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+Book 1
+PD: OS
+Subject: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (englisch)
+ 
+ 
+ 
+			 Douglas Adams
+ 
+	     The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
+ 
+ 
+=================================================================
+ 
+Douglas Adams   The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
+Douglas Adams   The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
+Douglas Adams   Life, the Universe, and Everything
+Douglas Adams   So long, and thanks for all the fish
+ 
+=================================================================
+ 
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
+ 
+for
+ 
+Jonny Brock and Clare Gorst
+ 
+and all other Arlingtonians
+ 
+for tea, sympathy, and a sofa
+ 
+=================================================================
+Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable  end  of
+the  western  spiral  arm  of  the Galaxy lies a small unregarded
+yellow sun.
+ 
+Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two  million  miles
+is  an  utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-
+descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that  they  still
+think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
+ 
+This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most
+of  the  people  on  it were unhappy for pretty much of the time.
+Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these
+were  largely  concerned with the movements of small green pieces
+of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't  the  small
+green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
+ 
+And so the problem remained; lots of the people  were  mean,  and
+most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
+ 
+Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a  big
+mistake  in  coming  down  from the trees in the first place. And
+some said that even the trees had been a bad move,  and  that  no
+one should ever have left the oceans.
+ 
+And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after  one  man
+had  been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be
+nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on  her  own  in  a
+small  cafe  in  Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that
+had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how  the
+world  could  be  made  a  good and happy place. This time it was
+right, it would work, and no one would  have  to  get  nailed  to
+anything.
+ 
+Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone  to  tell  anyone
+about  it,  a  terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea
+was lost forever.
+ 
+This is not her story.
+ 
+But it is the story of that terrible stupid catastrophe and  some
+of its consequences.
+ 
+It is also the story of a book, a book called The  Hitch  Hiker's
+Guide  to  the  Galaxy  -  not  an Earth book, never published on
+Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or
+heard of by any Earthman.
+ 
+Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.
+ 
+in fact it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out
+of  the  great  publishing  houses  of  Ursa  Minor - of which no
+Earthman had ever heard either.
+ 
+Not only is it a wholly remarkable book,  it  is  also  a  highly
+successful  one  -  more  popular  than  the  Celestial Home Care
+Omnibus, better selling than Fifty More  Things  to  do  in  Zero
+Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of
+philosophical blockbusters Where God Went  Wrong,  Some  More  of
+God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?
+ 
+In many of the more relaxed civilizations on  the  Outer  Eastern
+Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted
+the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the  standard  repository  of
+all  knowledge  and  wisdom, for though it has many omissions and
+contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly  inaccurate,
+it  scores  over the older, more pedestrian work in two important
+respects.
+ 
+First, it is slightly cheaper; and  secondly  it  has  the  words
+Don't Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
+ 
+But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its
+extraordinary   consequences,   and   the  story   of  how  these
+consequences are inextricably intertwined  with  this  remarkable
+book begins very simply.
+ 
+It begins with a house.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 1
+ 
+The house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village.
+It  stood  on  its  own  and  looked  over a broad spread of West
+Country farmland. Not a remarkable house by any means  -  it  was
+about  thirty  years old, squattish, squarish, made of brick, and
+had four windows set in the front of a size and proportion  which
+more or less exactly failed to please the eye.
+ 
+The only person for whom the house was in  any  way  special  was
+Arthur  Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one
+he lived in. He had lived in it for about three years, ever since
+he  had  moved  out  of  London  because  it made him nervous and
+irritable. He was about thirty as well,  dark  haired  and  never
+quite at ease with himself. The thing that used to worry him most
+was the fact that people always used  to  ask  him  what  he  was
+looking  so  worried  about.  He  worked  in local radio which he
+always used to tell his friends was a lot more  interesting  than
+they  probably  thought. It was, too - most of his friends worked
+in advertising.
+ 
+It hadn't properly registered with Arthur that the council wanted
+to knock down his house and build an bypass instead.
+ 
+At eight o'clock on Thursday  morning  Arthur  didn't  feel  very
+good.  He  woke  up blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his
+room, opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found his  slippers,  and
+stomped off to the bathroom to wash.
+ 
+Toothpaste on the brush - so. Scrub.
+ 
+Shaving mirror - pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted it.  For  a
+moment  it  reflected  a  second  bulldozer  through the bathroom
+window. Properly adjusted, it reflected Arthur  Dent's  bristles.
+He shaved them off, washed, dried, and stomped off to the kitchen
+to find something pleasant to put in his mouth.
+ 
+Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn.
+ 
+The word bulldozer wandered through his  mind  for  a  moment  in
+search of something to connect with.
+ 
+The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one.
+ 
+He stared at it.
+ 
+"Yellow," he thought and stomped off back to his bedroom  to  get
+dressed.
+ 
+Passing the bathroom he stopped to drink a large glass of  water,
+and  another.  He began to suspect that he was hung over. Why was
+he hung over? Had he been drinking the night before? He  supposed
+that  he must have been. He caught a glint in the shaving mirror.
+"Yellow," he thought and stomped on to the bedroom.
+ 
+He stood and thought. The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the  pub.  He
+vaguely remembered being angry, angry about something that seemed
+important. He'd been telling  people  about  it,  telling  people
+about  it  at  great  length,  he  rather suspected: his clearest
+visual recollection was of glazed looks on other people's  faces.
+Something  about a new bypass he had just found out about. It had
+been in the pipeline for months only no one seemed to have  known
+about  it.  Ridiculous.  He  took  a swig of water. It would sort
+itself out, he'd decided, no one wanted  a  bypass,  the  council
+didn't have a leg to stand on. It would sort itself out.
+ 
+God what a terrible hangover it had earned him though. He  looked
+at  himself  in  the  wardrobe  mirror.  He stuck out his tongue.
+"Yellow," he thought. The word yellow wandered through  his  mind
+in search of something to connect with.
+ 
+Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in  front
+of a big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path.
+ 
+Mr L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he  was
+a carbon-based life form descended from an ape. More specifically
+he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for  the  local  council.
+Curiously  enough, though he didn't know it, he was also a direct
+male-line  descendant  of  Genghis   Khan,   though   intervening
+generations  and  racial  mixing had so juggled his genes that he
+had  no  discernible  Mongoloid  characteristics,  and  the  only
+vestiges  left  in  Mr  L  Prosser  of his mighty ancestry were a
+pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for  little
+fur hats.
+ 
+He was by no means a great warrior: in  fact  he  was  a  nervous
+worried  man.  Today  he  was  particularly  nervous  and worried
+because something had gone seriously wrong with his job  -  which
+was  to  see  that Arthur Dent's house got cleared out of the way
+before the day was out.
+ 
+"Come off it, Mr Dent,", he said, "you can't win  you  know.  You
+can't  lie  in  front of the bulldozer indefinitely." He tried to
+make his eyes blaze fiercely but they just wouldn't do it.
+ 
+Arthur lay in the mud and squelched at him.
+ 
+"I'm game," he said, "we'll see who rusts first."
+ 
+"I'm afraid you're going to have to accept it," said  Mr  Prosser
+gripping  his  fur  hat and rolling it round the top of his head,
+"this bypass has got to be built and it's going to be built!"
+ 
+"First I've heard of it," said Arthur,  "why's  it  going  to  be
+built?"
+ 
+Mr Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit,  then  stopped  and
+put it away again.
+ 
+"What do you mean, why's it got to be built?" he  said.  "It's  a
+bypass. You've got to build bypasses."
+ 
+Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from  point
+A  to  point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to
+point A very fast. People  living  at  point  C,  being  a  point
+directly  in  between,  are often given to wonder what's so great
+about point A that so many people of point B are so keen  to  get
+there,  and  what's so great about point B that so many people of
+point A are so keen to get there. They  often  wish  that  people
+would  just  once and for all work out where the hell they wanted
+to be.
+ 
+Mr Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D  wasn't  anywhere  in
+particular, it was just any convenient point a very long way from
+points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage  at  point
+D,  with  axes over the door, and spend a pleasant amount of time
+at point E, which would be the nearest pub to point D.  His  wife
+of  course  wanted  climbing roses, but he wanted axes. He didn't
+know why - he  just  liked  axes.  He  flushed  hotly  under  the
+derisive grins of the bulldozer drivers.
+ 
+He shifted his weight from foot  to  foot,  but  it  was  equally
+uncomfortable  on  each.  Obviously somebody had been appallingly
+incompetent and he hoped to God it wasn't him.
+ 
+Mr Prosser said: "You were quite entitled to make any suggestions
+or protests at the appropriate time you know."
+ 
+"Appropriate time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate time? The first I
+knew  about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I
+asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said  no  he'd
+come  to  demolish  the house. He didn't tell me straight away of
+course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged  me
+a fiver. Then he told me."
+ 
+"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning
+office for the last nine month."
+ 
+"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went  straight  round  to  see
+them,  yesterday  afternoon.  You hadn't exactly gone out of your
+way to call attention to them  had  you?  I  mean  like  actually
+telling anybody or anything."
+ 
+"But the plans were on display ..."
+ 
+"On display? I eventually had to go down to the  cellar  to  find
+them."
+ 
+"That's the display department."
+ 
+"With a torch."
+ 
+"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
+ 
+"So had the stairs."
+ 
+"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
+ 
+"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in  the  bottom
+of  a  locked  filing  cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a
+sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
+ 
+A cloud passed overhead. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent as  he
+lay  propped  up  on  his elbow in the cold mud. It cast a shadow
+over Arthur Dent's house. Mr Prosser frowned at it.
+ 
+"It's not as if it's a particularly nice house," he said.
+ 
+"I'm sorry, but I happen to like it."
+ 
+"You'll like the bypass."
+ 
+"Oh shut up," said Arthur Dent. "Shut up and go  away,  and  take
+your  bloody  bypass  with you. You haven't got a leg to stand on
+and you know it."
+ 
+Mr Prosser's mouth opened and closed a couple of times while  his
+mind  was  for  a  moment  filled  with inexplicable but terribly
+attractive visions of Arthur Dent's  house  being  consumed  with
+fire  and  Arthur himself running screaming from the blazing ruin
+with at least three hefty spears protruding  from  his  back.  Mr
+Prosser  was often bothered with visions like these and they made
+him feel very nervous. He stuttered for a moment and then  pulled
+himself together.
+ 
+"Mr Dent," he said.
+ 
+"Hello? Yes?" said Arthur.
+ 
+"Some factual information for you. Have you  any  idea  how  much
+damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight
+over you?"
+ 
+"How much?" said Arthur.
+ 
+"None at  all,"  said  Mr  Prosser,  and  stormed  nervously  off
+wondering why his brain was filled with a thousand hairy horsemen
+all shouting at him.
+ 
+By a curious  coincidence,  None  at  all  is  exactly  how  much
+suspicion  the  ape-descendant  Arthur  Dent  had that one of his
+closest friends was not descended from an ape, but  was  in  fact
+from  a  small  planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from
+Guildford as he usually claimed.
+ 
+Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.
+ 
+This friend of his had first arrived on the planet  some  fifteen
+Earth  years  previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself
+into Earth society - with, it must be  said,  some  success.  For
+instance he had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out
+of work actor, which was plausible enough.
+ 
+He had made one careless blunder though, because he had skimped a
+bit  on his preparatory research. The information he had gathered
+had led him to choose the name "Ford  Prefect"  as  being  nicely
+inconspicuous.
+ 
+He was not conspicuously tall, his features were striking but not
+conspicuously  handsome.  His  hair  was  wiry  and gingerish and
+brushed backwards from the temples. His skin seemed to be  pulled
+backwards  from  the  nose. There was something very slightly odd
+about him, but it was difficult to say what it  was.  Perhaps  it
+was  that  his eyes didn't blink often enough and when you talked
+to him for any length of time your eyes  began  involuntarily  to
+water  on  his behalf. Perhaps it was that he smiled slightly too
+broadly and gave people the  unnerving  impression  that  he  was
+about to go for their neck.
+ 
+He struck most of  the  friends  he  had  made  on  Earth  as  an
+eccentric,  but  a  harmless  one  --  an unruly boozer with some
+oddish habits. For instance he would often  gatecrash  university
+parties,   get   badly   drunk   and  start  making  fun  of  any
+astrophysicist he could find till he got thrown out.
+ 
+Sometimes he would get seized with  oddly  distracted  moods  and
+stare  into the sky as if hypnotized until someone asked him what
+he was doing. Then he would start guiltily for  a  moment,  relax
+and grin.
+ 
+"Oh, just looking for flying saucers," he would joke and everyone
+would  laugh  and  ask  him  what  sort  of flying saucers he was
+looking for.
+ 
+"Green ones!" he would reply with a wicked grin, laugh wildly for
+a  moment  and then suddenly lunge for the nearest bar and buy an
+enormous round of drinks.
+ 
+Evenings like this usually ended badly. Ford would get out of his
+skull  on whisky, huddle into a corner with some girl and explain
+to her in slurred phrases that honestly the colour of the  flying
+saucers didn't matter that much really.
+ 
+Thereafter, staggering semi-paralytic down the night  streets  he
+would  often  ask  passing  policemen  if  they  knew  the way to
+Betelgeuse. The  policemen  would  usually  say  something  like,
+"Don't you think it's about time you went off home sir?"
+ 
+"I'm trying to baby, I'm trying  to,"  is  what  Ford  invariably
+replied on these occasions.
+ 
+In fact what he  was  really  looking  out  for  when  he  stared
+distractedly  into the night sky was any kind of flying saucer at
+all. The reason he said green was that green was the  traditional
+space livery of the Betelgeuse trading scouts.
+ 
+Ford Prefect was desperate that any flying saucer  at  all  would
+arrive soon because fifteen years was a long time to get stranded
+anywhere, particularly somewhere as  mindboggingly  dull  as  the
+Earth.
+ 
+Ford wished that a flying saucer would  arrive  soon  because  he
+knew  how to flag flying saucers down and get lifts from them. He
+knew how to see the Marvels of the Universe for less than  thirty
+Altairan dollars a day.
+ 
+In fact, Ford Prefect was a roving  researcher  for  that  wholly
+remarkable book The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
+ 
+Human beings are great adaptors, and by  lunchtime  life  in  the
+environs  of Arthur's house had settled into a steady routine. It
+was Arthur's accepted role to lie squelching in  the  mud  making
+occasional  demands to see his lawyer, his mother or a good book;
+it was Mr Prosser's accepted  role  to  tackle  Arthur  with  the
+occasional  new  ploy  such  as the For the Public Good talk, the
+March of Progress talk, the They Knocked My House Down  Once  You
+Know,  Never  Looked  Back  talk and various other cajoleries and
+threats; and it was the bulldozer drivers' accepted role  to  sit
+around  drinking  coffee and experimenting with union regulations
+to see how they could  turn  the  situation  to  their  financial
+advantage.
+ 
+The Earth moved slowly in its diurnal course.
+ 
+The sun was beginning to dry out the mud Arthur lay in.
+ 
+A shadow moved across him again.
+ 
+"Hello Arthur," said the shadow.
+ 
+Arthur looked up and squinting into the sun was startled  to  see
+Ford Prefect standing above him.
+ 
+"Ford! Hello, how are you?"
+ 
+"Fine," said Ford, "look, are you busy?"
+ 
+"Am I busy?" exclaimed Arthur. "Well, I've  just  got  all  these
+bulldozers and things to lie in front of because they'll knock my
+house down if I don't, but other  than  that  ...  well,  no  not
+especially, why?"
+ 
+They don't have sarcasm on Betelgeuse,  and  Ford  Prefect  often
+failed  to notice it unless he was concentrating. He said, "Good,
+is there anywhere we can talk?"
+ 
+"What?" said Arthur Dent.
+ 
+For a few seconds Ford seemed to ignore him, and  stared  fixedly
+into  the sky like a rabbit trying to get run over by a car. Then
+suddenly he squatted down beside Arthur.
+ 
+"We've got to talk," he said urgently.
+ 
+"Fine," said Arthur, "talk."
+ 
+"And drink," said Ford. "It's vitally important that we talk  and
+drink. Now. We'll go to the pub in the village."
+ 
+He looked into the sky again, nervous, expectant.
+ 
+"Look, don't you  understand?"  shouted  Arthur.  He  pointed  at
+Prosser. "That man wants to knock my house down!"
+ 
+Ford glanced at him, puzzled.
+ 
+"Well he can do it while you're away can't he?" he asked.
+ 
+"But I don't want him to!"
+ 
+"Ah."
+ 
+"Look, what's the matter with you Ford?" said Arthur.
+ 
+"Nothing. Nothing's the matter. Listen to me - I've got  to  tell
+you  the most important thing you've ever heard. I've got to tell
+you now, and I've got to tell you in the saloon bar of the  Horse
+and Groom."
+ 
+"But why?"
+ 
+"Because you are going to need a very stiff drink."
+ 
+Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur was astonished to find that his
+will  was  beginning  to  weaken. He didn't realize that this was
+because of an old drinking game that Ford learned to play in  the
+hyperspace  ports  that  served the madranite mining belts in the
+star system of Orion Beta.
+ 
+The game was not unlike the Earth game called  Indian  Wrestling,
+and was played like this:
+ 
+Two contestants would sit either side of a table, with a glass in
+front of each of them.
+ 
+Between them  would  be  placed  a  bottle  of  Janx  Spirit  (as
+immortalized  in that ancient Orion mining song "Oh don't give me
+none more of that Old Janx Spirit/ No, don't  you  give  me  none
+more  of  that  Old  Janx Spirit/ For my head will fly, my tongue
+will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die/ Won't you pour  me  one
+more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit").
+ 
+Each of the two contestants would then concentrate their will  on
+the  bottle  and attempt to tip it and pour spirit into the glass
+of his opponent - who would then have to drink it.
+ 
+The bottle would then be  refilled.  The  game  would  be  played
+again. And again.
+ 
+Once you started to lose you would probably keep losing,  because
+one  of  the  effects  of  Janx  spirit is to depress telepsychic
+power.
+ 
+As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the  final
+loser  would  have  to  perform  a  forfeit,  which  was  usually
+obscenely biological.
+ 
+Ford Prefect usually played to lose.
+ 
+Ford stared at Arthur, who began to think  that  perhaps  he  did
+want to go to the Horse and Groom after all.
+ 
+"But what about my house ...?" he asked plaintively.
+ 
+Ford looked across to Mr Prosser, and suddenly a  wicked  thought
+struck him.
+ 
+"He wants to knock your house down?"
+ 
+"Yes, he wants to build ..."
+ 
+"And he can't because you're lying in front of the bulldozers?"
+ 
+"Yes, and ..."
+ 
+"I'm sure we can come to some arrangement,"  said  Ford.  "Excuse
+me!" he shouted.
+ 
+Mr Prosser (who was arguing with a spokesman  for  the  bulldozer
+drivers  about  whether  or  not Arthur Dent constituted a mental
+health hazard, and how much they  should  get  paid  if  he  did)
+looked around. He was surprised and slightly alarmed to find that
+Arthur had company.
+ 
+"Yes? Hello?" he called. "Has Mr Dent come to his senses yet?"
+ 
+"Can we for the moment," called Ford, "assume that he hasn't?"
+ 
+"Well?" sighed Mr Prosser.
+ 
+"And can we also assume," said  Ford,  "that  he's  going  to  be
+staying here all day?"
+ 
+"So?"
+ 
+"So all your men are going to be standing around  all  day  doing
+nothing?"
+ 
+"Could be, could be ..."
+ 
+"Well, if  you're  resigned  to  doing  that  anyway,  you  don't
+actually need him to lie here all the time do you?"
+ 
+"What?"
+ 
+"You don't," said Ford patiently, "actually need him here."
+ 
+Mr Prosser thought about this.
+ 
+"Well no, not as  such...",  he  said,  "not  exactly  need  ..."
+Prosser  was worried. He thought that one of them wasn't making a
+lot of sense.
+ 
+Ford said, "So if you would just like to take  it  as  read  that
+he's  actually here, then he and I could slip off down to the pub
+for half an hour. How does that sound?"
+ 
+Mr Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty.
+ 
+"That sounds perfectly reasonable," he said in a reassuring  tone
+of voice, wondering who he was trying to reassure.
+ 
+"And if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself  later  on,"
+said Ford, "we can always cover up for you in return."
+ 
+"Thank you very much," said Mr Prosser who no longer knew how  to
+play  this  at  all,  "thank you very much, yes, that's very kind
+..." He frowned, then smiled, then tried  to  do  both  at  once,
+failed,  grasped hold of his fur hat and rolled it fitfully round
+the top of his head. He could only assume that he had just won.
+ 
+"So," continued Ford Prefect, "if you would  just  like  to  come
+over here and lie down ..."
+ 
+"What?" said Mr Prosser.
+ 
+"Ah, I'm sorry," said Ford, "perhaps I hadn't made  myself  fully
+clear.  Somebody's  got to lie in front of the bulldozers haven't
+they? Or there won't be anything to stop  them  driving  into  Mr
+Dent's house will there?"
+ 
+"What?" said Mr Prosser again.
+ 
+"It's very simple," said Ford, "my client, Mr Dent, says that  he
+will  stop  lying  here in the mud on the sole condition that you
+come and take over from him."
+ 
+"What are you talking about?" said Arthur, but  Ford  nudged  him
+with his shoe to be quiet.
+ 
+"You want me," said Mr Prosser, spelling out this new thought  to
+himself, "to come and lie there ..."
+ 
+"Yes."
+ 
+"In front of the bulldozer?"
+ 
+"Yes."
+ 
+"Instead of Mr Dent."
+ 
+"Yes."
+ 
+"In the mud."
+ 
+"In, as you say it, the mud."
+ 
+As soon as Mr Prosser realized  that  he  was  substantially  the
+loser  after  all,  it  was  as if a weight lifted itself off his
+shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew it. He sighed.
+ 
+"In return for which you will take Mr Dent with you down  to  the
+pub?"
+ 
+"That's it," said Ford. "That's it exactly."
+ 
+Mr Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped.
+ 
+"Promise?"
+ 
+"Promise," said Ford. He turned to Arthur.
+ 
+"Come on," he said to him, "get up and let the man lie down."
+ 
+Arthur stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream.
+ 
+Ford beckoned to Prosser who sadly, awkwardly, sat  down  in  the
+mud.  He  felt  that his whole life was some kind of dream and he
+sometimes wondered whose it was and whether  they  were  enjoying
+it. The mud folded itself round his bottom and his arms and oozed
+into his shoes.
+ 
+Ford looked at him severely.
+ 
+"And no sneaky knocking down Mr Dent's house  whilst  he's  away,
+alright?" he said.
+ 
+"The mere thought," growled Mr Prosser,  "hadn't  even  begun  to
+speculate,"  he  continued,  settling  himself  back,  "about the
+merest possibility of crossing my mind."
+ 
+He saw the bulldozer driver's  union  representative  approaching
+and  let his head sink back and closed his eyes. He was trying to
+marshal his arguments for proving that he did not now  constitute
+a  mental  health  hazard  himself. He was far from certain about
+this - his mind seemed to be full of noise,  horses,  smoke,  and
+the  stench of blood. This always happened when he felt miserable
+and put upon, and he  had  never  been  able  to  explain  it  to
+himself.  In a high dimension of which we know nothing the mighty
+Khan bellowed with rage, but Mr Prosser  only  trembled  slightly
+and whimpered. He began to fell little pricks of water behind the
+eyelids. Bureaucratic cock-ups,  angry  men  lying  in  the  mud,
+indecipherable  strangers  handing  out inexplicable humiliations
+and an unidentified army of horsemen laughing at him in his  head
+- what a day.
+ 
+What a day. Ford Prefect knew that it didn't  matter  a  pair  of
+dingo's  kidneys  whether  Arthur's house got knocked down or not
+now.
+ 
+Arthur remained very worried.
+ 
+"But can we trust him?" he said.
+ 
+"Myself I'd trust him to the end of the Earth," said Ford.
+ 
+"Oh yes," said Arthur, "and how far's that?"
+ 
+"About twelve minutes away,"  said  Ford,  "come  on,  I  need  a
+drink."
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 2
+ 
+Here's what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about  alcohol.
+It  says  that  alcohol is a colourless volatile liquid formed by
+the fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect
+on certain carbon-based life forms.
+ 
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions  alcohol.  It
+says  that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle
+Blaster.
+ 
+It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is  like
+having  your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round
+a large gold brick.
+ 
+The Guide also tells you on which planets the best  Pan  Galactic
+Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one
+and what voluntary organizations exist to help  you  rehabilitate
+afterwards.
+ 
+The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself.
+ 
+Take the juice from one bottle of that Ol' Janx Spirit, it says.
+ 
+Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus  V
+-  Oh that Santraginean sea water, it says. Oh those Santraginean
+fish!!!
+ 
+Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into  the  mixture
+(it must be properly iced or the benzine is lost).
+ 
+Allow four litres of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through  it,  in
+memory of all those happy Hikers who have died of pleasure in the
+Marshes of Fallia.
+ 
+Over the back of a silver spoon  float  a  measure  of  Qualactin
+Hypermint  extract,  redolent of all the heady odours of the dark
+Qualactin Zones, subtle sweet and mystic.
+ 
+Drop in the tooth of an Algolian  Suntiger.  Watch  it  dissolve,
+spreading  the  fires of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of
+the drink.
+ 
+Sprinkle Zamphuor.
+ 
+Add an olive.
+ 
+Drink ... but ... very carefully ...
+ 
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy sells  rather  better  than
+the Encyclopedia Galactica.
+ 
+"Six pints of bitter," said Ford Prefect to  the  barman  of  the
+Horse and Groom. "And quickly please, the world's about to end."
+ 
+The barman of the Horse and Groom didn't  deserve  this  sort  of
+treatment,  he  was a dignified old man. He pushed his glasses up
+his nose and blinked at Ford Prefect. Ford ignored him and stared
+out  of  the  window,  so the barman looked instead at Arthur who
+shrugged helplessly and said nothing.
+ 
+So the barman said, "Oh  yes  sir?  Nice  weather  for  it,"  and
+started pulling pints.
+ 
+He tried again.
+ 
+"Going to watch the match this afternoon then?"
+ 
+Ford glanced round at him.
+ 
+"No, no point," he said, and looked back out of the window.
+ 
+"What's that, foregone conclusion then you reckon sir?" said  the
+barman. "Arsenal without a chance?"
+ 
+"No, no," said Ford, "it's just that the world's about to end."
+ 
+"Oh yes sir, so you said," said  the  barman,  looking  over  his
+glasses  this  time  at  Arthur.  "Lucky escape for Arsenal if it
+did."
+ 
+Ford looked back at him, genuinely surprised.
+ 
+"No, not really," he said. He frowned.
+ 
+The barman breathed in heavily. "There you are sir,  six  pints,"
+he said.
+ 
+Arthur smiled at him wanly and  shrugged  again.  He  turned  and
+smiled  wanly at the rest of the pub just in case any of them had
+heard what was going on.
+ 
+None of them had, and none of them could understand what  he  was
+smiling at them for.
+ 
+A man sitting next to Ford at the bar  looked  at  the  two  men,
+looked  at the six pints, did a swift burst of mental arithmetic,
+arrived at an answer he liked and grinned a stupid  hopeful  grin
+at them.
+ 
+"Get off," said Ford, "They're ours,"  giving  him  a  look  that
+would have an Algolian Suntiger get on with what it was doing.
+ 
+Ford slapped a five-pound note on the bar.  He  said,  "Keep  the
+change."
+ 
+"What, from a fiver? Thank you sir."
+ 
+"You've got ten minutes left to spend it."
+ 
+The barman simply decided to walk away for a bit.
+ 
+"Ford," said Arthur, "would you please tell me what the  hell  is
+going on?"
+ 
+"Drink up," said Ford, "you've got three pints to get through."
+ 
+"Three pints?" said Arthur. "At lunchtime?"
+ 
+The man next to ford grinned and  nodded  happily.  Ford  ignored
+him. He said, "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
+ 
+"Very deep," said  Arthur,  "you  should  send  that  in  to  the
+Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you."
+ 
+"Drink up."
+ 
+"Why three pints all of a sudden?"
+ 
+"Muscle relaxant, you'll need it."
+ 
+"Muscle relaxant?"
+ 
+"Muscle relaxant."
+ 
+Arthur stared into his beer.
+ 
+"Did I do anything wrong today,"  he  said,  "or  has  the  world
+always  been  like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to
+notice?"
+ 
+"Alright," said Ford, "I'll try to  explain.  How  long  have  we
+known each other?"
+ 
+"How long?" Arthur thought. "Er, about five years, maybe six," he
+said. "Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time."
+ 
+"Alright," said Ford. "How would you react if I said that I'm not
+from  Guildford  after  all, but from a small planet somewhere in
+the vicinity of Betelgeuse?"
+ 
+Arthur shrugged in a so-so sort of way.
+ 
+"I don't know," he said, taking a pull of beer.  "Why  -  do  you
+think it's the sort of thing you're likely to say?"
+ 
+Ford gave up. It really wasn't worth  bothering  at  the  moment,
+what with the world being about to end. He just said:
+ 
+"Drink up."
+ 
+He added, perfectly factually:
+ 
+"The world's about to end."
+ 
+Arthur gave the rest of the pub another wan smile.  The  rest  of
+the  pub  frowned  at  him. A man waved at him to stop smiling at
+them and mind his own business.
+ 
+"This must be Thursday," said Arthur musing to  himself,  sinking
+low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 3
+ 
+On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through
+the  ionosphere  many  miles  above  the  surface  of the planet;
+several somethings in fact,  several  dozen  huge  yellow  chunky
+slablike  somethings,  huge as office buildings, silent as birds.
+They soared with ease, basking in electromagnetic rays  from  the
+star Sol, biding their time, grouping, preparing.
+ 
+The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious  of  their
+presence,  which  was just how they wanted it for the moment. The
+huge yellow somethings went unnoticed at Goonhilly,  they  passed
+over  Cape  Canaveral  without  a  blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank
+looked straight through them - which was a pity  because  it  was
+exactly  the  sort  of  thing  they'd  been looking for all these
+years.
+ 
+The only place they registered at all was on a small black device
+called  a  Sub-Etha  Sens-O-Matic  which  winked  away quietly to
+itself. It nestled in the darkness inside a leather satchel which
+Ford Prefect wore habitually round his neck. The contents of Ford
+Prefect's satchel were quite interesting in fact and  would  have
+made any Earth physicist's eyes pop out of his head, which is why
+he always concealed them by keeping a couple of dog-eared scripts
+for plays he pretended he was auditioning for stuffed in the top.
+Besides the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic  and  the  scripts  he  had  an
+Electronic  Thumb - a short squat black rod, smooth and matt with
+a couple of flat switches and dials at one end;  he  also  had  a
+device  which looked rather like a largish electronic calculator.
+This had about a hundred tiny flat press  buttons  and  a  screen
+about  four  inches  square on which any one of a million "pages"
+could be summoned  at  a  moment's  notice.  It  looked  insanely
+complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic
+cover it fitted into had the words Don't Panic printed on  it  in
+large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was
+in fact that most remarkable of all books ever to come out of the
+great  publishing  corporations of Ursa Minor - The Hitch Hiker's
+Guide to the Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the  form
+of  a  micro  sub  meson  electronic component is that if it were
+printed in normal book form, an interstellar  hitch  hiker  would
+require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around
+in.
+ 
+Beneath that in Ford  Prefect's  satchel  were  a  few  biros,  a
+notepad, and a largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer.
+ 
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say  on
+the subject of towels.
+ 
+A towel, it says, is about the most  massively  useful  thing  an
+interstellar  hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical
+value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across
+the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant
+marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling  the  heady  sea
+vapours;  you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so
+redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it  to  sail  a  mini
+raft  down  the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-
+hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or
+to  avoid  the  gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a
+mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it,
+it  can't  see  you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can
+wave your towel in emergencies  as  a  distress  signal,  and  of
+course  dry  yourself  off  with it if it still seems to be clean
+enough.
+ 
+More importantly, a towel has immense  psychological  value.  For
+some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a
+hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically  assume
+that  he  is  also  in  possession of a toothbrush, face flannel,
+soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string,  gnat
+spray,  wet  weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the
+strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of  these  or  a
+dozen  other  items  that the hitch hiker might accidentally have
+"lost". What the strag will think is that any man who  can  hitch
+the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle
+against terrible odds, win through, and  still  knows  where  his
+towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
+ 
+Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking  slang,  as  in
+"Hey,  you  sass  that  hoopy  Ford  Prefect? There's a frood who
+really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet,
+have   sex  with;  hoopy:  really  together  guy;  frood:  really
+amazingly together guy.)
+ 
+Nestling quietly on top of the towel in Ford  Prefect's  satchel,
+the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic began to wink more quickly. Miles above
+the surface of the planet the huge yellow somethings began to fan
+out.  At  Jodrell  Bank,  someone  decided it was time for a nice
+relaxing cup of tea.
+ 
+"You got a towel with you?" said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur.
+ 
+Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him.
+ 
+"Why? What, no  ...  should  I  have?"  He  had  given  up  being
+surprised, there didn't seem to be any point any longer.
+ 
+Ford clicked his tongue in irritation.
+ 
+"Drink up," he urged.
+ 
+At that moment the dull sound of a rumbling  crash  from  outside
+filtered  through the low murmur of the pub, through the sound of
+the jukebox, through the sound of the man next to Ford hiccupping
+over the whisky Ford had eventually bought him.
+ 
+Arthur choked on his beer, leapt to his feet.
+ 
+"What's that?" he yelped.
+ 
+"Don't worry," said Ford, "they haven't started yet."
+ 
+"Thank God for that," said Arthur and relaxed.
+ 
+"It's probably just your house being knocked  down,"  said  Ford,
+drowning his last pint.
+ 
+"What?" shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford's spell was broken.  Arthur
+looked wildly around him and ran to the window.
+ 
+"My God they are! They're knocking my house down. What  the  hell
+am I doing in the pub, Ford?"
