Creative Computers/Creative Computers CD-ROM, Volume 1 (Legendary Design Technologies, Inc.)(1994).iso/text/misc/hgttg.txt.pp/hgttg.txt

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                    The  Hitch  Hiker's  Guide to the Galaxy

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


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

Orbiting  this  at  a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly
insignificant  little  blue  green planet whose ape- descended life forms are so
amazingly  primitive  that  they  still  think digital watches are a pretty neat
idea.   This  planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this:  most of
the  people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time.  Many solutions were
suggested  for  this  problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the
movements  of  small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it
wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

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

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

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

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

This is not her story.

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

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

Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.

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

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

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

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

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

It begins with a house.

Chapter 1

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

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

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

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

Toothpaste on the brush -- so.  Scrub.

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

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

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

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

He stared at it.

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

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

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

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

Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a big yellow
bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path.

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

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

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

Arthur lay in the mud and squelched at him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But the plans were on display ..."

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

"That's the display department."

"With a torch."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

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

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

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

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

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

"You'll like the bypass."

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

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

"Mr Dent," he said.

"Hello?  Yes?" said Arthur.

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

"How much?" said Arthur.

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

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

Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.

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

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

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

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

Sometimes he would get seized with oddly distracted moods and stare into the sky
as if hypnotized until someone asked him what he was doing.  Then he would start
guiltily for a moment, relax and grin.

"Oh,  just  looking  for flying saucers," he would joke and everyone would laugh
and ask him what sort of flying saucers he was looking for.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Earth moved slowly in its diurnal course.

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

A shadow moved across him again.

"Hello Arthur," said the shadow.

Arthur  looked  up  and  squinting into the sun was startled to see Ford Prefect
standing above him.

"Ford!  Hello, how are you?"

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

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

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

"What?" said Arthur Dent.

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

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

"Fine," said Arthur, "talk."

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

He looked into the sky again, nervous, expectant.

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

Ford glanced at him, puzzled.

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

"But I don't want him to!"

"Ah."

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

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

"But why?"

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

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

The  game  was not unlike the Earth game called Indian Wrestling, and was played
like this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ford Prefect usually played to lose.

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

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

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

"He wants to knock your house down?"

"Yes, he wants to build ..."

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

"Yes, and ..."

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

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

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

"Can we for the moment," called Ford, "assume that he hasn't?"

"Well?" sighed Mr Prosser.

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

"So?"

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

"Could be, could be ..."

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

"What?"

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

Mr Prosser thought about this.

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

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

Mr Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty.

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

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

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

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

"What?" said Mr Prosser.

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

"What?" said Mr Prosser again.

"It's very simple," said Ford, "my client, Mr Dent, says that he will stop lying
here in the mud on the sole condition that you come and take over from him."

"What  are you talking about?" said Arthur, but Ford nudged him with his shoe to
be quiet.

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

"Yes."

"In front of the bulldozer?"

"Yes."

"Instead of Mr Dent."

"Yes."

"In the mud."

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

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

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

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

Mr Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped.

"Promise?"

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

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

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

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

Ford looked at him severely.

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

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

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

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

Arthur remained very worried.

"But can we trust him?" he said.

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

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

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

Chapter 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sprinkle Zamphuor.

Add an olive.

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

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

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

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

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

He tried again.

"Going to watch the match this afternoon then?"

Ford glanced round at him.

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

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

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

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

Ford looked back at him, genuinely surprised.

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

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

Arthur  smiled  at  him wanly and shrugged again.  He turned and smiled wanly at
the rest of the pub just in case any of them had heard what was going on.

None  of them had, and none of them could understand what he was smiling at them
for.

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

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

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

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

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

The barman simply decided to walk away for a bit.

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

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

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

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

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

"Drink up."

"Why three pints all of a sudden?"

"Muscle relaxant, you'll need it."

"Muscle relaxant?"

"Muscle relaxant."

Arthur stared into his beer.

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

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

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

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

Arthur shrugged in a so-so sort of way.

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

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

"Drink up."

He added, perfectly factually:

"The world's about to end."

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

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

Chapter 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ford clicked his tongue in irritation.

"Drink up," he urged.

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

Arthur choked on his beer, leapt to his feet.

"What's that?" he yelped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes," said Ford.

"But, this afternoon?"

Ford had recovered himself.  He was at his flippest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"If you like, yes," said Ford.

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

"Will that help?" asked the barman.

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

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

The barman cleared his throat.  He heard himself say:

"Last orders, please."

The huge yellow machines began to sink downward and to move faster.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another one followed and did the same thing only louder.

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

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

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

He knew where his towel was.

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

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

And still nothing happened.

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

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

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

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

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

The PA died away.

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

Observing this, the Vogons turned on their PA again.  It said:

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

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

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

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

"Energize the demolition beams."

Light poured out into the hatchways.

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

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

There was a terrible ghastly noise.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

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

Chapter 4

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

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

Damogran, secret home of the Heart of Gold.

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

The boat sped on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

President?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On top of the cliffs stood a reception committee.

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

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

Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zaphod smiled, picturing himself.

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

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

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

The President of the Galaxy had arrived.

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

"Hi," he said.

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

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

"Hi," he said again.

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

"Hi honey," he said to her.

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

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

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

Beneath  it  lay  uncovered  a huge starship, one hundred and fifty metres long,
shaped  like  a sleek running shoe, perfectly white and mindboggingly beautiful.
At  the  heart  of  it, unseen, lay a small gold box which carried within it the
most  brain-wretching  device  ever conceived, a device which made this starship
unique  in  the  history  of  the galaxy, a device after which the ship had been
named -- The Heart of Gold.

"Wow",  said  Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold.  There wasn't much else he
could say.

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

"Wow."

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ford Prefect said:  "I bought some peanuts."

Arthur Dent moved, and groaned again, muttering incoherently.

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

"Whhhrrrr..." said Arthur Dent.  He opened his eyes.

"It's dark," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

Ford stared at him blankly in the darkness.

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

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

"Oh good," said Arthur.

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

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

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

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

"We hitched a lift," said Ford.

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

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

"And the bug-eyed monster?"

"Is green, yes."

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

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

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

Even Ford was surprised.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ford and Arthur stared about them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm confused," said Arthur.

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

Ford handed the book to Arthur.

"What is it?" asked Arthur.

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

Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arthur blinked at it.

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

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

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

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

Arthur looked lost.

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

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

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

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

"A teaser?"

"Yeah."

"Er, what is ..."

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

"Buzz  them?"  Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult
for him.

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

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

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

"And what's happened to the Earth?"

"Ah.  It's been demolished."

"Has it," said Arthur levelly.

"Yes.  It just boiled away into space."

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

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

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

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

Ford sprang up.

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

"What?"

"Don't Panic."

"I'm not panicking!"

"Yes you are."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Im ...  important?"

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

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

"Listen!"

"But I can't speak Vogon!"

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

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

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

This is what he heard ...

Chapter 6

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

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

The noise stopped.

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

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

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

"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"

"You ask a glass of water."

Arthur thought about this.

"Ford," he said.

"Yeah?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

They were passing through hyperspace.

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

"Now   it   is   such  a  bizarrely  improbable  coincidence  that  anything  so
mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have
chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Earth.

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

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

He  passed  out.   When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for
his mother.

He jerked himself violently to his feet.

"Ford!"

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

"Yeah?" he said.

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

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

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

"Yeah OK." He passed it over again.

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

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

Ford looked over his shoulder.

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

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

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

Ford shrugged.

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

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

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

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

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

"Mostly harmless!" shouted Arthur.

"What was that noise?" hissed Ford.

"It was me shouting," shouted Arthur.

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

"You think we're in trouble!"

Outside the door were the sounds of marching feet.

"The Dentrassi?" whispered Arthur.

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

There was a sharp ringing rap on the door.

"Then who is it?" said Arthur.

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

"And if we're unlucky?"

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

Chapter 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arthur lolled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"...  humanity of the ..."

"Vogonity," Ford hissed at him.

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

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

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

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

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

The Vogon stood up.

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

"What?" shouted Ford.

A  huge  young  Vogon  guard stepped forward and yanked them out of their straps
with his huge blubbery arms.

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

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

The captain watched with detached amusement and then turned away.

Arthur stared round him wildly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Vogon guard dragged them on.

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

"Resistance is useless!" bellowed the guard.

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

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

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

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

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

"Resistance is useless!"

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

"Resistance is useless!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arthur twisted his head to look at Ford.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And shouting," added the guard.

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

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

Deep rumblings of bemusement came from the guard.

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

"Good lad!" encouraged Ford.

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

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

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

Ford suddenly felt the moment slipping away.

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

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

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

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

"Come on now ...  but look!" he said, less slowly, less brightly.

"Huhhhhgggggggnnnnnnn ..." said Arthur without any clear inflection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But it was a good idea was it?"

"Oh yes, very neat."

"What was it?"

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

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

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

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

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

"What?  Where?" cried Arthur twisting round.

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

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

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

"Why, what did she tell you?"

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

"Oh." Ford carried on humming.

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

A motor whirred.

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

Chapter 8

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

The introduction begins like this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By  a  totally  staggering  coincidence  that is also the telephone number of an
Islington  flat  where Arthur once went to a very good party and met a very nice
girl whom he totally failed to get off with -- she went off with a gatecrasher.

Though  the planet Earth, the Islington flat and the telephone have all now been
demolished,  it  is  comforting  to  reflect that they are all in some small way
commemorated  by  the  fact  that twenty-nine seconds later Ford and Arthur were
rescued.

Chapter 9

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

This was because Reason was in fact out to lunch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, nor have I," said Arthur.

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

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

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

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

"Why?"

"Because I thought I must be going mad."

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

Ford thought about this.

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

"I think so," said Arthur.

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

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

"Well, do you think this is Southend?"

"Oh yes."

"So do I."

"Therefore we must be mad."

"Nice day for it."

"Yes," said a passing maniac.

"Who was that?" asked Arthur

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

"Yes."

"I don't know.  Just someone."

"Ah."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What was that voice?" shouted Arthur.

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

"Probability?  What do you mean?"

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

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

"But what does it mean?" cried Arthur.

"What, the custard?"

"No, the measurement of probability!"

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

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

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

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

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

Again came the voice.

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

Ford waddled around his pond in a furious circle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The voice continued.

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

The voice cut out.

Ford and Arthur were in a small luminous pink cubicle.

Ford was wildly excited.

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

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

Arthur looked up.

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

Chapter 10

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

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

This, briefly, is the story of its discovery.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 11

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

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

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

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

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

Trillian span her seat round to face him and shrugged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The ship did."

"Huh?"

"The ship did.  All by itself."

"Huh?"

"Whilst we were in Improbability Drive."

"But that's incredible."

"No Zaphod.  Just very very improbable."

"Er, yeah."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Marvin!" warned Trillian.

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

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

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

"Just that?" he said.

"Yes," said Trillian firmly.

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

Zaphod leaped out of his seat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Marvin flashed him an electronic look.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ford jabbed at one of the pages and showed it to Arthur.

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities."

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

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

"What?" they said.

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

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

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

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

He turned and walked back to the hated door.

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

Marvin ignored him.

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

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

"Come on," he said.

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

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

Ford and Arthur muttered embarrassed little disclaimers.

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

"Which government ..." started Ford again.

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

"Stolen?"

"Stolen?" mimicked Marvin.

"Who by?" asked Ford.

"Zaphod Beeblebrox."

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

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

"Sorry, did I say something wrong?" said Marvin, dragging himself on regardless.
"Pardon  me  for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother
to  say  it,  oh  God  I'm so depressed.  Here's another of those self-satisfied
door.  Life!  Don't talk to me about life."

"No one ever mentioned it," muttered Arthur irritably.  "Ford, are you alright?"

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

Chapter 12

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

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

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

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

Trillian was tapping her fingers on a screenful of figures.

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

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

"You hear enough about yourself as it is."

"I'm very insecure.  We know that."

"Can we drop your ego for a moment?  This is important."

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

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

"What couple of guys?"

"The couple of guys we picked up."

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

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

"Yeah?" said Zaphod and blinked.

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

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

"Well?" said Trillian.

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

"Which one?"

"Any one."

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

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

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

"Hey ...  Yeah!" said Zaphod.

"Well?" she said.

"Well what?"

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

He looked at her and then looked back at the screen.

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

She ignored this.

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well?"

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

"OK," he said.  "Computer!"

The voice circuits sprang to life again.

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

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

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

"Improbability data, yeah."

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

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

"Have you flipped?" he said.

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

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

"Telephone number?" she said.  "Did that thing say telephone number?"

Numbers flashed up on the screen.

The computer had paused politely, but now it continued.

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

"Don't bother please," said Trillian.

"Look, what is this?" said Zaphod.

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

Chapter 13

Marvin trudged on down the corridor, still moaning.

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

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

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

"I can imagine."

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

Suddenly Marvin stopped, and held up a hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deep in Marvin's thorax gears ground.

"Funny,"  he intoned funerally, "how just when you think life can't possibly get
any worse it suddenly does."

He  heaved  himself  through  the  door and left Ford and Arthur staring at each
other  and  shrugging  their  shoulders.   From inside they heard Marvin's voice
again.

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

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

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

"What's ...?"

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

He stepped through into the bridge.

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

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

Ford was not going to be outcooled.

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

Arthur goggled at him.

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

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

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

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

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

"We've met," said Arthur sharply.

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

"Err ...  what?"

"I said we've met."

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

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

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

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

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

"What!" shouted Ford.

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

"It was at a party," pursued Arthur.

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

"Cool it will you Arthur!" demanded Ford.

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

Zaphod shook his head with a tight-lipped smile.

"London," insisted Arthur, "Islington."

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

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

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

"But I was stuck there for fifteen years!"

"Well I didn't know that did I?"

"But what were you doing there?"

"Looking about, you know."

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

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

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

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

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

"Zaphod?" exclaimed Ford.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 14

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

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

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

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

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

Arthur slept:  he was terribly tired.

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

"Zaphod ...?"

"Yeah?"

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

"Hey, yeah?"

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

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

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

Zaphod heard a noise and looked up.

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

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

"You recognize those Galactic coordinates?" said Zaphod.

"No."

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

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

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

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

There was absolutely nothing on them.

"Recognize that?" whispered Zaphod.

Ford frowned.

"Er, no," he said.

"What do you see?"

"Nothing."

"Recognize it?"

"What are you talking about?"

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

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

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

"Very good."

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

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

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

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

"Nothing."

"No stars?  No planets?"

"No."

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

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

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

Ford stared at it in astonishment.

"What is it?" he said.

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

Chapter 15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 16

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

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

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

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

"Computer!" shouted Zaphod.

"Oh no ..."

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

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

"Computer," said Zaphod, "tell us again what our present trajectory is."

