-
38
"Alright," said Ford, "just stop panicking."
"Who said anything about panicking?" snapped Arthur. "This is still
just the culture shock. You wait till I've settled down into the situation
and found my bearings. Then I'll start panicking."
"Arthur you're getting hysterical. Shut up!" Ford tried desperately to
think, but was interrupted by the guard shouting again.
"Resistance is useless!"
"And you can shut up as well!" snapped Ford.
"Resistance is useless!"
"Oh give it a rest," said Ford. He twisted his head till he was looking
straight up into his captor's face. A thought struck him.
"Do you really enjoy this sort of thing?" he asked suddenly.
The Vogon stopped dead and a look of immense stupidity seeped slowly
over his face.
"Enjoy?" he boomed. "What do you mean?"
"What I mean," said Ford, "is does it give you a full satisfying life?
Stomping around, shouting, pushing people out of spaceships ..."
The Vogon stared up at the low steel ceiling and his eyebrows almost
rolled over each other. His mouth slacked. Finally he said, "Well the
hours are good ..."
"They'd have to be," agreed Ford.
Arthur twisted his head to look at Ford.
"Ford, what are you doing?" he asked in an amazed whisper.
"Oh, just trying to take an interest in the world around me, OK?" he
said. "So the hours are pretty good then?" he resumed.
The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in
the murky depths.
"Yeah," he said, "but now you come to mention it, most of the actual
minutes are pretty lousy. Except ..." he thought again, which required
looking at the ceiling - "except some of the shouting I quite like." He
filled his lungs and bellowed, "Resistance is ..."
"Sure, yes," interrupted Ford hurriedly, "you're good at that, I can tell.
But if it's mostly lousy," he said, slowly giving the words time to reach
their mark, "then why do you do it? What is it? The girls? The leather?
The machismo? Or do you just find that coming to terms with the
mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge?"
"Er ..." said the guard, "er ... er ... I dunno. I think I just sort of ...
do it really. My aunt said that spaceship guard was a good career for a
young Vogon - you know, the uniform, the low- slung stun ray holster,
the mindless tedium ..."
39
"There you are Arthur," said Ford with the air of someone reaching the
conclusion of his argument, "you think you've got problems."
Arthur rather thought he had. Apart from the unpleasant business with
his home planet the Vogon guard had half-throttled him already and he
didn't like the sound of being thrown into space very much.
"Try and understand his problem," insisted Ford. "Here he is poor lad,
his entire life's work is stamping around, throwing people off spaceships
..."
"And shouting," added the guard.
"And shouting, sure," said Ford patting the blubbery arm clamped
round his neck in friendly condescension, "... and he doesn't even know
why he's doing it!"
Arthur agreed this was very sad. He did this with a small feeble gesture,
because he was too asphyxicated to speak.
Deep rumblings of bemusement came from the guard.
"Well. Now you put it like that I suppose ..."
"Good lad!" encouraged Ford.
"But alright," went on the rumblings, "so what's the alternative?"
"Well," said Ford, brightly but slowly, "stop doing it of course! Tell
them," he went on, "you're not going to do it anymore." He felt he had
to add something to that, but for the moment the guard seemed to have
his mind occupied pondering that much.
"Eerrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ..." said the guard,
"erm, well that doesn't sound that great to me."
Ford suddenly felt the moment slipping away.
"Now wait a minute," he said, "that's just the start you see, there's
more to it than that you see ..."
But at that moment the guard renewed his grip and continued his orig-
inal 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. "Huhhh-
hgggggggnnnnnnn ..." 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
-
40
there aren't usually many vacancies for non-shouting and non-pushing-
people-about officers, so I think I'd better stick to what I know."
They had now reached the airlock - a large circular steel hatchway of
massive strength and weight let into the inner skin of the craft. The
guard operated a control and the hatchway swung smoothly open.
"But thanks for taking an interest," said the Vogon guard. "Bye now."
He flung Ford and Arthur through the hatchway into the small chamber
within. Arthur lay panting for breath. Ford scrambled round and flung
his shoulder uselessly against the reclosing hatchway.
"But listen," he shouted to the guard, "there's a whole world you don't
know anything about ... here how about this?" Desperately he grabbed
for the only bit of culture he knew offhand - he hummed the first bar of
Beethoven's Fifth.
"Da da da dum! Doesn't that stir anything in you?"
"No," said the guard, "not really. But I'll mention it to my aunt."
If he said anything further after that it was lost. The hatchway sealed
itself tight, and all sound was lost but the faint distant hum of the ship's
engines.
They were in a brightly polished cylindrical chamber about six feet in
diameter and ten feet long.
"Potentially bright lad I thought," he said and slumped against the
curved wall.
Arthur was still lying in the curve of the floor where he had fallen. He
didn't look up. He just lay panting.
"We're trapped now aren't we?"
"Yes," said Ford, "we're trapped."
"Well didn't you think of anything? I thought you said you were going
to think of something. Perhaps you thought of something and didn't
notice."
"Oh yes, I thought of something," panted Ford. Arthur looked up ex-
pectantly.
"But unfortunately," continued Ford, "it rather involved being on the
other side of this airtight hatchway." He kicked the hatch they'd just
been through.
"But it was a good idea was it?"
"Oh yes, very neat."
"What was it?"
"Well I hadn't worked out the details yet. Not much point now is there?"
"So ... er, what happens next?"
"Oh, er, well the hatchway in front of us will open automatically in
a few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect and
41
asphyxicate. If you take a lungful of air with you you can last for up
to thirty seconds of course ..." said Ford. He stuck his hands behind his
back, raised his eyebrows and started to hum an old Betelgeusian battle
hymn. To Arthur's eyes he suddenly looked very alien.
"So this is it," said Arthur, "we're going to die."
"Yes," said Ford, "except ... no! Wait a minute!" he suddenly lunged
across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. "What's
this switch?" he cried.
"What? Where?" cried Arthur twisting round.
"No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after all."
He slumped against the wall again and carried on the tune from where
he left off.
"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped
in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of
asphyxication in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my
mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."
"Oh." Ford carried on humming.
"This is terrific," Arthur thought to himself, "Nelson's Column has gone,
McDonald's have gone, all that's left is me and the words Mostly Harm-
less. Any second now all that will be left is Mostly Harmless. And yes-
terday 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.
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 un-
der 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
-
42
planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by
ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the
amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet is
surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave: so every time
you go to the lavatory it is vitally important to get a receipt.)
To be fair though, when confronted by the sheer enormity of distances
between the stars, better minds than the one responsible for the Guide's
introduction have faltered. Some invite you to consider for a moment a
peanut in reading and a small walnut in Johannesburg, and other such
dizzying concepts.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human
imagination.
Even light, which travels so fast that it takes most races thousands of
years to realize that it travels at all, takes time to journey between the
stars. It takes eight minutes from the star Sol to the place where the
Earth used to be, and four years more to arrive at Sol's nearest stellar
neighbour, Alpha Proxima.
For light to reach the other side of the Galaxy, for it to reach Damogran
for instance, takes rather longer: five hundred thousand years.
