It was of course more or less at this moment that one of the crew sustained a nasty bruise to the upper arm. This should be emphasized because, as had already been revealed, they escape otherwise completely unharmed and the deadly nuclear missiles do not eventually hit the ship. The safety of the crew is absolutely assured. "Impact minus twenty seconds, guys..." said the computer. "Then turn the bloody engines back on!" bawled Zaphod. "OK, sure thing, guys," said the computer. With a subtle roar the engines cut back in, the ship smoothly flattened out of its dive and headed back towards the missiles again. The computer started to sing. "When you walk through the storm..." it whined nasally, "hold your head up high..." Zaphod screamed at it to shut up, but his voice was lost in the din of what they quite naturally assumed was approaching destruction. "And don't... be afraid... of the dark!" Eddie wailed. The ship, in flattening out had in fact flattened out upside down and lying on the ceiling as they were it was now totally impossible for any of the crew to reach the guidance systems. "At the end of the storm..." crooned Eddie. The two missiles loomed massively on the screens as they thundered towards the ship. "... is a golden sky..." But by an extraordinarily lucky chance they had not yet fully corrected their flight paths to that of the erratically weaving ship, and they passed right under it. "And the sweet silver songs of the lark... Revised impact time fifteen seconds fellas... Walk on through the wind..." The missiles banked round in a screeching arc and plunged back into pursuit. "This is it," said Arthur watching them. "We are now quite definitely going to die aren't we?" "I wish you'd stop saying that," shouted Ford. "Well we are aren't we?" "Yes." "Walk on through the rain..." sang Eddie. A thought struck Arthur. He struggled to his feet. "Why doesn't anyone turn on this Improbability Drive thing?" he said. "We could probably reach that." "What are you crazy?" said Zaphod. "Without proper programming anything could happen." "Does that matter at this stage?" shouted Arthur. "Though your dreams be tossed and blown..." sand Eddie. Arthur scrambled up on to one end of the excitingly chunky pieces of moulded contouring where the curve of the wall met the ceiling. "Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart..." "Does anyone know why Arthur can't turn on the Improbability Drive?" shouted Trillian. "And you'll never walk alone... Impact minus five seconds, it's been great knowing you guys, God bless... You'll ne... ver... walk... alone!" "I said," yelled Trillian, "does anyone know..." The next thing that happened was a mid-mangling explosion of noise and light.

Chapter 18

And the next thing that happened after that was that the Heart of Gold continued on its way perfectly normally with a rather fetchingly redesigned interior. It was somewhat larger, and done out in delicate pastel shades of green and blue. In the centre a spiral staircase, leading nowhere in particular, stood in a spray of ferns and yellow flowers and next to it a stone sundial pedestal housed the main computer terminal. Cunningly deployed lighting and mirrors created the illusion of standing in a conservatory overlooking a wide stretch of exquisitely manicured garden. Around the periphery of the conservatory area stood marble-topped tables on intricately beautiful wrought-iron legs. As you gazed into the polished surface of the marble the vague forms of instruments became visible, and as you touched them the instruments materialized instantly under your hands. Looked at from the correct angles the mirrors appeared to reflect all the required data readouts, though it was far from clear where they were reflected from. It was in fact sensationally beautiful. Relaxing in a wickerwork sun chair, Zaphod Beeblebrox said, "What the hell happened?" "Well I was just saying," said Arthur lounging by a small fish pool, "there's this Improbability Drive switch over here..." he waved at where it had been. There was a potted plant there now. "But where are we?" said Ford who was sitting on the spiral staircase, a nicely chilled Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in his hand. "Exactly where we were, I think..." said Trillian, as all about them the mirrors showed them an image of the blighted landscape of Magrathea which still scooted along beneath them. Zaphod leapt out of his seat. "Then what's happened to the missiles?" he said. A new and astounding image appeared in the mirrors. "They would appear," said Ford doubtfully, "to have turned into a bowl of petunias and a very surprised looking whale..." "At an Improbability Factor," cut in Eddie, who hadn't changed a bit, "of eight million seven hundred and sixty-seven thousand one hundred and twenty-eight to one against." Zaphod stared at Arthur. "Did you think of that, Earthman?" he demanded. "Well," said Arthur, "all I did was..." "That's very good thinking you know. Turn on the Improbability Drive for a second without first activating the proofing screens. Hey kid you just saved our lives, you know that?" "Oh," said Arthur, "well, it was nothing really..." "Was it?" said Zaphod. "Oh well, forget it then. OK, computer, take us in to land." "But..." "I said forget it."

Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet. And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more. This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it. Ah...! What's happening? it thought. Er, excuse me, who am I? Hello? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Calm down, get a grip now... oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It's a sort of... yawning, tingling sensation in my... my... well I suppose I'd better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let's call it my stomach. Good. Ooooh, it's getting quite strong. And hey, what's about this whistling roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that... wind! Is that a good name? It'll do... perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I've found out what it's for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What's this thing? This... let's call it a tail-yeah, tail. Hey! I can really thrash it about pretty good can't I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn't seem to achieve very much but I'll probably find out what it's for later on. Now-have I built up any coherent picture of things yet? No. Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation... Or is it the wind? There really is a lot of that now isn't it? And wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like... ow... ound... round... ground! That's it! That's a good name-ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.

Chapter 19

"Are we taking this robot with us?" said Ford, looking with distaste at Marvin who was standing in an awkward hunched posture in the corner under a small palm tree. Zaphod glanced away from the mirror screens which presented a panoramic view of the blighted landscape on which the Heart of Gold had now landed. "Oh, the Paranoid Android," he said. "Yeah, we'll take him." "But what are supposed to do with a manically depressed robot?" "You think you've got problems," said Marvin as if he was addressing a newly occupied coffin, "what are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot? No, don't bother to answer that, I'm fifty thousand times more intelligent than you and even I don't know the answer. It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level." Trillian burst in through the door from her cabin. "My white mice have escaped!" she said. An expression of deep worry and concern failed to cross either of Zaphod's faces. "Nuts to your white mice," he said. Trillian glared an upset glare at him, and disappeared again. It is possible that her remark would have commanded greater attention had it been generally realized that human beings were only the third most intelligent life form present on the planet Earth, instead of (as was generally thought by most independent observers) the second.

"Good afternoon boys." The voice was oddly familiar, but oddly different. It had a matriarchal twang. It announced itself to the crew as they arrived at the airlock hatchway that would let them out on the planet surface. They looked at each other in puzzlement. "It's the computer," explained Zaphod. "I discovered it had an emergency back-up personality that I thought might work out better." "Now this is going to be your first day out on a strange new planet," continued Eddie's new voice, "so I want you all wrapped up snug and warm, and no playing with any naughty bug-eyed monsters." Zaphod tapped impatiently on the hatch. "I'm sorry," he said, "I think we might be better off with a slide rule." "Right!" snapped the computer. "Who said that?" "Will you open the exit hatch please, computer?" said Zaphod trying not to get angry. "Not until whoever said that owns up," urged the computer, stamping a few synapses closed. "Oh God," muttered Ford, slumped against a bulkhead and started to count to ten. He was desperately worried that one day sentinent life forms would forget how to do this. Only by counting could humans demonstrate their independence of computers. "Come on," said Eddie sternly. "Computer..." began Zaphod... "I'm waiting," interrupted Eddie. "I can wait all day if necessary..." "Computer..." said Zaphod again, who had been trying to think of some subtle piece of reasoning to put the computer down with, and had decided not to bother competing with it on its own ground, "if you don't open that exit hatch this moment I shall zap straight off to your major data banks and reprogram you with a very large axe, got that?" Eddie, shocked, paused and considered this. Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying Blood... blood... blood... blood... Finally Eddie said quietly, "I can see this relationship is something we're all going to have to work at," and the hatchway opened. An icy wind ripped into them, they hugged themselves warmly and stepped down the ramp on to the barren dust of Magrathea. "It'll all end in tears, I know it," shouted Eddie after them and closed the hatchway again. A few minutes later he opened and closed the hatchway again in response to a command that caught him entirely by surprise.

Chapter 20

Five figures wandered slowly over the blighted land. Bits of it were dullish grey, bits of it dullish brown, the rest of it rather less interesting to look at. It was like a dried-out marsh, now barren of all vegetation and covered with a layer of dust about an inch thick. It was very cold. Zaphod was clearly rather depressed about it. He stalked off by himself and was soon lost to sight behind a slight rise in the ground. The wind stung Arthur's eyes and ears, and the stale thin air clasped his throat. However, the thing stung most was his mind. "It's fantastic..." he said, and his own voice rattled his ears. Sound carried badly in this thin atmosphere. "Desolate hole if you ask me," said Ford. "I could have more fun in a cat litter." He felt a mounting irritation. Of all the planets in all the star systems of all the Galaxy-didn't he just have to turn up at a dump like this after fifteen years of being a castaway? Not even a hot dog stand in evidence. He stooped down and picked up a cold clot of earth, but there was nothing underneath it worth crossing thousands of light years to look at. "No," insisted Arthur, "don't you understand, this is the first time I've actually stood on the surface of another planet... a whole alien world...! Pity it's such a dump though." Trillian hugged herself, shivered and frowned. She could have sworn she saw a slight and unexpected movement out of the corner of her eye, but when she glanced in that direction all she could see was the ship, still and silent, a hundred yards or so behind them. She was relieved when a second or so later they caught sight of Zaphod standing on top of the ridge of ground and waving to them to come and join him. He seemed to be excited, but they couldn't clearly hear what he was saying because of the thinnish atmosphere and the wind. As they approached the ridge of higher ground they became aware that it seemed to be circular-a crater about a hundred and fifty yards wide. Round the outside of the crater the sloping ground was spattered with black and red lumps. They stopped and looked at a piece. It was wet. It was rubbery. With horror they suddenly realized that it was fresh whalemeat. At the top of the crater's lip they met Zaphod. "Look," he said, pointing into the crater. In the centre lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn't lived long enough to be disappointed with its lot. The silence was only disturbed by the slight involuntary spasms of Trillian's throat. "I suppose there's no point in trying to bury it?" murmured Arthur, and then wished he hadn't. "Come," said Zaphod and started back down into the crater. "What, down there?" said Trillian with severe distaste. "Yeah," said Zaphod, "come on, I've got something to show you." "We can see it," said Trillian. "Not that," said Zaphod, "something else. Come on." They all hesitated. "Come on," insisted Zaphod, "I've found a way in." "In?" said Arthur in horror. "Into the interior of the planet! An underground passage. The force of the whale's impact cracked it open, and that's where we have to go. Where no man has trod these five million years, into the very depths of time itself..." Marvin started his ironical humming again. Zaphod hit him and he shut up. With little shudders of disgust they all followed Zaphod down the incline into the crater, trying very hard not to look at its unfortunate creator. "Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it." The ground had caved in where the whale had hit it revealing a network of galleries and passages, now largely obstructed by collapsed rubble and entrails. Zaphod had made a start clearing a way into one of them, but Marvin was able to do it rather faster. Dank air wafted out of its dark recesses, and as Zaphod shone a torch into it, little was visible in the dusty gloom. "According to the legends," he said, "the Magratheans lived most of their lives underground." "Why's that?" said Arthur. "Did the surface become too polluted or overpopulated?" "No, I don't think so," said Zaphod. "I think they just didn't like it very much." "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" said Trillian peering nervously into the darkness. "We've been attacked once already you know." "Look kid, I promise you the live population of this planet is nil plus the four of us, so come on, let's get on in there. Er, hey Earthman..." "Arthur," said Arthur. "Yeah could you just sort of keep this robot with you and guard this end of the passageway. OK?" "Guard?" said Arthur. "What from? You just said there's no one here." "Yeah, well, just for safety, OK?" said Zaphod. "Whose? Yours or mine?" "Good lad. OK, here we go." Zaphod scrambled down into the passage, followed by Trillian and Ford. "Well I hope you all have a really miserable time," complained Arthur. "Don't worry," Marvin assured him, "they will." In a few seconds they had disappeared from view. Arthur stamped around in a huff, and then decided that a whale's graveyard is not on the whole a good place to stamp around in. Marvin eyed him balefully for a moment, and then turned himself off.