"A  real pleasure feller," it burbled, "we are currently in orbit at an altitude
of three hundred miles around the legendary planet of Magrathea."

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

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

Trillian interrupted.

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

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

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

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

"Hi there!  What can I ..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

The  moment  carried  itself.   Even the most seasoned star tramp can't help but
shiver  at  the  spectacular  drama  of  a sunrise seen from space, but a binary
sunrise is one of the marvels of the Galaxy.

Out  of  the utter blackness stabbed a sudden point of blinding light.  It crept
up  by  slight  degrees and spread sideways in a thin crescent blade, and within
seconds  two suns were visible, furnaces of light, searing the black edge of the
horizon  with  white  fire.   Fierce  shafts of colour streaked through the thin
atmosphere beneath them.

"The  fires  of  dawn  ...  !" breathed Zaphod.  "The twin suns of Soulianis and
Rahm ...  !"

"Or whatever," said Ford quietly.

"Soulianis and Rahm!" insisted Zaphod.

The  suns blazed into the pitch of space and a low ghostly music floated through
the bridge:  Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much.

As Ford gazed at the spectacle of light before them excitement burnt inside him,
but only the excitement of seeing a strange new planet, it was enough for him to
see  it  as  it  was.   It  faintly irritated him that Zaphod had to impose some
ludicrous  fantasy  on to the scene to make it work for him.  All this Magrathea
nonsense  seemed  juvenile.   Isn't  it enough to see that a garden is beautiful
without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

All this Magrathea business seemed totally incomprehensible to Arthur.  He edged
up to Trillian and asked her what was going on.

"I  only  know  what Zaphod's told me," she whispered.  "Apparently Magrathea is
some  kind of legend from way back which no one seriously believes in.  Bit like
Atlantis  on  Earth,  except  that  the  legends  say  the  Magratheans  used to
manufacture planets."

Arthur  blinked  at  the  screens  and  felt he was missing something important.
Suddenly he realized what it was.

"Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.

More  of  the  planet  was  unfolding beneath them as the Heart of Gold streaked
along  its  orbital  path.   The  suns  now  stood  high  in  the black sky, the
pyrotechnics of dawn were over, and the surface of the planet appeared bleak and
forbidding  in  the common light of day -- grey, dusty and only dimly contoured.
It  looked dead and cold as a crypt.  From time to time promising features would
appear  on the distant horizon -- ravines, maybe mountains, maybe even cities --
but  as  they  approached  the  lines  would  soften and blur into anonymity and
nothing  would transpire.  The planet's surface was blurred by time, by the slow
movement  of  the  thin  stagnant  air that had crept across it for century upon
century.

Clearly, it was very very old.

A  moment  of  doubt  came to Ford as he watched the grey landscape move beneath
them.   The  immensity  of time worried him, he could feel it as a presence.  He
cleared his throat.

"Well, even supposing it is ..."

"It is," said Zaphod.

"Which  it  isn't,"  continued Ford.  "What do you want with it anyway?  There's
nothing there."

"Not on the surface," said Zaphod.

"Alright,  just  supposing there's something.  I take it you're not here for the
sheer industrial archaeology of it all.  What are you after?"

One  of  Zaphod's heads looked away.  The other one looked round to see what the
first was looking at, but it wasn't looking at anything very much.

"Well,"  said  Zaphod  airily,  "it's  partly  the  curiosity, partly a sense of
adventure, but mostly I think it's the fame and the money ..."

Ford glanced at him sharply.  He got a very strong impression that Zaphod hadn't
the faintest idea why he was there at all.

"You know I don't like the look of that planet at all," said Trillian shivering.

"Ah,  take no notice," said Zaphod, "with half the wealth of the former Galactic
Empire stored on it somewhere it can afford to look frumpy."

Bullshit,  thought  Ford.   Even  supposing  this  was  the home of some ancient
civilization  now  gone to dust, even supposing a number of exceedingly unlikely
things,  there  was no way that vast treasures of wealth were going to be stored
there in any form that would still have meaning now.  He shrugged.

"I think it's just a dead planet," he said.

"The suspense is killing me," said Arthur testily.

Stress  and  nervous tension are now serious social problems in all parts of the
Galaxy,  and  it  is  in  order  that  this  situation  should not in any way be
exacerbated that the following facts will now be revealed in advance.

The planet in question is in fact the legendary Magrathea.

The deadly missile attack shortly to be launched by an ancient automatic defence
system  will  result merely in the breakage of three coffee cups and a micecage,
the  bruising  of  somebody's  upper  arm,  and the untimely creation and sudden
demise of a bowl of petunias and an innocent sperm whale.

In  order  that  some  sense of mystery should still be preserved, no revelation
will yet be made concerning whose upper arm sustained the bruise.  This fact may
safely  be  made  the  subject  of  suspense  since  it  is  of  no significance
whatsoever.

Chapter 17

After a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur's mind was beginning to reassemble
itself  from  the shellshocked fragments the previous day had left him with.  He
had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled
with  a  liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.  The way it
functioned  was  very interesting.  When the Drink button was pressed it made an
instant  but  highly  detailed  examination  of  the  subject's  taste  buds,  a
spectroscopic   analysis   of  the  subject's  metabolism  and  then  sent  tiny
experimental  signals  down  the  neural  pathways  to  the taste centres of the
subject's  brain  to  see what was likely to go down well.  However, no one knew
quite  why  it  did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that
was  almost,  but  not quite, entirely unlike tea.  The Nutri-Matic was designed
and   manufactured  by  the  Sirius  Cybernetics  Corporation  whose  complaints
department  now  covers  all the major land masses of the first three planets in
the Sirius Tau Star system.

Arthur  drank  the  liquid  and found it reviving.  He glanced up at the screens
again  and  watched  a few more hundred miles of barren greyness slide past.  It
suddenly occurred to him to ask a question which had been bothering him.

"Is it safe?" he said.

"Magrathea's  been  dead  for  five million years," said Zaphod, "of course it's
safe.   Even  the  ghosts will have settled down and raised families by now." At
which  point  a  strange  and  inexplicable  sound thrilled suddenly through the
bridge -- a noise as of a distant fanfare; a hollow, reedy, insubstantial sound.
It preceded a voice that was equally hollow, reedy and insubstantial.  The voice
said "Greetings to you ..."

Someone from the dead planet was talking to them.

"Computer!" shouted Zaphod.

"Hi there!"

"What the photon is it?"

"Oh, just some five-million-year-old tape that's being broadcast at us."

"A what?  A recording?"

"Shush!" said Ford.  "It's carrying on."

The  voice  was  old, courteous, almost charming, but was underscored with quite
unmistakable menace.

"This  is a recorded announcement," it said, "as I'm afraid we're all out at the
moment.   The commercial council of Magrathea thanks you for your esteemed visit
..."

("A voice from ancient Magrathea!" shouted Zaphod.  "OK, OK," said Ford.)

"...   but regrets," continued the voice, "that the entire planet is temporarily
closed  for  business.  Thank you.  If you would care to leave your name and the
address  of  a planet where you can be contacted, kindly speak when you hear the
tone."

A short buzz followed, then silence.

"They want to get rid of us," said Trillian nervously.  "What do we do?"

"It's just a recording," said Zaphod.  "We keep going.  Got that, computer?"

"I got it," said the computer and gave the ship an extra kick of speed.

They waited.

After a second or so came the fanfare once again, and then the voice.

"We  would  like  to  assure  you  that  as  soon  as  our  business  is resumed
announcements  will be made in all fashionable magazines and colour supplements,
when  our  clients  will  once  again  be able to select from all that's best in
contemporary  geography."  The  menace  in  the  voice  took  on a sharper edge.
"Meanwhile  we  thank  our clients for their kind interest and would ask them to
leave.  Now."

Arthur looked round the nervous faces of his companions.

"Well, I suppose we'd better be going then, hadn't we?" he suggested.

"Shhh!" said Zaphod.  "There's absolutely nothing to be worried about."

"Then why's everyone so tense?"

"They're  just interested!" shouted Zaphod.  "Computer, start a descent into the
atmosphere and prepare for landing."

This time the fanfare was quite perfunctory, the voice distinctly cold.

"It is most gratifying," it said, "that your enthusiasm for our planet continues
unabated,  and so we would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently
converging  with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our
most  enthusiastic  clients,  and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course
merely  a  courtesy  detail.  We look forward to your custom in future lives ...
thank you."

The voice snapped off.

"Oh," said Trillian.

"Er ..." said Arthur.

"Well?" said Ford.

"Look,"  said  Zaphod, "will you get it into your heads?  That's just a recorded
message.  It's millions of years old.  It doesn't apply to us, get it?"

"What," said Trillian quietly, "about the missiles?"

"Missiles?  Don't make me laugh."

Ford tapped Zaphod on the shoulder and pointed at the rear screen.  Clear in the
distance  behind  them  two  silver  darts  were climbing through the atmosphere
towards the ship.  A quick change of magnification brought them into close focus
--  two massively real rockets thundering through the sky.  The suddenness of it
was shocking.

"I think they're going to have a very good try at applying to us," said Ford.

Zaphod stared at them in astonishment.

"Hey this is terrific!" he said.  "Someone down there is trying to kill us!"

"Terrific," said Arthur.

"But don't you see what this means?"

"Yes.  We're going to die."

"Yes, but apart from that."

"Apart from that?"

"It means we must be on to something!"

"How soon can we get off it?"

Second  by  second  the image of the missiles on the screen became larger.  They
had  swung round now on to a direct homing course so that all that could be seen
of them now was the warheads, head on.

"As a matter of interest," said Trillian, "what are we going to do?"

"Just keep cool," said Zaphod.

"Is that all?" shouted Arthur.

"No,  we're  also going to ...  er ...  take evasive action!" said Zaphod with a
sudden access of panic.  "Computer, what evasive action can we take?"

"Er, none I'm afraid, guys," said the computer.

"...  or something," said Zaphod, "...  er ..." he said.

"There seems to be something jamming my guidance system," explained the computer
brightly,  "impact  minus  forty-five  seconds.  Please call me Eddie if it will
help you to relax."

Zaphod  tried  to  run  in  several  equally decisive directions simultaneously.
"Right!" he said.  "Er ...  we've got to get manual control of this ship."

"Can you fly her?" asked Ford pleasantly.

"No, can you?"

"No."

"Trillian, can you?"

"No."

"Fine," said Zaphod, relaxing.  "We'll do it together."

"I can't either," said Arthur, who felt it was time he began to assert himself.

"I'd guessed that," said Zaphod.  "OK computer, I want full manual control now."

"You got it," said the computer.

Several  large desk panels slid open and banks of control consoles sprang up out
of  them,  showering  the  crew  with bits of expanded polystyrene packaging and
balls of rolled-up cellophane:  these controls had never been used before.

Zaphod stared at them wildly.

"OK, Ford," he said, "full retro thrust and ten degrees starboard.  Or something
..."

"Good luck guys," chirped the computer, "impact minus thirty seconds ..."

Ford leapt to the controls -- only a few of them made any immediate sense to him
so  he  pulled  those.   The ship shook and screamed as its guidance rocked jets
tried  to  push it every which way simultaneously.  He released half of them and
the ship span round in a tight arc and headed back the way it had come, straight
towards the oncoming missiles.

Air  cushions  ballooned  out  of the walls in an instant as everyone was thrown
against  them.   For  a  few seconds the inertial forces held them flattened and
squirming  for  breath,  unable  to  move.  Zaphod struggled and pushed in manic
desperation  and finally managed a savage kick at a small lever that formed part
of the guidance system.

The lever snapped off.  The ship twisted sharply and rocketed upwards.  The crew
were  hurled  violently back across the cabin.  Ford's copy of The Hitch Hiker's
Guide to the Galaxy smashed into another section of the control console with the
combined  result that the guide started to explain to anyone who cared to listen
about  the  best  ways  of smuggling Antarean parakeet glands out of Antares (an
Antarean  parakeet  gland  stuck on a small stick is a revolting but much sought
after  cocktail delicacy and very large sums of money are often paid for them by
very  rich  idiots  who  want  to  impress other very rich idiots), and the ship
suddenly dropped out of the sky like a stone.

It  was  of  course more or less at this moment that one of the crew sustained a
nasty  bruise  to  the  upper  arm.   This  should be emphasized because, as had
already  been revealed, they escape otherwise completely unharmed and the deadly
nuclear  missiles  do  not  eventually  hit the ship.  The safety of the crew is
absolutely assured.

"Impact minus twenty seconds, guys ..." said the computer.

"Then turn the bloody engines back on!" bawled Zaphod.

"OK,  sure  thing, guys," said the computer.  With a subtle roar the engines cut
back in, the ship smoothly flattened out of its dive and headed back towards the
missiles again.

The computer started to sing.

"When you walk through the storm ..." it whined nasally, "hold your head up high
..."

Zaphod screamed at it to shut up, but his voice was lost in the din of what they
quite naturally assumed was approaching destruction.

"And don't ...  be afraid ...  of the dark!" Eddie wailed.

The  ship,  in flattening out had in fact flattened out upside down and lying on
the  ceiling  as  they were it was now totally impossible for any of the crew to
reach the guidance systems.

"At the end of the storm ..." crooned Eddie.

The  two  missiles loomed massively on the screens as they thundered towards the
ship.

"...  is a golden sky ..."

But  by  an  extraordinarily lucky chance they had not yet fully corrected their
flight  paths  to  that  of  the erratically weaving ship, and they passed right
under it.

"And the sweet silver songs of the lark ...  Revised impact time fifteen seconds
fellas ...  Walk on through the wind ..."

The missiles banked round in a screeching arc and plunged back into pursuit.

"This  is it," said Arthur watching them.  "We are now quite definitely going to
die aren't we?"

"I wish you'd stop saying that," shouted Ford.

"Well we are aren't we?"

"Yes."

"Walk on through the rain ..." sang Eddie.

A thought struck Arthur.  He struggled to his feet.

"Why doesn't anyone turn on this Improbability Drive thing?" he said.  "We could
probably reach that."

"What  are  you crazy?" said Zaphod.  "Without proper programming anything could
happen."

"Does that matter at this stage?" shouted Arthur.

"Though your dreams be tossed and blown ..." sand Eddie.

Arthur  scrambled  up  on  to one end of the excitingly chunky pieces of moulded
contouring where the curve of the wall met the ceiling.

"Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart ..."

"Does  anyone  know  why  Arthur can't turn on the Improbability Drive?" shouted
Trillian.

"And  you'll  never  walk  alone ...  Impact minus five seconds, it's been great
knowing you guys, God bless ...  You'll ne ...  ver ...  walk ...  alone!"

"I said," yelled Trillian, "does anyone know ..."

The next thing that happened was a mid-mangling explosion of noise and light.