The record for hitch hiking this distance is just under five years, but you
don't get to see much on the way.
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy says that if you hold a lungful
of air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for about thirty
seconds. However it goes on to say that what with space being the mind
boggling size it is the chances of getting picked up by another ship within
those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and sixty-seven
thousand seven hundred and nine to one against.
By a totally staggering coincidence that is also the telephone number
of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good party and
met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get off with - she went
off with a gatecrasher. Though the planet Earth, the Islington flat and
the telephone have all now been demolished, it is comforting to reflect
that they are all in some small way commemorated by the fact that
twenty-nine seconds later Ford and Arthur were rescued.
10
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.
43
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 back-
wards and forwards through time in a most improbable fashion. Some-
where in the deeply remote past it seriously traumatized a small random
group of atoms drifting through the empty sterility of space and made
them cling together in the most extraordinarily unlikely patterns. These
patterns quickly learnt to copy themselves (this was part of what was so
extraordinary of the patterns) and went on to cause massive trouble on
every planet they drifted on to. That was how life began in the Universe.
Five wild Event Maelstroms swirled in vicious storms of unreason and
spewed up a pavement.
On the pavement lay Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent gulping like half-
spent fish.
"There you are," gasped Ford, scrabbling for a fingerhold on the pave-
ment 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 pre-
tend ones flitted silently by, like mountain goats. Primal light exploded,
splattering space-time as with gobbets of junket. Time blossomed, mat-
ter 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 astronomi-
cal."
"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 unex-
pected directions.
Arthur and Ford opened their eyes and looked about in considerable
surprise.
-
44
"Good god," said Arthur, "it looks just like the sea front at Southend."
"Hell, I'm relieved to hear you say that," said Ford.
"Why?"
"Because I thought I must be going mad."
"Perhaps you are. Perhaps you only thought I said it."
Ford thought about this.
"Well, did you say it or didn't you?" he asked.
"I think so," said Arthur.
"Well, perhaps we're both going mad."
"Yes," said Arthur, "we'd be mad, all things considered, to think this
was Southend."
"Well, do you think this is Southend?"
"Oh yes."
"So do I."
"Therefore we must be mad."
"Nice day for it."
"Yes," said a passing maniac.
"Who was that?" asked Arthur
"Who - the man with the five heads and the elderberry bush full of
kippers?" "Yes."
"I don't know. Just someone."
"Ah."
They both sat on the pavement and watched with a certain unease as
huge children bounced heavily along the sand and wild horses thun-
dered 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.
45
It sounded quite a sensible voice, but it just said, "Two to the power of
one hundred thousand to one against and falling," and that was all.
Ford skidded down a beam of light and span round trying to find a
source for the voice but could see nothing he could seriously believe in.
"What was that voice?" shouted Arthur.
"I don't know," yelled Ford, "I don't know. It sounded like a measure-
ment 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 warn-
ing.
"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 space-
ship."
"I can only assume," said Arthur, "that this is not the first- class com-
partment."
Bulges appeared in the fabric of space-time. Great ugly bulges.
"Haaaauuurrgghhh ..." said Arthur as he felt his body softening and
bending in unusual directions. "Southend seems to be melting away ...
the stars are swirling ... a dustbowl ... my legs are drifting off into the
sunset ... my left arm's come off too." A frightening thought struck him:
"Hell," he said, "how am I going to operate my digital watch now?" He
wound his eyes desperately around in Ford's direction.
"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
Again came the voice.
"Two to the power of seventy-five thousand to one against and falling."
Ford waddled around his pond in a furious circle.
"Hey, who are you," he quacked. "Where are you? What's going on and
is there any way of stopping it?"
"Please relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner
with only one wing and two engines one of which is on fire, "you are
perfectly safe."
"But that's not the point!" raged Ford. "The point is that I am now a
perfectly save penguin, and my colleague here is rapidly running out of
limbs!"
"It's alright, I've got them back now," said Arthur.
-
46
"Two to the power of fifty thousand to one against and falling," said the
voice.
"Admittedly," said Arthur, "they're longer than I usually like them, but
..."
"Isn't there anything," squawked Ford in avian fury, "you feel you ought
to be telling us?"
The voice cleared its throat. A giant petit four lolloped off into the
distance.
"Welcome," the voice said, "to the Starship Heart of Gold."
The voice continued.
"Please do not be alarmed," it said, "by anything you see or hear around
you. You are bound to feel some initial ill effects as you have been
rescued from certain death at an improbability level of two to the power
of two hundred and seventy-six thousand to one against - possibly much
higher. We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five
thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality
just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway. Thank you. Two to
the power of twenty thousand to one against and falling."
The voice cut out.
Ford and Arthur were in a small luminous pink cubicle.
Ford was wildly excited.
"Arthur!" he said, "this is fantastic! We've been picked up by a ship
powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive! This is incredible! I heard
rumors about it before! They were all officially denied, but they must
have done it! They've built the Improbability Drive! Arthur, this is ...
Arthur? What's happening?"
Arthur had jammed himself against the door to the cubicle, trying to
hold it closed, but it was ill fitting. Tiny furry little hands were squeezing
themselves through the cracks, their fingers were inkstained; tiny voices
chattered insanely.
Arthur looked up.
"Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who
want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out."
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 govern-
able form of propulsion by the Galactic Government's research team on
Damogran.
47
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 en-
countered in trying to construct a machine which could generate the
infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-
paralysing distances between the furthest stars, and in the end they
grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.
Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a
particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way:
If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, then
it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to
make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure
into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot
tea ... and turn it on!
He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed to
create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generator out
of thin air.
It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic
Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging
mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing
they really couldn't stand was a smartass.
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
-
48
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 mi-
crophone off - then turned it back on, with a slight smile and continued:
"Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem. Please
relax. You will be sent for soon."
Zaphod burst out in annoyance: "Who are they Trillian?"
Trillian span her seat round to face him and shrugged.
"Just a couple of guys we seem to have picked up in open space," she
said. "Section ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha."
"Yeah, well that's a very sweet thought Trillian," complained Zaphod,
"but do you really think it's wise under the circumstances? I mean, here
we are on the run and everything, we must have the police of half the
Galaxy after us by now, and we stop to pick up hitch hikers. OK, so ten
out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?"
He tapped irritably at a control panel. Trillian quietly moved his hand
before he tapped anything important. Whatever Zaphod's qualities of
mind might include - dash, bravado, conceit - he was mechanically inept
and could easily blow the ship up with an extravagant gesture. Trillian
had come to suspect that the main reason why he had had such a wild
and successful life that he never really understood the significance of
anything he did.
"Zaphod," she said patiently, "they were floating unprotected in open
space ... you wouldn't want them to have died would you?"
"Well, you know ... no. Not as such, but ..."
"Not as such? Not die as such? But?" Trillian cocked her head on one
side.
"Well, maybe someone else might have picked them up later."
"A second later and they would have been dead."
"Yeah, so if you'd taken the trouble to think about the problem a bit
longer it would have gone away."