Zaphod marched quickly down the passageway, nervous as hell, but trying to hide it by striding purposefully. He flung the torch beam around. The walls were covered in dark tiles and were cold to the touch, the air thick with decay. "There, what did I tell you?" he said. "An inhabited planet. Magrathea," and he strode on through the dirt and debris that littered the tile floor. Trillian was reminded unavoidably of the London Underground, though it was less thoroughly squalid. At intervals along the walls the tiles gave way to large mosaics-simple angular patterns in bright colours. Trillian stopped and studied one of them but could not interpret any sense in them. She called to Zaphod. "Hey, have you any idea what these strange symbols are?" "I think they're just strange symbols of some kind," said Zaphod, hardly glancing back. Trillian shrugged and hurried after him. From time to time a doorway led either to the left or right into smallish chambers which Ford discovered to be full of derelict computer equipment. He dragged Zaphod into one to have a look. Trillian followed. "Look," said Ford, "you reckon this is Magrathea..." "Yeah," said Zaphod, "and we heard the voice, right?" "OK, so I've bought the fact that it's Magrathea-for the moment. What you have so far said nothing about is how in the Galaxy you found it. You didn't just look it up in a star atlas, that's for sure." "Research. Government archives. Detective work. Few lucky guesses. Easy." "And then you stole the Heart of Gold to come and look for it with?" "I stole it to look for a lot of things." "A lot of things?" said Ford in surprise. "Like what?" "I don't know." "What?" "I don't know what I'm looking for." "Why not?" "Because... because... I think it might be because if I knew I wouldn't be able to look for them." "What, are you crazy?" "It's a possibility I haven't ruled out yet," said Zaphod quietly. "I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good." For a long time nobody said anything as Ford gazed at Zaphod with a mind suddenly full of worry. "Listen old friend, if you want to..." started Ford eventually. "No, wait... I'll tell you something," said Zaphod. "I freewheel a lot. I get an idea to do something, and, hey, why not, I do it. I reckon I'll become President of the Galaxy, and it just happens, it's easy. I decide to steal this ship. I decide to look for Magrathea, and it all just happens. Yeah, I work out how it can best be done, right, but it always works out. It's like having a Galacticredit card which keeps on working though you never send off the cheques. And then whenever I stop and think-why did I want to do something?-how did I work out how to do it?-I get a very strong desire just to stop thinking about it. Like I have now. It's a big effort to talk about it." Zaphod paused for a while. For a while there was silence. Then he frowned and said, "Last night I was worrying about this again. About the fact that part of my mind just didn't seem to work properly. Then it occurred to me that the way it seemed was that someone else was using my mind to have good ideas with, without telling me about it. I put the two ideas together and decided that maybe that somebody had locked off part of my mind for that purpose, which was why I couldn't use it. I wondered if there was a way I could check. "I went to the ship's medical bay and plugged myself into the encephelographic screen. I went through every major screening test on both my heads-all the tests I had to go through under government medical officers before my nomination for Presidency could be properly ratified. They showed up nothing. Nothing unexpected at least. They showed that I was clever, imaginative, irresponsible, untrustworthy, extrovert, nothing you couldn't have guessed. And no other anomalies. So I started inventing further tests, completely at random. Nothing. Then I tried superimposing the results from one head on top of the results from the other head. Still nothing. Finally I got silly, because I'd given it all up as nothing more than an attack of paranoia. Last thing I did before I packed it in was take the superimposed picture and look at it through a green filter. You remember I was always superstitious about the color green when I was a kid? I always wanted to be a pilot on one of the trading scouts?" Ford nodded. "And there it was," said Zaphod, "clear as day. A whole section in the middle of both brains that related only to each other and not to anything else around them. Some bastard had cauterized all the synapses and electronically traumatised those two lumps of cerebellum." Ford stared at him, aghast. Trillian had turned white. "Somebody did that to you?" whispered Ford. "Yeah." "But have you any idea who? Or why?" "Why? I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was." "You know? How do you know?" "Because they left their initials burnt into the cauterized synapses. They left them there for me to see." Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl. "Initials? Burnt into your brain?" "Yeah." "Well, what were they, for God's sake?" Zaphod looked at him in silence again for a moment. Then he looked away. "Z.B.," he said. At that moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them and gas started to pour into the chamber. "I'll tell you about it later," choked Zaphod as all three passed out.

Chapter 21

On the surface of Magrathea Arthur wandered about moodily. Ford had thoughtfully left him his copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to while away the time with. He pushed a few buttons at random. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited book and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time. One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates the experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then, after a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the biros he'd bought over the past few years. There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all the major centres of biro loss throughout the galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint little theory which quite caught the public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to highly biro-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the biro equivalent of the good life. And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make a fool of themselves in public. When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying. There did, however, remain the question of both the mysterious 60,000 Altairan dollars paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank account, and of course Zaphod Beeblebrox's highly profitable second-hand biro business.

Arthur read this, and put the book down. The robot still sat there, completely inert. Arthur got up and walked to the top of the crater. He walked around the crater. He watched two suns set magnificently over Magrathea. He went back down into the crater. He woke the robot up because even a manically depressed robot is better to talk to than nobody. "Night's falling," he said. "Look robot, the stars are coming out." From the heart of a dark nebula it is possible to see very few stars, and only very faintly, but they were there to be seen. The robot obediently looked at them, then looked back. "I know," he said. "Wretched isn't it?" "But that sunset! I've never seen anything like it in my wildest dreams... the two suns! It was like mountains of fire boiling into space." "I've seen it," said Marvin. "It's rubbish." "We only ever had the one sun at home," persevered Arthur, "I came from a planet called Earth you know." "I know," said Marvin, "you keep going on about it. It sounds awful." "Ah no, it was a beautiful place." "Did it have oceans?" "Oh yes," said Arthur with a sigh, "great wide rolling blue oceans..." "Can't bear oceans," said Marvin. "Tell me," inquired Arthur, "do you get on well with other robots?" "Hate them," said Marvin. "Where are you going?" Arthur couldn't bear any more. He had got up again. "I think I'll just take another walk," he said. "Don't blame you," said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later. Arthur slapped his arms about himself to try and get his circulation a little more enthusiastic about its job. He trudged back up the wall of the crater. Because the atmosphere was so thin and because there was no moon, nightfall was very rapid and it was by now very dark. Because of this, Arthur practically walked into the old man before he noticed him.

Chapter 22

He was standing with his back to Arthur watching the very last glimmers of light sink into blackness behind the horizon. He was tallish, elderly and dressed in a single long grey robe. When he turned his face was thin and distinguished, careworn but not unkind, the sort of face you would happily bank with. But he didn't turn yet, not even to react to Arthur's yelp of surprise. Eventually the last rays of the sun had vanished completely, and he turned. His face was still illuminated from somewhere, and when Arthur looked for the source of the light he saw that a few yards away stood a small craft of some kind-a small hovercraft, Arthur guessed. It shed a dim pool of light around it. The man looked at Arthur, sadly it seemed. "You choose a cold night to visit our dead planet," he said. "Who... who are you?" stammered Arthur. The man looked away. Again a kind of sadness seemed to cross his face. "My name is not important," he said. He seemed to have something on his mind. Conversation was clearly something he felt he didn't have to rush at. Arthur felt awkward. "I... er... you startled me..." he said, lamely. The man looked round to him again and slightly raised his eyebrows. "Hmmmm?" he said. "I said you startled me." "Do not be alarmed, I will not harm you." Arthur frowned at him. "But you shot at us! There were missiles..." he said. The man chuckled slightly. "An automatic system," he said and gave a small sigh. "Ancient computers ranged in the bowels of the planet tick away the dark millennia, and the ages hang heavy on their dusty data banks. I think they take the occasional pot shot to relieve the monotony." He looked gravely at Arthur and said, "I'm a great fan of science you know." "Oh... er, really?" said Arthur, who was beginning to find the man's curious, kindly manner disconcerting. "Oh, yes," said the old man, and simply stopped talking again. "Ah," said Arthur, "er..." He had an odd felling of being like a man in the act of adultery who is surprised when the woman's husband wanders into the room, changes his trousers, passes a few idle remarks about the weather and leaves again. "You seem ill at ease," said the old man with polite concern. "Er, no... well, yes. Actually you see, we weren't really expecting to find anybody about in fact. I sort of gathered that you were all dead or something..." "Dead?" said the old man. "Good gracious no, we have but slept." "Slept?" said Arthur incredulously. "Yes, through the economic recession you see," said the old man, apparently unconcerned about whether Arthur understood a word he was talking about or not. "Er, economic recession?" "Well you see, five million years ago the Galactic economy collapsed, and seeing that custom-made planets are something of a luxury commodity you see..." He paused and looked at Arthur. "You know we built planets do you?" he asked solemnly. "Well yes," said Arthur, "I'd sort of gathered..." "Fascinating trade," said the old man, and a wistful look came into his eyes, "doing the coastlines was always my favourite. Used to have endless fun doing the little bits in fjords... so anyway," he said trying to find his thread again, "the recession came and we decided it would save us a lot of bother if we just slept through it. So we programmed the computers to revive us when it was all over." The man stifled a very slight yawn and continued. "The computers were index linked to the Galactic stock market prices you see, so that we'd all be revived when everybody else had rebuilt the economy enough to afford our rather expensive services." Arthur, a regular Guardian reader, was deeply shocked at this. "That's a pretty unpleasant way to behave isn't it?" "Is it?" asked the old man mildly. "I'm sorry, I'm a bit out of touch." He pointed down into the crater. "Is that robot yours?" he said. "No," came a thin metallic voice from the crater, "I'm mine." "If you'd call it a robot," muttered Arthur. "It's more a sort of electronic sulking machine." "Bring it," said the old man. Arthur was quite surprised to hear a note of decision suddenly present in the old man's voice. He called to Marvin who crawled up the slope making a big show of being lame, which he wasn't. "On second thoughts," said the old man, "leave it here. You must come with me. Great things are afoot." He turned towards his craft which, though no apparent signal had been given, now drifted quietly towards them through the dark. Arthur looked down at Marvin, who now made an equally big show of turning round laboriously and trudging off down into the crater again muttering sour nothings to himself. "Come," called the old man, "come now or you will be late." "Late?" said Arthur. "What for?" "What is your name, human?" "Dent. Arthur Dent," said Arthur. "Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent," said the old man, sternly. "It's a sort of threat you see." Another wistful look came into his tired old eyes. "I've never been very good at them myself, but I'm told they can be very effective." Arthur blinked at him. "What an extraordinary person," he muttered to himself. "I beg your pardon?" said the old man. "Oh nothing, I'm sorry," said Arthur in embarrassment. "Alright, where do we go?" "In my aircar," said the old man motioning Arthur to get into the craft which had settled silently next to them. "We are going deep into the bowels of the planet where even now our race is being revived from its five-million-year slumber. Magrathea awakes." Arthur shivered involuntarily as he seated himself next to the old man. The strangeness of it, the silent bobbing movement of the craft as it soared into the night sky quite unsettled him. He looked at the old man, his face illuminated by the dull glow of tiny lights on the instrument panel. "Excuse me," he said to him, "what is your name by the way?" "My name?" said the old man, and the same distant sadness came into his face again. He paused. "My name," he said, "... is Slartibartfast." Arthur practically choked. "I beg your pardon?" he spluttered. "Slartibartfast," repeated the old man quietly. "Slartibartfast?" The old man looked at him gravely. "I said it wasn't important," he said. The aircar sailed through the night.

Chapter 23

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much-the wheel, New York, wars and so on-whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man-for precisely the same reasons. Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind of the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived. The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the "Star Sprangled Banner", but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish. In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures' plans.

Chapter 24

Silently the aircar coasted through the cold darkness, a single soft glow of light that was utterly alone in the deep Magrathean night. It sped swiftly. Arthur's companion seemed sunk in his own thoughts, and when Arthur tried on a couple of occasions to engage him in conversation again he would simply reply by asking if he was comfortable enough, and then left it at that. Arthur tried to gauge the speed at which they were travelling, but the blackness outside was absolute and he was denied any reference points. The sense of motion was so soft and slight he could almost believe they were hardly moving at all. Then a tiny glow of light appeared in the far distance and within seconds had grown so much in size that Arthur realized it was travelling towards them at a colossal speed, and he tried to make out what sort of craft it might be. He peered at it, but was unable to discern any clear shape, and suddenly gasped in alarm as the aircraft dipped sharply and headed downwards in what seemed certain to be a collision course. Their relative velocity seemed unbelievable, and Arthur had hardly time to draw breath before it was all over. The next thing he was aware of was an insane silver blur that seemed to surround him. He twisted his head sharply round and saw a small black point dwindling rapidly in the distance behind them, and it took him several seconds to realize what had happened. They had plunged into a tunnel in the ground. The colossal speed had been their own relative to the glow of light which was a stationary hole in the ground, the mouth of the tunnel. The insane blur of silver was the circular wall of the tunnel down which they were shooting, apparently at several hundred miles an hour. He closed his eyes in terror. After a length of time which he made no attempt to judge, he sensed a slight subsidence in their speed and some while later became aware that they were gradually gliding to a gentle halt. He opened his eyes again. They were still in the silver tunnel, threading and weaving their way through what appeared to be a crisscross warren of converging tunnels. When they finally stopped it was in a small chamber of curved steel. Several tunnels also had their terminus here, and at the farther end of the chamber Arthur could see a large circle of dim irritating light. It was irritating because it played tricks with the eyes, it was impossible to focus on it properly or tell how near or far it was. Arthur guessed (quite wrongly) that it might be ultra violet. Slartibartfast turned and regarded Arthur with his solemn old eyes. "Earthman," he said, "we are now deep in the heart of Magrathea." "How did you know I was an Earthman?" demanded Arthur. "These things will become clear to you," said the old man gently, "at least," he added with slight doubt in his voice, "clearer than they are at the moment." He continued: "I should warn you that the chamber we are about to pass into does not literally exist within our planet. It is a little too... large. We are about to pass through a gateway into a vast tract of hyperspace. It may disturb you." Arthur made nervous noises. Slartibartfast touched a button and added, not entirely reassuringly. "It scares the willies out of me. Hold tight." The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like.

