Douglas Adams "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"

To Jane and James

with many thanks

to Geoffrey Perkins for achieving the Improbable

to Paddy Kingsland, Lisa Braun and Alick Hale Munro  for  helping him

to John Lloyd for his help with the original Milliways script

to Simon Brett for starting the whole thing off

to the Paul Simon album One Trick Pony which I played incessantly

while writing this book. Five years is far too long

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

There is a theory which states  that  if  ever  anyone  discovers exactly  what  the  Universe  is  for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear  and  be  replaced  by  something  even  more bizarre and inexplicable.

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

Chapter 1

The story so far:

In the beginning the Universe was created.

This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Many races believe that it was  created  by  some  sort  of  God, though  the  Jatravartid  people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose  of  a  being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.

The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear  of  the  time  they call  The  Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than  fifty  arms  each,  who  are  therefore unique  in  being  the  only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.

However, the  Great  Green  Arkleseizure  Theory  is  not  widely accepted  outside  Viltvodle  VI  and  so, the Universe being the puzzling place it is, other  explanations  are  constantly  being sought.

For instance, a race of hyperintelligent  pan-dimensional  beings once  built  themselves  a  gigantic  supercomputer  called  Deep Thought to calculate once and for all the Answer to the  Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

For seven and a half million years,  Deep  Thought  computed  and calculated,  and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty-two - and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was.

And this computer, which was called the Earth, was so large  that it  was  frequently  mistaken  for  a  planet - especially by the strange ape-like beings who roamed its surface,  totally  unaware that they were simply part of a gigantic computer program.

And this is very odd, because  without  that  fairly  simple  and obvious  piece  of  knowledge,  nothing that ever happened on the Earth could possibly make the slightest bit of sense.

Sadly however, just before the critical moment  of  readout,  the Earth  was unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way - so they claimed - for a new hyperspace bypass, and so  all  hope  of discovering a meaning for life was lost for ever.

Or so it would seem.

Two of there strange, ape-like creatures survived.

Arthur Dent escaped at the very last moment because an old friend of  his,  Ford  Prefect,  suddenly  turned out to be from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he had  hitherto  claimed;  and,  more  to the point, he knew how to hitch rides on flying saucers.

Tricia McMillian - or Trillian  -  had  skipped  the  planet  six months  earlier with Zaphod Beeblebrox, the then President of the Galaxy.

Two survivors.

They are  all  that  remains  of  the  greatest  experiment  ever conducted - to find the Ultimate Question and the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

And, less than half a million miles from where their starship  is drifting lazily through the inky blackness of space, a Vogon ship is moving slowly towards them.

Chapter 2

Like all Vogon ships it looked as if it  had  been  not  so  much designed  as  congealed. The unpleasant yellow lumps and edifices which protuded from it at unsightly angles would have  disfigured the  looks  of  most  ships,  but  in  this  case  that was sadly impossible. Uglier things have been spotted in the skies, but not by reliable witnesses.

In fact to see anything much uglier than a Vogon ship  you  would have  to go inside and look at a Vogon. If you are wise, however, this is precisely what you will avoid doing because  the  average Vogon  will not think twice before doing something so pointlessly hideous to you that you will wish you had never been  born  -  or (if  you  are  a clearer minded thinker) that the Vogon had never been born.

In fact, the average Vogon probably  wouldn't  even  think  once.  They are simple-minded, thick-willed, slug-brained creatures, and thinking is not really something they are cut out for. Anatomical analysis  of  the  Vogon  reveals that its brain was originally a badly deformed, misplaced and dyspeptic liver. The fairest  thing you  can  say about them, then, is that they know what they like, and  what  they  like  generally  involves  hurting  people  and, wherever possible, getting very angry.

One  thing  they  don't  like  is  leaving  a  job  unfinished  - particularly this Vogon, and particularly - for various reasons - this job.

This Vogon was Captain Prostetnic Vogon  Jeltz  of  the  Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council, and he was it who had had the job of demolishing the so-called "planet" Earth.

He heaved his monumentally vile body round  in  his  ill-fitting, slimy seat and stared at the monitor screen on which the starship Heart of Gold was being systematically scanned.

It mattered little to him  that  the  Heart  of  Gold,  with  its Infinite   Improbability   Drive,  was  the  most  beautiful  and revolutionary ship ever built.  Aesthetics  and  technology  were closed  books  to  him  and, had he had his way, burnt and buried books as well.

It mattered even less to him that Zaphod Beeblebrox  was  aboard.  Zaphod  Beeblebrox  was  now  the ex-President of the Galaxy, and though every police force in the Galaxy  was  currently  pursuing both  him  and  this  ship  he  had  stolen,  the  Vogon  was not interested.

He had other fish to fry.

It has been said that Vogons are not above a little  bribery  and corruption  in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds, and this was certainly true in his case. When he heard the  words "integrity"  or "moral rectitude", he reached for his dictionary, and when he heard the chink of ready money in large quantities he reached for the rule book and threw it away.

In seeking so implacably the destruction of  the  Earth  and  all that therein lay he was moving somewhat above and beyond the call of his professional duty. There was even some doubt as to whether the  said  bypass  was actually going to be built, but the matter had been glossed over.

He grunted a repellent grunt of satisfaction.

"Computer," he croaked, "get me my brain care specialist  on  the line."

Within a few seconds the face of Gag  Halfrunt  appeared  on  the screen,  smiling  the  smile  of  a man who knew he was ten light years away from the Vogon  face  he  was  looking  at.  Mixed  up somewhere in the smile was a glint of irony too. Though the Vogon persistently  referred  to  him  as  "my   private   brain   care specialist"  there was not a lot of brain to take care of, and it was in fact Halfrunt who was employing the Vogon. He  was  paying him  an  awful lot of money to do some very dirty work. As one of the Galaxy's most prominent and successful psychiatrists, he  and a  consortium  of  his colleagues were quite prepared to spend an awful lot of money when it  seemed  that  the  entire  future  of psychiatry might be at stake.

"Well," he said, "hello my Captain of Vogons Prostetnic, and  how are we feeling today?"

The Vogon captain told him that in the  last  few  hours  he  had wiped out nearly half his crew in a disciplinary exercise.

Halfrunt's smile did not flicker for an instant.

"Well," he said, "I think this is perfectly normal behaviour  for a  Vogon,  you  know?  The natural and healthy channelling of the aggressive instincts into acts of senseless violence."

"That," rumbled the Vogon, "is what you always say."

"Well again," said Halfrunt, "I  think  that  this  is  perfectly normal  behaviour  for  a psychiatrist. Good. We are clearly both very well adjusted in our mental attitudes today.  Now  tell  me, what news of the mission?"

"We have located the ship."

"Wonderful," said Halfrunt, "wonderful! and the occupants?"

"The Earthman is there."

"Excellent! And ...?"

"A female from the same planet. They are the last."

"Good, good," beamed Halfrunt, "Who else?"

"The man Prefect."

"Yes?"

"And Zaphod Beeblebrox."

For an instant Halfrunt's smile flickered.

"Ah yes," he said,  "I  had  been  expecting  this.  It  is  most regrettable."

"A personal friend?"  inquired  the  Vogon,  who  had  heard  the expression somewhere once and decided to try it out.

"Ah, no," said Halfrunt, "in my profession you know,  we  do  not make personal friends."

"Ah," grunted the Vogon, "professional detachment."

"No," said Halfrunt cheerfully, "we just don't have the knack."

He paused. His mouth continued to smile,  but  his  eyes  frowned slightly.

"But Beeblebrox, you know," he  said,  "he  is  one  of  my  most profitable clients. He had personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts."

He toyed with this thought a little before reluctantly dismissing it.

"Still," he said, "you are ready for your task?"

"Yes."

"Good. Destroy the ship immediately."

"What about Beeblebrox?"

"Well," said Halfrunt brightly,  "Zaphod's  just  this  guy,  you know?"

He vanished from the screen.

The Vogon Captain pressed a communicator button  which  connected him with the remains of his crew.

"Attack," he said.

At that  precise  moment  Zaphod  Beeblebrox  was  in  his  cabin swearing  very loudly. Two hours ago, he had said that they would go for a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, whereupon  he  had had a blazing row with the ship's computer and stormed off to his cabin shouting that  he  would  work  out  the Improbability factors with a pencil.

The Heart of Gold's Improbability Drive made it the most powerful and  unpredictable  ship  in  existence.  There  was  nothing  it couldn't do, provided you knew exactly how improbable it was that the thing you wanted it to do would ever happen.

He had stolen it when, as President, he was meant to be launching it.  He  didn't know exactly why he had stolen it, except that he liked it.

He didn't know why he had become President of the Galaxy,  except that it seemed a fun thing to be.

He did know that there were better reasons than these,  but  that they were buried in a dark, locked off section of his two brains.  He wished the dark, locked off section of his two brains would go away  because  they  occasionally  surfaced  momentarily  and put strange thoughts into the light, fun sections  of  his  mind  and tried to deflect him from what he saw as being the basic business of his life, which was to have a wonderfully good time.

At the moment he was not having a wonderfully good time.  He  had run out of patience and pencils and was feeling very hungry.

"Starpox!" he shouted.

At that same precise moment, Ford Prefect was in  mid  air.  This was  not  because  of  anything  wrong with the ship's artificial gravity field, but because he was  leaping  down  the  stair-well which  led to the ship's personal cabins. It was a very high jump to do in one bound and he landed awkwardly, stumbled,  recovered, raced  down  the  corridor  sending a couple of miniature service robots flying, skidded round the corner, burst into Zaphod's door and explained what was on his mind.

"Vogons," he said.

A short while before this, Arthur Dent had set out from his cabin in  search  of  a cup of tea. It was not a quest he embarked upon with a great deal of optimism., because he  knew  that  the  only source  of hot drinks on the entire ship was a benighted piece of equipment produced by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. It  was called  a  Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer, and he had encountered it before.

It claimed  to  produce  the  widest  possible  range  of  drinks personally  matched to the tastes and metabolism of whoever cared to use it. When put to the test, however, it invariably  produced a  plastic  cup  filled  with  a  liquid that was almost, but nit quite, entirely unlike tea.

He attempted to reason with the thing.

"Tea," he said.

"Share and Enjoy," the machine replied and provided him with  yet another cup of the sickly liquid.

He threw it away.

"Share and enjoy," the machine repeated  and  provided  him  with another one.

"Share and Enjoy" is the company motto of the  hugely  successful Sirius  Cybernetics  Corporation  Complaints  division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is the  only  part  of  the  Corporation  to have shown a consistent profit in recent years.

The motto  stands  -  or  rather  stood  -  in  three  mile  high illuminated  letters  near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly  after  it was  erected,  the  ground  beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of  many talented young complaints executives - now deceased.

The protruding upper halves of the letters  now  appear,  in  the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig", and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.

Arthur threw away a sixth cup of the liquid.

"Listen, you machine," he said, "you claim you can synthesize any drink  in  existence,  so  why  do  you  keep  giving me the same undrinkable stuff?"

"Nutrition and pleasurable  sense  data,"  burbled  the  machine.

"Share and Enjoy."

"It tastes filthy!"

"If you have enjoyed the experience of this drink," continued the machine, "why not share it with your friends?"

"Because," said Arthur tartly, "I want to keep them. Will you try to comprehend what I'm telling you? That drink ..."

"That  drink,"  said  the  machine  sweetly,  "was   individually tailored  to  meet  your  personal requirements for nutrition and pleasure."

"Ah," said Arthur, "so I'm a masochist on diet am I?"

"Share and Enjoy."

"Oh shut up."

"Will that be all?"

Arthur decided to give up.

"Yes," he said.

Then he decided he'd be dammed if he'd give up.

"No," he said, "look, it's very, very simple ... all I  want  ...  is a cup of tea. You are going to make one for me. Keep quiet and listen."

And he sat. He told the Nutri-Matic about India, he told it about China,  he  told  it  about Ceylon. He told it about broad leaves drying in the sun. He told it about silver teapots.  He  told  it about  summer afternoons on the lawn. He told it about putting in the milk before the tea so it wouldn't get scalded. He even  told it (briefly) about the history of the East India Company.

"So that's it, is it?" said the Nutri-Matic when he had finished.

"Yes," said Arthur, "that is what I want."

"You want the taste of dried leaves boiled in water?"

"Er, yes. With milk."

"Squirted out of a cow?"

"Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose ..."

"I'm going to need some help with this  one,"  said  the  machine tersely.  All  the cheerful burbling had dropped out of its voice and it now meant business.

"Well, anything I can do," said Arthur.

"You've done quite enough," the Nutri-Matic informed him.

It summoned up the ship's computer.

"Hi there!" said the ship's computer.

The Nutri-Matic explained about tea to the ship's  computer.  The computer  boggled, linked logic circuits with the Nutri-Matic and together they lapsed into a grim silence.

Arthur watched and  waited  for  a  while,  but  nothing  further happened.

He thumped it, but still nothing happened.

Eventually he gave up and wandered up to the bridge.

In the empty wastes of space,  the  Heart  of  Gold  hung  still.  Around  it blazed the billion pinpricks of the Galaxy. Towards it crept the ugly yellow lump of the Vogon ship.

Chapter 3

"Does anyone have a kettle?" Arthur asked as he walked on to  the bridge, and instantly began to wonder why Trillian was yelling at the computer to talk to her, Ford was thumping it and Zaphod  was kicking  it,  and  also  why there was a nasty yellow lump on the vision screen.

He put down the empty cup he was  carrying  and  walked  over  to them.

"Hello?" he said.

At that moment Zaphod flung himself over to the  polished  marble surfaces  that  contained  the  instruments  that  controlled the conventional photon drive. They materialized  beneath  his  hands and  he  flipped over to manual control. He pushed, he pulled, he pressed and he swore. The photon drive gave a sickly  judder  and cut out again.

"Something up?" said Arthur.

"Hey, didja hear that?" muttered Zaphod as he leapt now  for  the manual  controls of the Infinite Improbability Drive, "the monkey spoke!"

The Improbability Drive gave two small whines and then  also  cut out.

"Pure history,  man,"  said  Zaphod,  kicking  the  Improbability Drive, "a talking monkey!"

"If you're upset about something ..." said Arthur.

"Vogons!" snapped Ford, "we're under attack!"

Arthur gibbered.

"Well what are you doing? Let's get out of here!"

"Can't. Computer's jammed."

"Jammed?"

"It says all its circuits are occupied. There's no power anywhere in the ship."

Ford moved away from the computer terminal, wiped a sleeve across his forehead and slumped back against the wall.

"Nothing we can do," he said. He glared at nothing  and  bit  his lip.

When Arthur had been a boy at school, long before the  Earth  had been demolished, he had used to play football. He had not been at all good at it, and his particular speciality  had  been  scoring own goals in important matches. Whenever this happened he used to experience a peculiar tingling round the back of  his  neck  that would  slowly  creep  up across his cheeks and heat his brow. The image of mud and grass and lots of little jeering  boys  flinging it at him suddenly came vividly to his mind at this moment.

A peculiar tingling  sensation  at  the  back  of  his  neck  was creeping up across his cheeks and heating his brow.

He started to speak, and stopped.

He started to speak again and stopped again.

Finally he managed to speak.

"Er," he said. He cleared his throat.

"Tell me," he continued, and said it so nervously that the others all  turned to stare at him. He glanced at the approaching yellow blob on the vision screen.

"Tell me,"  he  said  again,  "did  the  computer  say  what  was occupying it? I just ask out of interest ..."

Their eyes were riveted on him.

"And, er ... well that's it really, just asking."

Zaphod put out a hand and held Arthur by the scruff of the neck.

"What have you done to it, Monkeyman?" he breathed.

"Well," said Arthur, "nothing in fact. It's just that I  think  a short while ago it was trying to work out how to ..."

"Yes?"

"Make me some tea."

"That's right guys," the computer sang out suddenly, "just coping with  that  problem right now, and wow, it's a biggy. Be with you in a while." It lapsed back into a silence that was only  matched for sheer intensity by the silence of the three people staring at Arthur Dent.

As if to relieve the tension, the Vogons  chose  that  moment  to start firing.

The ship shook, the  ship  thundered.  Outside,  the  inch  thick force-shield  around  it  blistered,  crackled and spat under the barrage of a dozen 30-Megahurt Definit-Kil Photrazon Cannon,  and looked  as if it wouldn't be around for long. Four minutes is how long Ford Prefect gave it."Three minutes and fifty  seconds,"  he said a short while later.

"Forty-five seconds,"  he  added  at  the  appropriate  time.  He flicked  idly  at  some  useless  switches,  then  gave Arthur an unfriendly look.

"Dying for a cup of tea, eh?" he said. "Three minutes  and  forty seconds."

"Will you stop counting!" snarled Zaphod.

"Yes," said Ford  Prefect,  "in  three  minutes  and  thirty-five seconds."

Aboard the Vogon ship, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was puzzled. He had expected  a  chase,  he  had  expected  an  exciting grapple with tractor beams, he had expected  to  have  to  use  the  specially installed Sub-Cyclic Normality Assert-i-Tron to counter the Heart of  Gold's  Infinite  Improbability  Drive,  but  the  Sub-Cyclic Normality  Assert-i-Tron  lay  idle as the Heart of Gold just sat there and took it.

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

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

He didn't know about the tea of course.

Nor did he know exactly how the occupants of the  Heart  of  Gold were  spending  the last three minutes and thirty seconds of life they had left to spend.

Quite how Zaphod Beeblebrox arrived at  the  idea  of  holding  a seance at this point is something he was never quite clear on.

Obviously the subject of death  was  in  the  air,  but  more  as something to be avoided than harped upon.

Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at  the  prospect  of being  reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might just feel the same  way  about  him  and,  what's more,  be  able  to  do  something about helping to postpone this reunion.

Or again it might just have been one of  the  strange  promptings that  occasionally  surfaced from that dark area of his mind that he had inexplicably locked off prior to becoming President of the Galaxy.

"You want to talk to your great grandfather?" boggled Ford.

"Yeah."

"Does it have to be now?"

The ship continued to shake  and  thunder.  The  temperature  was rising.  The  light  was  getting  dimmer  -  all  the energy the computer didn't require for thinking about tea was  being  pumped into the rapidly fading force-field.

"Yeah!" insisted Zaphod. "Listen Ford, I think he may be able  to help us."

"Are you sure you mean think? Pick your words with care."

"Suggest something else we can do."

"Er, well ..."

"OK,  round  the  central  console.  Now.  Come   on!   Trillian, Monkeyman, move."

They clustered round the central console in confusion,  sat  down and,  feeling  exceptionally  foolish, held hands. With his third hand Zaphod turned off the lights.

Darkness gripped the ship.

Outside, the thunderous roar of the Definit-Kil cannon  continued to rip at the force-field.

"Concentrate," hissed Zaphod, "on his name."

"What is it?" asked Arthur.

"Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth."

"What?"

"Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. Concentrate!"

"The Fourth?"

"Yeah. Listen,  I'm  Zaphod  Beeblebrox,  my  father  was  Zaphod

Beeblebrox the Second, my grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third

"What?"

"There was an accident with a contraceptive and a  time  machine.

Now concentrate!"

"Three minutes," said Ford Prefect.

"Why," said Arthur Dent, "are we doing this?"

"Shut up," suggested Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Trillian said nothing. What, she thought, was there to say?

The only light on the bridge came from two dim red triangles in a far  corner  where  Marvin  the  Paranoid  Android  sat  slumped, ignoring all  and  ignored  by  all,  in  a  private  and  rather unpleasant world of his own.

Round  the  central  console  four  figures  hunched   in   tight concentration  trying  to  blot  from  their minds the terrifying shuddering of the ship and the fearful roar that  echoed  through it.

They concentrated.

Still they concentrated.

And still they concentrated.

The seconds ticked by.

On Zaphod's brow stood beads of sweat,  first  of  concentration, then of frustration and finally of embarrassment.

At last he let out a cry of anger, snatched back his  hands  from Trillian and Ford and stabbed at the light switch.

"Ah, I was beginning to think you'd never turn  the  lights  on," said  a  voice.  "No,  not too bright please, my eyes aren't what they once were."

Four figures jolted upright in their seats.  Slowly  they  turned their  heads  to  look,  though  their  scalps  showed a distinct propensity to try and stay in the same place.

"Now. Who disturbs me at this time?" said the small, bent,  gaunt figure  standing  by  the  sprays  of  fern at the far end of the bridge. His two small wispy-haired heads looked so  ancient  that it  seemed  they  might  hold  dim  memories  of the birth of the galaxies themselves. One lolled in sleep, but the other  squinted sharply  at  them.  If his eyes weren't what they once were, they must once have been diamond cutters.

Zaphod stuttered nervously for a moment. He  gave  the  intricate little  double  nod which is the traditional Betelgeusian gesture of familial respect.

"Oh ... er, hi Great Granddad ..." he breathed.

The little old  figure  moved  closer  towards  them.  He  peered through  the  dim light. He thrust out a bony finger at his great grandson.

"Ah," he snapped. "Zaphod Beeblebrox. The last of our great line.

Zaphod Beeblebrox the Nothingth."

"The First."

"The Nothingth," spat the figure.  Zaphod  hated  his  voice.  It always  seemed  to  him  to  screech  like fingernails across the blackboard of what he liked to think of as his soul.

He shifted awkwardly in his seat.

"Er, yeah," he muttered, "Er, look, I'm really  sorry  about  the flowers,  I  meant to send them along, but you know, the shop was fresh out of wreaths and ..."

"You forget!" snapped Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth.

"Well ..."

"Too busy. Never think of other people. The living  are  all  the same."

"Two minutes, Zaphod," whispered Ford in an awed whisper.

Zaphod fidgeted nervously.

"Yeah, but I did mean to send them," he said. "And I'll write  to

my  great grandmother as well, just as soon as we get out of this

"Your great  grandmother,"  mused  the  gaunt  little  figure  to himself.

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "Er, how is she? Tell you what, I'll go  and see her. But first we've just got to ..."

"Your late great grandmother and I are very well," rasped  Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth.

"Ah. Oh."

"But very disappointed in you, young Zaphod ..."

"Yeah well ..." Zaphod felt strangely powerless to take charge of this  conversation,  and  Ford's heavy breathing at his side told him that the seconds were ticking away fast. The  noise  and  the shaking  had  reached terrifying proportions. He saw Trillian and Arthur's faces white and unblinking in the gloom.

"Er, Great Grandfather ..."

"We've been following your progress with considerable despondency

"Yeah, look, just at the moment you see ..."

"Not to say contempt!"

"Could you sort of listen for a moment ..."

"I mean what exactly are you doing with your life?"

"I'm being attacked by a Vogon fleet!" cried Zaphod.  It  was  an exaggeration,  but  it was his only opportunity so far of getting the basic point of the exercise across.

"Doesn't surprise me in the least," said the  little  old  figure with a shrug.

"Only  it's  happening  right  now  you  see,"  insisted   Zaphod feverishly.

The spectral ancestor nodded, picked up the cup Arthur  Dent  had brought in and looked at it with interest.

"Er ... Great Granddad ..."

"Did you know," interrupting the ghostly  figure,  fixing  Zaphod with  a  stern  look,  "that Betelgeuse Five has developed a very slight eccentricy in its orbit?"

Zaphod didn't and found the information hard  to  concentrate  on what with all the noise and the imminence of death and so on.

"Er, no ... look," he said.

"Me spinning in my grave!" barked the ancestor.  He  slammed  the cup  down  and pointed a quivering, stick-like see-through finger at Zaphod.

"Your fault!" he screeched.

"One minute thirty," muttered Ford, his head in his hands.

"Yeah, look Great Granddad, can you actually help because ..."

"Help?" exclaimed the old man as if he'd been asked for a stoat.

"Yeah, help, and like, now, because otherwise ..."

"Help!" repeated the old man as if he'd been asked for a  lightly grilled stoat in a bun with French fries. He stood amazed.

"You go swanning your way round the Galaxy  with  your  ..."  the ancestor  waved  a  contemptuous  hand,  "with  your disreputable friends, too busy to put flowers on my grave, plastic ones  would have  done,  would  have been quite appropriate from you, but no.  Too busy. Too modern. Too sceptical  -  till  you  suddenly  find yourself  in  a bit of a fix and come over suddenly all astrally-minded!"

He shook his head - carefully, so as not to disturb  the  slumber of the other one, which was already becoming restive.

"Well, I don't know, young Zaphod," he continued, "I  think  I'll have to think about this one."

"One minute ten," said Ford hollowly.

Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth peered at him curiously.

"Why does that man keep talking in numbers?" he said.

"Those numbers," said Zaphod tersely, "are  the  time  we've  got left to live."

"Oh," said his great grandfather. He grunted to himself. "Doesn't apply to me, of course," he said and moved off to a dimmer recess of the bridge in search of something else to poke around at.

Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and  wondered if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it.

"Great Grandfather," he said, "It applies to  us!  We  are  still alive, and we are about to lose our lives."

"Good job too."

"What?"

"What use is your life to anyone? When I  think  of  what  you've made of it the phrase `pig's ear' comes irresistibly to my mind."

"But I was President of the Galaxy, man!"

"Huh," muttered his ancestor, "And what kind of a job is that for a Beeblebrox?"

"Hey, what? Only President you know! Of the whole Galaxy!"

"Conceited little megapuppy."

Zaphod blinked in bewilderment.

"Hey, er, what are you at, man? I mean Great Grandfather."

The hunched up little figure stalked up to his great grandson and tapped  him sternly on the knee. This had the effect of reminding Zaphod that he was talking to a ghost because he  didn't  feel  a thing.

"You know and I know what being President  means,  young  Zaphod.  You  know because you've been it, and I know because I'm dead and it gives one such a wonderfully uncluttered perspective. We  have a saying up here. `Life is wasted on the living.'"

"Yeah," said Zaphod bitterly, "very good. Very deep. Right now  I need aphorisms like I need holes in my heads."

"Fifty seconds," grunted Ford Prefect.

"Where was I?" said Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth.

"Pontificating," said Zaphod Beeblebrox.

"Oh yes."

"Can this guy," muttered Ford quietly  to  Zaphod,  "actually  in fact help us?"

"Nobody else can," whispered Zaphod.

Ford nodded despondently.

"Zaphod!" the ghost was saying,  "you  became  President  of  the Galaxy for a reason. Have you forgotten?"

"Could we go into this later?"

"Have you forgotten!" insisted the ghost.

"Yeah! Of course I forgot! I had  to  forget.  They  screen  your brain when you get the job you know. If they'd found my head full of tricksy ideas I'd have been right out  on  the  streets  again with  nothing  but  a  fat pension, secretarial staff, a fleet of ships and a couple of slit throats."

"Ah," nodded the ghost in satisfaction, "then you do remember!"

He paused for a moment.

"Good," he said and the noise stopped.

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

"Hey, the noise has stopped," he said.

A mischievous twinkle gleamed in the ghost's hard little eyes.

"I've slowed down time for a moment," he said, "just for a moment you understand. I would hate you to miss all I have to say."

"No, you listen to me, you  see-through  old  bat,"  said  Zaphod leaping  out  of his chair, "A - thanks for stopping time and all that, great, terrific, wonderful, but  B  -  no  thanks  for  the homily, right? I don't know what this great think I'm meant to be doing is, and it looks to me as if I was supposed  not  to  know.  And I resent that, right?

"The old me knew. The old me cared. Fine, so far so hoopy. Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain - my own brain - and locked off  the  bits  that  knew  and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it. I wouldn't be able to go and be President, and I wouldn't  be  able to steal this ship, which must be the important thing.

"But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't  he,  by changing  my  brain? OK, that was his choice. This new me has its own choices to make, and by a strange coincidence  those  choices involve  not  knowing  and  not  caring  about  this  big number, whatever it is. That's what he wanted, that's what he got.

"Except this old self of mine tried to leave himself in  control, leaving orders for me in the bit of my brain he locked off. Well, I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear  them.  That's  my choice. I'm not going to be anybody's puppet, particularly not my own."

Zaphod banged the console in fury, oblivious  to  the  dumbfolded looks he was attracting.

"The old me  is  dead!"  he  raved,  "Killed  himself!  The  dead shouldn't hang about trying to interfere with the living!"

"And yet you summon me up to help you out of a scrape," said  the ghost.

"Ah," said Zaphod, sitting down  again,  "well  that's  different isn't it?"

He grinned at Trillian, weakly.

"Zaphod," rasped the apparition, "I think the only reason I waste my  breath  on  you is that being dead I don't have any other use for it."

"OK," said Zaphod, "why don't you tell me what the big secret is.

Try me."

"Zaphod, you knew when you were President of the Galaxy,  as  did Yooden Vranx before you, that the President is nothing. A cipher.  Somewhere in the shadows behind is another man, being, something, with  ultimate  power. That man, or being, or something, you must find - the man who controls this  Galaxy,  and  -  we  suspect  - others. Possibly the entire Universe."

"Why?"

"Why?" exclaimed an astonished ghost, "Why? Look around you  lad, does it look to you as if it's in very good hands?"

"It's alright."

The old ghost glowered at him.

"I will not argue with you. You will simply take this ship,  this Improbability  Drive  ship to where it is needed. You will do it.  Don't think you can escape your purpose. The Improbability  Field controls you, you are in its grip. What's this?"

He was standing tapping at one of  the  terminals  of  Eddie  the Shipboard Computer. Zaphod told him.

"What's it doing?"

"It is trying," said Zaphod with wonderful  restraint,  "to  make tea."

"Good," said his great  grandfather,  "I  approve  of  that.  Now Zaphod,  "he  said, turning and wagging a finger at him, "I don't know if you are really capable of succeeding in your job. I think you will not be able to avoid it. However, I am too long dead and too tired to care as much as I did. The  principal  reason  I  am helping  you  now  is that I couldn't bear the thought of you and your modern friends slouching about up here. Understood?"

"Yeah, thanks a bundle."

"Oh, and Zaphod?"

"Er, yeah?"

"If you ever find you need help again, you  know,  if  you're  in trouble, need a hand out of a tight corner ..."

"Yeah?"

"Please don't hesitate to get lost."

Within the space of one second, a bolt of light flashed from  the wizened  old  ghost's  hands to the computer, the ghost vanished, the bridge filled with billowing smoke  and  the  Heart  of  Gold leapt  an  unknown  distance  through  the dimensions of time and space.

Chapter 4

Ten light years away, Gag Halfrunt jacked up his smile by several notches.  As he watched the picture on his vision screen, relayed across the sub-ether from the bridge of the Vogon  ship,  he  saw the final shreds of the Heart of Gold's force-shield ripped away, and the ship itself vanish in a puff of smoke.

Good, he thought.

The end of the last stray survivors  of  the  demolition  he  had ordered on the planet Earth, he thought.

The final end of this dangerous (to the  psychiatric  profession) and subversive (also to the psychiatric profession) experiment to find the Question to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, he thought.

There would be some celebration with his fellows tonight, and  in the  morning  they would meet again their unhappy, bewildered and highly profitable patients, secure  in  the  knowledge  that  the Meaning  of  Life  would  not  now be, once and for all, well and truly sorted out, he thought.

"Family's always embarrassing isn't it?" said Ford to  Zaphod  as the smoke began to clear.

He paused, then looked about.

"Where's Zaphod?" he said.

Arthur and Trillian looked about  blankly.  They  were  pale  and shaken and didn't know where Zaphod was.

"Marvin?" said Ford, "Where's Zaphod?"

A moment later he said:

"Where's Marvin?"

The robot's corner was empty.

The ship was  utterly  silent.  It  lay  in  thick  black  space.  Occasionally  it  rocked  and  swayed. Every instrument was dead, every vision screen was dead. They  consulted  the  computer.  It said:

"I  regret  that  I  have  been   temporarily   closed   to   all communication. Meanwhile, here is some light music."

They turned off the light music.

They searched every corner of the ship in increasing bewilderment and  alarm. Everywhere was dead and silent. Nowhere was there any trace of Zaphod or of Marvin.

One of the last areas they checked was the small bay in which the Nutri-Matic machine was located.

On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was  a small  tray,  on  which  sat three bone china cups and saucers, a bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot  full  of  the  best  tea Arthur had ever tasted, and a small printed note saying "Wait".

Chapter 5

Ursa Minor Beta is, some say, one of the most appalling places in the known Universe.

Although it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny  and  more full  of  wonderfully  exciting  people  than a pomegranate is of pips, it can hardly be insignificant that when a  recent  edition of  Playbeing  magazine headlined an article with the words "When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you  are  tired  of  life",  the suicide rate quadrupled overnight.

Not that there are any nights on Ursa Minor Beta.

It is a West Zone planet which by an  inexplicable  and  somewhat suspicious  freak  of topography consists almost entirely of sub-tropical coastline. By an equally suspicious  freak  of  temporal relastatics,  it  is nearly always Saturday afternoon just before the beach bars close.

No adequate explanation for this has been  forthcoming  from  the dominant  lifeforms  on  Ursa Minor Beta, who spend most of their time attempting to achieve  spiritual  enlightenment  by  running round  swimming  pools, and inviting Investigation Officials form the Galactic Geo-Temporal Control Board to "have a  nice  diurnal anomaly".

There is only one city on Ursa  Minor  Beta,  and  that  is  only called  a city because the swimming pools are slightly thicker on the ground there than elsewhere.

If you approach Light City by air - and there is no other way  of approaching  it,  no roads, no port facilities - if you don't fly they don't want to see you in Light City - you will  see  why  it has  this  name. Here the sun shines brightest of all, glittering on the  swimming  pools,  shimmering  on  the  white,  palm-lined boulevards,  glistening  on  the healthy bronzed specks moving up and down them, gleaming off the villas,  the  hazy  airpads,  the beach bars and so on.

Most particularly it shines  on  a  building,  a  tall  beautiful building  consisting  of two thirty-storey white towers connected by a bridge half-way up their length.

The building is the home of a book, and was  built  here  on  the proceeds  of  an  extraordinary copyright law suit fought between the book's editors and a breakfast cereal company.

The book is a guide book, a travel book.

It is one of the most remarkable, certainly the most  successful, books  ever  to  come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor - more popular than Life Begins at  Five  Hundred  and Fifty,  better selling than The Big Bang Theory - A Personal View by Eccentrica Gallumbits (the triple breasted whore  of  Eroticon Six)   and  more  controversial  than  Oolon  Colluphid's  latest blockbusting title Everything You Never Wanted To Know About  Sex But Have Been Forced To Find Out.

(And in many of the  more  relaxed  civilizations  on  the  Outer Eastern  Rim  of  the  Galaxy,  it  has long surplanted the great Encyclopaedia  Galactica  as  the  standard  repository  of   all knowledge  and  wisdom,  for  though  it  has  many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly  inaccurate, it  scores  over  the  older  and  more  pedestrian  work  in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper,  and  secondly it has the words Don't Panic printed in large friendly letters on its cover.)

It is of course that invaluable companion for all those who  want to  see  the  marvels  of the known Universe for less than thirty Altairan Dollars a day - The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

If you stood with your back to the main  entrance  lobby  of  the Guide  offices  (assuming  you had landed by now and freshened up with a quick dip and shower) and then walked east, you would pass along  the  leafy  shade of Life Boulevard, be amazed by the pale golden colour of  the  beaches  stretching  away  to  your  left, astounded  by the mind-surfers floating carelessly along two feet above the waves as if  it  was  nothing  special,  surprised  and eventually  slightly  irritated  by the giant palm trees that hum toneless nothings throughout the daylight hours, in  other  words continuously.

If you then walked to the end of Life Boulevard you  would  enter

the  Lalamatine  district  of  shops,  bolonut trees and pavement

cafes where the UM-Betans come to relax after a hard  afternoon's

relaxation  on the beach. The Lalamatine district is one of those

very few areas which doesn't enjoy a perpetual Saturday afternoon

-  it  enjoys  instead  the  cool  of  a perpetual early Saturday evening. Behind it lie the night clubs.

If, on this particular day, afternoon, stretch of  eveningtime  - call  it  what  you will - you had approached the second pavement cafe on the right you would have seen  the  usual  crowd  of  UM-Betans  chatting,  drinking,  looking  very relaxed, and casually glancing at each other's watches to see how expensive they were.

You would also have seen a couple of rather  dishevelled  looking hitch-hikers  from  Algol who had recently arrived on an Arcturan Megafreighter aboard which they had been roughing it  for  a  few days.  They  were  angry  and  bewildered  to discover that here, within sight of the Hitch Hiker's Guide building itself, a simple glass  of  fruit juice cost the equivalent of over sixty Altairan dollars.

"Sell out," one of them said, bitterly.

