TEXT: THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY 
  B Y  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  2 0 0 1  H A N O M A G  
  D O C U M E N T  V E R S I O N  1 . 0
  
  C O P Y R I G H T  ©  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  
  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. 
  
  4  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  5  
  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. 
  
  6  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 a 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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  7  
  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. 
  
  8  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  9  
  "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 
  
  10  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  11  
  "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 
  
  12  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  13  
  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. 
  
  14  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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?" 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  15  
  "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. 
  
  16  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  17  
  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. 
  
  18  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  19  
  "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." 
  
  20  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  21  
  "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." 
  
  22  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  23  
  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. 
  
  24  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  25  
  "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." 
  
  26  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  27  
  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 
  
  28  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  29  
  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 
  
  30  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  31  
  "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. 
  
  32  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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: 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  33  
  "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. 
  
  34  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  35  
  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 
  
  36  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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: 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  37  
  "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. 
  
  38  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  39  
  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 
  
  40  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  41  
  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 
  
  42  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  43  
  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. 
  
  44  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  45  
  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 
  
  46  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  ground and ran forward through the sea of suddenly frozen 
  smiles. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  47  
  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 
  
  48  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  49  
  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 
  
  50  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  51  
  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 
  
  52  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  53  
  "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. 
  
  54  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  55  
  "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?" 
  
  56  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  57  
  "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." 
  
  58  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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 ... 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  59  
  "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?" 
  
  60  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  61  
  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 mind\-bog\-gin\-gly useful could have evolved purely by 
  chance that some thin\-kers 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." 
  
  62  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  63  
  "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. 
  
  64  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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?" 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  65  
  "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 ..." 
  
  66  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  67  
  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. 
  
  68  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  69  
  "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 ..." 
  
  70  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  71  
  "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." 
  
  72  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  73  
  "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. 
  
  74  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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 ..." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  75  
  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. 
  
  76  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  77  
  "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." 
  
  78  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  79  
  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 
  
  80  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  81  
  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. 
  
  82  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  83  
  "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 
  
  84  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  85  
  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 
  
  86  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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?" 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  87  
  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. 
  
  88  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  89  
  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: 
  
  90  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  91  
  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 
  
  92  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  93  
  "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 
  
  94  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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?" 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  95  
  "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 
  
  96  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  97  
  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 
  
  98  /  D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  99  
  "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. 
  
  100  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  101  
  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 
  
  102  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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?" 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  103  
  "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. 
  
  104  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  105  
  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 ..." 
  
  106  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  107  
  "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?" 
  
  108  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  109  
  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 
  
  110  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  111  
  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. 
  
  112  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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?" 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  113  
  "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. 
  
  114  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  115  
  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 
  
  116  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  117  
  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?" 
  
  118  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  119  
  "What is it?" he said. 
  "That ..." said Zaphod, "is the most improbable planet that ever 
  existed." 
  
  120  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  (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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  121  
  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. 
  
  122  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  123  
  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!" 
  
  124  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  125  
  "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. 
  
  126  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  127  
  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. 
  
  128  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  129  
  "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?" 
  
  130  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  131  
  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. 
  
  132  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  133  
  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 ..." 
  
  134  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  135  
  "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 ..." 
  
  136  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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!" 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  137  
  "I said," yelled Trillian, "does anyone know ..." 
  The next thing that happened was a mid-mangling explosion of 
  noise and light. 
  
  138  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  139  
  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. 
  
  140  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 ...  \hspace{1cm} Or is it the wind? 
  There really is a lot of that now isn't it? 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  141  
  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. 
  
  142  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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 
  pa\-no\-ra\-mic 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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  143  
  "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. 
  
  144  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  145  
  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. 
  
  146  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  147  
  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?" 
  
  148  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  149  
  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?" 
  
  150  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  151  
  "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, 
  
  152  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  153  
  "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. 
  
  154  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  155  
  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. 
  
  156  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  157  
  "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. 
  
  158  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  159  
  "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. 
  
  160  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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?" 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  161  
  "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 
  
  162  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  163  
  "Slartibartfast?" 
  The old man looked at him gravely.  "I said it wasn't important," 
  he said. 
  The aircar sailed through the night. 
  
  164  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  165  
  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. 
  
  166  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  167  
  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 
  
  168  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  169  
  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 cheery.  
  "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?" 
  
  170  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  171  
  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 
  
  172  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  173  
  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 
  
  174  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  175  
  "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." 
  
  176  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  177  
  "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. 
  
  178  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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, 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  179  
  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!" 
  
  180  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  181  
  "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. 
  
  182  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  183  
  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. 
  
  184  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  185  
  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." 
  
  186  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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?" 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  187  
  "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. 
  
  188  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "Yes ...!" "Is ..." said Deep Thought, and paused. 
  "Yes ...!" 
  "Is ..." 
  "Yes ...!!!...?" 
  "Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  189  
  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?" 
  
  190  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  191  
  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. 
  
  192  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  193  
  "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." 
  
  194  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  195  
  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, 
  
  196  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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?" 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  197  
  "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. 
  
  198  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  199  
  "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." 
  
  200  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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?" 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  201  
  "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." 
  
  202  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  203  
  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." 
  
  204  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  205  
  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." 
  
  206  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  207  
  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." 
  
  208  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  209  
  "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 electronical\-ly," 
  pro\-tes\-ted 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 
  
  210  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  211  
  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. 
  
  212  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "Emergency! Emergency!" blared the klaxons throughout Ma\-
  gra\-thea.  "Hos\-tile 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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  213  
  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. 
  
  214  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  215  
  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. 
  
  216  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  217  
  "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. 
  
  218  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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." 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  219  
  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. 
  
  220  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  221  
  It said, This is probably the best button to press. 
  
  222  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  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 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  223  
  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." 
  
  224  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  "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. 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  225  
  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." 
  
  226  / D O U G L A S  A D A M S  
  {What's President?} 
  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. 
  {About Ford Perfect} 
  
  T H E  H I T C H H I K E R ' S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  G A L A X Y  /  227  
  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".   
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/A/Adams, Douglas/adams-douglas-the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy.pdf