Chapter 18

And the next thing that happened after that was that the Heart of Gold continued
on  its way perfectly normally with a rather fetchingly redesigned interior.  It
was  somewhat  larger, and done out in delicate pastel shades of green and blue.
In  the  centre  a  spiral  staircase, leading nowhere in particular, stood in a
spray of ferns and yellow flowers and next to it a stone sundial pedestal housed
the main computer terminal.  Cunningly deployed lighting and mirrors created the
illusion of standing in a conservatory overlooking a wide stretch of exquisitely
manicured   garden.   Around  the  periphery  of  the  conservatory  area  stood
marble-topped  tables  on intricately beautiful wrought-iron legs.  As you gazed
into  the  polished  surface of the marble the vague forms of instruments became
visible,  and  as  you touched them the instruments materialized instantly under
your  hands.   Looked at from the correct angles the mirrors appeared to reflect
all  the  required  data  readouts, though it was far from clear where they were
reflected from.  It was in fact sensationally beautiful.

Relaxing  in  a  wickerwork  sun  chair,  Zaphod Beeblebrox said, "What the hell
happened?"

"Well  I  was  just saying," said Arthur lounging by a small fish pool, "there's
this  Improbability  Drive  switch over here ..." he waved at where it had been.
There was a potted plant there now.

"But  where are we?" said Ford who was sitting on the spiral staircase, a nicely
chilled Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in his hand.

"Exactly  where  we  were,  I  think  ..."  said Trillian, as all about them the
mirrors  showed them an image of the blighted landscape of Magrathea which still
scooted along beneath them.

Zaphod leapt out of his seat.

"Then what's happened to the missiles?" he said.

A new and astounding image appeared in the mirrors.

"They  would  appear,"  said  Ford  doubtfully,  "to  have turned into a bowl of
petunias and a very surprised looking whale ..."

"At  an Improbability Factor," cut in Eddie, who hadn't changed a bit, "of eight
million  seven  hundred and sixty-seven thousand one hundred and twenty-eight to
one against."

Zaphod stared at Arthur.

"Did you think of that, Earthman?" he demanded.

"Well," said Arthur, "all I did was ..."

"That's  very  good  thinking  you  know.  Turn on the Improbability Drive for a
second  without  first  activating the proofing screens.  Hey kid you just saved
our lives, you know that?"

"Oh," said Arthur, "well, it was nothing really ..."

"Was  it?"  said Zaphod.  "Oh well, forget it then.  OK, computer, take us in to
land."

"But ..."

"I said forget it."

Another  thing  that  got  forgotten was the fact that against all probability a
sperm  whale  had  suddenly  been  called into existence several miles above the
surface of an alien planet.

And  since  this  is  not  a  naturally  tenable position for a whale, this poor
innocent  creature  had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a
whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.

This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till
the moment it ended it.

Ah ...  !  What's happening?  it thought.

Er, excuse me, who am I?

Hello?

Why am I here?  What's my purpose in life?

What do I mean by who am I?

Calm  down,  get  a grip now ...  oh!  this is an interesting sensation, what is
it?   It's  a sort of ...  yawning, tingling sensation in my ...  my ...  well I
suppose  I'd better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway
in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so
let's call it my stomach.

Good.   Ooooh,  it's getting quite strong.  And hey, what's about this whistling
roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my head?  Perhaps I can
call  that  ...  wind!  Is that a good name?  It'll do ...  perhaps I can find a
better  name  for  it  later  when  I've  found  out  what it's for.  It must be
something  very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of
it.   Hey!   What's  this  thing?  This ...  let's call it a tail -- yeah, tail.
Hey!   I  can  can really thrash it about pretty good can't I?  Wow!  Wow!  That
feels  great!  Doesn't seem to achieve very much but I'll probably find out what
it's for later on.  Now -- have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?

No.

Never  mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to
look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation ...

Or is it the wind?

There really is a lot of that now isn't it?

And  wow!   Hey!   What's this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast?  Very
very  fast.   So  big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like
...   ow  ...   ound  ...  round ...  ground!  That's it!  That's a good name --
ground!

I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

Curiously  enough,  the  only  thing  that  went through the mind of the bowl of
petunias  as  it fell was Oh no, not again.  Many people have speculated that if
we  knew  exactly  why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot
more about the nature of the universe than we do now.

Chapter 19

"Are  we  taking this robot with us?" said Ford, looking with distaste at Marvin
who  was standing in an awkward hunched posture in the corner under a small palm
tree.

Zaphod  glanced away from the mirror screens which presented a panoramic view of
the blighted landscape on which the Heart of Gold had now landed.

"Oh, the Paranoid Android," he said.  "Yeah, we'll take him."

"But what are supposed to do with a manically depressed robot?"

"You  think  you've  got  problems," said Marvin as if he was addressing a newly
occupied  coffin,  "what are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed
robot?   No,  don't  bother  to  answer  that,  I'm  fifty  thousand  times more
intelligent  than  you and even I don't know the answer.  It gives me a headache
just trying to think down to your level."

Trillian burst in through the door from her cabin.

"My white mice have escaped!" she said.

An  expression  of  deep  worry  and  concern failed to cross either of Zaphod's
faces.

"Nuts to your white mice," he said.

Trillian glared an upset glare at him, and disappeared again.

It  is  possible  that  her remark would have commanded greater attention had it
been  generally  realized that human beings were only the third most intelligent
life  form  present on the planet Earth, instead of (as was generally thought by
most independent observers) the second.

"Good afternoon boys."

The  voice was oddly familiar, but oddly different.  It had a matriarchal twang.
It  announced  itself  to  the crew as they arrived at the airlock hatchway that
would let them out on the planet surface.

They looked at each other in puzzlement.

"It's  the  computer,"  explained  Zaphod.   "I  discovered  it had an emergency
back-up personality that I thought might work out better."

"Now  this is going to be your first day out on a strange new planet," continued
Eddie's  new  voice, "so I want you all wrapped up snug and warm, and no playing
with any naughty bug-eyed monsters."

Zaphod tapped impatiently on the hatch.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I think we might be better off with a slide rule."

"Right!" snapped the computer.  "Who said that?"

"Will  you  open the exit hatch please, computer?" said Zaphod trying not to get
angry.

"Not  until  whoever  said  that  owns  up,"  urged the computer, stamping a few
synapses closed.

"Oh God," muttered Ford, slumped against a bulkhead and started to count to ten.
He was desperately worried that one day sentinent life forms would forget how to
do  this.   Only  by  counting  could  humans  demonstrate their independence of
computers.

"Come on," said Eddie sternly.

"Computer ..." began Zaphod ...

"I'm waiting," interrupted Eddie.  "I can wait all day if necessary ..."

"Computer  ..."  said  Zaphod again, who had been trying to think of some subtle
piece  of reasoning to put the computer down with, and had decided not to bother
competing  with  it  on  its own ground, "if you don't open that exit hatch this
moment  I shall zap straight off to your major data banks and reprogram you with
a very large axe, got that?"

Eddie, shocked, paused and considered this.

Ford  carried  on counting quietly.  This is about the most aggressive thing you
can  do  to  a  computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying
Blood ...  blood ...  blood ...  blood ...

Finally  Eddie said quietly, "I can see this relationship is something we're all
going to have to work at," and the hatchway opened.

An icy wind ripped into them, they hugged themselves warmly and stepped down the
ramp on to the barren dust of Magrathea.

"It'll  all  end  in  tears, I know it," shouted Eddie after them and closed the
hatchway again.

A  few  minutes  later  he opened and closed the hatchway again in response to a
command that caught him entirely by surprise.

Chapter 20

Five  figures  wandered  slowly over the blighted land.  Bits of it were dullish
grey,  bits  of it dullish brown, the rest of it rather less interesting to look
at.   It  was  like  a dried-out marsh, now barren of all vegetation and covered
with a layer of dust about an inch thick.  It was very cold.

Zaphod was clearly rather depressed about it.  He stalked off by himself and was
soon lost to sight behind a slight rise in the ground.

The  wind  stung  Arthur's  eyes  and  ears,  and the stale thin air clasped his
throat.  However, the thing stung most was his mind.

"It's fantastic ..." he said, and his own voice rattled his ears.  Sound carried
badly in this thin atmosphere.

"Desolate  hole  if  you  ask  me,"  said Ford.  "I could have more fun in a cat
litter."  He  felt  a  mounting  irritation.  Of all the planets in all the star
systems  of all the Galaxy -- didn't he just have to turn up at a dump like this
after  fifteen years of being a castaway?  Not even a hot dog stand in evidence.
He  stooped  down  and  picked  up  a  cold clot of earth, but there was nothing
underneath it worth crossing thousands of light years to look at.

"No,"  insisted  Arthur,  "don't  you  understand,  this  is the first time I've
actually  stood  on  the surface of another planet ...  a whole alien world ...!
Pity it's such a dump though."

Trillian  hugged  herself, shivered and frowned.  She could have sworn she saw a
slight  and  unexpected  movement  out  of  the  corner of her eye, but when she
glanced  in  that  direction all she could see was the ship, still and silent, a
hundred yards or so behind them.

She  was relieved when a second or so later they caught sight of Zaphod standing
on top of the ridge of ground and waving to them to come and join him.

He  seemed  to  be  excited,  but  they couldn't clearly hear what he was saying
because of the thinnish atmosphere and the wind.

As  they  approached the ridge of higher ground they became aware that it seemed
to  be  circular  --  a  crater about a hundred and fifty yards wide.  Round the
outside of the crater the sloping ground was spattered with black and red lumps.
They stopped and looked at a piece.  It was wet.  It was rubbery.

With horror they suddenly realized that it was fresh whalemeat.

At the top of the crater's lip they met Zaphod.

"Look," he said, pointing into the crater.

In the centre lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn't lived
long  enough to be disappointed with its lot.  The silence was only disturbed by
the slight involuntary spasms of Trillian's throat.

"I  suppose  there's  no  point in trying to bury it?" murmured Arthur, and then
wished he hadn't.

"Come," said Zaphod and started back down into the crater.

"What, down there?" said Trillian with severe distaste.

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "come on, I've got something to show you."

"We can see it," said Trillian.

"Not that," said Zaphod, "something else.  Come on."

They all hesitated.

"Come on," insisted Zaphod, "I've found a way in."

"In?" said Arthur in horror.

"Into  the  interior  of  the planet!  An underground passage.  The force of the
whale's  impact  cracked  it open, and that's where we have to go.  Where no man
has trod these five million years, into the very depths of time itself ..."

Marvin started his ironical humming again.

Zaphod hit him and he shut up.

With  little  shudders of disgust they all followed Zaphod down the incline into
the crater, trying very hard not to look at its unfortunate creator.

"Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."

The  ground  had  caved  in  where  the  whale had hit it revealing a network of
galleries and passages, now largely obstructed by collapsed rubble and entrails.
Zaphod  had made a start clearing a way into one of them, but Marvin was able to
do  it  rather  faster.  Dank air wafted out of its dark recesses, and as Zaphod
shone a torch into it, little was visible in the dusty gloom.

"According  to the legends," he said, "the Magratheans lived most of their lives
underground."

"Why's   that?"   said   Arthur.   "Did  the  surface  become  too  polluted  or
overpopulated?"

"No,  I  don't  think  so," said Zaphod.  "I think they just didn't like it very
much."

"Are  you sure you know what you're doing?" said Trillian peering nervously into
the darkness.  "We've been attacked once already you know."

"Look kid, I promise you the live population of this planet is nil plus the four
of us, so come on, let's get on in there.  Er, hey Earthman ..."

"Arthur," said Arthur.

"Yeah  could you just sort of keep this robot with you and guard this end of the
passageway.  OK?"

"Guard?" said Arthur.  "What from?  You just said there's no one here."

"Yeah, well, just for safety, OK?" said Zaphod.

"Whose?  Yours or mine?"

"Good lad.  OK, here we go."

Zaphod scrambled down into the passage, followed by Trillian and Ford.

"Well I hope you all have a really miserable time," complained Arthur.

"Don't worry," Marvin assured him, "they will."

In a few seconds they had disappeared from view.

Arthur  stamped  around  in a huff, and then decided that a whale's graveyard is
not on the whole a good place to stamp around in.

Marvin eyed him balefully for a moment, and then turned himself off.

Zaphod  marched quickly down the passageway, nervous as hell, but trying to hide
it  by  striding  purposefully.  He flung the torch beam around.  The walls were
covered in dark tiles and were cold to the touch, the air thick with decay.

"There,  what  did I tell you?" he said.  "An inhabited planet.  Magrathea," and
he strode on through the dirt and debris that littered the tile floor.

Trillian  was reminded unavoidably of the London Underground, though it was less
thoroughly squalid.

At  intervals  along  the  walls  the  tiles gave way to large mosaics -- simple
angular  patterns  in  bright colours.  Trillian stopped and studied one of them
but could not interpret any sense in them.  She called to Zaphod.

"Hey, have you any idea what these strange symbols are?"

"I  think  they're  just  strange  symbols  of  some  kind," said Zaphod, hardly
glancing back.

Trillian shrugged and hurried after him.

From  time  to  time  a  doorway  led  either to the left or right into smallish
chambers  which  Ford  discovered to be full of derelict computer equipment.  He
dragged Zaphod into one to have a look.  Trillian followed.

"Look," said Ford, "you reckon this is Magrathea ..."

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "and we heard the voice, right?"

"OK,  so  I've  bought the fact that it's Magrathea -- for the moment.  What you
have  so  far  said nothing about is how in the Galaxy you found it.  You didn't
just look it up in a star atlas, that's for sure."

"Research.  Government archives.  Detective work.  Few lucky guesses.  Easy."

"And then you stole the Heart of Gold to come and look for it with?"

"I stole it to look for a lot of things."

"A lot of things?" said Ford in surprise.  "Like what?"

"I don't know."

"What?"

"I don't know what I'm looking for."

"Why not?"

"Because  ...   because ...  I think it might be because if I knew I wouldn't be
able to look for them."

"What, are you crazy?"

"It's a possibility I haven't ruled out yet," said Zaphod quietly.  "I only know
as  much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions.  And
its current conditions are not good."

For  a  long  time  nobody  said  anything  as  Ford gazed at Zaphod with a mind
suddenly full of worry.

"Listen old friend, if you want to ..." started Ford eventually.

"No,  wait  ...   I'll tell you something," said Zaphod.  "I freewheel a lot.  I
get  an  idea to do something, and, hey, why not, I do it.  I reckon I'll become
President of the Galaxy, and it just happens, it's easy.  I decide to steal this
ship.   I  decide  to look for Magrathea, and it all just happens.  Yeah, I work
out how it can best be done, right, but it always works out.  It's like having a
Galacticredit card which keeps on working though you never send off the cheques.
And  then  whenever  I stop and think -- why did I want to do something?  -- how
did  I  work  out  how  to  do  it?   -- I get a very strong desire just to stop
thinking about it.  Like I have now.  It's a big effort to talk about it."