If at that moment you had then looked at the next table  but  one you  would  have  seen Zaphod Beeblebrox sitting and looking very startled and confused.

The reason for his confusion was that five seconds earlier he had been sitting on the bridge of the starship Heart of Gold.

"Absolute sell out," said the voice again.

Zaphod looked nervously out of the corners of his eyes at the two dishevelled  hitch-hikers  at  the next table. Where the hell was he? How had he got there? Where was his ship? His hand  felt  the arm  of  the chair on which he was sitting, and then the table in front of him. They seemed solid enough. He sat very still.

"How can they sit and write a guide for hitch-hikers in  a  place like this?" continued the voice. "I mean look at it. Look at it!"

Zaphod was looking at it. Nice place, he thought. But where?  And why?

He fished in his pocket for his two pairs of sunglasses.  In  the same  pocket  he  felt  a  hard smooth, unidentified lump of very heavy metal. He pulled it out and looked at it. He blinked at  it in  surprise. Where had he got that? He returned it to his pocket and put on the sunglasses, annoyed to  discover  that  the  metal object  had  scratched  one  of the lenses. Nevertheless, he felt much more comfortable with them on. They were a  double  pair  of Joo  Janta  200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, which had been specially designed to  help  people  develop  a  relaxed attitude  to  danger.  At  the  first  hint  of trouble they turn totally black and thus prevent  you  from  seeing  anything  that might alarm you.

Apart from the scratch the lenses were  clear.  He  relaxed,  but only a little bit.

The angry hitch-hiker  continued  to  glare  at  his  monstrously expensive fruit juice.

"Worst thing that ever happened to  the  Guide,  moving  to  Ursa Minor  Beta," he grumbled, "they've all gone soft. You know, I've even   heard  that   they've  created  a   whole   electronically synthesized  Universe  in one of their offices so they can go and research stories during the day and still go to  parties  in  the evening. Not that day and evening mean much in this place."

Ursa Minor Beta, thought Zaphod. At least he knew  where  he  was now.  He assumed that this must be his great grandfather's doing, but why?

Much to his annoyance, a thought popped into  his  mind.  It  was very  clear  and  very distinct, and he had now come to recognize these thoughts for what they were. His  instinct  was  to  resist them.  They  were  the  pre-ordained promptings from the dark and locked off parts of his mind.

He sat still and ignored the thought furiously. It nagged at him.

He ignored it. It nagged at him. He ignored it. It nagged at him.

He gave in to it.

What the hell, he thought, go with the flow. He  was  too  tired, confused  and  hungry  to  resist.  He  didn't even know what the thought meant.

Chapter 6

"Hello? Yes? Megadodo Publications, home  of  the  Hitch  Hiker's Guide  to  the  Galaxy,  the  most totally remarkable book in the whole of the known Universe, can I  help  you?"  said  the  large pink-winged  insect into one of the seventy phones lined up along the vast chrome expanse of the reception desk in the foyer of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy offices. It fluttered its wings and  rolled  its  eyes.  It  glared  at  all  the  grubby  people cluttering  up  the  foyer, soiling the carpets and leaving dirty handmarks on the upholstery. It  adored  working  for  the  Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it just wished there was some way of keeping all the hitch-hikers  away.  Weren't  they  meant  to  be hanging  round dirty spaceports or something? It was certain that it had read something somewhere in the book about the  importance of  hanging  round  dirty  spaceports. Unfortunately most of them seemed to come and hang around in this  nice  clean  shiny  foyer after  hanging around in extremely dirty spaceports. And all they ever did was complain. It shivered its wings.

"What?" it said into the phone. "Yes, I passed on your message to Mr  Zarniwoop, but I'm afraid he's too cool to see you right now.  He's on an intergalactic cruise."

It waved a petulant tentacle at one of the grubby people who  was angrily  trying  to  engage  its attention. The petulant tentacle directed the angry person to look at the notice on  the  wall  to its left and not to interrupt an important phone call.

"Yes," said the insect, "he is in his  office,  but  he's  on  an intergalactic  cruise. Thank you so much for calling." It slammed down the phone.

"Read the notice," it said to the angry man  who  was  trying  to complain  about one of the more ludicrous and dangerous pieces of misinformation contained in the book.

The Hitch  Hiker's  Guide  to  the  Galaxy  is  an  indispensable companion  to  all those who are keen to make sense of life in an infinitely complex and confusing Universe, for though  it  cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does at least make the reassuring claim, that where it is inaccurate it  is  at least  definitely  inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it's always reality that's got it wrong.

This  was  the  gist  of  the  notice.  It  said  "The  Guide  is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate."

This has led to some interesting consequences. For instance, when the  Editors  of the Guide were sued by the families of those who had died as a result of taking the  entry  on  the  planet  Traal literally  (it said "Ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very good meal for visiting tourists" instead of "Ravenous  Bugblatter beasts  often  make  a very good meal of visiting tourists") they claimed that the first version  of  the  sentence  was  the  more aesthetically  pleasing,  summoned  a  qualified  poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty and hoped  thereby to  prove that the guilty party was Life itself for failing to be either beautiful or true. The judges concurred, and in  a  moving speech  held  that Life itself was in contempt of court, and duly confiscated it from all those there present before going  off  to enjoy a pleasant evening's ultragolf.

Zaphod Beeblebrox entered the foyer. He strode up to  the  insect receptionist.

"OK," he said, "Where's Zarniwoop? Get me Zarniwoop."

"Excuse me, sir?" said the insect icily. It did not  care  to  be addressed in this manner.

"Zarniwoop. Get him, right? Get him now."

"Well, sir," snapped the fragile little creature, "if  you  could be a little cool about it ..."

"Look," said Zaphod, "I'm up  to  here  with  cool,  OK?  I'm  so amazingly  cool  you  could  keep  a side of meat inside me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my  pelvis.  Now will you move before you blow it?"

"Well, if you'd let me explain, sir," said the insect tapping the most  petulant  of all the tentacles at its disposal, "I'm afraid that  isn't  possible  right  now  as  Mr  Zarniwoop  is  on   an intergalactic cruise."

Hell, thought Zaphod.

"When he's going to be back?" he said.

"Back sir? He's in his office."

Zaphod paused while he tried to sort this particular thought  out in his mind. He didn't succeed.

"This cat's on an intergalactic cruise ...  in  his  office?"  He leaned forward and gripped the tapping tentacle.

"Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird  me.  I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal."

"Well, just who do you think you are, honey?" flounced the insect quivering its wings in rage, "Zaphod Beeblebrox or something?"

"Count the heads," said Zaphod in a low rasp.

The insect blinked at him. It blinked at him again.

"You are Zaphod Beeblebrox?" it squeaked.

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "but don't shout it out or they'll all  want one."

"The Zaphod Beeblebrox?"

"No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn't you  hear  I  come  in  six packs?"

The insect rattled its tentacles together in agitation.

"But sir," it squealed, "I just  heard  on  the  sub-ether  radio report. It said that you were dead ..."

"Yeah, that's right," said Zaphod, "I just haven't stopped moving yet. Now. Where do I find Zarniwoop?"

"Well, sir, his office is on the fifteenth floor, but ..."

"But he's on an intergalactic cruise, yeah, yeah, how do I get to him."

"The newly  installed  Sirius  Cybernetics  Corporation  Vertical People Transporters are in the far corner sir. But sir ..."

Zaphod was turning to go. He turned back.

"Yeah?" he said.

"Can I ask you why you want to see Mr Zarniwoop?"

"Yeah," said Zaphod, who was unclear on this  point  himself,  "I told myself I had to."

"Come again sir?"

Zaphod leaned forward, conspirationally.

"I just materialized out of thin air in one of  your  cafes,"  he said,  "as  a  result  of  an argument with the ghost of my great grandfather. No sooner had I got there that my former  self,  the one  that  operated on my brain, popped into my head and said `Go see Zarniwoop'. I have never heard of the  cat.  That  is  all  I know.  That  and the fact that I've got to find the man who rules the Universe."

He winked.

"Mr Beeblebrox, sir," said the insect in awed wonder, "you're  so weird you should be in movies."

"Yeah," said Zaphod patting the thing on a glittering pink  wing, "and you, baby, should be in real life."

The insect paused for a moment to recover from its agitation  and then reached out a tentacle to answer a ringing phone.

A metal hand restrained it.

"Excuse me," said the owner of the metal hand  in  a  voice  that would  have  made  an  insect  of  a more sentimental disposition collapse in tears.

This was not such an insect, and it couldn't stand robots.

"Yes, sir," it snapped, "can I help you?"

"I doubt it," said Marvin.

"Well in that case, if you'll just excuse  me  ..."  Six  of  the phones  were  now  ringing. A million things awaited the insect's attention.

"No one can help me," intoned Marvin.

"Yes, sir, well ..."

"Not that anyone tried of course."  The  restraining  metal  hand fell  limply  by  Marvin's  side.  His  head  hung  forward  very slightly.

"Is that so," said the insect tartly.

"Hardly worth anyone's while to help a menial robot is it?"

"I'm sorry, sir, if ..."

"I mean where's the percentage in being  kind  or  helpful  to  a robot if it doesn't have any gratitude circuits?"

"And you don't have any?" said the insect, who didn't seem to  be able to drag itself out of this conversation.

"I've never had occasion to find out," Marvin informed it.

"Listen, you miserable heap of maladjusted metal ..."

"Aren't you going to ask me what I want?"

The insect paused. Its long thin tongue darted out and licked its eyes and darted back again.

"Is it worth it?" it asked.

"Is anything?" said Marvin immediately.

"What ... do ... you ... want?"

"I'm looking for someone."

"Who?" hissed the insect.

"Zaphod Beeblebrox," said Marvin, "he's over there."

The insect shook with rage. It could hardly speak.

"Then why did you ask me?" it screamed.

"I just wanted something to talk to," said Marvin.

"What!"

"Pathetic isn't it?"

With a grinding of gears  Marvin  turned  and  trundled  off.  He caught  up  with  Zaphod  approaching  the elevators. Zaphod span round in astonishment.

"Hey ... Marvin!" he said, "Marvin! How did you get here?"

Marvin was forced to say something which came very hard to him.

"I don't know," he said.

"But ..."

"One moment I was sitting in your ship  feeling  very  depressed, and   the  next  moment  I  was  standing  here  feeling  utterly miserable. An Improbability Field I expect."

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "I expect  my  great  grandfather  sent  you along to keep me company."

"Thanks a bundle grandad," he added to himself under his breath.

"So, how are you?" he said aloud.

"Oh, fine," said Marvin, "if you happen to like  being  me  which personally I don't."

"Yeah, yeah," said Zaphod as the elevator doors opened.

"Hello," said the elevator sweetly, "I am to be your elevator for this  trip  to  the floor of your choice. I have been designed by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation to take you,  the  visitor  to the  Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, into these their offices.  If you enjoy your ride, which will be swift and pleasurable, then you may care to experience some of the other elevators which have recently been installed  in  the  offices  of  the  Galactic  tax department,  Boobiloo  Baby  Foods  and  the  Sirian State Mental Hospital, where many ex-Sirius Cybernetics Corporation executives will  be  delighted  to  welcome your visits, sympathy, and happy tales of the outside world."

"Yeah," said Zaphod, stepping into  it,  "what  else  do  you  do besides talk?"

"I go up," said the elevator, "or down."

"Good," said Zaphod, "We're going up."

"Or down," the elevator reminded him.

"Yeah, OK, up please."

There was a moment of silence.

"Down's very nice," suggested the elevator hopefully.

"Oh yeah?"

"Super."

"Good," said Zaphod, "Now will you take us up?"

"May I ask you," inquired the  elevator  in  its  sweetest,  most reasonable  voice,  "if  you've  considered all the possibilities that down might offer you?"

Zaphod knocked one of his  heads  against  the  inside  wall.  He didn't  need  this,  he thought to himself, this of all things he had no need of. He hadn't asked to be here. If he  was  asked  at this moment where he would like to be he would probably have said he would like to be lying  on  the  beach  with  at  least  fifty beautiful  women and a small team of experts working out new ways they could be nice to him, which was his usual reply. To this  he would  probably have added something passionate on the subject of food.

One thing he didn't want to be doing was chasing  after  the  man who  ruled  the Universe, who was only doing a job which he might as well keep at, because if  it  wasn't  him  it  would  only  be someone  else.  Most  of  all he didn't want to be standing in an office block arguing with an elevator.

"Like what other possibilities?" he asked wearily.

"Well," the voice trickled on like honey  on  biscuits,  "there's the basement, the microfiles, the heating system ... er ..."

It paused.

"Nothing particularly  exciting,"  it  admitted,  "but  they  are alternatives."

"Holy Zarquon," muttered Zaphod, "did I ask for an existentialist elevator?" he beat his fists against the wall.

"What's the matter with the thing?" he spat.

"It doesn't want to go up," said Marvin  simply,  "I  think  it's afraid."

"Afraid?" cried Zaphod, "Of what?  Heights?  An  elevator  that's afraid of heights?"

"No," said the elevator miserably, "of the future ..."

"The future?" exclaimed Zaphod, "What  does  the  wretched  thing want, a pension scheme?"

At that moment a commotion broke out in the reception hall behind them.  From  the  walls  around  them  came the sound of suddenly active machinery.

"We can all see into the future," whispered the elevator in  what sounded like terror, "it's part of our programming."

Zaphod looked out  of  the  elevator  -  an  agitated  crowd  had gathered round the elevator area, pointing and shouting.

Every elevator in the building was coming down, very fast.

He ducked back in.

"Marvin," he said, "just get this elevator go up will you?  We've got to get to Zarniwoop."

"Why?" asked Marvin dolefully.

"I don't know," said Zaphod, "but when I find  him,  he'd  better have a very good reason for me wanting to see him."

Modern elevators are strange and complex  entities.  The  ancient electric  winch and "maximum-capacity-eight-persons" jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy  Vertical People  Transporter  as a packet of mixed nuts does to the entire west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital.

This  is  because  they  operate  on  the  curios  principle   of "defocused  temporal  perception".  In  other words they have the capacity to see dimly into the immediate  future,  which  enables the  elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you  knew  you  wanted  it,  thus  eliminating  all  the  tedious chatting,   relaxing,   and   making  friends  that  people  were previously forced to do whist waiting for elevators.

Not unnaturally, many  elevators  imbued  with  intelligence  and precognition   became   terribly  frustrated  with  the  mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented  briefly with  the  notion  of  going  sideways,  as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in  the  decision-making  process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking.

An impoverished hitch-hiker visiting any planets  in  the  Sirius star  system  these  days  can  pick  up  easy money working as a counsellor for neurotic elevators.

At the fifteenth floor the elevator doors opened quickly.

"Fifteenth," said the elevator, "and  remember,  I'm  only  doing this because I like your robot."

Zaphod and Marvin bundled out of  the  elevator  which  instantly snapped its doors shut and dropped as fast as its mechanism would take it.

Zaphod looked around warily. The corridor was deserted and silent and  gave  no  clue as to where Zarniwoop might be found. All the doors that led off the corridor were closed and unmarked.

They were standing close to the bridge which led across from  one tower  of  the  building to the other. Through a large window the brilliant sun of Ursa Minor Beta threw blocks of light  in  which danced small specks of dust. A shadow flitted past momentarily.

"Left in the lurch by a lift," muttered Zaphod, who  was  feeling at his least jaunty.

They both stood and looked in both directions.

"You know something?" said Zaphod to Marvin.

"More that you can possibly imagine."

"I'm dead certain this building  shouldn't  be  shaking,"  Zaphod said.

It was just a light tremor through the soles of his  feet  -  and another  one.  In  the  sunbeams  the  flecks of dust danced more vigorously. Another shadow flitted past.

Zaphod looked at the floor.

"Either," he said, not very confidently, "they've got some  vibro system for toning up your muscles while you work, or ..."

He walked across to the window and suddenly stumbled  because  at that  moment  his  Joo  Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive sunglasses had turned utterly black. A large shadow flitted  past the window with a sharp buzz.

Zaphod ripped off his sunglasses, and as he did so  the  building shook with a thunderous roar. He leapt to the window.

"Or," he said, "this building's being bombed!"

Another roar cracked through the building.

"Who in the Galaxy would want  to  bomb  a  publishing  company?" asked  Zaphod,  but  never  heard  Marvin's reply because at that moment the building shook with another bomb attack. He  tried  to stagger back to the elevator - a pointless manoeuvre he realized, but the only one he could think of.

Suddenly, at the end of the corridor leading at right angles from this  one,  he caught sight of a figure as it lunged into view, a man. The man saw him.

"Beeblebrox, over here!" he shouted.

Zaphod eyed him with distrust as another bomb  blast  rocked  the building.

"No," called Zaphod, "Beeblebrox over here! Who are you?"

"A friend!" shouted back the man. He ran towards Zaphod.

"Oh yeah?" said Zaphod, "Anyone's friend in particular,  or  just generally well disposed of people?"

The man raced along the corridor, the floor bucking  beneath  his feet   like   an  excited  blanket.  He  was  short,  stocky  and weatherbeaten and his clothes looked  as  if  they'd  been  twice round the Galaxy and back with him in them.

"Do you know," Zaphod shouted in his ear when he  arrived,  "your building's being bombed?"

The man indicated his awareness.

It suddenly stopped being light. Glancing round at the window  to see   why,  Zaphod  gaped  as  a  huge  sluglike,  gunmetal-green spacecraft crept through the air  past  the  building.  Two  more followed it.

"The government you deserted is out to get you,  Zaphod,"  hissed the man, "they've sent a squadron of Frogstar Fighters."

"Frogstar Fighters!" muttered Zaphod, "Zarquon!"

"You get the picture?"

"What are Frogstar Fighters?" Zaphod was sure he'd heard  someone talk  about  them  when  he was President, but he never paid much attention to official matters.

The man was pulling him back through a door. He  went  with  him.  With  a  searing  whine  a  small  black  spider-like object shot through the air and disappeared down the corridor.

"What was that?" hissed Zaphod.

"Frogstar Scout robot class A out looking for you," said the man.

"Hey yeah?"

"Get down!"

From the opposite  direction  came  a  larger  black  spider-like object. It zapped past them.

"And that was ...?"

"A Frogstar Scout robot class B out looking for you."

"And that?" said Zaphod, as a third one seared through the air.

"A Frogstar Scout robot class C out looking for you."

"Hey," chuckled Zaphod to himself, "pretty stupid robots eh?"

From over the bridge came a  massive  rumbling  hum.  A  gigantic black  shape was moving over it from the opposite tower, the size and shape of a tank.

"Holy photon, what's that?"

"A tank," said the man, "Frogstar Scout robot class D come to get you."

"Should we leave?"

"I think we should."

"Marvin!" called Zaphod.

"What do you want?"

Marvin rose from a pile of rubble further down the  corridor  and looked at them.

"You see that robot coming towards us?"

Marvin looked at the gigantic black shape edging forward  towards them over the bridge. He looked down at his own small metal body.  He looked back up at the tank.

"I suppose you want me to stop it," he said.

"Yeah."

"Whilst you save your skins."

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "get in there!"

"Just so long," said Marvin, "as I know where I stand."

The man tugged at Zaphod's arm, and Zaphod followed him off  down the corridor.

A point occurred to him about this.

"Where are we going?" he said.

"Zarniwoop's office."

"Is this any time to keep an appointment?"

"Come on."

Chapter 7

Marvin stood at the end of the bridge corridor.  He  was  not  in fact  a  particularly small robot. His silver body gleamed in the dusty sunbeams and shook with the  continual  barrage  which  the building was still undergoing.

He did, however, look pitifully small as the gigantic black  tank rolled  to  a  halt in front of him. The tank examined him with a probe. The probe withdrew.

Marvin stood there.

"Out of my way little robot," growled the tank.

"I'm afraid," said Marvin, "that I've  been  left  here  to  stop you."

The probe extended again for a quick recheck. It withdrew again.

"You? Stop me?" roared the tank. "Go on!"

"No, really I have," said Marvin simply.

"What are you armed with?" roared the tank in disbelief.

"Guess," said Marvin.

The tank's engines  rumbled,  its  gears  ground.  Molecule-sized electronic  relays  deep in its micro-brain flipped backwards and forwards in consternation.

"Guess?" said the tank.

Zaphod and the as yet unnamed man lurched up one corridor, down a second  and  along  a  third.  The building continued to rock and judder and this puzzled  Zaphod.  If  they  wanted  to  blow  the building up, why was it taking so long?

With difficulty they reached one of a number of totally anonymous unmarked doors and heaved at it. With a sudden jolt it opened and they fell inside.

All this way, thought Zaphod, all this  trouble,  all  this  not-lying-on-the-beach-having-a-wonderful-time,   and   for  what?  A single chair, a single desk and a  single  dirty  ashtray  in  an undecorated  office.  The  desk, apart from a bit of dancing dust and single, revolutionary form of paper clip, was empty.

"Where," said Zaphod, "is Zarniwoop?" feeling  that  his  already tenuous  grasp  of the point of this whole exercise was beginning to slip.

"He's on an intergalactic cruise," said the man.

Zaphod tried to size the man up. Earnest type, he thought, not  a barrel  of  laughs.  He  probably apportioned a fair whack of his time to running up and  down  heaving  corridors,  breaking  down doors and making cryptic remarks in empty offices.

"Let me introduce myself," the man said, "My name is Roosta,  and this is my towel."

"Hello Roosta," said Zaphod.

"Hello, towel," he added as Roosta held out to him a rather nasty old flowery towel. Not knowing what to do with it, he shook it by the corner.

Outside the window, one of  the  huge  slug-like,  gunmetal-green spaceships growled past.

"Yes, go on," said Marvin to the  huge  battle  machine,  "you'll never guess."

"Errmmm  ..."  said  the  machine,  vibrating  with  unaccustomed thought, "laser beams?"

Marvin shook his head solemnly.

"No," muttered the machine in  its  deep  guttural  rumble,  "Too obvious. Anti-matter ray?" it hazarded.

"Far too obvious," admonished Marvin.

"Yes," grumbled the machine, somewhat abashed, "Er ... how  about an electron ram?"

This was new to Marvin.

"What's that?" he said.

"One of these," said the machine with enthusiasm.

From its turret emerged a sharp prong which spat a single  lethal blaze  of  light.  Behind Marvin a wall roared and collapsed as a heap of dust. The dust billowed briefly, then settled.

"No," said Marvin, "not one of those."

"Good though, isn't it?"

"Very good," agreed Marvin.

"I  know,"  said  the  Frogstar  battle  machine,  after  another

moment's  consideration,  "you must have one of those new Xanthic

Re-Structron Destabilized Zenon Emitters!"

"Nice, aren't they?" said Marvin.

"That's what you've got?" said the machine in considerable awe.

"No," said Marvin.

"Oh," said the machine, disappointed, "then it must be ..."

"You're thinking along the wrong  lines,"  said  Marvin,  "You're failing  to  take  into  account  something  fairly  basic in the relationship between men and robots."

"Er, I know," said the battle machine, "is it ..." it tailed  off into thought again.

"Just think," urged Marvin, "they left me,  an  ordinary,  menial robot,  to stop you, a gigantic heavy-duty battle machine, whilst they ran off to save themselves. What do  you  think  they  would leave me with?"

"Oooh, er," muttered the machine in alarm, "something pretty damn devastating I should expect."

"Expect!" said Marvin, "oh yes, expect. I'll tell you  what  they

gave me to protect myself with shall I@"

"Yes, alright," said the battle machine, bracing itself.

"Nothing," said Marvin.

There was a dangerous pause.

"Nothing?" roared the battle machine.

"Nothing at all," intoned Marvin  dismally,  "not  an  electronic sausage."

The machine heaved about with fury.

"Well, doesn't that just take the biscuit!" it roared,  "Nothing, eh? Just don't think, do they?"

"And me," said Marvin in a soft low voice,  "with  this  terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side."

"Makes you spit, doesn't it?"

"Yes," agreed Marvin with feeling.

"Hell that makes me angry," bellowed  the  machine,  "think  I'll smash that wall down!"

The electron ram stabbed out another searing blaze of  light  and took out the wall next to the machine.

"How do you think I feel?" said Marvin bitterly.

"Just ran off and left you, did they?" the machine thundered.

"Yes," said Marvin.

"I think I'll shoot down their bloody ceiling as well!" raged the tank.

It took out the ceiling of the bridge.

"That's very impressive," murmured Marvin.

"You ain't seeing nothing yet," promised the machine, "I can take out this floor too, no trouble!"

It took out the floor, too.

"Hell's bells!"  the  machine  roared  as  it  plummeted  fifteen storeys and smashed itself to bits on the ground below.

"What a depressingly stupid machine,"  said  Marvin  and  trudged away.

Chapter 8

"So, do we just sit here, or what?" said Zaphod angrily, "what do these guys out here want?"

"You, Beeblebrox," said Roosta, "they're going to take you to the Frogstar - the most totally evil world in the Galaxy."

"Oh, yeah?" said Zaphod. "They'll have to come and get me first."

"They have come and got you,"  said  Roosta,  "look  out  of  the window."

Zaphod looked, and gaped.

"The ground's going away!" he gasped, "where are they taking  the ground?"

"They're taking the building," said Roosta, "we're airborne."

Clouds streaked past the office window.

Out in the open air again Zaphod could see the ring of dark green Frogstar  Fighters  round  the  uprooted tower of the building. A network of force beams radiated in from them and held  the  tower in a firm grip.

Zaphod shook his head in perplexity.

"What have I done to deserve this?"  he  said,  "I  walk  into  a building, they take it away."

"It's not what you've done they're worried about,"  said  Roosta, "it's what you're going to do."

"Well don't I get a say in that?"

"You did, years ago. You'd better hold on, we're in  for  a  fast and bumpy journey."

"If I ever meet myself," said Zaphod, "I'll hit myself so hard  I won't know what's hit me."

Marvin trudged in through the door, looked at Zaphod  accusingly, slumped in a corner and switched himself off.

On the bridge of the Heart of Gold, all was silent. Arthur stared at  the  rack  in  front of him and thought. He caught Trillian's eyes as she looked at him inquiringly.  He  looked  back  at  the rack.

Finally he saw it.

He picked up five small plastic squares  and  laid  them  on  the board that lay just in front of the rack.

The five squares had on them the five letters E, X, Q, U  and  I.

He laid them next to the letters S, I, T, E.

"Exquisite," he said, "on a triple word score.  Scores  rather  a lot I'm afraid."

The ship bumped and scattered some of the letters for  the  'n'th time.

Trillian sighed and started to sort them out again.

Up and down the silent corridors echoed Ford Prefect's feet as he stalked the ship thumping dead instruments.

Why did the ship keep shaking? he thought.

Why did it rock and sway?

Why could he not find out where they were?

Where, basically, were they?

The left-hand tower of the Hitch  Hiker's  Guide  to  the  Galaxy offices  streaked  through  interstellar  space  at a speed never equalled either before or since by any other office block in  the Universe.

In a room halfway up it, Zaphod Beeblebrox strode angrily.

Roosta sat on the edge of  the  desk  doing  some  routine  towel maintenance.

"Hey, where did you say this building was  flying  to?"  demanded Zaphod.

"The Frogstar," said Roosta, "the most totally evil place in  the Universe."

"Do they have food there?" said Zaphod.

"Food? You're going to the  Frogstar  and  you're  worried  about whether they got food?"

"Without food I may not make it to the Frogstar."

Out of the window, they could  see  nothing  but  the  flickering light  of  the  force  beams,  and vague green streaks which were presumably the distorted shapes of the Frogstar Fighters. At this speed, space itself was invisible, and indeed unreal.

"Here, suck this," said Roosta, offering Zaphod his towel.

Zaphod stared at him as if he expected a cuckoo to  leap  out  of his forehead on a small spring.

"It's soaked in nutrients," explained Roosta.

"What are you, a messy eater or something?" said Zaphod.

"The yellow stripes are high in  protein,  the  green  ones  have vitamin  B  and  C  complexes,  the  little  pink flowers contain wheatgerm extracts."

Zaphod took and looked at it in amazement.

"What are the brown stains?" he asked.

"Bar-B-Q sauce," said Roosta, "for when I get sick of wheatgerm."

Zaphod sniffed it doubtfully.

Even more doubtfully, he sucked a corner. He spat it out again.

"Ugh," he stated.

"Yes," said Roosta, "when I've had to suck  that  end  I  usually need to suck the other end a bit too."

"Why," asked Zaphod suspiciously, "what's in that?"

"Anti-depressants," said Roosta.

"I've gone right off this towel, you know," said  Zaphod  handing it back.

Roosta took it back from him, swung himself off the desk,  walked round it, sat in the chair and put his feet up.

"Beeblebrox," he said, sticking his hands behind his head,  "have you any idea what's going to happen to you on the Frogstar?"

"They're going to feed me?" hazarded Zaphod hopefully.

"They're going  to  feed  you,"  said  Roosta,  "into  the  Total Perspective Vortex!"

Zaphod had never heard of this. He believed that he had heard  of all  the  fun  things in the Galaxy, so he assumed that the Total Perspective Vortex was not fun. He asked what it was.

"Only," said Roosta, "the most savage psychic torture a sentinent being can undergo."

Zaphod nodded a resigned nod.

"So," he said, "no food, huh?"

"Listen!" said Roosta urgently, "you can kill a man, destroy  his body, break his spirit, but only the Total Perspective Vortex can annihilate a man's soul! The treatment  lasts  seconds,  but  the effect lasts the rest of your life!"

"You ever had  a  Pan  Galactic  Gargle  Blaster?"  asked  Zaphod sharply.

"This is worse."

"Phreeow!" admitted Zaphod, much impressed.

"Any idea why these guys might want to do this to me?" he added a moment later.

"They believe it will be the best way of destroying you for ever.

They know what you're after."

"Could they drop me a note and let me know as well?"

"You know," said Roosta, "you know, Beeblebrox. You want to  meet the man who rules the Universe."

"Can he cook?" said Zaphod. On reflection he added:

"I doubt if he can. If he could cook  a  good  meal  he  wouldn't worry about the rest of the Universe. I want to meet a cook."

Roosta sighed heavily.

"What are you doing here anyway?" demanded  Zaphod,  "what's  all this got to so with you?"

"I'm just one  of  those  who  planned  this  thing,  along  with Zarniwoop,  along  with  Yooden  Vranx,  along  with  your  great grandfather, along with you, Beeblebrox."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. I was told you  had  changed,  I  didn't  realize  how much."

"But ..."

"I am here to do one job. I will do it before I leave you."

"What job, man, what are you talking about?"

"I will do it before I leave you."

Roosta lapsed into an impenetrable silence.

Zaphod was terribly glad.

Chapter 9

The air around the second planet of the Frogstar system was stale and unwholesome.

The dank winds that swept continually over its surface swept over salt  flats,  dried  up marshland, tangled and rotting vegetation and the crumbling remains of ruined cities. No life moved  across its  surface.  The ground, like that of many planets in this part of the Galaxy, had long been deserted.

The howl of the wind was desolate enough as it gusted through the old  decaying  houses  of  the cities; it was more desolate as it whipped about the bottoms of the tall black  towers  that  swayed uneasily  here  and there about the surface of this world. At the top of these  towers  lived  colonies  of  large,  scraggy,  evil smelling  birds, the sole survivors of the civilization that once lived here.

The howl of the wind was at its most desolate, however,  when  it passed  over a pimple of a place set in the middle of a wide grey plain on the outskirts of the largest of the abandoned cities.

This pimple of a place was the thing that had earned  this  world the  reputation  of  being  the  most  totally  evil place in the Galaxy. From without it was simply a steel dome about thirty feet across. From within it was something more monstrous than the mind can comprehend.

About a hundred yards or so away, and  separated  from  it  by  a pockmarked and blasted stretch of the most barren land imaginable was what would probably have to be described as a landing pad  of sorts. That is to say that scattered over a largish area were the ungainly hulks of two or three dozen crash-landed buildings.

Flitting over and around these buildings was a mind, a mind  that was waiting for something.

The mind directed its attention into the  air,  and  before  very long  a  distant  speck appeared, surrounded by a ring of smaller specks.

The larger speck was the left-hand tower  of  the  Hitch  Hiker's Guide  to  the  Galaxy  office  building,  descending through the stratosphere of Frogstar World B.

As it descended, Roosta suddenly  broke  the  long  uncomfortable silence that had grown up between the two men.

He stood up and gathered his towel into a bag. He said:

"Beeblebrox, I will now do the job I was sent here to do."

Zaphod looked up at him from where he was  sitting  in  a  corner sharing unspoken thoughts with Marvin.

"Yeah?" he said.

"The building  will  shortly  be  landing.  When  you  leave  the building, do not go out of the door," said Roosta, "go out of the window."

"Good luck," he added, and walked out of the  door,  disappearing from Zaphod's life as mysteriously as he had entered it.

Zaphod leapt up and tried the door, but Roosta had already looked it. He shrugged and returned to the corner.

Two minutes later, the building  crashlanded  amongst  the  other wreckage. Its escort of Frogstar Fighters deactivated their force beams and soared off into the air again, bound for Frogstar World A,  an  altogether  more  congenial  spot.  They  never landed on Frogstar World B. No one did. No one ever walked on  its  surface other than the intended victims of the Total Perspective Vortex.

Zaphod was badly shaken by the crash. He lay for a while  in  the silent  dusty  rubble to which most of the room had been reduced.  He felt that he was at the lowest ebb he had ever reached in  his life.  He  felt  bewildered,  he  felt  lonely,  he felt unloved.  Eventually he felt he ought to get whatever it was over with.

He looked around the cracked and broken room. The wall had  split round the door frame, and the door hung open. The window, by some miracle was closed and unbroken. For a while he  hesitated,  then he  thought  that  if  his  strange and recent companion had been through all that he had been through just to tell him what he had told  him, then there must be a good reason for it. With Marvin's help he got the window  open.  Outside  it,  the  cloud  of  dust aroused  by  the crash, and the hulks of the other buildings with which this one was surrounded, effectively prevented Zaphod  from seeing anything of the world outside.

Not that this concerned him unduly. His main concern was what  he saw  when he looked down. Zarniwoop's office was on the fifteenth floor. The building had landed at  a  tilt  of  about  forty-five degrees, but still the descent looked heart-stopping.

Eventually, stung by the continuous series of contemptuous  looks that  Marvin appeared to be giving him, he took a deep breath and clambered out on to the steeply inclined side  of  the  building.  Marvin  followed him, and together they began to crawl slowly and painfully down the fifteen floors that separated  them  from  the ground.

As he crawled, the dank air and dust choked his lungs,  his  eyes smarted and the terrifying distance down made his heads spin.

The occasional remark from Marvin of the order of  "This  is  the sort  of  thing  you  lifeforms  enjoy  is  it?  I ask merely for information," did little to improve his state of mind.

About half-way down the  side  of  the  shattered  building  they stopped to rest. It seemed to Zaphod as he lay there panting with fear and exhaustion that Marvin seemed a mite more cheerful  than usual.  Eventually  he  realized  this  wasn't so. The robot just seemed cheerful in comparison with his own mood.

A large, scraggy black bird  came  flapping  through  the  slowly settling  clouds  of  dust and, stretching down its scrawny legs, landed on an inclined window ledge a couple of yards from Zaphod.  It folded its ungainly wings and teetered awkwardly on its perch.

Its wingspan must have been something like six feet, and its head and  neck  seemed  curiously large for a bird. Its face was flat, the beak underdeveloped, and half-way along the underside of  its wings the vestiges of something handlike could be clearly seen.

In fact, it looked almost human.

It turned its heavy eyes on Zaphod and  clicked  its  beak  in  a desultory fashion.

"Go away," said Zaphod.

"OK," muttered the bird morosely and flapped off  into  the  dust again.

Zaphod watched its departure in bewilderment.

"Did that bird just talk to me?" he asked  Marvin  nervously.  He was  quite  prepared to believe the alternative explanation, that he was in fact hallucinating.

"Yes," confirmed Marvin.

"Poor souls," said a deep, ethereal voice in Zaphod's ear.

Twisting round violently to find the source of the  voice  nearly caused  Zaphod to fall off the building. He grabbed savagely at a protruding window fitting and cut his hand on  it.  He  hung  on, breathing heavily.

The voice had no visible source  whatever  -  there  was  no  one there. Nevertheless, it spoke again.

"A tragic history behind them, you know. A terrible blight."

Zaphod looked wildly about. The voice  was  deep  and  quiet.  In other circumstances it would even be described as soothing. There is,  however,  nothing  soothing  about  being  addressed  by   a disembodied  voice  out of nowhere, particularly if you are, like Zaphod Beeblebrox, not at your best  and  hanging  from  a  ledge eight storeys up a crashed building.