49
"You'd been happy to let them die?"
"Well, you know, not happy as such, but ..."
"Anyway," said Trillian, turning back to the controls, "I didn't pick them
up."
"What do you mean? Who picked them up then?"
"The ship did."
"Huh?"
"The ship did. All by itself."
"Huh?" "Whilst we were in Improbability Drive."
"But that's incredible."
"No Zaphod. Just very very improbable."
"Er, yeah."
"Look Zaphod," she said, patting his arm, "don't worry about the aliens.
They're just a couple of guys I expect. I'll send the robot down to get
them and bring them up here. Hey Marvin!"
In the corner, the robot's head swung up sharply, but then wobbled
about imperceptibly. It pulled itself up to its feet as if it was about five
pounds heavier that it actually was, and made what an outside observer
would have thought was a heroic effort to cross the room. It stopped in
front of Trillian and seemed to stare through her left shoulder.
"I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed," it said. Its voice
was low and hopeless.
"Oh God," muttered Zaphod and slumped into a seat.
"Well," said Trillian in a bright compassionate tone, "here's something
to occupy you and keep your mind off things."
"It won't work," droned Marvin, "I have an exceptionally large mind."
"Marvin!" warned Trillian.
"Alright," said Marvin, "what do you want me to do?"
"Go down to number two entry bay and bring the two aliens up here
under surveillance."
With a microsecond pause, and a finely calculated micromodulation of
pitch and timbre - nothing you could actually take offence at - Marvin
managed to convey his utter contempt and horror of all things human.
"Just that?" he said.
"Yes," said Trillian firmly.
"I won't enjoy it," said Marvin.
Zaphod leaped out of his seat.
"She's not asking you to enjoy it," he shouted, "just do it will you?"
-
50
"Alright," said Marvin like the tolling of a great cracked bell, "I'll do
it."
"Good ..." snapped Zaphod, "great ... thank you ..."
Marvin turned and lifted his flat-topped triangular red eyes up towards
him.
"I'm not getting you down at all am I?" he said pathetically.
"No no Marvin," lilted Trillian, "that's just fine, really ..."
"I wouldn't like to think that I was getting you down."
"No, don't worry about that," the lilt continued, "you just act as comes
naturally and everything will be just fine."
"You're sure you don't mind?" probed Marvin.
"No no Marvin," lilted Trillian, "that's just fine, really ... just part of
life."
"Marvin flashed him an electronic look.
"Life," said Marvin, "don't talk to me about life."
He turned hopelessly on his heel and lugged himself out of the cabin.
With a satisfied hum and a click the door closed behind him
"I don't think I can stand that robot much longer Zaphod," growled
Trillian.
The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus
designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius
Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun
To Be With."
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of
the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll
be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote
to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone
interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.
Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had
the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years
in the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the
wall when the revolution came."
The pink cubicle had winked out of existence, the monkeys had sunk
away to a better dimension. Ford and Arthur found themselves in the
embarkation area of the ship. It was rather smart.
"I think the ship's brand new," said Ford.
"How can you tell?" asked Arthur. "Have you got some exotic device for
measuring the age of metal?"
"No, I just found this sales brochure lying on the floor. It's a lot of `the
Universe can be yours' stuff. Ah! Look, I was right."
51
Ford jabbed at one of the pages and showed it to Arthur. "It says:
Sensational new breakthrough in Improbability Physics. As soon as the
ship's drive reaches Infinite Improbability it passes through every point
in the Universe. Be the envy of other major governments. Wow, this is
big league stuff."
Ford hunted excitedly through the technical specs of the ship, occa-
sionally 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 Sir-
ius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers, with the new GPP
feature."
"GPP feature?" said Arthur. "What's that?"
"Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities."
"Oh," said Arthur, "sounds ghastly."
A voice behind them said, "It is." The voice was low and hopeless and
accompanied by a slight clanking sound. They span round and saw an
abject steel man standing hunched in the doorway.
"What?" they said.
"Ghastly," continued Marvin, "it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't
even talk about it. Look at this door," he said, stepping through it.
The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the style
of the sales brochure. "All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful
and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their
satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done."
As the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did indeed
have a satisfied sigh-like quality to it. "Hummmmmmmyummmmmmm
ah!" it said.
Marvin regarded it with cold loathing whilst his logic circuits chattered
with disgust and tinkered with the concept of directing physical vio-
lence 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.
-
52
"Come on," he droned, "I've been ordered to take you down to the
bridge. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take
you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't."
He turned and walked back to the hated door.
"Er, excuse me," said Ford following after him, "which government owns
this ship?"
Marvin ignored him.
"You watch this door," he muttered, "it's about to open again. I can
tell by the intolerable air of smugness it suddenly generates."
With an ingratiating little whine the door slit open again and Marvin
stomped through.
"Come on," he said.
The others followed quickly and the door slit back into place with pleased
little clicks and whirrs.
"Thank you the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corpo-
ration," said Marvin and trudged desolately up the gleaming curved
corridor that stretched out before them. "Let's build robots with Gen-
uine People Personalities," they said. So they tried it out with me. I'm
a personality prototype. You can tell can't you?"
Ford and Arthur muttered embarrassed little disclaimers.
"I hate that door," continued Marvin. "I'm not getting you down at all
am I?"
"Which government ..." started Ford again.
"No government owns it," snapped the robot, "it's been stolen."
"Stolen?"
"Stolen?" mimicked Marvin.
"Who by?" asked Ford.
"Zaphod Beeblebrox."
Something extraordinary happened to Ford's face. At least five entirely
separate and distinct expressions of shock and amazement piled up on it
in a jumbled mess. His left leg, which was in mid stride, seemed to have
difficulty in finding the floor again. He stared at the robot and tried to
entangle some dartoid muscles.
"Zaphod Beeblebrox ...?" he said weakly.
"Sorry, did I say something wrong?" said Marvin, dragging himself on
regardless. "Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't
know why I bother to say it, oh God I'm so depressed. Here's another
of those self-satisfied door. Life! Don't talk to me about life." "No one
ever mentioned it," muttered Arthur irritably. "Ford, are you alright?"
Ford stared at him. "Did that robot say Zaphod Beeblebrox?" he said.
53
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, broad-
casting around the galaxy around the clock," squawked a voice, "and
we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere ... and
to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.
And of course, the big news story tonight is the sensational theft of the
new Improbability Drive prototype ship by none other than Galactic
President Zaphod Beeblebrox. And the question everyone's asking is ...
has the big Z finally flipped? Beeblebrox, the man who invented the
Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, ex-confidence trickster, once described by
Eccentrica Gallumbits as the Best Bang since the Big One, and recently
voted the Wort Dressed Sentinent Being in the Known Universe for the
seventh time ... has he got an answer this time? We asked his private
brain care specialist Gag Halfrunt ..." The music swirled and dived for
a moment. Another voice broke in, presumably Halfrunt. He said: "Vell,
Zaphod's jist zis guy you know?" but got no further because an elec-
tric 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 mo-
ment? 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?"