Zaphod  paused for a while.  For a while there was silence.  Then he frowned and
said,  "Last night I was worrying about this again.  About the fact that part of
my  mind just didn't seem to work properly.  Then it occurred to me that the way
it  seemed  was  that  someone  else  was using my mind to have good ideas with,
without  telling  me  about  it.   I put the two ideas together and decided that
maybe  that  somebody had locked off part of my mind for that purpose, which was
why I couldn't use it.  I wondered if there was a way I could check.

"I  went  to the ship's medical bay and plugged myself into the encephelographic
screen.   I  went through every major screening test on both my heads -- all the
tests I had to go through under government medical officers before my nomination
for  Presidency  could  be  properly ratified.  They showed up nothing.  Nothing
unexpected at least.  They showed that I was clever, imaginative, irresponsible,
untrustworthy,  extrovert,  nothing  you  couldn't  have  guessed.  And no other
anomalies.   So  I  started  inventing  further  tests,  completely  at  random.
Nothing.   Then  I  tried  superimposing the results from one head on top of the
results  from  the other head.  Still nothing.  Finally I got silly, because I'd
given  it  all  up as nothing more than an attack of paranoia.  Last thing I did
before I packed it in was take the superimposed picture and look at it through a
green  filter.   You  remember  I was always superstitious about the color green
when I was a kid?  I always wanted to be a pilot on one of the trading scouts?"

Ford nodded.

"And  there  it was," said Zaphod, "clear as day.  A whole section in the middle
of  both  brains that related only to each other and not to anything else around
them.    Some  bastard  had  cauterized  all  the  synapses  and  electronically
traumatised those two lumps of cerebellum."

Ford stared at him, aghast.  Trillian had turned white.

"Somebody did that to you?" whispered Ford.

"Yeah."

"But have you any idea who?  Or why?"

"Why?  I can only guess.  But I do know who the bastard was."

"You know?  How do you know?"

"Because they left their initials burnt into the cauterized synapses.  They left
them there for me to see."

Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl.

"Initials?  Burnt into your brain?"

"Yeah."

"Well, what were they, for God's sake?"

Zaphod looked at him in silence again for a moment.  Then he looked away.

"Z.B.," he said.

At  that moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them and gas started to pour
into the chamber.

"I'll tell you about it later," choked Zaphod as all three passed out.

Chapter 21

On the surface of Magrathea Arthur wandered about moodily.

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

The  Hitch  Hiker's  Guide  to  the  Galaxy  is  a very unevenly edited book and
contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the
time.

One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates the experiences
of  one  Veet  Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon,
who   pursued   a   brilliant   academic   career  studying  ancient  philology,
transformational  ethics  and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception,
and  then,  after  a  night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod
Beeblebrox,  became  increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened
to all the biros he'd bought over the past few years.

There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all
the major centres of biro loss throughout the galaxy and eventually came up with
a  quaint  little  theory which quite caught the public imagination at the time.
Somewhere  in  the  cosmos,  he  said,  along  with all the planets inhabited by
humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of
the colour blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to biro life forms.
And  it  was to this planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping
away  quietly  through  wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could
enjoy  a  uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to highly biro-oriented stimuli,
and generally leading the biro equivalent of the good life.

And  as  theories  go  this  was  all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig
suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while
driving  a  limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was
taken  away, locked up, wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax exile, which
is  the  usual  fate  reserved  for  those  who are determined to make a fool of
themselves in public.

When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had
claimed  for  this  planet  they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a
solitary  old  man  who  claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was
later discovered to be lying.

There  did,  however, remain the question of both the mysterious 60,000 Altairan
dollars  paid  yearly  into  his Brantisvogan bank account, and of course Zaphod
Beeblebrox's highly profitable second-hand biro business.

Arthur read this, and put the book down.

The robot still sat there, completely inert.

Arthur got up and walked to the top of the crater.  He walked around the crater.
He watched two suns set magnificently over Magrathea.

He  went  back  down  into  the  crater.   He  woke  the robot up because even a
manically depressed robot is better to talk to than nobody.

"Night's falling," he said.  "Look robot, the stars are coming out."

From  the  heart of a dark nebula it is possible to see very few stars, and only
very faintly, but they were there to be seen.

The robot obediently looked at them, then looked back.

"I know," he said.  "Wretched isn't it?"

"But  that  sunset!   I've  never seen anything like it in my wildest dreams ...
the two suns!  It was like mountains of fire boiling into space."

"I've seen it," said Marvin.  "It's rubbish."

"We only ever had the one sun at home," persevered Arthur, "I came from a planet
called Earth you know."

"I know," said Marvin, "you keep going on about it.  It sounds awful."

"Ah no, it was a beautiful place."

"Did it have oceans?"

"Oh yes," said Arthur with a sigh, "great wide rolling blue oceans ..."

"Can't bear oceans," said Marvin.

"Tell me," inquired Arthur, "do you get on well with other robots?"

"Hate them," said Marvin.  "Where are you going?"

Arthur couldn't bear any more.  He had got up again.

"I think I'll just take another walk," he said.

"Don't  blame  you,"  said  Marvin  and  counted  five  hundred and ninety-seven
thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.

Arthur  slapped  his  arms about himself to try and get his circulation a little
more enthusiastic about its job.  He trudged back up the wall of the crater.

Because  the atmosphere was so thin and because there was no moon, nightfall was
very  rapid  and  it  was by now very dark.  Because of this, Arthur practically
walked into the old man before he noticed him.

Chapter 22

He was standing with his back to Arthur watching the very last glimmers of light
sink  into blackness behind the horizon.  He was tallish, elderly and dressed in
a  single  long  grey robe.  When he turned his face was thin and distinguished,
careworn  but  not unkind, the sort of face you would happily bank with.  But he
didn't turn yet, not even to react to Arthur's yelp of surprise.

Eventually the last rays of the sun had vanished completely, and he turned.  His
face was still illuminated from somewhere, and when Arthur looked for the source
of  the light he saw that a few yards away stood a small craft of some kind -- a
small hovercraft, Arthur guessed.  It shed a dim pool of light around it.

The man looked at Arthur, sadly it seemed.

"You choose a cold night to visit our dead planet," he said.

"Who ...  who are you?" stammered Arthur.

The man looked away.  Again a kind of sadness seemed to cross his face.

"My name is not important," he said.

He  seemed to have something on his mind.  Conversation was clearly something he
felt he didn't have to rush at.  Arthur felt awkward.

"I ...  er ...  you startled me ..." he said, lamely.

The man looked round to him again and slightly raised his eyebrows.

"Hmmmm?" he said.

"I said you startled me."

"Do not be alarmed, I will not harm you."

Arthur frowned at him.  "But you shot at us!  There were missiles ..." he said.

The man chuckled slightly.

"An automatic system," he said and gave a small sigh.  "Ancient computers ranged
in  the  bowels  of  the  planet tick away the dark millennia, and the ages hang
heavy  on  their dusty data banks.  I think they take the occasional pot shot to
relieve the monotony."

He looked gravely at Arthur and said, "I'm a great fan of science you know."

"Oh  ...  er, really?" said Arthur, who was beginning to find the man's curious,
kindly manner disconcerting.

"Oh, yes," said the old man, and simply stopped talking again.

"Ah," said Arthur, "er ..." He had an odd felling of being like a man in the act
of  adultery  who  is  surprised when the woman's husband wanders into the room,
changes  his  trousers,  passes  a few idle remarks about the weather and leaves
again.

"You seem ill at ease," said the old man with polite concern.

"Er,  no  ...  well, yes.  Actually you see, we weren't really expecting to find
anybody  about  in fact.  I sort of gathered that you were all dead or something
..."

"Dead?" said the old man.  "Good gracious no, we have but slept."

"Slept?" said Arthur incredulously.

"Yes,  through  the  economic  recession  you see," said the old man, apparently
unconcerned about whether Arthur understood a word he was talking about or not.

"Er, economic recession?"

"Well you see, five million years ago the Galactic economy collapsed, and seeing
that custom-made planets are something of a luxury commodity you see ..."

He paused and looked at Arthur.

"You know we built planets do you?" he asked solemnly.

"Well yes," said Arthur, "I'd sort of gathered ..."

"Fascinating  trade,"  said  the old man, and a wistful look came into his eyes,
"doing  the  coastlines was always my favourite.  Used to have endless fun doing
the  little  bits  in  fjords ...  so anyway," he said trying to find his thread
again, "the recession came and we decided it would save us a lot of bother if we
just  slept through it.  So we programmed the computers to revive us when it was
all over."

The man stifled a very slight yawn and continued.

"The computers were index linked to the Galactic stock market prices you see, so
that  we'd  all be revived when everybody else had rebuilt the economy enough to
afford our rather expensive services."

Arthur, a regular Guardian reader, was deeply shocked at this.

"That's a pretty unpleasant way to behave isn't it?"

"Is it?" asked the old man mildly.  "I'm sorry, I'm a bit out of touch."

He pointed down into the crater.

"Is that robot yours?" he said.

"No," came a thin metallic voice from the crater, "I'm mine."

"If  you'd  call  it a robot," muttered Arthur.  "It's more a sort of electronic
sulking machine."

"Bring  it,"  said  the  old  man.  Arthur was quite surprised to hear a note of
decision  suddenly  present  in  the  old  man's voice.  He called to Marvin who
crawled up the slope making a big show of being lame, which he wasn't.

"On  second thoughts," said the old man, "leave it here.  You must come with me.
Great  things  are afoot." He turned towards his craft which, though no apparent
signal had been given, now drifted quietly towards them through the dark.

Arthur  looked down at Marvin, who now made an equally big show of turning round
laboriously  and trudging off down into the crater again muttering sour nothings
to himself.

"Come," called the old man, "come now or you will be late."

"Late?" said Arthur.  "What for?"

"What is your name, human?"

"Dent.  Arthur Dent," said Arthur.

"Late,  as in the late Dentarthurdent," said the old man, sternly.  "It's a sort
of  threat  you  see." Another wistful look came into his tired old eyes.  "I've
never been very good at them myself, but I'm told they can be very effective."

Arthur blinked at him.

"What an extraordinary person," he muttered to himself.

"I beg your pardon?" said the old man.

"Oh  nothing,  I'm  sorry," said Arthur in embarrassment.  "Alright, where do we
go?"

"In  my  aircar,"  said the old man motioning Arthur to get into the craft which
had  settled  silently  next to them.  "We are going deep into the bowels of the
planet  where  even  now  our  race  is being revived from its five-million-year
slumber.  Magrathea awakes."

Arthur  shivered  involuntarily  as  he seated himself next to the old man.  The
strangeness  of  it,  the silent bobbing movement of the craft as it soared into
the night sky quite unsettled him.

He  looked  at the old man, his face illuminated by the dull glow of tiny lights
on the instrument panel.

"Excuse me," he said to him, "what is your name by the way?"

"My  name?"  said  the  old man, and the same distant sadness came into his face
again.  He paused.  "My name," he said, "...  is Slartibartfast."

Arthur practically choked.

"I beg your pardon?" he spluttered.

"Slartibartfast," repeated the old man quietly.

"Slartibartfast?"

The old man looked at him gravely.

"I said it wasn't important," he said.

The aircar sailed through the night.

Chapter 23

It  is  an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem.
For  instance,  on  the  planet  Earth,  man had always assumed that he was more
intelligent  than  dolphins  because  he  had achieved so much -- the wheel, New
York,  wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in
the  water having a good time.  But conversely, the dolphins had always believed
that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.

Curiously  enough,  the  dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of
the  planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind of the danger; but
most  of  their  communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch
footballs  or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth
by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived.

The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated
attempt to do a double-backwards- somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the
"Star  Sprangled  Banner", but in fact the message was this:  So long and thanks
for all the fish.

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins,
and  they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running
round  inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments
on   man.    The  fact  that  once  again  man  completely  misinterpreted  this
relationship was entirely according to these creatures' plans.

Chapter 24

Silently  the  aircar  coasted  through the cold darkness, a single soft glow of
light  that  was  utterly  alone in the deep Magrathean night.  It sped swiftly.
Arthur's  companion  seemed sunk in his own thoughts, and when Arthur tried on a
couple of occasions to engage him in conversation again he would simply reply by
asking if he was comfortable enough, and then left it at that.

Arthur tried to gauge the speed at which they were travelling, but the blackness
outside  was  absolute  and  he  was  denied any reference points.  The sense of
motion was so soft and slight he could almost believe they were hardly moving at
all.

Then  a  tiny  glow of light appeared in the far distance and within seconds had
grown  so  much in size that Arthur realized it was travelling towards them at a
colossal  speed,  and  he  tried to make out what sort of craft it might be.  He
peered  at it, but was unable to discern any clear shape, and suddenly gasped in
alarm as the aircraft dipped sharply and headed downwards in what seemed certain
to  be  a  collision  course.   Their relative velocity seemed unbelievable, and
Arthur had hardly time to draw breath before it was all over.  The next thing he
was  aware of was an insane silver blur that seemed to surround him.  He twisted
his  head  sharply  round  and  saw a small black point dwindling rapidly in the
distance  behind  them,  and  it  took  him  several seconds to realize what had
happened.

They had plunged into a tunnel in the ground.  The colossal speed had been their
own relative to the glow of light which was a stationary hole in the ground, the
mouth  of  the  tunnel.   The insane blur of silver was the circular wall of the
tunnel  down  which  they  were shooting, apparently at several hundred miles an
hour.

He closed his eyes in terror.

After  a  length  of  time which he made no attempt to judge, he sensed a slight
subsidence  in  their  speed  and  some  while later became aware that they were
gradually gliding to a gentle halt.

He  opened  his eyes again.  They were still in the silver tunnel, threading and
weaving  their way through what appeared to be a crisscross warren of converging
tunnels.   When  they finally stopped it was in a small chamber of curved steel.
Several  tunnels  also  had  their  terminus here, and at the farther end of the
chamber  Arthur  could  see  a  large  circle  of  dim irritating light.  It was
irritating because it played tricks with the eyes, it was impossible to focus on
it properly or tell how near or far it was.  Arthur guessed (quite wrongly) that
it might be ultra violet.

Slartibartfast turned and regarded Arthur with his solemn old eyes.

"Earthman," he said, "we are now deep in the heart of Magrathea."

"How did you know I was an Earthman?" demanded Arthur.

"These things will become clear to you," said the old man gently, "at least," he
added with slight doubt in his voice, "clearer than they are at the moment."

He  continued:   "I  should  warn you that the chamber we are about to pass into
does  not literally exist within our planet.  It is a little too ...  large.  We
are  about  to  pass  through a gateway into a vast tract of hyperspace.  It may
disturb you."