It wasn't infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity-distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very big, so that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself. Arthur's senses bobbed and span, as, travelling at the immense speed he knew the aircar attained, they climbed slowly through the open air leaving the gateway through which they had passed an invisible pinprick in the shimmering wall behind them. The wall. The wall defied the imagination-seduced it and defeated it. The wall was so paralysingly vast and sheer that its top, bottom and sides passed away beyond the reach of sight. The mere shock of vertigo could kill a man. The wall appeared perfectly flat. It would take the finest laser measuring equipment to detect that as it climbed, apparently to infinity, as it dropped dizzily away, as it planed out to either side, it also curved. It met itself again thirteen light seconds away. In other words the wall formed the inside of a hollow sphere, a sphere over three million miles across and flooded with unimaginable light. "Welcome," said Slartibartfast as the tiny speck that was the aircar, travelling now at three times the speed of sound, crept imperceptibly forward into the mindboggling space, "welcome," he said, "to our factory floor." Arthur stared about him in a kind of wonderful horror. Ranged away before them, at distances he could neither judge nor even guess at, were a series of curious suspensions, delicate traceries of metal and light hung about shadowy spherical shapes that hung in the space. "This," said Slartibartfast, "is where we make most of our planets you see." "You mean," said Arthur, trying to form the words, "you mean you're starting it all up again now?" "No no, good heavens no," exclaimed the old man, "no, the Galaxy isn't nearly rich enough to support us yet. No, we've been awakened to perform just one extraordinary commission for very... special clients from another dimension. It may interest you... there in the distance in front of us." Arthur followed the old man's finger, till he was able to pick out the floating structure he was pointing out. It was indeed the only one of the many structures that betrayed any sign of activity about it, though this was more a sublimal impression than anything one could put one's finger on. At the moment however a flash of light arced through the structure and revealed in stark relief the patterns that were formed on the dark sphere within. Patterns that Arthur knew, rough blobby shapes that were as familiar to him as the shapes of words, part of the furniture of his mind. For a few seconds he sat in stunned silence as the images rushed around his mind and tried to find somewhere to settle down and make sense. Part of his brain told him that he knew perfectly well what he was looking at and what the shapes represented whilst another quite sensibly refused to countenance the idea and abdicated responsibility for any further thinking in that direction. The flash came again, and this time there could be no doubt. "The Earth..." whispered Arthur. "Well, the Earth Mark Two in fact," said Slartibartfast cheerfully. "We're making a copy from our original blueprints." There was a pause. "Are you trying to tell me," said Arthur, slowly and with control, "that you originally... made the Earth?" "Oh yes," said Slartibartfast. "Did you ever go to a place... I think it was called Norway?" "No," said Arthur, "no, I didn't." "Pity," said Slartibartfast, "that was one of mine. Won an award you know. Lovely crinkly edges. I was most upset to hear about its destruction." "You were upset!" "Yes. Five minutes later and it wouldn't have mattered so much. It was a quite shocking cock-up." "Huh?" said Arthur. "The mice were furious." "The mice were furious?" "Oh yes," said the old man mildly. "Yes well so I expect were the dogs and cats and duckbilled platypuses, but..." "Ah, but they hadn't paid for it you see, had they?" "Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?" For a while the aircar flew on in awkward silence. Then the old man tried patiently to explain. "Earthman, the planet you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice. It was destroyed five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it was built, and we've got to build another one." Only one word registered with Arthur. "Mice?" he said. "Indeed Earthman." "Look, sorry-are we talking about the little white furry things with the cheese fixation and women standing on tables screaming in early sixties sit coms?" Slartibartfast coughed politely. "Earthman," he said, "it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of speech. Remember I have been asleep inside this planet of Magrathea for five million years and know little of these early sixties sit coms of which you speak. These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vast hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings. The whole business with the cheese and the squeaking is just a front." The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued. "They've been experimenting on you I'm afraid." Arthur thought about this for a second, and then his face cleared. "Ah no," he said, "I see the source of the misunderstanding now. No, look you see, what happened was that we used to do experiments on them. They were often used in behavioural research, Pavlov and all that sort of stuff. So what happened was hat the mice would be set all sorts of tests, learning to ring bells, run around mazes and things so that the whole nature of the learning process could be examined. From our observations of their behaviour we were able to learn all sorts of things about our own..." Arthur's voice tailed off. "Such subtlety..." said Slartibartfast, "one has to admire it." "What?" said Arthur. "How better to disguise their real natures, and how better to guide your thinking. Suddenly running down a maze the wrong way, eating the wrong bit of cheese, unexpectedly dropping dead of myxomatosis,-if it's finely calculated the cumulative effect is enormous." He paused for effect. "You see, Earthman, they really are particularly clever hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings. Your planet and people have formed the matrix of an organic computer running a ten-million-year research programme... "Let me tell you the whole story. It'll take a little time." "Time," said Arthur weakly, "is not currently one of my problems."

Chapter 25

There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches? Many many millions of years ago a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings (whose physical manifestation in their own pan-dimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own) got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life which used to interrupt their favourite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away) that they decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all. And to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer which was so amazingly intelligent that even before the data banks had been connected up it had started from I think therefore I am and got as far as the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off. It was the size of a small city. Its main console was installed in a specially designed executive office, mounted on an enormous executive desk of finest ultramahagony topped with rich ultrared leather. The dark carpeting was discreetly sumptuous, exotic pot plants and tastefully engraved prints of the principal computer programmers and their families were deployed liberally about the room, and stately windows looked out upon a tree-lined public square. On the day of the Great On-Turning two soberly dressed programmers with brief cases arrived and were shown discreetly into the office. They were aware that this day they would represent their entire race in its greatest moment, but they conducted themselves calmly and quietly as they seated themselves deferentially before the desk, opened their brief cases and took out their leather-bound notebooks. Their names were Lunkwill and Fook. For a few moments they sat in respectful silence, then, after exchanging a quiet glance with Fook, Lunkwill leaned forward and touched a small black panel. The subtlest of hums indicated that the massive computer was now in total active mode. After a pause it spoke to them in a voice rich resonant and deep. It said: "What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought, the second greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space have been called into existence?" Lunkwill and Fook glanced at each other in surprise. "Your task, O Computer..." began Fook. "No, wait a minute, this isn't right," said Lunkwill, worried. "We distinctly designed this computer to be the greatest one ever and we're not making do with second best. Deep Thought," he addressed the computer, "are you not as we designed you to be, the greatest most powerful computer in all time?" "I described myself as the second greatest," intoned Deep Thought, "and such I am." Another worried look passed between the two programmers. Lunkwill cleared his throat. "There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greatest computer than the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?" "The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt. "A mere abacus-mention it not." "And are you not," said Fook leaning anxiously forward, "a greater analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?" "A five-week sand blizzard?" said Deep Thought haughtily. "You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff." The two programmers sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment. Then Lunkwill leaned forward again. "But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus 12, the Magic and Indefatigable?" "The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan MegaDonkey-but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterwards." "Then what," asked Fook, "is the problem?" "There is no problem," said Deep Thought with magnificent ringing tones. "I am simply the second greatest computer in the Universe of Space and Time." "But the second?" insisted Lunkwill. "Why do you keep saying the second? You're surely not thinking of the Multicorticoid Perspicutron Titan Muller are you? Or the Pondermatic? Or the..." Contemptuous lights flashed across the computer's console. "I spare not a single unit of thought on these cybernetic simpletons!" he boomed. "I speak of none but the computer that is to come after me!" Fook was losing patience. He pushed his notebook aside and muttered, "I think this is getting needlessly messianic." "You know nothing of future time," pronounced Deep Thought, "and yet in my teeming circuitry I can navigate the infinite delta streams of future probability and see that there must one day come a computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, but which it will be my fate eventually to design." Fook sighed heavily and glanced across to Lunkwill. "Can we get on and ask the question?" he said. Lunkwill motioned him to wait. "What computer is this of which you speak?" he asked. "I will speak of it no further in this present time," said Deep Thought. "Now. Ask what else of me you will that I may function. Speak." They shrugged at each other. Fook composed himself. "O Deep Thought Computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us..." he paused, "... the Answer!" "The answer?" said Deep Thought. "The answer to what?" "Life!" urged Fook. "The Universe!" said Lunkwill. "Everything!" they said in chorus. Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection. "Tricky," he said finally. "But can you do it?" Again, a significant pause. "Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it." "There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement." "A simple answer?" added Lunkwill. "Yes," said Deep Thought. "Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But," he added, "I'll have to think about it." A sudden commotion destroyed the moment: the door flew open and two angry men wearing the coarse faded-blue robes and belts of the Cruxwan University burst into the room, thrusting aside the ineffectual flunkies who tried to bar their way. "We demand admission!" shouted the younger of the two men elbowing a pretty young secretary in the throat. "Come on," shouted the older one, "you can't keep us out!" He pushed a junior programmer back through the door. "We demand that you can't keep us out!" bawled the younger one, though he was now firmly inside the room and no further attempts were being made to stop him. "Who are you?" said Lunkwill, rising angrily from his seat. "What do you want?" "I am Majikthise!" announced the older one. "And I demand that I am Vroomfondel!" shouted the younger one. Majikthise turned on Vroomfondel. "It's alright," he explained angrily, "you don't need to demand that." "Alright!" bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby desk. "I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!" "No we don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. "That is precisely what we don't demand!" Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!" "But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook. "We," said Majikthise, "are Philosophers." "Though we may not be," said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at the programmers. "Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!" "What's the problem?" said Lunkwill. "I'll tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!" "We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be the problem!" "You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?" "That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" Suddenly a stentorian voice boomed across the room. "Might I make an observation at this point?" inquired Deep Thought. "We'll go on strike!" yelled Vroomfondel. "That's right!" agreed Majikthise. "You'll have a national Philosopher's strike on your hands!" The hum level in the room suddenly increased as several ancillary bass driver units, mounted in sedately carved and varnished cabinet speakers around the room, cut in to give Deep Thought's voice a little more power. "All I wanted to say," bellowed the computer, "is that my circuits are now irrevocably committed to calculating the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything-" he paused and satisfied himself that he now had everyone's attention, before continuing more quietly, "but the programme will take me a little while to run." Fook glanced impatiently at his watch. "How long?" he said. "Seven and a half million years," said Deep Thought. Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other. "Seven and a half million years...!" they cried in chorus. "Yes," declaimed Deep Thought, "I said I'd have to think about it, didn't I? And it occurs to me that running a programme like this is bound to create an enormous amount of popular publicity for the whole area of philosophy in general. Everyone's going to have their own theories about what answer I'm eventually to come up with, and who better to capitalize on that media market than you yourself? So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other violently enough and slagging each other off in the popular press, you can keep yourself on the gravy train for life. How does that sound?" The two philosophers gaped at him. "Bloody hell," said Majikthise, "now that is what I call thinking. Here Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?" "Dunno," said Vroomfondel in an awed whisper, "think our brains must be too highly trained Majikthise." So saying, they turned on their heels and walked out of the door and into a lifestyle beyond their wildest dreams.

Chapter 26

"Yes, very salutary," said Arthur, after Slartibartfast had related the salient points of the story to him, "but I don't understand what all this has got to do with the Earth and mice and things." "That is but the first half of the story Earthman," said the old man. "If you would care to discover what happened seven and a half millions later, on the great day of the Answer, allow me to invite you to my study where you can experience the events yourself on our Sens-O-Tape records. That is unless you would care to take a quick stroll on the surface of New Earth. It's only half completed I'm afraid-we haven't even finished burying the artificial dinosaur skeletons in the crust yet, then we have the Tertiary and Quarternary Periods of the Cenozoic Era to lay down, and..." "No thank you," said Arthur, "it wouldn't be quite the same." "No," said Slartibartfast, "it won't be," and he turned the aircar round and headed back towards the mind-numbing wall.