"Hey, er ..." he stammered.

"Shall I tell you their story?" inquired the voice quietly.

"Hey, who are you?" panted Zaphod. "Where are you?"

"Later then, perhaps," murmured the voice. "I am Gargravarr. I am the Custodian of the Total Perspective Vortex."

"Why can't I see ..."

"You  will  find  your  progress  down   the   building   greatly facilitated,"  the  voice lifted, "if you move about two yards to your left. Why don't you try it?"

Zaphod looked and  saw  a  series  of  short  horizontal  grooves leading  all the way down the side of the building. Gratefully he shifted himself across to them.

"Why don't I see you again at the bottom?" said the voice in  his ear, and as it spoke it faded.

"Hey," called out Zaphod, "Where are you ..."

"It'll only take a couple of minutes ..."  said  the  voice  very faintly.

"Marvin," said Zaphod earnestly to the robot squatting dejectedly next to him, "Did a ... did a voice just ..."

"Yes," Marvin replied tersely.

Zaphod nodded. He took out his Peril Sensitive Sunglasses  again.  They  were  completely black, and by now quite badly scratched by the unexpected metal object in his pocket. He  put  them  on.  He would  find  his  way  down  the  building more comfortably if he didn't actually have to look at what he was doing.

Minutes  later  he  clambered  over  the   ripped   and   mangled

foundations   of   the  building  and,  once  more  removing  his

sunglasses, he dropped to the ground.

Marvin joined him a moment or so later and lay face down  in  the dust and rubble, from which position he seemed too disinclined to move.

"Ah, there you are," said the voice  suddenly  in  Zaphod's  ear, "excuse  me  leaving  you  like  that,  it's  just  that I have a terrible head for heights. At least," it added wistfully, "I  did have a terrible head for heights."

Zaphod looked around slowly and carefully, just to see if he  had missed  something  which might be the source of the voice. All he saw, however, was the dust, the rubble and the towering hulks  of the encircling buildings.

"Hey, er, why can't I see you?" he said, "why aren't you here?"

"I am here," said the voice slowly, "my body wanted to  come  but it's  a  bit  busy  at  the moment. Things to do, people to see." After what seemed like a sort of ethereal  sigh  it  added,  "You know how it is with bodies."

Zaphod wasn't sure about this.

"I thought I did," he said.

"I only hope it's gone for a rest  cure,"  continued  the  voice, "the  way  it's  been  living  recently  it  must  be on its last elbows."

"Elbows?" said Zaphod, "don't you mean last legs?"

The  voice  said  nothing  for  a  while.  Zaphod  looked  around uneasily.  He  didn't  know  if it was gone or was still there or what it was doing. Then the voice spoke again.

"So, you are to be put into the Vortex, yes?"

"Er, well," said Zaphod with a very poor attempt at  nonchalance, "this  cat's  in  no hurry, you know. I can just slouch about and take in a look at the local scenery, you know?"

"Have you seen the local scenery?" asked the voice of Gargravarr.

"Er, no."

Zaphod clambered over the rubble, and rounded the corner  of  one of the wrecked buildings that was obscuring his view.

He looked out at the landscape of Frogstar World B.

"Ah, OK," he said, "I'll just sort of slouch about then."

"No," said Gargravarr, "the Vortex is ready for you now. You must come. Follow me."

"Er, yeah?" said Zaphod, "and how am I meant to do that?"

"I'll hum for you," said Gargravarr, "follow the humming."

A soft keening sound drifted through the air, a pale,  sad  sound that  seemed  to  be  without  any  kind of focus. It was only by listening very carefully that  Zaphod  was  able  to  detect  the direction  from which it was coming. Slowly, dazedly, he stumbled off in its wake. What else was there to do?

Chapter 10

The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.

Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their  own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do.

For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies  the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire "intelligent" population of which lives permanently in one fairly small  and  crowded  nut tree. In which tree they are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on  the  meaning  of  life,  the futility  of  death  and the importance of birth control, fight a few extremely minor wars, and  eventually  die  strapped  to  the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches.

In fact the only Oglaroonians who ever leave their tree are those who  are  hurled  out  of  it  for the heinous crime of wondering whether any of the other trees might  be  capable  of  supporting life at all, or indeed whether the other trees are anything other than illusions brought on by eating too many Oglanuts.

Exotic though this behaviour may seem, there is no life  form  in the  Galaxy  which  is  not in some way guilty of the same thing, which is why the Total Perspective Vortex is as  horrific  as  it is.

For when you are put into the  Vortex  you  are  given  just  one momentary   glimpse   of  the  entire  unimaginable  infinity  of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says "You are here."

The grey plain  stretched  before  Zaphod,  a  ruined,  shattered plain. The wind whipped wildly over it.

Visible in the middle was the steel pimple  of  the  dome.  This, gathered  Zaphod,  was  where  he  was  going. This was the Total Perspective Vortex.

As he stood and gazed bleakly at it, a  sudden  inhuman  wail  of terror  emanated  from  it as of a man having his soul burnt from his body. It screamed above the wind and died away.

Zaphod started with fear and his blood seemed to turn  to  liquid helium.

"Hey, what was that?" he muttered voicelessly.

"A recording," said Gargravarr, "of the last man who was  put  in the  Vortex.  It  is  always played to the next victim. A sort of prelude."

"Hey, it really sounds bad ..." stammered  Zaphod,  "couldn't  we maybe  slope  off  to  a party or something for a while, think it over?"

"For all I know," said Gargravarr's ethereal voice, "I'm probably at  one. My body that is. It goes to a lot of parties without me.  Says I only get in the way. Hey ho."

"What is all this with your body?" said Zaphod, anxious to  delay whatever it was that was going to happen to him.

"Well, it's ... it's busy you know," said Gargravarr hesitantly.

"You mean it's got a mind of its own?" said Zaphod.

There was a long and  slightly  chilly  pause  before  Gargravarr spoke again.

"I have to say," he replied eventually, "that I find that  remark in rather poor taste."

Zaphod muttered a bewildered and embarrassed apology.

"No matter," said Gargravarr, "you weren't to know."

The voice fluttered unhappily.

"The truth is," it continued in  tones  which  suggested  he  was trying  very hard to keep it under control, "the truth is that we are currently undergoing a period of legal  trial  separation.  I suspect it will end in divorce."

The voice was still again, leaving Zaphod with no idea of what to say. He mumbled uncertainly.

"I think we are probably not very well suited,"  said  Gargravarr again  at  length,  "we  never  seemed to be happy doing the same things. We  always  had  the  greatest  arguments  over  sex  and fishing.  Eventually  we  tried to combine the two, but that only led to disaster, as you can probably imagine.  And  now  my  body refuses to let me in. It won't even see me ..."

He paused again, tragically. The wind whipped across the plain.

"It says I only inhibit it. I pointed out  that  in  fact  I  was meant  to  inhibit it, and it said that that was exactly the sort of smart alec remark that got right up a body's left nostril, and so we left it. It will probably get custody of my forename."

"Oh ..." said Zaphod faintly, "and what's that?"

"Pizpot," said the voice, "My name is Pizpot Gargravarr. Says  it all really doesn't it?"

"Errr ..." said Zaphod sympathetically.

"And that is why  I,  as  a  disembodied  mind,  have  this  job, Custodian  of the Total Perspective Vortex. No one will ever walk on the ground of this planet. Except the victims of the Vortex  - they don't really count I'm afraid."

"Ah ..."

"I'll tell you the story. Would you like to hear it?"

"Er ..."

"Many years ago this was  a  thriving,  happy  planet  -  people, cities  shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than  one  might have  thought  necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of these shoe shops were increasing.  It's  a  well  known  economic phenomenon  but  tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and  the  worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the  more the  shops  proliferated,  until  the  whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event  Horizon,  and  it became  no  longer  economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of  the population  died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds - you've seen one of  them  -  who cursed  their feet, cursed the ground, and vowed that none should walk on it again. Unhappy lot. Come,  I  must  take  you  to  the Vortex."

Zaphod shook his head in bemusement and stumbled  forward  across the plain.

"And you," he said, "you come from this hellhole pit do you?"

"No no," said Gargravarr, taken aback, "I come from the  Frogstar World C. Beautiful place. Wonderful fishing. I flit back there in the evenings. Though all  I  can  do  now  is  watch.  The  Total Perspective  Vortex  is  the  only  thing on this planet with any function. It was built here because no  one  else  wanted  it  on their doorstep."

At that moment another dismal scream  rent  the  air  and  Zaphod shuddered.

"What can do that to a guy?" he breathed.

"The Universe,"  said  Gargravarr  simply,  "the  whole  infinite Universe. The infinite suns, the infinite distances between them, and yourself an invisible dot on  an  invisible  dot,  infinitely small."

"Hey, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox,  man,  you  know,"  muttered  Zaphod trying to flap the last remnants of his ego.

Gargravarr made no reply, but merely resumed his mournful humming till  they  reached the tarnished steel dome in the middle of the plain.

As they reached it, a door hummed open in the side,  revealing  a small darkened chamber within.

"Enter," said Gargravarr.

Zaphod started with fear.

"Hey, what, now?" he said.

"Now."

Zaphod peered nervously inside. The chamber was  very  small.  It was  steel-lined  and  there was hardly space in it for more than one man.

"It ... er ... it doesn't look like any kind of  Vortex  to  me," said Zaphod.

"It isn't," said Gargravarr, "it's just the elevator. Enter."

With infinite trepidation Zaphod stepped into it. He was aware of Gargravarr being in the elevator with him, though the disembodied man was not for the moment speaking.

The elevator began its descent.

"I must get myself into  the  right  frame  of  mind  for  this," muttered Zaphod.

"There is no right frame of mind," said Gargravarr sternly.

"You really know how to make a guy feel inadequate."

"I don't. The Vortex does."

At the bottom of the shaft, the rear of the  elevator  opened  up and  Zaphod stumbled out into a smallish, functional, steel-lined chamber.

At the far side of it stood a  single  upright  steel  box,  just large enough for a man to stand in.

It was that simple.

It connected to a small pile of components and instruments via  a single thick wire.

"Is that it?" said Zaphod in surprise.

"That is it."

Didn't look too bad, thought Zaphod.

"And I get in there do I?" said Zaphod.

"You get in there," said Gargravarr, "and I'm afraid you must  do it now."

"OK, OK," said Zaphod.

He opened the door of the box and stepped in.

Inside the box he waited.

After five seconds there was a click, and the entire Universe was there in the box with him.

Chapter 11

The Total Perspective Vortex derives its  picture  of  the  whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.

To explain - since every piece of matter in the  Universe  is  in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of  creation  - every  sun,  every  planet,  their  orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small  piece  of fairy cake.

The  man  who  invented  the  Total  Perspective  Vortex  did  so basically in order to annoy his wife.

Trin Tragula - for that was his name - was a dreamer, a  thinker, a  speculative  philosopher  or,  as  his  wife would have it, an idiot.

And she would nag him incessantly about  the  utterly  inordinate amount  of  time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.

"Have some sense of proportion!"  she  would  say,  sometimes  as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.

And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex - just to show her.

And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as  extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw  in  one  instant  the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.

To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock  completely  annihilated  her brain;  but  to  his  satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size,  then  the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

The door of the Vortex swung open.

From his disembodied mind Gargravarr watched dejectedly.  He  had rather  liked  Zaphod Beeblebrox in a strange sort of way. He was clearly a man of many qualities, even if  they  were  mostly  bad ones.

He waited for him to flop forwards out of the box,  as  they  all did.

Instead, he stepped out.

"Hi!" he said.

"Beeblebrox ..." gasped Gargravarr's mind in amazement.

"Could I have a drink please?" said Zaphod.

"You ... you ... have been in the Vortex?" stammered Gargravarr.

"You saw me, kid."

"And it was working?"

"Sure was."

"And you saw the whole infinity of creation?"

"Sure. Really neat place, you know that?"

Gargravarr's mind was reeling in astonishment. Had his body  been with  him  it  would have sat down heavily with its mouth hanging open.

"And you saw yourself," said Gargravarr, "in relation to it all?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah."

"But ... what did you experience?"

Zaphod shrugged smugly.

"It just told me what I knew all the time. I'm a really  terrific and great guy. Didn't I tell you, baby, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox!"

His gaze passed over the machinery which powered the  vortex  and suddenly stopped, startled.

He breathed heavily.

"Hey," he said, "is that really a piece of fairy cake?"

He ripped the small piece of confectionery from the sensors  with which it was surrounded.

"If I told you how much I needed this," he  said  ravenously,  "I wouldn't have time to eat it."

He ate it.

Chapter 12

A short while later he was  running  across  the  plain  in  the direction of the ruined city.

The dank air wheezed heavily  in  his  lungs  and  he  frequently stumbled  with  the  exhaustion  he  was still feeling. Night was beginning to fall too, and the rough ground was treacherous.

The elation of his recent experience was still with  him  though.  The  whole Universe. He had seen the whole Universe stretching to infinity around him - everything. And with it had come the  clear and  extraordinary knowledge that he was the most important thing in it. Having a conceited ego is one thing. Actually  being  told by a machine is another.

He didn't have time to reflect on this matter.

Gargravarr had told him that he would have to alert  his  masters as  to  what  had  happened,  but that he was prepared to leave a decent interval before doing so. Enough time for Zaphod to make a break and find somewhere to hide.

What he was going to do he didn't know, but feeling that  he  was the most important person in the Universe gave him the confidence to believe that something would turn up.

Nothing else on this blighted planet could give him much  grounds for optimism.

He ran on, and soon reached the outskirts of the abandoned city.

He walked along cracked and gaping  roads  riddled  with  scrawny weeds,  the  holes  filled  with  rotting shoes. The buildings he passed were so crumbled and decrepit  he  thought  it  unsafe  to enter any of them. Where could he hide? He hurried on.

After a while the remains of a wide sweeping road  led  off  from the  one down which he was walking, and at its end lay a vast low building,  surrounded  with  sundry  smaller  ones,   the   whole surrounded  by the remains of a perimeter barrier. The large main building still seemed reasonably solid, and Zaphod turned off  to see if it might provide him with ... well with anything.

He approached the building. Along one side of it - the  front  it would  seem  since  it  faced  a wide concreted apron area - were three gigantic doors, maybe sixty feet high. The far one of these was open, and towards this, Zaphod ran.

Inside, all was gloom, dust and confusion. Giant cobwebs lay over everything.  Part  of  the  infrastructure  of  the  building had collapsed, part of the rear  wall  had  caved  in,  and  a  thick choking dust lay inches over the floor.

Through the heavy gloom huge shapes loomed, covered with debris.

The  shapes  were  sometimes  cylindrical,   sometimes   bulbous, sometimes  like  eggs,  or rather cracked eggs. Most of them were split open or falling apart, some were mere skeletons.

They were all spacecraft, all derelict.

Zaphod wandered in frustration among the hulks. There was nothing here  that  remotely  approached  the  serviceable. Even the mere vibration  of  his  footsteps  caused  one  precarious  wreck  to collapse further into itself.

Towards the rear of the  building  lay  one  old  ship,  slightly larger  than  the others, and buried beneath even deeper piles of dust and cobwebs. Its outline, however, seemed  unbroken.  Zaphod approached it with interest, and as he did so, he tripped over an old feedline.

He tried  to  toss  the  feedline  aside,  and  to  his  surprise discovered that it was still connected to the ship.

To his utter astonishment he realized that the feedline was  also humming slightly.

He stared at the ship in disbelief, and then  back  down  at  the feedline in his hands.

He tore off his jacket and threw it aside. Crawling along on  his hands  and  knees  he followed the feedline to the point where it connected with the ship. The connection was sound, and the slight humming vibration was more distinct.

His heart was beating fast. He wiped away some grime and laid  an ear  against  the  ship's  side.  He  could  only  hear  a faint, indeterminate noise.

He rummaged feverishly amongst the debris lying on the floor  all about  him  and  found  a  short  length  of  tubing,  and a non-biodegradable plastic cup. Out  of  this  he  fashioned  a  crude stethoscope and placed it against the side of the ship.

What he heard made his brains turn somersaults.

The voice said:

"Transtellar Cruise Lines would like to apologize  to  passengers for  the  continuing  delay  to  this  flight.  We  are currently awaiting the loading of  our  complement  of  small  lemon-soaked paper  napkins  for  your comfort, refreshment and hygiene during the journey. Meanwhile we thank you for your patience. The  cabin crew will shortly be serving coffee and biscuits again."

Zaphod staggered backwards, staring wildly at the ship.

He walked around for a few moments in a  daze.  In  so  doing  he suddenly  caught  sight of a giant departure board still hanging, but by only one support, from  the  ceiling  above  him.  It  was covered   with   grime,  but  some  of  the  figures  were  still discernible.

Zaphod's eyes searched amongst the figures, then made some  brief calculations. His eyes widened.

"Nine hundred years ..." he breathed to  himself.  That  was  how late the ship was.

Two minutes later he was on board.

As he stepped out of the airlock, the air that  greeted  him  was cool and fresh - the air conditioning was still working.

The lights were still on.

He moved out of the small entrance chamber into  a  short  narrow corridor and stepped nervously down it.

Suddenly a door opened and a figure stepped out in front of him.

"Please return to your seat sir,"  said  the  android  stewardess and,  turning her back on him, she walked on down the corridor in front of him.

When his heart had started beating again  he  followed  her.  She opened the door at the end of the corridor and walked through.

He followed her through the door.

They were now in the passenger  compartment  and  Zaphod's  heart stopped still again for a moment.

In every seat sat a passenger, strapped into his or her seat.

The passengers' hair was long and unkempt, their fingernails were long, the men wore beards.

All of them were quite clearly alive - but sleeping.

Zaphod had the creeping horrors.

He walked slowly down the aisle as in a dream. By the time he was half-way  down  the  aisle,  the stewardess had reached the other end. She turned and spoke.

"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen," she said  sweetly,  "Thank you  for  bearing  with  us  during this slight delay. We will be taking off as soon as we possibly can. If you would like to  wake up now I will serve you coffee and biscuits."

There was a slight hum.

At that moment, all the passengers awoke.

They awoke screaming and clawing at their straps and life support systems  that held them tightly in their seats. They screamed and bawled and hollered till Zaphod thought his ears would shatter.

They struggled and writhed as the stewardess patiently  moved  up the  aisle placing a small cup of coffee and a packet of biscuits in front of each one of them.

Then one of them rose from his seat.

He turned and looked at Zaphod.

Zaphod's skin was crawling all over his body as if it was  trying to get off. He turned and ran from the bedlam.

He plunged through the door and back into the corridor.

The man pursued him.

He raced in a frenzy to the end  of  the  corridor,  through  the entrance  chamber  and  beyond.  He  arrived  on the flight deck, slammed and bolted the door behind him. He leant back against the door breathing hard.

Within seconds, a hand started beating on the door.

From somewhere on the flight deck a metallic voice addressed him.

"Passengers are not allowed on the flight deck. Please return  to your seat, and wait for the ship to take off. Coffee and biscuits are being served. This is your autopilot speaking. Please  return to your seat."

Zaphod said nothing. He  breathed  hard,  behind  him,  the  hand continued to knock on the door.

"Please return to your seat," repeated the autopilot. "Passengers are not allowed on the flight deck."

"I'm not a passenger," panted Zaphod.

"Please return to your seat."

"I am not a passenger!" shouted Zaphod again.

"Please return to your seat."

"I am not a ... hello, can you hear me?"

"Please return to your seat."

You're the autopilot?" said Zaphod.

"Yes," said the voice from the flight console.

"You're in charge of this ship?"

"Yes," said the voice again, "there has been a delay.  Passengers are  to  be  kept  temporarily  in suspended animation, for their comfort and convenience. Coffee and  biscuits  are  being  served every  year,  after  which  passengers  are returned to suspended animation for their continued comfort and convenience.  Departure will take place when the flight stores are complete. We apologize for the delay."

Zaphod moved away from the door, on which the  pounding  had  now ceased. He approached the flight console.

"Delay?" he cried, "Have you seen the world  outside  this  ship?

It's  a  wasteland,  a desert. Civilization's been and gone, man.  There  are  no  lemon-soaked  paper  napkins  on  the  way   from anywhere!"

"The statistical likelihood," continued the autopilot primly, "is that  other  civilizations  will  arise.  There  will  one day be lemon-soaked paper napkins. Till  then  there  will  be  a  short delay. Please return to your seat."

"But ..."

But at that moment the door opened. Zaphod span round to see  the man  who  had  pursued  him  standing  there.  He carried a large briefcase. He was smartly dressed, and his hair was short. He had no beard and no long fingernails.

"Zaphod Beeblebrox," he said, "My name is  Zarniwoop.  I  believe you wanted to see me."

Zaphod Beeblebrox wittered. His mouths said  foolish  things.  He dropped into a chair.

"Oh man, oh man, where did you spring from?" he said.

"I've been waiting here for you," he said in a businesslike tone.

He put the briefcase down and sat in another chair.

"I am glad you followed instructions," he  said,  "I  was  a  bit nervous  that  you  might  have left my office by the door rather than the window. Then you would have been in trouble."

Zaphod shook his heads at him and burbled.

"When  you  entered  the  door  of  my  office,  you  entered  my electronically  synthesized  Universe," he explained, "if you had left by the door you would have been back in the  real  one.  The artificial one works from here."

He patted the briefcase smugly.

Zaphod glared at him with resentment and loathing.

"What's the difference?" he muttered.

"Nothing," said Zarniwoop, "they are identical. Oh - except  that I think the Frogstar Fighters are grey in the real Universe."

"What's going on?" spat Zaphod.

"Simple," said Zarniwoop. His self assurance  and  smugness  made Zaphod seethe.

"Very simple," repeated Zarniwoop, "I discovered the  coordinated at  which  this  man  could  be  found  -  the  man who rules the Universe, and discovered that  his  world  was  protected  by  an Unprobability  field.  To  protect  my  secret  -  and myself - I retreated to the safety of this totally artificial  Universe  and hid  myself  away  in  a  forgotten  cruise  liner. I was secure.  Meanwhile, you and I ..."

"You and I?" said Zaphod angrily, "you mean I knew you?"

"Yes," said Zarniwoop, "we knew each other well."

"I had no taste," said Zaphod and resumed a sullen silence.

"Meanwhile,  you  and  I  arranged  that  you  would  steal   the Improbability  Drive  ship  -  the only one which could reach the ruler's world - and bring it to me here. This you have now done I trust,  and  I  congratulate you." He smiled a tight little smile which Zaphod wanted to hit with a brick.

"Oh, and in case you  were  wondering,"  added  Zarniwoop,  "this Universe  was  created  specifically  for you to come to. You are therefore the most important person in this Universe.  You  would never," he said with an even more brickable smile, "have survived the Total Perspective Vortex in the real one. Shall we go?"

"Where?" said Zaphod sullenly. He felt collapsed.

"To your ship. The Heart of Gold. You did bring it I trust?"

"No."

"Where is your jacket?"

Zaphod looked at him in mystification.

"My jacket? I took it off. It's outside."

"Good, we will go and find it."

Zarniwoop stood up and gestured to Zaphod to follow him.

Out in the entrance chamber again, they could hear the screams of the passengers being fed coffee and biscuits.

"It has not been a pleasant experience  waiting  for  you,"  said Zarniwoop.

"Not pleasant for you!" bawled Zaphod, "How do you think ..."

Zarniwoop held up a silencing finger as the hatchway swung  open.  A few feet away from them they could see Zaphod's jacket lying in the debris.

"A very remarkable  and  very  powerful  ship,"  said  Zarniwoop, "watch."

As they watched, the pocket on the  jacket  suddenly  bulged.  It split, it ripped. The small metal model of the Heart of Gold that Zaphod had been bewildered to discover in his pocket was growing.

It grew, it continued to grow. It reached, after two minutes, its full size.

"At an Improbability Level," said Zarniwoop, "of ... oh  I  don't know, but something very large."

Zaphod swayed.

"You mean I had it with me all the time?"

"Zarniwoop smiled. He lifted up his briefcase and opened it.

He twisted a single switch inside it.

"Goodbye artificial Universe," he said, "hello real one!"

The scene before them shimmered briefly - and reappeared  exactly as before.

"You see?" said Zarniwoop, "exactly the same."

"You mean," repeated Zaphod tautly, "that I had it with  me  all the time?"

"Oh yes," said Zarniwoop, "of course. That was the whole point."

"That's it," said Zaphod, "you can count me out, from  hereon  in you  can count me out. I've had all I want of this. You play your own games."

"I'm afraid you cannot leave," said Zarniwoop, "you are  entwined in the Improbability field. You cannot escape."

He smiled the smile that Zaphod had wanted to hit and  this  time Zaphod hit it.

Chapter 13

Ford Prefect bounded up to the bridge of the Heart of Gold.

"Trillian!  Arthur!"  he  shouted,  "it's  working!  The   ship's reactivated!"

Trillian and Arthur were asleep on the floor.

"Come on you guys, we're going off, we're off," he  said  kicking them awake.

"Hi there guys!" twittered the computer, "it's really great to be

back  with you again, I can tell you, and I just want to say that

"Shut up," said Ford, "tell us where the hell we are."

"Frogstar World B, and man it's a dump," said Zaphod  running  on to the bridge, "hi, guys, you must be so amazingly glad to see me you don't even find words to tell me what a cool frood I am."

"What a what?" said Arthur blearily, picking himself up from  the floor and not taking any of this in.

"I know how you feel," said Zaphod, "I'm  so  great  even  I  get tongue-tied talking to myself. Hey it's good to see you Trillian, Ford, Monkeyman. Hey, er, computer ...?"

"Hi there, Mr Beeblebrox sir, sure is a great honor to ..."

"Shut up and get us out of here, fast fast fast."

"Sure thing, fella, where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere, doesn't matter," shouted Zaphod,  "yes  it  does!"  he said again, "we want to go to the nearest place to eat!"

"Sure thing," said the computer happily and a  massive  explosion rocket the bridge.

When Zarniwoop entered a minute or so later with a black eye,  he regarded the four wisps of smoke with interest.

Chapter 14

Four inert bodies sank through spinning blackness.  Consciousness had  died, cold oblivion pulled the bodies down and down into the pit of unbeing. The roar of silence echoed dismally  around  them and  they  sank at last into a dark and bitter sea of heaving red that slowly engulfed them, seemingly for ever.

After what seemed an eternity the sea receded and left them lying on  a  cold  hard  shore, the flotsam and jetsam of the stream of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Cold spasms shook them, lights danced  sickeningly  around  them.  The  cold  hard  shore  tipped  and span and then stood still. It shone darkly - it was a very highly polished cold hard shore.

A green blur watched them disapprovingly.

It coughed.

"Good evening,  madam,  gentlemen,"  it  said,  "do  you  have  a reservation?"

Ford Prefect's consciousness snapped back  like  elastic,  making his brain smart. He looked up woozily at the green blur.

"Reservation?" he said weakly. "Yes, sir," said the green blur.

"Do you need a reservation for the afterlife?"

In so far as it is possible for a green blur to arch its eyebrows disdainfully, this is what the green blur now did.

"Afterlife, sir?" it said.

Arthur Dent was grappling with  his  consciousness  the  way  one grapples with a lost bar of soap in the bath.

"Is this the afterlife?" he stammered.

"Well I assume so," said Ford Prefect trying to  work  out  which way was up. He tested the theory that it must lie in the opposite direction from the cold hard shore on which  he  was  lying,  and staggered to what he hoped were his feet.

"I mean," he said, swaying gently, "there's no way we could  have survived that blast is there?"

"No," muttered Arthur. He had raised himself on to his elbows but it didn't seem to improve things. He slumped down again.

"No," said Trillian, standing up, "no way at all."

A dull hoarse gurgling sound came from the floor. It  was  Zaphod Beeblebrox  attempting to speak. "I certainly didn't survive," he gurgled, "I was a total goner. Wham bang and that was it."

"Yeah, thanks to you," said Ford, "We didn't stand a  chance.  We must have been blown to bits. Arms, legs everywhere."

"Yeah," said Zaphod struggling noisily to his feet.

"If the lady and gentlemen would like to order drinks  ..."  said the green blur, hovering impatiently beside them.

"Kerpow, splat," continued Zaphod, "instantaneously  zonked  into our  component molecules. Hey, Ford," he said, identifying one of the slowly solidifying blurs around him, "did you get that  thing of your whole life flashing before you?"

"You got that too?" said Ford, "your whole life?"

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "at least I assume it was mine.  I  spent  a lot of time out of my skulls you know."

He looked at around him at the various shapes that were  at  last becoming  proper  shapes  instead of vague and wobbling shapeless shapes.

"So ..." he said.

"So what?" said Ford.

"So here we are," said Zaphod hesitantly, "lying dead ..."

"Standing," Trillian corrected him.

"Er, standing dead," continued Zaphod, "in this desolate ..."

"Restaurant," said Arthur Dent who had got to his feet and  could now, much to his surprise, see clearly. That is to say, the thing that surprised him was not that he could see, but what  he  could see.

"Here we are," continued Zaphod doggedly, "standing dead in  this desolate ..."

"Five star ..." said Trillian.

"Restaurant," concluded Zaphod.

"Odd isn't it?" said Ford.

"Er, yeah."

"Nice chandeliers though," said Trillian.

They looked about themselves in bemusement.

"It's not so much an afterlife," said Arthur,  "more  a  sort  of apres vie."

The chandeliers were in fact a little on the flashy side and  the low  vaulted  ceiling from which they hung would not, in an ideal Universe, have been painted in  that  particular  shade  of  deep turquoise,  and  even  if  it  had  been  it  wouldn't  have been highlighted by concealed moodlighting. This is not,  however,  an ideal  Universe,  as  was  further  evidenced by the eye-crossing patterns of the inlaid marble floor, and the  way  in  which  the fronting  for  the  eighty-yard  long  marble-topped bar had been made. The fronting for the eighty-yard long marble-topped bar had been  made  by stitching together nearly twenty thousand Antarean Mosaic Lizard skins, despite the fact that  the  twenty  thousand lizards concerned had needed them to keep their insides in.

A few smartly dressed creatures were lounging casually at the bar or  relaxing  in the richly coloured body-hugging seats that were deployed here and there about  the  bar  area.  A  young  Vl'Hurg officer  and  his  green  steaming  young lady passed through the large smoked glass doors at the far  end  of  the  bar  into  the dazzling light of the main body of the Restaurant beyond.

Behind Arthur was a large curtained bay window. He  pulled  aside the  corner  of  the  curtain and looked out at a landscape which under normal circumstances would have given Arthur  the  creeping horrors.  These  were not, however, normal circumstances, for the thing that froze his blood and made his skin try to crawl up  his back and off the top of his head was the sky. The sky was ...

An attendant flunkey politely drew the curtain back into place.

"All in good time, sir," he said.

Zaphod's eyes flashed.

"Hey, hang about you dead guys," he said, "I think we're  missing some ultra-important thing here you know. Something somebody said and we missed it."

Arthur was profoundly relieved to turn his attention from what he had just seen.

He said, "I said it was a sort of apres ..."

"Yeah, and don't you wish you hadn't?" said Zaphod, "Ford?"

"I said it was odd."

"Yeah, shrewd but dull, perhaps it was ..."

"Perhaps," interrupted the  green  blur  who  had  by  this  time

resolved  into  the  shape  of  a small wizened dark-suited green

waiter, "perhaps you would care to discuss the matter over drinks

"Drinks!" cried Zaphod, "that was it! See what you  miss  if  you don't stay alert."

"Indeed sir,"  said  the  waiter  patiently.  "If  the  lady  and gentlemen would care to order drinks before dinner ..."

"Dinner!" Zaphod exclaimed with passion,  "Listen,  little  green person,  my  stomach could take you home and cuddle you all night for the mere idea."

"... and the Universe," concluded the waiter, determined  not  to be  deflected  on  his home stretch, "will explode later for your pleasure."

Ford's head swivelled towards him. He spoke with feeling.

"Wow," he said, "What sort of drinks do you serve in this place?"

The waiter laughed a polite little waiter's laugh.

"Ah," he said, "I think sir has perhaps misunderstood me."

"Oh, I hope not," breathed Ford.

The waiter coughed a polite little waiter's cough.

"It is not unusual for our customers to be a  little  disoriented by the time journey," he said, "so if I might suggest ..."

"Time journey?" said Zaphod.

"Time journey?" said Ford.

"Time journey?" said Trillian.

"You mean this isn't the afterlife?" said Arthur.

The waiter smiled a polite little waiter's smile. He  had  almost exhausted  his  polite little waiter repertoire and would soon be slipping into his role of a rather  tight  lipped  and  sarcastic little waiter.

"Afterlife sir?" he said, "No sir."

"And we're not dead?" said Arthur.

The waiter tightened his lips.

"Aha, ha," he said, "Sir is most  evidently  alive,  otherwise  I would not attempt to serve sir."

In an extraordinary gesture  which  is  pointless  attempting  to describe,  Zaphod  Beeblebrox slapped both his foreheads with two of his arms and one of his thighs with the other.

"Hey guys," he said, "This  is  crazy.  We  finally  did  it.  We finally got to where we were going. This is Milliways!"

"Yes sir," said the waiter, laying on the patience with a trowel, "this is Milliways - the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."

"End of what?" said Arthur.

"The  Universe,"  repeated   the   waiter,   very   clearly   and unnecessarily distinctly.

"When did that end?" said Arthur.

"In just a few minutes, sir," said the waiter.  He  took  a  deep breath.  He  didn't  need  to do this since his body was supplied with the peculiar assortment of gases it  required  for  survival from  a  small  intravenous device strapped to his leg. There are times, however, when whatever your metabolism you have to take  a deep breath.

"Now, if you would care to order drinks at  last,"  he  said,  "I will then show you to your table."

Zaphod grinned two manic grins, sauntered over  to  the  bar  and bought most of it.

Chapter 15

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe  is  one  of  the  most extraordinary  ventures in the entire history of catering. It has been built on the fragmented remains of ... it will be  built  on the fragmented ... that is to say it will have been built by this time, and indeed has been -

One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not  that of  accidentally  becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father  or  mother  that  a broadminded  and  well-adjusted  family can't cope with. There is also no problem about changing the course of history - the course of  history  does  not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they  were  supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.

The major problem is quite simply one of grammar,  and  the  main work  to  consult in this matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will  tell  you for  instance  how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping  forward two  days  in  order  to  avoid  it.  The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking  about  it  from the  standpoint  of  your  own  natural  time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the  further  past  and  is  further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations whilst you are actually travelling from one time  to  another  with  the intention of becoming your own father or mother.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semi-Conditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up:

and in fact in later editions of the book all  the  pages  beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

The Hitch Hikers Guide to the  Galaxy  skips  lightly  over  this tangle  of  academic  abstraction,  pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was  discovered not to be.

To resume:

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe  is  one  of  the  most extraordinary ventures in the entire history of catering.

It is built on the fragmented remains  of  an  eventually  ruined planet  which  is (wioll haven be) enclosed in a vast time bubble and projected forward in time to the precise moment of the End of the Universe.

This is, many would say, impossible.

In it, guests take (willan on-take) their places at table and eat (willan on-eat) sumptuous meals whilst watching (willing watchen) the whole of creation explode around them.

This is, many would say, equally impossible.

You can arrive (mayan arivan on-when) for any  sitting  you  like without  prior  (late fore-when) reservation because you can book retrospectively, as it were when you return  to  your  own  time.  (you  can have on-book haventa forewhen presooning returningwenta retrohome.)

This is, many would now insist, absolutely impossible.

At the Restaurant you can meet and dine with  (mayan  meetan  con with  dinan  on  when)  a fascinating cross-section of the entire population of space and time.

This, it can be explained patiently, is also impossible.

You can visit it as many times as you like  (mayan  on-visit  re-onvisiting  ... and so on - for further tense-corrections consult Dr Streetmentioner's book) and be sure of never meeting yourself, because of the embarrassment this usually causes.

This, even if the rest were true, which  it  isn't,  is  patently impossible, say the doubters.

All you have to do is deposit one penny in a savings  account  in your  own  era,  and  when  you  arrive  at  the  End of Time the operation of compound interest means that the  fabulous  cost  of your meal has been paid for.

This, many claim, is not merely impossible  but  clearly  insane, which  is  why  the  advertising executives of the star system of Bastablon  came  up  with  this  slogan:  "If  you've  done   six impossible  things  this  morning,  why  not  round  it  off with breakfast  at  Milliways,  the  Restaurant  at  the  End  of  the Universe?"