Arthur made nervous noises.

Slartibartfast  touched  a  button  and  added,  not entirely reassuringly.  "It
scares the willies out of me.  Hold tight."

The  car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had
a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like.

It  wasn't  infinity  in  fact.   Infinity  itself looks flat and uninteresting.
Looking  up  into  the  night  sky  is  looking  into  infinity  --  distance is
incomprehensible  and  therefore meaningless.  The chamber into which the aircar
emerged  was  anything  but infinite, it was just very very big, so that it gave
the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself.

Arthur's senses bobbed and span, as, travelling at the immense speed he knew the
aircar  attained,  they  climbed slowly through the open air leaving the gateway
through  which  they  had  passed  an  invisible pinprick in the shimmering wall
behind them.

The wall.

The  wall defied the imagination -- seduced it and defeated it.  The wall was so
paralysingly  vast  and  sheer that its top, bottom and sides passed away beyond
the reach of sight.  The mere shock of vertigo could kill a man.

The  wall  appeared  perfectly  flat.   It would take the finest laser measuring
equipment  to  detect  that as it climbed, apparently to infinity, as it dropped
dizzily  away,  as  it planed out to either side, it also curved.  It met itself
again thirteen light seconds away.  In other words the wall formed the inside of
a  hollow  sphere,  a  sphere  over  three million miles across and flooded with
unimaginable light.

"Welcome," said Slartibartfast as the tiny speck that was the aircar, travelling
now  at  three  times  the  speed of sound, crept imperceptibly forward into the
mindboggling space, "welcome," he said, "to our factory floor."

Arthur stared about him in a kind of wonderful horror.  Ranged away before them,
at  distances he could neither judge nor even guess at, were a series of curious
suspensions,  delicate traceries of metal and light hung about shadowy spherical
shapes that hung in the space.

"This," said Slartibartfast, "is where we make most of our planets you see."

"You  mean," said Arthur, trying to form the words, "you mean you're starting it
all up again now?"

"No  no,  good  heavens no," exclaimed the old man, "no, the Galaxy isn't nearly
rich  enough  to  support  us  yet.  No, we've been awakened to perform just one
extraordinary  commission  for very ...  special clients from another dimension.
It may interest you ...  there in the distance in front of us."

Arthur  followed the old man's finger, till he was able to pick out the floating
structure  he  was  pointing  out.   It  was  indeed  the  only  one of the many
structures  that  betrayed any sign of activity about it, though this was more a
sublimal impression than anything one could put one's finger on.

At  the moment however a flash of light arced through the structure and revealed
in  stark  relief  the  patterns  that  were  formed  on the dark sphere within.
Patterns  that  Arthur knew, rough blobby shapes that were as familiar to him as
the  shapes  of  words, part of the furniture of his mind.  For a few seconds he
sat  in  stunned  silence as the images rushed around his mind and tried to find
somewhere to settle down and make sense.

Part  of  his  brain told him that he knew perfectly well what he was looking at
and  what  the  shapes  represented  whilst  another  quite  sensibly refused to
countenance  the  idea  and abdicated responsibility for any further thinking in
that direction.

The flash came again, and this time there could be no doubt.

"The Earth ..." whispered Arthur.

"Well,  the  Earth  Mark  Two  in fact," said Slartibartfast cheerfully.  "We're
making a copy from our original blueprints."

There was a pause.

"Are  you  trying  to  tell me," said Arthur, slowly and with control, "that you
originally ...  made the Earth?"

"Oh  yes," said Slartibartfast.  "Did you ever go to a place ...  I think it was
called Norway?"

"No," said Arthur, "no, I didn't."

"Pity,"  said  Slartibartfast,  "that  was  one of mine.  Won an award you know.
Lovely crinkly edges.  I was most upset to hear about its destruction."

"You were upset!"

"Yes.  Five minutes later and it wouldn't have mattered so much.  It was a quite
shocking cock-up."

"Huh?" said Arthur.

"The mice were furious."

"The mice were furious?"

"Oh yes," said the old man mildly.

"Yes well so I expect were the dogs and cats and duckbilled platypuses, but ..."

"Ah, but they hadn't paid for it you see, had they?"

"Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went
mad now?"

For  a  while  the  aircar  flew  on in awkward silence.  Then the old man tried
patiently to explain.

"Earthman,  the planet you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice.
It  was destroyed five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it
was built, and we've got to build another one."

Only one word registered with Arthur.

"Mice?" he said.

"Indeed Earthman."

"Look,  sorry  --  are  we  talking about the little white furry things with the
cheese  fixation  and  women  standing  on tables screaming in early sixties sit
coms?"

Slartibartfast coughed politely.

"Earthman,"  he  said,  "it  is  sometimes  hard  to follow your mode of speech.
Remember  I  have  been  asleep inside this planet of Magrathea for five million
years and know little of these early sixties sit coms of which you speak.  These
creatures  you  call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear.  They are
merely   the  protrusion  into  our  dimension  of  vast  hyperintelligent  pan-
dimensional  beings.   The  whole  business with the cheese and the squeaking is
just a front."

The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued.

"They've been experimenting on you I'm afraid."

Arthur thought about this for a second, and then his face cleared.

"Ah  no,"  he said, "I see the source of the misunderstanding now.  No, look you
see,  what happened was that we used to do experiments on them.  They were often
used  in  behavioural  research,  Pavlov  and  all  that sort of stuff.  So what
happened  was  hat  the  mice  would be set all sorts of tests, learning to ring
bells,  run  around  mazes  and  things so that the whole nature of the learning
process  could  be  examined.   From our observations of their behaviour we were
able to learn all sorts of things about our own ..."

Arthur's voice tailed off.

"Such subtlety ..." said Slartibartfast, "one has to admire it."

"What?" said Arthur.

"How  better  to  disguise  their  real  natures,  and  how better to guide your
thinking.   Suddenly  running down a maze the wrong way, eating the wrong bit of
cheese,  unexpectedly dropping dead of myxomatosis, -- if it's finely calculated
the cumulative effect is enormous."

He paused for effect.

"You  see,  Earthman,  they  really  are  particularly  clever  hyperintelligent
pan-dimensional  beings.   Your  planet  and people have formed the matrix of an
organic computer running a ten- million-year research programme ...

"Let me tell you the whole story.  It'll take a little time."

"Time," said Arthur weakly, "is not currently one of my problems."

Chapter 25

There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most
popular are Why are people born?  Why do they die?  Why do they want to spend so
much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?

Many  many  millions  of  years  ago a race of hyperintelligent pan- dimensional
beings  (whose  physical  manifestation in their own pan-dimensional universe is
not  dissimilar  to our own) got so fed up with the constant bickering about the
meaning  of  life  which  used  to interrupt their favourite pastime of Brockian
Ultra  Cricket  (a  curious  game  which involved suddenly hitting people for no
readily apparent reason and then running away) that they decided to sit down and
solve their problems once and for all.

And  to  this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer which was so
amazingly  intelligent  that even before the data banks had been connected up it
had  started from I think therefore I am and got as far as the existence of rice
pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off.

It was the size of a small city.

Its main console was installed in a specially designed executive office, mounted
on  an enormous executive desk of finest ultramahagony topped with rich ultrared
leather.   The  dark  carpeting  was discreetly sumptuous, exotic pot plants and
tastefully  engraved  prints  of  the  principal  computer programmers and their
families  were deployed liberally about the room, and stately windows looked out
upon a tree-lined public square.

On  the  day  of the Great On-Turning two soberly dressed programmers with brief
cases  arrived  and were shown discreetly into the office.  They were aware that
this day they would represent their entire race in its greatest moment, but they
conducted  themselves calmly and quietly as they seated themselves deferentially
before  the  desk,  opened  their  brief  cases and took out their leather-bound
notebooks.

Their names were Lunkwill and Fook.

For a few moments they sat in respectful silence, then, after exchanging a quiet
glance with Fook, Lunkwill leaned forward and touched a small black panel.

The subtlest of hums indicated that the massive computer was now in total active
mode.  After a pause it spoke to them in a voice rich resonant and deep.

It  said:   "What  is  this  great  task  for  which I, Deep Thought, the second
greatest  computer  in  the  Universe  of  Time  and Space have been called into
existence?"

Lunkwill and Fook glanced at each other in surprise.

 "Your task, O Computer ..." began Fook.

"No,  wait  a minute, this isn't right," said Lunkwill, worried.  "We distinctly
designed  this computer to be the greatest one ever and we're not making do with
second  best.   Deep  Thought,"  he  addressed  the computer, "are you not as we
designed you to be, the greatest most powerful computer in all time?"

"I  described  myself as the second greatest," intoned Deep Thought, "and such I
am."

Another  worried  look passed between the two programmers.  Lunkwill cleared his
throat.

"There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greatest computer than the
Milliard   Gargantubrain  which  can  count  all  the  atoms  in  a  star  in  a
millisecond?"

"The  Milliard  Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt.  "A
mere abacus -- mention it not."

"And  are you not," said Fook leaning anxiously forward, "a greater analyst than
the  Googleplex  Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which
can  calculate  the  trajectory  of  every  single  dust  particle  throughout a
five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?"

"A  five-week  sand blizzard?" said Deep Thought haughtily.  "You ask this of me
who  have  contemplated  the  very  vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself?
Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."

The  two  programmers  sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment.  Then Lunkwill
leaned forward again.

"But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the Great Hyperlobic
Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus 12, the Magic and Indefatigable?"

"The   Great  Hyperlobic  Omni-Cognate  Neutron  Wrangler,"  said  Deep  Thought
thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan MegaDonkey
-- but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterwards."

"Then what," asked Fook, "is the problem?"

"There  is no problem," said Deep Thought with magnificent ringing tones.  "I am
simply the second greatest computer in the Universe of Space and Time."

"But  the  second?"  insisted  Lunkwill.   "Why  do  you keep saying the second?
You're  surely  not thinking of the Multicorticoid Perspicutron Titan Muller are
you?  Or the Pondermatic?  Or the ..."

Contemptuous lights flashed across the computer's console.

"I  spare  not  a  single  unit  of  thought on these cybernetic simpletons!" he
boomed.  "I speak of none but the computer that is to come after me!"

Fook  was  losing patience.  He pushed his notebook aside and muttered, "I think
this is getting needlessly messianic."

"You  know  nothing  of  future  time,"  pronounced Deep Thought, "and yet in my
teeming   circuitry  I  can  navigate  the  infinite  delta  streams  of  future
probability  and  see  that  there  must  one  day  come a computer whose merest
operational  parameters  I  am  not worthy to calculate, but which it will be my
fate eventually to design."

Fook sighed heavily and glanced across to Lunkwill.

"Can we get on and ask the question?" he said.

Lunkwill motioned him to wait.

"What computer is this of which you speak?" he asked.

"I  will speak of it no further in this present time," said Deep Thought.  "Now.
Ask what else of me you will that I may function.  Speak."

They shrugged at each other.  Fook composed himself.

"O Deep Thought Computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is
this.  We want you to tell us ..." he paused, "...  the Answer!"

"The answer?" said Deep Thought.  "The answer to what?"

"Life!" urged Fook.

"The Universe!" said Lunkwill.

"Everything!" they said in chorus.

Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection.

"Tricky," he said finally.

"But can you do it?"

Again, a significant pause.

"Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it."

"There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement."

"A simple answer?" added Lunkwill.

"Yes,"  said  Deep  Thought.   "Life, the Universe, and Everything.  There is an
answer.  But," he added, "I'll have to think about it."

A  sudden  commotion destroyed the moment:  the door flew open and two angry men
wearing  the  coarse  faded-blue robes and belts of the Cruxwan University burst
into  the  room, thrusting aside the ineffectual flunkies who tried to bar their
way.

"We  demand  admission!"  shouted  the  younger of the two men elbowing a pretty
young secretary in the throat.

"Come  on,"  shouted  the older one, "you can't keep us out!" He pushed a junior
programmer back through the door.

"We  demand  that  you can't keep us out!" bawled the younger one, though he was
now firmly inside the room and no further attempts were being made to stop him.

"Who are you?" said Lunkwill, rising angrily from his seat.  "What do you want?"

"I am Majikthise!" announced the older one.

"And I demand that I am Vroomfondel!" shouted the younger one.

Majikthise  turned  on  Vroomfondel.  "It's alright," he explained angrily, "you
don't need to demand that."

"Alright!" bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby desk.  "I am Vroomfondel, and
that is not a demand, that is a solid fact!  What we demand is solid facts!"

"No  we  don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation.  "That is precisely what we
don't demand!"

Scarcely  pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts!
What  we  demand  is a total absence of solid facts.  I demand that I may or may
not be Vroomfondel!"

"But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook.

"We," said Majikthise, "are Philosophers."

"Though  we  may  not  be,"  said  Vroomfondel  waving  a  warning finger at the
programmers.

"Yes   we   are,"  insisted  Majikthise.   "We  are  quite  definitely  here  as
representatives  of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and
Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!"

"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.

"I'll  tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's
the problem!"

"We  demand,"  yelled  Vroomfondel,  "that  demarcation  may  or  may not be the
problem!"

"You  just  let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and
we'll  take care of the eternal verities thank you very much.  You want to check
your  legal  position  you  do  mate.  Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is
quite  clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers.  Any bloody
machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we?  I
mean  what's  the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or
may  not  be  a  God  if  this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone
number the next morning?"

"That's  right!"  shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt
and uncertainty!"

Suddenly a stentorian voice boomed across the room.

"Might I make an observation at this point?" inquired Deep Thought.

"We'll go on strike!" yelled Vroomfondel.

"That's right!" agreed Majikthise.  "You'll have a national Philosopher's strike
on your hands!"

The  hum  level  in the room suddenly increased as several ancillary bass driver
units,  mounted  in  sedately  carved  and varnished cabinet speakers around the
room, cut in to give Deep Thought's voice a little more power.

"All  I  wanted  to  say,"  bellowed  the computer, "is that my circuits are now
irrevocably  committed  to  calculating  the  answer to the Ultimate Question of
Life,  the  Universe, and Everything --" he paused and satisfied himself that he
now had everyone's attention, before continuing more quietly, "but the programme
will take me a little while to run."

Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.

"How long?" he said.

"Seven and a half million years," said Deep Thought.

Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other.

"Seven and a half million years ...!" they cried in chorus.

"Yes,"  declaimed  Deep  Thought,  "I said I'd have to think about it, didn't I?
And  it  occurs  to  me that running a programme like this is bound to create an
enormous  amount  of  popular  publicity  for  the  whole  area of philosophy in
general.   Everyone's  going  to  have  their own theories about what answer I'm
eventually  to  come  up with, and who better to capitalize on that media market
than  you  yourself?   So  long  as  you  can  keep  disagreeing with each other
violently  enough and slagging each other off in the popular press, you can keep
yourself on the gravy train for life.  How does that sound?"