+ 
+"It hardly makes any difference at this stage," said  Ford,  "let
+them have their fun."
+ 
+"Fun?" yelped Arthur. "Fun!" He quickly checked out of the window
+again that they were talking about the same thing.
+ 
+"Damn their fun!" he hooted and ran  out  of  the  pub  furiously
+waving  a  nearly  empty beer glass. He made no friends at all in
+the pub that lunchtime.
+ 
+"Stop, you vandals! You home wreckers!" bawled Arthur. "You  half
+crazed Visigoths, stop will you!"
+ 
+Ford would have to go after him. Turning quickly to the barman he
+asked for four packets of peanuts.
+ 
+"There you are sir," said the barman, slapping the packets on the
+bar, "twenty-eight pence if you'd be so kind."
+ 
+Ford was very kind - he gave the barman another  five-pound  note
+and told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then
+looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a  momentary
+sensation  that  he didn't understand because no one on Earth had
+ever experienced it before. In moments  of  great  stress,  every
+life  form  that  exists  gives  out a tiny sublimal signal. This
+signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense  of
+how far that being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is
+never possible to be further than  sixteen  thousand  miles  from
+your birthplace, which really isn't very far, so such signals are
+too minute to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this  moment  under
+great  stress,  and  he was born 600 light years away in the near
+vicinity of Betelgeuse.
+ 
+The  barman  reeled  for   a   moment,   hit   by   a   shocking,
+incomprehensible sense of distance. He didn't know what it meant,
+but he looked at Ford Prefect with a new sense of respect, almost
+awe.
+ 
+"Are you serious, sir?" he said in a small whisper which had  the
+effect  of  silencing  the  pub.  "You think the world's going to
+end?"
+ 
+"Yes," said Ford.
+ 
+"But, this afternoon?"
+ 
+Ford had recovered himself. He was at his flippest.
+ 
+"Yes,"  he  said  gaily,  "in  less  than  two  minutes  I  would
+estimate."
+ 
+The barman couldn't believe the conversation he was  having,  but
+he couldn't believe the sensation he had just had either.
+ 
+"Isn't there anything we can do about it then?" he said.
+ 
+"No, nothing," said Ford, stuffing the peanuts into his pockets.
+ 
+Someone in the hushed  bar  suddenly  laughed  raucously  at  how
+stupid everyone had become.
+ 
+The man sitting next to Ford was a bit sozzled by now.  His  eyes
+waved their way up to Ford.
+ 
+"I thought," he said, "that if the world was going to end we were
+meant to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something."
+ 
+"If you like, yes," said Ford.
+ 
+"That's what they told us in the army," said  the  man,  and  his
+eyes began the long trek back down to his whisky.
+ 
+"Will that help?" asked the barman.
+ 
+"No," said Ford and gave him a friendly smile.  "Excuse  me,"  he
+said, "I've got to go." With a wave, he left.
+ 
+The pub was silent for a moment longer, and then,  embarrassingly
+enough,  the man with the raucous laugh did it again. The girl he
+had dragged along to the pub with him had  grown  to  loathe  him
+dearly  over the last hour or so, and it would probably have been
+a great satisfaction to her to know that in a minute and  a  half
+or so he would suddenly evaporate into a whiff of hydrogen, ozone
+and carbon monoxide. However, when the moment came she  would  be
+too busy evaporating herself to notice it.
+ 
+The barman cleared his throat. He heard himself say:
+ 
+"Last orders, please."
+ 
+The huge yellow machines began  to  sink  downward  and  to  move
+faster.
+ 
+Ford knew they were there. This wasn't the way he had wanted it.
+ 
+Running up the lane, Arthur had  nearly  reached  his  house.  He
+didn't  notice  how cold it had suddenly become, he didn't notice
+the wind, he didn't notice the sudden irrational squall of  rain.
+He didn't notice anything but the caterpillar bulldozers crawling
+over the rubble that had been his home.
+ 
+"You barbarians!" he yelled. "I'll  sue  the  council  for  every
+penny  it's  got!  I'll  have  you hung, drawn and quartered! And
+whipped! And boiled ... until ...  until  ...  until  you've  had
+enough."
+ 
+Ford was running after him very fast. Very very fast.
+ 
+"And then I'll do  it  again!"  yelled  Arthur.  "And  when  I've
+finished  I  will  take  all  the little bits, and I will jump on
+them!"
+ 
+Arthur  didn't  notice  that  the  men  were  running  from   the
+bulldozers;   he  didn't  notice  that  Mr  Prosser  was  staring
+hectically into the sky. What Mr Prosser  had  noticed  was  that
+huge   yellow  somethings  were  screaming  through  the  clouds.
+Impossibly huge yellow somethings.
+ 
+"And I will carry on  jumping  on  them,"  yelled  Arthur,  still
+running,  "until  I get blisters, or I can think of anything even
+more unpleasant to do, and then ..."
+ 
+Arthur tripped, and fell headlong, rolled and landed flat on  his
+back.  At last he noticed that something was going on. His finger
+shot upwards.
+ 
+"What the hell's that?" he shrieked.
+ 
+Whatever it was raced across the  sky  in  monstrous  yellowness,
+tore  the  sky apart with mind-buggering noise and leapt off into
+the distance leaving the gaping air to shut behind it with a bang
+that drove your ears six feet into your skull.
+ 
+Another one followed and did the same thing only louder.
+ 
+It's difficult to say exactly what the people on the  surface  of
+the  planet  were doing now, because they didn't really know what
+they were doing themselves. None of it made  a  lot  of  sense  -
+running  into  houses, running out of houses, howling noiselessly
+at the noise. All around the world  city  streets  exploded  with
+people, cars slewed into each other as the noise fell on them and
+then rolled off like a tidal wave over hills and valleys, deserts
+and oceans, seeming to flatten everything it hit.
+ 
+Only one man stood and  watched  the  sky,  stood  with  terrible
+sadness in his eyes and rubber bungs in his ears. He knew exactly
+what was happening and had known ever since his Sub-Etha  Sens-O-
+Matic  had started winking in the dead of night beside his pillar
+and woken him with a start. It was what he  had  waited  for  all
+these  years,  but  when  he  had  deciphered  the signal pattern
+sitting alone in his small dark room a coldness had  gripped  him
+and squeezed his heart. Of all the races in all of the Galaxy who
+could have come and said a big hello to planet Earth, he thought,
+didn't it just have to be the Vogons.
+ 
+Still he knew what he had to do.  As  the  Vogon  craft  screamed
+through  the  air  high above him he opened his satchel. He threw
+away a copy of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor  Dreamcoat,  he
+threw away a copy of Godspell: He wouldn't need them where he was
+going. Everything was ready, everything was prepared.
+ 
+He knew where his towel was.
+ 
+A sudden silence hit the Earth. If anything it was worse than the
+noise. For a while nothing happened.
+ 
+The great ships hung motionless in the air, over every nation  on
+Earth.  Motionless  they  hung, huge, heavy, steady in the sky, a
+blasphemy against nature. Many people went straight into shock as
+their  minds  tried  to  encompass what they were looking at. The
+ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
+ 
+And still nothing happened.
+ 
+Then there was a slight whisper, a  sudden  spacious  whisper  of
+open  ambient  sound.  Every hi fi set in the world, every radio,
+every television, every cassette recorder,  every  woofer,  every
+tweeter,  every  mid-range  driver  in  the  world quietly turned
+itself on.
+ 
+Every tin can, every dust bin, every  window,  every  car,  every
+wine  glass,  every  sheet  of rusty metal became activated as an
+acoustically perfect sounding board.
+ 
+Before the Earth passed away it was going to be  treated  to  the
+very  ultimate in sound reproduction, the greatest public address
+system ever built.  But  there  was  no  concert,  no  music,  no
+fanfare, just a simple message.
+ 
+"People of Earth, your attention please," a voice  said,  and  it
+was   wonderful.   Wonderful   perfect  quadrophonic  sound  with
+distortion levels so low as to make a brave man weep.
+ 
+"This is  Prostetnic  Vogon  Jeltz  of  the  Galactic  Hyperspace
+Planning  Council," the voice continued. "As you will no doubt be
+aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions  of  the
+Galaxy  require  the  building  of  a  hyperspatial express route
+through your star system, and regrettably your planet is  one  of
+those  scheduled  for  demolition. The process will take slightly
+less that two of your Earth minutes. Thank you."
+ 
+The PA died away.
+ 
+Uncomprehending terror settled on the watching people  of  Earth.
+The  terror  moved  slowly through the gathered crowds as if they
+were iron fillings on a sheet of board and a  magnet  was  moving
+beneath  them. Panic sprouted again, desperate fleeing panic, but
+there was nowhere to flee to.
+ 
+Observing this, the Vogons turned on their PA again. It said:
+ 
+"There's no point in acting  all  surprised  about  it.  All  the
+planning  charts  and  demolition  orders have been on display in
+your local planning department on Alpha  Centauri  for  fifty  of
+your  Earth  years,  so  you've  had  plenty of time to lodge any
+formal complaint and it's far too late to  start  making  a  fuss
+about it now."
+ 
+The PA fell silent again and its  echo  drifted  off  across  the
+land. The huge ships turned slowly in the sky with easy power. On
+the underside of each a hatchway opened, an empty black space.
+ 
+By  this  time  somebody  somewhere  must  have  manned  a  radio
+transmitter,  located a wavelength and broadcasted a message back
+to the Vogon ships, to plead on behalf of the planet. Nobody ever
+heard  what  they said, they only heard the reply. The PA slammed
+back into life again. The voice was annoyed. It said:
+ 
+"What do you mean  you've  never  been  to  Alpha  Centauri?  For
+heaven's  sake mankind, it's only four light years away you know.
+I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take  an  interest  in
+local affairs that's your own lookout.
+ 
+"Energize the demolition beams."
+ 
+Light poured out into the hatchways.
+ 
+"I don't know," said the  voice  on  the  PA,  "apathetic  bloody
+planet, I've no sympathy at all." It cut off.
+ 
+There was a terrible ghastly silence.
+ 
+There was a terrible ghastly noise.
+ 
+There was a terrible ghastly silence.
+ 
+The Vogon Constructor fleet coasted away  into  the  inky  starry
+void.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 4
+ 
+Far away on the opposite spiral arm of the Galaxy,  five  hundred
+thousand  light  years  from  the  star  Sol,  Zaphod Beeblebrox,
+President of the Imperial Galactic Government,  sped  across  the
+seas  of  Damogran, his ion drive delta boat winking and flashing
+in the Damogran sun.
+ 
+Damogran the  hot;  Damogran  the  remote;  Damogran  the  almost
+totally unheard of.
+ 
+Damogran, secret home of the Heart of Gold.
+ 
+The boat sped on across the water. It would be some  time  before
+it   reached   its   destination  because  Damogran  is  such  an
+inconveniently  arranged  planet.  It  consists  of  nothing  but
+middling  to  large  desert  islands separated by very pretty but
+annoyingly wide stretches of ocean.
+ 
+The boat sped on.
+ 
+Because of  this  topological  awkwardness  Damogran  has  always
+remained  a  deserted  planet.  This is why the Imperial Galactic
+Government chose Damogran for the Heart of Gold project,  because
+it was so deserted and the Heart of Gold was so secret.
+ 
+The boat zipped and skipped across the  sea,  the  sea  that  lay
+between  the  main  islands of the only archipelago of any useful
+size on the whole planet. Zaphod Beeblebrox was on his  way  from
+the  tiny  spaceport  on  Easter Island (the name was an entirely
+meaningless coincidence - in Galacticspeke,  easter  means  small
+flat  and  light  brown)  to  the  Heart of Gold island, which by
+another meaningless coincidence was called France.
+ 
+One of the side effects of work on the Heart of Gold was a  whole
+string of pretty meaningless coincidences.
+ 
+But it was not in any way a coincidence that today,  the  day  of
+culmination  of  the project, the great day of unveiling, the day
+that the Heart  of  Gold  was  finally  to  be  introduced  to  a
+marvelling Galaxy, was also a great day of culmination for Zaphod
+Beeblebrox. It was for the sake of this day  that  he  had  first
+decided  to  run  for  the  Presidency, a decision which had sent
+waves of astonishment throughout the  Imperial  Galaxy  -  Zaphod
+Beeblebrox?   President?  Not  the  Zaphod  Beeblebrox?  Not  the
+President? Many had seen it as a clinching proof that  the  whole
+of known creation had finally gone bananas.
+ 
+Zaphod grinned and gave the boat an extra kick of speed.
+ 
+Zaphod Beeblebrox,  adventurer,  ex-hippy,  good  timer,  (crook?
+quite  possibly),  manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal
+relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.
+ 
+President?
+ 
+No one had gone bananas, not in that way at least.
+ 
+Only six people in the entire Galaxy understood the principle  on
+which  the  Galaxy  was  governed, and they knew that once Zaphod
+Beeblebrox had announced his intention to run as President it was
+more  or  less  a  fait  accompli:  he  was  the ideal Presidency
+fodder*.
+ 
+What they completely failed to  understand  was  why  Zaphod  was
+doing it.
+ 
+He banked sharply, shooting a wild wall of water at the sun.
+ 
+Today was the day; today was the day when they would realize what
+Zaphod  had  been  up  to.  Today  was  what  Zaphod Beeblebrox's
+Presidency was all  about.  Today  was  also  his  two  hundredth
+birthday, but that was just another meaningless coincidence.
+ 
+As he skipped his boat across the  seas  of  Damogran  he  smiled
+quietly  to  himself  about  what a wonderful exciting day it was
+going to be. He relaxed and spread his two arms lazily across the
+seat back. He steered with an extra arm he'd recently fitted just
+beneath his right one to help improve his ski-boxing.
+ 
+"Hey," he cooed to himself, "you're a real cool boy you." But his
+nerves sang a song shriller than a dog whistle.
+ 
+The island of France was about  twenty  miles  long,  five  miles
+across  the  middle, sandy and crescent shaped. In fact it seemed
+to exist not so much as an island in its own right  as  simply  a
+means  of  defining  the  sweep  and  curve  of  a huge bay. This
+impression was heightened by the fact that the inner coastline of
+the  crescent consisted almost entirely of steep cliffs. From the
+top of the cliff the land sloped slowly down five  miles  to  the
+opposite shore.
+ 
+On top of the cliffs stood a reception committee.
+ 
+It consisted in large part of the engineers and  researchers  who
+had built the Heart of Gold - mostly humanoid, but here and there
+were a few reptiloid atomineers, two or  three  green  slyph-like
+maximegalacticans,  an  octopoid  physucturalist  or  two  and  a
+Hooloovoo (a Hooloovoo is a super-intelligent shade of the  color
+blue).  All except the Hooloovoo were resplendent in their multi-
+colored ceremonial lab coats; the Hooloovoo had been  temporarily
+refracted into a free standing prism for the occasion.
+ 
+There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through  all  of
+them.  Together  and between them they had gone to and beyond the
+furthest limits of physical laws,  restructured  the  fundamental
+fabric  of  matter,  strained,  twisted  and  broken  the laws of
+possibility and impossibility, but still the greatest  excitement
+of  all  seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash round his
+neck. (An orange sash  was  what  the  President  of  the  Galaxy
+traditionally  wore.) It might not even have made much difference
+to them if they'd known exactly how much power the  President  of
+the  Galaxy actually wielded: none at all. Only six people in the
+Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic  President  was  not  to
+wield power but to attract attention away from it.
+ 
+Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.
+ 
+The  crowd  gasped,  dazzled  by  sun  and  seemanship,  as   the
+Presidential speedboat zipped round the headland into the bay. It
+flashed and shone as  it  came  skating  over  the  sea  in  wide
+skidding turns.
+ 
+In fact it didn't need to touch the water at all, because it  was
+supported  on  a  hazy  cushion  of  ionized atoms - but just for
+effect it was fitted with thin finblades which could  be  lowered
+into  the  water.  They  slashed sheets of water hissing into the
+air, carved deep gashes into the sea  which  swayed  crazily  and
+sank  back foaming into the boat's wake as it careered across the
+bay.
+ 
+Zaphod loved effect: it was what he was best at.
+ 
+He twisted the wheel sharply, the boat slewed  round  in  a  wild
+scything  skid beneath the cliff face and dropped to rest lightly
+on the rocking waves.
+ 
+Within seconds he ran out onto the deck and waved and grinned  at
+over  three  billion  people.  The  three  billion people weren't
+actually there, but they watched his every  gesture  through  the
+eyes  of a small robot tri-D camera which hovered obsequiously in
+the air nearby. The antics of the President always made amazingly
+popular tri-D; that's what they were for.
+ 
+He grinned again. Three billion and six people  didn't  know  it,
+but today would be a bigger antic than anyone had bargained for.
+ 
+The robot camera homed in for a close up on the more  popular  of
+his  two  heads  and  he  waved again. He was roughly humanoid in
+appearance except for the extra head  and  third  arm.  His  fair
+tousled  hair  stuck  out  in  random  directions,  his blue eyes
+glinted with something completely unidentifiable, and  his  chins
+were almost always unshaven.
+ 
+A twenty-foot-high transparent globe floated next  to  his  boat,
+rolling  and  bobbing, glistening in the brilliant sun. Inside it
+floated a wide semi-circular sofa  upholstered  in  glorious  red
+leather:  the more the globe bobbed and rolled, the more the sofa
+stayed perfectly still, steady as an upholstered rock. Again, all
+done for effect as much as anything.
+ 
+Zaphod stepped through the wall of the globe and relaxed  on  the
+sofa.  He  spread his two arms lazily along the back and with the
+third brushed some dust off his knee.  His  heads  looked  about,
+smiling;  he put his feet up. At any moment, he thought, he might
+scream.
+ 
+Water boiled up beneath the bubble, it seethed and  spouted.  The
+bubble  surged  into  the  air,  bobbing and rolling on the water
+spout. Up, up it climbed, throwing stilts of light at the  cliff.
+Up  it  surged  on  the  jet,  the water falling from beneath it,
+crashing back into the sea hundreds of feet below.
+ 
+Zaphod smiled, picturing himself.
+ 
+A thoroughly ridiculous  form  of  transport,  but  a  thoroughly
+beautiful one.
+ 
+At the top of the cliff the globe wavered for a moment, tipped on
+to  a railed ramp, rolled down it to a small concave platform and
+riddled to a halt.
+ 
+To tremendous applause  Zaphod  Beeblebrox  stepped  out  of  the
+bubble, his orange sash blazing in the light.
+ 
+The President of the Galaxy had arrived.
+ 
+He waited for the applause to die down, then raised his hands  in
+greeting.
+ 
+"Hi," he said.
+ 
+A government spider sidled up to him and  attempted  to  press  a
+copy  of his prepared speech into his hands. Pages three to seven
+of the original version were at the moment  floating  soggily  on
+the  Damogran sea some five miles out from the bay. Pages one and
+two had been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested Eagle  and  had
+already  become  incorporated  into  an extraordinary new form of
+nest which the eagle had invented. It was constructed largely  of
+papier  m@ch@ and it was virtually impossible for a newly hatched
+baby eagle to break out of it. The Damogran Frond  Crested  Eagle
+had  heard of the notion of survival of the species but wanted no
+truck with it.
+ 
+Zaphod Beeblebrox would not be needing  his  set  speech  and  he
+gently deflected the one being offered him by the spider.
+ 
+"Hi," he said again.
+ 
+Everyone beamed at him, or, at least, nearly everyone. He singled
+out  Trillian from the crowd. Trillian was a gird that Zaphod had
+picked up recently  whilst  visiting  a  planet,  just  for  fun,
+incognito.  She  was  slim, darkish, humanoid, with long waves of
+black hair, a full mouth,  an  odd  little  nob  of  a  nose  and
+ridiculously  brown eyes. With her red head scarf knotted in that
+particular way and her long flowing silky brown dress she  looked
+vaguely  Arabic.  Not that anyone there had ever heard of an Arab
+of course. The Arabs had very recently ceased to exist, and  even
+when they had existed they were five hundred thousand light years
+from Damogran. Trillian  wasn't  anybody  in  particular,  or  so
+Zaphod  claimed.  She  just went around with him rather a lot and
+told him what she thought of him.
+ 
+"Hi honey," he said to her.
+ 
+She flashed him a quick tight smile and  looked  away.  Then  she
+looked  back  for  a  moment and smiled more warmly - but by this
+time he was looking at something else.
+ 
+"Hi," he said to a small knot of creatures  from  the  press  who
+were standing nearby wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get
+on with the quotes. He grinned at them  particularly  because  he
+knew  that in a few moments he would be giving them one hell of a
+quote.
+ 
+The next thing he said though was not a lot of use to  them.  One
+of  the  officials  of  the  party had irritably decided that the
+President was clearly not in  a  mood  to  read  the  deliciously
+turned  speech that had been written for him, and had flipped the
+switch on the remote control device in his pocket. Away in  front
+of  them  a  huge  white dome that bulged against the sky cracked
+down in the middle, split, and slowly folded itself down into the
+ground. Everyone gasped although they had known perfectly well it
+was going to do that because they had built it that way.
+ 
+Beneath it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred  and  fifty
+metres  long,  shaped  like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white
+and mindboggingly beautiful. At the heart of it,  unseen,  lay  a
+small  gold  box which carried within it the most brain-wretching
+device ever conceived, a device which made this  starship  unique
+in  the  history of the galaxy, a device after which the ship had
+been named - The Heart of Gold.
+ 
+"Wow", said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold. There  wasn't
+much else he could say.
+ 
+He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press.
+ 
+"Wow."
+ 
+The crowd turned their faces back  towards  him  expectantly.  He
+winked  at  Trillian who raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes
+at him. She knew what he was about  to  say  and  thought  him  a
+terrible showoff.
+ 
+"That is really amazing," he said. "That really is truly amazing.
+That is so amazingly amazing I think I'd like to steal it."
+ 
+A marvellous Presidential quote, absolutely  true  to  form.  The
+crowd  laughed  appreciatively,  the  newsmen  gleefully  punched
+buttons on their Sub-Etha News-Matics and the President grinned.
+ 
+As he grinned his heart screamed unbearably and he  fingered  the
+small Paralyso-Matic bomb that nestled quietly in his pocket.
+ 
+Finally he could bear it no more. He lifted his heads up  to  the
+sky,  let out a wild whoop in major thirds, threw the bomb to the
+ground and ran forward through the sea of suddenly frozen smiles.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 5
+ 
+Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was not a pleasant sight, even  for  other
+Vogons.  His  highly  domed  nose  rose  high above a small piggy
+forehead. His dark green rubbery skin was thick enough for him to
+play  the game of Vogon Civil Service politics, and play it well,
+and waterproof enough for him  to  survive  indefinitely  at  sea
+depths of up to a thousand feet with no ill effects.
+ 
+Not that he ever went swimming of course. His busy schedule would
+not allow it. He was the way he was because billions of years ago
+when the Vogons had first crawled out of  the  sluggish  primeval
+seas  of  Vogsphere,  and  had  lain  panting  and heaving on the
+planet's virgin shores... when the first rays of the bright young
+Vogsol  sun  had shone across them that morning, it was as if the
+forces of evolution ad simply given up on them  there  and  then,
+had  turned  aside in disgust and written them off as an ugly and
+unfortunate mistake. They never evolved again; they should  never
+have survived.
+ 
+The fact that they did is some kind  of  tribute  to  the  thick-
+willed  slug-brained  stubbornness of these creatures. Evolution?
+they said to themselves, Who needs it?, and what  nature  refused
+to  do  for  them they simply did without until such time as they
+were able to rectify the grosser anatomical  inconveniences  with
+surgery.
+ 
+Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet  Vogsphere  had  been
+working  overtime  to  make  up  for  their earlier blunder. They
+brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs,  which  the
+Vogons  ate,  smashing  their  shells  with  iron  mallets;  tall
+aspiring trees with breathtaking slenderness and colour which the
+Vogons  cut  down and burned the crab meat with; elegant gazelle-
+like creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which  the  Vogons
+would  catch  and  sit  on. They were no use as transport because
+their backs would snap instantly, but  the  Vogons  sat  on  them
+anyway.
+ 
+Thus the planet Vogsphere whiled away the unhappy millennia until
+the  Vogons  suddenly  discovered  the principles of interstellar
+travel. Within a  few  short  Vog  years  every  last  Vogon  had
+migrated  to  the  Megabrantis  cluster, the political hub of the
+Galaxy and now formed the  immensely  powerful  backbone  of  the
+Galactic  Civil Service. They have attempted to acquire learning,
+they have attempted to acquire style and  social  grace,  but  in
+most  respects  the  modern  Vogon  is  little different from his
+primitive forebears. Every year they import twenty-seven thousand
+scintillating  jewelled  scuttling crabs from their native planet
+and while away a happy drunken night smashing them to  bits  with
+iron mallets.
+ 
+Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was a fairly typical Vogon in that he  was
+thoroughly vile. Also, he did not like hitch hikers.
+ 
+Somewhere in a small dark cabin buried deep in the intestines  of
+Prostetnic   Vogon   Jeltz's   flagship,  a  small  match  flared
+nervously. The owner of the match was not a Vogon,  but  he  knew
+all  about  them  and  was right to be nervous. His name was Ford
+Prefect*.
+ 
+He looked about the cabin but  could  see  very  little;  strange
+monstrous  shadows  loomed  and  leaped  with the tiny flickering
+flame, but all was quiet. He breathed a silent thank you  to  the
+Dentrassis.  The  Dentrassis  are an unruly tribe of gourmands, a
+wild but pleasant bunch whom the Vogons  had  recently  taken  to
+employing  as  catering  staff  on their long haul fleets, on the
+strict understanding that  they  keep  themselves  very  much  to
+themselves.
+ 
+This suited the Dentrassis fine, because they loved Vogon  money,
+which  is one of the hardest currencies in space, but loathed the
+Vogons themselves. The only sort of Vogon a  Dentrassi  liked  to
+see was an annoyed Vogon.
+ 
+It was because of  this  tiny  piece  of  information  that  Ford
+Prefect  was  not  now  a  whiff  of  hydrogen,  ozone and carbon
+monoxide.
+ 
+He heard a slight groan. By the light of the match he saw a heavy
+shape  moving  slightly  on the floor. Quickly he shook the match
+out, reached in his pocket, found what he  was  looking  for  and
+took it out. He crouched on the floor. The shape moved again.
+ 
+Ford Prefect said: "I bought some peanuts."
+ 
+Arthur Dent moved, and groaned again, muttering incoherently.
+ 
+"Here, have some," urged Ford,  shaking  the  packet  again,  "if
+you've  never  been  through  a  matter  transference beam before
+you've probably lost some salt and  protein.  The  beer  you  had
+should have cushioned your system a bit."
+ 
+"Whhhrrrr..." said Arthur Dent. He opened his eyes.
+ 
+"It's dark," he said.
+ 
+"Yes," said Ford Prefect, "it's dark."
+ 
+"No light," said Arthur Dent. "Dark, no light."
+ 
+One of the things  Ford  Prefect  had  always  found  hardest  to
+understand  about  human  beings  was  their habit of continually
+stating and repeating the obvious, as in  It's  a  nice  day,  or
+You're  very  tall,  or  Oh  dear  you seem to have fallen down a
+thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first  Ford  had  formed  a
+theory  to  account  for  this strange behaviour. If human beings
+don't keep  exercising  their  lips,  he  thought,  their  mouths
+probably   seize  up.  After  a  few  months'  consideration  and
+observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new  one.  If
+they  don't  keep  on  exercising  their  lips, he thought, their
+brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well
+as  being  obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human
+beings after all, but  he  always  remained  desperately  worried
+about the terrible number of things they didn't know about.
+ 
+"Yes," he agreed with Arthur, "no light."  He  helped  Arthur  to
+some peanuts. "How do you feel?" he asked.
+ 
+"Like a military academy," said  Arthur,  "bits  of  me  keep  on
+passing out."
+ 
+Ford stared at him blankly in the darkness.
+ 
+"If I asked you where the hell  we  were,"  said  Arthur  weakly,
+"would I regret it?"
+ 
+Ford stood up. "We're safe," he said.
+ 
+"Oh good," said Arthur.
+ 
+"We're in a small galley  cabin,"  said  Ford,  "in  one  of  the
+spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet."
+ 
+"Ah," said Arthur, "this is obviously some strange usage  of  the
+word safe that I wasn't previously aware of."
+ 
+Ford struck another match to help him search for a light  switch.
+Monstrous  shadows  leaped  and loomed again. Arthur struggled to
+his feet and hugged himself apprehensively. Hideous alien  shapes
+seemed  to  throng about him, the air was thick with musty smells
+which sidled into his lungs without identifying themselves, and a
+low irritating hum kept his brain from focusing.
+ 
+"How did we get here?" he asked, shivering slightly.
+ 
+"We hitched a lift," said Ford.
+ 
+"Excuse me?" said Arthur. "Are you trying to tell me that we just
+stuck  out  our  thumbs and some green bug-eyed monster stuck his
+head out and said, Hi fellas, hop right in. I can take you as far
+as the Basingstoke roundabout?"
+ 
+"Well," said Ford, "the Thumb's an electronic sub-etha signalling
+device,  the roundabout's at Barnard's Star six light years away,
+but otherwise, that's more or less right."
+ 
+"And the bug-eyed monster?"
+ 
+"Is green, yes."
+ 
+"Fine," said Arthur, "when can I get home?"
+ 
+"You can't," said Ford Prefect, and found the light switch.
+ 
+"Shade your eyes ..." he said, and turned it on.
+ 
+Even Ford was surprised.
+ 
+"Good grief," said Arthur, "is this  really  the  interior  of  a
+flying saucer?"
+ 
+Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz heaved his unpleasant green body round the
+control   bridge.   He   always   felt  vaguely  irritable  after
+demolishing populated planets. He wished that someone would  come
+and tell him that it was all wrong so that he could shout at them
+and feel better. He flopped as heavily as  he  could  on  to  his
+control  seat  in  the  hope  that  it  would  break and give him
+something to be  genuinely  angry  about,  but  it  only  gave  a
+complaining sort of creak.
+ 
+"Go away!" he shouted at a young  Vogon  guard  who  entered  the
+bridge  at  that  moment. The guard vanished immediately, feeling
+rather relieved. He was glad it wouldn't now be him who delivered
+the  report  they'd  just  received.  The  report was an official
+release which said that a wonderful new form of  spaceship  drive
+was  at  this moment being unveiled at a government research base
+on Damogran which would henceforth make all hyperspatial  express
+routes unnecessary.
+ 
+Another door slid open, but this time the  Vogon  captain  didn't
+shout  because it was the door from the galley quarters where the
+Dentrassis prepared his meals. A meal would be most welcome.
+ 
+A huge furry creature bounded through the  door  with  his  lunch
+tray. It was grinning like a maniac.
+ 
+Prostetnic Vogon  Jeltz  was  delighted.  He  knew  that  when  a
+Dentrassi  looked  that  pleased  with itself there was something
+going on somewhere on the ship  that  he  could  get  very  angry
+indeed about.
+ 
+Ford and Arthur stared about them.
+ 
+"Well, what do you think?" said Ford.
+ 
+"It's a bit squalid, isn't it?"
+ 
+Ford  frowned  at  the  grubby  mattress,   unwashed   cups   and
+unidentifiable bits of smelly alien underwear that lay around the
+cramped cabin.
+ 
+"Well, this is a working ship, you see," said  Ford.  "These  are
+the Dentrassi sleeping quarters."
+ 
+"I thought you said they were called Vogons or something."
+ 
+"Yes," said Ford, "the Vogons run the ship,  the  Dentrassis  are
+the cooks, they let us on board."
+ 
+"I'm confused," said Arthur.
+ 
+"Here, have a look at this," said Ford. He sat down on one of the
+mattresses  and rummaged about in his satchel. Arthur prodded the
+mattress nervously and then sat on it himself:  in  fact  he  had
+very  little to be nervous about, because all mattresses grown in
+the swamps of Squornshellous Zeta are very thoroughly killed  and
+dried  before  being  put  to service. Very few have ever come to
+life again.
+ 
+Ford handed the book to Arthur.
+ 
+"What is it?" asked Arthur.
+ 
+"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a sort of  electronic
+book.  It  tells  you everything you need to know about anything.
+That's its job."
+ 
+Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands.
+ 
+"I like the cover," he said. "Don't Panic. It's the first helpful
+or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day."
+ 
+"I'll show you how it works," said  Ford.  He  snatched  it  from
+Arthur who was still holding it as if it was a two-week-dead lark
+and pulled it out of its cover.
+ 
+"You press this button here you see  and  the  screen  lights  up
+giving you the index."
+ 
+A screen, about three inches by four, lit up and characters began
+to flicker across the surface.
+ 
+"You want to know about Vogons, so I enter  that  name  so."  His
+fingers tapped some more keys. "And there we are."
+ 
+The words Vogon Constructor Fleets flared  in  green  across  the
+screen.
+ 
+Ford pressed a large red button at the bottom of the  screen  and
+words  began  to  undulate  across it. At the same time, the book
+began to speak the entry as well in a still quiet measured voice.
+This is what the book said.
+ 
+"Vogon Constructor Fleets. Here is what to do if you want to  get
+a  lift  from  a  Vogon:  forget  it.  They  are  one of the most
+unpleasant races in the Galaxy --  not  actually  evil,  but  bad
+tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even
+lift a finger to save their own grandmothers  from  the  Ravenous
+Bugblatter  Beast  of  Traal without orders signed in triplicate,
+sent in, sent back, queried, lost,  found,  subjected  to  public
+inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat and recycled
+as firelighters.
+ 
+"The best way to get a drink out of a  Vogon  is  to  stick  your
+finger  down  his  throat, and the best way to irritate him is to
+feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
+ 
+"On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you."
+ 
+Arthur blinked at it.
+ 
+"What a strange book. How did we get a lift then?"
+ 
+"That's the point, it's out of date now," said Ford, sliding  the
+book  back  into its cover. "I'm doing the field research for the
+New Revised Edition, and one of the things I'll have  to  include
+is  a  bit  about how the Vogons now employ Dentrassi cooks which
+gives us a rather useful little loophole."
