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Thread: The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

  1. #21
    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
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  2. #22
    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
    Last edited by Blodcreeper; Jul 24th, 2002 at 14:43:46.
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  3. #23
    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.
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  4. #24
    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.
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  5. #25
    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
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  6. #26
    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?"
    **************************************************
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  7. #27
    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.
    **************************************************
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    7 years to ding 220, any better?

  8. #28
    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?"
    Last edited by Blodcreeper; Jul 24th, 2002 at 14:48:40.
    **************************************************
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    Total levels gained since nov 2002 |2500+ |
    **************************************************

    7 years to ding 220, any better?

  9. #29
    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.
    **************************************************
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  10. #30
    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.
    Last edited by Blodcreeper; Jul 24th, 2002 at 14:49:35.
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    7 years to ding 220, any better?

  11. #31
    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.
    **************************************************
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  12. #32
    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.
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  13. #33
    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."
    Last edited by Blodcreeper; Jul 24th, 2002 at 14:51:09.
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  14. #34
    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.
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  15. #35
    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
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  16. #36
    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.
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  17. #37
    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.
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  18. #38
    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
    **************************************************
    220/27/62 Crat | 200 NT | 200 fixer |174/14/42 twink trox nt| 100/12 trader| 60/6 enf|


    Total levels gained since nov 2002 |2500+ |
    **************************************************

    7 years to ding 220, any better?

  19. #39
    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.
    **************************************************
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    Total levels gained since nov 2002 |2500+ |
    **************************************************

    7 years to ding 220, any better?

  20. #40
    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?"
    **************************************************
    220/27/62 Crat | 200 NT | 200 fixer |174/14/42 twink trox nt| 100/12 trader| 60/6 enf|


    Total levels gained since nov 2002 |2500+ |
    **************************************************

    7 years to ding 220, any better?

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