The two philosophers gaped at him.

"Bloody  hell,"  said  Majikthise,  "now  that  is  what  I call thinking.  Here
Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?"

"Dunno,"  said  Vroomfondel  in  an  awed whisper, "think our brains must be too
highly trained Majikthise."

So  saying,  they  turned  on  their heels and walked out of the door and into a
lifestyle beyond their wildest dreams.

Chapter 26

"Yes,  very salutary," said Arthur, after Slartibartfast had related the salient
points  of the story to him, "but I don't understand what all this has got to do
with the Earth and mice and things."

"That  is  but the first half of the story Earthman," said the old man.  "If you
would  care  to  discover  what happened seven and a half millions later, on the
great  day  of  the  Answer,  allow  me  to invite you to my study where you can
experience  the  events yourself on our Sens-O-Tape records.  That is unless you
would  care  to take a quick stroll on the surface of New Earth.  It's only half
completed I'm afraid -- we haven't even finished burying the artificial dinosaur
skeletons in the crust yet, then we have the Tertiary and Quarternary Periods of
the Cenozoic Era to lay down, and ..."

"No thank you," said Arthur, "it wouldn't be quite the same."

"No,"  said  Slartibartfast,  "it  won't be," and he turned the aircar round and
headed back towards the mind-numbing wall.

Chapter 27

Slartibartfast's  study  was a total mess, like the results of an explosion in a
public library.  The old man frowned as they stepped in.

"Terribly  unfortunate,"  he  said,  "a  diode  blew  in one of the life-support
computers.  When we tried to revive our cleaning staff we discovered they'd been
dead  for  nearly  thirty thousand years.  Who's going to clear away the bodies,
that's what I want to know.  Look why don't you sit yourself down over there and
let me plug you in?"

He  gestured  Arthur  towards a chair which looked as if it had been made out of
the rib cage of a stegosaurus.

"It  was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus," explained the old man as he
pottered  about fishing bits of wire out from under tottering piles of paper and
drawing  instruments.   "Here,"  he  said,  "hold these," and passed a couple of
stripped wire end to Arthur.

The instant he took hold of them a bird flew straight through him.

He was suspended in mid-air and totally invisible to himself.  Beneath him was a
pretty treelined city square, and all around it as far as the eye could see were
white concrete buildings of airy spacious design but somewhat the worse for wear
--  many were cracked and stained with rain.  Today however the sun was shining,
a  fresh breeze danced lightly through the trees, and the odd sensation that all
the  buildings  were  quietly  humming  was probably caused by the fact that the
square and all the streets around it were thronged with cheerful excited people.
Somewhere  a  band  was  playing, brightly coloured flags were fluttering in the
breeze and the spirit of carnival was in the air.

Arthur  felt  extraordinarily lonely stuck up in the air above it all without so
much  as  a  body to his name, but before he had time to reflect on this a voice
rang out across the square and called for everyone's attention.

A  man  standing  on  a  brightly dressed dais before the building which clearly
dominated the square was addressing the crowd over a Tannoy.

"O  people  waiting  in  the  Shadow  of Deep Thought!" he cried out.  "Honoured
Descendants   of  Vroomfondel  and  Majikthise,  the  Greatest  and  Most  Truly
Interesting  Pundits  the  Universe  has  ever known ...  The Time of Waiting is
over!"

Wild  cheers  broke  out  amongst the crowd.  Flags, streamers and wolf whistles
sailed  through  the  air.   The  narrower streets looked rather like centipedes
rolled over on their backs and frantically waving their legs in the air.

"Seven and a half million years our race has waited for this Great and Hopefully
Enlightening Day!" cried the cheer leader.  "The Day of the Answer!"

Hurrahs burst from the ecstatic crowd.

"Never  again,"  cried  the man, "never again will we wake up in the morning and
think  Who  am  I?   What  is  my  purpose  in life?  Does it really, cosmically
speaking,  matter  if  I don't get up and go to work?  For today we will finally
learn  once  and for all the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little
problems of Life, the Universe and Everything!"

As  the  crowd  erupted once again, Arthur found himself gliding through the air
and  down  towards  one  of  the large stately windows on the first floor of the
building behind the dais from which the speaker was addressing the crowd.

He  experienced  a  moment's  panic  as  he  sailed straight through towards the
window,  which  passed  when  a  second  or  so later he found he had gone right
through the solid glass without apparently touching it.

No  one in the room remarked on his peculiar arrival, which is hardly surprising
as  he wasn't there.  He began to realize that the whole experience was merely a
recorded  projection  which  knocked  six-track seventy-millimetre into a cocked
hat.

The  room  was  much  as  Slartibartfast  had described it.  In seven and a half
million  years it had been well looked after and cleaned regularly every century
or  so.  The ultramahagony desk was worn at the edges, the carpet a little faded
now,  but  the  large  computer  terminal  sat  in sparkling glory on the desk's
leather top, as bright as if it had been constructed yesterday.

Two severely dressed men sat respectfully before the terminal and waited.

"The  time  is nearly upon us," said one, and Arthur was surprised to see a word
suddenly  materialize  in  thin  air  just  by  the  man's  neck.   The word was
Loonquawl,  and  it flashed a couple of times and the disappeared again.  Before
Arthur  was  able  to  assimilate  this the other man spoke and the word Phouchg
appeared by his neck.

"Seventy-five  thousand  generations  ago,  our  ancestors  set  this program in
motion," the second man said, "and in all that time we will be the first to hear
the computer speak."

"An  awesome  prospect,  Phouchg,"  agreed  the  first  man, and Arthur suddenly
realized that he was watching a recording with subtitles.

"We are the ones who will hear," said Phouchg, "the answer to the great question
of Life ...!"

"The Universe ...!" said Loonquawl.

"And Everything ...!"

"Shhh," said Loonquawl with a slight gesture, "I think Deep Thought is preparing
to speak!"

There  was  a  moment's expectant pause whilst panels slowly came to life on the
front of the console.  Lights flashed on and off experimentally and settled down
into  a  businesslike  pattern.   A  soft  low  hum  came from the communication
channel.

"Good morning," said Deep Thought at last.

"Er  ...   Good morning, O Deep Thought," said Loonquawl nervously, "do you have
...  er, that is ..."

"An answer for you?" interrupted Deep Thought majestically.  "Yes.  I have."

The two men shivered with expectancy.  Their waiting had not been in vain.

"There really is one?" breathed Phouchg.

"There really is one," confirmed Deep Thought.

"To Everything?  To the great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything?"

"Yes."

Both  of  the  men  had  been  trained  for  this moment, their lives had been a
preparation  for  it, they had been selected at birth as those who would witness
the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and squirming like excited
children.

"And you're ready to give it to us?" urged Loonquawl.

"I am."

"Now?"

"Now," said Deep Thought.

They both licked their dry lips.

"Though I don't think," added Deep Thought, "that you're going to like it."

"Doesn't matter!" said Phouchg.  "We must know it!  Now!"

"Now?" inquired Deep Thought.

"Yes!  Now ..."

"Alright,"  said  the  computer  and  settled  into  silence again.  The two men
fidgeted.  The tension was unbearable.

"You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought.

"Tell us!"

"Alright," said Deep Thought.  "The Answer to the Great Question ..."

"Yes ...!"

"Of Life, the Universe and Everything ..." said Deep Thought.

"Yes ...!"

"Is ..." said Deep Thought, and paused.

"Yes ...!"

"Is ..."

"Yes ...!!!...?"

"Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

Chapter 28

It was a long time before anyone spoke.

Out  of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea of tense expectant faces
down in the square outside.

"We're going to get lynched aren't we?" he whispered.

"It was a tough assignment," said Deep Thought mildly.

"Forty-two!"  yelled Loonquawl.  "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a
half million years' work?"

"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is
the  answer.   I  think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've
never actually known what the question is."

"But it was the Great Question!  The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and
Everything!" howled Loonquawl.

"Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, "but what
actually is it?"

A  slow  stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and
then at each other.

"Well,  you  know,  it's  just  Everything  ...  Everything ..." offered Phouchg
weakly.

"Exactly!"  said  Deep Thought.  "So once you do know what the question actually
is, you'll know what the answer means."

"Oh  terrific,"  muttered  Phouchg flinging aside his notebook and wiping away a
tiny tear.

"Look,  alright,  alright,"  said  Loonquawl,  "can  you just please tell us the
Question?"

"The Ultimate Question?"

"Yes!"

"Of Life, the Universe, and Everything?"

"Yes!"

Deep Thought pondered this for a moment.

"Tricky," he said.

"But can you do it?" cried Loonquawl.

Deep Thought pondered this for another long moment.

Finally:  "No," he said firmly.

Both men collapsed on to their chairs in despair.

"But I'll tell you who can," said Deep Thought.

They both looked up sharply.

"Who?" "Tell us!"

Suddenly  Arthur  began to feel his apparently non-existent scalp begin to crawl
as  he  found  himself moving slowly but inexorably forward towards the console,
but it was only a dramatic zoom on the part of whoever had made the recording he
assumed.

"I speak of none other than the computer that is to come after me," intoned Deep
Thought,  his  voice  regaining  its  accustomed declamatory tones.  "A computer
whose  merest  operational  parameters I am not worthy to calculate -- and yet I
will  design  it  for  you.   A computer which can calculate the Question to the
Ultimate  Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic
life itself shall form part of its operational matrix.  And you yourselves shall
take on new forms and go down into the computer to navigate its ten-million-year
program!   Yes!  I shall design this computer for you.  And I shall name it also
unto you.  And it shall be called ...  The Earth."

Phouchg gaped at Deep Thought.

"What  a dull name," he said and great incisions appeared down the length of his
body.   Loonquawl  too  suddenly  sustained  horrific  gashed from nowhere.  The
Computer  console blotched and cracked, the walls flickered and crumbled and the
room crashed upwards into its own ceiling ...

Slartibartfast was standing in front of Arthur holding the two wires.

"End of the tape," he explained.

Chapter 29

"Zaphod!  Wake up!"

"Mmmmmwwwwwerrrrr?"

"Hey come on, wake up."

"Just  let  me stick to what I'm good at, yeah?" muttered Zaphod and rolled away
from the voice back to sleep.

"Do you want me to kick you?" said Ford.

"Would it give you a lot of pleasure?" said Zaphod, blearily.

"No."

"Nor me.  So what's the point?  Stop bugging me." Zaphod curled himself up.

"He  got  a  double  dose  of  the gas," said Trillian looking down at him, "two
windpipes."

"And  stop  talking,"  said  Zaphod,  "it's  hard enough trying to sleep anyway.
What's the matter with the ground?  It's all cold and hard."

"It's gold," said Ford.

With  an  amazingly  balletic  movement  Zaphod  was  standing  and scanning the
horizon,  because that was how far the gold ground stretched in every direction,
perfectly smooth and solid.  It gleamed like ...  it's impossible to say what it
gleamed like because nothing in the Universe gleams in quite the same way that a
planet of solid gold does.

"Who put all that there?" yelped Zaphod, goggle-eyed.

"Don't get excited," said Ford, "it's only a catalogue."

"A who?"

"A catalogue," said Trillian, "an illusion."

"How can you say that?" cried Zaphod, falling to his hands and knees and staring
at  the  ground.   He  poked it and prodded it with his fingernail.  It was very
heavy  and  very  slightly soft -- he could mark it with his fingernail.  It was
very yellow and very shiny, and when he breathed on it his breath evaporated off
it in that very peculiar and special way that breath evaporates off solid gold.

"Trillian and I came round a while ago," said Ford.  "We shouted and yelled till
somebody  came and then carried on shouting and yelling till they got fed up and
put  us  in  their planet catalogue to keep us busy till they were ready to deal
with us.  This is all Sens-O-Tape."

Zaphod stared at him bitterly.

"Ah, shit," he said, "you wake me up from my own perfectly good dream to show me
somebody else's." He sat down in a huff.

"What's that series of valleys over there?" he said.

"Hallmark," said Ford.  "We had a look."

"We  didn't wake you earlier," said Trillian.  "The last planet was knee deep in
fish."

"Fish?"

"Some people like the oddest things."

"And  before  that,"  said  Ford, "we had platinum.  Bit dull.  We thought you'd
like to see this one though."

Seas of light glared at them in one solid blaze wherever they looked.

"Very pretty," said Zaphod petulantly.

In  the  sky  a huge green catalogue number appeared.  It flickered and changed,
and when they looked around again so had the land.

As with one voice they all went, "Yuch."

The  sea  was  purple.   The  beach they were on was composed of tiny yellow and
green  pebbles  --  presumably  terribly  precious stones.  The mountains in the
distance seemed soft and undulating with red peaks.  Nearby stood a solid silver
beach table with a frilly mauve parasol and silver tassles.

In  the  sky  a  huge  sign  appeared, replacing the catalogue number.  It said,
Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you.  We are not proud.

And five hundred entirely naked women dropped out of the sky on parachutes.

In  a  moment  the  scene  vanished and left them in a springtime meadow full of
cows.

"Ow!" said Zaphod.  "My brains!"

"You want to talk about it?" said Ford.

"Yeah, OK," said Zaphod, and all three sat down and ignored the scenes that came
and went around them.

"I  figure  this," said Zaphod.  "Whatever happened to my mind, I did it.  And I
did  it  in  such a way that it wouldn't be detected by the government screening
tests.  And I wasn't to know anything about it myself.  Pretty crazy, right?"

The other two nodded in agreement.

"So  I reckon, what's so secret that I can't let anybody know I know it, not the
Galactic  Government,  not  even  myself?   And  the  answer  is  I  don't know.
Obviously.   But I put a few things together and I can begin to guess.  When did
I  decide  to  run  for  President?  Shortly after the death of President Yooden
Vranx.  You remember Yooden, Ford?"

"Yeah,"  said  Ford,  "he  was  that  guy we met when we were kids, the Arcturan
captain.   He  was  a  gas.   He gave us conkers when you bust your way into his
megafreighter.  Said you were the most amazing kid he'd ever met."

"What's all this?" said Trillian.

"Ancient  history,"  said  Ford, "when we were kids together on Betelgeuse.  The
Arcturan  megafreighters  used  to  carry  most  of  the bulky trade between the
Galactic  Centre  and the outlying regions The Betelgeuse trading scouts used to
find  the  markets  and  the  Arcturans  would  supply them.  There was a lot of
trouble with space pirates before they were wiped out in the Dordellis wars, and
the  megafreighters  had  to be equipped with the most fantastic defence shields
known  to Galactic science.  They were real brutes of ships, and huge.  In orbit
round a planet they would eclipse the sun.