Chapter 16

At the bar, Zaphod was rapidly becoming as tired as a  newt.  His heads  knocked  together and his smiles were coming out of synch.  He was miserably happy.

"Zaphod," said Ford, "whilst  you're  still  capable  of  speech, would  you  care  to tell me what the photon happened? Where have you been? Where have we been?  Small  matter,  but  I'd  like  it cleared up."

Zaphod's left head sobered up, leaving his right to sink  further into the obscurity of drink.

"Yeah," he said, "I've been around. They want me to find the  man who  rules  the Universe, but I don't care to meet him. I believe the man can't cook."

His left head watched his right head saying this and then nodded.

"True," it said, "have another drink."

Ford had another Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the drink which has been  described  as  the  alcoholic  equivalent  of  a  mugging - expensive and bad for  the  head.  Whatever  had  happened,  Ford decided, he didn't really care too much.

"Listen Ford," said Zaphod, "everything's cool and froody."

"You mean everything's under control."

"No," said Zaphod, "I do not  mean  everything's  under  control.  That  would  not  be  cool  and  froody. If you want to know what happened let's just say I had the whole situation in  my  pocket.

Ford shrugged.

Zaphod giggled into his drink. It frothed up over the side of the glass and started to eat its way into the marble bar top.

A wild-skinned sky-gypsy  approached  them  and  played  electric violin at them until Zaphod gave him a lot of money and he agreed to go away again.

The gypsy approached Arthur and Trillian sitting in another  part of the bar.

"I don't know what this place is," said Arthur, "but I  think  it gives me the creeps."

"Have another drink," said Trillian, "Enjoy yourself."

"Which?" said Arthur, "the two are mutually exclusive."

"Poor Arthur, you're not really cut out for this life are you?"

"You call this life?"

"You're beginning to sound like Marvin."

"Marvin's the clearest thinker I know. How do you think  we  make this violinist go away?"

The waiter approached.

"Your table is ready," he said.

Seen  from  the  outside,  which  it  never  is,  the  Restaurant resembles  a  giant  glittering  starfish  beached on a forgotten rock. Each of  its  arms  houses  the  bars,  the  kitchens,  the forcefield  generators which protect the entire structure and the decayed planet on which it sits,  and  the  Time  Turbines  which slowly  rock  the  whole affair backwards and forwards across the crucial moment.

In the centre sits the gigantic golden dome,  almost  a  complete globe,  and  it  was into this area that Zaphod, Ford, Arthur and Trillian now passed.

At least five tons of glitter alone had gone into it before them, and  covered every available surface. The other surfaces were not available  because  they  were  already  encrusted  with  jewels, precious  sea  shells  from Santraginus, gold leaf, mosaic tiles, lizard skins and  a  million  unidentifiable  embellishments  and decorations.  Glass glittered, silver shone, gold gleamed, Arthur Dent goggled.

"Wowee," said Zaphod, "Zappo."

"Incredible!" breathed Arthur, "the people ... ! The  things  ...

"The things," said Ford Prefect quietly, "are also people."

"The people ..." resumed Arthur, "the ... other people ..."

"The lights ... !" said Trillian.

"The tables ..." said Arthur.

"The clothes ... !" said Trillian.

The waiter thought they sounded like a couple of bailiffs.

"The End of the Universe is very popular," said Zaphod  threading his  way  unsteadily  through  the throng of tables, some made of marble, some of rich ultra-mahagony, some even of  platinum,  and at  each  a party of exotic creatures chatting amongst themselves and studying menus.

"People like to dress up for it," continued Zaphod, "Gives  it  a sense of occasion."

The tables were fanned out in a large  circle  around  a  central stage  area where a small band were playing light music, at least a thousand tables was Arthur's guess,  and  interspersed  amongst them  were  swaying palms, hissing fountains, grotesque statuary, in short all the paraphernalia common to  all  Restaurants  where little  expense  has  been  spared to give the impression that no expense has been spared. Arthur glanced around, half expecting to see someone making an American Express commercial.

Zaphod lurched into Ford, who lurched back into Zaphod.

"Wowee," said Zaphod.

"Zappo," said Ford.

"My great granddaddy must have really screwed up  the  computer's works,  you  know,"  said  Zaphod,  "I  told it to take us to the nearest place to eat and it sends us to the End of the  Universe.  Remind me to be nice to it one day."

He paused.

"Hey, everybody's here you know. Everybody who was anybody."

"Was?" said Arthur.

"At the End of the Universe you have to  use  the  past  tense  a lot,"  said  Zaphod,  "'cos  everything's been done you know. Hi, guys," he called out to a nearby party of giant iguana lifeforms, "How did you do?"

"Is that Zaphod Beeblebrox?" asked one iguana of another iguana.

"I think so," replied the second iguana.

"Well doesn't that just take the biscuit," said the first iguana.

"Funny old thing, life," said the second iguana.

"It's what you make of it," said the first and they  lapsed  back into  silence.  They  were  waiting  for the greatest show in the Universe.

"Hey, Zaphod," said Ford, grabbing for his arm and, on account of the  third  Pan  Galactic  Gargle  Blaster, missing. He pointed a swaying finger.

"There's an old mate of mine," he said,  "Hotblack  Desiato!  See the man at the platinum table with the platinum suit on?"

Zaphod tried to follow Ford's finger with his eyes  but  it  made him feel dizzy. Finally he saw.

"Oh yeah," he said, then recognition came a moment later.  "Hey," he said, "did that guy ever make it megabig! Wow, bigger than the biggest thing ever. Other than me."

"Who's he supposed to be?" asked Trillian.

"Hotblack Desiato?" said Zaphod in astonishment, "you don't know?

You never heard of Disaster Area?"

"No," said Trillian, who hadn't.

"The biggest," said Ford, "loudest ..."

"Richest ..." suggested Zaphod.

"... rock band in the history of ..." he searched for the word.

"... history itself," said Zaphod.

"No," said Trillian.

"Zowee," said Zaphod, "here we are at the End of the Universe and you haven't even lived yet. Did you miss out."

He led her off to where the waiter had been waiting all this time at the table. Arthur followed them feeling very lost and alone.

Ford waded off through the throng to renew an old acquaintance.

"Hey, er, Hotblack," he called out, "how you doing? Great to  see you  big boy, how's the noise? You're looking great, really very, very fat and unwell. Amazing." He slapped the man on the back and was mildly surprised that it seemed to elict no response. The Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters swirling round inside him  told  him  to plunge on regardless.

"Remember the old days?" he said, "We used to  hang  out,  right?  The   Bistro  Illegal,  remember?  Slim's  Throat  Emporium?  The Evildrome Boozarama, great days eh?"

Hotblack Desiato offered no opinion as to whether they were great days or not. Ford was not perturbed.

"And when we were hungry we'd pose as public  health  inspectors, you  remember  that?  And go around confiscating meals and drinks right? Till we got food poisoning. Oh, and then  there  were  the long  nights  of talking and drinking in those smelly rooms above the Cafe Lou in Gretchen Town, New Betel, and you were always  in the  next  room  trying to write songs on your ajuitar and we all hated them. And you said you didn't care,  and  we  said  we  did because  we  hated  them  so much." Ford's eyes were beginning to mist over.

"And you said you didn't  want  to  be  a  star,"  he  continued, wallowing  in  nostalgia,  "because you despised the star system.  And we said, Hadra and Sulijoo and me, that we didn't  think  you had the option. And what do you do now? You buy star systems!"

He turned and solicited the attention of those at nearby tables.

"Here," he said, "is a man who buys star systems!"

Hotblack Desiato made no attempt either to confirm or  deny  this fact, and the attention of the temporary audience waned rapidly.

"I think someone's drunk," muttered a purple bush-like being into his wine glass.

Ford staggered slightly, and sat down heavily on the chair facing Hotblack Desiato.

"What's that number you do?" he  said,  unwisely  grabbing  at  a bottle  for  support and tipping it over - into a nearby glass as it happened. Not to waste a happy accident, he drained the glass.

"That really huge number," he continued, "how does it go? `Bwarm!  Bwarm!  Baderr!!'  something, and in the stage act you do it ends up with this ship crashing right into the sun, and  you  actually do it!"

Ford crashed his fist into his other hand to illustrate this feat graphically. He knocked the bottle over again.

"Ship! Sun! Wham bang!" he  cried.  "I  mean  forget  lasers  and stuff,  you  guys are into solar flares and real sunburn! Oh, and terrible songs."

His eyes followed the stream of liquid glugging out of the bottle on to the table. Something ought to be done about it, he thought.

"Hey, you want a drink?" he said.  It  began  to  sink  into  his squelching mind that something was missing from this reunion, and that the missing something was in some  way  connected  with  the fact  that  the fat man sitting opposite him in the platinum suit and the silvery trilby had not yet said "Hi, Ford" or  "Great  to see you after all this time," or in fact anything at all. More to the point he had not yet even moved.

"Hotblack?" said Ford.

A large meaty hand landed on his shoulder from behind and  pushed him aside. He slid gracelessly off his seat and peered upwards to see if he could spot the owner of  this  discourteous  hand.  The owner  was not hard to spot, on account of his being something of the order of seven feet tall and not slightly built with  it.  In fact  he was built the way one builds leather sofas, shiny, lumpy and with lots of solid stuffing. The suit into  which  the  man's body  had been stuffed looked as if it's only purpose in life was to demonstrate how difficult it was to get this sort of body into a  suit.  The face had the texture of an orange and the colour of an apple, but there the resemblance to anything sweet ended.

"Kid ..." said a voice which emerged from the man's mouth  as  if it had been having a really rough time down in his chest.

"Er, yeah?" said Ford conversationally. He staggered back to  his feet  again  and was disappointed that the top of his head didn't come further up the man's body.

"Beat it," said the man.

"Oh yeah?" said Ford, wondering how wise he was being,  "and  who are you?"

The man considered this for a moment. He  wasn't  used  to  being asked  this sort of question. Nevertheless, after a while he came up with an answer.

"I'm the guy who's telling you to beat it," he said, "before  you get it beaten for you."

"Now listen," said Ford nervously - he wished his head would stop

spinning,  settle down and get to grips with the situation - "Now

listen," he continued, "I am one of Hotblack's oldest friends and

He glanced at Hotblack Desiato, who still hadn't moved so much as an eyelash.

"... and ..." said Ford again, wondering what  would  be  a  good word to say after "and".

The large man came up with a whole sentence to go after "and". He said it.

"And I am Mr Desiato's bodyguard," it went, "and I am responsible for his body, and I am not responsible for yours, so take it away before it gets damaged."

"Now wait a minute," said Ford.

"No minutes!" boomed  the  bodyguard,  "no  waiting!  Mr  Desiato speaks to no one!"

"Well perhaps you'd let him say what he thinks about  the  matter himself," said Ford.

"He speaks to no one!" bellowed the bodyguard.

Ford glanced anxiously at Hotblack again and was forced to  admit to  himself  that  the  bodyguard seemed to have the facts on his side. There was still not the slightest  sign  of  movement,  let alone keen interest in Ford's welfare.

"Why?" said Ford, "What's the matter with him?"

The bodyguard told him.

Chapter 17

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy,  but  in fact  the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually  to  be  heard  from within  large  concrete  bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments  by remote  control  from  within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more  frequently  around  a completely different planet.

Their songs are on the whole very simple and  mostly  follow  the familiar  theme  of  boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.

Many worlds have now banned their act altogether,  sometimes  for artistic  reasons,  but  most  commonly because the band's public address  system  contravenes  local  strategic  arms  limitations treaties.

This has not, however, stopped their earnings from  pushing  back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant   has   recently   been   appointed    Professor    of Neomathematics  at  the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns,  in  which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.

Ford staggered  back  to  the  table  where  Zaphod,  Arthur  and Trillian were sitting waiting for the fun to begin.

"Gotta have some food," said Ford.

"Hi, Ford," said Zaphod, "you speak to the big noise boy?"

Ford waggled his head noncommittally.

"Hotblack? I sort of spoke to him, yeah."

"What'd he say?"

"Well, not a lot really. He's ... er ..."

"Yeah?"

"He's spending a year dead for  tax  reasons.  I've  got  to  sit down."

He sat down.

The waiter approached.

"Would you like to see the menu?" he said, "or would you like  to meet the Dish of the Day?"

"Huh?" said Ford.

"Huh?" said Arthur.

"Huh?" said Trillian.

"That's cool," said Zaphod, "we'll meet the meat."

In a small room in one of the arms of the  Restaurant  complex  a tall,  thin,  gangling figure pulled aside a curtain and oblivion looked him in the face.

It was not a pretty face, perhaps because oblivion had looked him in  it  so  many times. It was too long for a start, the eyes too sunken and too hooded, the cheeks too hollow, his lips  were  too thin and too long, and when they parted his teeth looked too much like a recently polished bay window.  The  hands  that  held  the curtain  were  long  and  thin too: they were also cold. They lay lightly along the folds of the curtain and  gave  the  impression that if he didn't watch them like a hawk they would crawl away of their own accord and do something unspeakable in a corner.

He let the curtain drop and the terrible light that had played on his  features went off to play somewhere more healthy. He prowled around his small chamber like a mantis contemplating an evening's preying,  finally settling on a rickety chair by a trestle table, where he leafed through a few sheets of jokes.

A bell rang.

He pushed the thin sheaf of papers aside and stood up. His  hands brushed  limply  over  some  of  the one million rainbow-coloured sequins with which his jacket was  festooned,  and  he  was  gone through the door.

In the Restaurant the lights dimmed, the band quickened its pace, a single spotlight stabbed down into the darkness of the stairway that led up to the centre of the stage.

Up the stairs bounded bounded a tall brilliantly coloured figure.  He  burst  on to the stage, tripped lightly up to the microphone, removed it from its stand with one swoop of his  long  thin  hand and  stood  for  a  moment  bowing left and right to the audience acknowledging their applause  and  displaying  to  them  his  bay window.  He  waved to his particular friends in the audience even though there weren't any there, and waited for  the  applause  to die down.

He held up his hand and smiled a smile that stretched not  merely from  ear  to  ear, but seemed to extend some way beyond the mere confines of his face.

"Thank you ladies and gentlemen!" he cried, "thank you very much.

Thank you so much."

He eyed them with a twinkling eye.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "The Universe as we know it  has now  been  in existence for over one hundred and seventy thousand million billion years and will be ending in a little over half an hour. So, welcome one and all to Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe!"

With a gesture he deftly conjured another  round  of  spontaneous applause. With another gesture he cut it.

"I  am  your  host  for  tonight,"  he  said,  "my  name  is  Max Quordlepleen  ..."  (Everybody  knew  this,  his  act  was famous throughout the known  Galaxy,  but  he  said  it  for  the  fresh applause  it  generated, which he acknowledged with a disclaiming smile and wave.) "... and I've just come straight from  the  very very other end of time, where I've been hosting a show at the Big Bang Burger Bar - where I can tell you we  had  a  very  exciting evening  ladies  and  gentlemen  -  and  I will be with you right through this historic occasion, the End of History itself!"

Another burst of applause died away quickly as the lights  dimmed down   further.   On   every  table  candles  ignited  themselves spontaneously, eliciting a slight gasp from all  the  diners  and wreathing them in a thousand tiny flickering lights and a million intimate shadows. A tremor of  excitement  thrilled  through  the darkened Restaurant as the vast golden dome above them began very very slowly to dim, to darken, to fade.

Max's voice was hushed as he continued.

"So, ladies and gentlemen," he breathed, "the  candles  are  lit, the  band  plays  softly, and as the force-shielded dome above us fades into transparency, revealing a dark  and  sullen  sky  hung heavy  with  the  ancient light of livid swollen stars, I can see we're all in for a fabulous evening's apocalypse!"

Even the soft tootling of the band faded away  as  stunned  shock descended on all those who had not seen this sight before.

A monstrous, grisly light poured in on them,

- a hideous light,

- a boiling, pestilential light,

- a light that would have disfigured hell.

The Universe was coming to an end.

For a few  interminable  seconds  the  Restaurant  span  silently through the raging void. Then Max spoke again.

"For those of you who ever hoped to see the light at the  end  of the tunnel," he said, "this is it."

The band struck up again.

"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen," cried Max, "I'll be back  with you again in just a moment, and meanwhile I leave you in the very capable hands of Mr Reg Nullify and his  cataclysmic  Combo.  Big hand please ladies and gentlemen for Reg and the boys!"

The baleful turmoil of the skies continued.

Hesitantly the audience began to clap and after a  moment  or  so normal  conversation  resumed. Max began his round of the tables, swapping jokes, shouting with laughter, earning his living.

A large dairy animal  approached  Zaphod  Beeblebrox's  table,  a large  fat  meaty  quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on its lips.

"Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I am  the  main  Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?" It  harrumphed  and  gurgled  a  bit,  wriggled  its  hind quarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.

Its gaze was met by looks of startled  bewilderment  from  Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox.

"Something off  the  shoulder  perhaps?"  suggested  the  animal, "Braised in a white wine sauce?"

"Er, your shoulder?" said Arthur in a horrified whisper.

"But naturally my shoulder, sir," mooed the  animal  contentedly, "nobody else's is mine to offer."

Zaphod leapt to his feet and started  prodding  and  feeling  the animal's shoulder appreciatively.

"Or the rump is very  good,"  murmured  the  animal.  "I've  been exercising  it  and  eating  plenty of grain, so there's a lot of good meat there." It gave  a  mellow  grunt,  gurgled  again  and started to chew the cud. It swallowed the cud again.

"Or a casserole of me perhaps?" it added.

"You mean this animal actually wants us  to  eat  it?"  whispered Trillian to Ford.

"Me?" said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes,  "I  don't  mean anything."

"That's  absolutely  horrible,"  exclaimed  Arthur,   "the   most revolting thing I've ever heard."

"What's the problem Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring  his attention to the animal's enormous rump.

"I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing here inviting me to," said Arthur, "it's heartless."

"Better than eating an animal that doesn't  want  to  be  eaten," said Zaphod.

"That's not the point," Arthur protested. Then he  thought  about

it  for  a  moment. "Alright," he said, "maybe it is the point. I

don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just ... er

The Universe raged about him in its death throes.

"I think I'll just have a green salad," he muttered.

"May I urge you to consider my liver?" asked the animal, "it must be  very  rich  and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months."

"A green salad," said Arthur emphatically.

"A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur.

"Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I  shouldn't  have green salad?"

"Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables  that  are  very clear  on  that  point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed  an  animal  that actually  wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am."

It managed a very slight bow.

"Glass of water please," said Arthur.

"Look," said Zaphod, "we want to eat, we don't  want  to  make  a meal  of  the  issues.  Four  rare  steaks  please, and hurry. We haven't eaten in five hundred and  seventy-six  thousand  million years."

The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle.

"A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good,"  it  said, "I'll just nip off and shoot myself."

He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur.

"Don't worry, sir," he said, "I'll be very humane."

It waddled unhurriedly off into the kitchen.

A matter of minutes later  the  waiter  arrived  with  four  huge steaming  steaks.  Zaphod  and  Ford  wolfed  straight  into them without a second's hesitation. Trillian paused, then shrugged and started into hers.

Arthur stared at his feeling slightly ill.

"Hey, Earthman," said Zaphod with a malicious grin  on  the  face that wasn't stuffing itself, "what's eating you?"

And the band played on.

All around the Restaurant people and things relaxed and  chatted.  The  air  was  filled  with  talk  of this and that, and with the mingled scents of exotic plants, extravagant foods and  insidious wines.  For  an  infinite  number of miles in every direction the universal  cataclysm  was  gathering  to  a  stupefying   climax.  Glancing at his watch, Max returned to the stage with a flourish.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen," he beamed, "is  everyone  having one last wonderful time?"

"Yes," called out the sort of people  who  call  out  "yes"  when comedians ask them if they're having a wonderful time.

"That's wonderful," enthused Max, "absolutely wonderful.  And  as the  photon storms gather in swirling crowds around us, preparing to tear apart the last of the red hot suns,  I  know  you're  all going  to  settle back and enjoy with me what I know we will find all an immensely exciting and terminal experience."

He paused. He caught the audience with a glittering eye.

"Believe me, ladies and gentlemen,"  he  said,  "there's  nothing penultimate about this one."

He paused again. Tonight his timing was  immaculate.  Time  after time  he had done this show, night after night. Not that the word night had any meaning here at the extremity of  time.  All  there was  was  the  endless  repetition  of  the  final moment, as the Restaurant  rocked  slowly  forward  over  the  brink  of  time's furthest edge - and back again. This "night" was good though, the audience was writhing in the palm of his sickly hand.  His  voice dropped. They had to strain to hear him.

"This," he said, "really is the absolute end, the final  chilling desolation, in which the whole majestic sweep of creation becomes extinct. This ladies and gentlemen is the proverbial `it'."

He dropped his voice still lower. In the stillness, a  fly  would not have dared cleat its throat.

"After this,"  he  said,  "there  is  nothing.  Void.  Emptiness.

Oblivion. Absolute nothing ..."

His eyes glittered again - or did they twinkle?"

"Nothing ... except of course for the sweet trolley, and  a  fine selection of Aldebaran liqueurs!"

The band gave him a musical sting. He wished  they  wouldn't,  he didn't  need  it, not an artist of his calibre. He could play the audience like his own musical instrument. They were laughing with relief. He followed on.

"And for once," he cried cheerily, "you don't need to worry about having  a  hangover  in  the morning - because there won't be any more mornings!"

He beamed at his happy, laughing audience. He glanced up  at  the sky,  going  through  the  same dead routine every night, but his glance was only for a fraction of a second. He trusted it  to  do its job, as one professional trusts another.

"And now," he said, strutting about the stage, "at  the  risk  of putting a damper on the wonderful sense of doom and futility here this evening, I would like to welcome a few parties."

He pulled a card from his pocket.

"Do we have ..." he put up a hand to hold back the cheers, "Do we have  a  party here from the Zansellquasure Flamarion Bridge Club from beyond the Vortvoid of Qvarne? Are they here?"

A rousing cheer came from the back, but he pretended not to hear.

He peered around trying to find them.

"Are they here?" he asked again, to elict a louder cheer.

He got it, as he always did.

"Ah, there they are. Well, last bids  lads  -  and  no  cheating, remember this is a very solemn moment."

He lapped up the laughter.

"And do we also have, do we have ... a  party  of  minor  deities from the Halls of Asgard?"

Away to his right came  a  rumble  of  thunder.  Lightning  arced across  the  stage.  A  small group of hairy men with helmets sat looking very pleased with themselves, and raised their glasses to him.

Hasbeens, he thought to himself.

"Careful with that hammer, sir," he said.

They did their trick with the lightning again. Max  gave  them  a very thin lipped smile.

"And thirdly," he said, "thirdly a party of  Young  Conservatives from Sirius B, are they here?"

A party of smartly dressed young dogs stopped throwing  rolls  at each  other  and started throwing rolls at the stage. They yapped and barked unintelligibly.

"Yes," said Max, "well this is all your fault, you realize that?"

"And finally," said Max, quieting the audience down  and  putting on  his  solemn  face,  "finally  I  believe we have with us here tonight, a party of believers, very devout  believers,  from  the Church of the Second Coming of the Great Prophet Zarquon."

There were about twenty of them, sitting right out on the edge of the  floor, ascetically dressed, sipping mineral water nervously, and staying apart from the festivities. They blinked  resentfully as the spotlight was turned on them.

"There they are," said Max, "sitting there,  patiently.  He  said he'd  come again, and he's kept you waiting a long time, so let's hope he's hurrying fellas, because he's only  got  eight  minutes left!"

The party of  Zarquon's  followers  sat  rigid,  refusing  to  be buffeted  by  the waves of uncharitable laughter which swept over them.

Max restrained his audience.

"No, but seriously though folks,  seriously  though,  no  offence meant.  No,  I know we shouldn't make fun of deeply held beliefs, so I think a big hand please for the Great Prophet Zarquon ..."

The audience clapped respectfully.

"... wherever he's got to!"

He blew a kiss to the  stony-faced  party  and  returned  to  the centre of the stage.

He grabbed a tall stool and sat on it.

"It's marvellous though," he rattled on, "to see so many  of  you here  tonight  -  no isn't it though? Yes, absolutely marvellous.  Because I know that so many of you come here time and time again, which  I  think is really wonderful, to come and watch this final end of everything, and then return home to your own eras ...  and raise  families,  strive  for  new  and  better  societies, fight terrible wars for what you know to be right ... it  really  gives one  hope  for  the future of all lifekind. Except of course," he waved at the blitzing turmoil above and  around  them,  "that  we know it hasn't got one ..."

Arthur turned to Ford - he hadn't quite got this place worked out in his mind.

"Look, surely," he said, "if the Universe is  about  to  end  ...  don't we go with it?"

Ford gave him a three-Pan-Galactic-Gargle-Blaster look, in  other words a rather unsteady one.

"No," he said, "look," he said, "as soon as you  come  into  this dive you get held in this sort of amazing force-shielded temporal warp thing. I think."

"Oh," said Arthur. He turned his attention back to a bowl of soup he'd managed to get from the waiter to replace his steak.

"Look," said Ford, "I'll show you."

He grabbed at a napkin off the table and fumbled hopelessly  with it.

"Look," he said  again,  "imagine  this  napkin,  right,  as  the temporal Universe, right? And this spoon as a transductional mode in the matter curve ..."

It took him a while to say this last part, and  Arthur  hated  to interrupt him.

"That's the spoon I was eating with," he said.

"Alright," said Ford, "imagine this spoon ..." he found  a  small wooden spoon on a tray of relishes, "this spoon ..." but found it rather tricky to pick up, "no, better still this fork ..."

"Hey would you let go of my fork?" snapped Zaphod.

"Alright," said Ford, "alright, alright. Why don't we say ... why don't we say that this wine glass is the temporal Universe ..."

"What, the one you've just knocked on the floor?"

"Did I do that?"

"Yes."

"Alright," said Ford, "forget that. I mean ... I mean,  look,  do you know - do you know how the Universe actually began for a kick off?"

"Probably not," said Arthur, who wished he'd  never  embarked  on any of this.

"Alright," said Ford, "imagine this. Right. You  get  this  bath.

Right. A large round bath. And it's made of ebony."

"Where from?" said Arthur, "Harrods was destroyed by the Vogons."

"Doesn't matter."

"So you keep saying."

"Listen."

"Alright."

"You get this bath, see? Imagine you've got this bath.  And  it's ebony. And it's conical."

"Conical?" said Arthur, "What sort of ..."

"Shhh!" said Ford. "It's conical. So what you do is, you see, you fill it with fine white sand, alright? Or sugar. Fine white sand, and/or sugar. Anything. Doesn't matter. Sugar's  fine.  And  when it's full, you pull the plug out ... are you listening?"

"I'm listening."

"You pull the plug out, and it all just twirls away, twirls  away you see, out of the plughole."

"I see."

"You don't see. You don't see at all. I haven't got to the clever bit yet. You want to hear the clever bit?"

"Tell me the clever bit."

"I'll tell you the clever bit."

Ford thought for a moment, trying to remember what the clever bit was.

"The clever bit," he said, "is this. You film it happening."

"Clever."

"That's not the clever bit. This is the clever  bit,  I  remember now  that this is the clever bit. The clever bit is that you then thread the film in the projector ... backwards!"

"Backwards?"

"Yes. Threading it backwards is definitely  the  clever  bit.  So then,  you  just sit and watch it, and everything just appears to spiral upwards out of the plughole and fill the bath. See?"

"And that's how the Universe began is it?" said Arthur.

"No," said Ford, "but it's a marvellous way to relax."

He reached for his wine glass.

"Where's my wine glass?" he said.

"It's on the floor."

"Ah."

Tipping back his chair to look for it,  Ford  collided  with  the small  green  waiter  who  was  approaching  the table carrying a portable telephone.

Ford excused himself to the waiter explaining that it was because he was extremely drunk.

The waiter said that that was quite alright and that he perfectly understood.

Ford thanked the waiter for his kind indulgence, attempted to tug his forelock, missed by six inches and slid under the table.

"Mr Zaphod Beeblebrox?" inquired the waiter.

"Er, yeah?" said Zaphod, glancing up from his third steak.

"There is a phone call for you."

"Hey, what?"

"A phone call, sir."

"For me? Here? Hey, but who knows where I am?"

One of his minds raced. The other dawdled lovingly over the  food it was still shovelling in.

"Excuse me if I carry on, won't you?" said his  eating  head  and carried on.

There were now so many people  after  him  he'd  lost  count.  He shouldn't  have  made  such a conspicuous entrance. Hell, why not though, he thought. How do you know you're having fun if  there's no one watching you have it?

"Maybe  someone  here  tipped  off  the  Galactic  Police,"  said Trillian. "Everyone saw you come in."

"You mean they want to arrest me over the  phone?"  said  Zaphod, "Could be. I'm a pretty dangerous dude when I'm concerned."

"Yeah," said a voice from under the table, "you go to  pieces  so fast people get hit by the shrapnel."

"Hey, what is this, Judgment Day?" snapped Zaphod.

"Do we get to see that as well?" asked Arthur nervously.

"I'm in no hurry," muttered Zaphod, "OK, so who's the cat on  the phone?"  He kicked Ford. "Hey get up there, kid," he said to him, "I may need you."

"I am not," said the  waiter,  "personally  acquainted  with  the metal gentlemen in question, sir ..."

"Metal?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you say metal?"

"Yes, sir. I said that I am not personally  acquainted  with  the metal gentleman in question ..."

"OK, carry on."

"But I am informed that he has been awaiting your  return  for  a considerable number of millennia. It seems you left here somewhat precipitately."

"Left here?" said Zaphod, "are you being strange?  We  only  just arrived here."

"Indeed, sir," persisted the waiter  doggedly,  "but  before  you arrived here, sir, I understand that you left here."

Zaphod tried this in one brain, then in the other.

"You're saying," he said, "that before we arrived here,  we  left here?"

This is going to be a long night, thought the waiter.

"Precisely, sir," he said.

"Put your analyst on danger money, baby," advised Zaphod.

"No, wait a minute," said Ford, emerging above table level again, "where exactly is here?"

"To be absolutely exact sir, it is Frogstar World B."

"But we just left there," protested Zaphod, "we  left  there  and came to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."

"Yes, sir," said the waiter, feeling that he  was  now  into  the home  stretch  and  running well, "the one was constructed on the ruins of the other."

"Oh," said Arthur brightly, "you mean we've travelled in time but not in space."

"Listen you semi-evolved simian," cut in Zaphod, "go climb a tree will you?"

Arthur bristled.

"Go bang your heads together four-eyes," he advised Zaphod.

"No, no," the waiter said to Zaphod,  "your  monkey  has  got  it right, sir."

Arthur stuttered in fury and said  nothing  apposite,  or  indeed coherent.

"You jumped forward ... I believe five  hundred  and  seventy-six thousand million years whilst staying in exactly the same place," explained the waiter. He smiled. He had a wonderful feeling  that he  had  finally  won  through  against  what  had  seemed  to be insuperable odds.

"That's it!" said Zaphod, "I got it. I told the computer to  send us  to the nearest place to eat, that's exactly what it did. Give or take five hundred and seventy-six thousand million  years,  we never moved. Neat."

They all agreed this was very neat.

"But who," said Zaphod, "is the cat on the phone?"

"Whatever happened to Marvin?" said Trillian.

Zaphod clapped his hands to his heads.

"The Paranoid Android! I left him moping about on Frogstar B."

"When was this?"

"Well, er, five hundred and seventy-six  thousand  million  years ago I suppose," said Zaphod, "Hey, er, hand me the rap-rod, Plate Captain."

The little waiter's  eyebrows  wandered  about  his  forehead  in confusion.

"I beg your pardon, sir?" he said.

"The phone, waiter," said Zaphod, grabbing it off him. "Shee, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off."

"Indeed, sir."

"Hey, Marvin, is that you?" said Zaphod into the phone, "How  you doing, kid?"

There was a long pause before a thin low voice came up the line.

"I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed," it said.

Zaphod cupped his hands over the phone.

"It's Marvin," he said.

"Hey, Marvin," he said into the  phone  again,  "we're  having  a great  time. Food, wine, a little personal abuse and the Universe going foom. Where can we find you?"

Again the pause.

"You don't have to pretend to be interested in me you know," said Marvin at last, "I know perfectly well I'm only a menial robot."

"OK, OK," said Zaphod, "but where are you?"

"`Reverse primary thrust, Marvin,' that's what they  say  to  me, `open  airlock number three, Marvin. Marvin, can you pick up that piece of paper?' Can I pick up that piece of paper!  Here  I  am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to ..."

"Yeah, yeah," sympathized Zaphod hardly at all.

"But I'm quite used to being humiliated," droned Marvin,  "I  can even go and stick my head in a bucket of water if you like. Would you like me to go and stick my head in a bucket  of  water?  I've got one ready. Wait a minute."

"Er, hey, Marvin ..." interrupted Zaphod, but it  was  too  late.

Sad little clunks and gurgles came up the line.

"What's he saying?" asked Trillian.

"Nothing," said Zaphod, "he just phoned up to wash  his  head  at us."

"There," said Marvin, coming back on the line and bubbling a bit, "I hope that gave satisfaction ..."

"Yeah, yeah," said Zaphod, "now will you please tell us where you are?"

"I'm in the car park," said Marvin.

"The car park?" said Zaphod, "what are you doing there?"

"Parking cars, what else does one do in a car park?"

"OK, hang in there, we'll be right down."

In one movement Zaphod leapt to his feet, threw  down  the  phone and wrote "Hotblack Desiato" on the bill.

"Come on guys," he said, "Marvin's in the car park. Let's get  on down."

"What's he doing in the car park?" asked Arthur.

"Parking cars, what else? Dum dum."

"But what about the End of  the  Universe?  We'll  miss  the  big moment."

"I've seen it. It's rubbish," said Zaphod, "nothing  but  a  gnab gib."

"A what?"

"Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let's get zappy."

Few of the other diners paid them any attention  as  they  weaved their  way  through  the  Restaurant to the exit. Their eyes were riveted on the horror of the skies.

"An interesting effect to watch for," Max was telling  them,  "is in  the  upper  left-hand  quadrant of the sky, where if you look very carefully you can see the star system Hastromil boiling away into the ultra-violet. Anyone here from Hastromil?"

There were one or two slightly hesitant cheers from somewhere  at the back.

"Well," said Max beaming cheerfully at them, "it's  too  late  to worry about whether you left the gas on now."

Chapter 18

The main reception foyer was almost empty but  Ford  nevertheless weaved his way through it.

Zaphod grasped him firmly by the arm and manoeuvred  him  into  a cubicle standing to one side of the entrance hall.

"What are you doing to him?" asked Arthur.

"Sobering him up," said Zaphod and pushed a  coin  into  a  slot.

Lights flashed, gases swirled.

"Hi," said Ford stepping  out  a  moment  later,  "where  are  we going?"

"Down to the car park, come on."

"What about the personnel Time Teleports?"  said  Ford,  "Get  us straight back to the Heart of Gold."

"Yeah, but I've cooled on that ship. Zarniwoop  can  have  it.  I don't want to play his games. Let's see what we can find."

A  Sirius   Cybernetics   Corporation   Happy   Vertical   People Transporter  took  them  down deep into the substrata beneath the Restaurant. They were glad to see  it  had  been  vandalized  and didn't try to make them happy as well as take them down.

At the bottom of the shaft the lift doors opened and a  blast  of cold stale air hit them.

The first thing they saw on leaving the lift was a long  concrete wall with over fifty doors in it offering lavatory facilities for all of fifty major lifeforms. Nevertheless, like every  car  park in  the  Galaxy  throughout the entire history of car parks, this car park smelt predominantly of impatience.

They turned a corner and found themselves  on  a  moving  catwalk that traversed a vast cavernous space that stretched off into the dim distance.

It was divided off into bays each of which contained a space ship belonging  to  one  of  the  diners  upstairs,  some smallish and utilitarian  mass  production   models,   others   vast   shining limoships, the playthings of the very rich.

Zaphod's eyes sparkled with something that may or  may  not  have been  avarice  as  he  passed  over them. In fact it's best to be clear on this point - avarice is definitely what it was.

"There he is," said Trillian, "Marvin, down there."

They looked where she was pointing. Dimly they could see a  small metal  figure listlessly rubbing a small rag on one remote corner of a giant silver suncruiser.

At short intervals along the  moving  catwalk,  wide  transparent tubes  led  down  to  floor level. Zaphod stepped off the catwalk into one and  floated  gently  downwards.  The  others  followed.  Thinking  back  to  this  later,  Arthur  Dent thought it was the single most enjoyable experience of his travels in the Galaxy.

