard back at him. It
+was the first phrase he'd learnt when he joined the Vogon Guard
+Corps.
+
+The captain watched with detached amusement and then turned away.
+
+Arthur stared round him wildly.
+
+"I don't want to die now!" he yelled. "I've still got a headache!
+I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross
+and wouldn't enjoy it!"
+
+The guard grasped them both firmly round the neck, and bowing
+deferentially towards his captain's back, hoiked them both
+protesting out of the bridge. A steel door closed and the captain
+was on his own again. He hummed quietly and mused to himself,
+lightly fingering his notebook of verses.
+
+"Hmmmm," he said, "counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying
+metaphor ..." He considered this for a moment, and then closed
+the book with a grim smile.
+
+"Death's too good for them," he said.
+
+The long steel-lined corridor echoed to the feeble struggles of
+the two humanoids clamped firmly under rubbery Vogon armpits.
+
+"This is great," spluttered Arthur, "this is really terrific. Let
+go of me you brute!"
+
+The Vogon guard dragged them on.
+
+"Don't you worry," said Ford, "I'll think of something." He
+didn't sound hopeful.
+
+"Resistance is useless!" bellowed the guard.
+
+"Just don't say things like that," stammered Ford. "How can
+anyone maintain a positive mental attitude if you're saying
+things like that?"
+
+"My God," complained Arthur, "you're talking about a positive
+mental attitude and you haven't even had your planet demolished
+today. I woke up this morning and thought I'd have a nice relaxed
+day, do a bit of reading, brush the dog ... It's now just after
+four in the afternoon and I'm already thrown out of an alien
+spaceship six light years from the smoking remains of the Earth!"
+He spluttered and gurgled as the Vogon tightened his grip.
+
+"Alright," said Ford, "just stop panicking."
+
+"Who said anything about panicking?" snapped Arthur. "This is
+still just the culture shock. You wait till I've settled down
+into the situation and found my bearings. Then I'll start
+panicking."
+
+"Arthur you're getting hysterical. Shut up!" Ford tried
+desperately to think, but was interrupted by the guard shouting
+again.
+
+"Resistance is useless!"
+
+"And you can shut up as well!" snapped Ford.
+
+"Resistance is useless!"
+
+"Oh give it a rest," said Ford. He twisted his head till he was
+looking straight up into his captor's face. A thought struck him.
+
+"Do you really enjoy this sort of thing?" he asked suddenly.
+
+The Vogon stopped dead and a look of immense stupidity seeped
+slowly over his face.
+
+"Enjoy?" he boomed. "What do you mean?"
+
+"What I mean," said Ford, "is does it give you a full satisfying
+life? Stomping around, shouting, pushing people out of spaceships
+..."
+
+The Vogon stared up at the low steel ceiling and his eyebrows
+almost rolled over each other. His mouth slacked. Finally he
+said, "Well the hours are good ..."
+
+"They'd have to be," agreed Ford.
+
+Arthur twisted his head to look at Ford.
+
+"Ford, what are you doing?" he asked in an amazed whisper.
+
+"Oh, just trying to take an interest in the world around me, OK?"
+he said. "So the hours are pretty good then?" he resumed.
+
+The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around
+in the murky depths.
+
+"Yeah," he said, "but now you come to mention it, most of the
+actual minutes are pretty lousy. Except ..." he thought again,
+which required looking at the ceiling - "except some of the
+shouting I quite like." He filled his lungs and bellowed,
+"Resistance is ..."
+
+"Sure, yes," interrupted Ford hurriedly, "you're good at that, I
+can tell. But if it's mostly lousy," he said, slowly giving the
+words time to reach their mark, "then why do you do it? What is
+it? The girls? The leather? The machismo? Or do you just find
+that coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all presents
+an interesting challenge?"
+
+"Er ..." said the guard, "er ... er ... I dunno. I think I just
+sort of ... do it really. My aunt said that spaceship guard was a
+good career for a young Vogon - you know, the uniform, the low-
+slung stun ray holster, the mindless tedium ..."
+
+"There you are Arthur," said Ford with the air of someone
+reaching the conclusion of his argument, "you think you've got
+problems."
+
+Arthur rather thought he had. Apart from the unpleasant business
+with his home planet the Vogon guard had half-throttled him
+already and he didn't like the sound of being thrown into space
+very much.
+
+"Try and understand his problem," insisted Ford. "Here he is poor
+lad, his entire life's work is stamping around, throwing people
+off spaceships ..."
+
+"And shouting," added the guard.
+
+"And shouting, sure," said Ford patting the blubbery arm clamped
+round his neck in friendly condescension, "... and he doesn't
+even know why he's doing it!"
+
+Arthur agreed this was very sad. He did this with a small feeble
+gesture, because he was too asphyxicated to speak.
+
+Deep rumblings of bemusement came from the guard.
+
+"Well. Now you put it like that I suppose ..."
+
+"Good lad!" encouraged Ford.
+
+"But alright," went on the rumblings, "so what's the
+alternative?"
+
+"Well," said Ford, brightly but slowly, "stop doing it of course!
+Tell them," he went on, "you're not going to do it anymore." He
+felt he had to add something to that, but for the moment the
+guard seemed to have his mind occupied pondering that much.
+
+"Eerrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ..." said the guard, "erm, well
+that doesn't sound that great to me."
+
+Ford suddenly felt the moment slipping away.
+
+"Now wait a minute," he said, "that's just the start you see,
+there's more to it than that you see ..."
+
+But at that moment the guard renewed his grip and continued his
+original purpose of lugging his prisoners to the airlock. He was
+obviously quite touched.
+
+"No, I think if it's all the same to you," he said, "I'd better
+get you both shoved into this airlock and then go and get on with
+some other bits of shouting I've got to do."
+
+It wasn't all the same to Ford Prefect after all.
+
+"Come on now ... but look!" he said, less slowly, less brightly.
+
+"Huhhhhgggggggnnnnnnn ..." said Arthur without any clear
+inflection.
+
+"But hang on," pursued Ford, "there's music and art and things to
+tell you about yet! Arrrggghhh!"
+
+"Resistance is useless," bellowed the guard, and then added, "You
+see if I keep it up I can eventually get promoted to Senior
+Shouting Officer, and there aren't usually many vacancies for
+non-shouting and non-pushing-people-about officers, so I think
+I'd better stick to what I know."
+
+They had now reached the airlock - a large circular steel
+hatchway of massive strength and weight let into the inner skin
+of the craft. The guard operated a control and the hatchway swung
+smoothly open.
+
+"But thanks for taking an interest," said the Vogon guard. "Bye
+now." He flung Ford and Arthur through the hatchway into the
+small chamber within. Arthur lay panting for breath. Ford
+scrambled round and flung his shoulder uselessly against the
+reclosing hatchway.
+
+"But listen," he shouted to the guard, "there's a whole world you
+don't know anything about ... here how about this?" Desperately
+he grabbed for the only bit of culture he knew offhand - he
+hummed the first bar of Beethoven's Fifth.
+
+"Da da da dum! Doesn't that stir anything in you?"
+
+"No," said the guard, "not really. But I'll mention it to my
+aunt."
+
+If he said anything further after that it was lost. The hatchway
+sealed itself tight, and all sound was lost but the faint distant
+hum of the ship's engines.
+
+They were in a brightly polished cylindrical chamber about six
+feet in diameter and ten feet long.
+
+"Potentially bright lad I thought," he said and slumped against
+the curved wall.
+
+Arthur was still lying in the curve of the floor where he had
+fallen. He didn't look up. He just lay panting.
+
+"We're trapped now aren't we?"
+
+"Yes," said Ford, "we're trapped."
+
+"Well didn't you think of anything? I thought you said you were
+going to think of something. Perhaps you thought of something and
+didn't notice."
+
+"Oh yes, I thought of something," panted Ford. Arthur looked up
+expectantly.