Chapter 27

Slartibartfast's study was a total mess, like the results of an explosion in a public library. The old man frowned as they stepped in. "Terribly unfortunate," he said, "a diode blew in one of the life-support computers. When we tried to revive our cleaning staff we discovered they'd been dead for nearly thirty thousand years. Who's going to clear away the bodies, that's what I want to know. Look why don't you sit yourself down over there and let me plug you in?" He gestured Arthur towards a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus. "It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus," explained the old man as he pottered about fishing bits of wire out from under tottering piles of paper and drawing instruments. "Here," he said, "hold these," and passed a couple of stripped wire end to Arthur. The instant he took hold of them a bird flew straight through him. He was suspended in mid-air and totally invisible to himself. Beneath him was a pretty treelined city square, and all around it as far as the eye could see were white concrete buildings of airy spacious design but somewhat the worse for wear-many were cracked and stained with rain. Today however the sun was shining, a fresh breeze danced lightly through the trees, and the odd sensation that all the buildings were quietly humming was probably caused by the fact that the square and all the streets around it were thronged with cheerful excited people. Somewhere a band was playing, brightly coloured flags were fluttering in the breeze and the spirit of carnival was in the air. Arthur felt extraordinarily lonely stuck up in the air above it all without so much as a body to his name, but before he had time to reflect on this a voice rang out across the square and called for everyone's attention. A man standing on a brightly dressed dais before the building which clearly dominated the square was addressing the crowd over a Tannoy. "O people waiting in the Shadow of Deep Thought!" he cried out. "Honoured Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the Greatest and Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe has ever known... The Time of Waiting is over!" Wild cheers broke out amongst the crowd. Flags, streamers and wolf whistles sailed through the air. The narrower streets looked rather like centipedes rolled over on their backs and frantically waving their legs in the air. "Seven and a half million years our race has waited for this Great and Hopefully Enlightening Day!" cried the cheer leader. "The Day of the Answer!" Hurrahs burst from the ecstatic crowd. "Never again," cried the man, "never again will we wake up in the morning and think Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and go to work? For today we will finally learn once and for all the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little problems of Life, the Universe and Everything!" As the crowd erupted once again, Arthur found himself gliding through the air and down towards one of the large stately windows on the first floor of the building behind the dais from which the speaker was addressing the crowd. He experienced a moment's panic as he sailed straight through towards the window, which passed when a second or so later he found he had gone right through the solid glass without apparently touching it. No one in the room remarked on his peculiar arrival, which is hardly surprising as he wasn't there. He began to realize that the whole experience was merely a recorded projection which knocked six-track seventy-millimetre into a cocked hat. The room was much as Slartibartfast had described it. In seven and a half million years it had been well looked after and cleaned regularly every century or so. The ultramahagony desk was worn at the edges, the carpet a little faded now, but the large computer terminal sat in sparkling glory on the desk's leather top, as bright as if it had been constructed yesterday. Two severely dressed men sat respectfully before the terminal and waited. "The time is nearly upon us," said one, and Arthur was surprised to see a word suddenly materialize in thin air just by the man's neck. The word was Loonquawl, and it flashed a couple of times and the disappeared again. Before Arthur was able to assimilate this the other man spoke and the word Phouchg appeared by his neck. "Seventy-five thousand generations ago, our ancestors set this program in motion," the second man said, "and in all that time we will be the first to hear the computer speak." "An awesome prospect, Phouchg," agreed the first man, and Arthur suddenly realized that he was watching a recording with subtitles. "We are the ones who will hear," said Phouchg, "the answer to the great question of Life...!" "The Universe...!" said Loonquawl. "And Everything...!" "Shhh," said Loonquawl with a slight gesture, "I think Deep Thought is preparing to speak!" There was a moment's expectant pause whilst panels slowly came to life on the front of the console. Lights flashed on and off experimentally and settled down into a businesslike pattern. A soft low hum came from the communication channel. "Good morning," said Deep Thought at last. "Er... Good morning, O Deep Thought," said Loonquawl nervously, "do you have... er, that is..." "An answer for you?" interrupted Deep Thought majestically. "Yes. I have." The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in vain. "There really is one?" breathed Phouchg. "There really is one," confirmed Deep Thought. "To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything?" "Yes." Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had been a preparation for it, they had been selected at birth as those who would witness the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and squirming like excited children. "And you're ready to give it to us?" urged Loonquawl. "I am." "Now?" "Now," said Deep Thought. They both licked their dry lips. "Though I don't think," added Deep Thought, "that you're going to like it." "Doesn't matter!" said Phouchg. "We must know it! Now!" "Now?" inquired Deep Thought. "Yes! Now..." "Alright," said the computer and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable. "You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought. "Tell us!" "Alright," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question..." "Yes...!" "Of Life, the Universe and Everything..." said Deep Thought. "Yes...!" "Is..." said Deep Thought, and paused. "Yes...!" "Is..." "Yes...!!!...?" "Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

Chapter 28

It was a long time before anyone spoke. Out of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea of tense expectant faces down in the square outside. "We're going to get lynched aren't we?" he whispered. "It was a tough assignment," said Deep Thought mildly. "Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?" "I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is." "But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!" howled Loonquawl. "Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, "but what actually is it?" A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other. "Well, you know, it's just Everything... Everything..." offered Phouchg weakly. "Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means." "Oh terrific," muttered Phouchg flinging aside his notebook and wiping away a tiny tear. "Look, alright, alright," said Loonquawl, "can you just please tell us the Question?" "The Ultimate Question?" "Yes!" "Of Life, the Universe, and Everything?" "Yes!" Deep Thought pondered this for a moment. "Tricky," he said. "But can you do it?" cried Loonquawl. Deep Thought pondered this for another long moment. Finally: "No," he said firmly. Both men collapsed on to their chairs in despair. "But I'll tell you who can," said Deep Thought. They both looked up sharply. "Who?" "Tell us!" Suddenly Arthur began to feel his apparently non-existent scalp begin to crawl as he found himself moving slowly but inexorably forward towards the console, but it was only a dramatic zoom on the part of whoever had made the recording he assumed. "I speak of none other than the computer that is to come after me," intoned Deep Thought, his voice regaining its accustomed declamatory tones. "A computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate-and yet I will design it for you. A computer which can calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form part of its operational matrix. And you yourselves shall take on new forms and go down into the computer to navigate its ten-million-year program! Yes! I shall design this computer for you. And I shall name it also unto you. And it shall be called... The Earth." Phouchg gaped at Deep Thought. "What a dull name," he said and great incisions appeared down the length of his body. Loonquawl too suddenly sustained horrific gashed from nowhere. The Computer console blotched and cracked, the walls flickered and crumbled and the room crashed upwards into its own ceiling...

Slartibartfast was standing in front of Arthur holding the two wires. "End of the tape," he explained.

Chapter 29

"Zaphod! Wake up!" "Mmmmmwwwwwerrrrr?" "Hey come on, wake up." "Just let me stick to what I'm good at, yeah?" muttered Zaphod and rolled away from the voice back to sleep. "Do you want me to kick you?" said Ford. "Would it give you a lot of pleasure?" said Zaphod, blearily. "No." "Nor me. So what's the point? Stop bugging me." Zaphod curled himself up. "He got a double dose of the gas," said Trillian looking down at him, "two windpipes." "And stop talking," said Zaphod, "it's hard enough trying to sleep anyway. What's the matter with the ground? It's all cold and hard." "It's gold," said Ford. With an amazingly balletic movement Zaphod was standing and scanning the horizon, because that was how far the gold ground stretched in every direction, perfectly smooth and solid. It gleamed like... it's impossible to say what it gleamed like because nothing in the Universe gleams in quite the same way that a planet of solid gold does. "Who put all that there?" yelped Zaphod, goggle-eyed. "Don't get excited," said Ford, "it's only a catalogue." "A who?" "A catalogue," said Trillian, "an illusion." "How can you say that?" cried Zaphod, falling to his hands and knees and staring at the ground. He poked it and prodded it with his fingernail. It was very heavy and very slightly soft-he could mark it with his fingernail. It was very yellow and very shiny, and when he breathed on it his breath evaporated off it in that very peculiar and special way that breath evaporates off solid gold. "Trillian and I came round a while ago," said Ford. "We shouted and yelled till somebody came and then carried on shouting and yelling till they got fed up and put us in their planet catalogue to keep us busy till they were ready to deal with us. This is all Sens-O-Tape." Zaphod stared at him bitterly. "Ah, shit," he said, "you wake me up from my own perfectly good dream to show me somebody else's." He sat down in a huff. "What's that series of valleys over there?" he said. "Hallmark," said Ford. "We had a look." "We didn't wake you earlier," said Trillian. "The last planet was knee deep in fish." "Fish?" "Some people like the oddest things." "And before that," said Ford, "we had platinum. Bit dull. We thought you'd like to see this one though." Seas of light glared at them in one solid blaze wherever they looked. "Very pretty," said Zaphod petulantly. In the sky a huge green catalogue number appeared. It flickered and changed, and when they looked around again so had the land. As with one voice they all went, "Yuch." The sea was purple. The beach they were on was composed of tiny yellow and green pebbles-presumably terribly precious stones. The mountains in the distance seemed soft and undulating with red peaks. Nearby stood a solid silver beach table with a frilly mauve parasol and silver tassles. In the sky a huge sign appeared, replacing the catalogue number. It said, Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud. And five hundred entirely naked women dropped out of the sky on parachutes. In a moment the scene vanished and left them in a springtime meadow full of cows. "Ow!" said Zaphod. "My brains!" "You want to talk about it?" said Ford. "Yeah, OK," said Zaphod, and all three sat down and ignored the scenes that came and went around them. "I figure this," said Zaphod. "Whatever happened to my mind, I did it. And I did it in such a way that it wouldn't be detected by the government screening tests. And I wasn't to know anything about it myself. Pretty crazy, right?" The other two nodded in agreement. "So I reckon, what's so secret that I can't let anybody know I know it, not the Galactic Government, not even myself? And the answer is I don't know. Obviously. But I put a few things together and I can begin to guess. When did I decide to run for President? Shortly after the death of President Yooden Vranx. You remember Yooden, Ford?" "Yeah," said Ford, "he was that guy we met when we were kids, the Arcturan captain. He was a gas. He gave us conkers when you bust your way into his megafreighter. Said you were the most amazing kid he'd ever met." "What's all this?" said Trillian. "Ancient history," said Ford, "when we were kids together on Betelgeuse. The Arcturan megafreighters used to carry most of the bulky trade between the Galactic Centre and the outlying regions The Betelgeuse trading scouts used to find the markets and the Arcturans would supply them. There was a lot of trouble with space pirates before they were wiped out in the Dordellis wars, and the megafreighters had to be equipped with the most fantastic defence shields known to Galactic science. They were real brutes of ships, and huge. In orbit round a planet they would eclipse the sun. "One day, young Zaphod here decides to raid one. On a tri-jet scooter designed for stratosphere work, a mere kid. I mean forget it, it was crazier than a mad monkey. I went along for the ride because I'd got some very safe money on him not doing it, and didn't want him coming back with fake evidence. So what happens? We got in his tri-jet which he had souped up into something totally other, crossed three parsecs in a matter of weeks, bust our way into a megafreighter I still don't know how, marched on to the bridge waving toy pistols and demanded conkers. A wilder thing I have not known. Lost me a year's pocket money. For what? Conkers." "The captain was this really amazing guy, Yooden Vranx," said Zaphod. "He gave us food, booze-stuff from really weird parts of the Galaxy-lots of conkers of course, and we had just the most incredible time. Then he teleported us back. Into the maximum security wing of Betelgeuse state prison. He was a cool guy. Went on to become President of the Galaxy." Zaphod paused. The scene around them was currently plunged into gloom. Dark mists swirled round them and elephantine shapes lurked indistinctly in the shadows. The air was occasionally rent with the sounds of illusory beings murdering other illusory beings. Presumably enough people must have liked this sort of thing to make it a paying proposition. "Ford," said Zaphod quietly. "Yeah?" "Just before Yooden died he came to see me." "What? You never told me." "No." "What did he say? What did he come to see you about?" "He told me about the Heart of Gold. It was his idea that I should steal it." "His idea?" "Yeah," said Zaphod, "and the only possible way of stealing it was to be at the launching ceremony." Ford gaped at him in astonishment for a moment, and then roared with laughter. "Are you telling me," he said, "that you set yourself up to become President of the Galaxy just to steal that ship?" "That's it," said Zaphod with the sort of grin that would get most people locked away in a room with soft walls. "But why?" said Ford. "What's so important about having it?" "Dunno," said Zaphod, "I think if I'd consciously known what was so important about it and what I would need it for it would have showed up on the brain screening tests and I would never have passed. I think Yooden told me a lot of things that are still locked away." "So you think you went and mucked about inside your own brain as a result of Yooden talking to you?" "He was a hell of a talker." "Yeah, but Zaphod old mate, you want to look after yourself you know." Zaphod shrugged. "I mean, don't you have any inkling of the reasons for all this?" asked Ford. Zaphod thought hard about this and doubts seemed to cross his minds. "No," he said at last, "I don't seem to be letting myself into any of my secrets. Still," he added on further reflection, "I can understand that. I wouldn't trust myself further than I could spit a rat." A moment later, the last planet in the catalogue vanished from beneath them and the solid world resolved itself again. They were sitting in a plush waiting room full of glass-top tables and design awards. A tall Magrathean man was standing in front of them. "The mice will see you now," he said.