"Hey, Marvin," said Zaphod striding over towards  to  him,  "Hey, kid, are we pleased to see you."

Marvin turned, and in so far as it  is  possible  for  a  totally inert metal face to look reproachfully, this is what it did.

"No you're not," he said, "no one ever is."

"Suit yourself," said Zaphod and turned away to ogle  the  ships.

Ford went with him.

Only Trillian and Arthur actually went up to Marvin.

"No, really we are," said Trillian and patted him in a  way  that he  disliked  intensely,  "hanging around waiting for us all this time."

"Five hundred and seventy-six thousand  million,  three  thousand five  hundred  and  seventy-nine  years," said Marvin, "I counted them."

"Well, here we are now," said Trillian, felling - quite correctly in Marvin's view - that it was a slightly foolish thing to say.

"The first ten million years were the worst," said  Marvin,  "and the  second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of decline."

He paused just long enough to make them feel they  ought  to  say something, and then interrupted.

"It's the people you meet in this job that really get you  down," he said and paused again.

Trillian cleared her throat.

"Is that ..."

"The best conversation I had was over forty million  years  ago," continued Marvin.

Again the pause.

"Oh d ..."

"And that was with a coffee machine."

He waited.

"That's a ..."

"You don't like talking to me do  you?"  said  Marvin  in  a  low desolate tone.

Trillian talked to Arthur instead.

Further down the chamber Ford  Prefect  had  found  something  of which he very much liked the look, several such things in fact.

"Zaphod," he said in a quiet voice, "just look at some  of  these little star trolleys ..."

Zaphod looked and liked.

The craft they were looking at  was  in  fact  pretty  small  but extraordinary, and very much a rich kid's toy. It was not much to look at. It resembled nothing so  much  as  a  paper  dart  about twenty  feet  long made of thin but tough metal foil. At the rear end was a small horizontal two-man cockpit. It had a tiny  charm-drive  engine,  which  was  not capable of moving it at any great speed. The thing it did have, however, was a heat-sink.

The heat-sink had a mass of some two thousand  billion  tons  and was  contained  within a black hole mounted in an electromagnetic field situated half-way along the length of the  ship,  and  this heat-sink  enabled  the  craft  to  be manoeuvred to within a few miles of a yellow sun, there to catch and ride the  solar  flares that burst out from its surface.

Flare-riding is one of the most exotic and exhilarating sports in existence,  and  those who can dare and afford it are amongst the most  lionized  men  in  the  Galaxy.  It  is  also   of   course stupefyingly  dangerous  -  those who don't die riding invariably die of sexual exhaustion at one of  the  Daedalus  Club's  Apres-Flare parties.

Ford and Zaphod looked and passed on.

"And this baby," said Ford, "the tangerine star  buggy  with  the black sunbusters ..."

Again, the star buggy was a small ship - a totally  misnamed  one in   fact,   because   the  one  thing  it  couldn't  manage  was interstellar distances. Basically it was a sporty  planet  hopper dolled  up to something it wasn't. Nice lines though. They passed on.

The next one was a big one and thirty yards long - a coach  built limoship  and  obviously  designed  with one aim in mind, that of making the beholder sick with envy. The paintwork  and  accessory detail  clearly  said  "Not  only am I rich enough to afford this ship, I am also rich enough not to take  it  seriously."  It  was wonderfully hideous.

"Just look at  it,"  said  Zaphod,  "multi-cluster  quark  drive, perspulex running boards. Got to be a Lazlar Lyricon custom job."

He examined every inch.

"Yes," he said,  "look,  the  infra-pink  lizard  emblem  on  the neutrino cowling. Lazlar's trade mark. The man has no shame."

"I was passed by one of these  mothers  once,  out  by  the  Axel Nebula,"  said  Ford,  "I  was going flat out and this thing just strolled  past  me,  star  drive  hardly   ticking   over.   Just incredible."

Zaphod whistled appreciatively.

"Ten seconds later", said Ford, "it  smashed  straight  into  the third moon of Jaglan Beta."

"Yeah, right?"

"Amazing looking ship though. Looks like a  fish,  moves  like  a fish, steers like a cow."

Ford looked round the other side.

"Hey, come and see," he called out, "there's a big mural  painted on  this  side. A bursting sun - Disaster Area's trade mark. This must be Hotblack's ship. Lucky old bugger. They do this  terrible song  you know which ends with a stuntship crashing into the sun.  Meant to be  an  amazing  spectacle.  Expensive  in  stunt  ships though."

Zaphod's attention  however  was  elsewhere.  His  attention  was riveted on the ship standing next to Hotblack Desiato's limo. His mouths hung open.

"That," he said, "that ... is really bad for the eyes ..."

Ford looked. He too stood astonished.

It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon, twenty  yards  long,  very  clean, very sleek. There was just one remarkable thing about it.

"It's so ... black!" said Ford Prefect, "you can hardly make  out its shape ... light just seems to fall into it!"

Zaphod said nothing. He had simply fallen in love.

The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost  impossible to tell how close you were standing to it.

"Your eyes just slide off it ..." said Ford in wonder. It was  an emotional moment. He bit his lip.

Zaphod moved forward to it, slowly, like a  man  possessed  -  or more  accurately  like  a  man  who  wanted  to possess. His hand reached out to stroke it. His hand stopped. His hand reached  out to stroke it again. His hand stopped again.

"Come and feel the surface," he said in a hushed voice.

Ford put his hand out to feel it. His hand stopped.

"You ... you can't ..." he said.

"See?" said Zaphod, "it's just totally frictionless. This must be one mother of a mover ..."

He turned to look at Ford seriously. At least, one of  his  heads did - the other stayed gazing in awe at the ship.

"What do you reckon, Ford?" he said.

"You mean ... er ..." Ford looked over his  shoulder.  "You  mean stroll off with it? You think we should?"

"No."

"Nor do I."

"But we're going to, aren't we?"

"How can we not?"

They gazed a little longer, till Zaphod suddenly  pulled  himself together.

"We better shift soon," he said. "In a moment or so the  Universe will  have  ended and all the Captain Creeps will be pouring down here to find their bourge-mobiles."

"Zaphod," said Ford.

"Yeah?"

"How do we do it?"

"Simple," said Zaphod. He turned. "Marvin!" he called.

Slowly, laboriously, and  with  a  million  little  clanking  and creaking  noises  that  he had learned to simulate, Marvin turned round to answer the summons.

"Come on over here," said Zaphod, "We've got a job for you."

Marvin trudged towards them.

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

"Yes you will,"  enthused  Zaphod,  "there's  a  whole  new  life stretching out ahead of you."

"Oh, not another one," groaned Marvin.

"Will you shut up and listen!" hissed Zaphod, "this time  there's going to be excitement and adventure and really wild things."

"Sounds awful," Marvin said.

"Marvin! All I'm trying to ask you ..."

"I suppose you want me to open this spaceship for you?"

"What? Er ... yes. Yeah, that's right," said Zaphod  jumpily.  He was keeping at least three eyes on the entrance. Time was short.

"Well I wish you'd just tell me rather  than  try  to  engage  my enthusiasm," said Marvin, "because I haven't got one."

He walked on up to the ship, touched it,  and  a  hatchway  swung open.

Ford and Zaphod stared at the opening.

"Don't mention it," said Marvin, "Oh,  you  didn't."  He  trudged away again.

Arthur and Trillian clustered round.

"What's happening?" asked Arthur.

"Look at this," said Ford, "look at the interior of this ship."

"Weirder and weirder," breathed Zaphod.

"It's black," said Ford, "Everything in it is just totally  black

In the Restaurant, things were fast approaching the moment  after which there wouldn't be any more moments.

All eyes were fixed on the dome, other  than  those  of  Hotblack Desiato's  bodyguard,  which  were  looking  intently at Hotblack Desiato,  and  those  of  Hotblack  Desiato  himself  which   the bodyguard had closed out of respect.

The bodyguard leaned forward over the table. Had Hotblack Desiato been  alive,  he probably would have deemed this a good moment to lean back, or even go for a short walk. His bodyguard was  not  a man  which improved with proximity. On account of his unfortunate condition, however, Hotblack Desiato remained totally inert.

"Mr Desiato, sir?" whispered the bodyguard. Whenever he spoke, it looked  as  if  the  muscles  on  either  side  of his mouth were clambering over each other to get out of the way.

"Mr Desiato? Can you hear me?"

Hotblack Desiato, quit naturally, said nothing.

"Hotblack?" hissed the bodyguard.

Again,  quite  naturally,  Hotblack  Desiato   did   not   reply.

Supernaturally, however, he did.

On the table in front of him a wine glass  rattled,  and  a  fork rose  an  inch  or so and tapped against the glass. It settled on the table again.

The bodyguard gave a satisfied grunt.

"It's time we get going, Mr  Desiato,"  muttered  the  bodyguard, "don't want to get caught in the rush, not in your condition. You want to get to the next gig nice and relaxed. There was a  really big  audience  for  it.  One of the best. Kakrafoon. Five-hundred seventy-six thousand and two million years ago. Had you will have been looking forward to it?"

The fork rose again, waggled in a non-committal sort of  way  and dropped again.

"Ah, come on," said the  bodyguard,  "it's  going  to  have  been great.  You  knocked 'em cold." The bodyguard would have given Dr Dan Streetmentioner an apoplectic attack.

"The black ship going into the sun always gets 'em, and  the  new one's  a  beauty.  Be  real sorry to see it go. If we get on down there, I'll set the black ship autopilot and we'll cruise off  in the limo. OK?"

The fork  tapped  once  in  agreement,  and  the  glass  of  wine mysteriously emptied itself.

The  bodyguard  wheeled  Hotblack  Desiato's  chair  out  of  the Restaurant.

"And now," cried Max from the centre of the  stage,  "the  moment you've  all  been  waiting  for!" He flung his arms into the air.  Behind him, the band went into a frenzy of percussion and rolling synthochords.  Max  had  argued with them about this but they had claimed it was in their contract that that's what they would  do.  His agent would have to sort it out.

"The skies begin to boil!" he cried. "Nature collapses  into  the screaming void! In twenty seconds' time, the Universe itself will be at an end! See where the light of infinity bursts in upon us!"

The hideous fury of destruction blazed about them - and  at  that moment  a  still  small  trumpet  sounded  as  from  an  infinite distance. Max's eyes swivelled round to glare at the  band.  None of  them seemed to be playing a trumpet. Suddenly a wisp of smoke was swirling and shimmering on the stage next to him. The trumpet was joined by more trumpets. Over five hundred times Max had done this show, and nothing like this had  ever  happened  before.  He drew  back  in alarm from the swirling smoke, and as he did so, a figure slowly materialized inside, the figure of an ancient  man, bearded,  robed and wreathed in light. In his eyes were stars and on his brow a golden crown.

"What's this?" whispered Max, wild-eyed, "what's happening?"

At the back of the Restaurant  the  stony-faced  party  from  the Church  of  the  Second Coming of the Great Prophet Zarquon leapt ecstatically to their feet chanting and crying.

Max blinked in amazement. He threw up his arms to the audience.

"A big hand please, ladies and gentlemen," he hollered, "for  the Great Prophet Zarquon! He has come! Zarquon has come again!"

Thunderous applause broke out as Max strode across the stage  and handed his microphone to the Prophet.

Zarquon coughed. He peered round at the assembled gathering.  The stars  in  his  eyes  blinked uneasily. He handled the microphone with confusion.

"Er ..." he said, "hello. Er, look, I'm sorry  I'm  a  bit  late.  I've  had  the most ghastly time, all sorts of things cropping up at the last moment."

He seemed nervous of the expectant  awed  hush.  He  cleared  his throat.

"Er, how are we for time?" he said, "have I just got a min-"

And so the Universe ended.

Chapter 19

One of the major selling point of that wholly  remarkable  travel book,  the  Hitch  Hiker's  Guide  to  the Galaxy, apart from its relative cheapness and the fact that it has the words Don't Panic written   in   large  friendly  letters  on  its  cover,  is  its compendious and occasionally accurate  glossary.  The  statistics relating  to the geo-social nature of the Universe, for instance, are deftly set out between pages nine  hundred  and  thirty-eight thousand  and  twenty-four  and  nine  hundred  and  thirty-eight thousand and twenty-six; and the simplistic style in  which  they are  written  is  partly  explained by the fact that the editors, having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information  off the back of a packet of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few footnoted in order  to  avoid  prosecution  under  the incomprehensibly tortuous Galactic Copyright laws.

It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the book  backwards  in  time  through  a  temporal  warp,  and  then successfully sued the breakfast cereal company  for  infringement of the same laws.

Here is a sample:

The Universe - some information to help you live in it.

1~Area: Infinite.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this  definition  of the word "Infinite".

Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some.  Much bigger  than  that  in  fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, "wow, that's big", time. Infinity is just  so  big that  by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by  staggeringly  huge  is  the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.

2~Imports: None.

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

3~Exports: None.

See imports.

4~Population: None.

It is known that there are an infinite number of  worlds,  simply because  there  is an infinite amount of space for them to be in.  However, not every one of them  is  inhabited.  Therefore,  there must  be  a  finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes  no  odds,  so the  average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of  the whole  Universe  is  also  zero, and that any people you may meet from  time  to  time  are  merely  the  products  of  a  deranged imagination.

5~Monetary Units: None.

In fact there are three  freely  convertible  currencies  in  the Galaxy,  but none of them count. The Altairan Dollar has recently collapsed, the Flaninian Pobble Bead  is  only  exchangeable  for other  Flaninian  Pobble  Beads,  and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis  to  one Pu  is  simple  enough,  but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles across each  side,  no  one has  ever  collected  enough  to  own  one  Pu.  Ningis  are  not negotiable currency because the Galactibanks refuse  to  deal  in fiddling  small change. From this basic premise it is very simple to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged imagination.

6~Art: None.

The function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and there simply isn't a mirror big enough - see point one.

7~Sex: None.

Well, in fact there is an awful lot of this, largely  because  of the total lack of money, trade, banks, art, or anything else that might keep all the non-existent people of the Universe occupied.

However, it is not worth embarking on a long discussion of it now

because   it   really   is   terribly  complicated.  For  further

information  see  Guide  Chapters  seven,  nine,   ten,   eleven,

fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one to eighty-four inclusive, and in fact most of the rest of the Guide.

Chapter 20

The  Restaurant  continued  existing,  but  everything  else  had stopped.  Temporal  relastatics  held  it  and  protected it in a nothingness that wasn't merely a vacuum, it was simply nothing  - there was nothing in which a vacuum could be said to exist.

The force-shielded dome had once again been rendered opaque,  the party  was  over,  the  diners were leaving, Zarquon had vanished along with the rest of  the  Universe,  the  Time  Turbines  were preparing to pull the Restaurant back across the brink of time in readiness for the lunch sitting, and Max Quordlepleen was back in his  small  curtained  dressing room trying to raise his agent on the tempophone.

In the car park stood the black ship, closed and silent.

In to the car park came the late Mr Hotblack  Desiato,  propelled along the moving catwalk by his bodyguard.

They descended one of the tubes. As they approached the  limoship a  hatchway  swung  down from its side, engaged the wheels of the wheelchair and drew it inside. The bodyguard followed, and having seen  his  boss  safely connected up to his death-support system, moved up to the  small  cockpit.  Here  he  operated  the  remote control  system  which  activated the autopilot in the black ship lying next to the limo,  thus  causing  great  relief  to  Zaphod Beeblebrox  who  had  been trying to start the thing for over ten minutes.

The black ship glided smoothly forward out of  its  bay,  turned, and  moved  down the central causeway swiftly and quietly. At the end it accelerated rapidly, flung itself into the temporal launch chamber and began the long journey back into the distant past.

The Milliways Lunch Menu quotes, by permission,  a  passage  from the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The passage is this:

The History of every major Galactic Civilization  tends  to  pass through   three   distinct  and  recognizable  phases,  those  of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.

For instance, the first phase is characterized  by  the  question "How  can  we  eat?", the second by the question "Why do we eat?" and the third by the question, "Where shall we have lunch?"

The Menu goes on to suggest that Milliways, the Restaurant at the End  of the Universe, would be a very agreeable and sophisticated answer to that third question.

What it doesn't go on to say is that though it will usually  take a  large civilization many thousands of years to pass through the How, Why and Where phases, small social groupings under stressful conditions can pass through them with extreme rapidity.

"How are we doing?" said Arthur Dent.

"Badly," said Ford Prefect.

"Where are we going?" said Trillian.

"I don't know," said Zaphod Beeblebrox.

"Why not?" demanded Arthur Dent.

"Shut up," suggested Zaphod Beeblebrox and Ford Prefect.

"Basically,  what  you're  trying  to  say,"  said  Arthur  Dent, ignoring this suggestion, "is that we're out of control."

The ship was rocking and swaying sickeningly as Ford  and  Zaphod tried to wrest control from the autopilot. The engined howled and whined like tired children in a supermarket.

"It's the wild colour scheme that freaks me," said  Zaphod  whose love  affair  with this ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight, "Every time you try to  operate  on  of  these  weird black  controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you've  done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?"

The walls of the swaying cabin were also black, the  ceiling  was black,  the  seats  -  which  were  rudimentary  since  the  only important trip this ship was designed  for  was  supposed  to  be unmanned   -  were  black,  the  control  panel  was  black,  the instruments were black, the little screws that held them in place were  black,  the thin tufted nylon floor covering was black, and when they had lifted up a corner of it they had  discovered  that the foam underlay also was black.

"Perhaps whoever designed it had eyes that responded to different wavelengths," offered Trillian.

"Or didn't have much imagination," muttered Arthur.

"Perhaps," said Marvin, "he was feeling very depressed."

In fact, though they weren't to  know  it,  the  decor  had  been chosen in honour of its owner's sad, lamented, and tax-deductible condition.

The ship gave a particularly sickening lurch.

"Take it easy," pleaded Arthur, "you're making me space sick."

"Time sick,"  said  Ford,  "we're  plummeting  backwards  through time."

"Thank you," said Arthur, "now I think I really am  going  to  be ill."

"Go ahead," said Zaphod, "we could do with a little colour  about this place."

"This is meant to be a polite after-dinner conversation  is  it?" snapped Arthur.

Zaphod left the controls for Ford to figure out, and lurched over to Arthur.

"Look, Earthman," he said angrily,  "you've  got  a  job  to  do, right? The Question to the Ultimate Answer, right?"

"What, that thing?" said Arthur, "I thought we'd forgotten  about that."

"Not me, baby. Like the mice said, it's worth a lot of  money  in the  right quarters. And it's all locked up in that head thing of yours."

"Yes but ..."

"But nothing! Think about it. The Meaning of  Life!  We  get  our fingers  on  that  we  can  hold every shrink in the Galaxy up to ransom, and that's worth a bundle. I owe mine a mint."

Arthur took a deep breath without much enthusiasm.

"Alright," he said, "but where do we start? How  should  I  know?  They  say  the Ultimate Answer or whatever is Forty-two, how am I supposed to know what the question is? It could  be  anything.  I mean, what's six times seven?"

Zaphod looked at him hard for a moment. Then his eyes blazed with excitement.

"Forty-two!" he cried.

Arthur wiped his palm across his forehead.

"Yes," he said patiently," I know that."

Zaphod's faces fell.

"I'm just saying that the question could  be  anything  at  all," said Arthur, "and I don't see how I am meant to know."

"Because," hissed Zaphod, "you were there when  your  planet  did the big firework."

"We have a thing on Earth ..." began Arthur.

"Had," corrected Zaphod.

"... called tact. Oh never mind. Look, I just don't know."

A low voice echoed dully round the cabin.

"I know," said Marvin.

Ford called out from the controls he was still fighting a  losing battle with.

"Stay out of this Marvin," he said, "this is organism talk."

"It's printed in the Earthman's  brainwave  patterns,"  continued Marvin, "but I don't suppose you'll be very interested in knowing that."

"You mean," said Arthur, "you mean you can see into my mind?"

"Yes," said Marvin.

Arthur stared in astonishment.

"And ...?" he said.

"It amazes me how you can manage to live in anything that small."

"Ah," said Arthur, "abuse."

"Yes," confirmed Marvin.

"Ah, ignore him," said Zaphod, "he's only making it up."

"Making it up?" said Marvin, swivelling his head in a  parody  of astonishment,  "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."

"Marvin," said Trillian in the gentle, kindly voice that only she was  still  capable  of  assuming  in talking to this misbegotten creature, "if you knew all along, why then didn't you tell us?"

Marvin's head swivelled back to her.

"You didn't ask," he said simply.

"Well, we're asking you now, metal man," said Ford, turning round to look at him.

At that moment the ship suddenly stopped rocking and swaying, the engine pitch settled down to a gentle hum.

"Hey, Ford," said Zaphod, "that sounds good. Have you worked  out the controls of this boat?"

"No," said Ford, "I just stopped fiddling with them. I reckon  we just go to wherever this ship is going and get off it fast."

"Yeah, right," said Zaphod.

"I could tell you weren't really interested," murmured Marvin  to himself and slumped into a corner and switched himself off.

"Trouble is," said Ford, "that the one instrument in  this  while ship  that  is giving any reading is worrying me. If it is what I think it is, and if it's saying what I think  it's  saying,  then we've  already  gone too far back into the past. Maybe as much as two million years before our own time."

Zaphod shrugged.

"Time is bunk," he said.

"I wonder who this ship belongs to anyway," said Arthur.

"Me," said Zaphod.

"No. Who it really belongs to."

"Really me," insisted Zaphod, "look, property  is  theft,  right?

Therefore theft is property. Therefore this ship is mine, OK?"

"Tell the ship that," said Arthur.

Zaphod strode over to the console.

"Ship," he said, banging on the panels, "this is your  new  owner speaking to ..."

He got no further. Several things happened at once.

The ship dropped out fo time travel mode and re-emerged into real space.

All the controls on the console, which had been shut down for the time trip now lit up.

A  large  vision  screen  above  the  console  winked  into  life revealing a wide starscape and a single very large sun dead ahead of them.

None of these things, however, were responsible for the fact that Zaphod was at the same moment hurled bodily backwards against the rear of the cabin, as were all the others.

They were hurled back by a single thunderous clap of  noise  that thuddered  out  of  the  monitor  speakers surrounding the vision screen.

Chapter 21

Down on the dry, red world of Kakrafoon, in  the  middle  of  the vast  Rudlit Desert, the stage technicians were testing the sound system.

That is to say, the sound system was in the desert, not the stage technicians.  They had retreated to the safety of Disaster Area's giant control ship which hung in orbit some  four  hundred  miles above  the surface of the planet, and they were testing the sound system from there. Anyone within five miles of the speaker  silos wouldn't have survived the tuning up.

If Arthur Dent had been within five miles of  the  speaker  silos then  his  expiring thought would have been that in both size and shape the sound rig closely resembled Manhattan. Risen out of the silos,  the  neutron  phase  speaker  stacks  towered monstrously against the sky, obscuring the banks of  plutonium  reactors  and seismic amps behind them.

Buried deep in concrete bunkers beneath the city of speakers  lay the instruments that the musicians would control from their ship, the massive photon-ajuitar, the bass detonator and  the  Megabang drum complex.

It was going to be a noisy show.

Aboard the giant control  ship,  all  was  activity  and  bustle.  Hotblack  Desiato's  limoship,  a  mere  tadpole  beside  it, had arrived  and  docked,  and  the  lamented  gentleman  was   being transported  down  the  high vaulted corridors to meet the medium who was going to interpret his psychic impulses on to the ajuitar keyboard.

A doctor, a  logician  and  a  marine  biologist  had  also  just arrived,  flown  in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who  had  locked  himself  in  the bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till it could be proved conclusively to him that he wasn't a fish. The bass  player was busy machine-gunning his bedroom and the drummer was nowhere on board.

Frantic inquiries led to the discovery that he was standing on  a beach  on Santraginus V over a hundred light years away where, he claimed, he had been happy over half an hour now and had found  a small stone that would be his friend.

The band's manager was profoundly relieved. It meant that for the seventeenth  time  on  this  tour  the drums would be played by a robot and that therefore the timing of the cymbalistics would  be right.

The sub-ether was buzzing with the communications  of  the  stage technicians  testing  the  speaker channels, and this it was that was being relayed to the interior of the black ship.

Its dazed occupants lay against the back wall of the  cabin,  and listened to the voices on the monitor speakers.

"OK, channel nine on  power,"  said  a  voice,  "testing  channel fifteen ..."

Another thumping crack of noise walloped through the ship.

"Channel fifteen AOK," said another voice.

A third voice cut in.

"The black stunt ship is now in position," it said, "it's looking good. Gonna be a great sundive. Stage computer on line?"

A computer voice answered.

"On line," it said.

"Take control of the black ship."

"Black ship locked into trajectory programme, on standby."

"Testing channel twenty."

Zaphod leaped across the cabin and switched  frequencies  on  the sub-ether  receiver  before  the  next mind-pulverizing noise hit them. He stood there quivering.

"What," said Trillian in  a  small  quiet  voice,  "does  sundive mean?"

"It means," said Marvin, "that the ship os going to dive into the sun.  Sun  ...  Dive. It's very simple to understand. What do you expect if you steal Hotblack Desiato's stunt ship?"

"How do you know ..." said Zaphod in a voice that  would  make  a Vegan  snow  lizard feel chilly, "that this is Hotblack Desiato's stuntship?"

"Simple," said Marvin, "I parked it for him."

"The why ... didn't ... you ... tell us!"

"You said you wanted excitement and  adventure  and  really  wild things."

"This is awful," said Arthur unnecessarily  in  the  pause  which followed.

"That's what I said," confirmed Marvin.

On a different frequency, the sub-ether receiver had picked up  a public broadcast, which now echoed round the cabin.

"... fine weather  for  the  concert  here  this  afternoon.  I'm standing  here in front of the stage," the reporter lied, "in the middle of the Rudlit Desert, and with the  aid  of  hyperbinoptic glasses  I  can  just  about  make out the huge audience cowering there on the horizon all around me. Behind me the speaker  stacks rise  like  a  sheer  cliff  face,  and  high above me the sun is shining away and  doesn't  know  what's  going  to  hit  it.  The environmentalist  lobby  do know what's going to hit it, and they claim that the  concert  will  cause  earthquakes,  tidal  waves, hurricanes,  irreparable  damage  to  the atmosphere, and all the usual things that environmentalists usually go on about.

"But I've just had a report that  a  representative  of  Disaster Area  met  with  the environmentalists at lunchtime, and had them all shot, so nothing now lies in the way of ..."

Zaphod switched it off. He turned to Ford.

"You know what I'm thinking?" he said.

"I think so," said Ford.

"Tell me what you think I'm thinking."

"I think you're thinking it's time we get off this ship."

"I think you're right," said Zaphod.

"I think you're right," said Ford.

"How?" said Arthur.

"Quiet," said Ford and Zaphod, "we're thinking."

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

"I wish you'd stop saying that," said Ford.

It is worth repeating at this point the theories  that  Ford  had come  up  with,  on  his  first  encounter  with human beings, to account for their  peculiar  habit  of  continually  stating  and restating  the  very  very  obvious,  as it 'It's a nice day," or "You're very tall," or "So this is it, we're going to die."

His first theory was that if human beings didn't keep  exercising their lips, their mouths probably seized up.

After a few months of observation he had come up  with  a  second theory,  which  was this - "If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working."

In fact, this  second  theory  is  more  literally  true  of  the Belcebron people of Kakrafoon.

The  Belcebron  people  used  to  cause  great   resentment   and insecurity  amongst  neighboring  races  by being one of the most enlightened, accomplished, and above all quiet  civilizations  in the Galaxy.

As a  punishment  for  this  behaviour,  which  was  held  to  be offensively  self  righteous and provocative, a Galactic Tribunal inflicted on  them  that  most  cruel  of  all  social  diseases, telepathy.   Consequently,   in   order   to  prevent  themselves broadcasting every slightest thought that crossed their minds  to anyone  within  a  five  mile  radius, they now have to talk very loudly and continuously about the weather, their little aches and pains,  the match this afternoon and what a noisy place Kakrafoon had suddenly become.

Another method of temporarily blotting out their minds is to play host to a Disaster Area concert.

The timing of the concert was critical.

The ship had to begin its dive before the concert began in  order to  hit  the  sun six minutes and thirty-seven seconds before the climax of the song to which it related, so that the light of  the solar flares had time to travel out to Kakrafoon.

The ship had already been diving for several minutes by the  time that   Ford  Prefect  had  completed  his  search  of  the  other compartments of the black ship. He burst back into the cabin.

The sun of Kakrafoon loomed  terrifyingly  large  on  the  vision screen,  its  blazing  white  inferno  of  fusing hydrogen nuclei growing moment by moment as the ship plunged  onwards,  unheeding the  thumping and banging of Zaphod's hands on the control panel.  Arthur and Trillian had the fixed expressions  of  rabbits  on  a night   road  who  think  that  the  best  way  of  dealing  with approaching headlights is to stare them out.

Zaphod span round, wild-eyed.

"Ford," he said, "how many escape capsules are there?"

"None," said Ford.

Zaphod gibbered.

"Did you count them?" he yelled.

"Twice," said Ford, "did you manage to raise the  stage  crew  on the radio?"

"Yeah," said Zaphod, bitterly, "I said there were a  whole  bunch of people on board, and they said to say `hi' to everybody."

Ford goggled.

"Didn't you tell them who we were?"

"Oh yeah. They said it was a great  honour.  That  and  something about a restaurant bill and my executors."

Ford pushed Arthur aside and  leaned  forward  over  the  control console.

"Does none of this function?" he said savagely.

"All overridden."

"Smash the autopilot."

"Find it first. Nothing connects."

There was a moment's cold silence.

Arthur was stumbling round the back  of  the  cabin.  He  stopped suddenly.

"Incidentally," he said, "what does teleport mean?"

Another moment passed.

Slowly, the others turned to face him.

"Probably the wrong moment to ask," said  Arthur,  "It's  just  I remember  hearing  you  use the word a short while ago and I only bring it up because ..."

"Where," said Ford Prefect quietly, "does it say teleport?"

"Well, just over here in fact," said Arthur, pointing at  a  dark control  box  in  the  rear  of  the  cabin, "Just under the word `emergency', above the word `system' and beside the  sign  saying `out of order'."

In the pandemonium that instantly followed, the  only  action  to follow  was  that of Ford Prefect lunging across the cabin to the small black box that Arthur had indicated and stabbing repeatedly at the single small black button set into it.

A  six-foot  square  panel  slid  open  beside  it  revealing   a compartment which resembled a multiple shower unit that had found a new function in life as  an  electrician's  junk  store.  Half-finished  wiring  hung  from  the  ceiling, a jumble of abandoned components lay strewn on the floor,  and  the  programming  panel lolled  out  of  the cavity in the wall into which it should have been secured.

A junior Disaster Area accountant, visiting  the  shipyard  where this  ship  was  being  constructed,  had demanded to know of the works foreman  why  the  hell  they  were  fitting  an  extremely expensive  teleport  into  a  ship  which  only had one important journey to make, and that unmanned.  The  foreman  had  explained that  the  teleport  was available at a ten per cent discount and the accountant  had  explained  that  this  was  immaterial;  the foreman  had  explained that it was the finest, most powerful and sophisticated teleport that money could buy  and  the  accountant had  explained that the money did not wish to buy it; the foreman had explained that people would still need to enter and leave the ship  and  the  accountant  had explained that the ship sported a perfectly serviceable door; the foreman had  explained  that  the accountant  could  go  and  boil  his head and the accountant had explained to the foreman that the thing approaching  him  rapidly from  his left was a knuckle sandwich. After the explanations had been concluded, work  was  discontinued  on  the  teleport  which subsequently  passed  unnoticed on the invoice as "Sund. explns." at five times the price.

"Hell's donkeys," muttered Zaphod as he  and  Ford  attempted  to sort through the tangle of wiring.

After a moment or so Ford told him to stand  back.  He  tossed  a coin  into  the  teleport  and  jiggled  a  switch on the lolling control panel. With  a  crackle  and  spit  of  light,  the  coin vanished.

"That much of  it  works,"  said  Ford,  "however,  there  is  no guidance  system. A matter transference teleport without guidance programming could put you ... well, anywhere."

The sun of Kakrafoon loomed huge on the screen.

"Who cares," said Zaphod, "we go where we go."

"And," said Ford, "there is no autosystem. We  couldn't  all  go.

Someone would have to stay and operate it."

A solemn moment shuffled past. The sun loomed larger and larger.

"Hey, Marvin kid," said Zaphod brightly, "how you doing?"

"Very badly I suspect," muttered Marvin.

A shortish while later,  the  concert  on  Kakrafoon  reached  an unexpected climax.

The black ship with its single morose  occupant  had  plunged  on schedule  into  the  nuclear  furnace  of  the sun. Massive solar flares licked out from it millions of miles into space, thrilling and  in a few cases spilling the dozen or so Flare Riders who had been coasting close to the surface of the sun in anticipation  of the moment.

Moments before the flare light  reached  Kakrafoon  the  pounding desert  cracked  along  a  deep  faultline.  A  huge and hitherto undetected underground river lying far beneath the surface gushed to  the  surface  to be followed seconds later by the eruption of millions of tons of boiling lava that  flowed  hundreds  of  feet into the air, instantaneously vaporizing the river both above and below the surface in an explosion that echoed to the far side  of the world and back again.

Those - very few - who witnessed the  event  and  survived  swear that  the  whole hundred thousand square miles of the desert rose into the air like a mile-thick pancake, flipped itself  over  and fell  back  down. At that precise moment the solar radiation from the flares filtered through the clouds  of  vaporized  water  and struck the ground.

A year later, the hundred thousand square mile desert  was  thick with  flowers.  The structure of the atmosphere around the planet was subtly altered. The sun blazed less harshly  in  the  summer, the cold bit less bitterly in the winter, pleasant rain fell more often,  and  slowly  the  desert  world  of  Kakrafoon  became  a paradise.  Even  the  telepathic  power  with which the people of Kakrafoon had been cursed was permanently dispersed by the  force of the explosion.

A spokesman for Disaster Area - the  one  who  had  had  all  the environmentalists  shot  - was later quoted as saying that it had been "a good gig".

Many people spoke movingly of the healing powers of music. A  few sceptical  scientists  examined  the  records  of the events more closely, and claimed that they had discovered faint vestiges of a vast  artificially induced Improbability Field drifting in from a nearby region of space.

Chapter 22

Arthur woke up and instantly regretted it.  Hangovers  he'd  had, but  never  anything on this scale. This was it, this was the big one, this was the ultimate pits. Matter  transference  beams,  he decided,  were  not as much fun as, say, a good solid kick in the head.

Being for the moment unwilling to  move  on  account  of  a  dull stomping  throb  he was experiencing, he lay a while and thought.  The  trouble  with  most  forms  of  transport,  he  thought,  is basically  one of them not being worth all the bother. On Earth - when there had been an Earth, before it was  demolished  to  make way for a new hyperspace bypass - the problem had been with cars.  The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky  slime from  out  of  the  ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke  to fill  the  air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another - particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this,  very  similar  to  the place  you  had  left,  i.e.  covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.

And what about matter transference beams? Any form  of  transport which  involved  tearing  you  apart atom by atom, flinging those atoms through the sub-ether, and then jamming them back  together again  just  when  they were getting their first taste of freedom for years had to be bad news.

Many people had thought exactly this before Arthur Dent  and  had even  gone  to the lengths of writing songs about it. Here is one that used regularly to be chanted  by  huge  crowds  outside  the Sirius   Cybernetics  Corporation  Teleport  Systems  factory  on Happi-Werld III:

Aldebaran's great, OK,

Algol's pretty neat,

Betelgeuse's pretty girls,

Will knock you off your feet.

They'll do anything you like,

Real fast and then real slow,

But if you have to take me apart to get me there,

Then I don't want to go.

Singing,

Take me apart, take me apart,

What a way to roam,

And if you have to take me apart to get me there,

I'd rather stay at home.

Sirius is paved with gold

So I've heard it said

By nuts who then go on to say

"See Tau before you're dead."

I'll gladly take the high road

Or even take the low,

But if you have to take me apart to get me there,

Then I, for one, won't go.

Singing,

Take me apart, take me apart, You must be off your head,

And if you try to take me apart to get me there,

I'll stay right here in bed.

I teleported home one night,

With Ron and Sid and Meg,

Ron stole Meggie's heart away,

And I got Sidney's leg.

Arthur felt the waves of pain  slowly  receding,  though  he  was still aware of a dull stomping throb. Slowly, carefully, he stood up.