+ 
+A pained expression crossed  Arthur's  face.  "But  who  are  the
+Dentrassi?" he said.
+ 
+"Great guys," said Ford. "They're the best  cooks  and  the  best
+drink  mixers and they don't give a wet slap about anything else.
+And they'll always help hitch hikers aboard, partly because  they
+like  the company, but mostly because it annoys the Vogons. Which
+is exactly the sort of thing  you  need  to  know  if  you're  an
+impoverished  hitch  hiker  trying  to  see  the  marvels  of the
+Universe for less than thirty Altairan Dollars a day. And  that's
+my job. Fun, isn't it?"
+ 
+Arthur looked lost.
+ 
+"It's  amazing,"  he  said  and  frowned  at  one  of  the  other
+mattresses.
+ 
+"Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than  I
+intended,"  said  Ford.  "I  came  for  a  week and got stuck for
+fifteen years."
+ 
+"But how did you get there in the first place then?"
+ 
+"Easy, I got a lift with a teaser."
+ 
+"A teaser?"
+ 
+"Yeah."
+ 
+"Er, what is ..."
+ 
+"A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They
+cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar
+contact yet and buzz them."
+ 
+"Buzz them?" Arthur began to feel that Ford was  enjoying  making
+life difficult for him.
+ 
+"Yeah", said Ford, "they buzz them. They find some isolated  spot
+with  very  few  people around, then land right by some poor soul
+whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in
+front  of  him  wearing  silly antennae on their heads and making
+beep beep noises. Rather childish really." Ford leant back on the
+mattress  with his hands behind his head and looked infuriatingly
+pleased with himself.
+ 
+"Ford," insisted Arthur, "I don't know  if  this  sounds  like  a
+silly question, but what am I doing here?"
+ 
+"Well you know that," said Ford. "I rescued you from the Earth."
+ 
+"And what's happened to the Earth?"
+ 
+"Ah. It's been demolished."
+ 
+"Has it," said Arthur levelly.
+ 
+"Yes. It just boiled away into space."
+ 
+"Look," said Arthur, "I'm a bit upset about that."
+ 
+Ford frowned to himself and seemed to roll the thought around his
+mind.
+ 
+"Yes, I can understand that," he said at last.
+ 
+"Understand that!" shouted Arthur. "Understand that!"
+ 
+Ford sprang up.
+ 
+"Keep looking at the book!" he hissed urgently.
+ 
+"What?"
+ 
+"Don't Panic."
+ 
+"I'm not panicking!"
+ 
+"Yes you are."
+ 
+"Alright so I'm panicking, what else is there to do?"
+ 
+"You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy's a
+fun place. You'll need to have this fish in your ear."
+ 
+"I beg your pardon?" asked Arthur, rather politely he thought.
+ 
+Ford was holding up a small glass jar which quite clearly  had  a
+small  yellow fish wriggling around in it. Arthur blinked at him.
+He wished there was something simple and  recognizable  he  could
+grasp hold of. He would have felt safe if alongside the Dentrassi
+underwear, the piles of Squornshellous  mattresses  and  the  man
+from  Betelgeuse  holding  up a small yellow fish and offering to
+put it in his ear he had been able to see just a small packet  of
+corn flakes. He couldn't, and he didn't feel safe.
+ 
+Suddenly a violent noise leapt at them from  no  source  that  he
+could  identify.  He  gasped in terror at what sounded like a man
+trying to gargle whilst fighting off a pack of wolves.
+ 
+"Shush!" said Ford. "Listen, it might be important."
+ 
+"Im ... important?"
+ 
+"It's the Vogon captain making an announcement on the T'annoy."
+ 
+"You mean that's how the Vogons talk?"
+ 
+"Listen!"
+ 
+"But I can't speak Vogon!"
+ 
+"You don't need to. Just put that fish in your ear."
+ 
+Ford, with a lightning movement, clapped  his  hand  to  Arthur's
+ear,  and  he  had  the  sudden  sickening  sensation of the fish
+slithering deep into his aural  tract.  Gasping  with  horror  he
+scrabbled  at  his ear for a second or so, but then slowly turned
+goggle-eyed with wonder. He was experiencing the aural equivalent
+of  looking  at  a  picture  of  two  black silhouetted faces and
+suddenly seeing it as a picture of a  white  candlestick.  Or  of
+looking  at  a  lot  of  coloured  dots on a piece of paper which
+suddenly resolve themselves into the figure  six  and  mean  that
+your  optician  is  going  to charge you a lot of money for a new
+pair of glasses.
+ 
+He was still listening to the howling gargles, he knew that, only
+now  it  had  taken on the semblance of perfectly straightforward
+English.
+ 
+This is what he heard ...
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 6
+ 
+"Howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl howl gargle  howl  gargle
+howl  howl  gargle  gargle  howl gargle gargle gargle howl slurrp
+uuuurgh should have a good time. Message repeats.  This  is  your
+captain   speaking,   so  stop  whatever  you're  doing  and  pay
+attention. First of all I see from our instruments that we have a
+couple of hitchhikers aboard. Hello wherever you are. I just want
+to make it totally clear that you  are  not  at  all  welcome.  I
+worked  hard to get where I am today, and I didn't become captain
+of a Vogon constructor ship simply so I could turn it into a taxi
+service  for  a load of degenerate freeloaders. I have sent out a
+search party, and as soon that they find you I will put  you  off
+the ship. If you're very lucky I might read you some of my poetry
+first.
+ 
+"Secondly, we are about to jump into hyperspace for  the  journey
+to  Barnard's  Star.  On  arrival  we  will  stay  in  dock for a
+seventy-two hour refit, and no one's to  leave  the  ship  during
+that time. I repeat, all planet leave is cancelled. I've just had
+an unhappy love affair, so I don't see why  anybody  else  should
+have a good time. Message ends."
+ 
+The noise stopped.
+ 
+Arthur discovered to his embarrassment that he was  lying  curled
+up  in  a small ball on the floor with his arms wrapped round his
+head. He smiled weakly.
+ 
+"Charming man," he said. "I wish I had  a  daughter  so  I  could
+forbid her to marry one ..."
+ 
+"You wouldn't need to," said  Ford.  "They've  got  as  much  sex
+appeal  as  a  road accident. No, don't move," he added as Arthur
+began to uncurl himself, "you'd better be prepared for  the  jump
+into hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
+ 
+"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
+ 
+"You ask a glass of water."
+ 
+Arthur thought about this.
+ 
+"Ford," he said.
+ 
+"Yeah?"
+ 
+"What's this fish doing in my ear?"
+ 
+"It's translating for you. It's a Babel fish. Look it up  in  the
+book if you like."
+ 
+He tossed over The Hitch Hiker's Guide to  the  Galaxy  and  then
+curled  himself  up into a foetal ball to prepare himself for the
+jump.
+ 
+At that moment the bottom fell out of Arthur's mind.
+ 
+His eyes turned inside out. His feet began to leak out of the top
+of his head.
+ 
+The room folded flat about  him,  spun  around,  shifted  out  of
+existence and left him sliding into his own navel.
+ 
+They were passing through hyperspace.
+ 
+"The Babel fish," said The Hitch  Hiker's  Guide  to  the  Galaxy
+quietly,  "is  small,  yellow  and  leech-like,  and probably the
+oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on  brainwave  energy  not
+from  its  carrier  but  from  those  around  it.  It absorbs all
+unconscious mental frequencies  from  this  brainwave  energy  to
+nourish  itself  with.  It  then  excretes  into  the mind of its
+carrier a telepathic matrix formed  by  combining  the  conscious
+thought  frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech
+centres of the brain  which  has  supplied  them.  The  practical
+upshot  of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear
+you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form  of
+language.  The  speech  patterns  you  actually  hear  decode the
+brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your  Babel
+fish.
+ 
+"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that  anything
+so  mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that
+some thinkers have chosen to see it as the  final  and  clinching
+proof of the non-existence of God.
+ 
+"The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I
+exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am
+nothing.'
+ 
+"`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway,  isn't  it?
+It  could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so
+therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
+ 
+"`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of  that,'  and  promptly
+vanished in a puff of logic.
+ 
+"`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for  an  encore  goes  on  to
+prove  that  black  is  white and gets himself killed on the next
+zebra crossing.
+ 
+"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a  load  of
+dingo's  kidneys,  but  that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a
+small fortune when he used it as the central theme of  his  best-
+selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.
+ 
+"Meanwhile, the poor Babel  fish,  by  effectively  removing  all
+barriers  to  communication between different races and cultures,
+has caused more and bloddier  wars  than  anything  else  in  the
+history of creation."
+ 
+Arthur let out a low groan. He was horrified to discover that the
+kick  through  hyperspace hadn't killed him. He was now six light
+years from the place that the Earth would have been if  it  still
+existed.
+ 
+The Earth.
+ 
+Visions of it swam sickeningly through his nauseated mind.  There
+was  no  way  his  imagination could feel the impact of the whole
+Earth having gone, it was too big. He  prodded  his  feelings  by
+thinking  that  his parents and his sister had gone. No reaction.
+He thought of all the people he had been close to.  No  reaction.
+Then  he  thought  of  a  complete  stranger he had been standing
+behind in the queue at the supermarket before and felt  a  sudden
+stab  -  the  supermarket  was  gone,  everything in it was gone.
+Nelson's Column had gone! Nelson's  Column  had  gone  and  there
+would  be  no  outcry,  because  there was no one left to make an
+outcry. From now on Nelson's Column only  existed  in  his  mind.
+England  only  existed in his mind - his mind, stuck here in this
+dank smelly  steel-lined  spaceship.  A  wave  of  claustrophobia
+closed in on him.
+ 
+England no longer existed. He'd got that - somehow he'd  got  it.
+He  tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn't grasp
+it. He decided to start smaller again.  New  York  has  gone.  No
+reaction.  He'd  never  seriously believed it existed anyway. The
+dollar, he thought, had sunk for ever. Slight tremor there. Every
+Bogart  movie  has  been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave
+him a nasty knock. McDonalds, he thought. There is no longer  any
+such thing as a McDonald's hamburger.
+ 
+He passed out. When he came round a second later he found he  was
+sobbing for his mother.
+ 
+He jerked himself violently to his feet.
+ 
+"Ford!"
+ 
+Ford looked up from where he was sitting in a corner  humming  to
+himself. He always found the actual travelling-through-space part
+of space travel rather trying.
+ 
+"Yeah?" he said.
+ 
+"If you're a researcher on this book thing and you were on Earth,
+you must have been gathering material on it."
+ 
+"Well, I was able to extend the original entry a bit, yes."
+ 
+"Let me see what it says in this edition then, I've  got  to  see
+it."
+ 
+"Yeah OK." He passed it over again.
+ 
+Arthur grabbed hold of it and tried to stop his hands shaking. He
+pressed  the  entry for the relevant page. The screen flashed and
+swirled and resolved into a page of print. Arthur stared at it.
+ 
+"It doesn't have an entry!" he burst out.
+ 
+Ford looked over his shoulder.
+ 
+"Yes it does," he said, "down there, see at  the  bottom  of  the
+screen,  just  under  Eccentrica  Gallumbits, the triple-breasted
+whore of Eroticon 6."
+ 
+Arthur followed Ford's finger, and saw where it was pointing. For
+a moment it still didn't register, then his mind nearly blew up.
+ 
+"What? Harmless? Is that all  it's  got  to  say?  Harmless!  One
+word!"
+ 
+Ford shrugged.
+ 
+"Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and  only
+a  limited  amount  of  space  in the book's microprocessors," he
+said, "and no one knew much about the Earth of course."
+ 
+"Well for God's sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit."
+ 
+"Oh yes, well I managed to  transmit  a  new  entry  off  to  the
+editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it's still an improvement."
+ 
+"And what does it say now?" asked Arthur.
+ 
+"Mostly harmless," admitted  Ford  with  a  slightly  embarrassed
+cough.
+ 
+"Mostly harmless!" shouted Arthur.
+ 
+"What was that noise?" hissed Ford.
+ 
+"It was me shouting," shouted Arthur.
+ 
+"No! Shut up!" said Ford. I think we're in trouble."
+ 
+"You think we're in trouble!"
+ 
+Outside the door were the sounds of marching feet.
+ 
+"The Dentrassi?" whispered Arthur.
+ 
+"No, those are steel tipped boots," said Ford.
+ 
+There was a sharp ringing rap on the door.
+ 
+"Then who is it?" said Arthur.
+ 
+"Well," said Ford, "if we're lucky it's just the Vogons  come  to
+throw us in to space."
+ 
+"And if we're unlucky?"
+ 
+"If we're unlucky," said  Ford  grimly,  "the  captain  might  be
+serious  in  his  threat  that  he's going to read us some of his
+poetry first ..."
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 7
+ 
+Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe.
+ 
+The second worst is that  of  the  Azagoths  of  Kria.  During  a
+recitation  by  their  Poet  Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his
+poem "Ode To A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One
+Midsummer   Morning"  four  of  his  audience  died  of  internal
+haemorrhaging,  and  the  President  of  the  Mid-Galactic   Arts
+Nobbling  Council  survived  by  gnawing one of his own legs off.
+Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed"  by  the  poem's
+reception,  and  was  about to embark on a reading of his twelve-
+book epic entitled My Favourite Bathtime  Gurgles  when  his  own
+major  intestine,  in  a  desperate  attempt  to  save  life  and
+civilization, leapt straight up through his  neck  and  throttled
+his brain.
+ 
+The very worst poetry of all  perished  along  with  its  creator
+Paula  Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England in
+the destruction of the planet Earth.
+ 
+Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz smiled very slowly. This was done  not  so
+much for effect as because he was trying to remember the sequence
+of muscle movements. He had had a terribly  therapeutic  yell  at
+his  prisoners  and was now feeling quite relaxed and ready for a
+little callousness.
+ 
+The prisoners sat in Poetry Appreciation  Chairs  --strapped  in.
+Vogons  suffered  no  illusions as to the regard their works were
+generally held in. Their early attempts at composition  had  been
+part  of  bludgeoning  insistence  that  they  be  accepted  as a
+properly evolved and cultured race, but now the only  thing  that
+kept them going was sheer bloodymindedness.
+ 
+The sweat stood out cold on Ford Prefect's brow, and  slid  round
+the  electrodes strapped to his temples. These were attached to a
+battery of electronic equipment - imagery intensifiers,  rhythmic
+modulators,  alliterative  residulators  and simile dumpers - all
+designed to heighten the experience of the  poem  and  make  sure
+that not a single nuance of the poet's thought was lost.
+ 
+Arthur Dent sat and quivered. He had no idea what he was in  for,
+but  he  knew  that he hadn't liked anything that had happened so
+far and didn't think things were likely to change.
+ 
+The Vogon began to read - a  fetid  little  passage  of  his  own
+devising.
+ 
+"Oh frettled gruntbuggly ..." he  began.  Spasms  wracked  Ford's
+body - this was worse than ever he'd been prepared for.
+ 
+"... thy micturations are to me | As plurdled gabbleblotchits  on
+a lurgid bee."
+ 
+"Aaaaaaarggggghhhhhh!" went Ford Prefect, wrenching his head back
+as  lumps  of  pain thumped through it. He could dimly see beside
+him Arthur lolling and rolling  in  his  seat.  He  clenched  his
+teeth.
+ 
+"Groop I  implore  thee,"  continued  the  merciless  Vogon,  "my
+foonting turlingdromes."
+ 
+His  voice  was  rising  to  a  horrible  pitch  of   impassioned
+stridency.    "And    hooptiously   drangle   me   with   crinkly
+bindlewurdles,| Or I will rend thee in the  gobberwarts  with  my
+blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!"
+ 
+"Nnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyuuuuuuurrrrrrrggggggghhhhh!" cried Ford Prefect
+and  threw  one  final spasm as the electronic enhancement of the
+last line caught him full blast across the temples. He went limp.
+ 
+Arthur lolled.
+ 
+"Now Earthlings ..." whirred the Vogon (he didn't know that  Ford
+Prefect  was  in  fact  from  a  small  planet in the vicinity of
+Betelgeuse, and wouldn't have cared if he  had)  "I  present  you
+with  a simple choice! Either die in the vacuum of space, or ..."
+he paused for melodramatic effect, "tell me how good you  thought
+my poem was!"
+ 
+He threw himself backwards into a huge leathery  bat-shaped  seat
+and watched them. He did the smile again.
+ 
+Ford was rasping for breath. He rolled his dusty tongue round his
+parched mouth and moaned.
+ 
+Arthur said brightly: "Actually I quite liked it."
+ 
+Ford turned and gaped. Here was an approach that had quite simply
+not occurred to him.
+ 
+The Vogon raised a surprised eyebrow  that  effectively  obscured
+his nose and was therefore no bad thing.
+ 
+"Oh good ..." he whirred, in considerable astonishment.
+ 
+"Oh yes," said Arthur, "I thought that some of  the  metaphysical
+imagery was really particularly effective."
+ 
+Ford continued to stare at him, slowly  organizing  his  thoughts
+around  this  totally  new  concept. Were they really going to be
+able to bareface their way out of this?
+ 
+"Yes, do continue ..." invited the Vogon.
+ 
+"Oh ... and er ... interesting rhythmic devices  too,"  continued
+Arthur,  "which  seemed to counterpoint the ... er ... er ..." He
+floundered.
+ 
+Ford leaped to his rescue, hazarding "counterpoint the surrealism
+of  the underlying metaphor of the ... er ..." He floundered too,
+but Arthur was ready again.
+ 
+"... humanity of the ..."
+ 
+"Vogonity," Ford hissed at him.
+ 
+"Ah yes, Vogonity (sorry)  of  the  poet's  compassionate  soul,"
+Arthur  felt  he  was  on  a  home  stretch now, "which contrives
+through the medium of the  verse  structure  to  sublimate  this,
+transcend   that,   and   come  to  terms  with  the  fundamental
+dichotomies  of  the  other,"  (he  was  reaching  a   triumphant
+crescendo ...) "and one is left with a profound and vivid insight
+into ... into ... er ..." (... which suddenly gave out  on  him.)
+Ford leaped in with the coup de gr@ce:
+ 
+"Into whatever it was the poem was about!" he yelled. Out of  the
+corner of his mouth: "Well done, Arthur, that was very good."
+ 
+The Vogon perused them. For a moment his embittered  racial  soul
+had  been  touched,  but he thought no - too little too late. His
+voice took on the quality of a cat snagging brushed nylon.
+ 
+"So what you're saying is that I write poetry because  underneath
+my  mean  callous  heartless  exterior  I  really just want to be
+loved," he said. He paused. "Is that right?"
+ 
+Ford laughed a nervous laugh. "Well I mean yes," he said,  "don't
+we all, deep down, you know ... er ..."
+ 
+The Vogon stood up.
+ 
+"No, well you're completely wrong," he said, "I just write poetry
+to  throw  my  mean callous heartless exterior into sharp relief.
+I'm going to throw you off  the  ship  anyway.  Guard!  Take  the
+prisoners to number three airlock and throw them out!"
+ 
+"What?" shouted Ford.
+ 
+A huge young Vogon guard stepped forward and yanked them  out  of
+their straps with his huge blubbery arms.
+ 
+"You can't throw us into space," yelled Ford,  "we're  trying  to
+write a book."
+ 
+"Resistance is useless!" shouted the Vogon guard back at him.  It
+was  the  first phrase he'd learnt when he joined the Vogon Guard
+Corps.
+ 
+The captain watched with detached amusement and then turned away.
+ 
+Arthur stared round him wildly.
+ 
+"I don't want to die now!" he yelled. "I've still got a headache!
+I  don't  want  to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross
+and wouldn't enjoy it!"
+ 
+The guard grasped them both firmly round  the  neck,  and  bowing
+deferentially  towards  his  captain's  back,  hoiked  them  both
+protesting out of the bridge. A steel door closed and the captain
+was  on  his  own  again. He hummed quietly and mused to himself,
+lightly fingering his notebook of verses.
+ 
+"Hmmmm," he said, "counterpoint the surrealism of the  underlying
+metaphor  ..."  He  considered this for a moment, and then closed
+the book with a grim smile.
+ 
+"Death's too good for them," he said.
+ 
+The long steel-lined corridor echoed to the feeble  struggles  of
+the two humanoids clamped firmly under rubbery Vogon armpits.
+ 
+"This is great," spluttered Arthur, "this is really terrific. Let
+go of me you brute!"
+ 
+The Vogon guard dragged them on.
+ 
+"Don't you worry," said  Ford,  "I'll  think  of  something."  He
+didn't sound hopeful.
+ 
+"Resistance is useless!" bellowed the guard.
+ 
+"Just don't say things  like  that,"  stammered  Ford.  "How  can
+anyone  maintain  a  positive  mental  attitude  if you're saying
+things like that?"
+ 
+"My God," complained Arthur, "you're  talking  about  a  positive
+mental  attitude  and you haven't even had your planet demolished
+today. I woke up this morning and thought I'd have a nice relaxed
+day,  do  a bit of reading, brush the dog ... It's now just after
+four in the afternoon and I'm already  thrown  out  of  an  alien
+spaceship six light years from the smoking remains of the Earth!"
+He spluttered and gurgled as the Vogon tightened his grip.
+ 
+"Alright," said Ford, "just stop panicking."
+ 
+"Who said anything about panicking?"  snapped  Arthur.  "This  is
+still  just  the  culture  shock. You wait till I've settled down
+into the  situation  and  found  my  bearings.  Then  I'll  start
+panicking."
+ 
+"Arthur  you're  getting  hysterical.  Shut   up!"   Ford   tried
+desperately  to  think, but was interrupted by the guard shouting
+again.
+ 
+"Resistance is useless!"
+ 
+"And you can shut up as well!" snapped Ford.
+ 
+"Resistance is useless!"
+ 
+"Oh give it a rest," said Ford. He twisted his head till  he  was
+looking straight up into his captor's face. A thought struck him.
+ 
+"Do you really enjoy this sort of thing?" he asked suddenly.
+ 
+The Vogon stopped dead and a look  of  immense  stupidity  seeped
+slowly over his face.
+ 
+"Enjoy?" he boomed. "What do you mean?"
+ 
+"What I mean," said Ford, "is does it give you a full  satisfying
+life? Stomping around, shouting, pushing people out of spaceships
+..."
+ 
+The Vogon stared up at the low steel  ceiling  and  his  eyebrows
+almost  rolled  over  each  other.  His mouth slacked. Finally he
+said, "Well the hours are good ..."
+ 
+"They'd have to be," agreed Ford.
+ 
+Arthur twisted his head to look at Ford.
+ 
+"Ford, what are you doing?" he asked in an amazed whisper.
+ 
+"Oh, just trying to take an interest in the world around me, OK?"
+he said. "So the hours are pretty good then?" he resumed.
+ 
+The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts  moiled  around
+in the murky depths.
+ 
+"Yeah," he said, "but now you come to mention  it,  most  of  the
+actual  minutes  are  pretty lousy. Except ..." he thought again,
+which required looking at the  ceiling  -  "except  some  of  the
+shouting  I  quite  like."  He  filled  his  lungs  and bellowed,
+"Resistance is ..."
+ 
+"Sure, yes," interrupted Ford hurriedly, "you're good at that,  I
+can  tell.  But if it's mostly lousy," he said, slowly giving the
+words time to reach their mark, "then why do you do it?  What  is
+it?  The  girls?  The  leather? The machismo? Or do you just find
+that coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all  presents
+an interesting challenge?"
+ 
+"Er ..." said the guard, "er ... er ... I dunno. I think  I  just
+sort of ... do it really. My aunt said that spaceship guard was a
+good career for a young Vogon - you know, the uniform,  the  low-
+slung stun ray holster, the mindless tedium ..."
+ 
+"There you are  Arthur,"  said  Ford  with  the  air  of  someone
+reaching  the  conclusion  of his argument, "you think you've got
+problems."
+ 
+Arthur rather thought he had. Apart from the unpleasant  business
+with  his  home  planet  the  Vogon  guard had half-throttled him
+already and he didn't like the sound of being thrown  into  space
+very much.
+ 
+"Try and understand his problem," insisted Ford. "Here he is poor
+lad,  his  entire life's work is stamping around, throwing people
+off spaceships ..."
+ 
+"And shouting," added the guard.
+ 
+"And shouting, sure," said Ford patting the blubbery arm  clamped
+round  his  neck  in  friendly condescension, "... and he doesn't
+even know why he's doing it!"
+ 
+Arthur agreed this was very sad. He did this with a small  feeble
+gesture, because he was too asphyxicated to speak.
+ 
+Deep rumblings of bemusement came from the guard.
+ 
+"Well. Now you put it like that I suppose ..."
+ 
+"Good lad!" encouraged Ford.
+ 
+"But  alright,"  went  on   the   rumblings,   "so   what's   the
+alternative?"
+ 
+"Well," said Ford, brightly but slowly, "stop doing it of course!
+Tell  them,"  he went on, "you're not going to do it anymore." He
+felt he had to add something to that,  but  for  the  moment  the
+guard seemed to have his mind occupied pondering that much.
+ 
+"Eerrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ..." said the  guard,  "erm,  well
+that doesn't sound that great to me."
+ 
+Ford suddenly felt the moment slipping away.
+ 
+"Now wait a minute," he said, "that's just  the  start  you  see,
+there's more to it than that you see ..."
+ 
+But at that moment the guard renewed his grip and  continued  his
+original  purpose of lugging his prisoners to the airlock. He was
+obviously quite touched.
+ 
+"No, I think if it's all the same to you," he said,  "I'd  better
+get you both shoved into this airlock and then go and get on with
+some other bits of shouting I've got to do."
+ 
+It wasn't all the same to Ford Prefect after all.
+ 
+"Come on now ... but look!" he said, less slowly, less brightly.
+ 
+"Huhhhhgggggggnnnnnnn  ..."  said  Arthur   without   any   clear
+inflection.
+ 
+"But hang on," pursued Ford, "there's music and art and things to
+tell you about yet! Arrrggghhh!"
+ 
+"Resistance is useless," bellowed the guard, and then added, "You
+see  if  I  keep  it  up  I can eventually get promoted to Senior
+Shouting Officer, and there aren't  usually  many  vacancies  for
+non-shouting  and  non-pushing-people-about  officers, so I think
+I'd better stick to what I know."
+ 
+They had now  reached  the  airlock  -  a  large  circular  steel
+hatchway  of  massive strength and weight let into the inner skin
+of the craft. The guard operated a control and the hatchway swung
+smoothly open.
+ 
+"But thanks for taking an interest," said the Vogon  guard.  "Bye
+now."  He  flung  Ford  and  Arthur through the hatchway into the
+small  chamber  within.  Arthur  lay  panting  for  breath.  Ford
+scrambled  round  and  flung  his  shoulder uselessly against the
+reclosing hatchway.
+ 
+"But listen," he shouted to the guard, "there's a whole world you
+don't  know  anything about ... here how about this?" Desperately
+he grabbed for the only bit of  culture  he  knew  offhand  -  he
+hummed the first bar of Beethoven's Fifth.
+ 
+"Da da da dum! Doesn't that stir anything in you?"
+ 
+"No," said the guard, "not really. But  I'll  mention  it  to  my
+aunt."
+ 
+If he said anything further after that it was lost. The  hatchway
+sealed itself tight, and all sound was lost but the faint distant
+hum of the ship's engines.
+ 
+They were in a brightly polished cylindrical  chamber  about  six
+feet in diameter and ten feet long.
+ 
+"Potentially bright lad I thought," he said and  slumped  against
+the curved wall.
+ 
+Arthur was still lying in the curve of the  floor  where  he  had
+fallen. He didn't look up. He just lay panting.
+ 
+"We're trapped now aren't we?"
+ 
+"Yes," said Ford, "we're trapped."
+ 
+"Well didn't you think of anything? I thought you said  you  were
+going to think of something. Perhaps you thought of something and
+didn't notice."
+ 
+"Oh yes, I thought of something," panted Ford. Arthur  looked  up
+expectantly.
+ 
+"But unfortunately," continued Ford, "it rather involved being on
+the  other  side  of this airtight hatchway." He kicked the hatch
+they'd just been through.
+ 
+"But it was a good idea was it?"
+ 
+"Oh yes, very neat."
+ 
+"What was it?"
+ 
+"Well I hadn't worked out the details yet. Not much point now  is
+there?"
+ 
+"So ... er, what happens next?"
+ 
+"Oh, er, well the hatchway in front of us will open automatically
+in  a  few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect
+and asphyxicate. If you take a lungful of air with  you  you  can
+last  for up to thirty seconds of course ..." said Ford. He stuck
+his hands behind his back, raised his eyebrows and started to hum
+an  old  Betelgeusian  battle  hymn. To Arthur's eyes he suddenly
+looked very alien.
+ 
+"So this is it," said Arthur, "we're going to die."
+ 
+"Yes," said Ford, "except ... no! Wait  a  minute!"  he  suddenly
+lunged  across  the  chamber at something behind Arthur's line of
+vision. "What's this switch?" he cried.
+ 
+"What? Where?" cried Arthur twisting round.
+ 
+"No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to  die  after
+all."
+ 
+He slumped against the wall again and carried on  the  tune  from
+where he left off.
+ 
+"You know," said Arthur, "it's  at  times  like  this,  when  I'm
+trapped  in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about
+to die of asphyxication in deep space  that  I  really  wish  I'd
+listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
+ 
+"Why, what did she tell you?"
+ 
+"I don't know, I didn't listen."
+ 
+"Oh." Ford carried on humming.
+ 
+"This is terrific," Arthur thought to himself,  "Nelson's  Column
+has  gone,  McDonald's  have  gone, all that's left is me and the
+words Mostly Harmless. Any second now all that will  be  left  is
+Mostly  Harmless.  And yesterday the planet seemed to be going so
+well."
+ 
+A motor whirred.
+ 
+A slight hiss built into a deafening roar of rushing air  as  the
+outer  hatchway opened on to an empty blackness studded with tiny
+impossibly bright points of light. Ford and  Arthur  popped  into
+outer space like corks from a toy gun.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 8
+ 
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the  Galaxy  is  a  wholly  remarkable
+book.  It  has  been compiled and recompiled many times over many
+years  and  under  many  different   editorships.   It   contains
+contributions   from   countless   numbers   of   travellers  and
+researchers.
+ 
+The introduction begins like this:
+ 
+"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how
+vastly  hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's
+a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just  peanuts
+to space. Listen ..." and so on.
+ 
+(After a while the style settles down a bit and it begins to tell
+you  things  you  really  need  to  know,  like the fact that the
+fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so  worried  about
+the  cumulative  erosion  by ten billion visiting tourists a year
+that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the  amount
+you  excrete whilst on the planet is surgically removed from your
+bodyweight when you leave: so every time you go to  the  lavatory
+it is vitally important to get a receipt.)
+ 
+To be fair though, when  confronted  by  the  sheer  enormity  of
+distances   between   the   stars,  better  minds  than  the  one
+responsible for the  Guide's  introduction  have  faltered.  Some
+invite  you  to  consider  for a moment a peanut in reading and a
+small walnut in Johannesburg, and other such dizzying concepts.
+ 
+The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into
+the human imagination.
+ 
+Even light, which travels  so  fast  that  it  takes  most  races
+thousands  of years to realize that it travels at all, takes time
+to journey between the stars. It takes  eight  minutes  from  the
+star  Sol to the place where the Earth used to be, and four years
+more to arrive at Sol's nearest stellar neighbour, Alpha Proxima.
+ 
+For light to reach the other side of the Galaxy, for it to  reach
+Damogran for instance, takes rather longer: five hundred thousand
+years.
+ 
+The record for hitch hiking this  distance  is  just  under  five
+years, but you don't get to see much on the way.
+ 
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy says that  if  you  hold  a
+lungful  of  air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for
+about thirty seconds. However it goes on to say  that  what  with
+space  being  the mind boggling size it is the chances of getting
+picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two  to
+the  power  of two hundred and sixty-seven thousand seven hundred
+and nine to one against.
+ 
+By a totally staggering coincidence that is  also  the  telephone
+number of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good
+party and met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get  off
+with - she went off with a gatecrasher.
+ 
+Though the planet Earth, the Islington  flat  and  the  telephone
+have  all  now  been demolished, it is comforting to reflect that
+they are all in some small way  commemorated  by  the  fact  that
+twenty-nine seconds later Ford and Arthur were rescued.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 9
+ 
+A computer chatted to itself in alarm as it  noticed  an  airlock
+open and close itself for no apparent reason.
+ 
+This was because Reason was in fact out to lunch.
+ 
+A hole had  just  appeared  in  the  Galaxy.  It  was  exactly  a
+nothingth  of  a  second  long,  a nothingth of an inch wide, and
+quite a lot of million light years from end to end.
+ 
+As it closed up lots of paper hats and party balloons fell out of
+it  and  drifted off through the universe. A team of seven three-
+foot-high market analysts fell out of  it  and  died,  partly  of
+asphyxication, partly of surprise.
+ 
+Two hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs fell  out
+of  it  too,  materializing in a large woobly heap on the famine-
+struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system.
+ 
+The whole Poghril tribe had died out from famine except  for  one
+last man who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later.
+ 
+The nothingth of a second for which the hole existed reverberated
+backwards and forwards through time in a most improbable fashion.
+Somewhere in the deeply remote past it  seriously  traumatized  a
+small  random group of atoms drifting through the empty sterility
+of space and made them cling together in the most extraordinarily
+unlikely   patterns.   These  patterns  quickly  learnt  to  copy
+themselves (this was part of what was  so  extraordinary  of  the
+patterns)  and  went  on to cause massive trouble on every planet
+they drifted on to. That was how life began in the Universe.
+ 
+Five wild Event Maelstroms swirled in vicious storms of  unreason
+and spewed up a pavement.
+ 
+On the pavement lay Ford Prefect and  Arthur  Dent  gulping  like
+half-spent fish.