-
54
"The couple of guys we picked up."
"Oh, yeah," said Zaphod, "those couple of guys."
"We picked them up in sector ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha."
"Yeah?" said Zaphod and blinked.
Trillian said quietly, "Does that mean anything to you?"
"Mmmmm," said Zaphod, "ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha. ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha?"
"Well?" said Trillian.
"Er ... what does the Z mean?" said Zaphod.
"Which one?"
"Any one."
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid
just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he
couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him,
pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually
didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.
He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so -
but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He
proffered people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above
all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer
be bothered to argue about it.
She sighed and punched up a star map on the visiscreen so she could
make it simple for him, whatever his reasons for wanting it to be that
way.
"There," she pointed, "right there."
"Hey ... Yeah!" said Zaphod.
"Well?" she said.
"Well what?"
Parts of the inside of her head screamed at other parts of the inside
of her head. She said, very calmly, "It's the same sector you originally
picked me up in."
He looked at her and then looked back at the screen. "Hey, yeah," he
said, "now that is wild. We should have zapped straight into the middle
of the Horsehead Nebula. How did we come to be there? I mean that's
nowhere."
She ignored this.
"Improbability Drive," she said patiently. "You explained it to me your-
self. We pass through every point in the Universe, you know that."
"Yeah, but that's one wild coincidence isn't it?"
"Yes."
55
"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 con-
trolled and permeated every particle of the ship switched into commu-
nication mode.
"Hi there!" it said brightly and simultaneously spewed out a tiny ribbon
of ticker tape just for the record. The ticker tape said, Hi there!
"Oh God," said Zaphod. He hadn't worked with this computer for long
but had already learned to loathe it.
The computer continued, brash and cheery as if it was selling detergent.
"I want you to know that whatever your problem, I am here to help you
solve it."
"Yeah yeah," said Zaphod. "Look, I think I'll just use a piece of paper."
"Sure thing," said the computer, spilling out its message into a waste
bin at the same time, "I understand. If you ever want ..."
"Shut up!" said Zaphod, and snatching up a pencil sat down next to
Trillian at the console.
"OK, OK ..." said the computer in a hurt tone of voice and closed down
its speech channel again.
Zaphod and Trillian pored over the figures that the Improbability flight
path scanner flashed silently up in front of them.
"Can we work out," said Zaphod, "from their point of view what the
Improbability of their rescue was?"
"Yes, that's a constant", said Trillian, "two to the power of two hundred
and seventy-six thousand seven hundred and nine to one against."
"That's high. They're two lucky lucky guys." "Yes."
"But relative to what we were doing when the ship picked them up ..."
Trillian punched up the figures. They showed tow-to-the power- of-
Infinity-minus-one (an irrational number that only has a conventional
meaning in Improbability physics).
"... it's pretty low," continued Zaphod with a slight whistle.
"Yes," agreed Trillian, and looked at him quizzically.
"That's one big whack of Improbability to be accounted for. Something
pretty improbable has got to show up on the balance sheet if it's all
going to add up into a pretty sum."
Zaphod scribbled a few sums, crossed them out and threw the pencil
away.
"Bat's dots, I can't work it out."
"Well?"
Zaphod knocked his two heads together in irritation and gritted his
teeth.
-
56
"OK," he said. "Computer!"
The voice circuits sprang to life again.
"Why hello there!" they said (ticker tape, ticker tape). "All I want to
do is make your day nicer and nicer and nicer ..."
"Yeah well shut up and work something out for me."
"Sure thing," chattered the computer, "you want a probability forecast
based on ..."
"Improbability data, yeah."
"OK," the computer continued. "Here's an interesting little notion. Did
you realize that most people's lives are governed by telephone numbers?"
A pained look crawled across one of Zaphod's faces and on to the other
one.
"Have you flipped?" he said.
"No, but you will when I tell you that ..."
Trillian gasped. She scrabbled at the buttons on the Improbability flight
path screen.
"Telephone number?" she said. "Did that thing say telephone number?"
Numbers flashed up on the screen.
The computer had paused politely, but now it continued.
"What I was about to say was that ..."
"Don't bother please," said Trillian.
"Look, what is this?" said Zaphod.
"I don't know," said Trillian, "but those aliens - they're on the way up
to the bridge with that wretched robot. Can we pick them up on any
monitor cameras?"
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?"
57
"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 su****iously.
"Well?" said Ford impatiently. "Do we go through?"
"Do we go through?" mimicked Marvin. "Yes. This is the entrance to
the bridge. I was told to take you to the bridge. Probably the highest
demand that will be made on my intellectual capacities today I shouldn't
wonder."
Slowly, with great loathing, he stepped towards the door, like a hunter
stalking his prey. Suddenly it slid open.
"Thank you," it said, "for making a simple door very happy."
Deep in Marvin's thorax gears ground.
"Funny," he intoned funerally, "how just when you think life can't pos-
sibly get any worse it suddenly does." He heaved himself through the
door and left Ford and Arthur staring at each other and shrugging their
shoulders. From inside they heard Marvin's voice again.
"I suppose you want to see the aliens now," he said. "Do you want me
to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm standing?"
"Yeah, just show them in would you Marvin?" came another voice.
Arthur looked at Ford and was astonished to see him laughing.
"What's ...?"
"Shhh," said Ford, "come in."
He stepped through into the bridge.
Arthur followed him in nervously and was astonished to see a man lolling
back in a chair with his feet on a control console picking the teeth in
his right-hand head with his left hand. The right-hand head seemed to
be thoroughly preoccupied with this task, but the left-hand one was
grinning a broad, relaxed, nonchalant grin. The number of things that
Arthur couldn't believe he was seeing was fairly large. His jaw flapped
about at a loose end for a while.
The peculiar man waved a lazy wave at Ford and with an appalling
affectation of nonchalance said, "Ford, hi, how are you? Glad you could
drop in."
Ford was not going to be outcooled.
"Zaphod," he drawled, "great to see you, you're looking well, the extra
arm suits you. Nice ship you've stolen."
Arthur goggled at him.
"You mean you know this guy?" he said, waving a wild finger at Zaphod.
"Know him!" exclaimed Ford, "he's ..." he paused, and decided to do
the introductions the other way round.
-
58
"Oh, Zaphod, this is a friend of mine, Arthur Dent," he said, "I saved
him when his planet blew up."
"Oh sure," said Zaphod, "hi Arthur, glad you could make it." His right-
hand head looked round casually, said "hi" and went back to having his
teeth picked.
Ford carried on. "And Arthur," he said, "this is my semi-cousin Zaphod
Beeb ..."
"We've met," said Arthur sharply.
When you're cruising down the road in the fast lane and you lazily sail
past a few hard driving cars and are feeling pretty pleased with yourself
and then accidentally change down from fourth to first instead of third
thus making your engine leap out of your bonnet in a rather ugly mess,
it tends to throw you off your stride in much the same way that this
remark threw Ford Prefect off his.
"Err ... what?"
"I said we've met."
Zaphod gave an awkward start of surprise and jabbed a gum sharply.