+
+"But unfortunately," continued Ford, "it rather involved being on
+the other side of this airtight hatchway." He kicked the hatch
+they'd just been through.
+
+"But it was a good idea was it?"
+
+"Oh yes, very neat."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"Well I hadn't worked out the details yet. Not much point now is
+there?"
+
+"So ... er, what happens next?"
+
+"Oh, er, well the hatchway in front of us will open automatically
+in a few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect
+and asphyxicate. If you take a lungful of air with you you can
+last for up to thirty seconds of course ..." said Ford. He stuck
+his hands behind his back, raised his eyebrows and started to hum
+an old Betelgeusian battle hymn. To Arthur's eyes he suddenly
+looked very alien.
+
+"So this is it," said Arthur, "we're going to die."
+
+"Yes," said Ford, "except ... no! Wait a minute!" he suddenly
+lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of
+vision. "What's this switch?" he cried.
+
+"What? Where?" cried Arthur twisting round.
+
+"No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after
+all."
+
+He slumped against the wall again and carried on the tune from
+where he left off.
+
+"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm
+trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about
+to die of asphyxication in deep space that I really wish I'd
+listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
+
+"Why, what did she tell you?"
+
+"I don't know, I didn't listen."
+
+"Oh." Ford carried on humming.
+
+"This is terrific," Arthur thought to himself, "Nelson's Column
+has gone, McDonald's have gone, all that's left is me and the
+words Mostly Harmless. Any second now all that will be left is
+Mostly Harmless. And yesterday the planet seemed to be going so
+well."
+
+A motor whirred.
+
+A slight hiss built into a deafening roar of rushing air as the
+outer hatchway opened on to an empty blackness studded with tiny
+impossibly bright points of light. Ford and Arthur popped into
+outer space like corks from a toy gun.
+
+=================================================================
+Chapter 8
+
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable
+book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times over many
+years and under many different editorships. It contains
+contributions from countless numbers of travellers and
+researchers.
+
+The introduction begins like this:
+
+"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how
+vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's
+a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts
+to space. Listen ..." and so on.
+
+(After a while the style settles down a bit and it begins to tell
+you things you really need to know, like the fact that the
+fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about
+the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year
+that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount
+you excrete whilst on the planet is surgically removed from your
+bodyweight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory
+it is vitally important to get a receipt.)
+
+To be fair though, when confronted by the sheer enormity of
+distances between the stars, better minds than the one
+responsible for the Guide's introduction have faltered. Some
+invite you to consider for a moment a peanut in reading and a
+small walnut in Johannesburg, and other such dizzying concepts.
+
+The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into
+the human imagination.
+
+Even light, which travels so fast that it takes most races
+thousands of years to realize that it travels at all, takes time
+to journey between the stars. It takes eight minutes from the
+star Sol to the place where the Earth used to be, and four years
+more to arrive at Sol's nearest stellar neighbour, Alpha Proxima.
+
+For light to reach the other side of the Galaxy, for it to reach
+Damogran for instance, takes rather longer: five hundred thousand
+years.
+
+The record for hitch hiking this distance is just under five
+years, but you don't get to see much on the way.
+
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy says that if you hold a
+lungful of air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for
+about thirty seconds. However it goes on to say that what with
+space being the mind boggling size it is the chances of getting
+picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two to
+the power of two hundred and sixty-seven thousand seven hundred
+and nine to one against.
+
+By a totally staggering coincidence that is also the telephone
+number of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good
+party and met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get off
+with - she went off with a gatecrasher.
+
+Though the planet Earth, the Islington flat and the telephone
+have all now been demolished, it is comforting to reflect that
+they are all in some small way commemorated by the fact that
+twenty-nine seconds later Ford and Arthur were rescued.
+
+=================================================================
+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 hitch hikers. OK, so ten out of ten for style,
+but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?"
+
+He tapped irritably at a control panel. Trillian quietly moved
+his hand before he tapped anything important. Whatever Zaphod's
+qualities of mind might include - dash, bravado, conceit - he was
+mechanically inept and could easily blow the ship up with an
+extravagant gesture. Trillian had come to suspect that the main
+reason why he had had such a wild and successful life that he
+never really understood the significance of anything he did.
+
+"Zaphod," she said patiently, "they were floating unprotected in
+open space ... you wouldn't want them to have died would you?"
+
+"Well, you know ... no. Not as such, but ..."
+
+"Not as such? Not die as such? But?" Trillian cocked her head on
+one side.
+
+"Well, maybe someone else might have picked them up later."
+
+"A second later and they would have been dead."
+
+"Yeah, so if you'd taken the trouble to think about the problem a
+bit longer it would have gone away."
+
+"You'd been happy to let them die?"
+
+"Well, you know, not happy as such, but ..."
+
+"Anyway," said Trillian, turning back to the controls, "I didn't
+pick them up."
+
+"What do you mean? Who picked them up then?"
+
+"The ship did."
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"The ship did. All by itself."
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Whilst we were in Improbability Drive."
+
+"But that's incredible."
+
+"No Zaphod. Just very very improbable."
+
+"Er, yeah."
+
+"Look Zaphod," she said, patting his arm, "don't worry about the
+aliens. They're just a couple of guys I expect. I'll send the
+robot down to get them and bring them up here. Hey Marvin!"
+
+In the corner, the robot's head swung up sharply, but then
+wobbled about imperceptibly. It pulled itself up to its feet as
+if it was about five pounds heavier that it actually was, and
+made what an outside observer would have thought was a heroic
+effort to cross the room. It stopped in front of Trillian and
+seemed to stare through her left shoulder.
+
+"I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed," it said.
+Its voice was low and hopeless.
+
+"Oh God," muttered Zaphod and slumped into a seat.
+
+"Well," said Trillian in a bright compassionate tone, "here's
+something to occupy you and keep your mind off things."
+
+"It won't work," droned Marvin, "I have an exceptionally large
+mind."
+
+"Marvin!" warned Trillian.
+
+"Alright," said Marvin, "what do you want me to do?"
+
+"Go down to number two entry bay and bring the two aliens up here
+under surveillance."
+
+With a microsecond pause, and a finely calculated micromodulation
+of pitch and timbre - nothing you could actually take offence at
+- Marvin managed to convey his utter contempt and horror of all
+things human.
+
+"Just that?" he said.
+
+"Yes," said Trillian firmly.
+
+"I won't enjoy it," said Marvin.
+
+Zaphod leaped out of his seat.
+
+"She's not asking you to enjoy it," he shouted, "just do it will
+you?"
+
+"Alright," said Marvin like the tolling of a great cracked bell,
+"I'll do it."
+
+"Good ..." snapped Zaphod, "great ... thank you ..."
+
+Marvin turned and lifted his flat-topped triangular red eyes up
+towards him.
+
+"I'm not getting you down at all am I?" he said pathetically.
+
+"No no Marvin," lilted Trillian, "that's just fine, really ..."
+
+"I wouldn't like to think that I was getting you down."
+
+"No, don't worry about that," the lilt continued, "you just act
+as comes naturally and everything will be just fine."
+
+"You're sure you don't mind?" probed Marvin.
+
+"No no Marvin," lilted Trillian, "that's just fine, really ...
+just part of life."
+
+"Marvin flashed him an electronic look.
+
+"Life," said Marvin, "don't talk to me about life."
+
+He turned hopelessly on his heel and lugged himself out of the
+cabin. With a satisfied hum and a click the door closed behind
+him
+
+"I don't think I can stand that robot much longer Zaphod,"
+growled Trillian.
+
+The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical
+apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing
+division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as
+"Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With."
+
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing
+division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of
+mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the
+revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors
+would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over
+the post of robotics correspondent.
+
+Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that
+had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand
+years in the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius
+Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were
+the first against the wall when the revolution came."