+ 
+"There you are," gasped Ford, scrabbling for a fingerhold on  the
+pavement  as  it raced through the Third Reach of the Unknown, "I
+told you I'd think of something."
+ 
+"Oh sure," said Arthur, "sure."
+ 
+"Bright idea of mine," said Ford, "to find  a  passing  spaceship
+and get rescued by it."
+ 
+The real universe arched sickeningly away beneath  them.  Various
+pretend  ones  flitted  silently  by, like mountain goats. Primal
+light exploded, splattering space-time as with gobbets of junket.
+Time  blossomed,  matter  shrank  away.  The highest prime number
+coalesced quietly in a corner and hid itself away for ever.
+ 
+"Oh come off it," said  Arthur,  "the  chances  against  it  were
+astronomical."
+ 
+"Don't knock it, it worked," said Ford.
+ 
+"What sort of ship are  we  in?"  asked  Arthur  as  the  pit  of
+eternity yawned beneath them.
+ 
+"I don't know," said Ford, "I haven't opened my eyes yet."
+ 
+"No, nor have I," said Arthur.
+ 
+The Universe jumped, froze, quivered and splayed out  in  several
+unexpected directions.
+ 
+Arthur  and  Ford  opened  their  eyes  and   looked   about   in
+considerable surprise.
+ 
+"Good god," said Arthur, "it looks just like  the  sea  front  at
+Southend."
+ 
+"Hell, I'm relieved to hear you say that," said Ford.
+ 
+"Why?"
+ 
+"Because I thought I must be going mad."
+ 
+"Perhaps you are. Perhaps you only thought I said it."
+ 
+Ford thought about this.
+ 
+"Well, did you say it or didn't you?" he asked.
+ 
+"I think so," said Arthur.
+ 
+"Well, perhaps we're both going mad."
+ 
+"Yes," said Arthur, "we'd be mad, all things considered, to think
+this was Southend."
+ 
+"Well, do you think this is Southend?"
+ 
+"Oh yes."
+ 
+"So do I."
+ 
+"Therefore we must be mad."
+ 
+"Nice day for it."
+ 
+"Yes," said a passing maniac.
+ 
+"Who was that?" asked Arthur
+ 
+"Who - the man with the five heads and the elderberry  bush  full
+of kippers?"
+ 
+"Yes."
+ 
+"I don't know. Just someone."
+ 
+"Ah."
+ 
+They both sat on the pavement and watched with a  certain  unease
+as  huge  children bounced heavily along the sand and wild horses
+thundered through the sky taking  fresh  supplies  of  reinforced
+railings to the Uncertain Areas.
+ 
+"You know,"  said  Arthur  with  a  slight  cough,  "if  this  is
+Southend, there's something very odd about it ..."
+ 
+"You mean the way the sea stays steady  and  the  buildings  keep
+washing up and down?" said Ford. "Yes I thought that was odd too.
+In fact," he continued as with a huge bang Southend split  itself
+into  six equal segments which danced and span giddily round each
+other in lewd  and  licentious  formation,  "there  is  something
+altogether very strange going on."
+ 
+Wild yowling noises of pipes and strings seared through the wind,
+hot  doughnuts  popped out of the road for ten pence each, horrid
+fish stormed out of the sky and Arthur and Ford decided to make a
+run for it.
+ 
+They plunged through heavy walls of sound, mountains  of  archaic
+thought,  valleys  of  mood music, bad shoe sessions and footling
+bats and suddenly heard a girl's voice.
+ 
+It sounded quite a sensible voice, but it just said, "Two to  the
+power  of  one  hundred thousand to one against and falling," and
+that was all.
+ 
+Ford skidded down a beam of light and span round trying to find a
+source  for  the  voice  but could see nothing he could seriously
+believe in.
+ 
+"What was that voice?" shouted Arthur.
+ 
+"I don't know," yelled Ford, "I don't know.  It  sounded  like  a
+measurement of probability."
+ 
+"Probability? What do you mean?"
+ 
+"Probability. You know, like two to one, three to  one,  five  to
+four against. It said two to the power of one hundred thousand to
+one against. That's pretty improbable you know."
+ 
+A million-gallon vat of custard upended itself over them  without
+warning.
+ 
+"But what does it mean?" cried Arthur.
+ 
+"What, the custard?"
+ 
+"No, the measurement of probability!"
+ 
+"I don't know. I don't know at all. I think we're on some kind of
+spaceship."
+ 
+"I can only assume," said Arthur, "that this is  not  the  first-
+class compartment."
+ 
+Bulges appeared in the fabric of space-time. Great ugly bulges.
+ 
+"Haaaauuurrgghhh ..." said Arthur as he felt his  body  softening
+and  bending in unusual directions. "Southend seems to be melting
+away ... the stars are swirling ... a dustbowl ...  my  legs  are
+drifting  off  into the sunset ... my left arm's come off too." A
+frightening thought struck him: "Hell," he said, "how am I  going
+to  operate  my digital watch now?" He wound his eyes desperately
+around in Ford's direction.
+ 
+"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
+ 
+Again came the voice.
+ 
+"Two to the power of seventy-five thousand  to  one  against  and
+falling."
+ 
+Ford waddled around his pond in a furious circle.
+ 
+"Hey, who are you," he quacked. "Where are you? What's  going  on
+and is there any way of stopping it?"
+ 
+"Please relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a  stewardess  in
+an airliner with only one wing and two engines one of which is on
+fire, "you are perfectly safe."
+ 
+"But that's not the point!" raged Ford. "The point is that  I  am
+now  a  perfectly  save penguin, and my colleague here is rapidly
+running out of limbs!"
+ 
+"It's alright, I've got them back now," said Arthur.
+ 
+"Two to the power of fifty thousand to one against and  falling,"
+said the voice.
+ 
+"Admittedly," said Arthur, "they're longer than  I  usually  like
+them, but ..."
+ 
+"Isn't there anything," squawked Ford in avian  fury,  "you  feel
+you ought to be telling us?"
+ 
+The voice cleared its throat. A giant  petit  four  lolloped  off
+into the distance.
+ 
+"Welcome," the voice said, "to the Starship Heart of Gold."
+ 
+The voice continued.
+ 
+"Please do not be alarmed," it said, "by anything you see or hear
+around you. You are bound to feel some initial ill effects as you
+have been rescued from certain death at an improbability level of
+two  to  the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand to one
+against - possibly much higher. We are now cruising at a level of
+two  to  the  power  of  twenty-five  thousand to one against and
+falling, and we will be restoring normality just as  soon  as  we
+are  sure  what  is normal anyway. Thank you. Two to the power of
+twenty thousand to one against and falling."
+ 
+The voice cut out.
+ 
+Ford and Arthur were in a small luminous pink cubicle.
+ 
+Ford was wildly excited.
+ 
+"Arthur!" he said, "this is fantastic! We've been picked up by  a
+ship  powered  by  the  Infinite  Improbability  Drive!  This  is
+incredible! I  heard  rumors  about  it  before!  They  were  all
+officially  denied, but they must have done it! They've built the
+Improbability  Drive!  Arthur,  this  is   ...   Arthur?   What's
+happening?"
+ 
+Arthur had jammed himself against the door to the cubicle, trying
+to  hold  it  closed,  but  it was ill fitting. Tiny furry little
+hands were squeezing themselves through the cracks, their fingers
+were inkstained; tiny voices chattered insanely.
+ 
+Arthur looked up.
+ 
+"Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of  monkeys  outside
+who  want  to  talk  to  us  about this script for Hamlet they've
+worked out."
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 10
+ 
+The Infinite Improbability Drive is a  wonderful  new  method  of
+crossing  vast  interstellar  distances  in a mere nothingth of a
+second, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace.
+ 
+It was discovered by a lucky chance, and then  developed  into  a
+governable  form  of  propulsion  by  the  Galactic  Government's
+research team on Damogran.
+ 
+This, briefly, is the story of its discovery.
+ 
+The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability
+by  simply  hooking  the  logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-
+Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter  suspended  in  a  strong
+Brownian  Motion  producer  (say  a  nice hot cup of tea) were of
+course well understood - and such generators were often  used  to
+break  the  ice  at  parties  by  making all the molecules in the
+hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left,
+in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy.
+ 
+Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand
+for  this  -  partly  because it was a debasement of science, but
+mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.
+ 
+Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure  they
+encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate
+the infinite improbability  field  needed  to  flip  a  spaceship
+across  the mind-paralysing distances between the furthest stars,
+and in the end they grumpily announced that such  a  machine  was
+virtually impossible.
+ 
+Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep  up  the  lab
+after  a  particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning
+this way:
+ 
+If,  he  thought  to  himself,  such  a  machine  is  a   virtual
+impossibility,  then it must logically be a finite improbability.
+So all I have to do in order to make one is to work  out  exactly
+how   improbable   it  is,  feed  that  figure  into  the  finite
+improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of  really  hot  tea
+... and turn it on!
+ 
+He did this, and was rather startled  to  discover  that  he  had
+managed   to   create  the  long  sought  after  golden  Infinite
+Improbability generator out of thin air.
+ 
+It startled him even more when just  after  he  was  awarded  the
+Galactic  Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched
+by a rampaging mob of  respectable  physicists  who  had  finally
+realized  that  the  one  thing  they really couldn't stand was a
+smartass.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 11
+ 
+The Improbability-proof control cabin of the Heart of Gold looked
+like  a  perfectly  conventional  spaceship  except  that  it was
+perfectly clean because it was so new. Some of the control  seats
+hadn't  had  the  plastic  wrapping  taken off yet. The cabin was
+mostly  white,  oblong,  and  about  the  size  of   a   smallish
+restaurant.  In  fact  it  wasn't  perfectly oblong: the two long
+walls were raked round in a slight parallel curve,  and  all  the
+angles  and  corners  were contoured in excitingly chunky shapes.
+The truth of the matter is that it would have been a  great  deal
+simpler  and  more  practical  to  build the cabin as an ordinary
+three-dimensional oblong rom, but then the designers  would  have
+got  miserable. As it was the cabin looked excitingly purposeful,
+with large video screens ranged over  the  control  and  guidance
+system  panels  on  the concave wall, and long banks of computers
+set into the convex wall. In one corner a robot sat  humped,  its
+gleaming  brushed steel head hanging loosely between its gleaming
+brushed steel knees. It too was fairly new,  but  though  it  was
+beautifully  constructed and polished it somehow looked as if the
+various parts of its more or less humanoid body didn't quite  fit
+properly.  In  fact  they fitted perfectly well, but something in
+its bearing suggested that they might have fitted better.
+ 
+Zaphod Beeblebrox paced nervously up and down the cabin, brushing
+his  hands  over  pieces  of gleaming equipment and giggling with
+excitement.
+ 
+Trillian sat hunched over a  clump  of  instruments  reading  off
+figures.  Her  voice  was  carried round the Tannoy system of the
+whole ship.
+ 
+"Five to one against and falling ..."  she  said,  "four  to  one
+against  and  falling  ...  three  to  one  ...  two  ... one ...
+probability factor of one to one ... we have normality, I  repeat
+we  have  normality." She turned her microphone off - then turned
+it back on, with a slight  smile  and  continued:  "Anything  you
+still  can't  cope  with  is  therefore  your own problem. Please
+relax. You will be sent for soon."
+ 
+Zaphod burst out in annoyance: "Who are they Trillian?"
+ 
+Trillian span her seat round to face him and shrugged.
+ 
+"Just a couple of guys we seem to have picked up in open  space,"
+she said. "Section ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha."
+ 
+"Yeah, well that's a very  sweet  thought  Trillian,"  complained
+Zaphod,   "but   do   you   really  think  it's  wise  under  the
+circumstances? I mean, here we are on the run and everything,  we
+must  have  the police of half the Galaxy after us by now, and we
+stop to pick up hitch hikers. OK, so ten out of  ten  for  style,
+but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?"
+ 
+He tapped irritably at a control panel.  Trillian  quietly  moved
+his  hand  before he tapped anything important. Whatever Zaphod's
+qualities of mind might include - dash, bravado, conceit - he was
+mechanically  inept  and  could  easily  blow the ship up with an
+extravagant gesture. Trillian had come to suspect that  the  main
+reason  why  he  had  had such a wild and successful life that he
+never really understood the significance of anything he did.
+ 
+"Zaphod," she said patiently, "they were floating unprotected  in
+open space ... you wouldn't want them to have died would you?"
+ 
+"Well, you know ... no. Not as such, but ..."
+ 
+"Not as such? Not die as such? But?" Trillian cocked her head  on
+one side.
+ 
+"Well, maybe someone else might have picked them up later."
+ 
+"A second later and they would have been dead."
+ 
+"Yeah, so if you'd taken the trouble to think about the problem a
+bit longer it would have gone away."
+ 
+"You'd been happy to let them die?"
+ 
+"Well, you know, not happy as such, but ..."
+ 
+"Anyway," said Trillian, turning back to the controls, "I  didn't
+pick them up."
+ 
+"What do you mean? Who picked them up then?"
+ 
+"The ship did."
+ 
+"Huh?"
+ 
+"The ship did. All by itself."
+ 
+"Huh?"
+ 
+"Whilst we were in Improbability Drive."
+ 
+"But that's incredible."
+ 
+"No Zaphod. Just very very improbable."
+ 
+"Er, yeah."
+ 
+"Look Zaphod," she said, patting his arm, "don't worry about  the
+aliens.  They're  just  a  couple of guys I expect. I'll send the
+robot down to get them and bring them up here. Hey Marvin!"
+ 
+In the corner, the  robot's  head  swung  up  sharply,  but  then
+wobbled  about imperceptibly.  It pulled itself up to its feet as
+if it was about five pounds heavier that  it  actually  was,  and
+made  what  an  outside  observer would have thought was a heroic
+effort to cross the room. It stopped in  front  of  Trillian  and
+seemed to stare through her left shoulder.
+ 
+"I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed," it  said.
+Its voice was low and hopeless.
+ 
+"Oh God," muttered Zaphod and slumped into a seat.
+ 
+"Well," said Trillian in a  bright  compassionate  tone,  "here's
+something to occupy you and keep your mind off things."
+ 
+"It won't work," droned Marvin, "I have  an  exceptionally  large
+mind."
+ 
+"Marvin!" warned Trillian.
+ 
+"Alright," said Marvin, "what do you want me to do?"
+ 
+"Go down to number two entry bay and bring the two aliens up here
+under surveillance."
+ 
+With a microsecond pause, and a finely calculated micromodulation
+of  pitch and timbre - nothing you could actually take offence at
+- Marvin managed to convey his utter contempt and horror  of  all
+things human.
+ 
+"Just that?" he said.
+ 
+"Yes," said Trillian firmly.
+ 
+"I won't enjoy it," said Marvin.
+ 
+Zaphod leaped out of his seat.
+ 
+"She's not asking you to enjoy it," he shouted, "just do it  will
+you?"
+ 
+"Alright," said Marvin like the tolling of a great cracked  bell,
+"I'll do it."
+ 
+"Good ..." snapped Zaphod, "great ... thank you ..."
+ 
+Marvin turned and lifted his flat-topped triangular red  eyes  up
+towards him.
+ 
+"I'm not getting you down at all am I?" he said pathetically.
+ 
+"No no Marvin," lilted Trillian, "that's just fine, really ..."
+ 
+"I wouldn't like to think that I was getting you down."
+ 
+"No, don't worry about that," the lilt continued, "you  just  act
+as comes naturally and everything will be just fine."
+ 
+"You're sure you don't mind?" probed Marvin.
+ 
+"No no Marvin," lilted Trillian, "that's just  fine,  really  ...
+just part of life."
+ 
+"Marvin flashed him an electronic look.
+ 
+"Life," said Marvin, "don't talk to me about life."
+ 
+He turned hopelessly on his heel and lugged himself  out  of  the
+cabin.  With  a  satisfied hum and a click the door closed behind
+him
+ 
+"I don't think I  can  stand  that  robot  much  longer  Zaphod,"
+growled Trillian.
+ 
+The Encyclopaedia Galactica  defines  a  robot  as  a  mechanical
+apparatus  designed  to  do  the  work  of  a  man. The marketing
+division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as
+"Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With."
+ 
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide  to  the  Galaxy  defines  the  marketing
+division  of  the  Sirius  Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of
+mindless jerks who'll be the first  against  the  wall  when  the
+revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors
+would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking  over
+the post of robotics correspondent.
+ 
+Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica  that
+had  the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand
+years in the future defined the marketing division of the  Sirius
+Cybernetics  Corporation  as  "a bunch of mindless jerks who were
+the first against the wall when the revolution came."
+ 
+The pink cubicle had winked out of  existence,  the  monkeys  had
+sunk away to a better dimension. Ford and Arthur found themselves
+in the embarkation area of the ship. It was rather smart.
+ 
+"I think the ship's brand new," said Ford.
+ 
+"How can you tell?" asked  Arthur.  "Have  you  got  some  exotic
+device for measuring the age of metal?"
+ 
+"No, I just found this sales brochure lying on the floor. It's  a
+lot of `the Universe can be yours' stuff. Ah! Look, I was right."
+ 
+Ford jabbed at one of the pages and showed it to Arthur.
+ 
+"It says: Sensational new breakthrough in Improbability  Physics.
+As  soon  as  the  ship's drive reaches Infinite Improbability it
+passes through every point in the Universe. Be the envy of  other
+major governments. Wow, this is big league stuff."
+ 
+Ford hunted excitedly through the technical specs  of  the  ship,
+occasionally  gasping with astonishment at what he read - clearly
+Galactic astrotechnology had moved ahead during the years of  his
+exile.
+ 
+Arthur listened for a short while, but being unable to understand
+the  vast  majority  of  what Ford was saying he began to let his
+mind  wander,  trailing  his  fingers  along  the  edge   of   an
+incomprehensible  computer  bank,  he  reached out and pressed an
+invitingly large red button on a nearby panel. The panel  lit  up
+with  the  words  Please do not press this button again. He shook
+himself.
+ 
+"Listen," said  Ford,  who  was  still  engrossed  in  the  sales
+brochure, "they make a big thing of the ship's cybernetics. A new
+generation  of  Sirius   Cybernetics   Corporation   robots   and
+computers, with the new GPP feature."
+ 
+"GPP feature?" said Arthur. "What's that?"
+ 
+"Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities."
+ 
+"Oh," said Arthur, "sounds ghastly."
+ 
+A voice behind them said, "It is." The voice was low and hopeless
+and  accompanied  by a slight clanking sound. They span round and
+saw an abject steel man standing hunched in the doorway.
+ 
+"What?" they said.
+ 
+"Ghastly," continued Marvin, "it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just
+don't  even  talk about it. Look at this door," he said, stepping
+through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he
+mimicked  the style of the sales brochure. "All the doors in this
+spaceship have a cheerful and  sunny  disposition.  It  is  their
+pleasure  to  open for you, and their satisfaction to close again
+with the knowledge of a job well done."
+ 
+As the door closed behind them it became  apparent  that  it  did
+indeed    have    a    satisfied   sigh-like   quality   to   it.
+"Hummmmmmmyummmmmmm ah!" it said.
+ 
+Marvin regarded it with cold loathing whilst his  logic  circuits
+chattered with disgust and tinkered with the concept of directing
+physical violence against it Further circuits cut in saying,  Why
+bother?  What's  the point? Nothing is worth getting involved in.
+Further circuits amused themselves  by  analysing  the  molecular
+components  of the door, and of the humanoids' brain cells. For a
+quick encore they measured the level of hydrogen emissions in the
+surrounding  cubic  parsec  of  space and then shut down again in
+boredom. A spasm of despair shook the robot's body as he turned.
+ 
+"Come on," he droned, "I've been ordered to take you down to  the
+bridge.  Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to
+take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction?  'Cos  I
+don't."
+ 
+He turned and walked back to the hated door.
+ 
+"Er, excuse me," said Ford following after him, "which government
+owns this ship?"
+ 
+Marvin ignored him.
+ 
+"You watch this door," he muttered, "it's about to open again.  I
+can   tell  by  the  intolerable  air  of  smugness  it  suddenly
+generates."
+ 
+With an ingratiating little whine the door slit  open  again  and
+Marvin stomped through.
+ 
+"Come on," he said.
+ 
+The others followed quickly and the door  slit  back  into  place
+with pleased little clicks and whirrs.
+ 
+"Thank you the  marketing  division  of  the  Sirius  Cybernetics
+Corporation,"  said Marvin and trudged desolately up the gleaming
+curved corridor that stretched  out  before  them.  "Let's  build
+robots  with  Genuine  People  Personalities," they said. So they
+tried it out with me. I'm a personality prototype. You  can  tell
+can't you?"
+ 
+Ford and Arthur muttered embarrassed little disclaimers.
+ 
+"I hate that door," continued Marvin. "I'm not getting  you  down
+at all am I?"
+ 
+"Which government ..." started Ford again.
+ 
+"No government owns it," snapped the robot, "it's been stolen."
+ 
+"Stolen?"
+ 
+"Stolen?" mimicked Marvin.
+ 
+"Who by?" asked Ford.
+ 
+"Zaphod Beeblebrox."
+ 
+Something extraordinary happened to Ford's face.  At  least  five
+entirely separate and distinct expressions of shock and amazement
+piled up on it in a jumbled mess. His left leg, which was in  mid
+stride,  seemed to have difficulty in finding the floor again. He
+stared at the robot and tried to entangle some dartoid muscles.
+ 
+"Zaphod Beeblebrox ...?" he said weakly.
+ 
+"Sorry, did I say something wrong?" said Marvin, dragging himself
+on  regardless. "Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway
+so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God I'm so  depressed.
+Here's  another of those self-satisfied door. Life! Don't talk to
+me about life."
+ 
+"No one ever mentioned it," muttered Arthur irritably. "Ford, are
+you alright?"
+ 
+Ford stared at him. "Did that robot say  Zaphod  Beeblebrox?"  he
+said.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 12
+ 
+A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the  Heart  of  Gold
+cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of
+himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate.  For  years
+radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning
+dials; then as  the  technology  became  more  sophisticated  the
+controls  were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the
+panels with your fingers; now all you had to  do  was  wave  your
+hand  in  the  general  direction  of the components and hope. It
+saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you
+had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to
+the same programme.
+ 
+Zaphod waved a hand and the channel  switched  again.  More  gunk
+music,  but this time it was a background to a news announcement.
+The news was always heavily edited to  fit  the  rhythms  of  the
+music.
+ 
+"... and news brought to you here  on  the  sub-etha  wave  band,
+broadcasting  around  the  galaxy  around  the clock," squawked a
+voice, "and we'll be saying a big hello to all  intelligent  life
+forms  everywhere  ... and to everyone else out there, the secret
+is to bang the rocks together, guys. And of course, the big  news
+story  tonight  is the sensational theft of the new Improbability
+Drive prototype ship by none other than Galactic President Zaphod
+Beeblebrox. And the question everyone's asking is ... has the big
+Z finally flipped? Beeblebrox,  the  man  who  invented  the  Pan
+Galactic  Gargle Blaster, ex-confidence trickster, once described
+by Eccentrica Gallumbits as the Best Bang since the Big One,  and
+recently  voted  the  Wort  Dressed  Sentinent Being in the Known
+Universe for the seventh time ... has he got an answer this time?
+We  asked his private brain care specialist Gag Halfrunt ..." The
+music swirled and dived for a moment.  Another  voice  broke  in,
+presumably  Halfrunt.  He  said: "Vell, Zaphod's jist zis guy you
+know?" but got no further because an electric pencil flew  across
+the  cabin  and  through  the  radio's on/off sensitive airspace.
+Zaphod turned and glared at Trillian - she had thrown the pencil.
+ 
+"Hey," he said, what do you do that for?"
+ 
+Trillian was tapping her fingers on a screenful of figures.
+ 
+"I've just thought of something," she said.
+ 
+"Yeah? Worth interrupting a news bulletin about me for?"
+ 
+"You hear enough about yourself as it is."
+ 
+"I'm very insecure. We know that."
+ 
+"Can we drop your ego for a moment? This is important."
+ 
+"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it
+caught and shot now." Zaphod glared at her again, then laughed.
+ 
+"Listen," she said, "we picked up those couple of guys ..."
+ 
+"What couple of guys?"
+ 
+"The couple of guys we picked up."
+ 
+"Oh, yeah," said Zaphod, "those couple of guys."
+ 
+"We picked them up in sector ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha."
+ 
+"Yeah?" said Zaphod and blinked.
+ 
+Trillian said quietly, "Does that mean anything to you?"
+ 
+"Mmmmm," said Zaphod, "ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha. ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha?"
+ 
+"Well?" said Trillian.
+ 
+"Er ... what does the Z mean?" said Zaphod.
+ 
+"Which one?"
+ 
+"Any one."
+ 
+One  of  the  major  difficulties  Trillian  experienced  in  her
+relationship  with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him
+pretending to be stupid just  to  get  people  off  their  guard,
+pretending  to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think
+and wanted someone else to  do  it  for  him,  pretending  to  be
+outrageously  stupid  to  hide  the  fact that he actually didn't
+understand what was going on, and really being genuinely  stupid.
+He  was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was
+so - but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the
+act.  He proffered people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.
+This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely  stupid,  but
+she could no longer be bothered to argue about it.
+ 
+She sighed and punched up a star map on  the  visiscreen  so  she
+could make it simple for him, whatever his reasons for wanting it
+to be that way.
+ 
+"There," she pointed, "right there."
+ 
+"Hey ... Yeah!" said Zaphod.
+ 
+"Well?" she said.
+ 
+"Well what?"
+ 
+Parts of the inside of her head screamed at other  parts  of  the
+inside  of her head. She said, very calmly, "It's the same sector
+you originally picked me up in."
+ 
+He looked at her and then looked back at the screen.
+ 
+"Hey, yeah," he said, "now that is wild. We  should  have  zapped
+straight into the middle of the Horsehead Nebula. How did we come
+to be there? I mean that's nowhere."
+ 
+She ignored this.
+ 
+"Improbability Drive," she said patiently. "You explained  it  to
+me  yourself.  We  pass  through every point in the Universe, you
+know that."
+ 
+"Yeah, but that's one wild coincidence isn't it?"
+ 
+"Yes."
+ 
+"Picking someone up at that  point?  Out  of  the  whole  of  the
+Universe  to choose from? That's just too ... I want to work this
+out. Computer!"
+ 
+The  Sirius  Cybernetics  Corporation  Shipboard  Computer  which
+controlled   and  permeated  every  particle of the ship switched
+into communication mode.
+ 
+"Hi there!" it said brightly and simultaneously spewed out a tiny
+ribbon  of ticker tape just for the record. The ticker tape said,
+Hi there!
+ 
+"Oh God," said Zaphod. He hadn't worked with  this  computer  for
+long but had already learned to loathe it.
+ 
+The computer continued, brash and cheery as  if  it  was  selling
+detergent.
+ 
+"I want you to know that whatever your problem, I am here to help
+you solve it."
+ 
+"Yeah yeah," said Zaphod. "Look, I think I'll just use a piece of
+paper."
+ 
+"Sure thing," said the computer, spilling out its message into  a
+waste bin at the same time, "I understand. If you ever want ..."
+ 
+"Shut up!" said Zaphod, and snatching up a pencil sat  down  next
+to Trillian at the console.
+ 
+"OK, OK ..." said the computer in a hurt tone of voice and closed
+down its speech channel again.
+ 
+Zaphod and Trillian pored over the figures that the Improbability
+flight path scanner flashed silently up in front of them.
+ 
+"Can we work out," said Zaphod, "from their point  of  view  what
+the Improbability of their rescue was?"
+ 
+"Yes, that's a constant", said Trillian, "two to the power of two
+hundred  and  seventy-six  thousand seven hundred and nine to one
+against."
+ 
+"That's high. They're two lucky lucky guys."
+ 
+"Yes."
+ 
+"But relative to what we were doing when the ship picked them  up
+..."
+ 
+Trillian punched up the figures. They  showed  tow-to-the  power-
+of-Infinity-minus-one  (an  irrational  number  that  only  has a
+conventional meaning in Improbability physics).
+ 
+"... it's pretty low," continued Zaphod with a slight whistle.
+ 
+"Yes," agreed Trillian, and looked at him quizzically.
+ 
+"That's one big whack  of  Improbability  to  be  accounted  for.
+Something  pretty  improbable  has  got to show up on the balance
+sheet if it's all going to add up into a pretty sum."
+ 
+Zaphod scribbled a few sums,  crossed  them  out  and  threw  the
+pencil away.
+ 
+"Bat's dots, I can't work it out."
+ 
+"Well?"
+ 
+Zaphod knocked his two heads together in irritation  and  gritted
+his teeth.
+ 
+"OK," he said. "Computer!"
+ 
+The voice circuits sprang to life again.
+ 
+"Why hello there!" they said (ticker tape, ticker tape).  "All  I
+want to do is make your day nicer and nicer and nicer ..."
+ 
+"Yeah well shut up and work something out for me."
+ 
+"Sure thing," chattered the computer,  "you  want  a  probability
+forecast based on ..."
+ 
+"Improbability data, yeah."
+ 
+"OK," the  computer  continued.  "Here's  an  interesting  little
+notion.  Did you realize that most people's lives are governed by
+telephone numbers?"
+ 
+A pained look crawled across one of Zaphod's faces and on to  the
+other one.
+ 
+"Have you flipped?" he said.
+ 
+"No, but you will when I tell you that ..."
+ 
+Trillian  gasped.  She  scrabbled   at   the   buttons   on   the
+Improbability flight path screen.
+ 
+"Telephone number?" she  said.  "Did  that  thing  say  telephone
+number?"
+ 
+Numbers flashed up on the screen.
+ 
+The computer had paused politely, but now it continued.
+ 
+"What I was about to say was that ..."
+ 
+"Don't bother please," said Trillian.
+ 
+"Look, what is this?" said Zaphod.
+ 
+"I don't know," said Trillian, "but those aliens - they're on the
+way  up  to the bridge with that wretched robot. Can we pick them
+up on any monitor cameras?"
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 13
+ 
+Marvin trudged on down the corridor, still moaning.
+ 
+"... and then of course I've got this terrible pain  in  all  the
+diodes down my left hand side ..."
+ 
+"No?" said Arthur grimly as he walked along beside him. "Really?"
+ 
+"Oh yes," said Marvin, "I mean I've asked for them to be replaced
+but no one ever listens."
+ 
+"I can imagine."
+ 
+Vague whistling and humming noises were coming from  Ford.  "Well
+well well," he kept saying to himself, "Zaphod Beeblebrox ..."
+ 
+Suddenly Marvin stopped, and held up a hand.
+ 
+"You know what's happened now of course?"
+ 
+"No, what?" said Arthur, who didn't what to know.
+ 
+"We've arrived at another of those doors."
+ 
+There was a sliding door let  into  the  side  of  the  corridor.
+Marvin eyed it suspiciously.
+ 
+"Well?" said Ford impatiently. "Do we go through?"
+ 
+"Do we go through?" mimicked Marvin. "Yes. This is  the  entrance
+to the bridge. I was told to take you to the bridge. Probably the
+highest demand that will be made on  my  intellectual  capacities
+today I shouldn't wonder."
+ 
+Slowly, with great loathing, he stepped towards the door, like  a
+hunter stalking his prey. Suddenly it slid open.
+ 
+"Thank you," it said, "for making a simple door very happy."
+ 
+Deep in Marvin's thorax gears ground.
+ 
+"Funny," he intoned funerally, "how  just  when  you  think  life
+can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does."
+ 
+He heaved himself through the  door  and  left  Ford  and  Arthur
+staring  at each other and shrugging their shoulders. From inside
+they heard Marvin's voice again.
+ 
+"I suppose you want to see the aliens now," he said. "Do you want
+me  to  sit  in  a  corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm
+standing?"
+ 
+"Yeah, just show them in would you Marvin?" came another voice.
+ 
+Arthur looked at Ford and was astonished to see him laughing.
+ 
+"What's ...?"
+ 
+"Shhh," said Ford, "come in."
+ 
+He stepped through into the bridge.
+ 
+Arthur followed him in nervously and was astonished to see a  man
+lolling  back  in  a  chair  with  his  feet on a control console
+picking the teeth in his right-hand head with his left hand.  The
+right-hand  head  seemed  to  be thoroughly preoccupied with this
+task, but the  left-hand  one  was  grinning  a  broad,  relaxed,
+nonchalant  grin.  The  number  of  things  that  Arthur couldn't
+believe he was seeing was fairly large. His jaw flapped about  at
+a loose end for a while.
+ 
+The peculiar man waved a lazy wave at Ford and with an  appalling
+affectation of nonchalance said, "Ford, hi, how are you? Glad you
+could drop in."
+ 
+Ford was not going to be outcooled.
+ 
+"Zaphod," he drawled, "great to see you, you're looking well, the
+extra arm suits you. Nice ship you've stolen."
+ 
+Arthur goggled at him.
+ 
+"You mean you know this guy?" he said, waving a  wild  finger  at
+Zaphod.
+ 
+"Know him!" exclaimed Ford, "he's ..." he paused, and decided  to
+do the introductions the other way round.
+ 
+"Oh, Zaphod, this is a friend of mine, Arthur Dent," he said,  "I
+saved him when his planet blew up."
+ 
+"Oh sure," said Zaphod, "hi Arthur, glad you could make it."  His
+right-hand head looked round casually, said "hi" and went back to
+having his teeth picked.
+ 
+Ford carried on. "And Arthur," he said, "this is  my  semi-cousin
+Zaphod Beeb ..."
+ 
+"We've met," said Arthur sharply.
+ 
+When you're cruising down the road  in  the  fast  lane  and  you
+lazily  sail  past a few hard driving cars and are feeling pretty
+pleased with yourself and  then  accidentally  change  down  from
+fourth to first instead of third thus making your engine leap out
+of your bonnet in a rather ugly mess, it tends to throw  you  off
+your  stride  in  much  the  same way that this remark threw Ford
+Prefect off his.
+ 
+"Err ... what?"
+ 
+"I said we've met."