"Hey ... er, have we? Hey ... er ..."
Ford rounded on Arthur with an angry flash in his eyes. Now he felt he
was back on home ground he suddenly began to resent having lumbered
himself with this ignorant primitive who knew as much about the affairs
of the Galaxy as an Ilford-based gnat knew about life in Peking.
"What do you mean you've met?" he demanded. "This is Zaphod Bee-
blebrox 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 Bee-
blebrox - or should I say ... Phil?"
"What!" shouted Ford.
"You'll have to remind me," said Zaphod. "I've a terrible memory for
species."
"It was at a party," pursued Arthur.
"Yeah, well I doubt that," said Zaphod.
"Cool it will you Arthur!" demanded Ford.
Arthur would not be deterred. "A party six months ago. On Earth ...
England ..."
Zaphod shook his head with a tight-lipped smile.
"London," insisted Arthur, "Islington."
"Oh," said Zaphod with a guilty start, "that party."
This wasn't fair on Ford at all. He looked backwards and forwards be-
tween 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?"
59
"No, of course not," said Zaphod breezily. "Well, I may have just dropped
in briefly, you know, on my way somewhere ..."
"But I was stuck there for fifteen years!"
"Well I didn't know that did I?" "But what were you doing there?"
"Looking about, you know."
"He gatecrashed a party," persisted Arthur, trembling with anger, "a
fancy dress party ..."
"It would have to be, wouldn't it?" said Ford.
"At this party," persisted Arthur, "was a girl ... oh well, look it doesn't
matter now. The whole place has gone up in smoke anyway ..."
"I wish you'd stop sulking about that bloody planet," said Ford. "Who
was the lady?"
"Oh just somebody. Well alright, I wasn't doing very well with her.
I'd been trying all evening. Hell, she was something though. Beautiful,
charming, devastatingly intelligent, at last I'd got her to myself for a bit
and was plying her with a bit of talk when this friend of yours barges
up and says Hey doll, is this guy boring you? Why don't you talk to me
instead? I'm from a different planet." I never saw her again."
"Zaphod?" exclaimed Ford.
"Yes," said Arthur, glaring at him and trying not to feel foolish. "He
only had the two arms and the one head and he called himself Phil, but
..."
"But you must admit he did turn out to be from another planet," said
Trillian wandering into sight at the other end of the bridge. She gave
Arthur a pleasant smile which settled on him like a ton of bricks and
then turned her attention to the ship's controls again.
There was silence for a few seconds, and then out of the scrambled mess
of Arthur's brain crawled some words.
"Tricia McMillian?" he said. "What are you doing here?"
"Same as you," she said, "I hitched a lift. After all with a degree in
Maths and another in astrophysics what else was there to do? It was
either that or the dole queue again on Monday."
"Infinity minus one," chattered the computer, "Improbability sum now
complete."
Zaphod looked about him, at Ford, at Arthur, and then at Trillian.
"Trillian," he said, "is this sort of thing going to happen every time we
use the Improbability drive?"
"Very probably, I'm afraid," she said.
-
60
15
The Heart of Gold fled on silently through the night of space, now on
conventional photon drive. Its crew of four were ill at ease knowing that
they had been brought together not of their own volition or by simple
coincidence, but by some curious principle of physics - as if relationships
between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the
relationships between atoms and molecules.
As the ship's artificial night closed in they were each grateful to retire
to separate cabins and try to rationalize their thoughts.
Trillian couldn't sleep. She sat on a couch and stared at a small cage
which contained her last and only links with Earth - two white mice
that she had insisted Zaphod let her bring. She had expected not to see
the planet again, but she was disturbed by her negative reaction to the
planet's destruction. It seemed remote and unreal and she could find no
thoughts to think about it. She watched the mice scurrying round the
cage and running furiously in their little plastic treadwheels till they
occupied her whole attention. Suddenly she shook herself and went back
to the bridge to watch over the tiny flashing lights and figures that
charted the ship's progress through the void. She wished she knew what
it was she was trying not to think about.
Zaphod couldn't sleep. He also wished he knew what it was that he
wouldn't let himself think about. For as long as he could remember he'd
suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there. Most of the
time he was able to put this thought aside and not worry about it, but it
had been re-awakened by the sudden inexplicable arrival of Ford Prefect
and Arthur Dent. Somehow it seemed to conform to a pattern that he
couldn't see.
Ford couldn't sleep. He was too excited about being back on the road
again. Fifteen years of virtual imprisonment were over, just as he was
finally beginning to give up hope. Knocking about with Zaphod for a bit
promised to be a lot of fun, though there seemed to be something faintly
odd about his semi-cousin that he couldn't put his finger on. The fact
that he had become President of the Galaxy was frankly astonishing, as
was the manner of his leaving the post. Was there a reason behind it?
There would be no point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have
a reason for anything he did at all: he had turned unfathomably into an
art form. He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary
genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which
was which.
Arthur slept: he was terribly tired.
There was a tap at Zaphod's door. It slid open.
"Zaphod ...?"
"Yeah?"
"I think we just found what you came to look for."
61
"Hey, yeah?" Ford gave up the attempt to sleep. In the corner of his
cabin was a small computer screen and keyboard. He sat at it for a
while and tried to compose a new entry for the Guide on the subject of
Vogons but couldn't think of anything vitriolic enough so he gave that
up too, wrapped a robe round himself and went for a walk to the bridge.
As he entered he was surprised to see two figures hunched excitedly over
the instruments.
"See? The ship's about to move into orbit," Trillian was saying. "There's
a planet out there. It's at the exact coordinates you predicted."
Zaphod heard a noise and looked up.
"Ford!" he hissed. "Hey, come and take a look at this."
Ford went and had a look at it. It was a series of figures flashing over a
screen.
"You recognize those Galactic coordinates?" said Zaphod.
"No."
"I'll give you a clue. Computer!"
"Hi gang!" enthused the computer. "This is getting real sociable isn't
it?"
"Shut up," said Zaphod, "and show up the screens."
Light on the bridge sank. Pinpoints of light played across the consoles
and reflected in four pairs of eyes that stared up at the external monitor
screens.
There was absolutely nothing on them.
"Recognize that?" whispered Zaphod.
Ford frowned.
"Er, no," he said.
"What do you see?"
"Nothing."
"Recognize it?"
"What are you talking about?"
"We're in the Horsehead Nebula. One whole vast dark cloud."
"And I was meant to recognize that from a blank screen?"
"Inside a dark nebula is the only place in the Galaxy you'd see a dark
screen." "Very good."
Zaphod laughed. He was clearly very excited about something, almost
childishly so.
"Hey, this is really terrific, this is just far too much!"
"What's so great about being stuck in a dust cloud?" said Ford.
"What would you reckon to find here?" urged Zaphod.
-
62
"Nothing."
"No stars? No planets?"
"No."
"Computer!" shouted Zaphod, "rotate angle of vision through one- eighty
degrees and don't talk about it!"