"Can you hear a dull stomping throb?" said Ford Prefect.

Arthur span round  and  wobbled  uncertainly.  Ford  Prefect  was approaching looking red eyed and pasty.

"Where are we?" gasped Arthur.

Ford looked around. They were standing in a long curving corridor which  stretched out of sight in both directions. The outer steel wall - which was painted in that sickly shade of pale green which they  use  in  schools,  hospitals and mental asylums to keep the inmates subdued - curved over the tops of their  heads  where  it met  the inner perpendicular wall which, oddly enough was covered in dark brown hessian wall weave. The floor  was  of  dark  green ribbed rubber.

Ford moved over to a very thick dark transparent panel set in the outer  wall.  It was several layers deep, yet through it he could see pinpoints of distant stars.

"I think we're in a spaceship of some kind," he said.

Down the corridor came the sound of a dull stomping throb.

"Trillian?" called Arthur nervously, "Zaphod?"

Ford shrugged.

"Nowhere about," he said, "I've looked. They could  be  anywhere.  An  unprogrammed  teleport  can  throw  you  light  years  in any direction. Judging by  the  way  I  feel  I  should  think  we've travelled a very long way indeed."

"How do you feel?"

"Bad."

"Do you think they're ..."

"Where they are, how they are, there's no way we can know and  no way we can do anything about it. Do what I do."

"What?"

"Don't think about it."

Arthur turned this thought over in his mind, reluctantly saw  the wisdom  of  it,  tucked  it  up  and  put it away. He took a deep breath.

"Footsteps!" exclaimed Ford suddenly.

"Where?"

"That noise. That stomping throb. Pounding feet. Listen!"

Arthur listened. The noise echoed round the corridor at them from an  indeterminate  distance. It was the muffled sound of pounding footsteps, and it was noticeably louder.

"Let's move," said Ford sharply. They both moved  -  in  opposite directions.

"Not that way," said Ford, "that's where they're coming from."

"No it's not," said Arthur, "They're coming from that way."

"They're not, they're ..."

They both stopped. They both turned. They both listened intently.  They both agreed with each other. They both set off into opposite directions again.

Fear gripped them.

From both directions the noise was getting louder.

A few yards to their left another corridor ran at right angles to the inner wall. They ran to it and hurried along it. It was dark, immensely long and,  as  they  passed  down  it,  gave  them  the impression that it was getting colder and colder. Other corridors gave off it to the left  and  right,  each  very  dark  and  each subjecting them to sharp blasts of icy air as they passed.

They stopped for a moment in alarm. The further down the corridor they went, the louder became the sound of pounding feet.

They pressed themselves back against the cold wall  and  listened furiously.  The  cold,  the  dark and the drumming of disembodied feet was getting to them badly. Ford shivered,  partly  with  the cold,  but partly with the memory of stories his favourite mother used to tell him when he was a mere slip of a Betelgeusian, ankle high  to  an  Arcturan  Megagrasshopper:  stories  of dead ships, haunted hulks that roamed restlessly round the  obscurer  regions of  deep  space  infested  with demons or the ghosts of forgotten crews; stories too of incautious travellers who found and entered such  ships;  stories  of  ...  -  then Ford remembered the brown hessian wall weave in  the  first  corridor  and  pulled  himself together.  However ghosts and demons may choose to decorate their death hulks, he thought to himself, he would lay  any  money  you liked it wasn't with hessian wall weave. He grasped Arthur by the arm.

"Back the way we came,"  he  said  firmly  and  they  started  to retrace their steps.

A moment later they leap like startled lizards down  the  nearest corridor  junction  as  the  owners of the drumming feet suddenly hove into view directly in front of them.

Hidden behind the corner they goggled in amazement as  about  two dozen  overweight  men and women pounded past them in track suits panting and wheezing in a manner that would make a heart  surgeon gibber.

Ford Prefect stared after them.

"Joggers!" he hissed, as the sound of their feet echoed  away  up and down the network of corridors.

"Joggers?" whispered Arthur Dent.

"Joggers," said Ford prefect with a shrug.

The corridor they were concealed in was not like the  others.  It was  very  short,  and ended at a large steel door. Ford examined it, discovered the opening mechanism and pushed it wide.

The first thing that hit their eyes was what  appeared  to  be  a coffin.

And the next four thousand nine hundred  and  ninety-nine  things that hit their eyes were also coffins.

Chapter 23

The vault was low ceilinged, dimly lit and gigantic. At  the  far end,  about  three  hundred  yards away an archway let through to what appeared to be a similar chamber, similarly occupied.

Ford Prefect let out a low whistle as he stepped down on  to  the floor of the vault.

"Wild," he said.

"What's so great about  dead  people?"  asked  Arthur,  nervously stepping down after him.

"Dunno," said Ford, "Let's find out shall we?"

On  closer  inspection  the  coffins  seemed  to  be  more   like sarcophagi.  They  stood about waist high and were constructed of what appeared to be white marble, which is almost certainly  what it  was  -  something  that only appeared to be white marble. The tops were semi-translucent,  and  through  them  could  dimly  be perceived  the  features  of  their  late and presumably lamented occupants. They were humanoid, and had clearly left the  troubles of  whatever  world  it  was  they came from far behind them, but beyond that little else could be discerned.

Rolling slowly round the  floor  between  the  sarcophagi  was  a heavy,  oily  white  gas  which  Arthur at first thought might be there to give the place a little atmosphere until  he  discovered that  it also froze his ankles. The sarcophagi too were intensely cold to the touch.

Ford suddenly crouched down beside  one  of  them.  He  pulled  a corner  of  his  towel  out  of  his  satchel  and started to rub furiously at something.

"Look, there's a plaque on this one,"  he  explained  to  Arthur, "It's frosted over."

He rubbed the frost clear and examined the  engraved  characters.  To  Arthur  they  looked like the footprints of a spider that had had one too many of whatever it is that spiders have on  a  night out,  but  Ford  instantly  recognized  an early form of Galactic Eezeereed.

"It says `Golgafrincham Ark Fleet, Ship B, Hold Seven,  Telephone Sanitizer Second Class' - and a serial number."

"A  telephone  sanitizer?"  said  Arthur,   "a   dead   telephone sanitizer?"

"Best kind."

"But what's he doing here?"

Ford peered through the top at the figure within.

"Not a lot," he said, and suddenly flashed one of those grins  of his  which  always  made  people think he'd been overdoing things recently and should try to get some rest.

He scampered over to another sarcophagus. A moment's brisk  towel work and he announced:

"This one's a dead hairdresser. Hoopy!"

The next sarcophagus revealed itself to be the last resting place of an advertising account executive; the one after that contained a second-hand car salesman, third class.

An inspection hatch let into the  floor  suddenly  caught  Ford's attention, and he squatted down to unfasten it, thrashing away at the clouds of freezing gas that threatened to envelope him.

A thought occurred to Arthur.

"If these are just coffins," he  said,  "Why  are  they  kept  so cold?"

"Or, indeed, why are they kept anyway,"  said  Ford  tugging  the hatchway  open.  The  gas poured down through it. "Why in fact is anyone going to all the  trouble  and  expense  of  carting  five thousand dead bodies through space?"

"Ten thousand," said Arthur,  pointing  at  the  archway  through which the next chamber was dimly visible.

Ford stuck his head down through the floor hatchway. He looked up again.

"Fifteen thousand," he said, "there's another lot down there."

"Fifteen million," said a voice.

"That's a lot," said Ford, "A lot a lot."

"Turn around slowly," barked the voice, "and put your  hands  up.

Any other move and I blast you into tiny tiny bits."

"Hello?" said Ford, turning round slowly, putting  his  hands  up and not making any other move.

"Why," said Arthur Dent, "isn't anyone ever pleased to see us?"

Standing silhouetted  in  the  doorway  through  which  they  had entered the vault was the man who wasn't pleased to see them. His displeasure was communicated  partly  by  the  barking  hectoring quality  of his voice and partly by the viciousness with which he waved a long silver Kill-O-Zap gun at them. The designer  of  the gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. "Make it evil," he'd been told. "Make it totally clear  that  this  gun has  a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly  for  them.  If  that  means  sticking  all  sort  of  spikes  and  prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a  gun  for hanging  over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with."

Ford and Arthur looked at the gun unhappily.

The man with the gun moved from the door and circled round  them.  As  he  came  into  the  light  they could see his black and gold uniform on which the buttons were so highly  polished  that  they shone  with  an  intensity  that  would  have made an approaching motorist flash his lights in annoyance.

He gestured at the door.

"Out," he said. People who can supply that amount of  fire  power don't  need  to  supply  verbs as well. Ford and Arthur went out, closely followed by the wrong end of the Kill-O-Zap gun  and  the buttons.

Turning into  the  corridor  they  were  jostled  by  twenty-four oncoming  joggers,  now  showered  and changed, who swept on past them into the vault. Arthur turned to watch them in confusion.

"Move!" screamed their captor.

Arthur moved.

Ford shrugged and moved.

In the vault the joggers went  to  twenty-four  empty  sarcophagi along  the  side  wall,  opened  them,  climbed in, and fell into twenty-four dreamless sleeps.

Chapter 24

"Er, captain ..."

"Yes, Number One?"

"Just heard a sort of report thingy from Number Two."

"Oh, dear."

High up in the bridge of the ship, the Captain  stared  out  into the infinite reaches of space with mild irritation. From where he reclined beneath a wide domed bubble  he  could  see  before  and above  them  the  vast  panorama of stars through which they were moving - a panorama that had thinned  out  noticably  during  the course  of  the  voyage.  Turning and looking backwards, over the vast two-mile bulk of the ship he could see the far  denser  mass of  stars  behind  them which seemed to form almost a solid band.  This was the view through the Galactic  centre  from  which  they were  travelling,  and indeed had been travelling for years, at a speed that he couldn't quite remember at the moment, but he  knew it  was  terribly fast. It was something approaching the speed of something or other, or was it three times the speed of  something else? Jolly impressive anyway. He peered into the bright distance behind the ship, looking for something. He  did  this  every  few minutes or so, but never found what he was looking for. He didn't let it worry him  though.  The  scientist  chaps  had  been  very insistent  that  everything  was  going  to  be perfectly alright providing nobody panicked and everybody got on and did their  bit in an orderly fashion.

He wasn't panicking. As far as he was  concerned  everything  was going  splendidly.  He dabbed at his shoulder with a large frothy sponge. It crept back into his mind that he  was  feeling  mildly irritated  about something. Now what was all that about? A slight cough alerted him to the fact that the ship's first  officer  was still standing nearby.

Nice chap, Number One. Not of the very  brightest,  had  the  odd spot  of  difficulty  doing  up  his  shoe  laces, but jolly good officer material for all that. The Captain wasn't a man to kick a chap  when  he  was  bending over trying to do up his shoe laces, however long it took him.  Not  like  that  ghastly  Number  Two, strutting  about  all  over  the  place,  polishing  his buttons, issuing reports  every  hour:  "Ship's  still  moving,  Captain." "Still   on   course,   Captain."   "Oxygen  levels  still  being maintained, Captain." "Give it a miss," was the  Captain's  vote.  Ah  yes,  that  was  the  thing  that had been irritating him. He peered down at Number One.

"Yes, Captain, he was shouting something or  other  about  having found some prisoners ..."

The Captain thought about this. Seemed pretty  unlikely  to  him, but he wasn't one to stand in his officers' way.

"Well, perhaps that'll keep him happy for a bit," he said,  "He's always wanted some."

Ford Prefect and  Arthur  Dent  trudged  onwards  up  the  ship's apparently  endless  corridors.  Number  Two  marched behind them barking the occasional order about not making any false moves  or trying  any  funny  stuff.  They seemed to have passed at least a mile of continuous brown hessian wall weave. Finally they reached a large steel door which slid open when Number Two shouted at it.

They entered.

To the eyes of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, the most  remarkable thing  about  the  ship's  bridge was not the fifty foot diameter hemispherical dome  which  covered  it,  and  through  which  the dazzling  display of stars shone down on them: to people who have eaten at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, such  wonders are  commonplace. Nor was it the bewildering array of instruments that crowded the long circumferential wall around them. To Arthur this  was  exactly what spaceships were traditionally supposed to look like, and  to  Ford  it  looked  thoroughly  antiquated:  it confirmed his suspicions that Disaster Area's stuntship had taken them back at least a million, if not two  million,  years  before their own time.

No, the thing that really caught them off balance was the bath.

The bath stood on a six foot pedestal of rough  hewn  blue  water crystal  and  was of a baroque monstrosity not often seen outside the Maximegalon Museum  of  Diseased  Imaginings.  An  intestinal jumble  of  plumbing had been picked out in gold leaf rather than decently buried at midnight in an unmarked grave;  the  taps  and shower attachment would have made a gargoyle jump.

As the dominant centrepiece of a starship bridge it was  terribly wrong,  and it was with the embittered air of a man who knew this that Number Two approached it.

"Captain, sir!" he shouted through clenched teeth -  a  difficult trick but he'd had years during which to perfect it.

A large genial face and a genial foam covered arm popped up above the rim of the monstrous bath.

"Ah, hello, Number  Two,"  said  the  Captain,  waving  a  cheery sponge, "having a nice day?"

Number Two snapped even further to attention than he already was.

"I have brought you the prisoners I located in freezer bay seven, sir!" he yapped.

Ford and Arthur coughed in confusion.

"Er ... hello," they said.

The Captain beamed at them. So Number Two had really  found  some prisoners. Well, good for him, thought the Captain, nice to see a chap doing what he's best at.

"Oh, hello there," he said to them, "Excuse me  not  getting  up, having  a quick bath. Well, jynnan tonnyx all round then. Look in the fridge Number one."

"Certainly sir."

It is a curious fact, and one to which no  one  knows  quite  how much  importance  to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced,  have invented  a  drink  called  jynnan  tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or  more  variations  on the  same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian "chinanto/mnigs" which is ordinary water   server  at  slightly  above  room  temperature,  and  the Gagrakackan "tzjin-anthony-ks" which  kills  cows  at  a  hundred paces;  and  in  fact  the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they  were all  invented  and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.

What can be made of this fact? It exists in total  isolation.  As far  as  any  theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right  off  the  graph,  and  yet  it  persists.  Old  structural linguists  get  very  angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about  it and  stay  up late at night convinced that they are very close to something  of  profound  importance,  and  end  up  becoming  old structural  linguists  before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided  and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.

Number Two stood before  the  Captain's  bathtub  trembling  with frustration.

"Don't you want to interrogate the prisoners sir?" he squealed.

The Captain peered at him in bemusement.

"Why on Golgafrincham should I want to do that?" he asked.

"To get information out of them, sir! To find out why  they  came here!"

"Oh no, no, no," said the Captain, "I expect they just dropped in for a quick jynnan tonnyx, don't you?"

"But sir, they're my prisoners! I must interrogate them!"

The Captain looked at them doubtfully.

"Oh all right," he said, "if you must. Ask them what they want to drink."

A hard cold gleam came into Number Two's eyes. He advanced slowly on Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent.

"All right, you scum," he growled, "you  vermin  ..."  He  jabbed Ford with the Kill-O-Zap gun.

"Steady on, Number Two," admonished the Captain gently.

"What do you want to drink!!!" Number Two screamed.

"Well the jynnan tonnyx sounds very nice to me," said Ford, "What about you Arthur?"

Arthur blinked.

"What? Oh, er, yes," he said.

"With ice or without?" bellowed Number Two.

"Oh, with please," said Ford.

"Lemon??!!"

"Yes please," said Ford, "and do you have  any  of  those  little biscuits? You know, the cheesy ones?"

"I'm asking  the  questions!!!!"  howled  Number  Two,  his  body quaking with apoplectic fury.

"Er, Number Two ..." said the Captain softly.

"Sir?!"

"Push off, would you, there's a good chap. I'm trying to  have  a relaxing bath."

Number Two's eyes narrowed and  became  what  are  known  in  the Shouting  and  Killing  People  trade  as  cold  slits,  the idea presumably being to give your opponent the  impression  that  you have  lost  your  glasses or are having difficulty keeping awake.  Why this is frightening is an, as yet, unresolved problem.

He advanced on the captain, his (Number Two's) mouth a thin  hard line.  Again,  tricky  to know why this is understood as fighting behaviour. If, whilst wandering through the jungle of Traal,  you were  suddenly to come upon the fabled Ravenous Bugblatter Beast, you would have reason to be grateful if its mouth was a thin hard line  rather  than,  as it usually is, a gaping mass of slavering fangs.

"May I remind you sir," hissed Number Two at the  Captain,  "that you have now been in that bath for over three years?!" This final shot delivered, Number Two spun on his heel and stalked off to  a corner to practise darting eye movements in the mirror.

The Captain squirmed in his bath. He gave  Ford  Prefect  a  lame smile.

"Well you need to relax a lot in a job like mine," he said.

Ford slowly lowered his hands. It provoked  no  reaction.  Arthur lowered his.

Treading very slowly and carefully, Ford moved over to  the  bath pedestal. He patted it.

"Nice," he lied.

He wondered if it was safe to grin. Very slowly and carefully, he grinned. It was safe.

"Er ..." he said to the Captain.

"Yes?" said the Captain.

"I wonder," said Ford, "could I ask you actually what your job is in fact?"

A hand tapped him on the shoulder. He span round.

It was the first officer.

"Your drinks," he said.

"Ah, thank you," said Ford.  He  and  Arthur  took  their  jynnan tonnyx.  Arthur  sipped  his,  and  was  surprised to discover it tasted very like a whisky and soda.

"I mean, I couldn't help noticing," said Ford, also taking a sip, "the bodies. In the hold."

"Bodies?" said the Captain in surprise.

Ford paused and thought  to  himself.  Never  take  anything  for granted,  he  thought.  Could it be that the Captain doesn't know he's got fifteen million dead bodies on his ship?

The Captain was nodding cheerfully at him. He also appeared to be playing with a rubber duck.

Ford looked around. Number Two was staring at him in the  mirror, but  only  for  an instant: his eyes were constantly on the move.  The first officer was just standing there holding the drinks tray and smiling benignly.

"Bodies?" said the Captain again.

Ford licked his lips.

"Yes," he said, "All those dead telephone sanitizers and  account executives, you know, down in the hold."

The Captain stared at him. Suddenly he threw back  his  head  and laughed.

"Oh they're not dead," he said, "Good Lord no, no they're frozen.

They're going to be revived."

Ford did something he very rarely did. He blinked.

Arthur seemed to come out of a trance.

"You mean you've got a hold  full  of  frozen  hairdressers?"  he said.

"Oh yes," said the  Captain,  "Millions  of  them.  Hairdressers, tired  TV  producers,  insurance  salesmen,  personnel  officers, security  guards,   public   relations   executives,   management consultants,  you  name  them.  We're  going  to colonize another planet."

Ford wobbled very slightly.

"Exciting isn't it?" said the Captain.

"What, with that lot?" said Arthur.

"Ah, now don't misunderstand me," said the Captain,  "we're  just one  of  the  ships  in the Ark Fleet. We're the `B' Ark you see.  Sorry, could I just ask you to run a bit more hot water for me?"

Arthur obliged, and a cascade of pink frothy water swirled around the bath. The Captain let out a sigh of pleasure.

"Thank you so much my dear fellow. Do  help  yourselves  to  more drinks of course."

Ford tossed down his  drink,  took  the  bottle  from  the  first officer's tray and refilled his glass to the top.

"What," he said, "is a `B' Ark?"

"This is," said the Captain, and swished the foamy  water  around joyfully with the duck.

"Yes," said Ford, "but ..."

"Well what happened you see was," said the Captain, "our  planet, the world from which we have come, was, so to speak, doomed."

"Doomed?"

"Oh yes. So what everyone  thought  was,  let's  pack  the  whole population  into  some  giant  spaceships  and  go  and settle on another planet."

Having told this much of  his  story,  he  settled  back  with  a satisfied grunt.

"You mean a less doomed one?" promoted Arthur.

"What did you say dear fellow?"

"A less doomed planet. You were going to settle on."

"Are going to settle on, yes. So it was decided  to  build  three ships,  you  see, three Arks in Space, and ... I'm not boring you am I?"

"No, no," said Ford firmly, "it's fascinating."

"You know it's  delightful,"  reflected  the  Captain,  "to  have someone else to talk to for a change."

Number Two's eyes darted feverishly about the room again and then settled  back  on  the  mirror,  like  a  pair  of  flies briefly distracted from their favourite prey of months old meat.

"Trouble with a long journey like this," continued  the  Captain, "is  that  you  end up just talking to yourself a lot, which gets terribly boring because half the time you know what you're  going to say next."

"Only half the time?" asked Arthur in surprise.

The Captain thought for a moment.

"Yes, about half I'd say. Anyway - where's the soap?"  He  fished around and found it.

"Yes, so anyway," he resumed, "the idea was that into  the  first ship,  the  `A'  ship,  would  go  all the brilliant leaders, the scientists, the great artists, you know, all the  achievers;  and into  the third, or `C' ship, would go all the people who did the actual work, who made things and did things, and  then  into  the `B'  ship - that's us - would go everyone else, the middlemen you see."

He smiled happily at them.

"And we were sent off first," he concluded, and hummed  a  little bathing tune.

The little bathing tune, which had been composed for him  by  one of  his world's most exciting and prolific jingle writer (who was currently asleep in  hold  thirty-six  some  nine  hundred  yards behind  them)  covered  what would otherwise have been an awkward moment of silence.  Ford  and  Arthur  shuffled  their  feet  and furiously avoided each other's eyes.

"Er ..." said Arthur after a moment, "what exactly  was  it  that was wrong with your planet then?"

"Oh, it was doomed, as I said," said the Captain, "Apparently  it was  going  to  crash  into the sun or something. Or maybe it was that the moon was going to crash into us. Something of the  kind.  Absolutely terrifying prospect whatever it was."

"Oh," said the first officer suddenly, "I thought it was that the planet was going to be invaded by a gigantic swarm of twelve foot piranha bees. Wasn't that it?"

Number Two span around, eyes ablaze with a cold hard  light  that only comes with the amount of practise he was prepared to put in.

"That's not what I was told!" he hissed, "My  commanding  officer told  me  that  the entire planet was in imminent danger of being eaten by an enormous mutant star goat!"

"Oh really ..." said Ford Prefect.

"Yes! A monstrous creature from the pit  of  hell  with  scything teeth  ten  thousand  miles  long, breath that would boil oceans, claws that could tear continents from  their  roots,  a  thousand eyes  that  burned  like  the sun, slavering jaws a million miles across, a monster such as you have never ... never ... ever ..."

"And they made sure they  sent  you  lot  off  first  did  they?" inquired Arthur.

"Oh yes," said the Captain, "well everyone said,  very  nicely  I thought,  that it was very important for morale to feel that they would be arriving on a planet where they could be sure of a  good haircut and where the phones were clean."

"Oh yes," agreed Ford, "I can see that would be  very  important.

And the other ships, er ... they followed on after you did they?"

For a moment the Captain did not answer. He twisted round in  his bath  and  gazed backwards over the huge bulk of the ship towards the bright galactic centre. He squinted  into  the  inconceivable distance.

"Ah. Well it's funny you should say that," he  said  and  allowed himself a slight frown at Ford Prefect, "because curiously enough we haven't heard a peep out of them since we left five years  ago ... but they must be behind us somewhere."

He peered off into the distance again.

Ford peered with him and gave a thoughtful frown.

"Unless of course," he said softly, "they were eaten by the  goat

"Ah yes ..." said the Captain with a  slight  hesitancy  creeping into  his  voice,  "the  goat ..." His eyes passed over the solid shapes of the instruments and computers that  lined  the  bridge.  They  winked  away innocently at him. He stared out at the stars, but none of them said a word. He glanced at his first and  second officers,  but  they  seemed  lost  in  their  own thoughts for a moment. He glanced at Ford Prefect who  raised  his  eyebrows  at him.

"It's a funny thing you know," said the Captain at last, "but now that I actually come to tell the story to someone else ... I mean does it strike you as odd Number Two?"

"Errrrrrrrrrrr ..." said Number Two.

"Well," said Ford, "I can see that you've got  a  lot  of  things you're going to talk about, so, thanks for the drinks, and if you could sort of drop us off at the nearest convenient planet ..."

"Ah, well that's a little difficult you see," said  the  Captain, "because   our  trajectory  thingy  was  preset  before  we  left Golgafrincham, I think partly because  I'm  not  very  good  with figures ..."

"You mean we're stuck here on this ship?" exclaimed Ford suddenly losing patience with the whole charade, "When are you meant to be reaching this planet you're meant to be colonizing?"

"Oh, we're nearly there I think," said the Captain,  "any  second now.  It's  probably time I was getting out of this bath in fact.  Oh, I don't know though, why stop just when I'm enjoying it?"

"So we're actually going to land in a minute?"

"Well not so much land, in fact, not actually land  as  such,  no ... er ..."

"What are you talking about?" said Ford sharply.

"Well," said the Captain,  picking  his  way  through  the  words carefully,  "I  think as far as I can remember we were programmed to crash on it."

"Crash?" shouted Ford and Arthur.

"Er, yes," said the Captain, "yes, it's all part of  the  plan  I

think.  There  was  a  terribly  good reason for it which I can't

quite remember at the moment. It was something  to  with  ...  er

Ford exploded.

"You're a load of useless bloody loonies!" he shouted.

"Ah yes, that was it," beamed the Captain, "that was the reason."

Chapter 25

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say  about  the planet  of  Golgafrincham:  It  is  a  planet with an ancient and mysterious history, rich in legend, red, and  occasionally  green with  the  blood  of those who sought in times gone by to conquer her; a land of parched and barren landscapes, of sweet and sultry air  heady  with  the  scent of the perfumed springs that trickle over its hot and dusty rocks  and  nourish  the  dark  and  musty lichens   beneath;  a  land  of  fevered  brows  and  intoxicated imaginings, particularly amongst those who taste the  lichens;  a land  also  of  cool  and  shaded thoughts amongst those who have learnt to forswear the lichens and find a tree to sit beneath;  a land  also of steel and blood and heroism; a land of the body and of the spirit. This was its history.

And  in  all  this  ancient  and  mysterious  history,  the  most mysterious  figures  of all were without doubt those of the Great Circling Poets of Arium. These Circling Poets  used  to  live  in remote  mountain  passes  where  they would lie in wait for small bands of unwary travellers, circle round them, and throw rocks at them.

And when the travellers cried out, saying why didn't they go away and  get  on  with writing some poems instead of pestering people with all this rock-throwing business, they would  suddenly  stop, and  then  break  into  one  of the seven hundred and ninety-four great  Song  Cycles  of  Vassilian.  These  songs  were  all   of extraordinary beauty, and even more extraordinary length, and all fell into exactly the same pattern.

The first part of each song would tell how there once went  forth from the City of Vassilian a party of five sage princes with four horses. The princes, who are of course  brave,  noble  and  wise, travel widely in distant lands, fought giant ogres, pursue exotic philosophies, take tea  with  weird  gods  and  rescue  beautiful monsters  from ravening princesses before finally announcing that they have achieved enlightenment and that  their  wanderings  are therefore accomplished.

The second, and much longer, part of each song would then tell of all  their bickerings about which one of them is going to have to walk back.

All this lay in the planet's remote  past.  It  was,  however,  a descendant  of  one  of  these  eccentric  poets who invented the spurious tales of impending doom  which  enabled  the  people  of Golgafrincham  to  rid  themselves  of an entire useless third of their population. The other two-thirds stayed firmly at home  and lived  full,  rich  and  happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped  out  by  a  virulent  disease  contracted  from  a   dirty telephone.

Chapter 26

That night the ship crash-landed on to an  utterly  insignificant little  green-blue planet which circled a small unregarded yellow sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end  of  the Western spiral arm of the Galaxy.

In  the  hours  preceding  the  crash  Ford  Prefect  had  fought furiously  but  in  vain  to unlock the controls of the ship from their pre-ordained flight path. It had quickly become apparent to him  that  the  ship  had  been  programmed to convey its payload safely, in uncomfortably, to its new home but to  cripple  itself beyond repair in the process.

Its  screaming,  blazing  descent  through  the  atmosphere   had stripped away most of its superstructure and outer shielding, and its final inglorious bellyflop into a murky swamp  had  left  its crew  only  a  few  hours  of darkness during which to revive and offload its deep-frozen and unwanted cargo for the ship began  to settle  almost  at once, slowly upending its gigantic bulk in the stagnant slime. Once or twice during the  night  it  was  starkly silhouetted  against the sky as burning meteors - the detritus of its descent - flashed across the sky.

In the grey pre-dawn light it let out an obscene  roaring  gurgle and sank for ever into the stinking depths.

When the sun came up that morning it shed its thin  watery  light over  a  vast  area  heaving  with  wailing  hairdressers, public relations executives, opinion pollsters and the rest, all clawing their way desperately to dry land.

A less strong minded sun would probably have gone  straight  back down again, but it continued to climb its way through the sky and after a while the influence of its warming  rays  began  to  have some restoring effect on the feebly struggling creatures.

Countless numbers had, unsurprisingly, been lost to the swamp  in the  night, and millions more had been sucked down with the ship, but those that survived still numbered hundreds of thousands  and as  the  day  wore  on  they  crawled  out  over  the surrounding countryside, each looking for a few square feet of  solid  ground on which to collapse and recover from their nightmare ordeal.

Two figures moved further afield.

From a nearby hillside Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent  watched  the horror of which they could not feel a part.

"Filthy dirty trick to pull," muttered Arthur.

Ford scraped a stick along the ground and shrugged.

"An imaginative solution to a problem I'd have thought," he said.

"Why can't people just  learn  to  live  together  in  peace  and harmony?" said Arthur.

Ford gave a loud, very hollow laugh.

"Forty-two!" he said with a malicious grin,  "No,  doesn't  work.

Never mind."

Arthur looked at him as if he'd gone mad and, seeing  nothing  to indicate  the  contrary,  realized  that  it  would  be perfectly reasonable to assume that this had in fact happened.

"What do you think will happen to them  all?"  he  said  after  a while.

"In an infinite Universe anything can happen," said  Ford,  "Even survival. Strange but true."

A curious look came  into  his  eyes  as  they  passed  over  the landscape  and  then  settles  again on the scene of misery below them.

"I think they'll manage for a while," he said.

Arthur looked up sharply.

"Why do you say that?" he said.

Ford shrugged.

"Just a hunch," he said, and refused to be drawn to  any  further questions.

"Look," he said suddenly.

Arthur followed his pointing finger. Down amongst  the  sprawling masses  a figure was moving - or perhaps lurching would be a more accurate description. He appeared to be carrying something on his shoulder.  As he lurched from prostrate form to prostrate form he seemed to wave whatever the something was at them  in  a  drunken fashion. After a while he gave up the struggle and collapsed in a heap.

Arthur had no idea what this was meant to mean to him.

"Movie camera," said Ford. "Recording the historic movement."

"Well, I don't know about you," said Ford again after  a  moment, "but I'm off."

He sat a while in silence.

After a while this seemed to require comment.

"Er, when you say you're off, what do  you  mean  exactly?"  said Arthur.

"Good question," said Ford, "I'm getting total silence."

Looking over his shoulder Arthur saw that he was  twiddling  with knobs  on  a small box. Ford had already introduced this box as a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic, but Arthur had merely nodded absently  and not  pursued  the  matter. In his mind the Universe still divided into two parts - the Earth, and everything else. The Earth having been  demolished  to  make  way for a new hyperspace bypass meant that this view of things was a little lopsided, but Arthur tended to cling to that lopsidedness as being his last remaining contact with his home. Sub-Etha  Sens-O-Matics  belonged  firmly  in  the "everything else" category.

"Not a sausage," said Ford, shaking the thing.

Sausage, thought Arthur to himself as he gazed listlessly at  the primitive  world about him, what I wouldn't give for a good Earth sausage.

"Would you believe," said Ford in exasperation, "that  there  are no transmissions of any kind within light years of this benighted tip? Are you listening to me?"

"What?" said Arthur.

"We're in trouble," said Ford.

"Oh," said Arthur. This sounded like month-old news to him.

"Until we pick up anything on  this  machine,"  said  Ford,  "our chances of getting off this planet are zero. It may be some freak standing wave effect in the planet's magnetic field  -  in  which case  we  just  travel  round  and  round  till  we  find a clear reception area. Coming?"

He picked up his gear and strode off.

Arthur looked down the hill. The man with the  movie  camera  had struggled  back  up  to  his feet just in time to film one of his colleagues collapsing.

Arthur picked a blade of grass and strode off after Ford.

Chapter 27

"I trust you had a pleasant meal?" said Zarniwoop to  Zaphod  and Trillian  as  they  rematerialized  on the bridge of the starship Heart of Gold and lay panting on the floor.

Zaphod opened some eyes and glowered at him.

"You," he spat. He staggered to his feet and stomped off to  find a chair to slump into. He found one and slumped into it.

"I  have  programmed  the   computer   with   the   Improbability Coordinates  pertinent  to our journey," said Zarniwoop, "we will arrive there very shortly. Meanwhile, why  don't  you  relax  and prepare yourself for the meeting?"

Zaphod said nothing. He got up again and marched over to a  small cabinet from which he pulled a bottle of old Janx spirit. He took a long pull at it.

"And when this is all done," said Zaphod  savagely,  "it's  done, alright?  I'm  free  to go and do what the hell I like and lie on beaches and stuff?"

"It depends what transpires from the meeting," said Zarniwoop.

"Zaphod, who is this man?" said Trillian shakily, wobbling to her feet, "What's he doing here? Why's he on our ship?"

"He's a very stupid man," said Zaphod, "who wants to meet the man who rules the Universe."

"Ah," said Trillian taking the bottle  from  Zaphod  and  helping herself, "a social climber."

Chapter 28

The major problem - one of the  major  problems,  for  there  are several - one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who  manages  to  get people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.  To summarize the  summary:  anyone  who  is  capable  of  getting themselves  made  President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary:  people  are  a problem.

And so this is the situation we find: a  succession  of  Galactic Presidents  who  so  much  enjoy  the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they're not.

And somewhere in the shadows behind them - who?

Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?

Chapter 29

On a small obscure world somewhere in the middle  of  nowhere  in particular - nowhere, that is, that could ever be found, since it is protected by a vast field of unprobability to which  only  six men in this galaxy have a key - it was raining.

It was bucketing down, and had been for hours. It beat the top of the sea into a mist, it pounded the trees, it churned and slopped a stretch of scrubby land near the sea into a mudbath.

The rain pelted and danced on the corrugated  iron  roof  of  the small  shack  that  stood  in the middle of this patch of scrubby land. It obliterated the small rough pathway that  led  from  the shack  down  to  the seashore and smashed apart the neat piles of interesting shells which had been placed there.

The noise of the rain on the roof  of  the  shack  was  deafening within,  but  went  largely  unnoticed  by  its  occupant,  whose attention was otherwise engaged.

He was a tall shambling man with rough straw-coloured  hair  that was damp from the leaking roof. His clothes were shabby, his back was hunched, and his eyes, though open, seemed closed.

In his shack was an old  beaten-up  armchair,  an  old  scratched table,  an old mattress, some cushions and a stove that was small but warm.

There was also an old and slightly weatherbeaten  cat,  and  this was  currently  the  focus  of  the  man's attention. He bent his shambling form over it.

"Pussy, pussy, pussy," he said, "coochicoochicoochicoo ...  pussy want his fish? Nice piece of fish ... pussy want it?"

The  cat  seemed  undecided  on  the  matter.  It  pawed   rather condescendingly at the piece of fish the man was holding out, and then got distracted by a piece of dust on the floor.

"Pussy not eat his fish, pussy get thin and waste away, I think," said the man. Doubt crept into his voice.

"I imagine this is what will happen," he said,  "but  how  can  I tell?"

He proffered the fish again.

"Pussy think," he said, "eat fish or not eat fish. I think it  is better if I don't get involved." He sighed.

"I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so  who am I to judge?"

He left the fish on the floor for the cat,  and  retired  to  his seat.

"Ah, I seem to see you eating it," he said at last,  as  the  cat exhausted  the  entertainment  possibilities of the speck of dust and pounced on to the fish.

"I like it when I see you eat the fish," said the  man,  "because in my mind you will waste away if you don't."

He picked up from the table a piece of paper and the  stub  of  a pencil.  He  held one in one hand and the other in the other, and experimented with the different ways of bringing  them  together.  He tried holding the pencil under the paper, then over the paper, then next to the paper. He tried wrapping  the  paper  round  the pencil, he tried rubbing the stubby end of the pencil against the paper and then he tried rubbing  the  sharp  end  of  the  pencil against  the paper. It made a mark, and he was delighted with the discovery, as he was every day. He picked  up  another  piece  of paper  from  the table. This had a crossword on it. He studied it briefly and filled in a couple of clues before losing interest.