"One  day, young Zaphod here decides to raid one.  On a tri-jet scooter designed
for  stratosphere work, a mere kid.  I mean forget it, it was crazier than a mad
monkey.   I  went along for the ride because I'd got some very safe money on him
not  doing  it,  and  didn't  want  him coming back with fake evidence.  So what
happens?   We  got  in his tri-jet which he had souped up into something totally
other,  crossed  three  parsecs  in  a  matter  of  weeks,  bust  our way into a
megafreighter  I  still  don't  know  how,  marched  on to the bridge waving toy
pistols  and  demanded  conkers.   A  wilder  thing I have not known.  Lost me a
year's pocket money.  For what?  Conkers."

"The  captain was this really amazing guy, Yooden Vranx," said Zaphod.  "He gave
us food, booze -- stuff from really weird parts of the Galaxy -- lots of conkers
of  course,  and  we  had  just the most incredible time.  Then he teleported us
back.  Into the maximum security wing of Betelgeuse state prison.  He was a cool
guy.  Went on to become President of the Galaxy."

Zaphod paused.

The  scene  around  them  was  currently plunged into gloom.  Dark mists swirled
round  them  and elephantine shapes lurked indistinctly in the shadows.  The air
was  occasionally  rent  with  the  sounds  of  illusory  beings murdering other
illusory beings.  Presumably enough people must have liked this sort of thing to
make it a paying proposition.

"Ford," said Zaphod quietly.

"Yeah?"

"Just before Yooden died he came to see me."

"What?  You never told me."

"No."

"What did he say?  What did he come to see you about?"

"He told me about the Heart of Gold.  It was his idea that I should steal it."

"His idea?"

"Yeah,"  said Zaphod, "and the only possible way of stealing it was to be at the
launching ceremony."

Ford gaped at him in astonishment for a moment, and then roared with laughter.

"Are  you telling me," he said, "that you set yourself up to become President of
the Galaxy just to steal that ship?"

"That's it," said Zaphod with the sort of grin that would get most people locked
away in a room with soft walls.

"But why?" said Ford.  "What's so important about having it?"

"Dunno,"  said  Zaphod,  "I think if I'd consciously known what was so important
about  it  and  what  I  would  need it for it would have showed up on the brain
screening  tests and I would never have passed.  I think Yooden told me a lot of
things that are still locked away."

"So  you  think  you  went and mucked about inside your own brain as a result of
Yooden talking to you?"

"He was a hell of a talker."

"Yeah, but Zaphod old mate, you want to look after yourself you know."

Zaphod shrugged.

"I mean, don't you have any inkling of the reasons for all this?" asked Ford.

Zaphod thought hard about this and doubts seemed to cross his minds.

"No,"  he  said  at  last,  "I  don't  seem  to be letting myself into any of my
secrets.   Still,"  he  added  on further reflection, "I can understand that.  I
wouldn't trust myself further than I could spit a rat."

A  moment later, the last planet in the catalogue vanished from beneath them and
the solid world resolved itself again.

They  were  sitting  in a plush waiting room full of glass-top tables and design
awards.

A tall Magrathean man was standing in front of them.

"The mice will see you now," he said.

Chapter 30

"So  there  you  have  it," said Slartibartfast, making a feeble and perfunctory
attempt  to  clear away some of the appalling mess of his study.  He picked up a
paper  from  the  top of a pile, but then couldn't think of anywhere else to put
it,  so  he  but  it  back on top of the original pile which promptly fell over.
"Deep Thought designed the Earth, we built it and you lived on it."

"And  the  Vogons  came  and  destroyed  it  five minutes before the program was
completed," added Arthur, not unbitterly.

"Yes,"  said  the  old  man,  pausing  to  gaze hopelessly round the room.  "Ten
million  years  of  planning  and  work gone just like that.  Ten million years,
Earthman  ...   can  you  conceive  of  that  kind  of  time  span?   A galactic
civilization could grow from a single worm five times over in that time.  Gone."
He paused.

"Well that's bureaucracy for you," he added.

"You  know,"  said Arthur thoughtfully, "all this explains a lot of things.  All
through  my  life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was
going  on  in  the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me
what it was."

"No," said the old man, "that's just perfectly normal paranoia.  Everyone in the
Universe has that."

"Everyone?"  said  Arthur.   "Well,  if  everyone  has  that  perhaps  it  means
something!  Perhaps somewhere outside the Universe we know ..."

"Maybe.   Who  cares?"  said  Slartibartfast  before  Arthur  got  too  excited.
"Perhaps  I'm old and tired," he continued, "but I always think that the chances
of  finding  out  what  really  is going on are so absurdly remote that the only
thing  to  do  is  to  say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.
Look at me:  I design coastlines.  I got an award for Norway."

He rummaged around in a pile of debris and pulled out a large perspex block with
his name on it and a model of Norway moulded into it.

"Where's  the  sense  in that?" he said.  "None that I've been able to make out.
I've  been  doing  fjords  in  all  my  life.  For a fleeting moment they become
fashionable and I get a major award."

He  turned it over in his hands with a shrug and tossed it aside carelessly, but
not so carelessly that it didn't land on something soft.

"In  this  replacement Earth we're building they've given me Africa to do and of
course I'm doing it with all fjords again because I happen to like them, and I'm
old  fashioned  enough  to  think  that  they  give  a  lovely baroque feel to a
continent.  And they tell me it's not equatorial enough.  Equatorial!" He gave a
hollow laugh.  "What does it matter?  Science has achieved some wonderful things
of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day."

"And are you?"

"No.  That's where it all falls down of course."

"Pity,"  said  Arthur  with  sympathy.   "It sounded like quite a good lifestyle
otherwise."

Somewhere on the wall a small white light flashed.

"Come,"  said  Slartibartfast,  "you  are to meet the mice.  Your arrival on the
planet  has  caused  considerable  excitement.  It has already been hailed, so I
gather, as the third most improbable event in the history of the Universe."

"What were the first two?"

"Oh, probably just coincidences," said Slartibartfast carelessly.  He opened the
door and stood waiting for Arthur to follow.

Arthur  glanced  around  him  once more, and then down at himself, at the sweaty
dishevelled clothes he had been lying in the mud in on Thursday morning.

"I  seem  to  be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," he muttered to
himself.

"I beg your pardon?" said the old man mildly.

"Oh nothing," said Arthur, "only joking."

Chapter 31

It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of
the problem is not always appreciated.

For  instance,  at  the  very  moment  that  Arthur  said  "I  seem to be having
tremendous  difficulty  with  my  lifestyle,"  a freak wormhole opened up in the
fabric  of  the  space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time
across  almost  infinite  reaches of space to a distant Galaxy where strange and
warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.

The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.

A  dreadful  silence  fell  across  the conference table as the commander of the
Vl'hurgs,  resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the
G'Gugvuntt  leader  squatting  opposite  him  in a cloud of green sweet-smelling
steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to
unleash  electric  death  at  his  single  word  of command, challenged the vile
creature to take back what it had said about his mother.

The  creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that very moment the
words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle drifted across
the conference table.

Unfortunately,  in  the  Vl'hurg  tongue  this  was  the  most  dreadful  insult
imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.

Eventually  of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand
years,  it  was realized that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so
the  two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order
to  launch  a joint attack on our own Galaxy -- now positively identified as the
source of the offending remark.

For  thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space
and  finally  dived  screaming  on to the first planet they came across -- which
happened  to be the Earth -- where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the
entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

Those  who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the
Universe  say  that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are
powerless to prevent it.

"It's just life," they say.

A  short  aircar  trip brought Arthur and the old Magrathean to a doorway.  They
left  the car and went through the door into a waiting room full of glass-topped
tables  and  perspex awards.  Almost immediately, a light flashed above the door
at the other side of the room and they entered.

"Arthur!  You're safe!" a voice cried.

"Am I?" said Arthur, rather startled.  "Oh good."

The  lighting  was  rather  subdued  and it took him a moment or so to see Ford,
Trillian  and  Zaphod  sitting  round  a large table beautifully decked out with
exotic  dishes, strange sweetmeats and bizarre fruits.  They were stuffing their
faces.

"What happened to you?" demanded Arthur.

"Well,"  said  Zaphod,  attacking  a boneful of grilled muscle, "our guests here
have  been  gassing  us and zapping our minds and being generally weird and have
now given us a rather nice meal to make it up to us.  Here," he said hoiking out
a lump of evil smelling meat from a bowl, "have some Vegan Rhino's cutlet.  It's
delicious if you happen to like that sort of thing."

"Hosts?" said Arthur.  "What hosts?  I don't see any ..."

A small voice said, "Welcome to lunch, Earth creature."

Arthur glanced around and suddenly yelped.

"Ugh!" he said.  "There are mice on the table!"

There was an awkward silence as everyone looked pointedly at Arthur.

He was busy staring at two white mice sitting in what looked like whisky glasses
on the table.  He heard the silence and glanced around at everyone.

"Oh!" he said, with sudden realization.  "Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't quite prepared
for ..."

"Let me introduce you," said Trillian.  "Arthur this is Benji mouse."

"Hi,"  said  one  of the mice.  His whiskers stroked what must have been a touch
sensitive  panel  on  the  inside  of the whisky-glass like affair, and it moved
forward slightly.

"And this is Frankie mouse."

The other mouse said, "Pleased to meet you," and did likewise.

Arthur gaped.

"But aren't they ..."

"Yes," said Trillian, "they are the mice I brought with me from the Earth."

She  looked  him  in the eye and Arthur thought he detected the tiniest resigned
shrug.

"Could you pass me that bowl of grated Arcturan Megadonkey?" she said.

Slartibartfast coughed politely.

"Er, excuse me," he said.

"Yes, thank you Slartibartfast," said Benji mouse sharply, "you may go."

"What?   Oh  ...   er, very well," said the old man, slightly taken aback, "I'll
just go and get on with some of my fjords then."

"Ah,  well in fact that won't be necessary," said Frankie mouse.  "It looks very
much  as if we won't be needing the new Earth any longer." He swivelled his pink
little  eyes.   "Not now that we have found a native of the planet who was there
seconds before it was destroyed."

"What?"  cried  Slartibartfast,  aghast.   "You  can't  mean  that!   I've got a
thousand glaciers poised and ready to roll over Africa!"

"Well  perhaps  you  can take a quick skiing holiday before you dismantle them,"
said Frankie, acidly.

"Skiing  holiday!"  cried  the  old  man.   "Those  glaciers  are  works of art!
Elegantly  sculptured contours, soaring pinnacles of ice, deep majestic ravines!
It would be sacrilege to go skiing on high art!"

"Thank you Slartibartfast," said Benji firmly.  "That will be all."

"Yes  sir,"  said  the  old  man  coldly,  "thank  you very much.  Well, goodbye
Earthman," he said to Arthur, "hope the lifestyle comes together."

With  a  brief  nod to the rest of the company he turned and walked sadly out of
the room.

Arthur stared after him not knowing what to say.

"Now," said Benji mouse, "to business."

Ford and Zaphod clinked their glasses together.

"To business!" they said.

"I beg your pardon?" said Benji.

Ford looked round.

"Sorry, I thought you were proposing a toast," he said.

The  two  mice  scuttled  impatiently around in their glass transports.  Finally
they composed themselves, and Benji moved forward to address Arthur.

"Now,  Earth  creature,"  he said, "the situation we have in effect is this.  We
have,  as  you  know,  been  more  or  less running your planet for the last ten
million  years  in  order  to  find  this  wretched  thing  called  the Ultimate
Question."

"Why?" said Arthur, sharply.

"No  --  we  already  thought  of  that one," said Frankie interrupting, "but it
doesn't fit the answer.  Why?  -- Forty-Two ...  you see, it doesn't work."

"No," said Arthur, "I mean why have you been doing it?"

"Oh, I see," said Frankie.  "Well, eventually just habit I think, to be brutally
honest.   And this is more or less the point -- we're sick to the teeth with the
whole  thing,  and  the  prospect of doing it all over again on account of those
whinnet-ridden  Vogons  quite  frankly gives me the screaming heeby jeebies, you
know  what  I mean?  It was by the merest lucky chance that Benji and I finished
our particular job and left the planet early for a quick holiday, and have since
manipulated our way back to Magrathea by the good offices of your friends."

"Magrathea is a gateway back to our own dimension," put in Benji.

"Since  when,"  continued his murine colleague, "we have had an offer of a quite
enormously  fat  contract to do the 5D chat show and lecture circuit back in our
own dimensional neck of the woods, and we're very much inclined to take it."

"I would, wouldn't you Ford?" said Zaphod promptingly.

"Oh yes," said Ford, "jump at it, like a shot."

Arthur glanced at them, wondering what all this was leading up to.

"But  we've  got  to  have  a product you see," said Frankie, "I mean ideally we
still need the Ultimate Question in some form or other."

Zaphod leaned forward to Arthur.

"You  see,"  he  said, "if they're just sitting there in the studio looking very
relaxed  and,  you  know, just mentioning that they happen to know the Answer to
Life,  the  Universe  and  Everything, and then eventually have to admit that in
fact  it's  Forty-two,  then the show's probably quite short.  No follow-up, you
see."

"We have to have something that sounds good," said Benji.

"Something  that  sounds  good?"  exclaimed  Arthur.  "An Ultimate Question that
sounds good?  From a couple of mice?"

The mice bristled.

"Well,  I  mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit
of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to
suspect  that  if there's any real truth, it's that the entire multi-dimensional
infinity  of  the  Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.
And  if  it  comes  to  a  choice between spending yet another ten million years
finding  that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then
I for one could do with the exercise," said Frankie.

"But ..." started Arthur, hopelessly.

"Hey,  will  you  get  this,  Earthman,"  interrupted  Zaphod.   "You are a last
generation  product  of that computer matrix, right, and you were there right up
to the moment your planet got the finger, yeah?"

"Er ..."

"So  your  brain  was  an  organic  part of the penultimate configuration of the
computer programme," said Ford, rather lucidly he thought.

"Right?" said Zaphod.

"Well,"  said Arthur doubtfully.  He wasn't aware of ever having felt an organic
part of anything.  He had always seen this as one of his problems.

"In  other words," said Benji, steering his curious little vehicle right over to
Arthur,  "there's a good chance that the structure of the question is encoded in
the structure of your brain -- so we want to buy it off you."

"What, the question?" said Arthur.

"Yes," said Ford and Trillian.

"For lots of money," said Zaphod.

"No, no," said Frankie, "it's the brain we want to buy."

"What!"

"I  thought  you  said  you could just read his brain electronically," protested
Ford.

"Oh  yes,"  said  Frankie,  "but  we'd have to get it out first.  It's got to be
prepared."

"Treated," said Benji.

"Diced."

"Thank  you,"  shouted  Arthur,  tipping  up his chair and backing away from the
table in horror.

"It  could  always  be  replaced,"  said  Benji  reasonably,  "if you think it's
important."

"Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie, "a simple one would suffice."

"A simple one!" wailed Arthur.