For a moment it seemed that nothing was happening, then a brightness
glowed at the edge of the huge screen. A red star the size of a small plate
crept across it followed quickly by another one - a binary system. Then
a vast crescent sliced into the corner of the picture - a red glare shading
away into the deep black, the night side of the planet.
"I've found it!" cried Zaphod, thumping the console. "I've found it!"
Ford stared at it in astonishment.
"What is it?" he said.
"That ..." said Zaphod, "is the most improbable planet that ever ex-
isted."
(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 nat-
ural 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 suc-
cessful 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 spe-
cialist 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
63
- all lovingly made to meet the exacting standards that the Galaxy's
richest men naturally came to expect.
But so successful was this venture that Magrathea itself soon became
the richest planet of all time and the rest of the Galaxy was reduced to
abject poverty. And so the system broke down, the Empire collapsed,
and a long sullen silence settled over a billion worlds, disturbed only by
the pen scratchings of scholars as they laboured into the night over smug
little treaties on the value of a planned political economy.
Magrathea itself disappeared and its memory soon passed into the ob-
scurity of legend.
In these enlightened days of course, no one believes a word of it.
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 Ma-
grathea."
"Proving nothing," said Ford. "I wouldn't trust that computer to speak
my weight."
"I can do that for you, sure," enthused the computer, punching out more
tickertape. "I can even work out you personality problems to ten decimal
places if it will help."
Trillian interrupted.
"Zaphod," she said, "any minute now we will be swinging round to the
daylight side of this planet," adding, "whatever it turns out to be."
-
64
"Hey, what do you mean by that? The planet's where I predicted it
would be isn't it?"
"Yes, I know there's a planet there. I'm not arguing with anyone, it's
just that I wouldn't know Magrathea from any other lump of cold rock.
Dawn's coming up if you want it."
"OK, OK," muttered Zaphod, "let's at least give our eyes a good time.
Computer!"
"Hi there! What can I ..."
"Just shut up and give us a view of the planet again."
A dark featureless mass once more filled the screens - the planet rolling
away beneath them.
They watched for a moment in silence, but Zaphod was fidgety with
excitement.
"We are now traversing the night side ..." he said in a hushed voice. The
planet rolled on.
"The surface of the planet is now three hundred miles beneath us ..." he
continued. He was trying to restore a sense of occasion to what he felt
should have been a great moment. Magrathea! He was piqued by Ford's
sceptical reaction. Magrathea!
"In a few seconds," he continued, "we should see ... there!"
The moment carried itself. Even the most seasoned star tramp can't
help but shiver at the spectacular drama of a sunrise seen from space,
but a binary sunrise is one of the marvels of the Galaxy.
Out of the utter blackness stabbed a sudden point of blinding light. It
crept up by slight degrees and spread sideways in a thin crescent blade,
and within seconds two suns were visible, furnaces of light, searing the
black edge of the horizon with white fire. Fierce shafts of colour streaked
through the thin atmosphere beneath them. "The fires of dawn ... !"
breathed Zaphod. "The twin suns of Soulianis and Rahm ... !"
"Or whatever," said Ford quietly.
"Soulianis and Rahm!" insisted Zaphod.
The suns blazed into the pitch of space and a low ghostly music floated
through the bridge: Marvin was humming ironically because he hated
humans so much.
As Ford gazed at the spectacle of light before them excitement burnt
inside him, but only the excitement of seeing a strange new planet, it was
enough for him to see it as it was. It faintly irritated him that Zaphod
had to impose some ludicrous fantasy on to the scene to make it work
for him. All this Magrathea nonsense seemed juvenile. Isn't it enough to
see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are
fairies at the bottom of it too?
All this Magrathea business seemed totally incomprehensible to Arthur.
He edged up to Trillian and asked her what was going on.
65
"I only know what Zaphod's told me," she whispered. "Apparently Ma-
grathea 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 impor-
tant. Suddenly he realized what it was.
"Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.
More of the planet was unfolding beneath them as the Heart of Gold
streaked along its orbital path. The suns now stood high in the black
sky, the pyrotechnics of dawn were over, and the surface of the planet
appeared bleak and forbidding in the common light of day - grey, dusty
and only dimly contoured. It looked dead and cold as a crypt. From time
to time promising features would appear on the distant horizon - ravines,
maybe mountains, maybe even cities - but as they approached the lines
would soften and blur into anonymity and nothing would transpire. The
planet's surface was blurred by time, by the slow movement of the thin
stagnant air that had crept across it for century upon century.
Clearly, it was very very old.
A moment of doubt came to Ford as he watched the grey landscape
move beneath them. The immensity of time worried him, he could feel
it as a presence. He cleared his throat.
"Well, even supposing it is ..."
"It is," said Zaphod.
"Which it isn't," continued Ford. "What do you want with it anyway?
There's nothing there." "Not on the surface," said Zaphod.
"Alright, just supposing there's something. I take it you're not here for
the sheer industrial archaeology of it all. What are you after?"
One of Zaphod's heads looked away. The other one looked round to see
what the first was looking at, but it wasn't looking at anything very
much.
"Well," said Zaphod airily, "it's partly the curiosity, partly a sense of
adventure, but mostly I think it's the fame and the money ..."
Ford glanced at him sharply. He got a very strong impression that Za-
phod 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."
Bull****, thought Ford. Even supposing this was the home of some an-
cient civilization now gone to dust, even supposing a number of exceed-
ingly 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.
-
66
"I think it's just a dead planet," he said.
"The suspense is killing me," said Arthur testily.
Stress and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all parts of
the Galaxy, and it is in order that this situation should not in any way
be exacerbated that the following facts will now be revealed in advance.
The planet in question is in fact the legendary Magrathea.
The deadly missile attack shortly to be launched by an ancient automatic
defence system will result merely in the breakage of three coffee cups
and a micecage, the bruising of somebody's upper arm, and the untimely
creation and sudden demise of a bowl of petunias and an innocent sperm
whale.
In order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no revela-
tion 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.
18
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 man-
ufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaints de-
partment 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 ..."
67
Someone from the dead planet was talking to them.
"Computer!" shouted Zaphod.
"Hi there!"
"What the photon is it?"
"Oh, just some five-million-year-old tape that's being broadcast at us."
"A what? A recording?"
"Shush!" said Ford. "It's carrying on."
The voice was old, courteous, almost charming, but was underscored
with quite unmistakable menace.
"This is a recorded announcement," it said, "as I'm afraid we're all out
at the moment. The commercial council of Magrathea thanks you for
your esteemed visit ..."
("A voice from ancient Magrathea!" shouted Zaphod. "OK, OK," said
Ford.)
"... but regrets," continued the voice, "that the entire planet is tem-
porarily 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, com-
puter?"
"I got it," said the computer and gave the ship an extra kick of speed.
They waited.
After a second or so came the fanfare once again, and then the voice.
"We would like to assure you that as soon as our business is resumed
announcements will be made in all fashionable magazines and colour
supplements, when our clients will once again be able to select from
all that's best in contemporary geography." The menace in the voice
took on a sharper edge. "Meanwhile we thank our clients for their kind
interest and would ask them to leave. Now."