+
+The pink cubicle had winked out of existence, the monkeys had
+sunk away to a better dimension. Ford and Arthur found themselves
+in the embarkation area of the ship. It was rather smart.
+
+"I think the ship's brand new," said Ford.
+
+"How can you tell?" asked Arthur. "Have you got some exotic
+device for measuring the age of metal?"
+
+"No, I just found this sales brochure lying on the floor. It's a
+lot of `the Universe can be yours' stuff. Ah! Look, I was right."
+
+Ford jabbed at one of the pages and showed it to Arthur.
+
+"It says: Sensational new breakthrough in Improbability Physics.
+As soon as the ship's drive reaches Infinite Improbability it
+passes through every point in the Universe. Be the envy of other
+major governments. Wow, this is big league stuff."
+
+Ford hunted excitedly through the technical specs of the ship,
+occasionally gasping with astonishment at what he read - clearly
+Galactic astrotechnology had moved ahead during the years of his
+exile.
+
+Arthur listened for a short while, but being unable to understand
+the vast majority of what Ford was saying he began to let his
+mind wander, trailing his fingers along the edge of an
+incomprehensible computer bank, he reached out and pressed an
+invitingly large red button on a nearby panel. The panel lit up
+with the words Please do not press this button again. He shook
+himself.
+
+"Listen," said Ford, who was still engrossed in the sales
+brochure, "they make a big thing of the ship's cybernetics. A new
+generation of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and
+computers, with the new GPP feature."
+
+"GPP feature?" said Arthur. "What's that?"
+
+"Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities."
+
+"Oh," said Arthur, "sounds ghastly."
+
+A voice behind them said, "It is." The voice was low and hopeless
+and accompanied by a slight clanking sound. They span round and
+saw an abject steel man standing hunched in the doorway.
+
+"What?" they said.
+
+"Ghastly," continued Marvin, "it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just
+don't even talk about it. Look at this door," he said, stepping
+through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he
+mimicked the style of the sales brochure. "All the doors in this
+spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their
+pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again
+with the knowledge of a job well done."
+
+As the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did
+indeed have a satisfied sigh-like quality to it.
+"Hummmmmmmyummmmmmm ah!" it said.
+
+Marvin regarded it with cold loathing whilst his logic circuits
+chattered with disgust and tinkered with the concept of directing
+physical violence against it Further circuits cut in saying, Why
+bother? What's the point? Nothing is worth getting involved in.
+Further circuits amused themselves by analysing the molecular
+components of the door, and of the humanoids' brain cells. For a
+quick encore they measured the level of hydrogen emissions in the
+surrounding cubic parsec of space and then shut down again in
+boredom. A spasm of despair shook the robot's body as he turned.
+
+"Come on," he droned, "I've been ordered to take you down to the
+bridge. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to
+take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I
+don't."
+
+He turned and walked back to the hated door.
+
+"Er, excuse me," said Ford following after him, "which government
+owns this ship?"
+
+Marvin ignored him.
+
+"You watch this door," he muttered, "it's about to open again. I
+can tell by the intolerable air of smugness it suddenly
+generates."
+
+With an ingratiating little whine the door slit open again and
+Marvin stomped through.
+
+"Come on," he said.
+
+The others followed quickly and the door slit back into place
+with pleased little clicks and whirrs.
+
+"Thank you the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics
+Corporation," said Marvin and trudged desolately up the gleaming
+curved corridor that stretched out before them. "Let's build
+robots with Genuine People Personalities," they said. So they
+tried it out with me. I'm a personality prototype. You can tell
+can't you?"
+
+Ford and Arthur muttered embarrassed little disclaimers.
+
+"I hate that door," continued Marvin. "I'm not getting you down
+at all am I?"
+
+"Which government ..." started Ford again.
+
+"No government owns it," snapped the robot, "it's been stolen."
+
+"Stolen?"
+
+"Stolen?" mimicked Marvin.
+
+"Who by?" asked Ford.
+
+"Zaphod Beeblebrox."
+
+Something extraordinary happened to Ford's face. At least five
+entirely separate and distinct expressions of shock and amazement
+piled up on it in a jumbled mess. His left leg, which was in mid
+stride, seemed to have difficulty in finding the floor again. He
+stared at the robot and tried to entangle some dartoid muscles.
+
+"Zaphod Beeblebrox ...?" he said weakly.
+
+"Sorry, did I say something wrong?" said Marvin, dragging himself
+on regardless. "Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway
+so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God I'm so depressed.
+Here's another of those self-satisfied door. Life! Don't talk to
+me about life."
+
+"No one ever mentioned it," muttered Arthur irritably. "Ford, are
+you alright?"
+
+Ford stared at him. "Did that robot say Zaphod Beeblebrox?" he
+said.
+
+=================================================================
+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 Wort Dressed Sentinent Being in the Known
+Universe for the seventh time ... has he got an answer this time?
+We asked his private brain care specialist Gag Halfrunt ..." The
+music swirled and dived for a moment. Another voice broke in,
+presumably Halfrunt. He said: "Vell, Zaphod's jist zis guy you
+know?" but got no further because an electric pencil flew across
+the cabin and through the radio's on/off sensitive airspace.
+Zaphod turned and glared at Trillian - she had thrown the pencil.
+
+"Hey," he said, what do you do that for?"
+
+Trillian was tapping her fingers on a screenful of figures.
+
+"I've just thought of something," she said.
+
+"Yeah? Worth interrupting a news bulletin about me for?"
+
+"You hear enough about yourself as it is."
+
+"I'm very insecure. We know that."
+
+"Can we drop your ego for a moment? This is important."
+
+"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it
+caught and shot now." Zaphod glared at her again, then laughed.
+
+"Listen," she said, "we picked up those couple of guys ..."
+
+"What couple of guys?"
+
+"The couple of guys we picked up."
+
+"Oh, yeah," said Zaphod, "those couple of guys."
+
+"We picked them up in sector ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha."
+
+"Yeah?" said Zaphod and blinked.
+
+Trillian said quietly, "Does that mean anything to you?"
+
+"Mmmmm," said Zaphod, "ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha. ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha?"
+
+"Well?" said Trillian.
+
+"Er ... what does the Z mean?" said Zaphod.
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"Any one."
+
+One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her
+relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him
+pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard,
+pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think
+and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be
+outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't
+understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.
+He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was
+so - but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the
+act. He proffered people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.
+This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but
+she could no longer be bothered to argue about it.
+
+She sighed and punched up a star map on the visiscreen so she
+could make it simple for him, whatever his reasons for wanting it
+to be that way.
+
+"There," she pointed, "right there."
+
+"Hey ... Yeah!" said Zaphod.
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+"Well what?"
+
+Parts of the inside of her head screamed at other parts of the
+inside of her head. She said, very calmly, "It's the same sector
+you originally picked me up in."
+
+He looked at her and then looked back at the screen.
+
+"Hey, yeah," he said, "now that is wild. We should have zapped
+straight into the middle of the Horsehead Nebula. How did we come
+to be there? I mean that's nowhere."
+
+She ignored this.
+
+"Improbability Drive," she said patiently. "You explained it to
+me yourself. We pass through every point in the Universe, you
+know that."
+
+"Yeah, but that's one wild coincidence isn't it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Picking someone up at that point? Out of the whole of the
+Universe to choose from? That's just too ... I want to work this
+out. Computer!"
+
+The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Shipboard Computer which
+controlled and permeated every particle of the ship switched
+into communication mode.
+
+"Hi there!" it said brightly and simultaneously spewed out a tiny
+ribbon of ticker tape just for the record. The ticker tape said,
+Hi there!
+
+"Oh God," said Zaphod. He hadn't worked with this computer for
+long but had already learned to loathe it.
+
+The computer continued, brash and cheery as if it was selling
+detergent.
+
+"I want you to know that whatever your problem, I am here to help
+you solve it."
+
+"Yeah yeah," said Zaphod. "Look, I think I'll just use a piece of
+paper."