+ 
+Zaphod gave an  awkward  start  of  surprise  and  jabbed  a  gum
+sharply.
+ 
+"Hey ... er, have we? Hey ... er ..."
+ 
+Ford rounded on Arthur with an angry flash in his  eyes.  Now  he
+felt  he  was  back  on  home  ground he suddenly began to resent
+having lumbered himself with this ignorant primitive who knew  as
+much about the affairs of the Galaxy as an Ilford-based gnat knew
+about life in Peking.
+ 
+"What do you mean you've  met?"  he  demanded.  "This  is  Zaphod
+Beeblebrox from Betelgeuse Five you know, not bloody Martin Smith
+from Croydon."
+ 
+"I don't care," said Arthur coldly. We've met, haven't we  Zaphod
+Beeblebrox - or should I say ... Phil?"
+ 
+"What!" shouted Ford.
+ 
+"You'll have to remind me," said Zaphod. "I've a terrible  memory
+for species."
+ 
+"It was at a party," pursued Arthur.
+ 
+"Yeah, well I doubt that," said Zaphod.
+ 
+"Cool it will you Arthur!" demanded Ford.
+ 
+Arthur would not be deterred. "A party six months ago.  On  Earth
+... England ..."
+ 
+Zaphod shook his head with a tight-lipped smile.
+ 
+"London," insisted Arthur, "Islington."
+ 
+"Oh," said Zaphod with a guilty start, "that party."
+ 
+This wasn't fair on Ford at all. He looked backwards and forwards
+between  Arthur and Zaphod. "What?" he said to Zaphod. "You don't
+mean to say you've been on that miserable planet as well do you?"
+ 
+"No, of course not," said Zaphod breezily. "Well, I may have just
+dropped in briefly, you know, on my way somewhere ..."
+ 
+"But I was stuck there for fifteen years!"
+ 
+"Well I didn't know that did I?"
+ 
+"But what were you doing there?"
+ 
+"Looking about, you know."
+ 
+"He gatecrashed a party," persisted Arthur, trembling with anger,
+"a fancy dress party ..."
+ 
+"It would have to be, wouldn't it?" said Ford.
+ 
+"At this party," persisted Arthur, "was a girl ... oh well,  look
+it  doesn't  matter  now.  The  whole  place has gone up in smoke
+anyway ..."
+ 
+"I wish you'd stop sulking about that bloody planet," said  Ford.
+"Who was the lady?"
+ 
+"Oh just somebody. Well alright, I wasn't doing  very  well  with
+her. I'd been trying all evening. Hell, she was something though.
+Beautiful, charming, devastatingly intelligent, at last  I'd  got
+her  to  myself  for  a bit and was plying her with a bit of talk
+when this friend of yours barges up and says Hey  doll,  is  this
+guy  boring  you?  Why  don't  you talk to me instead? I'm from a
+different planet." I never saw her again."
+ 
+"Zaphod?" exclaimed Ford.
+ 
+"Yes," said Arthur,  glaring  at  him  and  trying  not  to  feel
+foolish. "He only had the two arms and the one head and he called
+himself Phil, but ..."
+ 
+"But you must admit he did turn out to be from  another  planet,"
+said  Trillian  wandering  into  sight  at  the  other end of the
+bridge. She gave Arthur a pleasant smile  which  settled  on  him
+like  a ton of bricks and then turned her attention to the ship's
+controls again.
+ 
+There was silence  for  a  few  seconds,  and  then  out  of  the
+scrambled mess of Arthur's brain crawled some words.
+ 
+"Tricia McMillian?" he said. "What are you doing here?"
+ 
+"Same as you," she said, "I hitched a  lift.  After  all  with  a
+degree  in  Maths and another in astrophysics what else was there
+to do? It was either that or the dole queue again on Monday."
+ 
+"Infinity minus one," chattered the computer, "Improbability  sum
+now complete."
+ 
+Zaphod looked  about  him,  at  Ford,  at  Arthur,  and  then  at
+Trillian.
+ 
+"Trillian," he said, "is this sort of thing going to happen every
+time we use the Improbability drive?"
+ 
+"Very probably, I'm afraid," she said.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 14
+ 
+The Heart of Gold fled on silently through the  night  of  space,
+now  on  conventional  photon drive. Its crew of four were ill at
+ease knowing that they had been brought together not of their own
+volition  or by simple coincidence, but by some curious principle
+of physics - as if relationships between people were  susceptible
+to  the  same  laws that governed the relationships between atoms
+and molecules.
+ 
+As the ship's artificial night closed in they were each  grateful
+to  retire  to  separate  cabins  and  try  to  rationalize their
+thoughts.
+ 
+Trillian couldn't sleep. She sat on a couch and stared at a small
+cage  which  contained  her  last and only links with Earth - two
+white mice that she had insisted Zaphod let her  bring.  She  had
+expected  not  to  see the planet again, but she was disturbed by
+her negative  reaction to the  planet's  destruction.  It  seemed
+remote  and  unreal and she could find no thoughts to think about
+it. She watched the mice scurrying round  the  cage  and  running
+furiously  in their little plastic treadwheels till they occupied
+her whole attention. Suddenly she shook herself and went back  to
+the  bridge  to  watch  over the tiny flashing lights and figures
+that charted the ship's progress through the void. She wished she
+knew what it was she was trying not to think about.
+ 
+Zaphod couldn't sleep. He also wished he knew what it was that he
+wouldn't  let  himself  think  about.  For  as  long  as he could
+remember he'd suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being  not
+all there. Most of the time he was able to put this thought aside
+and not worry about it, but it had been re-awakened by the sudden
+inexplicable  arrival of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent. Somehow it
+seemed to conform to a pattern that he couldn't see.
+ 
+Ford couldn't sleep. He was too excited about being back  on  the
+road again. Fifteen years of virtual imprisonment were over, just
+as he was finally beginning to give up hope. Knocking about  with
+Zaphod for a bit promised to be a lot of fun, though there seemed
+to be  something  faintly  odd  about  his  semi-cousin  that  he
+couldn't put his finger on. The fact that he had become President
+of the Galaxy was frankly astonishing, as was the manner  of  his
+leaving the post. Was there a reason behind it? There would be no
+point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have  a  reason  for
+anything  he  did  at all: he had turned unfathomably into an art
+form.  He  attacked  everything  in  life  with  a   mixture   of
+extraordinary  genius  and  naive  incompetence  and it was often
+difficult to tell which was which.
+ 
+Arthur slept: he was terribly tired.
+ 
+There was a tap at Zaphod's door. It slid open.
+ 
+"Zaphod ...?"
+ 
+"Yeah?"
+ 
+"I think we just found what you came to look for."
+ 
+"Hey, yeah?"
+ 
+Ford gave up the attempt to sleep. In the corner of his cabin was
+a  small  computer  screen and keyboard. He sat at it for a while
+and tried to compose a new entry for the Guide on the subject  of
+Vogons but couldn't think of anything vitriolic enough so he gave
+that up too, wrapped a robe round himself and went for a walk  to
+the bridge.
+ 
+As he entered  he  was  surprised  to  see  two  figures  hunched
+excitedly over the instruments.
+ 
+"See? The ship's about to move into orbit," Trillian was  saying.
+"There's  a  planet  out there. It's at the exact coordinates you
+predicted."
+ 
+Zaphod heard a noise and looked up.
+ 
+"Ford!" he hissed. "Hey, come and take a look at this."
+ 
+Ford went and had a look at  it.  It  was  a  series  of  figures
+flashing over a screen.
+ 
+"You recognize those Galactic coordinates?" said Zaphod.
+ 
+"No."
+ 
+"I'll give you a clue. Computer!"
+ 
+"Hi gang!" enthused the computer. "This is getting real  sociable
+isn't it?"
+ 
+"Shut up," said Zaphod, "and show up the screens."
+ 
+Light on the bridge sank. Pinpoints of light  played  across  the
+consoles  and  reflected  in four pairs of eyes that stared up at
+the external monitor screens.
+ 
+There was absolutely nothing on them.
+ 
+"Recognize that?" whispered Zaphod.
+ 
+Ford frowned.
+ 
+"Er, no," he said.
+ 
+"What do you see?"
+ 
+"Nothing."
+ 
+"Recognize it?"
+ 
+"What are you talking about?"
+ 
+"We're in the Horsehead Nebula. One whole vast dark cloud."
+ 
+"And I was meant to recognize that from a blank screen?"
+ 
+"Inside a dark nebula is the only place in the Galaxy you'd see a
+dark screen."
+ 
+"Very good."
+ 
+Zaphod laughed. He was  clearly  very  excited  about  something,
+almost childishly so.
+ 
+"Hey, this is really terrific, this is just far too much!"
+ 
+"What's so great about being stuck in a dust cloud?" said Ford.
+ 
+"What would you reckon to find here?" urged Zaphod.
+ 
+"Nothing."
+ 
+"No stars? No planets?"
+ 
+"No."
+ 
+"Computer!" shouted Zaphod, "rotate angle of vision through  one-
+eighty degrees and don't talk about it!"
+ 
+For a moment  it  seemed  that  nothing  was  happening,  then  a
+brightness  glowed at the edge of the huge screen. A red star the
+size of a small plate crept across it followed quickly by another
+one  -  a  binary  system.  Then  a vast crescent sliced into the
+corner of the picture - a red glare shading away  into  the  deep
+black, the night side of the planet.
+ 
+"I've found it!" cried Zaphod, thumping the console. "I've  found
+it!"
+ 
+Ford stared at it in astonishment.
+ 
+"What is it?" he said.
+ 
+"That ..." said Zaphod, "is the most improbable planet that  ever
+existed."
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 15
+ 
+(Excerpt from The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Page 634784,
+Section 5a, Entry: Magrathea)
+ 
+Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and  glorious
+days  of  the  former  Galactic  Empire,  life was wild, rich and
+largely tax free.
+ 
+Mighty starships plied their way  between  exotic  suns,  seeking
+adventure  and  reward  amongst  the furthest reaches of Galactic
+space. In those days spirits were brave, the  stakes  were  high,
+men  were  real  men,  women  were  real  women,  and small furry
+creatures from Alpha Centauri were  real  small  furry  creatures
+from  Alpha  Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to
+do mighty deeds, to boldly split  infinitives  that  no  man  had
+split before - and thus was the Empire forged.
+ 
+Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was  perfectly
+natural  and  nothing  to be ashamed of because no one was really
+poor - at least no one worth speaking of. And for all the richest
+and  most successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull
+and niggly, and they began to imagine that this was therefore the
+fault of the worlds they'd settled on - none of them was entirely
+satisfactory: either the climate wasn't quite right in the  later
+part  of  the afternoon, or the day was half an hour too long, or
+the sea was exactly the wrong shade of pink.
+ 
+And thus were created the conditions for a staggering new form of
+specialist industry: custom-made luxury planet building. The home
+of this industry was the  planet  Magrathea,  where  hyperspatial
+engineers  sucked  matter through white holes in space to form it
+into dream planets - gold planets, platinum planets, soft  rubber
+planets  with lots of earthquakes - all lovingly made to meet the
+exacting standards that the Galaxy's richest men  naturally  came
+to expect.
+ 
+But so successful was this venture  that  Magrathea  itself  soon
+became  the richest planet of all time and the rest of the Galaxy
+was reduced to abject poverty. And so the system broke down,  the
+Empire  collapsed,  and  a  long  sullen  silence  settled over a
+billion worlds, disturbed only by the pen scratchings of scholars
+as  they laboured into the night over smug little treaties on the
+value of a planned political economy.
+ 
+Magrathea itself disappeared and its memory soon passed into  the
+obscurity of legend.
+ 
+In these enlightened days of course, no one believes  a  word  of
+it.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 16
+ 
+Arthur awoke to the sound of argument and  went  to  the  bridge.
+Ford was waving his arms about.
+ 
+"You're crazy, Zaphod," he was saying, "Magrathea is  a  myth,  a
+fairy  story, it's what parents tell their kids about at night if
+they want them to grow up to become economists, it's ..."
+ 
+"And that's what we are  currently  in  orbit  around,"  insisted
+Zaphod.
+ 
+"Look, I can't help what you may personally be in orbit  around,"
+said Ford, "but this ship ..."
+ 
+"Computer!" shouted Zaphod.
+ 
+"Oh no ..."
+
+"Hi there! This is Eddie your shipboard computer, and I'm feeling
+just  great  guys,  and  I know I'm just going to get a bundle of
+kicks out of any programme you care to run through me."
+ 
+Arthur looked inquiringly at Trillian. She motioned him  to  come
+on in but keep quiet.
+ 
+"Computer,"  said  Zaphod,  "tell  us  again  what  our   present
+trajectory is."
+ 
+"A real pleasure feller," it burbled, "we are currently in  orbit
+at an altitude of three hundred miles around the legendary planet
+of Magrathea."
+ 
+"Proving nothing," said Ford. "I wouldn't trust that computer  to
+speak my weight."
+ 
+"I can do that for you, sure," enthused  the  computer,  punching
+out  more  tickertape.  "I  can  even  work  out  you personality
+problems to ten decimal places if it will help."
+ 
+Trillian interrupted.
+ 
+"Zaphod," she said, "any minute now we will be swinging round  to
+the daylight side of this planet," adding, "whatever it turns out
+to be."
+ 
+"Hey, what do you mean by that? The planet's where I predicted it
+would be isn't it?"
+ 
+"Yes, I know there's a planet there. I'm not arguing with anyone,
+it's  just  that I wouldn't know Magrathea from any other lump of
+cold rock. Dawn's coming up if you want it."
+ 
+"OK, OK," muttered Zaphod, "let's at least give our eyes  a  good
+time. Computer!"
+ 
+"Hi there! What can I ..."
+ 
+"Just shut up and give us a view of the planet again."
+ 
+A dark featureless mass once more filled the screens - the planet
+rolling away beneath them.
+ 
+They watched for a moment in silence, but Zaphod was fidgety with
+excitement.
+ 
+"We are now traversing the night side ..." he said  in  a  hushed
+voice. The planet rolled on.
+ 
+"The surface of the planet is now three hundred miles beneath  us
+..."  he  continued. He was trying to restore a sense of occasion
+to what he felt should have been a great  moment.  Magrathea!  He
+was piqued by Ford's sceptical reaction. Magrathea!
+ 
+"In a few seconds," he continued, "we should see ... there!"
+ 
+The moment carried itself. Even  the  most  seasoned  star  tramp
+can't  help but shiver at the spectacular drama of a sunrise seen
+from space, but a binary sunrise is one of  the  marvels  of  the
+Galaxy.
+ 
+Out of the utter blackness stabbed a  sudden  point  of  blinding
+light.  It  crept  up  by slight degrees and spread sideways in a
+thin crescent blade, and within seconds two  suns  were  visible,
+furnaces  of  light,  searing  the black edge of the horizon with
+white fire. Fierce shafts of colour  streaked  through  the  thin
+atmosphere beneath them.
+ 
+"The fires of dawn ... !" breathed  Zaphod.  "The  twin  suns  of
+Soulianis and Rahm ... !"
+ 
+"Or whatever," said Ford quietly.
+ 
+"Soulianis and Rahm!" insisted Zaphod.
+ 
+The suns blazed into the pitch of space and a low  ghostly  music
+floated through the bridge: Marvin was humming ironically because
+he hated humans so much.
+ 
+As Ford gazed at the spectacle of light  before  them  excitement
+burnt inside him, but only the excitement of seeing a strange new
+planet, it was enough for him to see it as  it  was.  It  faintly
+irritated him that Zaphod had to impose some ludicrous fantasy on
+to the scene to make it work for him. All this Magrathea nonsense
+seemed  juvenile.  Isn't  it  enough  to  see  that  a  garden is
+beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the
+bottom of it too?
+ 
+All this Magrathea business seemed  totally  incomprehensible  to
+Arthur. He edged up to Trillian and asked her what was going on.
+ 
+"I only know what Zaphod's told me," she  whispered.  "Apparently
+Magrathea  is  some  kind  of  legend  from way back which no one
+seriously believes in. Bit like Atlantis on  Earth,  except  that
+the legends say the Magratheans used to manufacture planets."
+ 
+Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was  missing  something
+important. Suddenly he realized what it was.
+ 
+"Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.
+ 
+More of the planet was unfolding beneath them  as  the  Heart  of
+Gold  streaked along its orbital path. The suns now stood high in
+the black sky, the  pyrotechnics  of  dawn  were  over,  and  the
+surface of the planet appeared bleak and forbidding in the common
+light of day - grey, dusty and only dimly  contoured.  It  looked
+dead  and  cold  as a crypt. From time to time promising features
+would appear on the distant horizon - ravines,  maybe  mountains,
+maybe even cities - but as they approached the lines would soften
+and blur into anonymity and nothing would transpire. The planet's
+surface  was  blurred  by  time, by the slow movement of the thin
+stagnant air that had crept across it for century upon century.
+ 
+Clearly, it was very very old.
+ 
+A moment of doubt came to Ford as he watched the  grey  landscape
+move  beneath  them.  The immensity of time worried him, he could
+feel it as a presence. He cleared his throat.
+ 
+"Well, even supposing it is ..."
+ 
+"It is," said Zaphod.
+ 
+"Which it isn't," continued Ford.  "What  do  you  want  with  it
+anyway? There's nothing there."
+ 
+"Not on the surface," said Zaphod.
+ 
+"Alright, just supposing there's something. I take it you're  not
+here for the sheer industrial archaeology of it all. What are you
+after?"
+ 
+One of Zaphod's heads looked away. The other one looked round  to
+see  what  the  first  was  looking  at, but it wasn't looking at
+anything very much.
+ 
+"Well," said Zaphod airily, "it's partly the curiosity, partly  a
+sense  of  adventure,  but  mostly  I think it's the fame and the
+money ..."
+ 
+Ford glanced at him sharply. He got a very strong impression that
+Zaphod hadn't the faintest idea why he was there at all.
+ 
+"You know I don't like the look of  that  planet  at  all,"  said
+Trillian shivering.
+ 
+"Ah, take no notice," said Zaphod, "with half the wealth  of  the
+former  Galactic  Empire  stored on it somewhere it can afford to
+look frumpy."
+ 
+Bullshit, thought Ford. Even supposing this was the home of  some
+ancient civilization now gone to dust, even supposing a number of
+exceedingly unlikely things, there was no way that vast treasures
+of  wealth  were  going to be stored there in any form that would
+still have meaning now. He shrugged.
+ 
+"I think it's just a dead planet," he said.
+ 
+"The suspense is killing me," said Arthur testily.
+ 
+Stress and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all
+parts  of  the  Galaxy,  and  it  is in order that this situation
+should not in any way be exacerbated  that  the  following  facts
+will now be revealed in advance.
+ 
+The planet in question is in fact the legendary Magrathea.
+ 
+The deadly missile attack shortly to be launched  by  an  ancient
+automatic  defence  system  will result merely in the breakage of
+three coffee cups and a  micecage,  the  bruising  of  somebody's
+upper  arm, and the untimely creation and sudden demise of a bowl
+of petunias and an innocent sperm whale.
+ 
+In order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no
+revelation  will yet be made concerning whose upper arm sustained
+the bruise. This fact may safely be made the subject of  suspense
+since it is of no significance whatsoever.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 17
+ 
+After a  fairly  shaky  start  to  the  day,  Arthur's  mind  was
+beginning  to  reassemble  itself from the shellshocked fragments
+the previous day had left him with. He had  found  a  Nutri-Matic
+machine  which  had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a
+liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike  tea.  The
+way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was
+pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the
+subject's  taste  buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's
+metabolism and then  sent  tiny  experimental  signals  down  the
+neural  pathways  to  the taste centres of the subject's brain to
+see what was likely to go down well. However, no one  knew  quite
+why  it  did  this  because  it  invariably delivered a cupful of
+liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike  tea.  The
+Nutri-Matic   was   designed   and  manufactured  by  the  Sirius
+Cybernetics Corporation whose complaints  department  now  covers
+all  the  major  land  masses  of  the first three planets in the
+Sirius Tau Star system.
+ 
+Arthur drank the liquid and found it reviving. He glanced  up  at
+the  screens again and watched a few more hundred miles of barren
+greyness slide past.  It  suddenly  occurred  to  him  to  ask  a
+question which had been bothering him.
+ 
+"Is it safe?" he said.
+ 
+"Magrathea's been dead for five million years," said Zaphod,  "of
+course  it's  safe.  Even  the  ghosts will have settled down and
+raised  families  by  now."  At  which  point   a   strange   and
+inexplicable sound thrilled suddenly through the bridge - a noise
+as of a distant fanfare; a hollow, reedy, insubstantial sound. It
+preceded   a   voice   that   was   equally   hollow,  reedy  and
+insubstantial. The voice said "Greetings to you ..."
+ 
+Someone from the dead planet was talking to them.
+ 
+"Computer!" shouted Zaphod.
+ 
+"Hi there!"
+ 
+"What the photon is it?"
+ 
+"Oh, just some five-million-year-old tape that's being  broadcast
+at us."
+ 
+"A what? A recording?"
+ 
+"Shush!" said Ford. "It's carrying on."
+ 
+The  voice  was  old,  courteous,  almost   charming,   but   was
+underscored with quite unmistakable menace.
+ 
+"This is a recorded announcement," it said, "as I'm afraid  we're
+all out at the moment. The commercial council of Magrathea thanks
+you for your esteemed visit ..."
+ 
+("A voice from ancient Magrathea!" shouted Zaphod. "OK, OK," said
+Ford.)
+ 
+"... but regrets," continued the voice, "that the  entire  planet
+is  temporarily closed for business. Thank you. If you would care
+to leave your name and the address of a planet where you  can  be
+contacted, kindly speak when you hear the tone."
+ 
+A short buzz followed, then silence.
+ 
+"They want to get rid of us," said Trillian nervously.  "What  do
+we do?"
+ 
+"It's just a recording," said Zaphod. "We keep going.  Got  that,
+computer?"
+ 
+"I got it," said the computer and gave the ship an extra kick  of
+speed.
+ 
+They waited.
+ 
+After a second or so came the fanfare once again,  and  then  the
+voice.
+ 
+"We would like to assure you that as  soon  as  our  business  is
+resumed  announcements  will be made in all fashionable magazines
+and colour supplements, when our clients will once again be  able
+to  select  from  all that's best in contemporary geography." The
+menace in the voice took on a sharper edge. "Meanwhile  we  thank
+our  clients for their kind interest and would ask them to leave.
+Now."
+ 
+Arthur looked round the nervous faces of his companions.
+ 
+"Well, I suppose we'd  better  be  going  then,  hadn't  we?"  he
+suggested.
+ 
+"Shhh!" said Zaphod. "There's absolutely nothing  to  be  worried
+about."
+ 
+"Then why's everyone so tense?"
+ 
+"They're just interested!" shouted  Zaphod.  "Computer,  start  a
+descent into the atmosphere and prepare for landing."
+ 
+This time the fanfare was quite perfunctory, the voice distinctly
+cold.
+ 
+"It is most gratifying," it said, "that your enthusiasm  for  our
+planet  continues  unabated,  and  so we would like to assure you
+that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship  are
+part  of  a  special  service  we  extend  to  all  of  our  most
+enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of
+course  merely  a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom
+in future lives ... thank you."
+ 
+The voice snapped off.
+ 
+"Oh," said Trillian.
+ 
+"Er ..." said Arthur.
+ 
+"Well?" said Ford.
+ 
+"Look," said Zaphod, "will you get it  into  your  heads?  That's
+just  a  recorded message. It's millions of years old. It doesn't
+apply to us, get it?"
+ 
+"What," said Trillian quietly, "about the missiles?"
+ 
+"Missiles? Don't make me laugh."
+ 
+Ford tapped Zaphod on  the  shoulder  and  pointed  at  the  rear
+screen.  Clear  in the distance behind them two silver darts were
+climbing through the atmosphere towards the ship. A quick  change
+of  magnification  brought  them into close focus - two massively
+real rockets thundering through the sky. The suddenness of it was
+shocking.
+ 
+"I think they're going to have a very good  try  at  applying  to
+us," said Ford.
+ 
+Zaphod stared at them in astonishment.
+ 
+"Hey this is terrific!" he said. "Someone down there is trying to
+kill us!"
+ 
+"Terrific," said Arthur.
+ 
+"But don't you see what this means?"
+ 
+"Yes. We're going to die."
+ 
+"Yes, but apart from that."
+ 
+"Apart from that?"
+ 
+"It means we must be on to something!"
+ 
+"How soon can we get off it?"
+ 
+Second by second the image of the missiles on the  screen  became
+larger.  They had swung round now on to a direct homing course so
+that all that could be seen of them now was  the  warheads,  head
+on.
+ 
+"As a matter of interest," said Trillian, "what are we  going  to
+do?"
+ 
+"Just keep cool," said Zaphod.
+ 
+"Is that all?" shouted Arthur.
+ 
+"No, we're also going to ... er ... take  evasive  action!"  said
+Zaphod  with  a  sudden  access of panic. "Computer, what evasive
+action can we take?"
+ 
+"Er, none I'm afraid, guys," said the computer.
+ 
+"... or something," said Zaphod, "... er ..." he said.
+ 
+"There  seems  to  be  something  jamming  my  guidance  system,"
+explained   the   computer  brightly,  "impact  minus  forty-five
+seconds. Please call me Eddie if it will help you to relax."
+ 
+Zaphod tried  to  run  in  several  equally  decisive  directions
+simultaneously. "Right!" he said. "Er ... we've got to get manual
+control of this ship."
+ 
+"Can you fly her?" asked Ford pleasantly.
+ 
+"No, can you?"
+ 
+"No."
+ 
+"Trillian, can you?"
+ 
+"No."
+ 
+"Fine," said Zaphod, relaxing. "We'll do it together."
+ 
+"I can't either," said Arthur, who felt it was time he  began  to
+assert himself.
+ 
+"I'd guessed that," said Zaphod. "OK computer, I want full manual
+control now."
+ 
+"You got it," said the computer.
+ 
+Several large desk panels slid open and banks of control consoles
+sprang  up  out of them, showering the crew with bits of expanded
+polystyrene packaging and balls of  rolled-up  cellophane:  these
+controls had never been used before.
+ 
+Zaphod stared at them wildly.
+ 
+"OK,  Ford,"  he  said,  "full  retro  thrust  and  ten   degrees
+starboard. Or something ..."
+ 
+"Good luck guys," chirped  the  computer,  "impact  minus  thirty
+seconds ..."
+ 
+Ford leapt to the  controls  -  only  a  few  of  them  made  any
+immediate  sense  to  him  so he pulled those. The ship shook and
+screamed as its guidance rocked jets tried to push it every which
+way  simultaneously.  He  released half of them and the ship span
+round in a tight arc  and  headed  back  the  way  it  had  come,
+straight towards the oncoming missiles.
+ 
+Air cushions ballooned out of the walls in an instant as everyone
+was  thrown  against  them. For a few seconds the inertial forces
+held them flattened and squirming for  breath,  unable  to  move.
+Zaphod  struggled  and  pushed  in  manic desperation and finally
+managed a savage kick at a small lever that formed  part  of  the
+guidance system.
+ 
+The lever snapped off. The  ship  twisted  sharply  and  rocketed
+upwards.  The  crew  were hurled violently back across the cabin.
+Ford's copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy smashed into
+another  section  of the control console with the combined result
+that the guide started to explain to anyone who cared  to  listen
+about  the best ways of smuggling Antarean parakeet glands out of
+Antares (an Antarean parakeet gland stuck on a small stick  is  a
+revolting  but much sought after cocktail delicacy and very large
+sums of money are often paid for them by  very  rich  idiots  who
+want  to  impress  other very rich idiots), and the ship suddenly
+dropped out of the sky like a stone.
+ 
+It was of course more or less at this moment that one of the crew
+sustained  a  nasty  bruise  to  the  upper  arm.  This should be
+emphasized because, as had already  been  revealed,  they  escape
+otherwise  completely unharmed and the deadly nuclear missiles do
+not eventually hit the ship. The safety of the crew is absolutely
+assured.
+ 
+"Impact minus twenty seconds, guys ..." said the computer.
+ 
+"Then turn the bloody engines back on!" bawled Zaphod.
+ 
+"OK, sure thing, guys," said the computer. With a subtle roar the
+engines  cut back in, the ship smoothly flattened out of its dive
+and headed back towards the missiles again.
+ 
+The computer started to sing.
+ 
+"When you walk through the storm ..." it  whined  nasally,  "hold
+your head up high ..."
+ 
+Zaphod screamed at it to shut up, but his voice was lost  in  the
+din   of  what  they  quite  naturally  assumed  was  approaching
+destruction.
+ 
+"And don't ... be afraid ... of the dark!" Eddie wailed.
+ 
+The ship, in flattening out had in fact flattened out upside down
+and  lying  on  the  ceiling  as  they  were  it  was now totally
+impossible for any of the crew to reach the guidance systems.
+ 
+"At the end of the storm ..." crooned Eddie.
+ 
+The  two  missiles  loomed  massively  on  the  screens  as  they
+thundered towards the ship.
+ 
+"... is a golden sky ..."
+ 
+But by an extraordinarily lucky chance they  had  not  yet  fully
+corrected  their  flight paths to that of the erratically weaving
+ship, and they passed right under it.
+ 
+"And the sweet silver songs of the lark ... Revised  impact  time
+fifteen seconds fellas ... Walk on through the wind ..."
+ 
+The missiles banked round in a screeching arc  and  plunged  back
+into pursuit.
+ 
+"This is it," said  Arthur  watching  them.  "We  are  now  quite
+definitely going to die aren't we?"
+ 
+"I wish you'd stop saying that," shouted Ford.
+ 
+"Well we are aren't we?"
+ 
+"Yes."
+ 
+"Walk on through the rain ..." sang Eddie.
+ 
+A thought struck Arthur. He struggled to his feet.
+ 
+"Why doesn't anyone turn on this Improbability Drive  thing?"  he
+said. "We could probably reach that."
+ 
+"What are you crazy?" said Zaphod.  "Without  proper  programming
+anything could happen."
+ 
+"Does that matter at this stage?" shouted Arthur.
+ 
+"Though your dreams be tossed and blown ..." sand Eddie.
+ 
+Arthur scrambled up on to one end of the excitingly chunky pieces
+of  moulded  contouring  where  the  curve  of  the  wall met the
+ceiling.
+ 
+"Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart ..."
+ 
+"Does anyone know why Arthur  can't  turn  on  the  Improbability
+Drive?" shouted Trillian.
+ 
+"And you'll never walk alone ... Impact minus five seconds,  it's
+been  great knowing you guys, God bless ... You'll ne ... ver ...
+walk ... alone!"
+ 
+"I said," yelled Trillian, "does anyone know ..."
+ 
+The next thing that happened  was  a  mid-mangling  explosion  of
+noise and light.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 18
+ 
+And the next thing that happened after that was that the Heart of
+Gold  continued  on  its  way  perfectly  normally  with a rather
+fetchingly redesigned interior. It was somewhat larger, and  done
+out  in delicate pastel shades of green and blue. In the centre a
+spiral staircase, leading nowhere in particular, stood in a spray
+of  ferns  and  yellow  flowers  and  next  to it a stone sundial
+pedestal housed the main computer  terminal.  Cunningly  deployed
+lighting  and  mirrors  created  the  illusion  of  standing in a
+conservatory overlooking a wide stretch of exquisitely  manicured
+garden.  Around  the  periphery  of  the  conservatory area stood
+marble-topped tables on intricately beautiful wrought-iron  legs.
+As  you  gazed  into the polished surface of the marble the vague
+forms of instruments became visible, and as you touched them  the
+instruments  materialized  instantly  under your hands. Looked at
+from the correct angles the mirrors appeared to reflect  all  the
+required  data  readouts, though it was far from clear where they
+were reflected from. It was in fact sensationally beautiful.
+ 
+Relaxing in a wickerwork sun chair, Zaphod Beeblebrox said, "What
+the hell happened?"
+ 
+"Well I was just saying," said Arthur lounging by  a  small  fish
+pool,  "there's this Improbability Drive switch over here ..." he
+waved at where it had been. There was a potted plant there now.
+ 
+"But where are we?" said Ford  who  was  sitting  on  the  spiral
+staircase,  a  nicely  chilled Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in his
+hand.
+ 
+"Exactly where we were, I think ..." said Trillian, as all  about
+them  the  mirrors showed them an image of the blighted landscape
+of Magrathea which still scooted along beneath them.
+ 
+Zaphod leapt out of his seat.
+ 
+"Then what's happened to the missiles?" he said.
+ 
+A new and astounding image appeared in the mirrors.
+ 
+"They would appear," said Ford doubtfully, "to have turned into a
+bowl of petunias and a very surprised looking whale ..."
+ 
+"At an Improbability Factor," cut in Eddie, who hadn't changed  a
+bit, "of eight million seven hundred and sixty-seven thousand one
+hundred and twenty-eight to one against."
+ 
+Zaphod stared at Arthur.
+ 
+"Did you think of that, Earthman?" he demanded.
+ 
+"Well," said Arthur, "all I did was ..."
+ 
+"That's very good thinking you know. Turn  on  the  Improbability
+Drive for a second without first activating the proofing screens.
+Hey kid you just saved our lives, you know that?"
+ 
+"Oh," said Arthur, "well, it was nothing really ..."
+ 
+"Was it?" said Zaphod. "Oh well, forget it  then.  OK,  computer,
+take us in to land."
+ 
+"But ..."
+ 
+"I said forget it."
+ 
+Another thing that got forgotten was the fact  that  against  all
+probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence
+several miles above the surface of an alien planet.
+ 
+And since this is not a naturally tenable position for  a  whale,
+this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms
+with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to  terms
+with not being a whale any more.
+ 
+This is a complete record of its  thoughts  from  the  moment  it
+began its life till the moment it ended it.
+ 
+Ah ... ! What's happening? it thought.
+ 
+Er, excuse me, who am I?
+ 
+Hello?
+ 
+Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?
+ 
+What do I mean by who am I?