Arthur looked round the nervous faces of his companions.
"Well, I suppose we'd better be going then, hadn't we?" he suggested.
"Shhh!" said Zaphod. "There's absolutely nothing to be worried about."
"Then why's everyone so tense?"
"They're just interested!" shouted Zaphod. "Computer, start a descent
into the atmosphere and prepare for landing."
This time the fanfare was quite perfunctory, the voice distinctly cold.
"It is most gratifying," it said, "that your enthusiasm for our planet
continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided
missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service
-
68
we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed
nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward
to your custom in future lives ... thank you."
The voice snapped off.
"Oh," said Trillian.
"Er ..." said Arthur.
"Well?" said Ford.
"Look," said Zaphod, "will you get it into your heads? That's just a
recorded message. It's millions of years old. It doesn't apply to us, get
it?" "What," said Trillian quietly, "about the missiles?"
"Missiles? Don't make me laugh."
Ford tapped Zaphod on the shoulder and pointed at the rear screen.
Clear in the distance behind them two silver darts were climbing through
the atmosphere towards the ship. A quick change of magnification brought
them into close focus - two massively real rockets thundering through
the sky. The suddenness of it was shocking.
"I think they're going to have a very good try at applying to us," said
Ford.
Zaphod stared at them in astonishment.
"Hey this is terrific!" he said. "Someone down there is trying to kill us!"
"Terrific," said Arthur.
"But don't you see what this means?"
"Yes. We're going to die."
"Yes, but apart from that."
"Apart from that?"
"It means we must be on to something!"
"How soon can we get off it?"
Second by second the image of the missiles on the screen became larger.
They had swung round now on to a direct homing course so that all that
could be seen of them now was the warheads, head on.
"As a matter of interest," said Trillian, "what are we going to do?"
"Just keep cool," said Zaphod.
"Is that all?" shouted Arthur.
"No, we're also going to ... er ... take evasive action!" said Zaphod with
a sudden access of panic. "Computer, what evasive action can we take?"
"Er, none I'm afraid, guys," said the computer.
"... or something," said Zaphod, "... er ..." he said.
"There seems to be something jamming my guidance system," explained
the computer brightly, "impact minus forty-five seconds. Please call me
Eddie if it will help you to relax."
69
Zaphod tried to run in several equally decisive directions simultaneously.
"Right!" he said. "Er ... we've got to get manual control of this ship."
"Can you fly her?" asked Ford pleasantly.
"No, can you?"
"No."
"Trillian, can you?"
"No."
"Fine," said Zaphod, relaxing. "We'll do it together."
"I can't either," said Arthur, who felt it was time he began to assert
himself.
"I'd guessed that," said Zaphod. "OK computer, I want full manual
control now."
"You got it," said the computer.
Several large desk panels slid open and banks of control consoles sprang
up out of them, showering the crew with bits of expanded polystyrene
packaging and balls of rolled-up cellophane: these controls had never
been used before.
Zaphod stared at them wildly.
"OK, Ford," he said, "full retro thrust and ten degrees starboard. Or
something ..."
"Good luck guys," chirped the computer, "impact minus thirty seconds
..."
Ford leapt to the controls - only a few of them made any immediate sense
to him so he pulled those. The ship shook and screamed as its guidance
rocked jets tried to push it every which way simultaneously. He released
half of them and the ship span round in a tight arc and headed back the
way it had come, straight towards the oncoming missiles.
Air cushions ballooned out of the walls in an instant as everyone was
thrown against them. For a few seconds the inertial forces held them
flattened and squirming for breath, unable to move. Zaphod struggled
and pushed in manic desperation and finally managed a savage kick at
a small lever that formed part of the guidance system.
The lever snapped off. The ship twisted sharply and rocketed upwards.
The crew were hurled violently back across the cabin. Ford's copy of
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy smashed into another section of
the control console with the combined result that the guide started to
explain to anyone who cared to listen about the best ways of smuggling
Antarean parakeet glands out of Antares (an Antarean parakeet gland
stuck on a small stick is a revolting but much sought after cocktail
delicacy and very large sums of money are often paid for them by very
rich idiots who want to impress other very rich idiots), and the ship
suddenly dropped out of the sky like a stone.
-
70
It was of course more or less at this moment that one of the crew sus-
tained a nasty bruise to the upper arm. This should be emphasized be-
cause, as had already been revealed, they escape otherwise completely
unharmed and the deadly nuclear missiles do not eventually hit the ship.
The safety of the crew is absolutely assured.
"Impact minus twenty seconds, guys ..." said the computer.
"Then turn the bloody engines back on!" bawled Zaphod.
"OK, sure thing, guys," said the computer. With a subtle roar the en-
gines cut back in, the ship smoothly flattened out of its dive and headed
back towards the missiles again.
The computer started to sing.
"When you walk through the storm ..." it whined nasally, "hold your
head up high ..."
Zaphod screamed at it to shut up, but his voice was lost in the din of
what they quite naturally assumed was approaching destruction.
"And don't ... be afraid ... of the dark!" Eddie wailed.
The ship, in flattening out had in fact flattened out upside down and
lying on the ceiling as they were it was now totally impossible for any
of the crew to reach the guidance systems.
"At the end of the storm ..." crooned Eddie.
The two missiles loomed massively on the screens as they thundered
towards the ship.
"... is a golden sky ..."
But by an extraordinarily lucky chance they had not yet fully corrected
their flight paths to that of the erratically weaving ship, and they passed
right under it.
"And the sweet silver songs of the lark ... Revised impact time fifteen
seconds fellas ... Walk on through the wind ..."
The missiles banked round in a screeching arc and plunged back into
pursuit.
"This is it," said Arthur watching them. "We are now quite definitely
going to die aren't we?"
"I wish you'd stop saying that," shouted Ford.
"Well we are aren't we?"
"Yes." "Walk on through the rain ..." sang Eddie.
A thought struck Arthur. He struggled to his feet.
"Why doesn't anyone turn on this Improbability Drive thing?" he said.
"We could probably reach that."
"What are you crazy?" said Zaphod. "Without proper programming
anything could happen."
71
"Does that matter at this stage?" shouted Arthur.
"Though your dreams be tossed and blown ..." sand Eddie.
Arthur scrambled up on to one end of the excitingly chunky pieces of
moulded contouring where the curve of the wall met the ceiling.
"Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart ..."
"Does anyone know why Arthur can't turn on the Improbability Drive?"
shouted Trillian.
"And you'll never walk alone ... Impact minus five seconds, it's been
great knowing you guys, God bless ... You'll ne ... ver ... walk ... alone!"
"I said," yelled Trillian, "does anyone know ..."
The next thing that happened was a mid-mangling explosion of noise
and light.
19
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 mir-
rors 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.
-
72
A new and astounding image appeared in the mirrors.
"They would appear," said Ford doubtfully, "to have turned into a bowl
of petunias and a very surprised looking whale ..."
"At an Improbability Factor," cut in Eddie, who hadn't changed a bit,
"of eight million seven hundred and sixty-seven thousand one hundred
and twenty-eight to one against."