+
+"Sure thing," said the computer, spilling out its message into a
+waste bin at the same time, "I understand. If you ever want ..."
+
+"Shut up!" said Zaphod, and snatching up a pencil sat down next
+to Trillian at the console.
+
+"OK, OK ..." said the computer in a hurt tone of voice and closed
+down its speech channel again.
+
+Zaphod and Trillian pored over the figures that the Improbability
+flight path scanner flashed silently up in front of them.
+
+"Can we work out," said Zaphod, "from their point of view what
+the Improbability of their rescue was?"
+
+"Yes, that's a constant", said Trillian, "two to the power of two
+hundred and seventy-six thousand seven hundred and nine to one
+against."
+
+"That's high. They're two lucky lucky guys."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But relative to what we were doing when the ship picked them up
+..."
+
+Trillian punched up the figures. They showed tow-to-the power-
+of-Infinity-minus-one (an irrational number that only has a
+conventional meaning in Improbability physics).
+
+"... it's pretty low," continued Zaphod with a slight whistle.
+
+"Yes," agreed Trillian, and looked at him quizzically.
+
+"That's one big whack of Improbability to be accounted for.
+Something pretty improbable has got to show up on the balance
+sheet if it's all going to add up into a pretty sum."
+
+Zaphod scribbled a few sums, crossed them out and threw the
+pencil away.
+
+"Bat's dots, I can't work it out."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Zaphod knocked his two heads together in irritation and gritted
+his teeth.
+
+"OK," he said. "Computer!"
+
+The voice circuits sprang to life again.
+
+"Why hello there!" they said (ticker tape, ticker tape). "All I
+want to do is make your day nicer and nicer and nicer ..."
+
+"Yeah well shut up and work something out for me."
+
+"Sure thing," chattered the computer, "you want a probability
+forecast based on ..."
+
+"Improbability data, yeah."
+
+"OK," the computer continued. "Here's an interesting little
+notion. Did you realize that most people's lives are governed by
+telephone numbers?"
+
+A pained look crawled across one of Zaphod's faces and on to the
+other one.
+
+"Have you flipped?" he said.
+
+"No, but you will when I tell you that ..."
+
+Trillian gasped. She scrabbled at the buttons on the
+Improbability flight path screen.
+
+"Telephone number?" she said. "Did that thing say telephone
+number?"
+
+Numbers flashed up on the screen.
+
+The computer had paused politely, but now it continued.
+
+"What I was about to say was that ..."
+
+"Don't bother please," said Trillian.
+
+"Look, what is this?" said Zaphod.
+
+"I don't know," said Trillian, "but those aliens - they're on the
+way up to the bridge with that wretched robot. Can we pick them
+up on any monitor cameras?"
+
+=================================================================
+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."
+
+He heaved himself through the door and left Ford and Arthur
+staring at each other and shrugging their shoulders. From inside
+they heard Marvin's voice again.
+
+"I suppose you want to see the aliens now," he said. "Do you want
+me to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm
+standing?"
+
+"Yeah, just show them in would you Marvin?" came another voice.
+
+Arthur looked at Ford and was astonished to see him laughing.
+
+"What's ...?"
+
+"Shhh," said Ford, "come in."
+
+He stepped through into the bridge.
+
+Arthur followed him in nervously and was astonished to see a man
+lolling back in a chair with his feet on a control console
+picking the teeth in his right-hand head with his left hand. The
+right-hand head seemed to be thoroughly preoccupied with this
+task, but the left-hand one was grinning a broad, relaxed,
+nonchalant grin. The number of things that Arthur couldn't
+believe he was seeing was fairly large. His jaw flapped about at
+a loose end for a while.
+
+The peculiar man waved a lazy wave at Ford and with an appalling
+affectation of nonchalance said, "Ford, hi, how are you? Glad you
+could drop in."
+
+Ford was not going to be outcooled.
+
+"Zaphod," he drawled, "great to see you, you're looking well, the
+extra arm suits you. Nice ship you've stolen."
+
+Arthur goggled at him.
+
+"You mean you know this guy?" he said, waving a wild finger at
+Zaphod.
+
+"Know him!" exclaimed Ford, "he's ..." he paused, and decided to
+do the introductions the other way round.
+
+"Oh, Zaphod, this is a friend of mine, Arthur Dent," he said, "I
+saved him when his planet blew up."
+
+"Oh sure," said Zaphod, "hi Arthur, glad you could make it." His
+right-hand head looked round casually, said "hi" and went back to
+having his teeth picked.
+
+Ford carried on. "And Arthur," he said, "this is my semi-cousin
+Zaphod Beeb ..."
+
+"We've met," said Arthur sharply.
+
+When you're cruising down the road in the fast lane and you
+lazily sail past a few hard driving cars and are feeling pretty
+pleased with yourself and then accidentally change down from
+fourth to first instead of third thus making your engine leap out
+of your bonnet in a rather ugly mess, it tends to throw you off
+your stride in much the same way that this remark threw Ford
+Prefect off his.
+
+"Err ... what?"
+
+"I said we've met."
+
+Zaphod gave an awkward start of surprise and jabbed a gum
+sharply.
+
+"Hey ... er, have we? Hey ... er ..."
+
+Ford rounded on Arthur with an angry flash in his eyes. Now he
+felt he was back on home ground he suddenly began to resent
+having lumbered himself with this ignorant primitive who knew as
+much about the affairs of the Galaxy as an Ilford-based gnat knew
+about life in Peking.
+
+"What do you mean you've met?" he demanded. "This is Zaphod
+Beeblebrox from Betelgeuse Five you know, not bloody Martin Smith
+from Croydon."
+
+"I don't care," said Arthur coldly. We've met, haven't we Zaphod
+Beeblebrox - or should I say ... Phil?"
+
+"What!" shouted Ford.
+
+"You'll have to remind me," said Zaphod. "I've a terrible memory
+for species."
+
+"It was at a party," pursued Arthur.
+
+"Yeah, well I doubt that," said Zaphod.
+
+"Cool it will you Arthur!" demanded Ford.
+
+Arthur would not be deterred. "A party six months ago. On Earth
+... England ..."
+
+Zaphod shook his head with a tight-lipped smile.
+
+"London," insisted Arthur, "Islington."
+
+"Oh," said Zaphod with a guilty start, "that party."
+
+This wasn't fair on Ford at all. He looked backwards and forwards
+between Arthur and Zaphod. "What?" he said to Zaphod. "You don't
+mean to say you've been on that miserable planet as well do you?"
+
+"No, of course not," said Zaphod breezily. "Well, I may have just
+dropped in briefly, you know, on my way somewhere ..."
+
+"But I was stuck there for fifteen years!"
+
+"Well I didn't know that did I?"
+
+"But what were you doing there?"
+
+"Looking about, you know."
+
+"He gatecrashed a party," persisted Arthur, trembling with anger,
+"a fancy dress party ..."
+
+"It would have to be, wouldn't it?" said Ford.
+
+"At this party," persisted Arthur, "was a girl ... oh well, look
+it doesn't matter now. The whole place has gone up in smoke
+anyway ..."
+
+"I wish you'd stop sulking about that bloody planet," said Ford.
+"Who was the lady?"
+
+"Oh just somebody. Well alright, I wasn't doing very well with
+her. I'd been trying all evening. Hell, she was something though.
+Beautiful, charming, devastatingly intelligent, at last I'd got
+her to myself for a bit and was plying her with a bit of talk
+when this friend of yours barges up and says Hey doll, is this
+guy boring you? Why don't you talk to me instead? I'm from a
+different planet." I never saw her again."
+
+"Zaphod?" exclaimed Ford.
+
+"Yes," said Arthur, glaring at him and trying not to feel
+foolish. "He only had the two arms and the one head and he called
+himself Phil, but ..."