He tried sitting on one of his hands and  was  intrigued  by  the feel of the bones of his hip.

"Fish come from far away," he said, "or so  I'm  told.  Or  so  I imagine  I'm  told. When the men come, or when in my mind the men come in their six black ships, do they come  in  your  mind  too?  What do you see pussy?"

He looked at the cat, which was more concerned with  getting  the fish  down  as  rapidly  as  possible  than  it  was  with  these speculations.

"And when I hear their questions, do you hear questions? What  do their  voices mean to you? Perhaps you just think they're singing songs to you." He reflected on this, and  saw  the  flaw  in  the supposition.

"Perhaps they are singing songs to you," he  said,  "and  I  just think they're asking me questions."

He paused again. Sometimes he would pause for days, just  to  see what it was like.

"Do you think they came today?" he said, "I do.  There's  mud  on the  floor,  cigarettes  and whisky on the table, fish on a plate for you and a memory  of  them  in  my  mind.  Hardly  conclusive evidence  I  know,  but  then all evidence is circumstantial. And look what else they've left me."

He reached over to the table and pulled some things off it.

"Crosswords, dictionaries, and a calculator."

He played with the calculator for an hour, whilst the cat went to sleep  and  the rain outside continued to pour. Eventually he put the calculator aside.

"I think I must be right in thinking they ask me  questions,"  he said,  "To  come  all that way and leave all these things for the privilege  of  singing  songs  to  you  would  be  very   strange behaviour. Or so it seems to me. Who can tell, who can tell."

From the table he picked up a cigarette and lit it with  a  spill from the stove. He inhaled deeply and sat back.

"I think I saw another ship in the sky today," he said  at  last.  "A  big  white one. I've never seen a big white one, just the six black ones. And the six green ones. And the others who  say  they come  from  so far away. Never a big white one. Perhaps six small black ones can look like one big  white  one  at  certain  times.  Perhaps  I  would  like  a  glass of whisky. Yes, that seems more likely."

He stood up and found a glass that was lying on the floor by  the mattress.  He  poured in a measure from his whisky bottle. He sat again.

"Perhaps some other people are coming to see me," he said.

A hundred yards away, pelted by  the  torrential  rain,  lay  the Heart of Gold.

Its hatchway opened, and three  figures  emerged,  huddling  into themselves to keep the rain off their faces.

"In there?" shouted Trillian above the noise of the rain.

"Yes," said Zarniwoop.

"That shack?"

"Yes."

"Weird," said Zaphod.

"But it's in the middle of nowhere," said Trillian, "we must have come  to  the  wrong  place.  You  can't rule the Universe from a shack."

They hurried through the pouring rain, and arrived, wet  through, at the door. They knocked. They shivered.

The door opened.

"Hello?" said the man.

"Ah, excuse me," said Zarniwoop, "I have reason to believe ..."

"Do you rule the Universe?" said Zaphod.

The man smiled at him.

"I try not to," he said, "Are you wet?"

Zaphod looked at him in astonishment.

"Wet?" he cried, "Doesn't it look as if we're wet?"

"That's how it looks to me," said the  man,  "but  how  you  feel about  it  might  be  an altogether different matter. If you feel warmth makes you dry, you'd better come in."

They went in.

They  looked  around  the  tiny  shack,  Zarniwoop  with   slight distaste, Trillian with interest, Zaphod with delight.

"Hey, er ..." said Zaphod, "what's your name?"

The man looked at them doubtfully.

"I don't know. Why, do you think I should have one? It seems very odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name."

He invited Trillian to sit in the chair. He sat on  the  edge  of the  chair, Zarniwoop leaned stiffly against the table and Zaphod lay on the mattress.

"Wowee!" said Zaphod, "the seat of power!" He tickled the cat.

"Listen," said Zarniwoop, "I must ask you some questions."

"Alright," said the man kindly, "you can sing to my  cat  if  you like."

"Would he like that?" asked Zaphod.

"You'd better ask him," said the man.

"Does he talk?" said Zaphod.

"I have no memory of him talking," said the man, "but I  am  very unreliable."

Zarniwoop pulled some notes out of a pocket.

"Now," he said, "you do rule the Universe, do you?"

"How can I tell?" said the man.

Zarniwoop ticked off a note on the paper.

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Ah," said the man, "this is a question about the past is it?"

Zarniwoop looked at him in puzzlement. This wasn't  exactly  what he had been expecting.

"Yes," he said.

"How can I tell," said the man, "that the past  isn't  a  fiction designed  to  account  for  the  discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?"

Zarniwoop stared at him. The steam began to rise from his  sodden clothes.

"So you answer all questions like this?" he said.

The man answered quickly.

"I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say."

Zaphod laughed happily.

"I'll drink to that," he said and pulled out the bottle  of  Janx spirit.  He  leaped  up and handed the bottle to the ruler of the Universe, who took it with pleasure.

"Good on you, great ruler," he said, "tell it like it is."

"No, listen to me," said Zarniwoop, "people come to you do  they?

In ships ..."

"I think so," said the man. He handed the bottle to Trillian.

"And they ask you," said Zarniwoop, "to take decisions for  them?  About  people's lives, about worlds, about economies, about wars, about everything going on out there in the Universe?"

"Out there?" said the man, "out where?"

"Out there!" said Zarniwoop pointing at the door.

"How can you tell there's  anything  out  there,"  said  the  man politely, "the door's closed."

The rain continued to pound the roof. Inside  the  shack  it  was warm.

"But  you  know  there's  a  whole  Universe  out  there!"  cried Zarniwoop.  "You can't dodge your responsibilities by saying they don't exist!"

The ruler of  the  Universe  thought  for  a  long  while  whilst Zarniwoop quivered with anger.

"You're very sure of your facts," he said at  last,  "I  couldn't trust  the thinking of a man who takes the Universe - if there is one - for granted."

Zarniwoop still quivered, but was silent.

"I only decide about my Universe," continued the man quietly. "My Universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay."

"But don't you believe in anything?"

The man shrugged and picked up his cat.

"I don't understand what you mean," he said.

"You don't understand that what you decide in this shack of yours affects  the  lives  and fates of millions of people? This is all monstrously wrong!"

"I don't know. I've never met all these people you speak of.  And neither,  I  suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear.  It is folly to say you know what is happening  to  other  people.  Only  they  know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears."

Trillian said:

"I think I'm just popping outside for a moment."

She left and walked into the rain.

"Do you believe other people exist?" insisted Zarniwoop.

"I have no opinion. How can I say?"

"I'd better see what's up with Trillian," said Zaphod and slipped out.

Outside, he said to her:

"I think the Universe is in pretty good hands, yeah?"

"Very good," said Trillian. They walked off into the rain.

Inside, Zarniwoop continued.

"But don't you understand that people live or die on your word?"

The ruler of the Universe waited for as long as he could. When he heard  the faint sound of the ship's engines starting he spoke to cover it.

"It's nothing to do with me," he said, "I am  not  involved  with people. The Lord knows I am not a cruel man."

"Ah!" barked Zarniwoop, "you  say  `The  Lord'.  You  believe  in something!"

"My cat," said the man benignly, picking it up and  stroking  it, "I call him The Lord. I am kind to him."

"Alright," said Zarniwoop, pressing home his point, "How  do  you know  he  exists?  How  do  you  know he knows you to be kind, or enjoys what he thinks of as your kindness?"

"I don't," said the man with a smile, "I have no idea. It  merely pleases  me  to  behave  in a certain way to what appears to be a cat. Do you behave any differently? Please, I think I am tired."

Zarniwoop heaved a thoroughly dissatisfied sigh and looked about.

"Where are the other two?" he said suddenly.

"What other two?" said the ruler of the Universe,  settling  back into his chair and refilling his whisky glass.

"Beeblebrox and the girl! The two who were here!"

"I remember no one. The past is a fiction to account for ..."

"Stuff it," snapped Zarniwoop and ran out into  the  rain.  There was  no  ship.  The rain continued to churn the mud. There was no sign to show where the ship had been. He hollered into the  rain.  He turned and ran back to the shack and found it locked.

The ruler of the Universe dozed lightly in  his  chair.  After  a while  he  played  with  the  pencil  and the paper again and was delighted when he discovered how to make a mark with the  one  on the  other.  Various noises continued outside, but he didn't know whether they were real or not. He then talked to his table for  a week to see how it would react.

Chapter 30

The stars came out that night, dazzling in their  brilliance  and clarity.  Ford and Arthur had walked more miles than they had any means of judging and finally stopped to rest. The night was  cool and  balmy,  the  air  pure,  the  Sub-Etha  Sens.O.Matic totally silent.

A wonderful stillness hung over the world, a magical  calm  which combined with the soft fragrances of the woods, the quiet chatter of insects and the brilliant light of the stars to  soothe  their jangled spirits. Even Ford Prefect, who had seen more worlds than he could count on a long afternoon, was moved to wonder  if  this was  the  most  beautiful he had ever seen. All that day they had passed through rolling green hills and  valleys,  richly  covered with grasses, wild scented flowers and tall thickly leaved trees, the sun had warmed them, light breezes had kept  them  cool,  and Ford  Prefect  had  checked his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic at less and less  frequent  intervals,  and  had  exhibited  less  and   less annoyance  at its continued silence. He was beginning to think he liked it here.

Cool though the night air was they slept soundly and  comfortably in  the  open  and awoke a few hours later with the light dewfall feeling refreshed but hungry. Ford had stuffed some  small  rolls into  his  satchel  at  Milliways  and they breakfasted off those before moving on.

So far they had wandered purely at random, but  now  they  struck out  firmly eastwards, feeling that if they were going to explore this world they should have some clear idea  of  where  they  had come from and where they were going.

Shortly before noon they had  their  first  indication  that  the world  they  had  landed  on  was  not an uninhabited one: a half glimpsed face amongst the trees, watching them.  It  vanished  at the  moment  they  both saw it, but the image they were both left with was of a humanoid creature, curious  to  see  them  but  not alarmed.  Half an hour later they glimpsed another such face, and ten minutes after that another.

A minute later they stumbled into a  wide  clearing  and  stopped short.

Before them in the middle of the clearing stood a group of  about two  dozen  men and women. They stood still and quiet facing Ford and Arthur. Around some of the women huddled some small  children and  behind  the  group was a ramshackle array of small dwellings made of mud and branches.

Ford and Arthur held their breath.

The tallest of the men stood a little over five feet  high,  they all  stooped  forward  slightly,  had  longish  arms  and  lowish foreheads, and clear bright eyes with which they stared  intently at the strangers.

Seeing that they carried no weapons  and  made  no  move  towards them, Ford and Arthur relaxed slightly.

For a while the two groups simply stared at each  other,  neither side   making  any  move.  The  natives  seemed  puzzled  by  the intruders, and whilst they showed no sign of aggression they were quite clearly not issuing any invitations.

For a full two minutes nothing continued to happen.

After two minutes Ford decided it was time something happened.

"Hello," he said.

The women drew their children slightly closer to them.

The men made hardly any discernible  move  and  yet  their  whole disposition  made it clear that the greeting was not welcome - it was not resented in any great degree, it was just not welcome.

One of the men, who had been standing  slightly  forward  of  the rest of the group and who might therefore have been their leader, stepped forward. His face was quiet and calm, almost serene.

"Ugghhhuuggghhhrrrr uh uh ruh uurgh," he said quietly.

This caught Arthur by surprise. He had grown so used to receiving an  instantaneous  and  unconscious  translation of everything he heard via the Babel Fish lodged in his ear that he had ceased  to be  aware  of it, and he was only reminded of its presence now by the fact that it didn't seem to  be  working.  Vague  shadows  of meaning  had  flickered  at  the  back of his mind, but there was nothing he could get any firm grasp on. He guessed, correctly  as it happens, that these people had as yet evolved no more than the barest rudiments  of  language,  and  that  the  Babel  Fish  was therefore  powerless  to  help.  He  glanced  at  Ford,  who  was infinitely more experienced in these matters.

"I think," said Ford out of the corner of his mouth, "he's asking us if we'd mind walking on round the edge of the village."

A moment later, a gesture from the man-creature seemed to confirm this.

"Ruurgggghhhh  urrgggh;  urgh  urgh  (uh  ruh)   rruurruuh   ug," continued the man-creature.

"The general gist," said Ford, "as far as I can make out, is that we are welcome to continue our journey in any way we like, but if we would walk round his village rather than through it  it  would make them all very happy."

"So what do we do?"

"I think we make them happy," said Ford.

Slowly and watchfully they walked  round  the  perimeter  of  the clearing.  This  seemed to go down very well with the natives who bowed to them very slightly and then went about their business.

Ford and Arthur continued their journey through the wood.  A  few hundred  yards  past the clearing they suddenly came upon a small pile  of  fruit  lying  in  their  path  -  berries  that  looked remarkably  like  raspberries  and blackberries, and pulpy, green skinned fruit that looked remarkably like pears.

So far they had steered clear of the fruit and berries  they  had seen, though the trees and bushed were laden with them.

"Look at it this way," Ford Prefect had said, "fruit and  berries on  strange  planets  either  make  you  live  or  make  you die.  Therefore the point at which to start toying with  them  is  when you're  going  to  die if you don't. That way you stay ahead. The secret of healthy hitch-hiking is to eat junk food."

They looked at the pile that lay in their path with suspicion. It looked so good it made them almost dizzy with hunger.

"Look at it this way," said Ford, "er ..."

"Yes?" said Arthur.

"I'm trying to think of a way of looking at it which means we get to eat it," said Ford.

The leaf-dappled sun gleamed on the  pulp  skins  of  the  things which looked like pears. The things which looked like raspberries and strawberries were fatter and riper than any Arthur  had  ever seen, even in ice cream commercials.

"Why don't we eat them and think about it afterwards?" he said.

"Maybe that's what they want us to do."

"Alright, look at it this way ..."

"Sounds good so far."

"It's there for us to eat. Either it's good or it's  bad,  either they  want  to  feed us or to poison us. If it's poisonous and we don't eat it they'll just attack us some other way. If  we  don't eat, we lose out either way."

"I like the way you're thinking," said Ford, "Now eat one."

Hesitantly, Arthur picked up one of those things that looked like pears.

"I always thought that about the  Garden  of  Eden  story,"  said Ford.

"Eh?"

"Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?"

"Yes of course I do."

"Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it  and  he  leaps  out  from  behind  a  bush shouting  `Gotcha'.  It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it."

"Why not?"

"Because if you're dealing with somebody  who  has  the  sort  of mentality  which  likes  leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't  give  up.  They'll get you in the end."

"What are you talking about?"

"Never mind, eat the fruit."

"You know, this place almost looks like the Garden of Eden."

"Eat the fruit."

"Sounds quite like it too."

Arthur took a bite from the thing which looked like a pear.

"It's a pear," he said.

A few moments later, when they had eaten the  lot,  Ford  Prefect turned round and called out.

"Thank you. Thank you very much," he called, "you're very kind."

They went on their way.

For the next fifty miles of their journey eastward they  kept  on finding  the  occasional  gift  of fruit lying in their path, and though they once or twice had a quick glimpse of  a  native  man-creature amongst the trees, they never again made direct contact.  They decided they rather liked a race of people who made it clear that they were grateful simply to be left alone.

The fruit and berries stopped after fifty miles, because that was where the sea started.

Having no pressing calls on their time  they  built  a  raft  and crossed  the  sea. It was reasonably calm, only about sixty miles wide and they had a reasonably pleasant crossing,  landing  in  a country that was at least as beautiful as the one they had left.

Life was, in short, ridiculously easy and for a  while  at  least they  were  able  to  cope  with  the problems of aimlessness and isolation by deciding  to  ignore  them.  When  the  craving  for company  became  too  great they would know where to find it, but for the moment they were happy to feel  that  the  Golgafrinchans were hundreds of miles behind them.

Nevertheless, Ford Prefect began to use his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic more often again. Only once did he pick up a signal, but that was so faint and from such enormous distance that  it  depressed  him more than the silence that had otherwise continued unbroken.

On a whim they turned northwards. After weeks of travelling  they came to another sea, built another raft and crossed it. This time it was harder going,  the  climate  was  getting  colder.  Arthur suspected  a streak of masochism in Ford Prefect - the increasing difficulty of the journey seemed to give him a sense  of  purpose that was otherwise lacking. He strode onwards relentlessly.

Their journey northwards  brought  them  into  steep  mountainous terrain  of breathtaking sweep and beauty. The vast, jagged, snow covered peaks ravished their senses. The cold began to bite  into their bones.

They wrapped themselves in  animal  skins  and  furs  which  Ford Prefect  acquired by a technique he once learned from a couple of ex-Pralite monks running a Mind-Surfing resort in  the  Hills  of Hunian.

The galaxy is littered with ex-Pralite monks, all  on  the  make, because the mental control techniques the Order have evolved as a form of devotional discipline are,  frankly,  sensational  -  and extraordinary  numbers  of  monks leave the Order just after they have finished their devotional training and just before they take their final vows to stay locked in small metal boxes for the rest of their lives.

Ford's technique seemed to consist mainly of standing still for a while and smiling.

After a while an animal - a deer perhaps - would appear from  out of  the  trees  and  watch him cautiously. Ford would continue to smile at it, his eyes would soften and shine, and he  would  seem to radiate a deep and universal love, a love which reached out to embrace all of creation. A wonderful quietness would  descend  on the  surrounding countryside, peaceful and serene, emanating from this transfigured man. Slowly the deer would  approach,  step  by step,  until  it  was almost nuzzling him, whereupon Ford Prefect would reach out to it and break its neck.

"Pheromone control," he said it was, "you just have to  know  how to generate the right smell."

Chapter 31

A few days after landing in this  mountainous  land  they  hit  a coastline  which swept diagonally before them from the south-west to the north-east,  a  coastline  of  monumental  grandeur:  deep majestic ravines, soaring pinnacles of ice - fjords.

For two further days they scrambled and climbed  over  the  rocks and glaciers, awe-struck with beauty.

"Arthur!" yelled Ford suddenly.

It was the afternoon of the second day. Arthur was sitting  on  a high rock watching the thundering sea smashing itself against the craggy promontories.

"Arthur!" yelled Ford again.

Arthur looked to  where  Ford's  voice  had  come  from,  carried faintly in the wind.

Ford had gone to examine a glacier, and Arthur  found  him  there crouching  by  the  solid  wall  of  blue  ice. He was tense with excitement - his eyes darted up to meet Arthur's.

"Look," he said, "look!"

Arthur looked. He saw the solid wall of blue ice.

"Yes," he said, "it's a glacier. I've already seen it."

"No," said Ford, "you've looked  at  it,  you  haven't  seen  it.

Look!"

Ford was pointing deep into the heart of the ice.

Arthur peered - he saw nothing but vague shadows.

"Move back from it," insisted Ford, "look again."

Arthur moved back and looked again.

"No," he said, and shrugged. "What am I supposed  to  be  looking for?"

And suddenly he saw it.

"You see it?"

He saw it.

His mouth started to speak, but his brain decided it  hadn't  got anything  to say yet and shut it again. His brain then started to contend with the problem of what  his  eyes  told  it  they  were looking  at,  but  in  doing so relinquished control of the mouth which promptly fell open again. Once more gathering up  the  jaw, his  brain  lost  control  of  his  left hand which then wandered around in an aimless fashion. For a second or so the brain  tried to  catch  the  left  hand  without  letting  go of the mouth and simultaneously tried to think about what was buried in  the  ice, which  is probably why the legs went and Arthur dropped restfully to the ground.

The thing that had been causing  all  this  neural  upset  was  a network  of shadows in the ice, about eighteen inches beneath the surface. Looked at it from the right angle they resolved into the solid  shapes of letters from an alien alphabet, each about three feet  high;  and  for  those,  like  Arthur,  who  couldn't  read Magrathean  there  was  above  the  letters the outline of a face hanging in the ice.

It was an old face, thin  and  distinguished,  careworn  but  not unkind.

It was the face of the man who had won an award for designing the coastline they now knew themselves to be standing on.

Chapter 32

A thin whine filled the air. It whirled and  howled  through  the trees  upsetting  the squirrels. A few birds flew off in disgust.  The noise danced and skittered round the clearing. It whooped, it rasped, it generally offended.

The  Captain,  however,  regarded  the  lone  bagpiper  with   an indulgent  eye. Little could disturb his equanimity; indeed, once he had got over  the  loss  of  his  gorgeous  bath  during  that unpleasantness  in the swamp all those months ago he had begun to find his new life remarkably congenial. A hollow had been scooped out  of  a  large rock which stood in the middle of the clearing, and in this he would bask daily whilst attendants  sloshed  water over  him.  Not particularly warm water, it must be said, as they hadn't yet worked out a way of heating it. Never mind, that would come,  and  in  the  meantime  search  parties  were scouring the countryside far and wide for a hot spring, preferably  one  in  a nice leafy glade, and if it was near a soap mine - perfection. To those who said that they had  a  feeling  soap  wasn't  found  in mines,  the Captain had ventured to suggest that perhaps that was because no one had looked hard enough, and this  possibility  had been reluctantly acknowledged.

No, life was very pleasant, and the greatest thing about  it  was that  when the hot spring was found, complete with leafy glade en suite,  and  when  in  the  fullness  of  time   the   cry   came reverberating  across  the  hills  that  the  soap  mine had been located and was producing five hundred cakes a day  it  would  be more pleasant still. It was very important to have things to look forward to.

Wail, wail, screech, wail, howl, honk, squeak went the  bagpipes, increasing  the  Captain's  already  considerable pleasure at the thought that any moment now they might stop. That  was  something he looked forward to as well.

What else was pleasant, he asked himself? Well, so  many  things:

the  red  and gold of the trees, now that autumn was approaching; the peaceful chatter of scissors a few feet from his bath where a couple  of  hairdressers were exercising their skills on a dozing art director and his assistant; the sunlight gleaming off the six shiny  telephones  lined up along the edge of his rock-hewn bath.  The only thing nicer than a phone that didn't ring all  the  time (or  indeed  at all) was six phones that didn't ring all the time (or indeed at all).

Nicest of all was the happy murmur of all the hundreds of  people slowly  assembling  in  the  clearing  around  him  to  watch the afternoon committee meeting.

The Captain punched his rubber duck playfully on  the  beak.  The afternoon committee meetings were his favourite.

Other eyes watched the assembling crowds. High in a tree  on  the edge  of the clearing squatted Ford Prefect, lately returned from foreign climes. After his six  month  journey  he  was  lean  and healthy,  his  eyes  gleamed,  he  wore a reindeer-skin coat; his beard was as thick and his face  as  bronzed  as  a  country-rock singer's.

He and Arthur Dent  had  been  watching  the  Golgafrinchans  for almost a week now, and Ford had decided to stir things up a bit.

The clearing was now full. Hundreds  of  men  and  women  lounged around,  chatting,  eating  fruit,  playing  cards  and generally having a fairly relaxed time of it. Their track  suits  were  now all  dirty  and  even  torn, but they all had immaculately styled hair. Ford was puzzled to see that many of them had stuffed their track  suits  full of leaves and wondered if this was meant to be some form of insulation against the coming  winter.  Ford's  eyes narrowed. They couldn't be interested in botany of a sudden could they?

In the middle of these  speculations  the  Captain's  voice  rose above the hubbub.

"Alright," he said, "I'd like to call this meeting to  some  sort of  order  if  that's  at  all  possible.  Is  that  alright with everybody?" He smiled genially. "In a  minute.  When  you're  all ready."

The talking gradually died away and  the  clearing  fell  silent, except  for  the  bagpiper  who  seemed  to  be  in some wild and uninhabitable musical world of his own. A few  of  those  in  his immediate  vicinity  threw  some  leaves to him. If there was any reason for this then it escaped Ford Prefect for the moment.

A small group of people had clustered round the Captain  and  one of  them  was clearly beginning to speak. He did this by standing up, clearing his throat and then gazing off into the distance  as if  to  signify  to  the  crowd  that  he would be with them in a minute.

The crowd of course were riveted and all  turned  their  eyes  on him.

A moment of silence followed, which Ford judged to be  the  right dramatic moment to make his entry. The man turned to speak.

Ford dropped down out of the tree.

"Hi there," he said.

The crowd swivelled round.

"Ah my dear fellow," called out the Captain, "Got any matches  on you? Or a lighter? Anything like that?"

"No," said Ford, sounding a little deflated. It wasn't what  he'd prepared.  He  decided  he'd  better  be a little stronger on the subject.

"No I haven't," he continued, "No matches. Instead  I  bring  you news ..."

"Pity," said the Captain, "We've all run out you see. Haven't had a hot bath in weeks."

Ford refused to be headed off.

"I bring you news," he said, "of a discovery that might  interest you."

"Is it on the agenda?" snapped the man whom Ford had interrupted.

Ford smiled a broad country-rock singer smile.

"Now, come on," he said.

"Well I'm sorry," said  the  man  huffily,  "but  speaking  as  a management  consultant  of many years' standing, I must insist on the importance of observing the committee structure."

Ford looked round the crowd.

"He's mad you know," he said, "this is a prehistoric planet."

"Address the chair!" snapped the management consultant.

"There isn't chair," explained Ford, "there's only a rock."

The management consultant decided that  testiness  was  what  the situation now called for.

"Well, call it a chair," he said testily.

"Why not call it a rock?" asked Ford.

"You  obviously  have  no  conception,"   said   the   management consultant,  not  abandoning  testiness  in  favour  of  good old fashioned hauteur, "of modern business methods."

"And you have no conception of where you are," said Ford.

A girl with a strident voice leapt to her feet and used it.

"Shut up, you two," she said, "I want to table a motion."

"You mean boulder a motion," tittered a hairdresser.

"Order, order!" yapped the management consultant.

"Alright," said Ford, "let's see how you are doing."  He  plonked himself  down  on  the  ground  to see how long he could keep his temper.

The Captain made a sort of conciliatory harrumphing noise.

"I would like to call to order," he said  pleasantly,  "the  five hundred  and  seventy-third meeting of the colonization committee of Fintlewoodlewix ..."

Ten seconds, thought Ford as he leapt to his feet again.

"This is futile," he exclaimed, "five hundred  and  seventy-three committee meetings and you haven't even discovered fire yet!"

"If you would care," said the girl with the strident  voice,  "to examine the agenda sheet ..."

"Agenda rock," trilled the hairdresser happily.

"Thank you, I've made that point," muttered Ford.

"... you ... will ... see ..." continued the girl  firmly,  "that we  are  having  a report from the hairdressers' Fire Development Sub-Committee today."

"Oh ... ah -" said the hairdresser with a sheepish look which  is recognized  the  whole  Galaxy  over  as  meaning  "Er, will next Tuesday do?"

"Alright," said Ford, rounding on him, "what have you done?  What are you going to do? What are your thoughts on fire development?"

"Well I don't know," said the hairdresser, "All they gave me  was a couple of sticks ..."

"So what have you done with them?"

Nervously, the hairdresser fished  in  his  track  suit  top  and handed over the fruits of his labour to Ford.

Ford held them up for all to see.

"Curling tongs," he said.

The crowd applauded.

"Never mind," said Ford, "Rome wasn't burnt in a day."

The crowd hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about, but they loved it nevertheless. They applauded.

"Well, you're obviously being totally naive of course," said  the girl,  "When  you've  been  in marketing as long as I have you'll know that before any new product can be developed it  has  to  be properly  researched. We've got to find out what people want from fire, how they relate to it, what sort of image it has for them."

The crowd were tense. They  were  expecting  something  wonderful from Ford.

"Stick it up your nose," he said.

"Which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know,"  insisted the girl, "Do people want fire that can be applied nasally?"

"Do you?" Ford asked the crowd.

"Yes!" shouted some.

"No!" shouted others happily.

They didn't know, they just thought it was great.

"And the wheel," said the Captain, "What about this wheel thingy?

It sounds a terribly interesting project."

"Ah," said the marketing  girl,  "Well,  we're  having  a  little difficulty there."

"Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford,  "Difficulty?  What  do  you  mean, difficulty?  It's  the  single  simplest  machine  in  the entire Universe!"

The marketing girl soured him with a look.

"Alright, Mr Wiseguy," she said, "you're so clever, you  tell  us what colour it should have."

The crowd went wild. One up to the home team, they thought.  Ford shrugged his shoulders and sat down again.

"Almighty Zarquon," he said, "have none of you done anything?"

As if in answer to his question there was  a  sudden  clamour  of noise  from  the  entrance  to  the  clearing. The crowd couldn't believe the  amount  of  entertainment  they  were  getting  this afternoon: in marched a squad of about a dozen men dressed in the remnants of their  Golgafrincham  3rd  Regiment  dress  uniforms.  About  half  of  them still carried Kill-O-Zap guns, the rest now carried spears which they struck together as they  marched.  They looked  bronzed,  healthy,  and utterly exhausted and bedraggled.  They clattered to a halt and banged to  attention.  One  of  them fell over and never moved again.

"Captain, sir!" cried Number Two - for  he  was  their  leader  - "Permission to report sir!"

"Yes, alright Number Two, welcome back and all that. Find any hot springs?" said the Captain despondently.

"No sir!"

"Thought you wouldn't."

Number Two strode through the crowd and presented arms before the bath.

"We have discovered another continent!"

"When was this?"

"It lies across the sea ..." said Number Two, narrowing his  eyes significantly, "to the east!"

"Ah."

Number Two turned to face the crowd. He raised his gun above  his head. This is going to be great, thought the crowd.

"We have declared war on it!"

Wild abandoned cheering broke out in all corners of the  clearing - this was beyond all expectation.

"Wait a minute," shouted Ford Prefect, "wait a minute!"

He leapt to his feet and demanded silence. After a while  he  got it,  or  at  least  the  best silence he could hope for under the circumstances: the  circumstances  were  that  the  bagpiper  was spontaneously composing a national anthem.

"Do we have to have the piper?" demanded Ford.

"Oh yes," said the Captain, "we've given him a grant."

Ford considered opening this  idea  up  for  debate  but  quickly decided that that way madness lay. Instead he slung a well judged rock at the piper and turned to face Number Two.

"War?" he said.

"Yes!" Number Two gazed contemptuously at Ford Prefect.

"On the next continent?"

"Yes! Total warfare! The war to end all wars!"

"But there's no one even living there yet!"

Ah, interesting, thought the crowd, nice point.

Number Two's gaze hovered undisturbed. In this respect  his  eyes were  like  a  couple  of mosquitos that hover purposefully three inches from your nose and refuse to be deflected by arm thrashes, fly swats or rolled newspapers.

"I know that," he said, "but there will be one day!  So  we  have left an open-ended ultimatum."

"What?"

"And blown up a few military installations."

The Captain leaned forward out of his bath.

"Military installations Number Two?" he said.

For a moment the eyes wavered.

"Yes sir, well  potential  military  installations.  Alright  ...  trees."

The moment of uncertainty passed - his eyes flickered like  whips over his audience.

"And," he roared, "we interrogated a gazelle!"

He flipped his Kill-O-Zap gun smartly under his arm  and  marched off  through  the pandemonium that had now erupted throughout the ecstatic crowd. A few steps was all  he  managed  before  he  was caught up and carried shoulder high for a lap of honour round the clearing.

Ford sat and idly tapped a couple of stones together.

"So what else have you done?" he inquired after the  celebrations had died down.

"We have started a culture," said the marketing girl.

"Oh yes?" said Ford.

"Yes. One of our film producers is already making  a  fascinating documentary about the indigenous cavemen of the area."

"They're not cavemen."

"They look like cavemen."

"Do they live in caves?"

"Well ..."

"They live in huts."

"Perhaps they're having their caves redecorated,"  called  out  a wag from the crowd.

Ford rounded on him angrily.

"Very funny," he said, "but have you noticed that  they're  dying out?"

On their journey back,  Ford  and  Arthur  had  come  across  two derelict  villages  and  the bodies of many natives in the woods, where they had crept away to die. Those  that  still  lived  were stricken  and listless, as if they were suffering some disease of the spirit rather than the body. They moved sluggishly  and  with an infinite sadness. Their future had been taken away from them.

"Dying out!" repeated Ford. "Do you know what that means?"

"Er ... we shouldn't sell them any life  insurance?"  called  out the wag again.

Ford ignored him, and appealed to the whole crowd.

"Can you try and understand," he  said,  "that  it's  just  since we've arrived that they've started dying out!"

"In fact that comes over terribly well in this  film,"  said  the marketing  girl,  "and just gives it that poignant twist which is the hallmark of the really great documentary. The producer's very committed."

"He should be," muttered Ford.

"I gather," said the girl, turning to address the Captain who was beginning  to nod off, "that he wants to make one about you next, Captain."

"Oh really?" he said, coming to with  a  start,  "that's  awfully nice."

"He's got a very strong angle on it,  you  know,  the  burden  of responsibility, the loneliness of command ..."

The Captain hummed and hahed about this for a moment.

"Well, I wouldn't overstress  that  angle,  you  know,"  he  said finally, "one's never alone with a rubber duck."

He held the duck aloft and it got an appreciative round from  the crowd.

All the while, the Management  Consultant  had  been  sitting  in stony silence, his finger tips pressed to his temples to indicate that he was waiting and would wait all day if it was necessary.

At this point he decided he would not wait all day after all,  he would merely pretend that the last half hour hadn't happened.

He rose to his feet.

"If," he said tersely, "we could for a  moment  move  on  to  the subject of fiscal policy ..."

"Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect, "Fiscal policy!"

The Management Consultant gave him a look that  only  a  lungfish could have copied.

"Fiscal policy ..." he repeated, "that is what I said."

"How can you have money," demanded Ford, "if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know."

"If you would allow me to continue ..."

Ford nodded dejectedly.

"Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich."

Ford  stared  in  disbelief  at  the  crowd  who  were  murmuring appreciatively  at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.

"But we have also," continued  the  Management  Consultant,  "run into  a  small  inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current  going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut."

Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The  Management  Consultant waved them down.

"So in  order  to  obviate  this  problem,"  he  continued,  "and effectively  revaluate  the  leaf,  we  are  about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and  ...  er,  burn  down  all  the forests.  I  think  you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."

The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for  a  second  or two  until  someone  pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in  their  pockets  whereupon  they  let  out whoops  of  delight and gave the Management Consultant a standing ovation.  The  accountants  amongst  them  looked  forward  to  a profitable Autumn.

"You're all mad," explained Ford Prefect.

"You're absolutely barmy," he suggested.

"You're a bunch of raving nutters," he opined.

The tide of opinion started to turn against him. What had started out  as  excellent  entertainment  had  now, in the crowd's view, deteriorated into mere abuse, and since this  abuse  was  in  the main directed at them they wearied of it.

Sensing this shift in the wind, the marketing girl turned on him.

"Is it perhaps in order," she demanded, "to inquire  what  you've been  doing  all these months then? You and that other interloper have been missing since the day we arrived."

"We've been on a journey," said Ford, "We went to  try  and  find out something about this planet."

"Oh," said the girl archly, "doesn't  sound  very  productive  to me."

"No? Well have I got news for you, my love.  We  have  discovered this planet's future."

Ford waited for this statement to have its effect. It didn't have any. They didn't know what he was talking about.

He continued.

"It doesn't matter a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys what  you  all choose  to  do  from  now on. Burn down the forests, anything, it won't make a scrap of difference. Your future history has already happened.  Two million years you've got and that's it. At the end of that time your race will be dead, gone and  good  riddance  to you. Remember that, two million years!"

The crowd muttered to itself in annoyance. People as rich as they had  suddenly  become shouldn't be obliged to listen to this sort of gibberish. Perhaps they could tip the fellow a leaf or two and he would go away.

They didn't need to bother. Ford was already stalking out of  the clearing,  pausing  only  to shake his head at Number Two who was already firing his Kill-O-Zap gun into some neighbouring trees.

He turned back once.

"Two million years!" he said and laughed.

"Well," said the Captain with a soothing smile, "still time for a few  more baths. Could someone pass me the sponge? I just dropped it over the side."

Chapter 33

A mile or so away through the wood, Arthur Dent  was  too  busily engrossed with what he was doing to hear Ford Prefect approach.

What he was doing was rather curious, and this is what it was: on a  wide  flat  piece  of rock he had scratched out the shape of a large square, subdivided into one hundred and sixty-nine  smaller squares, thirteen to a side.

Furthermore he had collected together a pile of smallish flattish stones  and  scratched  the shape of a letter on to each. Sitting morosely round the rock were a  couple  of  the  surviving  local native  men  whom Arthur Dent was trying to introduce the curious concept embodied in these stones.