Chapter 30

"So there you have it," said Slartibartfast, making a feeble and perfunctory attempt to clear away some of the appalling mess of his study. He picked up a paper from the top of a pile, but then couldn't think of anywhere else to put it, so he but it back on top of the original pile which promptly fell over. "Deep Thought designed the Earth, we built it and you lived on it." "And the Vogons came and destroyed it five minutes before the program was completed," added Arthur, not unbitterly. "Yes," said the old man, pausing to gaze hopelessly round the room. "Ten million years of planning and work gone just like that. Ten million years, Earthman... can you conceive of that kind of time span? A galactic civilization could grow from a single worm five times over in that time. Gone." He paused. "Well that's bureaucracy for you," he added. "You know," said Arthur thoughtfully, "all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was." "No," said the old man, "that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that." "Everyone?" said Arthur. "Well, if everyone has that perhaps it means something! Perhaps somewhere outside the Universe we know..." "Maybe. Who cares?" said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too excited. "Perhaps I'm old and tired," he continued, "but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway." He rummaged around in a pile of debris and pulled out a large perspex block with his name on it and a model of Norway moulded into it. "Where's the sense in that?" he said. "None that I've been able to make out. I've been doing fjords in all my life. For a fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award." He turned it over in his hands with a shrug and tossed it aside carelessly, but not so carelessly that it didn't land on something soft. "In this replacement Earth we're building they've given me Africa to do and of course I'm doing it with all fjords again because I happen to like them, and I'm old fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it's not equatorial enough. Equatorial!" He gave a hollow laugh. "What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day." "And are you?" "No. That's where it all falls down of course." "Pity," said Arthur with sympathy. "It sounded like quite a good lifestyle otherwise." Somewhere on the wall a small white light flashed. "Come," said Slartibartfast, "you are to meet the mice. Your arrival on the planet has caused considerable excitement. It has already been hailed, so I gather, as the third most improbable event in the history of the Universe." "What were the first two?" "Oh, probably just coincidences," said Slartibartfast carelessly. He opened the door and stood waiting for Arthur to follow. Arthur glanced around him once more, and then down at himself, at the sweaty dishevelled clothes he had been lying in the mud in on Thursday morning. "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," he muttered to himself. "I beg your pardon?" said the old man mildly. "Oh nothing," said Arthur, "only joking."

Chapter 31

It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated. For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant Galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle. The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time. A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl'hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G'Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother. The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that very moment the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle drifted across the conference table. Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries. Eventually of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realized that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy-now positively identified as the source of the offending remark. For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across-which happened to be the Earth-where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog. Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it. "It's just life," they say.

A short aircar trip brought Arthur and the old Magrathean to a doorway. They left the car and went through the door into a waiting room full of glass-topped tables and perspex awards. Almost immediately, a light flashed above the door at the other side of the room and they entered. "Arthur! You're safe!" a voice cried. "Am I?" said Arthur, rather startled. "Oh good." The lighting was rather subdued and it took him a moment or so to see Ford, Trillian and Zaphod sitting round a large table beautifully decked out with exotic dishes, strange sweetmeats and bizarre fruits. They were stuffing their faces. "What happened to you?" demanded Arthur. "Well," said Zaphod, attacking a boneful of grilled muscle, "our hosts here have been gassing us and zapping our minds and being generally weird and have now given us a rather nice meal to make it up to us. Here," he said hoiking out a lump of evil smelling meat from a bowl, "have some Vegan Rhino's cutlet. It's delicious if you happen to like that sort of thing." "Hosts?" said Arthur. "What hosts? I don't see any..." A small voice said, "Welcome to lunch, Earth creature." Arthur glanced around and suddenly yelped. "Ugh!" he said. "There are mice on the table!" There was an awkward silence as everyone looked pointedly at Arthur. He was busy staring at two white mice sitting in what looked like whisky glasses on the table. He heard the silence and glanced around at everyone. "Oh!" he said, with sudden realization. "Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't quite prepared for..." "Let me introduce you," said Trillian. "Arthur this is Benji mouse." "Hi," said one of the mice. His whiskers stroked what must have been a touch sensitive panel on the inside of the whisky-glass like affair, and it moved forward slightly. "And this is Frankie mouse." The other mouse said, "Pleased to meet you," and did likewise. Arthur gaped. "But aren't they..." "Yes," said Trillian, "they are the mice I brought with me from the Earth." She looked him in the eye and Arthur thought he detected the tiniest resigned shrug. "Could you pass me that bowl of grated Arcturan Megadonkey?" she said. Slartibartfast coughed politely. "Er, excuse me," he said. "Yes, thank you Slartibartfast," said Benji mouse sharply, "you may go." "What? Oh... er, very well," said the old man, slightly taken aback, "I'll just go and get on with some of my fjords then." "Ah, well in fact that won't be necessary," said Frankie mouse. "It looks very much as if we won't be needing the new Earth any longer." He swivelled his pink little eyes. "Not now that we have found a native of the planet who was there seconds before it was destroyed." "What?" cried Slartibartfast, aghast. "You can't mean that! I've got a thousand glaciers poised and ready to roll over Africa!" "Well perhaps you can take a quick skiing holiday before you dismantle them," said Frankie, acidly. "Skiing holiday!" cried the old man. "Those glaciers are works of art! Elegantly sculptured contours, soaring pinnacles of ice, deep majestic ravines! It would be sacrilege to go skiing on high art!" "Thank you Slartibartfast," said Benji firmly. "That will be all." "Yes sir," said the old man coldly, "thank you very much. Well, goodbye Earthman," he said to Arthur, "hope the lifestyle comes together." With a brief nod to the rest of the company he turned and walked sadly out of the room. Arthur stared after him not knowing what to say. "Now," said Benji mouse, "to business." Ford and Zaphod clinked their glasses together. "To business!" they said. "I beg your pardon?" said Benji. Ford looked round. "Sorry, I thought you were proposing a toast," he said. The two mice scuttled impatiently around in their glass transports. Finally they composed themselves, and Benji moved forward to address Arthur. "Now, Earth creature," he said, "the situation we have in effect is this. We have, as you know, been more or less running your planet for the last ten million years in order to find this wretched thing called the Ultimate Question." "Why?" said Arthur, sharply. "No-we already thought of that one," said Frankie interrupting, "but it doesn't fit the answer. Why? Forty-Two... you see, it doesn't work." "No," said Arthur, "I mean why have you been doing it?" "Oh, I see," said Frankie. "Well, eventually just habit I think, to be brutally honest. And this is more or less the point-we're sick to the teeth with the whole thing, and the prospect of doing it all over again on account of those whinnet-ridden Vogons quite frankly gives me the screaming heeby jeebies, you know what I mean? It was by the merest lucky chance that Benji and I finished our particular job and left the planet early for a quick holiday, and have since manipulated our way back to Magrathea by the good offices of your friends." "Magrathea is a gateway back to our own dimension," put in Benji. "Since when," continued his murine colleague, "we have had an offer of a quite enormously fat contract to do the 5D chat show and lecture circuit back in our own dimensional neck of the woods, and we're very much inclined to take it." "I would, wouldn't you Ford?" said Zaphod promptingly. "Oh yes," said Ford, "jump at it, like a shot." Arthur glanced at them, wondering what all this was leading up to. "But we've got to have a product you see," said Frankie, "I mean ideally we still need the Ultimate Question in some form or other." Zaphod leaned forward to Arthur. "You see," he said, "if they're just sitting there in the studio looking very relaxed and, you know, just mentioning that they happen to know the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, and then eventually have to admit that in fact it's Forty-two, then the show's probably quite short. No follow-up, you see." "We have to have something that sounds good," said Benji. "Something that sounds good?" exclaimed Arthur. "An Ultimate Question that sounds good? From a couple of mice?" The mice bristled. "Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that if there's any real truth, it's that the entire multi-dimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise," said Frankie. "But..." started Arthur, hopelessly. "Hey, will you get this, Earthman," interrupted Zaphod. "You are a last generation product of that computer matrix, right, and you were there right up to the moment your planet got the finger, yeah?" "Er..." "So your brain was an organic part of the penultimate configuration of the computer programme," said Ford, rather lucidly he thought. "Right?" said Zaphod. "Well," said Arthur doubtfully. He wasn't aware of ever having felt an organic part of anything. He had always seen this as one of his problems. "In other words," said Benji, steering his curious little vehicle right over to Arthur, "there's a good chance that the structure of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain-so we want to buy it off you." "What, the question?" said Arthur. "Yes," said Ford and Trillian. "For lots of money," said Zaphod. "No, no," said Frankie, "it's the brain we want to buy." "What!" "I thought you said you could just read his brain electronically," protested Ford. "Oh yes," said Frankie, "but we'd have to get it out first. It's got to be prepared." "Treated," said Benji. "Diced." "Thank you," shouted Arthur, tipping up his chair and backing away from the table in horror. "It could always be replaced," said Benji reasonably, "if you think it's important." "Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie, "a simple one would suffice." "A simple one!" wailed Arthur. "Yeah," said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea? who'd know the difference?" "What?" cried Arthur, backing away still further. "See what I mean?" said Zaphod and howled with pain because of something that Trillian did at that moment. "I'd notice the difference," said Arthur. "No you wouldn't," said Frankie mouse, "you'd be programmed not to." Ford made for the door. "Look, I'm sorry, mice old lads," he said. "I don't think we've got a deal." "I rather think we have to have a deal," said the mice in chorus, all the charm vanishing fro their piping little voices in an instant. With a tiny whining shriek their two glass transports lifted themselves off the table, and swung through the air towards Arthur, who stumbled further backwards into a blind corner, utterly unable to cope or think of anything. Trillian grabbed him desperately by the arm and tried to drag him towards the door, which Ford and Zaphod were struggling to open, but Arthur was dead weight-he seemed hypnotized by the airborne rodents swooping towards him. She screamed at him, but he just gaped. With one more yank, Ford and Zaphod got the door open. On the other side of it was a small pack of rather ugly men who they could only assume were the heavy mob of Magrathea. Not only were they ugly themselves, but the medical equipment they carried with them was also far from pretty. They charged. So-Arthur was about to have his head cut open, Trillian was unable to help him, and Ford and Zaphod were about to be set upon by several thugs a great deal heavier and more sharply armed than they were. All in all it was extremely fortunate that at that moment every alarm on the planet burst into an earsplitting din.