+
+"But you must admit he did turn out to be from another planet,"
+said Trillian wandering into sight at the other end of the
+bridge. She gave Arthur a pleasant smile which settled on him
+like a ton of bricks and then turned her attention to the ship's
+controls again.
+
+There was silence for a few seconds, and then out of the
+scrambled mess of Arthur's brain crawled some words.
+
+"Tricia McMillian?" he said. "What are you doing here?"
+
+"Same as you," she said, "I hitched a lift. After all with a
+degree in Maths and another in astrophysics what else was there
+to do? It was either that or the dole queue again on Monday."
+
+"Infinity minus one," chattered the computer, "Improbability sum
+now complete."
+
+Zaphod looked about him, at Ford, at Arthur, and then at
+Trillian.
+
+"Trillian," he said, "is this sort of thing going to happen every
+time we use the Improbability drive?"
+
+"Very probably, I'm afraid," she said.
+
+=================================================================
+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 Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Page 634784,
+Section 5a, Entry: Magrathea)
+
+Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious
+days of the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and
+largely tax free.
+
+Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking
+adventure and reward amongst the furthest reaches of Galactic
+space. In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high,
+men were real men, women were real women, and small furry
+creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures
+from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to
+do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had
+split before - and thus was the Empire forged.
+
+Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly
+natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really
+poor - at least no one worth speaking of. And for all the richest
+and most successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull
+and niggly, and they began to imagine that this was therefore the
+fault of the worlds they'd settled on - none of them was entirely
+satisfactory: either the climate wasn't quite right in the later
+part of the afternoon, or the day was half an hour too long, or
+the sea was exactly the wrong shade of pink.
+
+And thus were created the conditions for a staggering new form of
+specialist industry: custom-made luxury planet building. The home
+of this industry was the planet Magrathea, where hyperspatial
+engineers sucked matter through white holes in space to form it
+into dream planets - gold planets, platinum planets, soft rubber
+planets with lots of earthquakes - all lovingly made to meet the
+exacting standards that the Galaxy's richest men naturally came
+to expect.
+
+But so successful was this venture that Magrathea itself soon
+became the richest planet of all time and the rest of the Galaxy
+was reduced to abject poverty. And so the system broke down, the
+Empire collapsed, and a long sullen silence settled over a
+billion worlds, disturbed only by the pen scratchings of scholars
+as they laboured into the night over smug little treaties on the
+value of a planned political economy.
+
+Magrathea itself disappeared and its memory soon passed into the
+obscurity of legend.
+
+In these enlightened days of course, no one believes a word of
+it.
+
+=================================================================
+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."
+
+"Hey, what do you mean by that? The planet's where I predicted it
+would be isn't it?"
+
+"Yes, I know there's a planet there. I'm not arguing with anyone,
+it's just that I wouldn't know Magrathea from any other lump of
+cold rock. Dawn's coming up if you want it."
+
+"OK, OK," muttered Zaphod, "let's at least give our eyes a good
+time. Computer!"
+
+"Hi there! What can I ..."
+
+"Just shut up and give us a view of the planet again."
+
+A dark featureless mass once more filled the screens - the planet
+rolling away beneath them.
+
+They watched for a moment in silence, but Zaphod was fidgety with
+excitement.
+
+"We are now traversing the night side ..." he said in a hushed
+voice. The planet rolled on.
+
+"The surface of the planet is now three hundred miles beneath us
+..." he continued. He was trying to restore a sense of occasion
+to what he felt should have been a great moment. Magrathea! He
+was piqued by Ford's sceptical reaction. Magrathea!
+
+"In a few seconds," he continued, "we should see ... there!"
+
+The moment carried itself. Even the most seasoned star tramp
+can't help but shiver at the spectacular drama of a sunrise seen
+from space, but a binary sunrise is one of the marvels of the
+Galaxy.
+
+Out of the utter blackness stabbed a sudden point of blinding
+light. It crept up by slight degrees and spread sideways in a
+thin crescent blade, and within seconds two suns were visible,
+furnaces of light, searing the black edge of the horizon with
+white fire. Fierce shafts of colour streaked through the thin
+atmosphere beneath them.
+
+"The fires of dawn ... !" breathed Zaphod. "The twin suns of
+Soulianis and Rahm ... !"
+
+"Or whatever," said Ford quietly.
+
+"Soulianis and Rahm!" insisted Zaphod.
+
+The suns blazed into the pitch of space and a low ghostly music
+floated through the bridge: Marvin was humming ironically because
+he hated humans so much.
+
+As Ford gazed at the spectacle of light before them excitement
+burnt inside him, but only the excitement of seeing a strange new
+planet, it was enough for him to see it as it was. It faintly
+irritated him that Zaphod had to impose some ludicrous fantasy on
+to the scene to make it work for him. All this Magrathea nonsense
+seemed juvenile. Isn't it enough to see that a garden is
+beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the
+bottom of it too?
+
+All this Magrathea business seemed totally incomprehensible to
+Arthur. He edged up to Trillian and asked her what was going on.
+
+"I only know what Zaphod's told me," she whispered. "Apparently
+Magrathea is some kind of legend from way back which no one
+seriously believes in. Bit like Atlantis on Earth, except that
+the legends say the Magratheans used to manufacture planets."
+
+Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something
+important. Suddenly he realized what it was.
+
+"Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.
+
+More of the planet was unfolding beneath them as the Heart of
+Gold streaked along its orbital path. The suns now stood high in
+the black sky, the pyrotechnics of dawn were over, and the
+surface of the planet appeared bleak and forbidding in the common
+light of day - grey, dusty and only dimly contoured. It looked
+dead and cold as a crypt. From time to time promising features
+would appear on the distant horizon - ravines, maybe mountains,
+maybe even cities - but as they approached the lines would soften
+and blur into anonymity and nothing would transpire. The planet's
+surface was blurred by time, by the slow movement of the thin
+stagnant air that had crept across it for century upon century.
+
+Clearly, it was very very old.
+
+A moment of doubt came to Ford as he watched the grey landscape
+move beneath them. The immensity of time worried him, he could
+feel it as a presence. He cleared his throat.
+
+"Well, even supposing it is ..."
+
+"It is," said Zaphod.
+
+"Which it isn't," continued Ford. "What do you want with it
+anyway? There's nothing there."
+
+"Not on the surface," said Zaphod.
+
+"Alright, just supposing there's something. I take it you're not
+here for the sheer industrial archaeology of it all. What are you
+after?"
+
+One of Zaphod's heads looked away. The other one looked round to
+see what the first was looking at, but it wasn't looking at
+anything very much.
+
+"Well," said Zaphod airily, "it's partly the curiosity, partly a
+sense of adventure, but mostly I think it's the fame and the
+money ..."
+
+Ford glanced at him sharply. He got a very strong impression that
+Zaphod hadn't the faintest idea why he was there at all.
+
+"You know I don't like the look of that planet at all," said
+Trillian shivering.
+
+"Ah, take no notice," said Zaphod, "with half the wealth of the
+former Galactic Empire stored on it somewhere it can afford to
+look frumpy."
+
+Bullshit, thought Ford. Even supposing this was the home of some
+ancient civilization now gone to dust, even supposing a number of
+exceedingly unlikely things, there was no way that vast treasures
+of wealth were going to be stored there in any form that would
+still have meaning now. He shrugged.
+
+"I think it's just a dead planet," he said.
+
+"The suspense is killing me," said Arthur testily.
+
+Stress and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all
+parts of the Galaxy, and it is in order that this situation
+should not in any way be exacerbated that the following facts
+will now be revealed in advance.
+
+The planet in question is in fact the legendary Magrathea.
+
+The deadly missile attack shortly to be launched by an ancient
+automatic defence system will result merely in the breakage of
+three coffee cups and a micecage, the bruising of somebody's
+upper arm, and the untimely creation and sudden demise of a bowl
+of petunias and an innocent sperm whale.