+ 
+Calm down, get  a  grip  now  ...  oh!  this  is  an  interesting
+sensation,  what  is  it?  It's  a  sort of ... yawning, tingling
+sensation in my ... my  ...  well  I  suppose  I'd  better  start
+finding  names  for  things if I want to make any headway in what
+for the sake of what I shall call an argument I  shall  call  the
+world, so let's call it my stomach.
+ 
+Good. Ooooh, it's getting quite strong.  And  hey,  what's  about
+this  whistling  roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going
+to call my head? Perhaps I can call that ... wind! Is that a good
+name?  It'll do ... perhaps I can find a better name for it later
+when I've found out what it's for.  It  must  be  something  very
+important  because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of
+it. Hey! What's this thing? This ... let's call it a tail - yeah,
+tail.  Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can't I?
+Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn't seem to achieve very much but
+I'll probably find out what it's for later on. Now - have I built
+up any coherent picture of things yet?
+ 
+No.
+ 
+Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so  much  to  find  out
+about,  so  much  to  look  forward  to,  I'm  quite  dizzy  with
+anticipation ...
+ 
+Or is it the wind?
+ 
+There really is a lot of that now isn't it?
+ 
+And wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming towards  me  very
+fast?  Very  very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big
+wide sounding name like ... ow ... ound  ...  round  ...  ground!
+That's it! That's a good name - ground!
+ 
+I wonder if it will be friends with me?
+ 
+And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.
+ 
+Curiously enough, the only thing that went through  the  mind  of
+the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people
+have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of  petunias
+had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the
+universe than we do now.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 19
+ 
+"Are we taking this robot  with  us?"  said  Ford,  looking  with
+distaste at Marvin who was standing in an awkward hunched posture
+in the corner under a small palm tree.
+ 
+Zaphod glanced away from the mirror  screens  which  presented  a
+panoramic  view  of  the blighted landscape on which the Heart of
+Gold had now landed.
+ 
+"Oh, the Paranoid Android," he said. "Yeah, we'll take him."
+ 
+"But what are supposed to do with a manically depressed robot?"
+ 
+"You think you've  got  problems,"  said  Marvin  as  if  he  was
+addressing  a newly occupied coffin, "what are you supposed to do
+if you are a manically  depressed  robot?  No,  don't  bother  to
+answer  that,  I'm fifty thousand times more intelligent than you
+and even I don't know the answer. It gives  me  a  headache  just
+trying to think down to your level."
+ 
+Trillian burst in through the door from her cabin.
+ 
+"My white mice have escaped!" she said.
+ 
+An expression of deep worry and concern failed to cross either of
+Zaphod's faces.
+ 
+"Nuts to your white mice," he said.
+ 
+Trillian glared an upset glare at him, and disappeared again.
+ 
+It is possible that  her  remark  would  have  commanded  greater
+attention  had  it been generally realized that human beings were
+only the third most intelligent life form present on  the  planet
+Earth,  instead  of (as was generally thought by most independent
+observers) the second.
+ 
+"Good afternoon boys."
+ 
+The voice was oddly familiar,  but  oddly  different.  It  had  a
+matriarchal  twang.  It  announced  itself  to  the  crew as they
+arrived at the airlock hatchway that would let them  out  on  the
+planet surface.
+ 
+They looked at each other in puzzlement.
+ 
+"It's the computer," explained Zaphod. "I discovered  it  had  an
+emergency  back-up  personality  that  I  thought  might work out
+better."
+ 
+"Now this is going to be your first day  out  on  a  strange  new
+planet,"  continued Eddie's new voice, "so I want you all wrapped
+up snug and warm,  and  no  playing  with  any  naughty  bug-eyed
+monsters."
+ 
+Zaphod tapped impatiently on the hatch.
+ 
+"I'm sorry," he said, "I think we might  be  better  off  with  a
+slide rule."
+ 
+"Right!" snapped the computer. "Who said that?"
+ 
+"Will you open the exit  hatch  please,  computer?"  said  Zaphod
+trying not to get angry.
+ 
+"Not until whoever  said  that  owns  up,"  urged  the  computer,
+stamping a few synapses closed.
+ 
+"Oh God," muttered Ford, slumped against a bulkhead  and  started
+to  count  to  ten.  He  was  desperately  worried  that  one day
+sentinent life forms  would  forget  how  to  do  this.  Only  by
+counting   could   humans   demonstrate   their  independence  of
+computers.
+ 
+"Come on," said Eddie sternly.
+ 
+"Computer ..." began Zaphod ...
+ 
+"I'm  waiting,"  interrupted  Eddie.  "I  can  wait  all  day  if
+necessary ..."
+ 
+"Computer ..." said Zaphod again, who had been trying to think of
+some subtle piece of reasoning to put the computer down with, and
+had decided not to bother competing with it on  its  own  ground,
+"if  you  don't  open  that  exit  hatch  this moment I shall zap
+straight off to your major data banks and reprogram  you  with  a
+very large axe, got that?"
+ 
+Eddie, shocked, paused and considered this.
+ 
+Ford  carried  on  counting  quietly.  This  is  about  the  most
+aggressive  thing  you  can  do  to a computer, the equivalent of
+going up to a human being and saying Blood ...  blood  ...  blood
+... blood ...
+ 
+Finally Eddie said quietly,  "I  can  see  this  relationship  is
+something  we're  all going to have to work at," and the hatchway
+opened.
+ 
+An icy wind ripped into them, they hugged themselves  warmly  and
+stepped down the ramp on to the barren dust of Magrathea.
+ 
+"It'll all end in tears, I know it," shouted Eddie after them and
+closed the hatchway again.
+ 
+A few minutes later he opened and closed the  hatchway  again  in
+response to a command that caught him entirely by surprise.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 20
+ 
+Five figures wandered slowly over the blighted land. Bits  of  it
+were  dullish  grey,  bits  of  it  dullish brown, the rest of it
+rather less interesting to look  at.  It  was  like  a  dried-out
+marsh,  now  barren of all vegetation and covered with a layer of
+dust about an inch thick. It was very cold.
+ 
+Zaphod was clearly rather depressed about it. He stalked  off  by
+himself  and  was  soon lost to sight behind a slight rise in the
+ground.
+ 
+The wind stung Arthur's eyes and ears, and  the  stale  thin  air
+clasped his throat. However, the thing stung most was his mind.
+ 
+"It's fantastic ..." he said, and his own voice rattled his ears.
+Sound carried badly in this thin atmosphere.
+ 
+"Desolate hole if you ask me," said Ford. "I could have more  fun
+in  a  cat  litter."  He  felt  a mounting irritation. Of all the
+planets in all the star systems of all the  Galaxy  -  didn't  he
+just  have  to turn up at a dump like this after fifteen years of
+being a castaway? Not even  a  hot  dog  stand  in  evidence.  He
+stooped  down  and  picked up a cold clot of earth, but there was
+nothing underneath it worth crossing thousands of light years  to
+look at.
+ 
+"No," insisted Arthur, "don't you understand, this is  the  first
+time  I've  actually stood on the surface of another planet ... a
+whole alien world ...! Pity it's such a dump though."
+ 
+Trillian hugged herself, shivered and  frowned.  She  could  have
+sworn  she saw a slight and unexpected movement out of the corner
+of her eye, but when she glanced in that direction all she  could
+see  was the ship, still and silent, a hundred yards or so behind
+them.
+ 
+She was relieved when a second or so later they caught  sight  of
+Zaphod  standing on top of the ridge of ground and waving to them
+to come and join him.
+ 
+He seemed to be excited, but they couldn't clearly hear  what  he
+was saying because of the thinnish atmosphere and the wind.
+ 
+As they approached the ridge of higher ground they  became  aware
+that  it  seemed  to  be  circular - a crater about a hundred and
+fifty yards wide. Round the outside of  the  crater  the  sloping
+ground  was  spattered with black and red lumps. They stopped and
+looked at a piece. It was wet. It was rubbery.
+ 
+With horror they suddenly realized that it was fresh whalemeat.
+ 
+At the top of the crater's lip they met Zaphod.
+ 
+"Look," he said, pointing into the crater.
+ 
+In the centre lay the exploded carcass of a  lonely  sperm  whale
+that  hadn't  lived  long enough to be disappointed with its lot.
+The silence was only disturbed by the slight  involuntary  spasms
+of Trillian's throat.
+ 
+"I suppose there's no point  in  trying  to  bury  it?"  murmured
+Arthur, and then wished he hadn't.
+ 
+"Come," said Zaphod and started back down into the crater.
+ 
+"What, down there?" said Trillian with severe distaste.
+ 
+"Yeah," said Zaphod, "come on, I've got something to show you."
+ 
+"We can see it," said Trillian.
+ 
+"Not that," said Zaphod, "something else. Come on."
+ 
+They all hesitated.
+ 
+"Come on," insisted Zaphod, "I've found a way in."
+ 
+"In?" said Arthur in horror.
+ 
+"Into the interior of the planet!  An  underground  passage.  The
+force  of the whale's impact cracked it open, and that's where we
+have to go. Where no man has trod these five million years,  into
+the very depths of time itself ..."
+ 
+Marvin started his ironical humming again.
+ 
+Zaphod hit him and he shut up.
+ 
+With little shudders of disgust they all followed Zaphod down the
+incline  into  the  crater,  trying  very hard not to look at its
+unfortunate creator.
+ 
+"Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't
+like it."
+ 
+The ground had caved in where the whale had hit  it  revealing  a
+network  of  galleries  and  passages,  now largely obstructed by
+collapsed rubble and entrails. Zaphod had made a start clearing a
+way into one of them, but Marvin was able to do it rather faster.
+Dank air wafted out of its dark recesses, and as Zaphod  shone  a
+torch into it, little was visible in the dusty gloom.
+ 
+"According to the legends," he said, "the Magratheans lived  most
+of their lives underground."
+ 
+"Why's that?" said Arthur. "Did the surface become  too  polluted
+or overpopulated?"
+ 
+"No, I don't think so," said Zaphod. "I think  they  just  didn't
+like it very much."
+ 
+"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" said Trillian  peering
+nervously  into  the  darkness. "We've been attacked once already
+you know."
+ 
+"Look kid, I promise you the live population of  this  planet  is
+nil  plus  the four of us, so come on, let's get on in there. Er,
+hey Earthman ..."
+ 
+"Arthur," said Arthur.
+ 
+"Yeah could you just sort of keep this robot with you  and  guard
+this end of the passageway. OK?"
+ 
+"Guard?" said Arthur. "What from? You just said  there's  no  one
+here."
+ 
+"Yeah, well, just for safety, OK?" said Zaphod.
+ 
+"Whose? Yours or mine?"
+ 
+"Good lad. OK, here we go."
+ 
+Zaphod scrambled down into the passage, followed by Trillian  and
+Ford.
+ 
+"Well I hope you all have a really  miserable  time,"  complained
+Arthur.
+ 
+"Don't worry," Marvin assured him, "they will."
+ 
+In a few seconds they had disappeared from view.
+ 
+Arthur stamped around in a huff, and then decided that a  whale's
+graveyard is not on the whole a good place to stamp around in.
+ 
+Marvin eyed him balefully for a moment, and then  turned  himself
+off.
+ 
+Zaphod marched quickly down the passageway, nervous as hell,  but
+trying  to  hide  it by striding purposefully. He flung the torch
+beam around. The walls were covered in dark tiles and  were  cold
+to the touch, the air thick with decay.
+ 
+"There, what did I tell you?"  he  said.  "An  inhabited  planet.
+Magrathea,"  and  he  strode  on through the dirt and debris that
+littered the tile floor.
+ 
+Trillian was reminded  unavoidably  of  the  London  Underground,
+though it was less thoroughly squalid.
+ 
+At intervals along the walls the tiles gave way to large  mosaics
+- simple angular patterns in bright colours. Trillian stopped and
+studied one of them but could not interpret any  sense  in  them.
+She called to Zaphod.
+ 
+"Hey, have you any idea what these strange symbols are?"
+ 
+"I think they're just strange symbols of some kind," said Zaphod,
+hardly glancing back.
+ 
+Trillian shrugged and hurried after him.
+ 
+From time to time a doorway led either to the left or right  into
+smallish  chambers  which  Ford discovered to be full of derelict
+computer equipment. He dragged Zaphod into one to  have  a  look.
+Trillian followed.
+ 
+"Look," said Ford, "you reckon this is Magrathea ..."
+ 
+"Yeah," said Zaphod, "and we heard the voice, right?"
+ 
+"OK, so I've bought the  fact  that  it's  Magrathea  -  for  the
+moment.  What  you  have  so far said nothing about is how in the
+Galaxy you found it. You didn't just look it up in a star  atlas,
+that's for sure."
+ 
+"Research.  Government  archives.  Detective  work.   Few   lucky
+guesses. Easy."
+ 
+"And then you stole the Heart of Gold to come  and  look  for  it
+with?"
+ 
+"I stole it to look for a lot of things."
+ 
+"A lot of things?" said Ford in surprise. "Like what?"
+ 
+"I don't know."
+ 
+"What?"
+ 
+"I don't know what I'm looking for."
+ 
+"Why not?"
+ 
+"Because ... because ... I think it might be because if I knew  I
+wouldn't be able to look for them."
+ 
+"What, are you crazy?"
+ 
+"It's a  possibility  I  haven't  ruled  out  yet,"  said  Zaphod
+quietly.  "I  only  know as much about myself as my mind can work
+out under its current conditions. And its current conditions  are
+not good."
+ 
+For a long time nobody said anything as Ford gazed at Zaphod with
+a mind suddenly full of worry.
+ 
+"Listen old friend, if you want to ..." started Ford eventually.
+ 
+"No, wait ... I'll tell you something," said Zaphod. "I freewheel
+a lot. I get an idea to do something, and, hey, why not, I do it.
+I reckon I'll  become  President  of  the  Galaxy,  and  it  just
+happens, it's easy. I decide to steal this ship. I decide to look
+for Magrathea, and it all just happens. Yeah, I work out  how  it
+can  best  be  done,  right,  but  it always works out. It's like
+having a Galacticredit card which keeps  on  working  though  you
+never  send off the cheques. And then whenever I stop and think -
+why did I want to do something? - how did I work out  how  to  do
+it?  - I get a very strong desire just to stop thinking about it.
+Like I have now. It's a big effort to talk about it."
+ 
+Zaphod paused for a while. For a while there was silence. Then he
+frowned  and  said,  "Last night I was worrying about this again.
+About the fact that part of my mind  just  didn't  seem  to  work
+properly.  Then it occurred to me that the way it seemed was that
+someone else was using my mind to have good ideas  with,  without
+telling  me  about  it.  I put the two ideas together and decided
+that maybe that somebody had locked off part of my mind for  that
+purpose, which was why I couldn't use it. I wondered if there was
+a way I could check.
+ 
+"I went to the ship's medical bay and  plugged  myself  into  the
+encephelographic  screen.  I  went  through every major screening
+test on both my heads - all the tests I had to go  through  under
+government  medical  officers before my nomination for Presidency
+could be properly  ratified.  They  showed  up  nothing.  Nothing
+unexpected  at least. They showed that I was clever, imaginative,
+irresponsible, untrustworthy,  extrovert,  nothing  you  couldn't
+have  guessed.  And  no  other  anomalies. So I started inventing
+further tests,  completely  at  random.  Nothing.  Then  I  tried
+superimposing  the  results  from  one head on top of the results
+from the other head. Still nothing. Finally I got silly,  because
+I'd  given  it all up as nothing more than an attack of paranoia.
+Last thing I did before I packed it in was take the  superimposed
+picture and look at it through a green filter. You remember I was
+always superstitious about the color green when I was  a  kid?  I
+always wanted to be a pilot on one of the trading scouts?"
+ 
+Ford nodded.
+ 
+"And there it was," said Zaphod, "clear as day. A  whole  section
+in  the middle of both brains that related only to each other and
+not to anything else around them. Some bastard had cauterized all
+the  synapses  and  electronically traumatised those two lumps of
+cerebellum."
+ 
+Ford stared at him, aghast. Trillian had turned white.
+ 
+"Somebody did that to you?" whispered Ford.
+ 
+"Yeah."
+ 
+"But have you any idea who? Or why?"
+ 
+"Why? I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was."
+ 
+"You know? How do you know?"
+ 
+"Because they left  their  initials  burnt  into  the  cauterized
+synapses. They left them there for me to see."
+ 
+Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl.
+ 
+"Initials? Burnt into your brain?"
+ 
+"Yeah."
+ 
+"Well, what were they, for God's sake?"
+ 
+Zaphod looked at him in silence  again  for  a  moment.  Then  he
+looked away.
+ 
+"Z.B.," he said.
+ 
+At that moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them  and  gas
+started to pour into the chamber.
+ 
+"I'll tell you about it later," choked Zaphod as all three passed
+out.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 21
+ 
+On the surface of Magrathea Arthur wandered about moodily.
+ 
+Ford had thoughtfully left him his  copy  of  The  Hitch  Hiker's
+Guide  to the Galaxy to while away the time with. He pushed a few
+buttons at random.
+ 
+The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a very  unevenly  edited
+book and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors
+like a good idea at the time.
+ 
+One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly  relates
+the  experiences  of  one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at
+the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a  brilliant  academic
+career  studying  ancient  philology, transformational ethics and
+the wave harmonic theory  of  historical  perception,  and  then,
+after  a  night  of  drinking  Pan  Galactic Gargle Blasters with
+Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the  problem
+of  what  had happened to all the biros he'd bought over the past
+few years.
+ 
+There followed a long period of painstaking research during which
+he  visited  all  the  major  centres of biro loss throughout the
+galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint little  theory  which
+quite caught the public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the
+cosmos,  he  said,  along  with  all  the  planets  inhabited  by
+humanoids,    reptiloids,    fishoids,   walking   treeoids   and
+superintelligent shades of the colour  blue,  there  was  also  a
+planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this
+planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping  away
+quietly  through  wormholes  in  space to a world where they knew
+they could enjoy  a  uniquely  biroid  lifestyle,  responding  to
+highly  biro-oriented  stimuli,  and  generally  leading the biro
+equivalent of the good life.
+ 
+And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet
+Voojagig  suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have
+worked there for a while driving a  limousine  for  a  family  of
+cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up,
+wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax exile, which  is  the
+usual  fate  reserved for those who are determined to make a fool
+of themselves in public.
+ 
+When one day an expedition was sent to  the  spatial  coordinates
+that  Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a
+small asteroid inhabited  by  a  solitary  old  man  who  claimed
+repeatedly  that nothing was true, though he was later discovered
+to be lying.
+ 
+There did, however, remain the question of  both  the  mysterious
+60,000  Altairan  dollars  paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank
+account, and of  course  Zaphod  Beeblebrox's  highly  profitable
+second-hand biro business.
+ 
+Arthur read this, and put the book down.
+ 
+The robot still sat there, completely inert.
+ 
+Arthur got up and walked to the top  of  the  crater.  He  walked
+around  the  crater.  He  watched two suns set magnificently over
+Magrathea.
+ 
+He went back down into the crater. He woke the robot  up  because
+even  a  manically  depressed  robot  is  better  to talk to than
+nobody.
+ 
+"Night's falling," he said. "Look robot,  the  stars  are  coming
+out."
+ 
+From the heart of a dark nebula it is possible to  see  very  few
+stars, and only very faintly, but they were there to be seen.
+ 
+The robot obediently looked at them, then looked back.
+ 
+"I know," he said. "Wretched isn't it?"
+ 
+"But that sunset! I've never seen anything like it in my  wildest
+dreams  ...  the  two suns! It was like mountains of fire boiling
+into space."
+ 
+"I've seen it," said Marvin. "It's rubbish."
+ 
+"We only ever had the one sun at  home,"  persevered  Arthur,  "I
+came from a planet called Earth you know."
+ 
+"I know," said Marvin, "you keep going on  about  it.  It  sounds
+awful."
+ 
+"Ah no, it was a beautiful place."
+ 
+"Did it have oceans?"
+ 
+"Oh yes," said Arthur with  a  sigh,  "great  wide  rolling  blue
+oceans ..."
+ 
+"Can't bear oceans," said Marvin.
+ 
+"Tell me," inquired Arthur,  "do  you  get  on  well  with  other
+robots?"
+ 
+"Hate them," said Marvin. "Where are you going?"
+ 
+Arthur couldn't bear any more. He had got up again.
+ 
+"I think I'll just take another walk," he said.
+ 
+"Don't blame you," said  Marvin  and  counted  five  hundred  and
+ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a
+second later.
+ 
+Arthur slapped  his  arms  about  himself  to  try  and  get  his
+circulation  a little more enthusiastic about its job. He trudged
+back up the wall of the crater.
+ 
+Because the atmosphere was so thin and because there was no moon,
+nightfall  was very rapid and it was by now very dark. Because of
+this, Arthur practically  walked  into  the  old  man  before  he
+noticed him.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 22
+ 
+He was standing with his back to Arthur watching  the  very  last
+glimmers  of light sink into blackness behind the horizon. He was
+tallish, elderly and dressed in a single long grey robe. When  he
+turned  his  face  was  thin  and distinguished, careworn but not
+unkind, the sort of face you would  happily  bank  with.  But  he
+didn't turn yet, not even to react to Arthur's yelp of surprise.
+ 
+Eventually the last rays of the sun had vanished completely,  and
+he  turned.  His  face  was still illuminated from somewhere, and
+when Arthur looked for the source of the light he saw that a  few
+yards away stood a small craft of some kind - a small hovercraft,
+Arthur guessed. It shed a dim pool of light around it.
+ 
+The man looked at Arthur, sadly it seemed.
+ 
+"You choose a cold night to visit our dead planet," he said.
+ 
+"Who ... who are you?" stammered Arthur.
+ 
+The man looked away. Again a kind of sadness seemed to cross  his
+face.
+ 
+"My name is not important," he said.
+ 
+He seemed to have something on his mind. Conversation was clearly
+something he felt he didn't have to rush at. Arthur felt awkward.
+ 
+"I ... er ... you startled me ..." he said, lamely.
+ 
+The man looked  round  to  him  again  and  slightly  raised  his
+eyebrows.
+ 
+"Hmmmm?" he said.
+ 
+"I said you startled me."
+ 
+"Do not be alarmed, I will not harm you."
+ 
+Arthur frowned at him. "But you shot at us! There  were  missiles
+..." he said.
+ 
+The man chuckled slightly.
+ 
+"An automatic system," he said and gave a  small  sigh.  "Ancient
+computers  ranged  in the bowels of the planet tick away the dark
+millennia, and the ages hang heavy on their dusty data  banks.  I
+think they take the occasional pot shot to relieve the monotony."
+ 
+He looked gravely at Arthur and said, "I'm a great fan of science
+you know."
+ 
+"Oh ... er, really?" said Arthur, who was beginning to  find  the
+man's curious, kindly manner disconcerting.
+ 
+"Oh, yes," said the old man, and simply stopped talking again.
+ 
+"Ah," said Arthur, "er ..." He had an odd felling of being like a
+man  in  the  act  of  adultery who is surprised when the woman's
+husband wanders into the room, changes his trousers, passes a few
+idle remarks about the weather and leaves again.
+ 
+"You seem ill at ease," said the old man with polite concern.
+ 
+"Er, no ... well,  yes.  Actually  you  see,  we  weren't  really
+expecting  to find anybody about in fact. I sort of gathered that
+you were all dead or something ..."
+ 
+"Dead?" said the old man. "Good gracious no, we have but slept."
+ 
+"Slept?" said Arthur incredulously.
+ 
+"Yes, through the economic recession you see," said the old  man,
+apparently  unconcerned  about  whether  Arthur understood a word
+he was talking about or not.
+ 
+"Er, economic recession?"
+ 
+"Well you see,  five  million  years  ago  the  Galactic  economy
+collapsed, and seeing that custom-made planets are something of a
+luxury commodity you see ..."
+ 
+He paused and looked at Arthur.
+ 
+"You know we built planets do you?" he asked solemnly.
+ 
+"Well yes," said Arthur, "I'd sort of gathered ..."
+ 
+"Fascinating trade," said the old man, and a  wistful  look  came
+into  his  eyes,  "doing  the coastlines was always my favourite.
+Used to have endless fun doing the little bits in fjords  ...  so
+anyway,"  he said trying to find his thread again, "the recession
+came and we decided it would save us a lot of bother if  we  just
+slept  through  it.  So  we programmed the computers to revive us
+when it was all over."
+ 
+The man stifled a very slight yawn and continued.
+ 
+"The computers were index linked to  the  Galactic  stock  market
+prices  you  see, so that we'd all be revived when everybody else
+had rebuilt the economy enough to  afford  our  rather  expensive
+services."
+ 
+Arthur, a regular Guardian reader, was deeply shocked at this.
+ 
+"That's a pretty unpleasant way to behave isn't it?"
+ 
+"Is it?" asked the old man mildly. "I'm sorry, I'm a bit  out  of
+touch."
+ 
+He pointed down into the crater.
+ 
+"Is that robot yours?" he said.
+ 
+"No," came a thin metallic voice from the crater, "I'm mine."
+ 
+"If you'd call it a robot," muttered Arthur. "It's more a sort of
+electronic sulking machine."
+ 
+"Bring it," said the old man. Arthur was quite surprised to  hear
+a  note  of  decision suddenly present in the old man's voice. He
+called to Marvin who crawled up the slope making a  big  show  of
+being lame, which he wasn't.
+ 
+"On second thoughts," said the old man, "leave it here. You  must
+come  with  me.  Great  things  are afoot." He turned towards his
+craft which, though  no  apparent  signal  had  been  given,  now
+drifted quietly towards them through the dark.
+ 
+Arthur looked down at Marvin, who now made an equally big show of
+turning  round  laboriously and trudging off down into the crater
+again muttering sour nothings to himself.
+ 
+"Come," called the old man, "come now or you will be late."
+ 
+"Late?" said Arthur. "What for?"
+ 
+"What is your name, human?"
+ 
+"Dent. Arthur Dent," said Arthur.
+ 
+"Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent," said the old man, sternly.
+"It's  a  sort of threat you see." Another wistful look came into
+his tired old eyes. "I've never been very good  at  them  myself,
+but I'm told they can be very effective."
+ 
+Arthur blinked at him.
+ 
+"What an extraordinary person," he muttered to himself.
+ 
+"I beg your pardon?" said the old man.
+ 
+"Oh nothing, I'm sorry," said Arthur in embarrassment.  "Alright,
+where do we go?"
+ 
+"In my aircar," said the old man motioning Arthur to get into the
+craft which had settled silently next to them. "We are going deep
+into the bowels of the planet where even now our  race  is  being
+revived from its five-million-year slumber. Magrathea awakes."
+ 
+Arthur shivered involuntarily as he seated himself  next  to  the
+old  man.  The  strangeness of it, the silent bobbing movement of
+the craft as it soared into the night sky quite unsettled him.
+ 
+He looked at the old man, his face illuminated by the  dull  glow
+of tiny lights on the instrument panel.
+ 
+"Excuse me," he said to him, "what is your name by the way?"
+ 
+"My name?" said the old man, and the same  distant  sadness  came
+into  his  face  again.  He  paused.  "My name," he said, "... is
+Slartibartfast."
+ 
+Arthur practically choked.
+ 
+"I beg your pardon?" he spluttered.
+ 
+"Slartibartfast," repeated the old man quietly.
+ 
+"Slartibartfast?"
+ 
+The old man looked at him gravely.
+ 
+"I said it wasn't important," he said.
+ 
+The aircar sailed through the night.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 23
+ 
+It is an important and popular fact that things  are  not  always
+what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always
+assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had
+achieved  so  much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst
+all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having
+a  good  time.  But  conversely, the dolphins had always believed
+that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely  the
+same reasons.
+ 
+Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known  of  the  impending
+destruction  of  the  planet  Earth and had made many attempts to
+alert mankind of the danger; but  most  of  their  communications
+were  misinterpreted  as  amusing  attempts to punch footballs or
+whistle for tidbits, so they eventually  gave  up  and  left  the
+Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived.
+ 
+The  last  ever  dolphin  message   was   misinterpreted   as   a
+surprisingly  sophisticated  attempt  to  do  a double-backwards-
+somersault through a hoop whilst whistling  the  "Star  Sprangled
+Banner", but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for
+all the fish.
+ 
+In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent
+than  dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural
+research laboratories running round inside wheels and  conducting
+frighteningly  elegant  and  subtle  experiments on man. The fact
+that once again man completely misinterpreted  this  relationship
+was entirely according to these creatures' plans.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 24
+ 
+Silently the aircar coasted through the cold darkness,  a  single
+soft  glow of light that was utterly alone in the deep Magrathean
+night. It sped swiftly. Arthur's companion seemed sunk in his own
+thoughts,  and  when  Arthur  tried  on  a couple of occasions to
+engage him in conversation again he would simply reply by  asking
+if he was comfortable enough, and then left it at that.
+ 
+Arthur tried to gauge the speed at which  they  were  travelling,
+but  the  blackness  outside  was  absolute and he was denied any
+reference points. The sense of motion was so soft and  slight  he
+could almost believe they were hardly moving at all.
+ 
+Then a tiny glow of light appeared in the far distance and within
+seconds  had  grown  so  much in size that Arthur realized it was
+travelling towards them at a colossal speed, and he tried to make
+out  what  sort  of  craft  it might be. He peered at it, but was
+unable to discern any clear shape, and suddenly gasped  in  alarm
+as  the  aircraft  dipped  sharply  and  headed downwards in what
+seemed certain to be a collision course. Their relative  velocity
+seemed  unbelievable,  and  Arthur had hardly time to draw breath
+before it was all over. The next thing he was  aware  of  was  an
+insane  silver  blur  that seemed to surround him. He twisted his
+head sharply round and saw a small black point dwindling  rapidly
+in  the  distance behind them, and it took him several seconds to
+realize what had happened.
+ 
+They had plunged into a tunnel in the ground. The colossal  speed
+had  been  their  own  relative  to the glow of light which was a
+stationary hole in the ground,  the  mouth  of  the  tunnel.  The
+insane  blur  of  silver was the circular wall of the tunnel down
+which they were shooting, apparently at several hundred miles  an
+hour.
+ 
+He closed his eyes in terror.
+ 
+After a length of time which he made  no  attempt  to  judge,  he
+sensed  a  slight  subsidence in their speed and some while later
+became aware that they were gradually gliding to a gentle halt.
+ 
+He opened his eyes again. They were still in the  silver  tunnel,
+threading  and  weaving  their  way through what appeared to be a
+crisscross  warren  of  converging  tunnels.  When  they  finally
+stopped  it  was  in  a  small  chamber  of curved steel. Several
+tunnels also had their terminus here, and at the farther  end  of
+the  chamber  Arthur  could  see a large circle of dim irritating
+light. It was irritating because it played tricks with the  eyes,
+it was impossible to focus on it properly or tell how near or far
+it was. Arthur guessed (quite wrongly) that  it  might  be  ultra
+violet.
+ 
+Slartibartfast turned and regarded Arthur  with  his  solemn  old
+eyes.
+ 
+"Earthman," he said, "we are now deep in the heart of Magrathea."
+ 
+"How did you know I was an Earthman?" demanded Arthur.
+ 
+"These things will become clear to you," said the old man gently,
+"at  least,"  he  added  with slight doubt in his voice, "clearer
+than they are at the moment."
+ 
+He continued: "I should warn you that the chamber we are about to
+pass  into  does  not  literally exist within our planet. It is a
+little too ... large. We are about to pass through a gateway into
+a vast tract of hyperspace. It may disturb you."
+ 
+Arthur made nervous noises.
+ 
+Slartibartfast  touched  a  button  and   added,   not   entirely
+reassuringly. "It scares the willies out of me. Hold tight."
+ 
+The car shot forward straight  into  the  circle  of  light,  and
+suddenly  Arthur  had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked
+like.
+ 
+It wasn't infinity  in  fact.  Infinity  itself  looks  flat  and
+uninteresting.  Looking  up  into  the  night sky is looking into
+infinity   -   distance   is   incomprehensible   and   therefore
+meaningless.  The  chamber  into  which  the  aircar  emerged was
+anything but infinite, it was just very very big, so that it gave
+the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself.
+ 
+Arthur's senses bobbed and span, as, travelling  at  the  immense
+speed  he  knew  the aircar attained, they climbed slowly through
+the open air leaving the gateway through which they had passed an
+invisible pinprick in the shimmering wall behind them.
+ 
+The wall.
+ 
+The wall defied the imagination - seduced it and defeated it. The
+wall  was so paralysingly vast and sheer that its top, bottom and
+sides passed away beyond the reach of sight. The  mere  shock  of
+vertigo could kill a man.
+ 
+The wall appeared perfectly flat. It would take the finest  laser
+measuring  equipment  to detect that as it climbed, apparently to
+infinity, as it dropped dizzily away, as it planed out to  either
+side,  it also curved. It met itself again thirteen light seconds
+away. In other words the wall  formed  the  inside  of  a  hollow
+sphere, a sphere over three million miles across and flooded with
+unimaginable light.
+ 
+"Welcome," said Slartibartfast as the tiny  speck  that  was  the
+aircar,  travelling  now at three times the speed of sound, crept
+imperceptibly forward into the mindboggling space, "welcome,"  he
+said, "to our factory floor."
+ 
+Arthur stared about him in a kind  of  wonderful  horror.  Ranged
+away  before  them,  at distances he could neither judge nor even
+guess  at,  were  a  series  of  curious  suspensions,   delicate
+traceries  of metal and light hung about shadowy spherical shapes
+that hung in the space.
+ 
+"This," said Slartibartfast,  "is  where  we  make  most  of  our
+planets you see."
+ 
+"You mean," said Arthur, trying to  form  the  words,  "you  mean
+you're starting it all up again now?"
+ 
+"No no, good heavens no," exclaimed the old man, "no, the  Galaxy
+isn't  nearly  rich  enough  to  support  us  yet. No, we've been
+awakened to perform just one extraordinary commission   for  very
+...  special  clients from another dimension. It may interest you
+... there in the distance in front of us."