Chapter 32

"Emergency! Emergency!" blared the klaxons throughout Magrathea. "Hostile ship has landed on planet. Armed intruders in section 8A. Defence stations, defence stations!" The two mice sniffed irritably round the fragments of their glass transports where they lay shattered on the floor. "Damnation," muttered Frankie mouse, "all that fuss over two pounds of Earthling brain." He scuttled round and about, his pink eyes flashing, his fine white coat bristling with static. "The only thing we can do now," said Benji, crouching and stroking his whiskers in thought, "is to try and fake a question, invent one that will sound plausible." "Difficult," said Frankie. He thought. "How about What's yellow and dangerous?" Benji considered this for a moment. "No, no good," he said. "Doesn't fit the answer." They sank into silence for a few seconds. "Alright," said Benji. "What do you get if you multiply six by seven?" "No, no, too literal, too factual," said Frankie, "wouldn't sustain the punters' interest." Again they thought. Then Frankie said: "Here's a thought. How many roads must a man walk down?" "Ah," said Benji. "Aha, now that does sound promising!" He rolled the phrase around a little. "Yes," he said, "that's excellent! Sounds very significant without actually tying you down to meaning anything at all. How many roads must a man walk down? Forty-two. Excellent, excellent, that'll fox 'em. Frankie baby, we are made!" They performed a scampering dance in their excitement. Near them on the floor lay several rather ugly men who had been hit about the head with some heavy design awards. Half a mile away, four figures pounded up a corridor looking for a way out. They emerged into a wide open-plan computer bay. They glanced about wildly. "Which way do you reckon Zaphod?" said Ford. "At a wild guess, I'd say down here," said Zaphod, running off down to the right between a computer bank and the wall. As the others started after him he was brought up short by a Kill-O-Zap energy bolt that cracked through the air inches in front of him and fried a small section of adjacent wall. A voice on a loud hailer said, "OK Beeblebrox, hold it right there. We've got you covered." "Cops!" hissed Zaphod, and span around in a crouch. "You want to try a guess at all, Ford?" "OK, this way," said Ford, and the four of them ran down a gangway between two computer banks. At the end of the gangway appeared a heavily armoured and space-suited figure waving a vicious Kill-O-Zap gun. "We don't want to shoot you, Beeblebrox!" shouted the figure. "Suits me fine!" shouted Zaphod back and dived down a wide gap between two data process units. The others swerved in behind him. "There are two of them," said Trillian. "We're cornered." They squeezed themselves down in an angle between a large computer data bank and the wall. They held their breath and waited. Suddenly the air exploded with energy bolts as both the cops opened fire on them simultaneously. "Hey, they're shooting at us," said Arthur, crouching in a tight ball, "I thought they said they didn't want to do that." "Yeah, I thought they said that," agreed Ford. Zaphod stuck a head up for a dangerous moment. "Hey," he said, "I thought you said you didn't want to shoot us!" and ducked again. They waited. After a moment a voice replied, "It isn't easy being a cop!" "What did he say?" whispered Ford in astonishment. "He said it isn't easy being a cop." "Well surely that's his problem isn't it?" "I'd have thought so." Ford shouted out, "Hey listen! I think we've got enough problems on our own having you shooting at us, so if you could avoid laying your problems on us as well, I think we'd all find it easier to cope!" Another pause, and then the loud hailer again. "Now see here, guy," said the voice on the loud hailer, "you're not dealing with any dumb two-bit trigger-pumping morons with low hairlines, little piggy eyes and no conversation, we're a couple of intelligent caring guys that you'd probably quite like if you met us socially! I don't go around gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it afterwards in seedy space-rangers bars, like some cops I could mention! I go around shooting people gratuitously and then I agonize about it afterwards for hours to my girlfriend!" "And I write novels!" chimed in the other cop. "Though I haven't had any of them published yet, so I better warn you, I'm in a meeeean mood!" Ford's eyes popped halfway out of their sockets. "Who are these guys?" he said. "Dunno," said Zaphod, "I think I preferred it when they were shooting." "So are you going to come quietly," shouted one of the cops again, "or are you going to let us blast you out?" "Which would you prefer?" shouted Ford. A millisecond later the air about them started to fry again, as bolt after bolt of Kill-O-Zap hurled itself into the computer bank in front of them. The fusillade continued for several seconds at unbearable intensity. When it stopped, there were a few seconds of near quietness ad the echoes died away. "You still there?" called one of the cops. "Yes," they called back. "We didn't enjoy doing that at all," shouted the other cop. "We could tell," shouted Ford. "Now, listen to this, Beeblebrox, and you better listen good!" "Why?" shouted Back Zaphod. "Because," shouted the cop, "it's going to be very intelligent, and quite interesting and humane! Now either you all give yourselves up now and let us beat you up a bit, though not very much of course because we are firmly opposed to needless violence, or we blow up this entire planet and possibly one or two others we noticed on our way out here!" "But that's crazy!" cried Trillian. "You wouldn't do that!" "Oh yes we would," shouted the cop, "wouldn't we?" he asked the other one. "Oh yes, we'd have to, no question," the other one called back. "But why?" demanded Trillian. "Because there are some things you have to do even if you are an enlightened liberal cop who knows all about sensitivity and everything!" "I just don't believe these guys," muttered Ford, shaking his head. One cop shouted to the other, "Shall we shoot them again for a bit?" "Yeah, why not?" They let fly another electric barrage. The heat and noise was quite fantastic. Slowly, the computer bank was beginning to disintegrate. The front had almost all melted away, and thick rivulets of molten metal were winding their way back towards where they were squatting. They huddled further back and waited for the end.

Chapter 33

But the end never came, at least not then. Quite suddenly the barrage stopped, and the sudden silence afterwards was punctuated by a couple of strangled gurgles and thuds. The four stared at each other. "What happened?" said Arthur. "They stopped," said Zaphod with a shrug. "Why?" "Dunno, do you want to go and ask them?" "No." They waited. "Hello?" called out Ford. No answer. "That's odd." "Perhaps it's a trap." "They haven't the wit." "What were those thuds?" "Dunno." They waited for a few more seconds. "Right," said Ford, "I'm going to have a look." He glanced round at the others. "Is no one going to say, No you can't possibly, let me go instead?" They all shook their heads. "Oh well," he said, and stood up. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen. Ford peered through the thick smoke that was billowing out of the burning computer. Cautiously he stepped out into the open. Still nothing happened. Twenty yards away he could dimly see through the smoke the space-suited figure of one of the cops. He was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground. Twenty yards in the other direction lay the second man. No one else was anywhere to be seen. This struck Ford as being extremely odd. Slowly, nervously, he walked towards the first one. The body lay reassuringly still as he approached it, and continued to lie reassuringly still as he reached it and put his foot down on the Kill-O-Zap gun that still dangled from its limp fingers. He reached down and picked it up, meeting no resistance. The cop was quite clearly dead. A quick examination revealed him to be from Blagulon Kappa-he was a methane-breathing life form, dependent on his space suit for survival in the thin oxygen atmosphere of Magrathea. The tiny life-support system computer on his backpack appeared unexpectedly to have blown up. Ford poked around in it in considerable astonishment. These miniature suit computers usually had the full back-up of the main computer back on the ship, with which they were directly linked through the sub-etha. Such a system was fail-safe in all circumstances other than total feedback malfunction, which was unheard of. He hurried over to the other prone figure, and discovered that exactly the same impossible thing had happened to him, presumably simultaneously. He called the others over to look. They came, shared his astonishment, but not his curiosity. "Let's get shot out of this hole," said Zaphod. "If whatever I'm supposed to be looking for is here, I don't want it." He grabbed the second Kill-O-Zap gun, blasted a perfectly harmless accounting computer and rushed out into the corridor, followed by the others. He very nearly blasted hell out of an aircar that stood waiting for them a few yards away. The aircar was empty, but Arthur recognized it as belonging to Slartibartfast. It had a note from him pinned to part of its sparse instrument panel. The note had an arrow drawn on it, pointing at one of the controls. It said, This is probably the best button to press.

Chapter 34

The aircar rocketed them at speeds in excess of R17 through the steel tunnels that lead out onto the appalling surface of the planet which was now in the grip of yet another drear morning twilight. Ghastly grey lights congealed on the land. R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental wellbeing and not being more than say five minutes late. It is therefore clearly an almost infinitely variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed taken as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquility this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers and even death. R17 is not a fixed velocity, but it is clearly far too fast. The aircar flung itself through the air at R17 and above, deposited them next to the Heart of Gold which stood starkly on the frozen ground like a bleached bone, and then precipitately hurled itself back in the direction whence they had come, presumably on important business of its own. Shivering, the four of them stood and looked at the ship. Beside it stood another one. It was the Blagulon Kappa policecraft, a bulbous sharklike affair, slate green in colour and smothered with black stencilled letters of varying degrees of size and unfriendliness. The letters informed anyone who cared to read them as to where the ship was from, what section of the police it was assigned to, and where the power feeds should be connected. It seemed somehow unnaturally dark and silent, even for a ship whose two-man crew was at that moment lying asphyxicated in a smoke-filled chamber several miles beneath the ground. It is one of those curious things that is impossible to explain or define, but one can sense when a ship is completely dead. Ford could sense it and found it most mysterious-a ship and two policemen seemed to have gone spontaneously dead. In his experience the Universe simply didn't work like that. The other three could sense it too, but they could sense the bitter cold even more and hurried back into the Heart of Gold suffering from an acute attack of no curiosity. Ford stayed, and went to examine the Blagulon ship. As he walked, he nearly tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down in the cold dust. "Marvin!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing?" "Don't feel you have to take any notice of me, please," came a muffled drone. "But how are you, metalman?" said Ford. "Very depressed." "What's up?" "I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there." "Why," said Ford squatting down beside him and shivering, "are you lying face down in the dust?" "It's a very effective way of being wretched," said Marvin. "Don't pretend you want to talk to me, I know you hate me." "No I don't." "Yes you do, everybody does. It's part of the shape of the Universe. I only have to talk to somebody and they begin to hate me. Even robots hate me. If you just ignore me I expect I shall probably go away." He jacked himself up to his feet and stood resolutely facing the opposite direction. "That ship hated me," he said dejectedly, indicating the policecraft. "That ship?" said Ford in sudden excitement. "What happened to it? Do you know?" "It hated me because I talked to it." "You talked to it?" exclaimed Ford. "What do you mean you talked to it?" "Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin. "And what happened?" pressed Ford. "It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.

Chapter 35

That night, as the Heart of Gold was busy putting a few light years between itself and the Horsehead Nebula, Zaphod lounged under the small palm tree on the bridge trying to bang his brain into shape with massive Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters; Ford and Trillian sat in a corner discussing life and matters arising from it; and Arthur took to his bed to flip through Ford's copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Since he was going to live in the place, he reasoned, he'd better start finding out something about it. He came across this entry. It said: 'The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases." "For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?" He got no further before the ship's intercom buzzed into life. "Hey Earthman? You hungry kid?" said Zaphod's voice. "Er, well yes, a little peckish I suppose," said Arthur. "OK baby, hold tight," said Zaphod. "We'll take in a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."

DOUGLAS ADAMS

THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE

To Jane and James

with many thanks to Geoffrey Perkins for achieving the Improbable to Paddy Kingsland, Lisa Braun and Alick Hale Munro for helping him to John Lloyd for his help with the original Milliways script to Simon Brett for starting the whole thing off

to the Paul Simon album One Trick Pony which I played incessantly while writing this book. Five years is far too long

And with very special thanks to Jacqui Graham for infinite patience, kindness and food in adversity

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Chapter 1

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Many races believe that it was created by some sort of God, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel. However, the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory is not widely accepted outside Viltvodle VI and so, the Universe being the puzzling place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought. For instance, a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings once built themselves a gigantic supercomputer called Deep Thought to calculate once and for all the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. For seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty-two-and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was. And this computer, which was called the Earth, was so large that it was frequently mistaken for a planet-especially by the strange ape-like beings who roamed its surface, totally unaware that they were simply part of a gigantic computer program. And this is very odd, because without that fairly simple and obvious piece of knowledge, nothing that ever happened on the Earth could possibly make the slightest bit of sense. Sadly however, just before the critical moment of readout, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way-so they claimed-for a new hyperspace bypass, and so all hope of discovering a meaning for life was lost for ever. Or so it would seem. Two of there strange, ape-like creatures survived. Arthur Dent escaped at the very last moment because an old friend of his, Ford Prefect, suddenly turned out to be from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he had hitherto claimed; and, more to the point, he knew how to hitch rides on flying saucers. Tricia McMillian-or Trillian-had skipped the planet six months earlier with Zaphod Beeblebrox, the then President of the Galaxy. Two survivors. They are all that remains of the greatest experiment ever conducted-to find the Ultimate Question and the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe, and Everything. And, less than half a million miles from where their starship is drifting lazily through the inky blackness of space, a Vogon ship is moving slowly towards them.