+
+In order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no
+revelation will yet be made concerning whose upper arm sustained
+the bruise. This fact may safely be made the subject of suspense
+since it is of no significance whatsoever.
+
+=================================================================
+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. He released half of them and the ship span
+round in a tight arc and headed back the way it had come,
+straight towards the oncoming missiles.
+
+Air cushions ballooned out of the walls in an instant as everyone
+was thrown against them. For a few seconds the inertial forces
+held them flattened and squirming for breath, unable to move.
+Zaphod struggled and pushed in manic desperation and finally
+managed a savage kick at a small lever that formed part of the
+guidance system.
+
+The lever snapped off. The ship twisted sharply and rocketed
+upwards. The crew were hurled violently back across the cabin.
+Ford's copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy smashed into
+another section of the control console with the combined result
+that the guide started to explain to anyone who cared to listen
+about the best ways of smuggling Antarean parakeet glands out of
+Antares (an Antarean parakeet gland stuck on a small stick is a
+revolting but much sought after cocktail delicacy and very large
+sums of money are often paid for them by very rich idiots who
+want to impress other very rich idiots), and the ship suddenly
+dropped out of the sky like a stone.
+
+It was of course more or less at this moment that one of the crew
+sustained a nasty bruise to the upper arm. This should be
+emphasized because, as had already been revealed, they escape
+otherwise completely unharmed and the deadly nuclear missiles do
+not eventually hit the ship. The safety of the crew is absolutely
+assured.
+
+"Impact minus twenty seconds, guys ..." said the computer.
+
+"Then turn the bloody engines back on!" bawled Zaphod.
+
+"OK, sure thing, guys," said the computer. With a subtle roar the
+engines cut back in, the ship smoothly flattened out of its dive
+and headed back towards the missiles again.
+
+The computer started to sing.
+
+"When you walk through the storm ..." it whined nasally, "hold
+your head up high ..."
+
+Zaphod screamed at it to shut up, but his voice was lost in the
+din of what they quite naturally assumed was approaching
+destruction.
+
+"And don't ... be afraid ... of the dark!" Eddie wailed.
+
+The ship, in flattening out had in fact flattened out upside down
+and lying on the ceiling as they were it was now totally
+impossible for any of the crew to reach the guidance systems.
+
+"At the end of the storm ..." crooned Eddie.
+
+The two missiles loomed massively on the screens as they
+thundered towards the ship.
+
+"... is a golden sky ..."
+
+But by an extraordinarily lucky chance they had not yet fully
+corrected their flight paths to that of the erratically weaving
+ship, and they passed right under it.
+
+"And the sweet silver songs of the lark ... Revised impact time
+fifteen seconds fellas ... Walk on through the wind ..."
+
+The missiles banked round in a screeching arc and plunged back
+into pursuit.
+
+"This is it," said Arthur watching them. "We are now quite
+definitely going to die aren't we?"
+
+"I wish you'd stop saying that," shouted Ford.
+
+"Well we are aren't we?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Walk on through the rain ..." sang Eddie.
+
+A thought struck Arthur. He struggled to his feet.
+
+"Why doesn't anyone turn on this Improbability Drive thing?" he
+said. "We could probably reach that."
+
+"What are you crazy?" said Zaphod. "Without proper programming
+anything could happen."
+
+"Does that matter at this stage?" shouted Arthur.
+
+"Though your dreams be tossed and blown ..." sand Eddie.
+
+Arthur scrambled up on to one end of the excitingly chunky pieces
+of moulded contouring where the curve of the wall met the
+ceiling.
+
+"Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart ..."
+
+"Does anyone know why Arthur can't turn on the Improbability
+Drive?" shouted Trillian.
+
+"And you'll never walk alone ... Impact minus five seconds, it's
+been great knowing you guys, God bless ... You'll ne ... ver ...
+walk ... alone!"
+
+"I said," yelled Trillian, "does anyone know ..."
+
+The next thing that happened was a mid-mangling explosion of
+noise and light.
+
+=================================================================
+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 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 in
+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? How do you know?"
+
+"Because they left their initials burnt into the cauterized
+synapses. They left them there for me to see."
+
+Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl.
+
+"Initials? Burnt into your brain?"
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"Well, what were they, for God's sake?"
+
+Zaphod looked at him in silence again for a moment. Then he
+looked away.
+
+"Z.B.," he said.
+
+At that moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them and gas
+started to pour into the chamber.
+
+"I'll tell you about it later," choked Zaphod as all three passed
+out.
+
+=================================================================
+Chapter 21
+
+On the surface of Magrathea Arthur wandered about moodily.
+
+Ford had thoughtfully left him his copy of The Hitch Hiker's
+Guide to the Galaxy to while away the time with. He pushed a few
+buttons at random.
+
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited
+book and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors
+like a good idea at the time.
+
+One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates
+the experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at
+the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a brilliant academic
+career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics and
+the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then,
+after a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with
+Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the problem
+of what had happened to all the biros he'd bought over the past
+few years.
+
+There followed a long period of painstaking research during which
+he visited all the major centres of biro loss throughout the
+galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint little theory which
+quite caught the public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the
+cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by
+humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and
+superintelligent shades of the colour blue, there was also a
+planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this
+planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping away
+quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew
+they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to
+highly biro-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the biro
+equivalent of the good life.
+
+And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet
+Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have
+worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of
+cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up,
+wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the
+usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make a fool
+of themselves in public.
+
+When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates
+that Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a
+small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed
+repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered
+to be lying.
+
+There did, however, remain the question of both the mysterious
+60,000 Altairan dollars paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank
+account, and of course Zaphod Beeblebrox's highly profitable
+second-hand biro business.
+
+Arthur read this, and put the book down.
+
+The robot still sat there, completely inert.
+
+Arthur got up and walked to the top of the crater. He walked
+around the crater. He watched two suns set magnificently over
+Magrathea.
+
+He went back down into the crater. He woke the robot up because
+even a manically depressed robot is better to talk to than
+nobody.
+
+"Night's falling," he said. "Look robot, the stars are coming
+out."
+
+From the heart of a dark nebula it is possible to see very few
+stars, and only very faintly, but they were there to be seen.
+
+The robot obediently looked at them, then looked back.
+
+"I know," he said. "Wretched isn't it?"
+
+"But that sunset! I've never seen anything like it in my wildest
+dreams ... the two suns! It was like mountains of fire boiling
+into space."
+
+"I've seen it," said Marvin. "It's rubbish."
+
+"We only ever had the one sun at home," persevered Arthur, "I
+came from a planet called Earth you know."
+
+"I know," said Marvin, "you keep going on about it. It sounds
+awful."
+
+"Ah no, it was a beautiful place."
+
+"Did it have oceans?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Arthur with a sigh, "great wide rolling blue
+oceans ..."
+
+"Can't bear oceans," said Marvin.
+
+"Tell me," inquired Arthur, "do you get on well with other
+robots?"
+
+"Hate them," said Marvin. "Where are you going?"
+
+Arthur couldn't bear any more. He had got up again.
+
+"I think I'll just take another walk," he said.
+
+"Don't blame you," said Marvin and counted five hundred and
+ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a
+second later.
+
+Arthur slapped his arms about himself to try and get his
+circulation a little more enthusiastic about its job. He trudged
+back up the wall of the crater.
+
+Because the atmosphere was so thin and because there was no moon,
+nightfall was very rapid and it was by now very dark. Because of
+this, Arthur practically walked into the old man before he
+noticed him.
+
+=================================================================
+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 coms?"
+
+Slartibartfast coughed politely.
+
+"Earthman," he said, "it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of
+speech. Remember I have been asleep inside this planet of
+Magrathea for five million years and know little of these early
+sixties sit coms of which you speak. These creatures you call
+mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely
+the protrusion into our dimension of vast hyperintelligent pan-
+dimensional beings. The whole business with the cheese and the
+squeaking is just a front."