Zaphod stared at Arthur.
"Did you think of that, Earthman?" he demanded.
"Well," said Arthur, "all I did was ..."
"That's very good thinking you know. Turn on the Improbability Drive
for a second without first activating the proofing screens. Hey kid you
just saved our lives, you know that?"
"Oh," said Arthur, "well, it was nothing really ..."
"Was it?" said Zaphod. "Oh well, forget it then. OK, computer, take us
in to land."
"But ..."
"I said forget it."
Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability
a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles
above the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor
innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity
as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale
any more.
This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its
life till the moment it ended it.
Ah ... ! What's happening? it thought.
Er, excuse me, who am I?
Hello? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now ... oh! this is an interesting sensation, what
is it? It's a sort of ... yawning, tingling sensation in my ... my ... well I
suppose I'd better start finding names for things if I want to make any
headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall
call the world, so let's call it my stomach.
Good. Ooooh, it's getting quite strong. And hey, what's about this
whistling roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my
head? Perhaps I can call that ... wind! Is that a good name? It'll do ...
perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I've found out what
it's for. It must be something very important because there certainly
seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What's this thing? This ... let's
73
call it a tail - yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty
good can't I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn't seem to achieve very
much but I'll probably find out what it's for later on. Now - have I built
up any coherent picture of things yet?
No. Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so
much to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation ... Or
is it the wind?
There really is a lot of that now isn't it?
And wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming towards me very
fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide
sounding name like ... ow ... ound ... round ... ground! That's it! That's
a good name - ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?
And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl
of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated
that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we
would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.
20
"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 pano-
ramic 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 Za-
phod'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
-
74
most intelligent life form present on the planet Earth, instead of (as was
generally thought by most independent observers) the second.
"Good afternoon boys."
The voice was oddly familiar, but oddly different. It had a matriarchal
twang. It announced itself to the crew as they arrived at the airlock
hatchway that would let them out on the planet surface.
They looked at each other in puzzlement.
"It's the computer," explained Zaphod. "I discovered it had an emer-
gency 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 bulk-
head and started to count to ten. He was desperately worried that one
day sentinent life forms would forget how to do this. Only by counting
could humans demonstrate their independence of computers.
"Come on," said Eddie sternly.
"Computer ..." began Zaphod ...
"I'm waiting," interrupted Eddie. "I can wait all day if necessary ..."
"Computer ..." said Zaphod again, who had been trying to think of
some subtle piece of reasoning to put the computer down with, and had
decided not to bother competing with it on its own ground, "if you don't
open that exit hatch this moment I shall zap straight off to your major
data banks and reprogram you with a very large axe, got that?"
Eddie, shocked, paused and considered this.
Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing
you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being
and saying Blood ... blood ... blood ... blood ...
Finally Eddie said quietly, "I can see this relationship is something we're
all going to have to work at," and the hatchway opened.
An icy wind ripped into them, they hugged themselves warmly and
stepped down the ramp on to the barren dust of Magrathea.
"It'll all end in tears, I know it," shouted Eddie after them and closed
the hatchway again.
A few minutes later he opened and closed the hatchway again in response
to a command that caught him entirely by surprise.
75
21
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 car-
ried 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 irrita-
tion. Of all the planets in all the star systems of all the Galaxy - didn't
he just have to turn up at a dump like this after fifteen years of being
a castaway? Not even a hot dog stand in evidence. He stooped down
and picked up a cold clot of earth, but there was nothing underneath it
worth crossing thousands of light years to look at.
"No," insisted Arthur, "don't you understand, this is the first time I've
actually stood on the surface of another planet ... a whole alien world
...! Pity it's such a dump though."
Trillian hugged herself, shivered and frowned. She could have sworn she
saw a slight and unexpected movement out of the corner of her eye, but
when she glanced in that direction all she could see was the ship, still
and silent, a hundred yards or so behind them.
She was relieved when a second or so later they caught sight of Zaphod
standing on top of the ridge of ground and waving to them to come and
join him.
He seemed to be excited, but they couldn't clearly hear what he was
saying because of the thinnish atmosphere and the wind.
As they approached the ridge of higher ground they became aware that
it seemed to be circular - a crater about a hundred and fifty yards wide.
Round the outside of the crater the sloping ground was spattered with
black and red lumps. They stopped and looked at a piece. It was wet.
It was rubbery.
With horror they suddenly realized that it was fresh whalemeat.
At the top of the crater's lip they met Zaphod.
"Look," he said, pointing into the crater.
In the centre lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that
hadn't lived long enough to be disappointed with its lot. The silence
was only disturbed by the slight involuntary spasms of Trillian's throat.
"I suppose there's no point in trying to bury it?" murmured Arthur, and
then wished he hadn't.
-
76
"Come," said Zaphod and started back down into the crater.
"What, down there?" said Trillian with severe distaste.
"Yeah," said Zaphod, "come on, I've got something to show you."
"We can see it," said Trillian.
"Not that," said Zaphod, "something else. Come on."
They all hesitated.
"Come on," insisted Zaphod, "I've found a way in." "In?" said Arthur
in horror.
"Into the interior of the planet! An underground passage. The force of
the whale's impact cracked it open, and that's where we have to go.
Where no man has trod these five million years, into the very depths of
time itself ..."
Marvin started his ironical humming again.
Zaphod hit him and he shut up.
With little shudders of disgust they all followed Zaphod down the incline
into the crater, trying very hard not to look at its unfortunate creator.
"Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
The ground had caved in where the whale had hit it revealing a network
of galleries and passages, now largely obstructed by collapsed rubble and
entrails. Zaphod had made a start clearing a way into one of them, but
Marvin was able to do it rather faster. Dank air wafted out of its dark
recesses, and as Zaphod shone a torch into it, little was visible in the
dusty gloom.
"According to the legends," he said, "the Magratheans lived most of
their lives underground."
"Why's that?" said Arthur. "Did the surface become too polluted or
overpopulated?"
"No, I don't think so," said Zaphod. "I think they just didn't like it very
much."
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" said Trillian peering ner-
vously 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."
77
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 grave-
yard is not on the whole a good place to stamp around in.
Marvin eyed him balefully for a moment, and then turned himself off.
Zaphod marched quickly down the passageway, nervous as hell, but try-
ing 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 equip-
ment. He dragged Zaphod into one to have a look. Trillian followed.
"Look," said Ford, "you reckon this is Magrathea ..."
"Yeah," said Zaphod, "and we heard the voice, right?"
"OK, so I've bought the fact that it's Magrathea - for the moment. What
you have so far said nothing about is how in the Galaxy you found it.
You didn't just look it up in a star atlas, that's for sure."
"Research. Government archives. Detective work. Few lucky guesses.
Easy."
"And then you stole the Heart of Gold to come and look for it with?"
"I stole it to look for a lot of things." "A lot of things?" said Ford in
surprise. "Like what?"
"I don't know."
"What?"
"I don't know what I'm looking for."
"Why not?"