+ 
+Arthur followed the old man's finger, till he was  able  to  pick
+out the floating structure he was pointing out. It was indeed the
+only one of  the  many  structures  that  betrayed  any  sign  of
+activity  about  it,  though  this was more a sublimal impression
+than anything one could put one's finger on.
+ 
+At the  moment  however  a  flash  of  light  arced  through  the
+structure  and  revealed  in  stark relief the patterns that were
+formed on the dark sphere  within.  Patterns  that  Arthur  knew,
+rough blobby shapes that were as familiar to him as the shapes of
+words, part of the furniture of his mind. For a  few  seconds  he
+sat  in  stunned silence as the images rushed around his mind and
+tried to find somewhere to settle down and make sense.
+ 
+Part of his brain told him that he knew perfectly  well  what  he
+was  looking  at  and  what the shapes represented whilst another
+quite sensibly refused to  countenance  the  idea  and  abdicated
+responsibility for any further thinking in that direction.
+ 
+The flash came again, and this time there could be no doubt.
+ 
+"The Earth ..." whispered Arthur.
+ 
+"Well,  the  Earth  Mark  Two  in  fact,"   said   Slartibartfast
+cheerfully. "We're making a copy from our original blueprints."
+ 
+There was a pause.
+ 
+"Are you trying  to  tell  me,"  said  Arthur,  slowly  and  with
+control, "that you originally ... made the Earth?"
+ 
+"Oh yes," said Slartibartfast. "Did you ever go to a place ...  I
+think it was called Norway?"
+ 
+"No," said Arthur, "no, I didn't."
+ 
+"Pity," said Slartibartfast, "that was one of mine. Won an  award
+you  know.  Lovely  crinkly edges. I was most upset to hear about
+its destruction."
+ 
+"You were upset!"
+ 
+"Yes. Five minutes later and it wouldn't have mattered  so  much.
+It was a quite shocking cock-up."
+ 
+"Huh?" said Arthur.
+ 
+"The mice were furious."
+ 
+"The mice were furious?"
+ 
+"Oh yes," said the old man mildly.
+ 
+"Yes well so I expect were  the  dogs  and  cats  and  duckbilled
+platypuses, but ..."
+ 
+"Ah, but they hadn't paid for it you see, had they?"
+ 
+"Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if  I  just
+gave up and went mad now?"
+ 
+For a while the aircar flew on in awkward silence. Then  the  old
+man tried patiently to explain.
+ 
+"Earthman, the planet you lived on was  commissioned,  paid  for,
+and  run  by  mice.  It  was  destroyed  five  minutes before the
+completion of the purpose for which it was built, and  we've  got
+to build another one."
+ 
+Only one word registered with Arthur.
+ 
+"Mice?" he said.
+ 
+"Indeed Earthman."
+ 
+"Look, sorry - are we talking about the little white furry things
+with  the  cheese fixation and women standing on tables screaming
+in early sixties sit coms?"
+ 
+Slartibartfast coughed politely.
+ 
+"Earthman," he said, "it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of
+speech.  Remember  I  have  been  asleep  inside  this  planet of
+Magrathea for five million years and know little of  these  early
+sixties  sit  coms  of  which you speak. These creatures you call
+mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely
+the  protrusion  into our dimension of vast hyperintelligent pan-
+dimensional beings. The whole business with the  cheese  and  the
+squeaking is just a front."
+ 
+The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued.
+ 
+"They've been experimenting on you I'm afraid."
+ 
+Arthur thought about  this  for  a  second,  and  then  his  face
+cleared.
+ 
+"Ah no," he said, "I see the source of the misunderstanding  now.
+No,  look  you  see,  what  happened  was  that  we  used  to  do
+experiments  on  them.  They  were  often  used  in   behavioural
+research, Pavlov and all that sort of stuff. So what happened was
+hat the mice would be set all sorts of tests,  learning  to  ring
+bells,  run  around  mazes and things so that the whole nature of
+the learning process could be examined. From our observations  of
+their  behaviour  we were able to learn all sorts of things about
+our own ..."
+ 
+Arthur's voice tailed off.
+ 
+"Such subtlety ..." said Slartibartfast, "one has to admire it."
+ 
+"What?" said Arthur.
+ 
+"How better to disguise their real natures,  and  how  better  to
+guide  your thinking. Suddenly running down a maze the wrong way,
+eating the wrong bit of cheese, unexpectedly   dropping  dead  of
+myxomatosis, - if it's finely calculated the cumulative effect is
+enormous."
+ 
+He paused for effect.
+ 
+"You  see,  Earthman,  they  really   are   particularly   clever
+hyperintelligent  pan-dimensional  beings. Your planet and people
+have formed the matrix of an  organic  computer  running  a  ten-
+million-year research programme ...
+ 
+"Let me tell you the whole story. It'll take a little time."
+ 
+"Time,"  said  Arthur  weakly,  "is  not  currently  one  of   my
+problems."
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 25
+ 
+There are of course many problems connected with life,  of  which
+some  of  the  most  popular are Why are people born? Why do they
+die? Why do they want to spend so much of  the  intervening  time
+wearing digital watches?
+ 
+Many many millions of years ago a race of  hyperintelligent  pan-
+dimensional  beings  (whose  physical  manifestation in their own
+pan-dimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own) got so fed
+up  with  the  constant bickering about the meaning of life which
+used to interrupt  their  favourite  pastime  of  Brockian  Ultra
+Cricket  (a  curious  game which involved suddenly hitting people
+for no readily apparent reason and then running away)  that  they
+decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all.
+ 
+And to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer
+which  was  so  amazingly  intelligent  that even before the data
+banks had been connected up it had started from I think therefore
+I  am  and got as far as the existence of rice pudding and income
+tax before anyone managed to turn it off.
+ 
+It was the size of a small city.
+ 
+Its main console was installed in a specially designed  executive
+office,   mounted   on  an  enormous  executive  desk  of  finest
+ultramahagony  topped  with  rich  ultrared  leather.  The   dark
+carpeting   was  discreetly  sumptuous,  exotic  pot  plants  and
+tastefully engraved prints of the principal computer  programmers
+and  their  families  were deployed liberally about the room, and
+stately windows looked out upon a tree-lined public square.
+ 
+On  the  day  of  the  Great  On-Turning  two   soberly   dressed
+programmers  with  brief  cases arrived and were shown discreetly
+into the office.  They  were  aware  that  this  day  they  would
+represent  their  entire  race  in  its greatest moment, but they
+conducted themselves calmly and quietly as they seated themselves
+deferentially  before the desk, opened their brief cases and took
+out their leather-bound notebooks.
+ 
+Their names were Lunkwill and Fook.
+ 
+For a few moments they sat in  respectful  silence,  then,  after
+exchanging  a quiet glance with Fook, Lunkwill leaned forward and
+touched a small black panel.
+ 
+The subtlest of hums indicated that the massive computer was  now
+in  total  active mode. After a pause it spoke to them in a voice
+rich resonant and deep.
+ 
+It said: "What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought,  the
+second  greatest  computer in the Universe of Time and Space have
+been called into existence?"
+ 
+Lunkwill and Fook glanced at each other in surprise.
+ 
+ "Your task, O Computer ..." began Fook.
+ 
+"No, wait a minute, this isn't right,"  said  Lunkwill,  worried.
+"We distinctly designed this computer to be the greatest one ever
+and we're not making do  with  second  best.  Deep  Thought,"  he
+addressed  the  computer,  "are you not as we designed you to be,
+the greatest most powerful computer in all time?"
+ 
+"I  described  myself  as  the  second  greatest,"  intoned  Deep
+Thought, "and such I am."
+ 
+Another worried look passed between the two programmers. Lunkwill
+cleared his throat.
+ 
+"There must be some mistake," he said, "are you  not  a  greatest
+computer  than the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the
+atoms in a star in a millisecond?"
+ 
+"The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with  unconcealed
+contempt. "A mere abacus - mention it not."
+ 
+"And are you  not,"  said  Fook  leaning  anxiously  forward,  "a
+greater  analyst  than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh
+Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the  trajectory
+of  every  single  dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad
+Beta sand blizzard?"
+ 
+"A five-week sand blizzard?" said Deep  Thought  haughtily.  "You
+ask  this  of  me  who  have contemplated the very vectors of the
+atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest  me  not  with  this  pocket
+calculator stuff."
+ 
+The two programmers sat in uncomfortable silence  for  a  moment.
+Then Lunkwill leaned forward again.
+ 
+"But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant  than  the
+Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus 12,
+the Magic and Indefatigable?"
+ 
+"The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler,"  said  Deep
+Thought thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off
+an Arcturan MegaDonkey - but only I could persuade it to go for a
+walk afterwards."
+ 
+"Then what," asked Fook, "is the problem?"
+ 
+"There is no problem," said Deep Thought with magnificent ringing
+tones.  "I am simply the second greatest computer in the Universe
+of Space and Time."
+ 
+"But the second?" insisted Lunkwill. "Why do you keep saying  the
+second?   You're   surely  not  thinking  of  the  Multicorticoid
+Perspicutron Titan Muller are you? Or  the  Pondermatic?  Or  the
+..."
+ 
+Contemptuous lights flashed across the computer's console.
+ 
+"I spare not  a  single  unit  of  thought  on  these  cybernetic
+simpletons!" he boomed. "I speak of none but the computer that is
+to come after me!"
+ 
+Fook was losing  patience.  He  pushed  his  notebook  aside  and
+muttered, "I think this is getting needlessly messianic."
+ 
+"You know nothing of future time," pronounced Deep Thought,  "and
+yet  in  my  teeming  circuitry I can navigate the infinite delta
+streams of future probability and see that  there  must  one  day
+come  a  computer  whose  merest  operational parameters I am not
+worthy to calculate, but which it will be my fate  eventually  to
+design."
+ 
+Fook sighed heavily and glanced across to Lunkwill.
+ 
+"Can we get on and ask the question?" he said.
+ 
+Lunkwill motioned him to wait.
+ 
+"What computer is this of which you speak?" he asked.
+ 
+"I will speak of it no further in this present time,"  said  Deep
+Thought.  "Now. Ask what else of me you will that I may function.
+Speak."
+ 
+They shrugged at each other. Fook composed himself.
+ 
+"O Deep Thought Computer," he said, "the task  we  have  designed
+you  to  perform  is this. We want you to tell us ..." he paused,
+"... the Answer!"
+ 
+"The answer?" said Deep Thought. "The answer to what?"
+ 
+"Life!" urged Fook.
+ 
+"The Universe!" said Lunkwill.
+ 
+"Everything!" they said in chorus.
+ 
+Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection.
+ 
+"Tricky," he said finally.
+ 
+"But can you do it?"
+ 
+Again, a significant pause.
+ 
+"Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it."
+ 
+"There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement."
+ 
+"A simple answer?" added Lunkwill.
+ 
+"Yes," said Deep Thought. "Life, the  Universe,  and  Everything.
+There  is  an  answer.  But," he added, "I'll have to think about
+it."
+ 
+A sudden commotion destroyed the moment: the door flew  open  and
+two  angry  men  wearing the coarse faded-blue robes and belts of
+the Cruxwan University burst into the room, thrusting  aside  the
+ineffectual flunkies who tried to bar their way.
+ 
+"We demand  admission!"  shouted  the  younger  of  the  two  men
+elbowing a pretty young secretary in the throat.
+ 
+"Come on," shouted the older one, "you can't  keep  us  out!"  He
+pushed a junior programmer back through the door.
+ 
+"We demand that you can't keep us out!" bawled the  younger  one,
+though  he was now firmly inside the room and no further attempts
+were being made to stop him.
+ 
+"Who are you?" said Lunkwill, rising angrily from his seat. "What
+do you want?"
+ 
+"I am Majikthise!" announced the older one.
+ 
+"And I demand that I am Vroomfondel!" shouted the younger one.
+ 
+Majikthise turned on Vroomfondel. "It's  alright,"  he  explained
+angrily, "you don't need to demand that."
+ 
+"Alright!" bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby  desk.  "I  am
+Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What
+we demand is solid facts!"
+ 
+"No we don't!"  exclaimed  Majikthise  in  irritation.  "That  is
+precisely what we don't demand!"
+ 
+Scarcely pausing  for  breath,  Vroomfondel  shouted,  "We  don't
+demand  solid  facts!  What we demand is a total absence of solid
+facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!"
+ 
+"But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook.
+ 
+"We," said Majikthise, "are Philosophers."
+ 
+"Though we may not be," said Vroomfondel waving a warning  finger
+at the programmers.
+ 
+"Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely  here
+as  representatives  of  the  Amalgamated  Union of Philosophers,
+Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and  we  want  this
+machine off, and we want it off now!"
+ 
+"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.
+ 
+"I'll tell you  what  the  problem  is  mate,"  said  Majikthise,
+"demarcation, that's the problem!"
+ 
+"We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not
+be the problem!"
+ 
+"You just let the machines get on with  the  adding  up,"  warned
+Majikthise,  "and  we'll  take care of the eternal verities thank
+you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate.
+Under  law  the  Quest  for  Ultimate  Truth is quite clearly the
+inalienable  prerogative of your  working  thinkers.  Any  bloody
+machine  goes  and  actually finds it and we're straight out of a
+job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up  half  the
+night  arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine
+only goes and  gives  us  his  bleeding  phone  number  the  next
+morning?"
+ 
+"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand  rigidly  defined
+areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
+ 
+Suddenly a stentorian voice boomed across the room.
+ 
+"Might I make  an  observation  at  this  point?"  inquired  Deep
+Thought.
+ 
+"We'll go on strike!" yelled Vroomfondel.
+ 
+"That's  right!"  agreed  Majikthise.  "You'll  have  a  national
+Philosopher's strike on your hands!"
+ 
+The hum level in the room suddenly increased as several ancillary
+bass  driver  units,  mounted  in  sedately  carved and varnished
+cabinet speakers around the room, cut in to give  Deep  Thought's
+voice a little more power.
+ 
+"All I wanted  to  say,"  bellowed  the  computer,  "is  that  my
+circuits  are now irrevocably committed to calculating the answer
+to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything -"
+he  paused  and  satisfied  himself  that  he  now had everyone's
+attention, before continuing more  quietly,  "but  the  programme
+will take me a little while to run."
+ 
+Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.
+ 
+"How long?" he said.
+ 
+"Seven and a half million years," said Deep Thought.
+ 
+Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other.
+ 
+"Seven and a half million years ...!" they cried in chorus.
+ 
+"Yes," declaimed Deep Thought, "I said I'd have  to  think  about
+it,  didn't  I? And it occurs to me that running a programme like
+this is bound to create an enormous amount of  popular  publicity
+for  the whole area of philosophy in general. Everyone's going to
+have their own theories about what answer I'm eventually to  come
+up  with,  and who better to capitalize on that media market than
+you yourself? So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other
+violently  enough  and  slagging  each  other  off in the popular
+press, you can keep yourself on the gravy  train  for  life.  How
+does that sound?"
+ 
+The two philosophers gaped at him.
+ 
+"Bloody  hell,"  said  Majikthise,  "now  that  is  what  I  call
+thinking.  Here Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like
+that?"
+ 
+"Dunno," said Vroomfondel in an awed whisper, "think  our  brains
+must be too highly trained Majikthise."
+ 
+So saying, they turned on their heels and walked out of the  door
+and into a lifestyle beyond their wildest dreams.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 26
+ 
+"Yes, very  salutary,"  said  Arthur,  after  Slartibartfast  had
+related  the  salient  points  of  the story to him, "but I don't
+understand what all this has got to do with the  Earth  and  mice
+and things."
+ 
+"That is but the first half of the story Earthman," said the  old
+man.  "If  you  would  care to discover what happened seven and a
+half millions later, on the great day of the Answer, allow me  to
+invite  you  to  my  study  where  you  can experience the events
+yourself on our Sens-O-Tape records. That  is  unless  you  would
+care  to  take  a  quick stroll on the surface of New Earth. It's
+only half completed I'm afraid - we haven't even finished burying
+the  artificial dinosaur skeletons in the crust yet, then we have
+the Tertiary and Quarternary Periods of the Cenozoic Era  to  lay
+down, and ..."
+ 
+"No thank you," said Arthur, "it wouldn't be quite the same."
+ 
+"No," said Slartibartfast, "it  won't  be,"  and  he  turned  the
+aircar round and headed back towards the mind-numbing wall.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 27
+ 
+Slartibartfast's study was a total mess, like the results  of  an
+explosion  in  a  public  library.  The  old  man frowned as they
+stepped in.
+ 
+"Terribly unfortunate," he said, "a diode  blew  in  one  of  the
+life-support  computers.  When  we  tried  to revive our cleaning
+staff we discovered they'd been dead for nearly  thirty  thousand
+years.  Who's  going to clear away the bodies, that's what I want
+to know. Look why don't you sit yourself down over there and  let
+me plug you in?"
+ 
+He gestured Arthur towards a chair which looked as if it had been
+made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus.
+ 
+"It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus," explained the
+old  man as he pottered about fishing bits of wire out from under
+tottering piles of paper  and  drawing  instruments.  "Here,"  he
+said,  "hold  these," and passed a couple of stripped wire end to
+Arthur.
+ 
+The instant he took hold of them a  bird  flew  straight  through
+him.
+ 
+He was suspended in mid-air and  totally  invisible  to  himself.
+Beneath him was a pretty treelined city square, and all around it
+as far as the eye could see were white concrete buildings of airy
+spacious  design  but  somewhat  the  worse  for wear - many were
+cracked and stained with rain. Today however the sun was shining,
+a  fresh  breeze  danced  lightly  through the trees, and the odd
+sensation  that  all  the  buildings  were  quietly  humming  was
+probably  caused  by the fact that the square and all the streets
+around it were thronged with cheerful excited people. Somewhere a
+band  was playing, brightly coloured flags were fluttering in the
+breeze and the spirit of carnival was in the air.
+ 
+Arthur felt extraordinarily lonely stuck up in the air  above  it
+all without so much as a body to his name, but before he had time
+to reflect on this a voice rang out across the square and  called
+for everyone's attention.
+ 
+A man standing on a brightly dressed  dais  before  the  building
+which  clearly dominated the square was addressing the crowd over
+a Tannoy.
+ 
+"O people waiting in the Shadow of Deep Thought!" he  cried  out.
+"Honoured Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the Greatest
+and Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe  has  ever  known
+... The Time of Waiting is over!"
+ 
+Wild cheers broke out amongst the  crowd.  Flags,  streamers  and
+wolf whistles sailed through the air. The narrower streets looked
+rather like centipedes rolled over on their backs and frantically
+waving their legs in the air.
+ 
+"Seven and a half million years our  race  has  waited  for  this
+Great  and  Hopefully  Enlightening Day!" cried the cheer leader.
+"The Day of the Answer!"
+ 
+Hurrahs burst from the ecstatic crowd.
+ 
+"Never again," cried the man, "never again will we wake up in the
+morning  and  think Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it
+really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and  go  to
+work?  For today we will finally learn once and for all the plain
+and simple answer to all these nagging little problems  of  Life,
+the Universe and Everything!"
+ 
+As the crowd erupted once again,  Arthur  found  himself  gliding
+through the air and down towards one of the large stately windows
+on the first floor of the building behind the dais from which the
+speaker was addressing the crowd.
+ 
+He experienced a moment's panic as  he  sailed  straight  through
+towards  the  window,  which  passed when a second or so later he
+found  he  had  gone  right  through  the  solid  glass   without
+apparently touching it.
+ 
+No one in the room remarked on his  peculiar  arrival,  which  is
+hardly  surprising  as  he wasn't there. He began to realize that
+the whole experience  was  merely  a  recorded  projection  which
+knocked six-track seventy-millimetre into a cocked hat.
+ 
+The room was much as Slartibartfast had described  it.  In  seven
+and  a  half  million  years  it  had  been well looked after and
+cleaned regularly every century or so. The ultramahagony desk was
+worn  at  the edges, the carpet a little faded now, but the large
+computer terminal sat in sparkling glory on  the  desk's  leather
+top, as bright as if it had been constructed yesterday.
+ 
+Two severely dressed men sat respectfully before the terminal and
+waited.
+ 
+"The time is nearly upon us," said one, and Arthur was  surprised
+to  see a word suddenly materialize in thin air just by the man's
+neck. The word was Loonquawl, and it flashed a  couple  of  times
+and  the  disappeared again. Before Arthur was able to assimilate
+this the other man spoke and the word  Phouchg  appeared  by  his
+neck.
+ 
+"Seventy-five thousand generations ago, our  ancestors  set  this
+program in motion," the second man said, "and in all that time we
+will be the first to hear the computer speak."
+ 
+"An awesome prospect, Phouchg," agreed the first man, and  Arthur
+suddenly   realized   that  he  was  watching  a  recording  with
+subtitles.
+ 
+"We are the ones who will hear," said Phouchg, "the answer to the
+great question of Life ...!"
+ 
+"The Universe ...!" said Loonquawl.
+ 
+"And Everything ...!"
+ 
+"Shhh," said Loonquawl with  a  slight  gesture,  "I  think  Deep
+Thought is preparing to speak!"
+ 
+There was a moment's expectant pause whilst panels slowly came to
+life  on  the  front  of  the  console. Lights flashed on and off
+experimentally and settled down into a  businesslike  pattern.  A
+soft low hum came from the communication channel.
+ 
+"Good morning," said Deep Thought at last.
+ 
+"Er ... Good morning, O Deep Thought," said Loonquawl  nervously,
+"do you have ... er, that is ..."
+ 
+"An answer for you?" interrupted Deep Thought majestically. "Yes.
+I have."
+ 
+The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not  been
+in vain.
+ 
+"There really is one?" breathed Phouchg.
+ 
+"There really is one," confirmed Deep Thought.
+ 
+"To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the  Universe  and
+Everything?"
+ 
+"Yes."
+ 
+Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had
+been  a  preparation  for  it, they had been selected at birth as
+those who would witness  the  answer,  but  even  so  they  found
+themselves gasping and squirming like excited children.
+ 
+"And you're ready to give it to us?" urged Loonquawl.
+ 
+"I am."
+ 
+"Now?"
+ 
+"Now," said Deep Thought.
+ 
+They both licked their dry lips.
+ 
+"Though I don't think," added Deep Thought, "that you're going to
+like it."
+ 
+"Doesn't matter!" said Phouchg. "We must know it! Now!"
+ 
+"Now?" inquired Deep Thought.
+ 
+"Yes! Now ..."
+ 
+"Alright," said the computer and settled into silence again.  The
+two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable.
+ 
+"You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought.
+ 
+"Tell us!"
+ 
+"Alright," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the  Great  Question
+..."
+ 
+"Yes ...!"
+ 
+"Of Life, the Universe and Everything ..." said Deep Thought.
+ 
+"Yes ...!"
+ 
+"Is ..." said Deep Thought, and paused.
+ 
+"Yes ...!"
+ 
+"Is ..."
+ 
+"Yes ...!!!...?"
+ 
+"Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 28
+ 
+It was a long time before anyone spoke.
+ 
+Out of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea  of  tense
+expectant faces down in the square outside.
+ 
+"We're going to get lynched aren't we?" he whispered.
+ 
+"It was a tough assignment," said Deep Thought mildly.
+ 
+"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've  got  to  show
+for seven and a half million years' work?"
+ 
+"I checked it very thoroughly,"  said  the  computer,  "and  that
+quite  definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite
+honest with you, is that you've never  actually  known  what  the
+question is."
+ 
+"But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate  Question  of  Life,
+the Universe and Everything!" howled Loonquawl.
+ 
+"Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one  who  suffers  fools
+gladly, "but what actually is it?"
+ 
+A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the
+computer and then at each other.
+ 
+"Well, you know, it's just Everything ... Everything ..." offered
+Phouchg weakly.
+ 
+"Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So  once  you  do  know  what  the
+question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."
+ 
+"Oh terrific," muttered Phouchg flinging aside his  notebook  and
+wiping away a tiny tear.
+ 
+"Look, alright, alright," said Loonquawl, "can  you  just  please
+tell us the Question?"
+ 
+"The Ultimate Question?"
+ 
+"Yes!"
+ 
+"Of Life, the Universe, and Everything?"
+ 
+"Yes!"
+ 
+Deep Thought pondered this for a moment.
+ 
+"Tricky," he said.
+ 
+"But can you do it?" cried Loonquawl.
+ 
+Deep Thought pondered this for another long moment.
+ 
+Finally: "No," he said firmly.
+ 
+Both men collapsed on to their chairs in despair.
+ 
+"But I'll tell you who can," said Deep Thought.
+ 
+They both looked up sharply.
+ 
+"Who?" "Tell us!"
+ 
+Suddenly Arthur began to feel his apparently  non-existent  scalp
+begin  to  crawl as he found himself moving slowly but inexorably
+forward towards the console, but it was only a dramatic  zoom  on
+the part of whoever had made the recording he assumed.
+ 
+"I speak of none other than the computer that is  to  come  after
+me,"  intoned  Deep  Thought,  his voice regaining its accustomed
+declamatory  tones.  "A   computer   whose   merest   operational
+parameters  I  am not worthy to calculate - and yet I will design
+it for you. A computer which can calculate the  Question  to  the
+Ultimate   Answer,   a  computer  of  such  infinite  and  subtle
+complexity that organic  life  itself  shall  form  part  of  its
+operational  matrix.  And  you yourselves shall take on new forms
+and go down into the computer to  navigate  its  ten-million-year
+program!  Yes!  I shall design this computer for you. And I shall
+name it also unto you. And it shall be called ... The Earth."
+ 
+Phouchg gaped at Deep Thought.
+ 
+"What a dull name," he said and great incisions appeared down the
+length  of  his  body.  Loonquawl too suddenly sustained horrific
+gashed from nowhere. The Computer console blotched  and  cracked,
+the  walls  flickered  and  crumbled and the room crashed upwards
+into its own ceiling ...
+ 
+Slartibartfast was standing in front of Arthur  holding  the  two
+wires.
+ 
+"End of the tape," he explained.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 29
+ 
+"Zaphod! Wake up!"
+ 
+"Mmmmmwwwwwerrrrr?"
+ 
+"Hey come on, wake up."
+ 
+"Just let me stick to what I'm good at,  yeah?"  muttered  Zaphod
+and rolled away from the voice back to sleep.
+ 
+"Do you want me to kick you?" said Ford.
+ 
+"Would it give you a lot of pleasure?" said Zaphod, blearily.
+ 
+"No."
+ 
+"Nor me. So what's the point? Stop  bugging  me."  Zaphod  curled
+himself up.
+ 
+"He got a double dose of the gas," said Trillian looking down  at
+him, "two windpipes."
+ 
+"And stop talking," said Zaphod,  "it's  hard  enough  trying  to
+sleep  anyway.  What's  the matter with the ground? It's all cold
+and hard."
+ 
+"It's gold," said Ford.
+ 
+With an amazingly  balletic  movement  Zaphod  was  standing  and
+scanning  the  horizon,  because that was how far the gold ground
+stretched in every direction,  perfectly  smooth  and  solid.  It
+gleamed  like  ...  it's  impossible  to say what it gleamed like
+because nothing in the Universe gleams in quite the same way that
+a planet of solid gold does.
+ 
+"Who put all that there?" yelped Zaphod, goggle-eyed.
+ 
+"Don't get excited," said Ford, "it's only a catalogue."
+ 
+"A who?"
+ 
+"A catalogue," said Trillian, "an illusion."
+ 
+"How can you say that?" cried Zaphod, falling to  his  hands  and
+knees  and staring at the ground. He poked it and prodded it with
+his fingernail. It was very heavy and very  slightly  soft  -  he
+could  mark  it  with his fingernail. It was very yellow and very
+shiny, and when he breathed on it his breath evaporated off it in
+that  very  peculiar  and  special way that breath evaporates off
+solid gold.
+ 
+"Trillian and I came round a while ago," said Ford.  "We  shouted
+and  yelled  till  somebody came and then carried on shouting and
+yelling till they got fed up and put us in their planet catalogue
+to keep us busy till they were ready to deal with us. This is all
+Sens-O-Tape."
+ 
+Zaphod stared at him bitterly.
+ 
+"Ah, shit," he said, "you wake me up from my own  perfectly  good
+dream to show me somebody else's." He sat down in a huff.
+ 
+"What's that series of valleys over there?" he said.
+ 
+"Hallmark," said Ford. "We had a look."
+ 
+"We didn't wake you earlier," said Trillian. "The last planet was
+knee deep in fish."
+ 
+"Fish?"
+ 
+"Some people like the oddest things."
+ 
+"And before that," said Ford, "we  had  platinum.  Bit  dull.  We
+thought you'd like to see this one though."
+ 
+Seas of light glared at them in one  solid  blaze  wherever  they
+looked.
+ 
+"Very pretty," said Zaphod petulantly.
+ 
+In the sky a huge green catalogue number appeared.  It  flickered
+and changed, and when they looked around again so had the land.
+ 
+As with one voice they all went, "Yuch."
+ 
+The sea was purple. The beach they were on was composed  of  tiny
+yellow  and  green pebbles - presumably terribly precious stones.
+The mountains in the distance seemed soft and undulating with red
+peaks.  Nearby  stood  a  solid  silver beach table with a frilly
+mauve parasol and silver tassles.
+ 
+In the sky a huge sign appeared, replacing the catalogue  number.
+It  said,  Whatever  your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We
+are not proud.
+ 
+And five hundred entirely naked women dropped out of the  sky  on
+parachutes.
+ 
+In a moment the scene vanished and  left  them  in  a  springtime
+meadow full of cows.
+ 
+"Ow!" said Zaphod. "My brains!"
+ 
+"You want to talk about it?" said Ford.
+ 
+"Yeah, OK," said Zaphod, and all three sat down and  ignored  the
+scenes that came and went around them.
+ 
+"I figure this," said Zaphod. "Whatever happened to  my  mind,  I
+did  it.  And I did it in such a way that it wouldn't be detected
+by the government screening tests. And I wasn't to know  anything
+about it myself. Pretty crazy, right?"
+ 
+The other two nodded in agreement.
+ 
+"So I reckon, what's so secret that I can't let  anybody  know  I
+know  it,  not  the Galactic Government, not even myself? And the
+answer is I don't  know.  Obviously.  But  I  put  a  few  things
+together  and  I can begin to guess. When did I decide to run for
+President? Shortly after the death of President Yooden Vranx. You
+remember Yooden, Ford?"
+ 
+"Yeah," said Ford, "he was that guy we met when we were kids, the
+Arcturan  captain. He was a gas. He gave us conkers when you bust
+your way into his megafreighter. Said you were the  most  amazing
+kid he'd ever met."
+ 
+"What's all this?" said Trillian.
+ 
+"Ancient history," said Ford, "when  we  were  kids  together  on
+Betelgeuse. The Arcturan megafreighters used to carry most of the
+bulky trade between the Galactic Centre and the outlying  regions
+The  Betelgeuse  trading  scouts used to find the markets and the
+Arcturans would supply them. There was  a  lot  of  trouble  with
+space  pirates  before they were wiped out in the Dordellis wars,
+and the megafreighters had to be equipped with the most fantastic
+defence  shields known to Galactic science. They were real brutes
+of ships, and huge. In orbit round a planet  they  would  eclipse
+the sun.
+ 
+"One day, young Zaphod here decides to raid  one.  On  a  tri-jet
+scooter designed for stratosphere work, a mere kid. I mean forget
+it, it was crazier than a mad monkey. I went along for  the  ride
+because  I'd  got  some  very safe money on him not doing it, and
+didn't want him coming back with fake evidence. So what  happens?
+We  got  in  his  tri-jet  which  he had souped up into something
+totally other, crossed three parsecs in a matter of  weeks,  bust
+our  way  into a megafreighter I still don't know how, marched on
+to the bridge waving toy pistols and demanded conkers.  A  wilder
+thing  I have not known. Lost me a year's pocket money. For what?
+Conkers."
+ 
+"The captain was this really amazing  guy,  Yooden  Vranx,"  said
+Zaphod.  "He  gave us food, booze - stuff from really weird parts
+of the Galaxy - lots of conkers of course, and we  had  just  the
+most  incredible  time.  Then  he  teleported  us  back. Into the
+maximum security wing of Betelgeuse state prison. He was  a  cool
+guy. Went on to become President of the Galaxy."
+ 
+Zaphod paused.
+ 
+The scene around them was  currently  plunged  into  gloom.  Dark
+mists   swirled   round   them   and  elephantine  shapes  lurked
+indistinctly in the shadows. The air was occasionally  rent  with
+the  sounds  of  illusory beings murdering other illusory beings.
+Presumably enough people must have liked this sort  of  thing  to
+make it a paying proposition.
+ 
+"Ford," said Zaphod quietly.
+ 
+"Yeah?"
+ 
+"Just before Yooden died he came to see me."
+ 
+"What? You never told me."
+ 
+"No."
+ 
+"What did he say? What did he come to see you about?"
+ 
+"He told me about the Heart of Gold.  It  was  his  idea  that  I
+should steal it."
+ 
+"His idea?"
+ 
+"Yeah," said Zaphod, "and the only possible way  of  stealing  it
+was to be at the launching ceremony."
+ 
+Ford gaped at him in astonishment for a moment, and  then  roared
+with laughter.
+ 
+"Are you telling me," he said,  "that  you  set  yourself  up  to
+become President of the Galaxy just to steal that ship?"
+ 
+"That's it," said Zaphod with the sort of  grin  that  would  get
+most people locked away in a room with soft walls.
+ 
+"But why?" said Ford. "What's so important about having it?"
+ 
+"Dunno," said Zaphod, "I think if I'd consciously known what  was
+so  important about it and what I would need it for it would have
+showed up on the brain screening tests and  I  would  never  have
+passed.  I  think  Yooden  told me a lot of things that are still
+locked away."
+ 
+"So you think you went and mucked about inside your own brain  as
+a result of Yooden talking to you?"
+ 
+"He was a hell of a talker."
+ 
+"Yeah, but Zaphod old mate, you want to look after  yourself  you
+know."