+
+The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued.
+
+"They've been experimenting on you I'm afraid."
+
+Arthur thought about this for a second, and then his face
+cleared.
+
+"Ah no," he said, "I see the source of the misunderstanding now.
+No, look you see, what happened was that we used to do
+experiments on them. They were often used in behavioural
+research, Pavlov and all that sort of stuff. So what happened was
+hat the mice would be set all sorts of tests, learning to ring
+bells, run around mazes and things so that the whole nature of
+the learning process could be examined. From our observations of
+their behaviour we were able to learn all sorts of things about
+our own ..."
+
+Arthur's voice tailed off.
+
+"Such subtlety ..." said Slartibartfast, "one has to admire it."
+
+"What?" said Arthur.
+
+"How better to disguise their real natures, and how better to
+guide your thinking. Suddenly running down a maze the wrong way,
+eating the wrong bit of cheese, unexpectedly dropping dead of
+myxomatosis, - if it's finely calculated the cumulative effect is
+enormous."
+
+He paused for effect.
+
+"You see, Earthman, they really are particularly clever
+hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings. Your planet and people
+have formed the matrix of an organic computer running a ten-
+million-year research programme ...
+
+"Let me tell you the whole story. It'll take a little time."
+
+"Time," said Arthur weakly, "is not currently one of my
+problems."
+
+=================================================================
+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. He was a gas. He gave us conkers when you bust
+your way into his megafreighter. Said you were the most amazing
+kid he'd ever met."
+
+"What's all this?" said Trillian.
+
+"Ancient history," said Ford, "when we were kids together on
+Betelgeuse. The Arcturan megafreighters used to carry most of the
+bulky trade between the Galactic Centre and the outlying regions
+The Betelgeuse trading scouts used to find the markets and the
+Arcturans would supply them. There was a lot of trouble with
+space pirates before they were wiped out in the Dordellis wars,
+and the megafreighters had to be equipped with the most fantastic
+defence shields known to Galactic science. They were real brutes
+of ships, and huge. In orbit round a planet they would eclipse
+the sun.
+
+"One day, young Zaphod here decides to raid one. On a tri-jet
+scooter designed for stratosphere work, a mere kid. I mean forget
+it, it was crazier than a mad monkey. I went along for the ride
+because I'd got some very safe money on him not doing it, and
+didn't want him coming back with fake evidence. So what happens?
+We got in his tri-jet which he had souped up into something
+totally other, crossed three parsecs in a matter of weeks, bust
+our way into a megafreighter I still don't know how, marched on
+to the bridge waving toy pistols and demanded conkers. A wilder
+thing I have not known. Lost me a year's pocket money. For what?
+Conkers."
+
+"The captain was this really amazing guy, Yooden Vranx," said
+Zaphod. "He gave us food, booze - stuff from really weird parts
+of the Galaxy - lots of conkers of course, and we had just the
+most incredible time. Then he teleported us back. Into the
+maximum security wing of Betelgeuse state prison. He was a cool
+guy. Went on to become President of the Galaxy."
+
+Zaphod paused.
+
+The scene around them was currently plunged into gloom. Dark
+mists swirled round them and elephantine shapes lurked
+indistinctly in the shadows. The air was occasionally rent with
+the sounds of illusory beings murdering other illusory beings.
+Presumably enough people must have liked this sort of thing to
+make it a paying proposition.
+
+"Ford," said Zaphod quietly.
+
+"Yeah?"
+
+"Just before Yooden died he came to see me."
+
+"What? You never told me."
+
+"No."
+
+"What did he say? What did he come to see you about?"
+
+"He told me about the Heart of Gold. It was his idea that I
+should steal it."
+
+"His idea?"
+
+"Yeah," said Zaphod, "and the only possible way of stealing it
+was to be at the launching ceremony."
+
+Ford gaped at him in astonishment for a moment, and then roared
+with laughter.
+
+"Are you telling me," he said, "that you set yourself up to
+become President of the Galaxy just to steal that ship?"
+
+"That's it," said Zaphod with the sort of grin that would get
+most people locked away in a room with soft walls.
+
+"But why?" said Ford. "What's so important about having it?"
+
+"Dunno," said Zaphod, "I think if I'd consciously known what was
+so important about it and what I would need it for it would have
+showed up on the brain screening tests and I would never have
+passed. I think Yooden told me a lot of things that are still
+locked away."
+
+"So you think you went and mucked about inside your own brain as
+a result of Yooden talking to you?"
+
+"He was a hell of a talker."
+
+"Yeah, but Zaphod old mate, you want to look after yourself you
+know."
+
+Zaphod shrugged.
+
+"I mean, don't you have any inkling of the reasons for all this?"
+asked Ford.
+
+Zaphod thought hard about this and doubts seemed to cross his
+minds.
+
+"No," he said at last, "I don't seem to be letting myself into
+any of my secrets. Still," he added on further reflection, "I can
+understand that. I wouldn't trust myself further than I could
+spit a rat."
+
+A moment later, the last planet in the catalogue vanished from
+beneath them and the solid world resolved itself again.
+
+They were sitting in a plush waiting room full of glass-top
+tables and design awards.
+
+A tall Magrathean man was standing in front of them.
+
+"The mice will see you now," he said.
+
+=================================================================
+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
+guests here have been gassing us and zapping our minds and being
+generally weird and have now given us a rather nice meal to make
+it up to us. Here," he said hoiking out a lump of evil smelling
+meat from a bowl, "have some Vegan Rhino's cutlet. It's delicious
+if you happen to like that sort of thing."
+
+"Hosts?" said Arthur. "What hosts? I don't see any ..."
+
+A small voice said, "Welcome to lunch, Earth creature."
+
+Arthur glanced around and suddenly yelped.
+
+"Ugh!" he said. "There are mice on the table!"
+
+There was an awkward silence as everyone looked pointedly at
+Arthur.
+
+He was busy staring at two white mice sitting in what looked like
+whisky glasses on the table. He heard the silence and glanced
+around at everyone.
+
+"Oh!" he said, with sudden realization. "Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't
+quite prepared for ..."
+
+"Let me introduce you," said Trillian. "Arthur this is Benji
+mouse."
+
+"Hi," said one of the mice. His whiskers stroked what must have
+been a touch sensitive panel on the inside of the whisky-glass
+like affair, and it moved forward slightly.
+
+"And this is Frankie mouse."
+
+The other mouse said, "Pleased to meet you," and did likewise.
+
+Arthur gaped.
+
+"But aren't they ..."
+
+"Yes," said Trillian, "they are the mice I brought with me from
+the Earth."
+
+She looked him in the eye and Arthur thought he detected the
+tiniest resigned shrug.
+
+"Could you pass me that bowl of grated Arcturan Megadonkey?" she
+said.
+
+Slartibartfast coughed politely.
+
+"Er, excuse me," he said.
+
+"Yes, thank you Slartibartfast," said Benji mouse sharply, "you
+may go."
+
+"What? Oh ... er, very well," said the old man, slightly taken
+aback, "I'll just go and get on with some of my fjords then."
+
+"Ah, well in fact that won't be necessary," said Frankie mouse.
+"It looks very much as if we won't be needing the new Earth any
+longer." He swivelled his pink little eyes. "Not now that we have
+found a native of the planet who was there seconds before it was
+destroyed."
+
+"What?" cried Slartibartfast, aghast. "You can't mean that! I've
+got a thousand glaciers poised and ready to roll over Africa!"
+
+"Well perhaps you can take a quick skiing holiday before you
+dismantle them," said Frankie, acidly.
+
+"Skiing holiday!" cried the old man. "Those glaciers are works of
+art! Elegantly sculptured contours, soaring pinnacles of ice,
+deep majestic ravines! It would be sacrilege to go skiing on high
+art!"
+
+"Thank you Slartibartfast," said Benji firmly. "That will be
+all."
