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