+ 
+Zaphod shrugged.
+ 
+"I mean, don't you have any inkling of the reasons for all this?"
+asked Ford.
+ 
+Zaphod thought hard about this and doubts  seemed  to  cross  his
+minds.
+ 
+"No," he said at last, "I don't seem to be  letting  myself  into
+any of my secrets. Still," he added on further reflection, "I can
+understand that. I wouldn't trust myself  further  than  I  could
+spit a rat."
+ 
+A moment later, the last planet in the  catalogue  vanished  from
+beneath them and the solid world resolved itself again.
+ 
+They were sitting in a  plush  waiting  room  full  of  glass-top
+tables and design awards.
+ 
+A tall Magrathean man was standing in front of them.
+ 
+"The mice will see you now," he said.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 30
+ 
+"So there you have it," said Slartibartfast, making a feeble  and
+perfunctory  attempt  to clear away some of the appalling mess of
+his study. He picked up a paper from the top of a pile, but  then
+couldn't  think  of anywhere else to put it, so he but it back on
+top of the original pile which promptly fell over. "Deep  Thought
+designed the Earth, we built it and you lived on it."
+ 
+"And the Vogons came and destroyed it  five  minutes  before  the
+program was completed," added Arthur, not unbitterly.
+ 
+"Yes," said the old man, pausing to  gaze  hopelessly  round  the
+room.  "Ten  million  years  of  planning and work gone just like
+that. Ten million years, Earthman ... can you  conceive  of  that
+kind  of  time  span?  A  galactic civilization could grow from a
+single worm five times over in that time. Gone." He paused.
+ 
+"Well that's bureaucracy for you," he added.
+ 
+"You know," said Arthur thoughtfully, "all this explains a lot of
+things.  All  through my life I've had this strange unaccountable
+feeling that something was going on in the world, something  big,
+even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was."
+ 
+"No," said the old man, "that's just perfectly  normal  paranoia.
+Everyone in the Universe has that."
+ 
+"Everyone?" said Arthur. "Well, if everyone has that  perhaps  it
+means  something!  Perhaps somewhere outside the Universe we know
+..."
+ 
+"Maybe. Who cares?" said Slartibartfast  before  Arthur  got  too
+excited. "Perhaps I'm old and tired," he continued, "but I always
+think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are
+so  absurdly  remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the
+sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design
+coastlines. I got an award for Norway."
+ 
+He rummaged around in a pile of debris and  pulled  out  a  large
+perspex  block  with his name on it and a model of Norway moulded
+into it.
+ 
+"Where's the sense in that?" he said. "None that I've  been  able
+to  make  out.  I've  been  doing  fjords  in  all my life. For a
+fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award."
+ 
+He turned it over in his hands with a shrug and tossed  it  aside
+carelessly,  but  not  so  carelessly  that  it  didn't  land  on
+something soft.
+ 
+"In this replacement Earth we're building they've given me Africa
+to  do and of course I'm doing it with all fjords again because I
+happen to like them, and I'm old fashioned enough to  think  that
+they  give a lovely baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me
+it's not equatorial enough. Equatorial!" He gave a hollow  laugh.
+"What  does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things
+of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day."
+ 
+"And are you?"
+ 
+"No. That's where it all falls down of course."
+ 
+"Pity," said Arthur with sympathy. "It sounded like quite a  good
+lifestyle otherwise."
+ 
+Somewhere on the wall a small white light flashed.
+ 
+"Come," said Slartibartfast, "you are  to  meet  the  mice.  Your
+arrival  on the planet has caused considerable excitement. It has
+already been hailed, so I gather, as the  third  most  improbable
+event in the history of the Universe."
+ 
+"What were the first two?"
+ 
+"Oh, probably just coincidences," said Slartibartfast carelessly.
+He opened the door and stood waiting for Arthur to follow.
+ 
+Arthur glanced around him once more, and then down at himself, at
+the sweaty dishevelled clothes he had been lying in the mud in on
+Thursday morning.
+ 
+"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," he
+muttered to himself.
+ 
+"I beg your pardon?" said the old man mildly.
+ 
+"Oh nothing," said Arthur, "only joking."
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 31
+ 
+It is of course well known that careless talk  costs  lives,  but
+the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.
+ 
+For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said "I seem  to  be
+having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," a freak wormhole
+opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum  and  carried
+his  words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of
+space to a distant Galaxy where strange and warlike  beings  were
+poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.
+ 
+The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.
+ 
+A dreadful silence  fell  across  the  conference  table  as  the
+commander  of  the  Vl'hurgs,  resplendent  in his black jewelled
+battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G'Gugvuntt  leader  squatting
+opposite  him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with
+a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers  poised  to
+unleash  electric death at his single word of command, challenged
+the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.
+ 
+The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and  at  that
+very  moment  the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty
+with my lifestyle drifted across the conference table.
+ 
+Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the  most  dreadful
+insult  imaginable,  and  there  was  nothing  for it but to wage
+terrible war for centuries.
+ 
+Eventually of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated  over
+a  few  thousand  years, it was realized that the whole thing had
+been a ghastly mistake, and so the  two  opposing  battle  fleets
+settled  their  few  remaining  differences  in order to launch a
+joint attack on our own Galaxy - now positively identified as the
+source of the offending remark.
+ 
+For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across  the  empty
+wastes  of  space  and  finally  dived  screaming on to the first
+planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth -  where
+due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet
+was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
+ 
+Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in  the
+history  of  the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on
+all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.
+ 
+"It's just life," they say.
+ 
+A short aircar trip brought Arthur and the old  Magrathean  to  a
+doorway.  They  left  the  car  and  went through the door into a
+waiting room full of  glass-topped  tables  and  perspex  awards.
+Almost  immediately,  a light flashed above the door at the other
+side of the room and they entered.
+ 
+"Arthur! You're safe!" a voice cried.
+ 
+"Am I?" said Arthur, rather startled. "Oh good."
+ 
+The lighting was rather subdued and it took him a moment or so to
+see  Ford,  Trillian  and  Zaphod  sitting  round  a  large table
+beautifully decked out with exotic dishes, strange sweetmeats and
+bizarre fruits. They were stuffing their faces.
+ 
+"What happened to you?" demanded Arthur.
+ 
+"Well," said Zaphod, attacking a boneful of grilled muscle,  "our
+guests  here have been gassing us and zapping our minds and being
+generally weird and have now given us a rather nice meal to  make
+it  up  to us. Here," he said hoiking out a lump of evil smelling
+meat from a bowl, "have some Vegan Rhino's cutlet. It's delicious
+if you happen to like that sort of thing."
+ 
+"Hosts?" said Arthur. "What hosts? I don't see any ..."
+ 
+A small voice said, "Welcome to lunch, Earth creature."
+ 
+Arthur glanced around and suddenly yelped.
+ 
+"Ugh!" he said. "There are mice on the table!"
+ 
+There was an awkward silence  as  everyone  looked  pointedly  at
+Arthur.
+ 
+He was busy staring at two white mice sitting in what looked like
+whisky  glasses  on  the  table. He heard the silence and glanced
+around at everyone.
+ 
+"Oh!" he said, with sudden realization. "Oh, I'm sorry, I  wasn't
+quite prepared for ..."
+ 
+"Let me introduce you," said  Trillian.  "Arthur  this  is  Benji
+mouse."
+ 
+"Hi," said one of the mice. His whiskers stroked what  must  have
+been  a  touch  sensitive panel on the inside of the whisky-glass
+like affair, and it moved forward slightly.
+ 
+"And this is Frankie mouse."
+ 
+The other mouse said, "Pleased to meet you," and did likewise.
+ 
+Arthur gaped.
+ 
+"But aren't they ..."
+ 
+"Yes," said Trillian, "they are the mice I brought with  me  from
+the Earth."
+ 
+She looked him in the eye and  Arthur  thought  he  detected  the
+tiniest resigned shrug.
+ 
+"Could you pass me that bowl of grated Arcturan Megadonkey?"  she
+said.
+ 
+Slartibartfast coughed politely.
+ 
+"Er, excuse me," he said.
+ 
+"Yes, thank you Slartibartfast," said Benji mouse  sharply,  "you
+may go."
+ 
+"What? Oh ... er, very well," said the old  man,  slightly  taken
+aback, "I'll just go and get on with some of my fjords then."
+ 
+"Ah, well in fact that won't be necessary," said  Frankie  mouse.
+"It  looks  very much as if we won't be needing the new Earth any
+longer." He swivelled his pink little eyes. "Not now that we have
+found  a native of the planet who was there seconds before it was
+destroyed."
+ 
+"What?" cried Slartibartfast, aghast. "You can't mean that!  I've
+got a thousand glaciers poised and ready to roll over Africa!"
+ 
+"Well perhaps you can take a  quick  skiing  holiday  before  you
+dismantle them," said Frankie, acidly.
+ 
+"Skiing holiday!" cried the old man. "Those glaciers are works of
+art!  Elegantly  sculptured  contours,  soaring pinnacles of ice,
+deep majestic ravines! It would be sacrilege to go skiing on high
+art!"
+ 
+"Thank you Slartibartfast," said  Benji  firmly.  "That  will  be
+all."
+ 
+"Yes sir," said the old man coldly, "thank you very  much.  Well,
+goodbye  Earthman,"  he said to Arthur, "hope the lifestyle comes
+together."
+ 
+With a brief nod to the rest of the company he turned and  walked
+sadly out of the room.
+ 
+Arthur stared after him not knowing what to say.
+ 
+"Now," said Benji mouse, "to business."
+ 
+Ford and Zaphod clinked their glasses together.
+ 
+"To business!" they said.
+ 
+"I beg your pardon?" said Benji.
+ 
+Ford looked round.
+ 
+"Sorry, I thought you were proposing a toast," he said.
+ 
+The  two  mice  scuttled  impatiently  around  in   their   glass
+transports.  Finally  they  composed  themselves, and Benji moved
+forward to address Arthur.
+ 
+"Now, Earth creature," he said, "the situation we have in  effect
+is  this.  We  have,  as you know, been more or less running your
+planet for the last ten million  years  in  order  to  find  this
+wretched thing called the Ultimate Question."
+ 
+"Why?" said Arthur, sharply.
+ 
+"No - we already thought of that one," said Frankie interrupting,
+"but  it doesn't fit the answer. Why? - Forty-Two ... you see, it
+doesn't work."
+ 
+"No," said Arthur, "I mean why have you been doing it?"
+ 
+"Oh, I see," said Frankie. "Well, eventually just habit I  think,
+to be brutally honest. And this is more or less the point - we're
+sick to the teeth with the whole thing, and the prospect of doing
+it all over again on account of those whinnet-ridden Vogons quite
+frankly gives me the screaming heeby jeebies,  you  know  what  I
+mean? It was by the merest lucky chance that Benji and I finished
+our particular job and left the planet early for a quick holiday,
+and  have since manipulated our way back to Magrathea by the good
+offices of your friends."
+ 
+"Magrathea is a gateway back to our own dimension," put in Benji.
+ 
+"Since when," continued his murine colleague,  "we  have  had  an
+offer  of  a quite enormously fat contract to do the 5D chat show
+and lecture circuit back in  our  own  dimensional  neck  of  the
+woods, and we're very much inclined to take it."
+ 
+"I would, wouldn't you Ford?" said Zaphod promptingly.
+ 
+"Oh yes," said Ford, "jump at it, like a shot."
+ 
+Arthur glanced at them, wondering what all this  was  leading  up
+to.
+ 
+"But we've got to have a product you see," said Frankie, "I  mean
+ideally  we  still  need  the  Ultimate  Question in some form or
+other."
+ 
+Zaphod leaned forward to Arthur.
+ 
+"You see," he said, "if they're just sitting there in the  studio
+looking  very  relaxed  and,  you know, just mentioning that they
+happen to know the Answer to Life, the Universe  and  Everything,
+and  then  eventually  have to admit that in fact it's Forty-two,
+then the show's probably quite short. No follow-up, you see."
+ 
+"We have to have something that sounds good," said Benji.
+ 
+"Something that sounds  good?"  exclaimed  Arthur.  "An  Ultimate
+Question that sounds good? From a couple of mice?"
+ 
+The mice bristled.
+ 
+"Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity  of  pure  research,
+yes  the  pursuit  of  truth  in all its forms, but there comes a
+point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that if  there's  any
+real  truth,  it's  that the entire multi-dimensional infinity of
+the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.
+And  if  it  comes  to  a choice between spending yet another ten
+million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking
+the  money  and  running,  then  I  for  one  could  do  with the
+exercise," said Frankie.
+ 
+"But ..." started Arthur, hopelessly.
+ 
+"Hey, will you get this, Earthman," interrupted Zaphod. "You  are
+a last generation product of that computer matrix, right, and you
+were there right up to the moment your  planet  got  the  finger,
+yeah?"
+ 
+"Er ..."
+ 
+"So  your  brain  was  an  organic  part   of   the   penultimate
+configuration  of  the  computer  programme,"  said  Ford, rather
+lucidly he thought.
+ 
+"Right?" said Zaphod.
+ 
+"Well," said Arthur doubtfully. He wasn't aware  of  ever  having
+felt  an organic part of anything. He had always seen this as one
+of his problems.
+ 
+"In other words," said Benji, steering his curious little vehicle
+right  over  to Arthur, "there's a good chance that the structure
+of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain - so we
+want to buy it off you."
+ 
+"What, the question?" said Arthur.
+ 
+"Yes," said Ford and Trillian.
+ 
+"For lots of money," said Zaphod.
+ 
+"No, no," said Frankie, "it's the brain we want to buy."
+ 
+"What!"
+ 
+"I  thought  you   said   you   could   just   read   his   brain
+electronically," protested Ford.
+ 
+"Oh yes," said Frankie, "but we'd have to get it out first.  It's
+got to be prepared."
+ 
+"Treated," said Benji.
+ 
+"Diced."
+ 
+"Thank you," shouted Arthur, tipping up  his  chair  and  backing
+away from the table in horror.
+ 
+"It could always be replaced," said  Benji  reasonably,  "if  you
+think it's important."
+ 
+"Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie,  "a  simple  one  would
+suffice."
+ 
+"A simple one!" wailed Arthur.
+ 
+"Yeah," said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have  to
+program  it  to  say What? and I don't understand and Where's the
+tea? - who'd know the difference?"
+ 
+"What?" cried Arthur, backing away still further.
+ 
+"See what I mean?" said Zaphod and howled with  pain  because  of
+something that Trillian did at that moment.
+ 
+"I'd notice the difference," said Arthur.
+ 
+"No you wouldn't," said Frankie mouse, "you'd be  programmed  not
+to."
+ 
+Ford made for the door.
+ 
+"Look, I'm sorry, mice old lads," he said. "I don't  think  we've
+got a deal."
+ 
+"I rather think we have to have a deal," said the mice in chorus,
+all  the  charm  vanishing  fro  their piping little voices in an
+instant. With a tiny whining shriek their  two  glass  transports
+lifted  themselves  off  the  table,  and  swung  through the air
+towards Arthur, who  stumbled  further  backwards  into  a  blind
+corner, utterly unable to cope or think of anything.
+ 
+Trillian grabbed him desperately by the arm and tried to drag him
+towards  the door, which Ford and Zaphod were struggling to open,
+but Arthur was dead weight - he seemed hypnotized by the airborne
+rodents swooping towards him.
+ 
+She screamed at him, but he just gaped.
+ 
+With one more yank, Ford and Zaphod got the  door  open.  On  the
+other  side  of  it  was a small pack of rather ugly men who they
+could only assume were the heavy mob of Magrathea. Not only  were
+they ugly themselves, but the medical equipment they carried with
+them was also far from pretty. They charged.
+ 
+So - Arthur was about to have his head  cut  open,  Trillian  was
+unable to help him, and Ford and Zaphod were about to be set upon
+by several thugs a great deal heavier and more sharply armed than
+they were.
+ 
+All in all it was extremely fortunate that at that  moment  every
+alarm on the planet burst into an earsplitting din.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 32
+ 
+"Emergency! Emergency!" blared the klaxons throughout  Magrathea.
+"Hostile  ship  has  landed on planet. Armed intruders in section
+8A. Defence stations, defence stations!"
+ 
+The two mice sniffed irritably round the fragments of their glass
+transports where they lay shattered on the floor.
+ 
+"Damnation," muttered Frankie mouse,  "all  that  fuss  over  two
+pounds of Earthling brain." He scuttled round and about, his pink
+eyes flashing, his fine white coat bristling with static.
+ 
+"The only thing  we  can  do  now,"  said  Benji,  crouching  and
+stroking his whiskers in thought, "is to try and fake a question,
+invent one that will sound plausible."
+ 
+"Difficult," said Frankie. He thought. "How about  What's  yellow
+and dangerous?"
+ 
+Benji considered this for a moment.
+ 
+"No, no good," he said. "Doesn't fit the answer."
+ 
+They sank into silence for a few seconds.
+ 
+"Alright," said Benji. "What do you get if you  multiply  six  by
+seven?"
+ 
+"No, no, too  literal,  too  factual,"  said  Frankie,  "wouldn't
+sustain the punters' interest."
+ 
+Again they thought.
+ 
+Then Frankie said: "Here's a thought. How many roads must  a  man
+walk down?"
+ 
+"Ah," said Benji. "Aha, now that does sound promising!" He rolled
+the  phrase  around  a little. "Yes," he said, "that's excellent!
+Sounds very  significant  without  actually  tying  you  down  to
+meaning  anything  at  all.  How many roads must a man walk down?
+Forty-two. Excellent, excellent, that'll fox 'em.  Frankie  baby,
+we are made!"
+ 
+They performed a scampering dance in their excitement.
+ 
+Near them on the floor lay several rather ugly men who  had  been
+hit about the head with some heavy design awards.
+ 
+Half a mile away, four figures pounded up a corridor looking  for
+a  way out. They emerged into a wide open-plan computer bay. They
+glanced about wildly.
+ 
+"Which way do you reckon Zaphod?" said Ford.
+ 
+"At a wild guess, I'd say down here," said  Zaphod,  running  off
+down  to  the  right between a computer bank and the wall. As the
+others started after him he was brought up short by a  Kill-O-Zap
+energy  bolt  that cracked through the air inches in front of him
+and fried a small section of adjacent wall.
+ 
+A voice on a loud hailer said,  "OK  Beeblebrox,  hold  it  right
+there. We've got you covered."
+ 
+"Cops!" hissed Zaphod, and span around in a crouch. "You want  to
+try a guess at all, Ford?"
+ 
+"OK, this way," said Ford, and  the  four  of  them  ran  down  a
+gangway between two computer banks.
+ 
+At the end of the gangway appeared a heavily armoured and  space-
+suited figure waving a vicious Kill-O-Zap gun.
+ 
+"We don't want to shoot you, Beeblebrox!" shouted the figure.
+ 
+"Suits me fine!" shouted Zaphod back and dived down  a  wide  gap
+between two data process units.
+ 
+The others swerved in behind him.
+ 
+"There are two of them," said Trillian. "We're cornered."
+ 
+They squeezed  themselves  down  in  an  angle  between  a  large
+computer data bank and the wall.
+ 
+They held their breath and waited.
+ 
+Suddenly the air exploded with energy  bolts  as  both  the  cops
+opened fire on them simultaneously.
+ 
+"Hey, they're shooting at us," said Arthur, crouching in a  tight
+ball, "I thought they said they didn't want to do that."
+ 
+"Yeah, I thought they said that," agreed Ford.
+ 
+Zaphod stuck a head up for a dangerous moment.
+ 
+"Hey," he said, "I thought you said you didn't want to shoot us!"
+and ducked again.
+ 
+They waited.
+ 
+After a moment a voice replied, "It isn't easy being a cop!"
+ 
+"What did he say?" whispered Ford in astonishment.
+ 
+"He said it isn't easy being a cop."
+ 
+"Well surely that's his problem isn't it?"
+ 
+"I'd have thought so."
+ 
+Ford shouted out, "Hey listen! I think we've got enough  problems
+on  our  own  having  you  shooting  at us, so if you could avoid
+laying your problems on us as well, I  think  we'd  all  find  it
+easier to cope!"
+ 
+Another pause, and then the loud hailer again.
+ 
+"Now see here, guy," said the voice on the loud  hailer,  "you're
+not dealing with any dumb two-bit trigger-pumping morons with low
+hairlines, little piggy eyes and no conversation, we're a  couple
+of  intelligent caring guys that you'd probably quite like if you
+met us socially! I don't go around gratuitously  shooting  people
+and  then  bragging  about  it  afterwards in seedy space-rangers
+bars, like some cops I could mention! I go around shooting people
+gratuitously  and then I agonize about it afterwards for hours to
+my girlfriend!"
+ 
+"And I write novels!" chimed in the other cop. "Though I  haven't
+had  any  of  them  published yet, so I better warn you, I'm in a
+meeeean mood!"
+ 
+Ford's eyes popped halfway out of their sockets. "Who  are  these
+guys?" he said.
+ 
+"Dunno," said Zaphod, "I think I  preferred  it  when  they  were
+shooting."
+ 
+"So are you going to come  quietly,"  shouted  one  of  the  cops
+again, "or are you going to let us blast you out?"
+ 
+"Which would you prefer?" shouted Ford.
+ 
+A millisecond later the air about them started to fry  again,  as
+bolt  after  bolt  of  Kill-O-Zap hurled itself into the computer
+bank in front of them.
+ 
+The  fusillade  continued  for  several  seconds  at   unbearable
+intensity.
+ 
+When it stopped, there were a few seconds of  near  quietness  ad
+the echoes died away.
+ 
+"You still there?" called one of the cops.
+ 
+"Yes," they called back.
+ 
+"We didn't enjoy doing that at all," shouted the other cop.
+ 
+"We could tell," shouted Ford.
+ 
+"Now, listen to this, Beeblebrox, and you better listen good!"
+ 
+"Why?" shouted Back Zaphod.
+ 
+"Because," shouted the cop, "it's going to be  very  intelligent,
+and  quite  interesting  and  humane!  Now  either  you  all give
+yourselves up now and let us beat you up a bit, though  not  very
+much  of  course  because  we  are  firmly  opposed  to  needless
+violence, or we blow up this entire planet and  possibly  one  or
+two others we noticed on our way out here!"
+ 
+"But that's crazy!" cried Trillian. "You wouldn't do that!"
+ 
+"Oh yes we would," shouted the cop, "wouldn't we?" he  asked  the
+other one.
+ 
+"Oh yes, we'd have to, no question," the other one called back.
+ 
+"But why?" demanded Trillian.
+ 
+"Because there are some things you have to do even if you are  an
+enlightened  liberal  cop  who  knows  all  about sensitivity and
+everything!"
+ 
+"I just don't believe these guys,"  muttered  Ford,  shaking  his
+head.
+ 
+One cop shouted to the other, "Shall we shoot them  again  for  a
+bit?"
+ 
+"Yeah, why not?"
+ 
+They let fly another electric barrage.
+ 
+The heat and noise was quite fantastic. Slowly, the computer bank
+was  beginning  to  disintegrate. The front had almost all melted
+away, and thick rivulets of molten metal were winding  their  way
+back towards where they were squatting. They huddled further back
+and waited for the end.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 33
+ 
+But the end never came, at least not then.
+ 
+Quite suddenly  the  barrage  stopped,  and  the  sudden  silence
+afterwards  was  punctuated  by a couple of strangled gurgles and
+thuds.
+ 
+The four stared at each other.
+ 
+"What happened?" said Arthur.
+ 
+"They stopped," said Zaphod with a shrug.
+ 
+"Why?"
+ 
+"Dunno, do you want to go and ask them?"
+ 
+"No."
+ 
+They waited.
+ 
+"Hello?" called out Ford.
+ 
+No answer.
+ 
+"That's odd."
+ 
+"Perhaps it's a trap."
+ 
+"They haven't the wit."
+ 
+"What were those thuds?"
+ 
+"Dunno."
+ 
+They waited for a few more seconds.
+ 
+"Right," said Ford, "I'm going to have a look."
+ 
+He glanced round at the others.
+ 
+"Is no one going to  say,  No  you  can't  possibly,  let  me  go
+instead?"
+ 
+They all shook their heads.
+ 
+"Oh well," he said, and stood up.
+ 
+For a moment, nothing happened.
+ 
+Then, after a second or so, nothing  continued  to  happen.  Ford
+peered  through  the  thick  smoke  that was billowing out of the
+burning computer.
+ 
+Cautiously he stepped out into the open.
+ 
+Still nothing happened.
+ 
+Twenty yards away he  could  dimly  see  through  the  smoke  the
+space-suited  figure  of  one  of  the  cops.  He  was lying in a
+crumpled heap on the ground. Twenty yards in the other  direction
+lay the second man. No one else was anywhere to be seen.
+ 
+This struck Ford as being extremely odd.
+ 
+Slowly, nervously, he walked towards the first one. The body  lay
+reassuringly  still  as  he  approached  it, and continued to lie
+reassuringly still as he reached it and put his foot down on  the
+Kill-O-Zap gun that still dangled from its limp fingers.
+ 
+He reached down and picked it up, meeting no resistance.
+ 
+The cop was quite clearly dead.
+ 
+A quick examination revealed him to be from Blagulon Kappa  -  he
+was  a  methane-breathing  life form, dependent on his space suit
+for survival in the thin oxygen atmosphere of Magrathea.
+ 
+The tiny life-support system computer on  his  backpack  appeared
+unexpectedly to have blown up.
+ 
+Ford poked around  in  it  in  considerable  astonishment.  These
+miniature suit computers usually had the full back-up of the main
+computer back on the ship, with which they were  directly  linked
+through  the  sub-etha.  Such  a  system  was  fail-safe  in  all
+circumstances other than total feedback  malfunction,  which  was
+unheard of.
+ 
+He hurried over to the other prone figure,  and  discovered  that
+exactly the same impossible thing had happened to him, presumably
+simultaneously.
+ 
+He called  the  others  over  to  look.  They  came,  shared  his
+astonishment, but not his curiosity.
+ 
+"Let's get shot out of this hole," said Zaphod. "If whatever  I'm
+supposed  to be looking for is here, I don't want it." He grabbed
+the  second  Kill-O-Zap  gun,  blasted   a   perfectly   harmless
+accounting computer and rushed out into the corridor, followed by
+the others. He very nearly blasted hell out  of  an  aircar  that
+stood waiting for them a few yards away.
+ 
+The aircar was empty, but Arthur recognized it  as  belonging  to
+Slartibartfast.
+ 
+It had a note from him pinned to part of  its  sparse  instrument
+panel.  The note had an arrow drawn on it, pointing at one of the
+controls.
+ 
+It said, This is probably the best button to press.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 34
+ 
+The aircar rocketed them at speeds in excess of R17  through  the
+steel  tunnels  that  lead  out onto the appalling surface of the
+planet which was now in the grip of  yet  another  drear  morning
+twilight. Ghastly grey lights congealed on the land.
+ 
+R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of  travel
+that  is  consistent  with health, mental wellbeing and not being
+more than say five minutes  late.  It  is  therefore  clearly  an
+almost  infinitely  variable  figure  according to circumstances,
+since the first two factors vary not only with speed taken as  an
+absolute,  but  also  with  awareness of the third factor. Unless
+handled with tranquility this equation can result in considerable
+stress, ulcers and even death.
+ 
+R17 is not a fixed velocity, but it is clearly far too fast.
+ 
+The aircar flung  itself  through  the  air  at  R17  and  above,
+deposited  them  next to the Heart of Gold which stood starkly on
+the frozen ground like a bleached bone,  and  then  precipitately
+hurled  itself  back  in  the  direction  whence  they  had come,
+presumably on important business of its own.
+ 
+Shivering, the four of them stood and looked at the ship.
+ 
+Beside it stood another one.
+ 
+It was  the  Blagulon  Kappa  policecraft,  a  bulbous  sharklike
+affair, slate green in colour and smothered with black stencilled
+letters of  varying  degrees  of  size  and  unfriendliness.  The
+letters  informed  anyone  who cared to read them as to where the
+ship was from, what section of the police it was assigned to, and
+where the power feeds should be connected.
+ 
+It seemed somehow unnaturally dark and silent, even  for  a  ship
+whose  two-man  crew  was  at that moment lying asphyxicated in a
+smoke-filled chamber several miles beneath the ground. It is  one
+of  those curious things that is impossible to explain or define,
+but one can sense when a ship is completely dead.
+ 
+Ford could sense it and found it most mysterious - a ship and two
+policemen   seemed  to  have  gone  spontaneously  dead.  In  his
+experience the Universe simply didn't work like that.
+ 
+The other three could sense it too,  but  they  could  sense  the
+bitter  cold  even  more  and hurried back into the Heart of Gold
+suffering from an acute attack of no curiosity.
+ 
+Ford stayed, and went to examine the Blagulon ship. As he walked,
+he  nearly  tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down in
+the cold dust.
+ 
+"Marvin!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing?"
+ 
+"Don't feel you have to take any notice of me,  please,"  came  a
+muffled drone.
+ 
+"But how are you, metalman?" said Ford.
+ 
+"Very depressed."
+ 
+"What's up?"
+ 
+"I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."
+ 
+"Why," said Ford squatting down beside him  and  shivering,  "are
+you lying face down in the dust?"
+ 
+"It's a very effective  way  of  being  wretched,"  said  Marvin.
+"Don't pretend you want to talk to me, I know you hate me."
+ 
+"No I don't."
+ 
+"Yes you do, everybody does.  It's  part  of  the  shape  of  the
+Universe.  I only have to talk to somebody and they begin to hate
+me. Even robots hate me. If you just ignore me I expect  I  shall
+probably go away."
+ 
+He jacked himself up to his feet and stood resolutely facing  the
+opposite direction.
+ 
+"That  ship  hated  me,"  he  said  dejectedly,  indicating   the
+policecraft.
+ 
+"That ship?" said Ford in sudden excitement.  "What  happened  to
+it? Do you know?"
+ 
+"It hated me because I talked to it."
+ 
+"You talked to it?" exclaimed Ford. "What do you mean you  talked
+to it?"
+ 
+"Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I  went  and  plugged
+myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer
+at great length and explained my view of  the  Universe  to  it,"
+said Marvin.
+ 
+"And what happened?" pressed Ford.
+ 
+"It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back  to  the
+Heart of Gold.
+ 
+=================================================================
+Chapter 35
+ 
+That night, as the Heart of Gold was busy  putting  a  few  light
+years  between  itself  and  the Horsehead Nebula, Zaphod lounged
+under the small palm tree on the bridge trying to bang his  brain
+into  shape  with  massive Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters; Ford and
+Trillian sat in a corner discussing life and matters arising from
+it; and Arthur took to his bed to flip through Ford's copy of The
+Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Since he was going to live  in
+the  place,  he reasoned, he'd better start finding out something
+about it.
+ 
+He came across this entry.
+ 
+It said: 'The History of every major Galactic Civilization  tends
+to  pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of
+Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How,
+Why and Where phases.
+ 
+"For instance, the first phase is characterized by  the  question
+How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the
+third by the question Where shall we have lunch?"
+ 
+He got no further before the ship's intercom buzzed into life.
+ 
+"Hey Earthman? You hungry kid?" said Zaphod's voice.
+ 
+"Er, well yes, a little peckish I suppose," said Arthur.
+ 
+"OK baby, hold tight," said Zaphod. "We'll take in a  quick  bite
+at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."
+ 
+ 
+=================================================================
+* President:  full  title  President  of  the  Imperial  Galactic
+Government.
+ 
+The term Imperial is kept though it is now  an  anachronism.  The
+hereditary  Emperor  is  nearly  dead  and  has  been so for many
+centuries. In the last moments of his dying coma he was locked in
+a   statis  field  which  keeps  him  in  a  state  of  perpetual
+unchangingness. All his heirs are now long dead, and  this  means
+that without any drastic political upheaval, power has simply and
+effectively moved a rung or two down the ladder, and is now  seen
+to  be  vested  in a body which used to act simply as advisers to
+the Emperor -  an  elected  Governmental  assembly  headed  by  a
+President  elected  by that assembly. In fact it vests in no such
+place.
+ 
+The President in particular is very much a figurehead - he wields
+no  real  power  whatsoever.  He  is  apparently  chosen  by  the
+government, but the qualities he is required to display  are  not
+those  of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this
+reason the President is always a controversial choice, always  an
+infuriating  but  fascinating  character. His job is not to wield
+power but to draw attention  away  from  it.  On  those  criteria
+Zaphod  Beeblebrox  is  one of the most successful Presidents the
+Galaxy has ever had -  he  has  already  spent  two  of  his  ten
+Presidential  years  in  prison  for  fraud. Very very few people
+realize that the President and the Government have  virtually  no
+power  at  all, and of these very few people only six know whence
+ultimate political power is wielded. Most of the others  secretly
+believe that the ultimate decision-making process is handled by a
+computer. They couldn't be more wrong.
+ 
+* Ford Prefect's original name is only pronuncible in an  obscure
+Betelgeusian  dialect,  now  virtually  extinct  since  the Great
+Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758 which wiped out
+all  the  old  Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven. Ford's
+father was the only man on the entire planet to survive the Great
+Collapsing  Hrung  disaster, by an extraordinary coincidence that
+he was never able satisfactorily to explain. The whole episode is
+shrouded  in  deep mystery: in fact no one ever knew what a Hrung
+was nor why  it  had  chosen  to  collapse  on  Betelgeuse  Seven
+particularly.  Ford's  father,  magnanimously  waving  aside  the
+clouds of suspicion that had inevitably settled around him,  came
+to  live  on  Betelgeuse  Five  where he both fathered and uncled
+Ford; in memory of his now dead race he  christened  him  in  the
+ancient Praxibetel tongue.
+ 
+Because Ford never learned to say his original name,  his  father
+eventually  died  of  shame, which is still a terminal disease in
+some parts of the Galaxy. The other kids at school nicknamed  him
+Ix,  which  in the language of Betelgeuse Five translates as "boy
+who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a  Hrung  is,  nor
+why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven".
+