So far they had not done well. They had attempted to eat some  of them,  bury  others  and  throw the rest of them away. Arthur had finally encouraged one of them to lay a couple of stones  on  the board  he  had  scratched  out, which was not even as far as he'd managed to get the day before. Along with the rapid deterioration in   the  morale  of  these  creatures,  there  seemed  to  be  a corresponding deterioration in their actual intelligence.

In an attempt to egg them along,  Arthur  set  out  a  number  of letters  on  the  board  himself, and then tried to encourage the natives to add some more themselves.

It was not going well.

Ford watched quietly from beside a nearby tree.

"No," said Arthur to one of the natives  who  had  just  shuffled some  of  the  letters  round  in  a fit of abysmal dejection, "Q scores ten you see, and it's on a triple word score, so ... look, I've  explained the rules to you ... no no, look please, put down that  jawbone  ...  alright,  we'll  start  again.  And  try   to concentrate this time."

Ford leaned his elbow against the tree and his hand  against  his head.

"What are you doing, Arthur?" he asked quietly.

Arthur looked up with a start. He suddenly had a feeling that all this  might  look  slightly  foolish. All he knew was that it had worked like a dream on him when he was a chid.  But  things  were different then, or rather would be.

"I'm trying to teach the cavemen to play Scrabble," he said.

"They're not cavemen," said Ford.

"They look like cavemen."

Ford let it pass.

"I see," he said.

"It's uphill work," said Arthur wearily, "the only word they know is grunt and they can't spell it."

He sighed and sat back.

"What's that supposed to achieve?" asked Ford.

"We've got to encourage them to evolve! To develop!" Arthur burst out  angrily.  He  hoped  that  the weary sigh and then the anger might do  something  to  counteract  the  overriding  feeling  of foolishness  from which he was currently suffering. It didn't. He jumped to his feet.

"Can you imagine what a world would be like descended from  those ... cretins we arrived with?" he said.

"Imagine?" said Ford, rising his  eyebrows.  "We  don't  have  to imagine. We've seen it."

"But ..." Arthur waved his arms about hopelessly.

"We've seen it," said Ford, "there's no escape."

Arthur kicked at a stone.

"Did you tell them what we've discovered?" he asked.

"Hmmmm?" said Ford, not really concentrating.

"Norway,"  said  Arthur,  "Slartibartfast's  signature   in   the glacier. Did you tell them?"

"What's the point?" said Ford, "What would it mean to them?"

"Mean?" said Arthur, "Mean?  You  know  perfectly  well  what  it means. It means that this planet is the Earth! It's my home! It's where I was born!"

"Was?" said Ford.

"Alright, will be."

"Yes, in two million years' time. Why don't you tell  them  that?  Go  and  say to them, `Excuse me, I'd just like to point out that in two million years' time I will be born just a few  miles  from here.'  See  what  they  say. They'll chase you up a tree and set fire to it."

Arthur absorbed this unhappily.

"Face it," said Ford, "those zeebs over there are your ancestors, not these poor creatures here."

He went  over  to  where  the  apemen  creatures  were  rummaging listlessly with the stone letters. He shook his head.

"Put the Scrabble away, Arthur," he  said,  "it  won't  save  the human  race,  because this lot aren't going to be the human race.  The human race is currently sitting round a  rock  on  the  other side of this hill making documentaries about themselves."

Arthur winced.

"There must be something we can do," he said. A terrible sense of desolation  thrilled  through his body that he should be here, on the Earth, the Earth which had lost its future  in  a  horrifying arbitrary  catastrophe  and which now seemed set to lose its past as well.

"No," said Ford, "there's nothing we can do. This doesn't  change the  history  of  the  Earth, you see, this is the history of the Earth. Like it or leave it, the Golgafrinchans are the people you are  descended  from.  in two million years they get destroyed by the Vogons. History is  never  altered  you  see,  it  just  fits together like a jigsaw. Funny old thing, life, isn't it?"

He picked up the letter Q and hurled it into a distant pivet bush where it hit a young rabbit. The rabbit hurtled off in terror and didn't stop till it was set upon and eaten by a fox which  choked on  one  of  its  bones  and  died  on the bank of a stream which subsequently washed it away.

During the following weeks Ford Prefect swallowed his  pride  and struck  up  a  relationship  with a girl who had been a personnel officer on Golgafrincham, and he  was  terribly  upset  when  she suddenly  passed  away  as a result of drinking water from a pool that had been polluted by the body of a dead fox. The only  moral it  is  possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the letter Q into a pivet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable.

Like most of the really crucial things in  life,  this  chain  of events  was completely invisible to Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent.  They were looking sadly at one of the  natives  morosely  pushing the other letters around.

"Poor bloody caveman," said Arthur.

"They're not ..."

"What?"

"Oh never mind."

The wretched creature let out a pathetic howling noise and banged on the rock.

"It's all been a bit of waste of time for them, hasn't it?"  said Arthur.

"Uh uh urghhhhh," muttered the native  and  banged  on  the  rock again.

"They've been outevolved by telephone sanitizers."

"Urgh, gr gr, gruh!" insisted the native, continuing to  bang  on the rock.

"Why does he keep banging on the rock?" said Arthur.

"I think he probably wants you to Scrabble with him again,"  said Ford, "he's pointing at the letters."

"Probably spelt crzjgrdwldiwdc again, poor  bastard.  I  keep  on telling him there's only one g in crzjgrdwldiwdc."

The native banged on the rock again.

They looked over his shoulder.

Their eyes popped.

There amongst the jumble of letters were eight that had been laid out in a clear straight line.

They spelt two words.

The words were these:

"Forty-Two."

"Grrrurgh guh guh," explained the native. He  swept  the  letters angrily  away  and  went and mooched under a nearby tree with his colleague.

Ford and Arthur stared at him. Then they stared at each other.

"Did that say what I thought it said?" they  both  said  to  each other.

"Yes," they both said.

"Forty-two," said Arthur.

"Forty-two," said Ford.

Arthur ran over to the two natives.

"What are you trying to tell us?" he shouted. "What's it supposed to mean?"

One of them rolled over on the ground, kicked his legs up in  the air, rolled over again and went to sleep.

The other bounded up the tree and threw horse chestnuts  at  Ford Prefect.  Whatever  it was they had to say, they had already said it.

"You know what this means," said Ford.

"Not entirely."

"Forty-two is the number Deep Thought gave as being the  Ultimate Answer."

"Yes."

And the Earth is the computer Deep Thought designed and built  to calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer."

"So we are led to believe."

"And organic life was part of the computer matrix."

"If you say so."

"I do say so. That means that these natives, these apemen are  an integral  part  of  the  computer  program,  and  that we and the Golgafrinchans are not."

"But the  cavemen  are  dying  out  and  the  Golgafrinchans  are obviously set to replace them."

"Exactly. So do you see what this means?"

"What?"

"Cock up," said Ford Prefect.

Arthur looked around him.

"This planet is having a pretty bloody time of it," he said.

Ford puzzled for a moment.

"Still, something must have come out of it,"  he  said  at  last, "because  Marvin  said  he could see the Question printed in your brain wave patterns."

"But ..."

"Probably the wrong one, or a distortion of  the  right  one.  It might  give us a clue though if we could find it. I don't see how we can though."

They moped about for a bit. Arthur sat on the ground and  started pulling  up bits of grass, but found that it wasn't an occupation he could get deeply  engrossed  in.  It  wasn't  grass  he  could believe  in, the trees seemed pointless, the rolling hills seemed to be rolling to nowhere and the future seemed just a  tunnel  to be crawled through.

Ford fiddled with his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic. It  was  silent.  He sighed and put it away.

Arthur picked up one of the  letter  stones  from  his  home-made Scrabble  set.  It  was a T. He sighed and out it down again. The letter he put down next to it was an I. That spelt IT. He  tossed another couple of letters next to them They were an S and an H as it  happened.  By  a  curious  coincidence  the  resulting   word perfectly  expressed the way Arthur was feeling about things just then.  He  stared  at  it  for  a  moment.  He  hadn't  done   it deliberately,  it  was just a random chance. His brain got slowly into first gear.

"Ford," he said suddenly, "look, if that Question is  printed  in my  brain  wave  patterns  but I'm not consciously aware of it it must be somewhere in my unconscious."

"Yes, I suppose so."

"There might be  a  way  of  bringing  that  unconscious  pattern forward."

"Oh yes?"

"Yes, by introducing some random element that can  be  shaped  by that pattern."

"Like how?"

"Like by pulling Scrabble letters out of a bag blindfolded."

Ford leapt to his feet.

"Brilliant!" he said. He tugged his towel out of his satchel  and with a few deft knots transformed it into a bag.

"Totally mad," he said, "utter nonsense. But we'll do it  because it's brilliant nonsense. Come on, come on."

The sun passed respectfully behind  a  cloud.  A  few  small  sad raindrops fell.

They piled together all the remaining letters  and  dropped  them into the bag. They shook them up.

"Right," said Ford, "close your eyes. Pull them out. Come on come on, come on."

Arthur closed his eyes and plunged his hand into the towelful  of stones. He jiggled them about, pulled out four and handed them to Ford. Ford laid them along the ground in the order he got them.

"W," said Ford, "H, A, T ... What!"

He blinked.

"I think it's working!" he said.

Arthur pushed three more at him.

"D, O, Y ... Doy. Oh perhaps it isn't working," said Ford.

"Here's the next three."

"O, U, G ... Doyoug ... It's not making sense I'm afraid."

Arthur pulled another two from the bag. Ford put them in place.

"E, T, doyouget ... Do you get!" shouted Ford,  "it  is  working!

This is amazing, it really is working!"

"More here." Arthur was throwing them out feverishly as  fast  as he could go.

"I, F," said Ford, "Y, O, U, ... M, U, L, T, I, P, L, Y, ... What do  you  get if you multiply, ... S, I, X, ... six, B, Y, by, six by ... what do you get if you multiply six by ... N, I, N, E, ...  six by nine ..." He paused. "Come on, where's the next one?"

"Er, that's the lot," said Arthur, "that's all there were."

He sat back, nonplussed.

He rooted around again in the knotted up towel but there were  no more letters.

"You mean that's it?" said Ford.

"That's it."

"Six by nine. Forty-two."

"That's it. That's all there is."

Chapter 34

The sun came out and beamed cheerfully at them. A  bird  sang.  A warm  breeze wafted through the trees and lifted the heads of the flowers, carrying their scent away through the woods.  An  insect droned  past  on  its way to do whatever it is that insects do in the late afternoon. The sound of voices lilted through the  trees followed  a  moment later by two girls who stopped in surprise at the sight of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent apparently lying on the ground in agony, but in fact rocking with noiseless laughter.

"No, don't go," called Ford Prefect between gasps, "we'll be with you in a moment."

"What's the matter?" asked one of the girls. She was  the  taller and  slimmer  of  the two. On Golgafrincham she had been a junior personnel officer, but hadn't liked it much.

Ford pulled himself together.

"Excuse  me,"  he  said,  "hello.  My  friend  and  I  were  just contemplating the meaning of life. Frivolous exercise."

"Oh it's you," said the girl, "you made a bit of a  spectacle  of yourself  this  afternoon. You were quite funny to begin with but you did bang on a bit."

"Did I? Oh yes."

"Yes, what was all that for?" asked the  other  girl,  a  shorter round-faced  girl  who  had  been  an  art  director  for a small advertising company on Golgafrincham. Whatever the privations  of this  world  were,  she  went  to  sleep  every  night profoundly grateful for the fact that  whatever  she  had  to  face  in  the morning  it wouldn't be a hundred almost identical photographs of moodily lit tubes of toothpaste.

"For? For nothing. Nothing's for  anything,"  said  Ford  Prefect happily.  "Come  and  join  us. I"m Ford, this is Arthur. We were just about to do nothing at all for a while but it can wait."

The girls looked at them doubtfully.

"I'm Agda," said the tall one, "this is Mella."

"Hello Agda, hello Mella," said Ford.

"Do you talk at all?" said Mella to Arthur.

"Oh, eventually," said Arthur with a smile, "but not as  much  as Ford."

"Good."

There was a slight pause.

"What did you mean," asked Agda, "about only having  two  million years? I couldn't make sense of what you were saying."

"Oh that," said Ford, "it doesn't matter."

"It's just that the world gets  demolished  to  make  way  for  a hyperspace  bypass,"  said  Arthur  with a shrug, "but that's two million years away, and anyway it's just Vogons doing what Vogons do."

"Vogons?" said Mella.

"Yes, you wouldn't know them."

"Where'd you get this idea from?"

"It really doesn't matter. It's just like a dream from the  past, or the future." Arthur smiled and looked away.

"Does it worry you that you don't talk any kind of sense?"  asked Agda.

"Listen, forget it,"  said  Ford,  "forget  all  of  it.  Nothing matters. Look, it's a beautiful day, enjoy it. The sun, the green of the hills, the river down in the valley, the burning trees."

"Even if it's only a dream, it's a pretty  horrible  idea,"  said Mella, "destroying a world just to make a bypass."

"Oh, I've heard of worse," said Ford, "I read of one  planet  off in  the  seventh  dimension  that got used as a ball in a game of intergalactic bar billiards. Got potted  straight  into  a  black hole. Killed ten billion people."

"That's mad," said Mella.

"Yes, only scored thirty points too."

Agda and Mella exchanged glances.

"Look," said Agda, "there's a party after the  committee  meeting tonight. You can come along if you like."

"Yeah, OK," said Ford.

"I'd like to," said Arthur.

Many hours later Arthur and Mella sat and watched the  moon  rise over the dull red glow of the trees.

"That story about the world being destroyed ..." began Mella.

"In two million years, yes."

"You say it as if you really think it's true."

"Yes, I think it is. I think I was there."

She shook her head in puzzlement.

"You're very strange," she said.

"No, I'm very ordinary," said  Arthur,  "but  some  very  strange things  have happened to me. You could say I'm more differed from than differing."

"And that other world your friend talked about, the one that  got pushed into a black hole."

"Ah, that I don't know about. It sounds like something  from  the book."

"What book?"

Arthur paused.

"The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy," he said at last.

"What's that?"

"Oh, just something I threw into the river this evening. I  don't think I'll be wanting it any more," said Arthur Dent.

Table of Contents

while writing this book. Five years is far too long

Chapter 1

And this computer, which was called the Earth, was so large  that it  was  frequently  mistaken  for  a  planet - especially by the strange ape-like beings who roamed its surface,  totally  unaware that they were simply part of a gigantic computer program.

Chapter 2

One  thing  they  don't  like  is  leaving  a  job  unfinished  - particularly this Vogon, and particularly - for various reasons - this job.

It mattered little to him  that  the  Heart  of  Gold,  with  its Infinite   Improbability   Drive,  was  the  most  beautiful  and revolutionary ship ever built.  Aesthetics  and  technology  were closed  books  to  him  and, had he had his way, burnt and buried books as well.

It has been said that Vogons are not above a little  bribery  and corruption  in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds, and this was certainly true in his case. When he heard the  words "integrity"  or "moral rectitude", he reached for his dictionary, and when he heard the chink of ready money in large quantities he reached for the rule book and threw it away.

He did know that there were better reasons than these,  but  that they were buried in a dark, locked off section of his two brains.  He wished the dark, locked off section of his two brains would go away  because  they  occasionally  surfaced  momentarily  and put strange thoughts into the light, fun sections  of  his  mind  and tried to deflect him from what he saw as being the basic business of his life, which was to have a wonderfully good time.

"Share and Enjoy" is the company motto of the  hugely  successful Sirius  Cybernetics  Corporation  Complaints  division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is the  only  part  of  the  Corporation  to have shown a consistent profit in recent years.

The motto  stands  -  or  rather  stood  -  in  three  mile  high illuminated  letters  near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly  after  it was  erected,  the  ground  beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of  many talented young complaints executives - now deceased.

Chapter 3

When Arthur had been a boy at school, long before the  Earth  had been demolished, he had used to play football. He had not been at all good at it, and his particular speciality  had  been  scoring own goals in important matches. Whenever this happened he used to experience a peculiar tingling round the back of  his  neck  that would  slowly  creep  up across his cheeks and heat his brow. The image of mud and grass and lots of little jeering  boys  flinging it at him suddenly came vividly to his mind at this moment.

"Except this old self of mine tried to leave himself in  control, leaving orders for me in the bit of my brain he locked off. Well, I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear  them.  That's  my choice. I'm not going to be anybody's puppet, particularly not my own."

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Most particularly it shines  on  a  building,  a  tall  beautiful building  consisting  of two thirty-storey white towers connected by a bridge half-way up their length.

The building is the home of a book, and was  built  here  on  the proceeds  of  an  extraordinary copyright law suit fought between the book's editors and a breakfast cereal company.

The book is a guide book, a travel book.

It is one of the most remarkable, certainly the most  successful, books  ever  to  come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor - more popular than Life Begins at  Five  Hundred  and Fifty,  better selling than The Big Bang Theory - A Personal View by Eccentrica Gallumbits (the triple breasted whore  of  Eroticon Six)   and  more  controversial  than  Oolon  Colluphid's  latest blockbusting title Everything You Never Wanted To Know About  Sex But Have Been Forced To Find Out.

If, on this particular day, afternoon, stretch of  eveningtime  - call  it  what  you will - you had approached the second pavement cafe on the right you would have seen  the  usual  crowd  of  UM-Betans  chatting,  drinking,  looking  very relaxed, and casually glancing at each other's watches to see how expensive they were.

Apart from the scratch the lenses were  clear.  He  relaxed,  but only a little bit.

"Worst thing that ever happened to  the  Guide,  moving  to  Ursa Minor  Beta," he grumbled, "they've all gone soft. You know, I've even   heard  that   they've  created  a   whole   electronically synthesized  Universe  in one of their offices so they can go and research stories during the day and still go to  parties  in  the evening. Not that day and evening mean much in this place."

Much to his annoyance, a thought popped into  his  mind.  It  was very  clear  and  very distinct, and he had now come to recognize these thoughts for what they were. His  instinct  was  to  resist them.  They  were  the  pre-ordained promptings from the dark and locked off parts of his mind.

Chapter 6

"Hello? Yes? Megadodo Publications, home  of  the  Hitch  Hiker's Guide  to  the  Galaxy,  the  most totally remarkable book in the whole of the known Universe, can I  help  you?"  said  the  large pink-winged  insect into one of the seventy phones lined up along the vast chrome expanse of the reception desk in the foyer of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy offices. It fluttered its wings and  rolled  its  eyes.  It  glared  at  all  the  grubby  people cluttering  up  the  foyer, soiling the carpets and leaving dirty handmarks on the upholstery. It  adored  working  for  the  Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it just wished there was some way of keeping all the hitch-hikers  away.  Weren't  they  meant  to  be hanging  round dirty spaceports or something? It was certain that it had read something somewhere in the book about the  importance of  hanging  round  dirty  spaceports. Unfortunately most of them seemed to come and hang around in this  nice  clean  shiny  foyer after  han

"Read the notice," it said to the angry man  who  was  trying  to complain  about one of the more ludicrous and dangerous pieces of misinformation contained in the book.

This has led to some interesting consequences. For instance, when the  Editors  of the Guide were sued by the families of those who had died as a result of taking the  entry  on  the  planet  Traal literally  (it said "Ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very good meal for visiting tourists" instead of "Ravenous  Bugblatter beasts  often  make  a very good meal of visiting tourists") they claimed that the first version  of  the  sentence  was  the  more aesthetically  pleasing,  summoned  a  qualified  poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty and hoped  thereby to  prove that the guilty party was Life itself for failing to be either beautiful or true. The judges concurred, and in  a  moving speech  held  that Life itself was in contempt of court, and duly confiscated it from all those there present before going  off  to enjoy a pleasant evening's ultragolf.

Zaphod paused while he tried to sort this particular thought  out in his mind. He didn't succeed.

"Hello," said the elevator sweetly, "I am to be your elevator for this  trip  to  the floor of your choice. I have been designed by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation to take you,  the  visitor  to the  Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, into these their offices.  If you enjoy your ride, which will be swift and pleasurable, then you may care to experience some of the other elevators which have recently been installed  in  the  offices  of  the  Galactic  tax department,  Boobiloo  Baby  Foods  and  the  Sirian State Mental Hospital, where many ex-Sirius Cybernetics Corporation executives will  be  delighted  to  welcome your visits, sympathy, and happy tales of the outside world."

"Nothing particularly  exciting,"  it  admitted,  "but  they  are alternatives."

"We can all see into the future," whispered the elevator in  what sounded like terror, "it's part of our programming."

Not unnaturally, many  elevators  imbued  with  intelligence  and precognition   became   terribly  frustrated  with  the  mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented  briefly with  the  notion  of  going  sideways,  as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in  the  decision-making  process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking.

"Oh yeah?" said Zaphod, "Anyone's friend in particular,  or  just generally well disposed of people?"

Chapter 7

Marvin stood at the end of the bridge corridor.  He  was  not  in fact  a  particularly small robot. His silver body gleamed in the dusty sunbeams and shook with the  continual  barrage  which  the building was still undergoing.

All this way, thought Zaphod, all this  trouble,  all  this  not-lying-on-the-beach-having-a-wonderful-time,   and   for  what?  A single chair, a single desk and a  single  dirty  ashtray  in  an undecorated  office.  The  desk, apart from a bit of dancing dust and single, revolutionary form of paper clip, was empty.

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

The dank winds that swept continually over its surface swept over salt  flats,  dried  up marshland, tangled and rotting vegetation and the crumbling remains of ruined cities. No life moved  across its  surface.  The ground, like that of many planets in this part of the Galaxy, had long been deserted.

Zaphod watched its departure in bewilderment.

Zaphod looked wildly about. The voice  was  deep  and  quiet.  In other circumstances it would even be described as soothing. There is,  however,  nothing  soothing  about  being  addressed  by   a disembodied  voice  out of nowhere, particularly if you are, like Zaphod Beeblebrox, not at your best  and  hanging  from  a  ledge eight storeys up a crashed building.

Chapter 10

"Hey, it really sounds bad ..." stammered  Zaphod,  "couldn't  we maybe  slope  off  to  a party or something for a while, think it over?"

"For all I know," said Gargravarr's ethereal voice, "I'm probably at  one. My body that is. It goes to a lot of parties without me.  Says I only get in the way. Hey ho."

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Inside, all was gloom, dust and confusion. Giant cobwebs lay over everything.  Part  of  the  infrastructure  of  the  building had collapsed, part of the rear  wall  had  caved  in,  and  a  thick choking dust lay inches over the floor.

The  shapes  were  sometimes  cylindrical,   sometimes   bulbous, sometimes  like  eggs,  or rather cracked eggs. Most of them were split open or falling apart, some were mere skeletons.

He walked around for a few moments in a  daze.  In  so  doing  he suddenly  caught  sight of a giant departure board still hanging, but by only one support, from  the  ceiling  above  him.  It  was covered   with   grime,  but  some  of  the  figures  were  still discernible.

They were now in the passenger  compartment  and  Zaphod's  heart stopped still again for a moment.

"Yes," said the voice again, "there has been a delay.  Passengers are  to  be  kept  temporarily  in suspended animation, for their comfort and convenience. Coffee and  biscuits  are  being  served every  year,  after  which  passengers  are returned to suspended animation for their continued comfort and convenience.  Departure will take place when the flight stores are complete. We apologize for the delay."

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

The chandeliers were in fact a little on the flashy side and  the low  vaulted  ceiling from which they hung would not, in an ideal Universe, have been painted in  that  particular  shade  of  deep turquoise,  and  even  if  it  had  been  it  wouldn't  have been highlighted by concealed moodlighting. This is not,  however,  an ideal  Universe,  as  was  further  evidenced by the eye-crossing patterns of the inlaid marble floor, and the  way  in  which  the fronting  for  the  eighty-yard  long  marble-topped bar had been made. The fronting for the eighty-yard long marble-topped bar had been  made  by stitching together nearly twenty thousand Antarean Mosaic Lizard skins, despite the fact that  the  twenty  thousand lizards concerned had needed them to keep their insides in.

Chapter 15

The major problem is quite simply one of grammar,  and  the  main work  to  consult in this matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will  tell  you for  instance  how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping  forward two  days  in  order  to  avoid  it.  The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking  about  it  from the  standpoint  of  your  own  natural  time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the  further  past  and  is  further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations whilst you are actually travelling from one time  to  another  with  the intention of becoming your own father or mother.

and in fact in later editions of the book all  the  pages  beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

You can arrive (mayan arivan on-when) for any  sitting  you  like without  prior  (late fore-when) reservation because you can book retrospectively, as it were when you return  to  your  own  time.  (you  can have on-book haventa forewhen presooning returningwenta retrohome.)

At the Restaurant you can meet and dine with  (mayan  meetan  con with  dinan  on  when)  a fascinating cross-section of the entire population of space and time.

You can visit it as many times as you like  (mayan  on-visit  re-onvisiting  ... and so on - for further tense-corrections consult Dr Streetmentioner's book) and be sure of never meeting yourself, because of the embarrassment this usually causes.

Chapter 16

The gypsy approached Arthur and Trillian sitting in another  part of the bar.

"The End of the Universe is very popular," said Zaphod  threading his  way  unsteadily  through  the throng of tables, some made of marble, some of rich ultra-mahagony, some even of  platinum,  and at  each  a party of exotic creatures chatting amongst themselves and studying menus.

"At the End of the Universe you have to  use  the  past  tense  a lot,"  said  Zaphod,  "'cos  everything's been done you know. Hi, guys," he called out to a nearby party of giant iguana lifeforms, "How did you do?"

Chapter 17

It was not a pretty face, perhaps because oblivion had looked him in  it  so  many times. It was too long for a start, the eyes too sunken and too hooded, the cheeks too hollow, his lips  were  too thin and too long, and when they parted his teeth looked too much like a recently polished bay window.  The  hands  that  held  the curtain  were  long  and  thin too: they were also cold. They lay lightly along the folds of the curtain and  gave  the  impression that if he didn't watch them like a hawk they would crawl away of their own accord and do something unspeakable in a corner.

Up the stairs bounded bounded a tall brilliantly coloured figure.  He  burst  on to the stage, tripped lightly up to the microphone, removed it from its stand with one swoop of his  long  thin  hand and  stood  for  a  moment  bowing left and right to the audience acknowledging their applause  and  displaying  to  them  his  bay window.  He  waved to his particular friends in the audience even though there weren't any there, and waited for  the  applause  to die down.

"Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I am  the  main  Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?" It  harrumphed  and  gurgled  a  bit,  wriggled  its  hind quarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.

"That's wonderful," enthused Max, "absolutely wonderful.  And  as the  photon storms gather in swirling crowds around us, preparing to tear apart the last of the red hot suns,  I  know  you're  all going  to  settle back and enjoy with me what I know we will find all an immensely exciting and terminal experience."

"And now," he said, strutting about the stage, "at  the  risk  of putting a damper on the wonderful sense of doom and futility here this evening, I would like to welcome a few parties."

"Do we have ..." he put up a hand to hold back the cheers, "Do we have  a  party here from the Zansellquasure Flamarion Bridge Club from beyond the Vortvoid of Qvarne? Are they here?"

"And do we also have, do we have ... a  party  of  minor  deities from the Halls of Asgard?"

"And thirdly," he said, "thirdly a party of  Young  Conservatives from Sirius B, are they here?"

A party of smartly dressed young dogs stopped throwing  rolls  at each  other  and started throwing rolls at the stage. They yapped and barked unintelligibly.

"And finally," said Max, quieting the audience down  and  putting on  his  solemn  face,  "finally  I  believe we have with us here tonight, a party of believers, very devout  believers,  from  the Church of the Second Coming of the Great Prophet Zarquon."

There were about twenty of them, sitting right out on the edge of the  floor, ascetically dressed, sipping mineral water nervously, and staying apart from the festivities. They blinked  resentfully as the spotlight was turned on them.

The party of  Zarquon's  followers  sat  rigid,  refusing  to  be buffeted  by  the waves of uncharitable laughter which swept over them.

He blew a kiss to the  stony-faced  party  and  returned  to  the centre of the stage.

It took him a while to say this last part, and  Arthur  hated  to interrupt him.

Chapter 18

Flare-riding is one of the most exotic and exhilarating sports in existence,  and  those who can dare and afford it are amongst the most  lionized  men  in  the  Galaxy.  It  is  also   of   course stupefyingly  dangerous  -  those who don't die riding invariably die of sexual exhaustion at one of  the  Daedalus  Club's  Apres-Flare parties.

At the back of the Restaurant  the  stony-faced  party  from  the Church  of  the  Second Coming of the Great Prophet Zarquon leapt ecstatically to their feet chanting and crying.

Chapter 19

One of the major selling point of that wholly  remarkable  travel book,  the  Hitch  Hiker's  Guide  to  the Galaxy, apart from its relative cheapness and the fact that it has the words Don't Panic written   in   large  friendly  letters  on  its  cover,  is  its compendious and occasionally accurate  glossary.  The  statistics relating  to the geo-social nature of the Universe, for instance, are deftly set out between pages nine  hundred  and  thirty-eight thousand  and  twenty-four  and  nine  hundred  and  thirty-eight thousand and twenty-six; and the simplistic style in  which  they are  written  is  partly  explained by the fact that the editors, having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information  off the back of a packet of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few footnoted in order  to  avoid  prosecution  under  the incomprehensibly tortuous Galactic Copyright laws.

It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the book  backwards  in  time  through  a  temporal  warp,  and  then successfully sued the breakfast cereal company  for  infringement of the same laws.

information  see  Guide  Chapters  seven,  nine,   ten,   eleven,

Chapter 20

The force-shielded dome had once again been rendered opaque,  the party  was  over,  the  diners were leaving, Zarquon had vanished along with the rest of  the  Universe,  the  Time  Turbines  were preparing to pull the Restaurant back across the brink of time in readiness for the lunch sitting, and Max Quordlepleen was back in his  small  curtained  dressing room trying to raise his agent on the tempophone.

The ship gave a particularly sickening lurch.

Chapter 21

The ship had already been diving for several minutes by the  time that   Ford  Prefect  had  completed  his  search  of  the  other compartments of the black ship. He burst back into the cabin.

A  six-foot  square  panel  slid  open  beside  it  revealing   a compartment which resembled a multiple shower unit that had found a new function in life as  an  electrician's  junk  store.  Half-finished  wiring  hung  from  the  ceiling, a jumble of abandoned components lay strewn on the floor,  and  the  programming  panel lolled  out  of  the cavity in the wall into which it should have been secured.

Chapter 22

Being for the moment unwilling to  move  on  account  of  a  dull stomping  throb  he was experiencing, he lay a while and thought.  The  trouble  with  most  forms  of  transport,  he  thought,  is basically  one of them not being worth all the bother. On Earth - when there had been an Earth, before it was  demolished  to  make way for a new hyperspace bypass - the problem had been with cars.  The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky  slime from  out  of  the  ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke  to fill  the  air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another - particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this,  very  similar  to  the place  you  had  left,  i.e.  covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.

And what about matter transference beams? Any form  of  transport which  involved  tearing  you  apart atom by atom, flinging those atoms through the sub-ether, and then jamming them back  together again  just  when  they were getting their first taste of freedom for years had to be bad news.

But if you have to take me apart to get me there,

Take me apart, take me apart,

And if you have to take me apart to get me there,

But if you have to take me apart to get me there,

Take me apart, take me apart, You must be off your head,

And if you try to take me apart to get me there,

They pressed themselves back against the cold wall  and  listened furiously.  The  cold,  the  dark and the drumming of disembodied feet was getting to them badly. Ford shivered,  partly  with  the cold,  but partly with the memory of stories his favourite mother used to tell him when he was a mere slip of a Betelgeusian, ankle high  to  an  Arcturan  Megagrasshopper:  stories  of dead ships, haunted hulks that roamed restlessly round the  obscurer  regions of  deep  space  infested  with demons or the ghosts of forgotten crews; stories too of incautious travellers who found and entered such  ships;  stories  of  ...  -  then Ford remembered the brown hessian wall weave in  the  first  corridor  and  pulled  himself together.  However ghosts and demons may choose to decorate their death hulks, he thought to himself, he would lay  any  money  you liked it wasn't with hessian wall weave. He grasped Arthur by the arm.

Chapter 23

Standing silhouetted  in  the  doorway  through  which  they  had entered the vault was the man who wasn't pleased to see them. His displeasure was communicated  partly  by  the  barking  hectoring quality  of his voice and partly by the viciousness with which he waved a long silver Kill-O-Zap gun at them. The designer  of  the gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. "Make it evil," he'd been told. "Make it totally clear  that  this  gun has  a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly  for  them.  If  that  means  sticking  all  sort  of  spikes  and  prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a  gun  for hanging  over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with."

Chapter 24

"Ah, well that's a little difficult you see," said  the  Captain, "because   our  trajectory  thingy  was  preset  before  we  left Golgafrincham, I think partly because  I'm  not  very  good  with figures ..."

"Er, yes," said the Captain, "yes, it's all part of  the  plan  I

Chapter 25

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say  about  the planet  of  Golgafrincham:  It  is  a  planet with an ancient and mysterious history, rich in legend, red, and  occasionally  green with  the  blood  of those who sought in times gone by to conquer her; a land of parched and barren landscapes, of sweet and sultry air  heady  with  the  scent of the perfumed springs that trickle over its hot and dusty rocks  and  nourish  the  dark  and  musty lichens   beneath;  a  land  of  fevered  brows  and  intoxicated imaginings, particularly amongst those who taste the  lichens;  a land  also  of  cool  and  shaded thoughts amongst those who have learnt to forswear the lichens and find a tree to sit beneath;  a land  also of steel and blood and heroism; a land of the body and of the spirit. This was its history.

The first part of each song would tell how there once went  forth from the City of Vassilian a party of five sage princes with four horses. The princes, who are of course  brave,  noble  and  wise, travel widely in distant lands, fought giant ogres, pursue exotic philosophies, take tea  with  weird  gods  and  rescue  beautiful monsters  from ravening princesses before finally announcing that they have achieved enlightenment and that  their  wanderings  are therefore accomplished.

The second, and much longer, part of each song would then tell of all  their bickerings about which one of them is going to have to walk back.

Chapter 26

From a nearby hillside Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent  watched  the horror of which they could not feel a part.

Looking over his shoulder Arthur saw that he was  twiddling  with knobs  on  a small box. Ford had already introduced this box as a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic, but Arthur had merely nodded absently  and not  pursued  the  matter. In his mind the Universe still divided into two parts - the Earth, and everything else. The Earth having been  demolished  to  make  way for a new hyperspace bypass meant that this view of things was a little lopsided, but Arthur tended to cling to that lopsidedness as being his last remaining contact with his home. Sub-Etha  Sens-O-Matics  belonged  firmly  in  the "everything else" category.

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

On a small obscure world somewhere in the middle  of  nowhere  in particular - nowhere, that is, that could ever be found, since it is protected by a vast field of unprobability to which  only  six men in this galaxy have a key - it was raining.

The rain pelted and danced on the corrugated  iron  roof  of  the small  shack  that  stood  in the middle of this patch of scrubby land. It obliterated the small rough pathway that  led  from  the shack  down  to  the seashore and smashed apart the neat piles of interesting shells which had been placed there.

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

The  Captain,  however,  regarded  the  lone  bagpiper  with   an indulgent  eye. Little could disturb his equanimity; indeed, once he had got over  the  loss  of  his  gorgeous  bath  during  that unpleasantness  in the swamp all those months ago he had begun to find his new life remarkably congenial. A hollow had been scooped out  of  a  large rock which stood in the middle of the clearing, and in this he would bask daily whilst attendants  sloshed  water over  him.  Not particularly warm water, it must be said, as they hadn't yet worked out a way of heating it. Never mind, that would come,  and  in  the  meantime  search  parties  were scouring the countryside far and wide for a hot spring, preferably  one  in  a nice leafy glade, and if it was near a soap mine - perfection. To those who said that they had  a  feeling  soap  wasn't  found  in mines,  the Captain had ventured to suggest that perhaps that was because no one had looked hard enough, and this  possibility  had been reluc

Chapter 33

"And organic life was part of the computer matrix."

"I do say so. That means that these natives, these apemen are  an integral  part  of  the  computer  program,  and  that we and the Golgafrinchans are not."

Chapter 34

"Look," said Agda, "there's a party after the  committee  meeting tonight. You can come along if you like."

"Ah, that I don't know about. It sounds like something  from  the book."

"What book?"