"Yeah,"  said  Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have to program it to
say  What?   and  I  don't  understand  and  Where's the tea?  -- who'd know the
difference?"

"What?" cried Arthur, backing away still further.

"See  what  I  mean?" said Zaphod and howled with pain because of something that
Trillian did at that moment.

"I'd notice the difference," said Arthur.

"No you wouldn't," said Frankie mouse, "you'd be programmed not to."

Ford made for the door.

"Look, I'm sorry, mice old lads," he said.  "I don't think we've got a deal."

"I  rather think we have to have a deal," said the mice in chorus, all the charm
vanishing  fro  their  piping  little voices in an instant.  With a tiny whining
shriek  their  two  glass  transports lifted themselves off the table, and swung
through  the  air  towards  Arthur,  who stumbled further backwards into a blind
corner, utterly unable to cope or think of anything.

Trillian  grabbed  him  desperately by the arm and tried to drag him towards the
door,  which Ford and Zaphod were struggling to open, but Arthur was dead weight
-- he seemed hypnotized by the airborne rodents swooping towards him.

She screamed at him, but he just gaped.

With  one more yank, Ford and Zaphod got the door open.  On the other side of it
was  a  small  pack of rather ugly men who they could only assume were the heavy
mob of Magrathea.  Not only were they ugly themselves, but the medical equipment
they carried with them was also far from pretty.  They charged.

So  --  Arthur  was about to have his head cut open, Trillian was unable to help
him, and Ford and Zaphod were about to be set upon by several thugs a great deal
heavier and more sharply armed than they were.

All  in  all  it  was extremely fortunate that at that moment every alarm on the
planet burst into an earsplitting din.

Chapter 32

"Emergency!  Emergency!" blared the klaxons throughout Magrathea.  "Hostile ship
has landed on planet.  Armed intruders in section 8A.  Defence stations, defence
stations!"

The  two  mice  sniffed  irritably round the fragments of their glass transports
where they lay shattered on the floor.

"Damnation," muttered Frankie mouse, "all that fuss over two pounds of Earthling
brain." He scuttled round and about, his pink eyes flashing, his fine white coat
bristling with static.

"The  only thing we can do now," said Benji, crouching and stroking his whiskers
in  thought,  "is  to  try  and  fake  a  question,  invent  one that will sound
plausible."

"Difficult,"   said   Frankie.   He  thought.   "How  about  What's  yellow  and
dangerous?"

Benji considered this for a moment.

"No, no good," he said.  "Doesn't fit the answer."

They sank into silence for a few seconds.

"Alright," said Benji.  "What do you get if you multiply six by seven?"

"No, no, too literal, too factual," said Frankie, "wouldn't sustain the punters'
interest."

Again they thought.

Then Frankie said:  "Here's a thought.  How many roads must a man walk down?"

"Ah,"  said  Benji.   "Aha, now that does sound promising!" He rolled the phrase
around  a  little.   "Yes," he said, "that's excellent!  Sounds very significant
without actually tying you down to meaning anything at all.  How many roads must
a  man  walk  down?  Forty-two.  Excellent, excellent, that'll fox 'em.  Frankie
baby, we are made!"

They performed a scampering dance in their excitement.

Near  them  on  the floor lay several rather ugly men who had been hit about the
head with some heavy design awards.

Half  a  mile  away,  four  figures pounded up a corridor looking for a way out.
They emerged into a wide open-plan computer bay.  They glanced about wildly.

"Which way do you reckon Zaphod?" said Ford.

"At a wild guess, I'd say down here," said Zaphod, running off down to the right
between  a  computer  bank and the wall.  As the others started after him he was
brought up short by a Kill-O-Zap energy bolt that cracked through the air inches
in front of him and fried a small section of adjacent wall.

A  voice  on a loud hailer said, "OK Beeblebrox, hold it right there.  We've got
you covered."

"Cops!" hissed Zaphod, and span around in a crouch.  "You want to try a guess at
all, Ford?"

"OK,  this  way," said Ford, and the four of them ran down a gangway between two
computer banks.

At  the  end of the gangway appeared a heavily armoured and space- suited figure
waving a vicious Kill-O-Zap gun.

"We don't want to shoot you, Beeblebrox!" shouted the figure.

"Suits  me fine!" shouted Zaphod back and dived down a wide gap between two data
process units.

The others swerved in behind him.

"There are two of them," said Trillian.  "We're cornered."

They squeezed themselves down in an angle between a large computer data bank and
the wall.

They held their breath and waited.

Suddenly the air exploded with energy bolts as both the cops opened fire on them
simultaneously.

"Hey,  they're  shooting  at  us,"  said  Arthur,  crouching in a tight ball, "I
thought they said they didn't want to do that."

"Yeah, I thought they said that," agreed Ford.

Zaphod stuck a head up for a dangerous moment.

"Hey,"  he  said,  "I  thought you said you didn't want to shoot us!" and ducked
again.

They waited.

After a moment a voice replied, "It isn't easy being a cop!"

"What did he say?" whispered Ford in astonishment.

"He said it isn't easy being a cop."

"Well surely that's his problem isn't it?"

"I'd have thought so."

Ford  shouted  out,  "Hey  listen!  I think we've got enough problems on our own
having  you  shooting at us, so if you could avoid laying your problems on us as
well, I think we'd all find it easier to cope!"

Another pause, and then the loud hailer again.

"Now see here, guy," said the voice on the loud hailer, "you're not dealing with
any  dumb  two-bit  trigger-pumping morons with low hairlines, little piggy eyes
and  no  conversation,  we're  a  couple  of  intelligent caring guys that you'd
probably  quite  like  if  you  met us socially!  I don't go around gratuitously
shooting  people  and  then  bragging about it afterwards in seedy space-rangers
bars,  like some cops I could mention!  I go around shooting people gratuitously
and then I agonize about it afterwards for hours to my girlfriend!"

"And  I  write  novels!"  chimed in the other cop.  "Though I haven't had any of
them published yet, so I better warn you, I'm in a meeeean mood!"

Ford's eyes popped halfway out of their sockets.  "Who are these guys?" he said.

"Dunno," said Zaphod, "I think I preferred it when they were shooting."

"So  are  you going to come quietly," shouted one of the cops again, "or are you
going to let us blast you out?"

"Which would you prefer?" shouted Ford.

A  millisecond later the air about them started to fry again, as bolt after bolt
of Kill-O-Zap hurled itself into the computer bank in front of them.

The fusillade continued for several seconds at unbearable intensity.

When  it  stopped, there were a few seconds of near quietness ad the echoes died
away.

"You still there?" called one of the cops.

"Yes," they called back.

"We didn't enjoy doing that at all," shouted the other cop.

"We could tell," shouted Ford.

"Now, listen to this, Beeblebrox, and you better listen good!"

"Why?" shouted Back Zaphod.

"Because,"  shouted  the  cop,  "it's  going  to  be very intelligent, and quite
interesting  and  humane!   Now either you all give yourselves up now and let us
beat  you up a bit, though not very much of course because we are firmly opposed
to  needless  violence, or we blow up this entire planet and possibly one or two
others we noticed on our way out here!"

"But that's crazy!" cried Trillian.  "You wouldn't do that!"

"Oh yes we would," shouted the cop, "wouldn't we?" he asked the other one.

"Oh yes, we'd have to, no question," the other one called back.

"But why?" demanded Trillian.

"Because  there  are  some  things you have to do even if you are an enlightened
liberal cop who knows all about sensitivity and everything!"

"I just don't believe these guys," muttered Ford, shaking his head.

One cop shouted to the other, "Shall we shoot them again for a bit?"

"Yeah, why not?"

They let fly another electric barrage.

The heat and noise was quite fantastic.  Slowly, the computer bank was beginning
to  disintegrate.   The  front had almost all melted away, and thick rivulets of
molten  metal  were  winding  their  way back towards where they were squatting.
They huddled further back and waited for the end.

Chapter 33

But the end never came, at least not then.

Quite  suddenly  the  barrage  stopped,  and  the  sudden silence afterwards was
punctuated by a couple of strangled gurgles and thuds.

The four stared at each other.

"What happened?" said Arthur.

"They stopped," said Zaphod with a shrug.

"Why?"

"Dunno, do you want to go and ask them?"

"No."

They waited.

"Hello?" called out Ford.

No answer.

"That's odd."

"Perhaps it's a trap."

"They haven't the wit."

"What were those thuds?"

"Dunno."

They waited for a few more seconds.

"Right," said Ford, "I'm going to have a look."

He glanced round at the others.

"Is no one going to say, No you can't possibly, let me go instead?"

They all shook their heads.

"Oh well," he said, and stood up.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then,  after  a  second or so, nothing continued to happen.  Ford peered through
the thick smoke that was billowing out of the burning computer.

Cautiously he stepped out into the open.

Still nothing happened.

Twenty  yards  away he could dimly see through the smoke the space-suited figure
of  one  of  the  cops.   He was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground.  Twenty
yards in the other direction lay the second man.  No one else was anywhere to be
seen.

This struck Ford as being extremely odd.

Slowly,  nervously,  he walked towards the first one.  The body lay reassuringly
still as he approached it, and continued to lie reassuringly still as he reached
it  and put his foot down on the Kill-O-Zap gun that still dangled from its limp
fingers.

He reached down and picked it up, meeting no resistance.

The cop was quite clearly dead.

A  quick  examination  revealed  him  to  be  from  Blagulon  Kappa  -- he was a
methane-breathing  life  form,  dependent  on his space suit for survival in the
thin oxygen atmosphere of Magrathea.

The  tiny  life-support system computer on his backpack appeared unexpectedly to
have blown up.

Ford  poked  around  in  it  in considerable astonishment.  These miniature suit
computers  usually  had  the full back-up of the main computer back on the ship,
with  which  they  were directly linked through the sub-etha.  Such a system was
fail-safe  in all circumstances other than total feedback malfunction, which was
unheard of.

He  hurried over to the other prone figure, and discovered that exactly the same
impossible thing had happened to him, presumably simultaneously.

He  called the others over to look.  They came, shared his astonishment, but not
his curiosity.

"Let's get shot out of this hole," said Zaphod.  "If whatever I'm supposed to be
looking  for  is  here,  I don't want it." He grabbed the second Kill-O-Zap gun,
blasted  a  perfectly  harmless  accounting  computer  and  rushed  out into the
corridor,  followed by the others.  He very nearly blasted hell out of an aircar
that stood waiting for them a few yards away.

The aircar was empty, but Arthur recognized it as belonging to Slartibartfast.

It  had a note from him pinned to part of its sparse instrument panel.  The note
had an arrow drawn on it, pointing at one of the controls.

It said, This is probably the best button to press.

Chapter 34

The  aircar  rocketed  them at speeds in excess of R17 through the steel tunnels
that lead out onto the appalling surface of the planet which was now in the grip
of  yet  another  drear  morning twilight.  Ghastly grey lights congealed on the
land.

R  is  a  velocity  measure,  defined  as  a  reasonable speed of travel that is
consistent  with  health,  mental  wellbeing  and  not  being more than say five
minutes  late.   It  is  therefore  clearly an almost infinitely variable figure
according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed
taken  as  an  absolute,  but  also  with awareness of the third factor.  Unless
handled with tranquility this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers
and even death.

R17 is not a fixed velocity, but it is clearly far too fast.

The aircar flung itself through the air at R17 and above, deposited them next to
the Heart of Gold which stood starkly on the frozen ground like a bleached bone,
and then precipitately hurled itself back in the direction whence they had come,
presumably on important business of its own.

Shivering, the four of them stood and looked at the ship.

Beside it stood another one.

It  was  the Blagulon Kappa policecraft, a bulbous sharklike affair, slate green
in colour and smothered with black stencilled letters of varying degrees of size
and  unfriendliness.   The  letters informed anyone who cared to read them as to
where  the  ship  was  from,  what section of the police it was assigned to, and
where the power feeds should be connected.

It  seemed  somehow  unnaturally  dark and silent, even for a ship whose two-man
crew  was  at  that  moment lying asphyxicated in a smoke-filled chamber several
miles  beneath the ground.  It is one of those curious things that is impossible
to explain or define, but one can sense when a ship is completely dead.

Ford  could  sense  it  and found it most mysterious -- a ship and two policemen
seemed  to  have gone spontaneously dead.  In his experience the Universe simply
didn't work like that.

The  other  three  could sense it too, but they could sense the bitter cold even
more  and  hurried back into the Heart of Gold suffering from an acute attack of
no curiosity.

Ford  stayed,  and  went  to examine the Blagulon ship.  As he walked, he nearly
tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down in the cold dust.

"Marvin!" he exclaimed.  "What are you doing?"

"Don't feel you have to take any notice of me, please," came a muffled drone.

"But how are you, metalman?" said Ford.

"Very depressed."

"What's up?"

"I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."

"Why,"  said  Ford  squatting down beside him and shivering, "are you lying face
down in the dust?"

"It's  a very effective way of being wretched," said Marvin.  "Don't pretend you
want to talk to me, I know you hate me."

"No I don't."

"Yes  you  do,  everybody does.  It's part of the shape of the Universe.  I only
have  to  talk  to somebody and they begin to hate me.  Even robots hate me.  If
you just ignore me I expect I shall probably go away."

He  jacked  himself  up  to  his  feet  and stood resolutely facing the opposite
direction.

"That ship hated me," he said dejectedly, indicating the policecraft.

"That  ship?"  said  Ford  in  sudden excitement.  "What happened to it?  Do you
know?"

"It hated me because I talked to it."

"You talked to it?" exclaimed Ford.  "What do you mean you talked to it?"

"Simple.  I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its
external  computer feed.  I talked to the computer at great length and explained
my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin.

"And what happened?" pressed Ford.

"It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.

Chapter 35

That  night,  as  the  Heart  of Gold was busy putting a few light years between
itself and the Horsehead Nebula, Zaphod lounged under the small palm tree on the
bridge  trying  to  bang  his  brain into shape with massive Pan Galactic Gargle
Blasters;  Ford and Trillian sat in a corner discussing life and matters arising
from  it;  and  Arthur  took to his bed to flip through Ford's copy of The Hitch
Hiker's  Guide  to  the  Galaxy.   Since  he  was going to live in the place, he
reasoned, he'd better start finding out something about it.

He came across this entry.

It  said:   'The  History  of  every  major  Galactic Civilization tends to pass
through  three  distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and
Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.

"For  instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat?
the  second  by the question Why do we eat?  and the third by the question Where
shall we have lunch?"

He got no further before the ship's intercom buzzed into life.

"Hey Earthman?  You hungry kid?" said Zaphod's voice.

"Er, well yes, a little peckish I suppose," said Arthur.

"OK  baby,  hold  tight,"  said  Zaphod.   "We'll  take  in  a quick bite at the
Restaurant at the End of the Universe."