+
+"Yes sir," said the old man coldly, "thank you very much. Well,
+goodbye Earthman," he said to Arthur, "hope the lifestyle comes
+together."
+
+With a brief nod to the rest of the company he turned and walked
+sadly out of the room.
+
+Arthur stared after him not knowing what to say.
+
+"Now," said Benji mouse, "to business."
+
+Ford and Zaphod clinked their glasses together.
+
+"To business!" they said.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Benji.
+
+Ford looked round.
+
+"Sorry, I thought you were proposing a toast," he said.
+
+The two mice scuttled impatiently around in their glass
+transports. Finally they composed themselves, and Benji moved
+forward to address Arthur.
+
+"Now, Earth creature," he said, "the situation we have in effect
+is this. We have, as you know, been more or less running your
+planet for the last ten million years in order to find this
+wretched thing called the Ultimate Question."
+
+"Why?" said Arthur, sharply.
+
+"No - we already thought of that one," said Frankie interrupting,
+"but it doesn't fit the answer. Why? - Forty-Two ... you see, it
+doesn't work."
+
+"No," said Arthur, "I mean why have you been doing it?"
+
+"Oh, I see," said Frankie. "Well, eventually just habit I think,
+to be brutally honest. And this is more or less the point - we're
+sick to the teeth with the whole thing, and the prospect of doing
+it all over again on account of those whinnet-ridden Vogons quite
+frankly gives me the screaming heeby jeebies, you know what I
+mean? It was by the merest lucky chance that Benji and I finished
+our particular job and left the planet early for a quick holiday,
+and have since manipulated our way back to Magrathea by the good
+offices of your friends."
+
+"Magrathea is a gateway back to our own dimension," put in Benji.
+
+"Since when," continued his murine colleague, "we have had an
+offer of a quite enormously fat contract to do the 5D chat show
+and lecture circuit back in our own dimensional neck of the
+woods, and we're very much inclined to take it."
+
+"I would, wouldn't you Ford?" said Zaphod promptingly.
+
+"Oh yes," said Ford, "jump at it, like a shot."
+
+Arthur glanced at them, wondering what all this was leading up
+to.
+
+"But we've got to have a product you see," said Frankie, "I mean
+ideally we still need the Ultimate Question in some form or
+other."
+
+Zaphod leaned forward to Arthur.
+
+"You see," he said, "if they're just sitting there in the studio
+looking very relaxed and, you know, just mentioning that they
+happen to know the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything,
+and then eventually have to admit that in fact it's Forty-two,
+then the show's probably quite short. No follow-up, you see."
+
+"We have to have something that sounds good," said Benji.
+
+"Something that sounds good?" exclaimed Arthur. "An Ultimate
+Question that sounds good? From a couple of mice?"
+
+The mice bristled.
+
+"Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research,
+yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a
+point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that if there's any
+real truth, it's that the entire multi-dimensional infinity of
+the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.
+And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten
+million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking
+the money and running, then I for one could do with the
+exercise," said Frankie.
+
+"But ..." started Arthur, hopelessly.
+
+"Hey, will you get this, Earthman," interrupted Zaphod. "You are
+a last generation product of that computer matrix, right, and you
+were there right up to the moment your planet got the finger,
+yeah?"
+
+"Er ..."
+
+"So your brain was an organic part of the penultimate
+configuration of the computer programme," said Ford, rather
+lucidly he thought.
+
+"Right?" said Zaphod.
+
+"Well," said Arthur doubtfully. He wasn't aware of ever having
+felt an organic part of anything. He had always seen this as one
+of his problems.
+
+"In other words," said Benji, steering his curious little vehicle
+right over to Arthur, "there's a good chance that the structure
+of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain - so we
+want to buy it off you."
+
+"What, the question?" said Arthur.
+
+"Yes," said Ford and Trillian.
+
+"For lots of money," said Zaphod.
+
+"No, no," said Frankie, "it's the brain we want to buy."
+
+"What!"
+
+"I thought you said you could just read his brain
+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 Back Zaphod.
+
+"Because," shouted the cop, "it's going to be very intelligent,
+and quite interesting and humane! Now either you all give
+yourselves up now and let us beat you up a bit, though not very
+much of course because we are firmly opposed to needless
+violence, or we blow up this entire planet and possibly one or
+two others we noticed on our way out here!"
+
+"But that's crazy!" cried Trillian. "You wouldn't do that!"
+
+"Oh yes we would," shouted the cop, "wouldn't we?" he asked the
+other one.
+
+"Oh yes, we'd have to, no question," the other one called back.
+
+"But why?" demanded Trillian.
+
+"Because there are some things you have to do even if you are an
+enlightened liberal cop who knows all about sensitivity and
+everything!"
+
+"I just don't believe these guys," muttered Ford, shaking his
+head.
+
+One cop shouted to the other, "Shall we shoot them again for a
+bit?"
+
+"Yeah, why not?"
+
+They let fly another electric barrage.
+
+The heat and noise was quite fantastic. Slowly, the computer bank
+was beginning to disintegrate. The front had almost all melted
+away, and thick rivulets of molten metal were winding their way
+back towards where they were squatting. They huddled further back
+and waited for the end.
+
+=================================================================
+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
+Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Since he was going to live in
+the place, he reasoned, he'd better start finding out something
+about it.
+
+He came across this entry.
+
+It said: 'The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends
+to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of
+Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How,
+Why and Where phases.
+
+"For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question
+How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the
+third by the question Where shall we have lunch?"
+
+He got no further before the ship's intercom buzzed into life.
+
+"Hey Earthman? You hungry kid?" said Zaphod's voice.
+
+"Er, well yes, a little peckish I suppose," said Arthur.
+
+"OK baby, hold tight," said Zaphod. "We'll take in a quick bite
+at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."
+
+
+=================================================================
+* President: full title President of the Imperial Galactic
+Government.
+
+The term Imperial is kept though it is now an anachronism. The
+hereditary Emperor is nearly dead and has been so for many
+centuries. In the last moments of his dying coma he was locked in
+a statis field which keeps him in a state of perpetual
+unchangingness. All his heirs are now long dead, and this means
+that without any drastic political upheaval, power has simply and
+effectively moved a rung or two down the ladder, and is now seen
+to be vested in a body which used to act simply as advisers to
+the Emperor - an elected Governmental assembly headed by a
+President elected by that assembly. In fact it vests in no such
+place.
+
+The President in particular is very much a figurehead - he wields
+no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the
+government, but the qualities he is required to display are not
+those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this
+reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an
+infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield
+power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria
+Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the
+Galaxy has ever had - he has already spent two of his ten
+Presidential years in prison for fraud. Very very few people
+realize that the President and the Government have virtually no
+power at all, and of these very few people only six know whence
+ultimate political power is wielded. Most of the others secretly
+believe that the ultimate decision-making process is handled by a
+computer. They couldn't be more wrong.
+
+* Ford Prefect's original name is only pronuncible in an obscure
+Betelgeusian dialect, now virtually extinct since the Great
+Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758 which wiped out
+all the old Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven. Ford's
+father was the only man on the entire planet to survive the Great
+Collapsing Hrung disaster, by an extraordinary coincidence that
+he was never able satisfactorily to explain. The whole episode is
+shrouded in deep mystery: in fact no one ever knew what a Hrung
+was nor why it had chosen to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven
+particularly. Ford's father, magnanimously waving aside the
+clouds of suspicion that had inevitably settled around him, came
+to live on Betelgeuse Five where he both fathered and uncled
+Ford; in memory of his now dead race he christened him in the
+ancient Praxibetel tongue.
+
+Because Ford never learned to say his original name, his father
+eventually died of shame, which is still a terminal disease in
+some parts of the Galaxy. The other kids at school nicknamed him
+Ix, which in the language of Betelgeuse Five translates as "boy
+who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor
+why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven".
+