Chapter 2

Like all Vogon ships it looked as if it had been not so much designed as congealed. The unpleasant yellow lumps and edifices which protuded from it at unsightly angles would have disfigured the looks of most ships, but in this case that was sadly impossible. Uglier things have been spotted in the skies, but not by reliable witnesses. In fact to see anything much uglier than a Vogon ship you would have to go inside and look at a Vogon. If you are wise, however, this is precisely what you will avoid doing because the average Vogon will not think twice before doing something so pointlessly hideous to you that you will wish you had never been born-or (if you are a clearer minded thinker) that the Vogon had never been born. In fact, the average Vogon probably wouldn't even think once. They are simple-minded, thick-willed, slug-brained creatures, and thinking is not really something they are cut out for. Anatomical analysis of the Vogon reveals that its brain was originally a badly deformed, misplaced and dyspeptic liver. The fairest thing you can say about them, then, is that they know what they like, and what they like generally involves hurting people and, wherever possible, getting very angry. One thing they don't like is leaving a job unfinished-particularly this Vogon, and particularly-for various reasons-this job. This Vogon was Captain Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council, and he was it who had had the job of demolishing the so-called "planet" Earth. He heaved his monumentally vile body round in his ill-fitting, slimy seat and stared at the monitor screen on which the starship Heart of Gold was being systematically scanned. It mattered little to him that the Heart of Gold, with its Infinite Improbability Drive, was the most beautiful and revolutionary ship ever built. Aesthetics and technology were closed books to him and, had he had his way, burnt and buried books as well. It mattered even less to him that Zaphod Beeblebrox was aboard. Zaphod Beeblebrox was now the ex-President of the Galaxy, and though every police force in the Galaxy was currently pursuing both him and this ship he had stolen, the Vogon was not interested. He had other fish to fry. It has been said that Vogons are not above a little bribery and corruption in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds, and this was certainly true in his case. When he heard the words "integrity" or "moral rectitude", he reached for his dictionary, and when he heard the chink of ready money in large quantities he reached for the rule book and threw it away. In seeking so implacably the destruction of the Earth and all that therein lay he was moving somewhat above and beyond the call of his professional duty. There was even some doubt as to whether the said bypass was actually going to be built, but the matter had been glossed over. He grunted a repellent grunt of satisfaction. "Computer," he croaked, "get me my brain care specialist on the line." Within a few seconds the face of Gag Halfrunt appeared on the screen, smiling the smile of a man who knew he was ten light years away from the Vogon face he was looking at. Mixed up somewhere in the smile was a glint of irony too. Though the Vogon persistently referred to him as "my private brain care specialist" there was not a lot of brain to take care of, and it was in fact Halfrunt who was employing the Vogon. He was paying him an awful lot of money to do some very dirty work. As one of the Galaxy's most prominent and successful psychiatrists, he and a consortium of his colleagues were quite prepared to spend an awful lot of money when it seemed that the entire future of psychiatry might be at stake. "Well," he said, "hello my Captain of Vogons Prostetnic, and how are we feeling today?" The Vogon captain told him that in the last few hours he had wiped out nearly half his crew in a disciplinary exercise. Halfrunt's smile did not flicker for an instant. "Well," he said, "I think this is perfectly normal behaviour for a Vogon, you know? The natural and healthy channelling of the aggressive instincts into acts of senseless violence." "That," rumbled the Vogon, "is what you always say." "Well again," said Halfrunt, "I think that this is perfectly normal behaviour for a psychiatrist. Good. We are clearly both very well adjusted in our mental attitudes today. Now tell me, what news of the mission?" "We have located the ship." "Wonderful," said Halfrunt, "wonderful! and the occupants?" "The Earthman is there." "Excellent! And...?" "A female from the same planet. They are the last." "Good, good," beamed Halfrunt, "Who else?" "The man Prefect." "Yes?" "And Zaphod Beeblebrox." For an instant Halfrunt's smile flickered. "Ah yes," he said, "I had been expecting this. It is most regrettable." "A personal friend?" inquired the Vogon, who had heard the expression somewhere once and decided to try it out. "Ah, no," said Halfrunt, "in my profession you know, we do not make personal friends." "Ah," grunted the Vogon, "professional detachment." "No," said Halfrunt cheerfully, "we just don't have the knack." He paused. His mouth continued to smile, but his eyes frowned slightly. "But Beeblebrox, you know," he said, "he is one of my most profitable clients. He had personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts." He toyed with this thought a little before reluctantly dismissing it. "Still," he said, "you are ready for your task?" "Yes." "Good. Destroy the ship immediately." "What about Beeblebrox?" "Well," said Halfrunt brightly, "Zaphod's just this guy, you know?" He vanished from the screen. The Vogon Captain pressed a communicator button which connected him with the remains of his crew. "Attack," he said.

At that precise moment Zaphod Beeblebrox was in his cabin swearing very loudly. Two hours ago, he had said that they would go for a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, whereupon he had had a blazing row with the ship's computer and stormed off to his cabin shouting that he would work out the Improbability factors with a pencil. The Heart of Gold's Improbability Drive made it the most powerful and unpredictable ship in existence. There was nothing it couldn't do, provided you knew exactly how improbable it was that the thing you wanted it to do would ever happen. He had stolen it when, as President, he was meant to be launching it. He didn't know exactly why he had stolen it, except that he liked it. He didn't know why he had become President of the Galaxy, except that it seemed a fun thing to be. He did know that there were better reasons than these, but that they were buried in a dark, locked off section of his two brains. He wished the dark, locked off section of his two brains would go away because they occasionally surfaced momentarily and put strange thoughts into the light, fun sections of his mind and tried to deflect him from what he saw as being the basic business of his life, which was to have a wonderfully good time. At the moment he was not having a wonderfully good time. He had run out of patience and pencils and was feeling very hungry. "Starpox!" he shouted. At that same precise moment, Ford Prefect was in mid air. This was not because of anything wrong with the ship's artificial gravity field, but because he was leaping down the stair-well which led to the ship's personal cabins. It was a very high jump to do in one bound and he landed awkwardly, stumbled, recovered, raced down the corridor sending a couple of miniature service robots flying, skidded round the corner, burst into Zaphod's door and explained what was on his mind. "Vogons," he said. A short while before this, Arthur Dent had set out from his cabin in search of a cup of tea. It was not a quest he embarked upon with a great deal of optimism., because he knew that the only source of hot drinks on the entire ship was a benighted piece of equipment produced by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. It was called a Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer, and he had encountered it before. It claimed to produce the widest possible range of drinks personally matched to the tastes and metabolism of whoever cared to use it. When put to the test, however, it invariably produced a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but nit quite, entirely unlike tea. He attempted to reason with the thing. "Tea," he said. "Share and Enjoy," the machine replied and provided him with yet another cup of the sickly liquid. He threw it away. "Share and enjoy," the machine repeated and provided him with another one. "Share and Enjoy" is the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years. The motto stands-or rather stood-in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young complaints executives-now deceased. The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig", and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration. Arthur threw away a sixth cup of the liquid. "Listen, you machine," he said, "you claim you can synthesize any drink in existence, so why do you keep giving me the same undrinkable stuff?" "Nutrition and pleasurable sense data," burbled the machine. "Share and Enjoy." "It tastes filthy!" "If you have enjoyed the experience of this drink," continued the machine, "why not share it with your friends?" "Because," said Arthur tartly, "I want to keep them. Will you try to comprehend what I'm telling you? That drink..." "That drink," said the machine sweetly, "was individually tailored to meet your personal requirements for nutrition and pleasure." "Ah," said Arthur, "so I'm a masochist on diet am I?" "Share and Enjoy." "Oh shut up." "Will that be all?" Arthur decided to give up. "Yes," he said. Then he decided he'd be dammed if he'd give up. "No," he said, "look, it's very, very simple... all I want... is a cup of tea. You are going to make one for me. Keep quiet and listen." And he sat. He told the Nutri-Matic about India, he told it about China, he told it about Ceylon. He told it about broad leaves drying in the sun. He told it about silver teapots. He told it about summer afternoons on the lawn. He told it about putting in the milk before the tea so it wouldn't get scalded. He even told it (briefly) about the history of the East India Company. "So that's it, is it?" said the Nutri-Matic when he had finished. "Yes," said Arthur, "that is what I want." "You want the taste of dried leaves boiled in water?" "Er, yes. With milk." "Squirted out of a cow?" "Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose..." "I'm going to need some help with this one," said the machine tersely. All the cheerful burbling had dropped out of its voice and it now meant business. "Well, anything I can do," said Arthur. "You've done quite enough," the Nutri-Matic informed him. It summoned up the ship's computer. "Hi there!" said the ship's computer. The Nutri-Matic explained about tea to the ship's computer. The computer boggled, linked logic circuits with the Nutri-Matic and together they lapsed into a grim silence. Arthur watched and waited for a while, but nothing further happened. He thumped it, but still nothing happened. Eventually he gave up and wandered up to the bridge.

In the empty wastes of space, the Heart of Gold hung still. Around it blazed the billion pinpricks of the Galaxy. Towards it crept the ugly yellow lump of the Vogon ship.

Chapter 3

"Does anyone have a kettle?" Arthur asked as he walked on to the bridge, and instantly began to wonder why Trillian was yelling at the computer to talk to her, Ford was thumping it and Zaphod was kicking it, and also why there was a nasty yellow lump on the vision screen. He put down the empty cup he was carrying and walked over to them. "Hello?" he said. At that moment Zaphod flung himself over to the polished marble surfaces that contained the instruments that controlled the conventional photon drive. They materialized beneath his hands and he flipped over to manual control. He pushed, he pulled, he pressed and he swore. The photon drive gave a sickly judder and cut out again. "Something up?" said Arthur. "Hey, didja hear that?" muttered Zaphod as he leapt now for the manual controls of the Infinite Improbability Drive, "the monkey spoke!" The Improbability Drive gave two small whines and then also cut out. "Pure history, man," said Zaphod, kicking the Improbability Drive, "a talking monkey!" "If you're upset about something..." said Arthur. "Vogons!" snapped Ford, "we're under attack!" Arthur gibbered. "Well what are you doing? Let's get out of here!" "Can't. Computer's jammed." "Jammed?" "It says all its circuits are occupied. There's no power anywhere in the ship." Ford moved away from the computer terminal, wiped a sleeve across his forehead and slumped back against the wall. "Nothing we can do," he said. He glared at nothing and bit his lip. When Arthur had been a boy at school, long before the Earth had been demolished, he had used to play football. He had not been at all good at it, and his particular speciality had been scoring own goals in important matches. Whenever this happened he used to experience a peculiar tingling round the back of his neck that would slowly creep up across his cheeks and heat his brow. The image of mud and grass and lots of little jeering boys flinging it at him suddenly came vividly to his mind at this moment. A peculiar tingling sensation at the back of his neck was creeping up across his cheeks and heating his brow. He started to speak, and stopped. He started to speak again and stopped again. Finally he managed to speak. "Er," he said. He cleared his throat. "Tell me," he continued, and said it so nervously that the others all turned to stare at him. He glanced at the approaching yellow blob on the vision screen. "Tell me," he said again, "did the computer say what was occupying it? I just ask out of interest..." Their eyes were riveted on him. "And, er... well that's it really, just asking." Zaphod put out a hand and held Arthur by the scruff of the neck. "What have you done to it, Monkeyman?" he breathed. "Well," said Arthur, "nothing in fact. It's just that I think a short while ago it was trying to work out how to..." "Yes?" "Make me some tea." "That's right guys," the computer sang out suddenly, "just coping with that problem right now, and wow, it's a biggy. Be with you in a while." It lapsed back into a silence that was only matched for sheer intensity by the silence of the three people staring at Arthur Dent. As if to relieve the tension, the Vogons chose that moment to start firing.

The ship shook, the ship thundered. Outside, the inch thick force-shield around it blistered, crackled and spat under the barrage of a dozen 30-Megahurt Definit-Kil Photrazon Cannon, and looked as if it wouldn't be around for long. Four minutes is how long Ford Prefect gave it."Three minutes and fifty seconds," he said a short while later. "Forty-five seconds," he added at the appropriate time. He flicked idly at some useless switches, then gave Arthur an unfriendly look. "Dying for a cup of tea, eh?" he said. "Three minutes and forty seconds." "Will you stop counting!" snarled Zaphod. "Yes," said Ford Prefect, "in three minutes and thirty-five seconds."

Aboard the Vogon ship, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was puzzled. He had expected a chase, he had expected an exciting grapple with tractor beams, he had expected to have to use the specially installed Sub-Cyclic Normality Assert-i-Tron to counter the Heart of Gold's Infinite Improbability Drive, but the Sub-Cyclic Normality Assert-i-Tron lay idle as the Heart of Gold just sat there and took it. A dozen 30-Megahurt Definit-Kil Photrazon Cannon continued to blaze away at the Heart of Gold, and still it just sat there and took it. He tested every sensor at his disposal to see if there was any subtle trickery afoot, but no subtle trickery was to be found. He didn't know about the tea of course. Nor did he know exactly how the occupants of the Heart of Gold were spending the last three minutes and thirty seconds of life they had left to spend.

Quite how Zaphod Beeblebrox arrived at the idea of holding a seance at this point is something he was never quite clear on. Obviously the subject of death was in the air, but more as something to be avoided than harped upon. Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at the prospect of being reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might just feel the same way about him and, what's more, be able to do something about helping to postpone this reunion. Or again it might just have been one of the strange promptings that occasionally surfaced from that dark area of his mind that he had inexplicably locked off prior to becoming President of the Galaxy. "You want to talk to your great grandfather?" boggled Ford. "Yeah." "Does it have to be now?" The ship continued to shake and thunder. The temperature was rising. The light was getting dimmer-all the energy the computer didn't require for thinking about tea was being pumped into the rapidly fading force-field. "Yeah!" insisted Zaphod. "Listen Ford, I think he may be able to help us." "Are you sure you mean think? Pick your words with care." "Suggest something else we can do." "Er, well..." "OK, round the central console. Now. Come on! Trillian, Monkeyman, move." They clustered round the central console in confusion, sat down and, feeling exceptionally foolish, held hands. With his third hand Zaphod turned off the lights. Darkness gripped the ship. Outside, the thunderous roar of the Definit-Kil cannon continued to rip at the force-field. "Concentrate," hissed Zaphod, "on his name." "What is it?" asked Arthur. "Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth." "What?" "Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. Concentrate!" "The Fourth?" "Yeah. Listen, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father was Zaphod Beeblebrox the Second, my grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third..." "What?" "There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now concentrate!" "Three minutes," said Ford Prefect. "Why," said Arthur Dent, "are we doing this?" "Shut up," suggested Zaphod Beeblebrox. Trillian said nothing. What, she thought, was there to say? The only light on the bridge came from two dim red triangles in a far corner where Marvin the Paranoid Android sat slumped, ignoring all and ignored by all, in a private and rather unpleasant world of his own. Round the central console four figures hunched in tight concentration trying to blot from their minds the terrifying shuddering of the ship and the fearful roar that echoed through it. They concentrated. Still they concentrated. And still they concentrated. The seconds ticked by. On Zaphod's brow stood beads of sweat, first of concentration, then of frustration and finally of embarrassment. At last he let out a cry of anger, snatched back his hands from Trillian and Ford and stabbed at the light switch. "Ah, I was beginning to think you'd never turn the lights on," said a voice. "No, not too bright please, my eyes aren't what they once were." Four figures jolted upright in their seats. Slowly they turned their heads to look, though their scalps showed a distinct propensity to try and stay in the same place. "Now. Who disturbs me at this time?" said the small, bent, gaunt figure standing by the sprays of fern at the far end of the bridge. His two small wispy-haired heads looked so ancient that it seemed they might hold dim memories of the birth of the galaxies themselves. One lolled in sleep, but the other squinted sharply at them. If his eyes weren't what they once were, they must once have been diamond cutters. Zaphod stuttered nervously for a moment. He gave the intricate little double nod which is the traditional Betelgeusian gesture of familial respect. "Oh... er, hi Great Granddad..." he breathed. The little old figure moved closer towards them. He peered through the dim light. He thrust out a bony finger at his great grandson. "Ah," he snapped. "Zaphod Beeblebrox. The last of our great line. Zaphod Beeblebrox the Nothingth." "The First." "The Nothingth," spat the figure. Zaphod hated his voice. It always seemed to him to screech like fingernails across the blackboard of what he liked to think of as his soul. He shifted awkwardly in his seat. "Er, yeah," he muttered, "Er, look, I'm really sorry about the flowers, I meant to send them along, but you know, the shop was fresh out of wreaths and..." "You forget!" snapped Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. "Well..." "Too busy. Never think of other people. The living are all the same." "Two minutes, Zaphod," whispered Ford in an awed whisper. Zaphod fidgeted nervously. "Yeah, but I did mean to send them," he said. "And I'll write to my great grandmother as well, just as soon as we get out of this..." "Your great grandmother," mused the gaunt little figure to himself. "Yeah," said Zaphod, "Er, how is she? Tell you what, I'll go and see her. But first we've just got to..." "Your late great grandmother and I are very well," rasped Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. "Ah. Oh." "But very disappointed in you, young Zaphod..." "Yeah well..." Zaphod felt strangely powerless to take charge of this conversation, and Ford's heavy breathing at his side told him that the seconds were ticking away fast. The noise and the shaking had reached terrifying proportions. He saw Trillian and Arthur's faces white and unblinking in the gloom. "Er, Great Grandfather..." "We've been following your progress with considerable despondency..." "Yeah, look, just at the moment you see..." "Not to say contempt!" "Could you sort of listen for a moment..." "I mean what exactly are you doing with your life?" "I'm being attacked by a Vogon fleet!" cried Zaphod. It was an exaggeration, but it was his only opportunity so far of getting the basic point of the exercise across. "Doesn't surprise me in the least," said the little old figure with a shrug. "Only it's happening right now you see," insisted Zaphod feverishly. The spectral ancestor nodded, picked up the cup Arthur Dent had brought in and looked at it with interest. "Er... Great Granddad..." "Did you know," interrupting the ghostly figure, fixing Zaphod with a stern look, "that Betelgeuse Five has developed a very slight eccentricy in its orbit?" Zaphod didn't and found the information hard to concentrate on what with all the noise and the imminence of death and so on. "Er, no... look," he said. "Me spinning in my grave!" barked the ancestor. He slammed the cup down and pointed a quivering, stick-like see-through finger at Zaphod. "Your fault!" he screeched. "One minute thirty," muttered Ford, his head in his hands. "Yeah, look Great Granddad, can you actually help because..." "Help?" exclaimed the old man as if he'd been asked for a stoat. "Yeah, help, and like, now, because otherwise..." "Help!" repeated the old man as if he'd been asked for a lightly grilled stoat in a bun with French fries. He stood amazed. "You go swanning your way round the Galaxy with your..." the ancestor waved a contemptuous hand, "with your disreputable friends, too busy to put flowers on my grave, plastic ones would have done, would have been quite appropriate from you, but no. Too busy. Too modern. Too sceptical-till you suddenly find yourself in a bit of a fix and come over suddenly all astrally-minded!" He shook his head-carefully, so as not to disturb the slumber of the other one, which was already becoming restive. "Well, I don't know, young Zaphod," he continued, "I think I'll have to think about this one." "One minute ten," said Ford hollowly. Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth peered at him curiously. "Why does that man keep talking in numbers?" he said. "Those numbers," said Zaphod tersely, "are the time we've got left to live." "Oh," said his great grandfather. He grunted to himself. "Doesn't apply to me, of course," he said and moved off to a dimmer recess of the bridge in search of something else to poke around at. Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it. "Great Grandfather," he said, "It applies to us! We are still alive, and we are about to lose our lives." "Good job too." "What?" "What use is your life to anyone? When I think of what you've made of it the phrase 'pig's ear' comes irresistibly to my mind." "But I was President of the Galaxy, man!" "Huh," muttered his ancestor, "And what kind of a job is that for a Beeblebrox?" "Hey, what? Only President you know! Of the whole Galaxy!" "Conceited little megapuppy." Zaphod blinked in bewilderment. "Hey, er, what are you at, man? I mean Great Grandfather." The hunched up little figure stalked up to his great grandson and tapped him sternly on the knee. This had the effect of reminding Zaphod that he was talking to a ghost because he didn't feel a thing. "You know and I know what being President means, young Zaphod. You know because you've been it, and I know because I'm dead and it gives one such a wonderfully uncluttered perspective. We have a saying up here. 'Life is wasted on the living.'" "Yeah," said Zaphod bitterly, "very good. Very deep. Right now I need aphorisms like I need holes in my heads." "Fifty seconds," grunted Ford Prefect. "Where was I?" said Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. "Pontificating," said Zaphod Beeblebrox. "Oh yes." "Can this guy," muttered Ford quietly to Zaphod, "actually in fact help us?" "Nobody else can," whispered Zaphod. Ford nodded despondently. "Zaphod!" the ghost was saying, "you became President of the Galaxy for a reason. Have you forgotten?" "Could we go into this later?" "Have you forgotten!" insisted the ghost. "Yeah! Of course I forgot! I had to forget. They screen your brain when you get the job you know. If they'd found my head full of tricksy ideas I'd have been right out on the streets again with nothing but a fat pension, secretarial staff, a fleet of ships and a couple of slit throats." "Ah," nodded the ghost in satisfaction, "then you do remember!" He paused for a moment. "Good," he said and the noise stopped. "Forty-eight seconds," said Ford. He looked again at his watch and tapped it. He looked up. "Hey, the noise has stopped," he said. A mischievous twinkle gleamed in the ghost's hard little eyes. "I've slowed down time for a moment," he said, "just for a moment you understand. I would hate you to miss all I have to say." "No, you listen to me, you see-through old bat," said Zaphod leaping out of his chair, "A-thanks for stopping time and all that, great, terrific, wonderful, but B-no thanks for the homily, right? I don't know what this great think I'm meant to be doing is, and it looks to me as if I was supposed not to know. And I resent that, right? "The old me knew. The old me cared. Fine, so far so hoopy. Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain-my own brain-and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it. I wouldn't be able to go and be President, and I wouldn't be able to steal this ship, which must be the important thing. "But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't he, by changing my brain? OK, that was his choice. This new me has its own choices to make, and by a strange coincidence those choices involve not knowing and not caring about this big number, whatever it is. That's what he wanted, that's what he got. "Except this old self of mine tried to leave himself in control, leaving orders for me in the bit of my brain he locked off. Well, I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear them. That's my choice. I'm not going to be anybody's puppet, particularly not my own." Zaphod banged the console in fury, oblivious to the dumbfolded looks he was attracting. "The old me is dead!" he raved, "Killed himself! The dead shouldn't hang about trying to interfere with the living!" "And yet you summon me up to help you out of a scrape," said the ghost. "Ah," said Zaphod, sitting down again, "well that's different isn't it?" He grinned at Trillian, weakly. "Zaphod," rasped the apparition, "I think the only reason I waste my breath on you is that being dead I don't have any other use for it." "OK," said Zaphod, "why don't you tell me what the big secret is. Try me." "Zaphod, you knew when you were President of the Galaxy, as did Yooden Vranx before you, that the President is nothing. A cipher. Somewhere in the shadows behind is another man, being, something, with ultimate power. That man, or being, or something, you must find-the man who controls this Galaxy, and-we suspect-others. Possibly the entire Universe." "Why?" "Why?" exclaimed an astonished ghost, "Why? Look around you lad, does it look to you as if it's in very good hands?" "It's alright." The old ghost glowered at him. "I will not argue with you. You will simply take this ship, this Improbability Drive ship to where it is needed. You will do it. Don't think you can escape your purpose. The Improbability Field controls you, you are in its grip. What's this?" He was standing tapping at one of the terminals of Eddie the Shipboard Computer. Zaphod told him. "What's it doing?" "It is trying," said Zaphod with wonderful restraint, "to make tea." "Good," said his great grandfather, "I approve of that. Now Zaphod, "he said, turning and wagging a finger at him, "I don't know if you are really capable of succeeding in your job. I think you will not be able to avoid it. However, I am too long dead and too tired to care as much as I did. The principal reason I am helping you now is that I couldn't bear the thought of you and your modern friends slouching about up here. Understood?" "Yeah, thanks a bundle." "Oh, and Zaphod?" "Er, yeah?" "If you ever find you need help again, you know, if you're in trouble, need a hand out of a tight corner..." "Yeah?" "Please don't hesitate to get lost." Within the space of one second, a bolt of light flashed from the wizened old ghost's hands to the computer, the ghost vanished, the bridge filled with billowing smoke and the Heart of Gold leapt an unknown distance through the dimensions of time and space.

Chapter 4

Ten light years away, Gag Halfrunt jacked up his smile by several notches. As he watched the picture on his vision screen, relayed across the sub-ether from the bridge of the Vogon ship, he saw the final shreds of the Heart of Gold's force-shield ripped away, and the ship itself vanish in a puff of smoke. Good, he thought. The end of the last stray survivors of the demolition he had ordered on the planet Earth, he thought. The final end of this dangerous (to the psychiatric profession) and subversive (also to the psychiatric profession) experiment to find the Question to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, he thought. There would be some celebration with his fellows tonight, and in the morning they would meet again their unhappy, bewildered and highly profitable patients, secure in the knowledge that the Meaning of Life would not now be, once and for all, well and truly sorted out, he thought.

"Family's always embarrassing isn't it?" said Ford to Zaphod as the smoke began to clear. He paused, then looked about. "Where's Zaphod?" he said. Arthur and Trillian looked about blankly. They were pale and shaken and didn't know where Zaphod was. "Marvin?" said Ford, "Where's Zaphod?" A moment later he said: "Where's Marvin?" The robot's corner was empty. The ship was utterly silent. It lay in thick black space. Occasionally it rocked and swayed. Every instrument was dead, every vision screen was dead. They consulted the computer. It said: "I regret that I have been temporarily closed to all communication. Meanwhile, here is some light music." They turned off the light music. They searched every corner of the ship in increasing bewilderment and alarm. Everywhere was dead and silent. Nowhere was there any trace of Zaphod or of Marvin. One of the last areas they checked was the small bay in which the Nutri-Matic machine was located. On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was a small tray, on which sat three bone china cups and saucers, a bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot full of the best tea Arthur had ever tasted, and a small printed note saying "Wait".

Chapter 5