Ursa Minor Beta is, some say, one of the most appalling places in the known Universe. Although it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny and more full of wonderfully exciting people than a pomegranate is of pips, it can hardly be insignificant that when a recent edition of Playbeing magazine headlined an article with the words "When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are tired of life", the suicide rate quadrupled overnight. Not that there are any nights on Ursa Minor Beta. It is a West Zone planet which by an inexplicable and somewhat suspicious freak of topography consists almost entirely of sub-tropical coastline. By an equally suspicious freak of temporal relastatics, it is nearly always Saturday afternoon just before the beach bars close. No adequate explanation for this has been forthcoming from the dominant lifeforms on Ursa Minor Beta, who spend most of their time attempting to achieve spiritual enlightenment by running round swimming pools, and inviting Investigation Officials form the Galactic Geo-Temporal Control Board to "have a nice diurnal anomaly". There is only one city on Ursa Minor Beta, and that is only called a city because the swimming pools are slightly thicker on the ground there than elsewhere. If you approach Light City by air-and there is no other way of approaching it, no roads, no port facilities-if you don't fly they don't want to see you in Light City-you will see why it has this name. Here the sun shines brightest of all, glittering on the swimming pools, shimmering on the white, palm-lined boulevards, glistening on the healthy bronzed specks moving up and down them, gleaming off the villas, the hazy airpads, the beach bars and so on. Most particularly it shines on a building, a tall beautiful building consisting of two thirty-storey white towers connected by a bridge half-way up their length. The building is the home of a book, and was built here on the proceeds of an extraordinary copyright law suit fought between the book's editors and a breakfast cereal company. The book is a guide book, a travel book. It is one of the most remarkable, certainly the most successful, books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor-more popular than Life Begins at Five Hundred and Fifty, better selling than The Big Bang Theory-A Personal View by Eccentrica Gallumbits (the triple breasted whore of Eroticon Six) and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's latest blockbusting title Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Sex But Have Been Forced To Find Out. (And in many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, it has long surplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older and more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper, and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC printed in large friendly letters on its cover.) It is of course that invaluable companion for all those who want to see the marvels of the known Universe for less than thirty Altairan Dollars a day-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If you stood with your back to the main entrance lobby of the Guide offices (assuming you had landed by now and freshened up with a quick dip and shower) and then walked east, you would pass along the leafy shade of Life Boulevard, be amazed by the pale golden colour of the beaches stretching away to your left, astounded by the mind-surfers floating carelessly along two feet above the waves as if it was nothing special, surprised and eventually slightly irritated by the giant palm trees that hum toneless nothings throughout the daylight hours, in other words continuously. If you then walked to the end of Life Boulevard you would enter the Lalamatine district of shops, bolonut trees and pavement cafes where the UM-Betans come to relax after a hard afternoon's relaxation on the beach. The Lalamatine district is one of those very few areas which doesn't enjoy a perpetual Saturday afternoon-it enjoys instead the cool of a perpetual early Saturday evening. Behind it lie the night clubs. If, on this particular day, afternoon, stretch of eveningtime-call it what you will-you had approached the second pavement cafe on the right you would have seen the usual crowd of UM-Betans chatting, drinking, looking very relaxed, and casually glancing at each other's watches to see how expensive they were. You would also have seen a couple of rather dishevelled looking hitch-hikers from Algol who had recently arrived on an Arcturan Megafreighter aboard which they had been roughing it for a few days. They were angry and bewildered to discover that here, within sight of the Hitchhiker's Guide building itself, a simple glass of fruit juice cost the equivalent of over sixty Altairan dollars. "Sell out," one of them said, bitterly. If at that moment you had then looked at the next table but one you would have seen Zaphod Beeblebrox sitting and looking very startled and confused. The reason for his confusion was that five seconds earlier he had been sitting on the bridge of the starship Heart of Gold. "Absolute sell out," said the voice again. Zaphod looked nervously out of the corners of his eyes at the two dishevelled hitch-hikers at the next table. Where the hell was he? How had he got there? Where was his ship? His hand felt the arm of the chair on which he was sitting, and then the table in front of him. They seemed solid enough. He sat very still. "How can they sit and write a guide for hitch-hikers in a place like this?" continued the voice. "I mean look at it. Look at it!" Zaphod was looking at it. Nice place, he thought. But where? And why? He fished in his pocket for his two pairs of sunglasses. In the same pocket he felt a hard smooth, unidentified lump of very heavy metal. He pulled it out and looked at it. He blinked at it in surprise. Where had he got that? He returned it to his pocket and put on the sunglasses, annoyed to discover that the metal object had scratched one of the lenses. Nevertheless, he felt much more comfortable with them on. They were a double pair of Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, which had been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you. Apart from the scratch the lenses were clear. He relaxed, but only a little bit. The angry hitch-hiker continued to glare at his monstrously expensive fruit juice. "Worst thing that ever happened to the Guide, moving to Ursa Minor Beta," he grumbled, "they've all gone soft. You know, I've even heard that they've created a whole electronically synthesized Universe in one of their offices so they can go and research stories during the day and still go to parties in the evening. Not that day and evening mean much in this place." Ursa Minor Beta, thought Zaphod. At least he knew where he was now. He assumed that this must be his great grandfather's doing, but why? Much to his annoyance, a thought popped into his mind. It was very clear and very distinct, and he had now come to recognize these thoughts for what they were. His instinct was to resist them. They were the pre-ordained promptings from the dark and locked off parts of his mind. He sat still and ignored the thought furiously. It nagged at him. He ignored it. It nagged at him. He ignored it. It nagged at him. He gave in to it. What the hell, he thought, go with the flow. He was too tired, confused and hungry to resist. He didn't even know what the thought meant.

Chapter 6

"Hello? Yes? Megadodo Publications, home of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the most totally remarkable book in the whole of the known Universe, can I help you?" said the large pink-winged insect into one of the seventy phones lined up along the vast chrome expanse of the reception desk in the foyer of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offices. It fluttered its wings and rolled its eyes. It glared at all the grubby people cluttering up the foyer, soiling the carpets and leaving dirty handmarks on the upholstery. It adored working for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it just wished there was some way of keeping all the hitch-hikers away. Weren't they meant to be hanging round dirty spaceports or something? It was certain that it had read something somewhere in the book about the importance of hanging round dirty spaceports. Unfortunately most of them seemed to come and hang around in this nice clean shiny foyer after hanging around in extremely dirty spaceports. And all they ever did was complain. It shivered its wings. "What?" it said into the phone. "Yes, I passed on your message to Mr. Zarniwoop, but I'm afraid he's too cool to see you right now. He's on an intergalactic cruise." It waved a petulant tentacle at one of the grubby people who was angrily trying to engage its attention. The petulant tentacle directed the angry person to look at the notice on the wall to its left and not to interrupt an important phone call. "Yes," said the insect, "he is in his office, but he's on an intergalactic cruise. Thank you so much for calling." It slammed down the phone. "Read the notice," it said to the angry man who was trying to complain about one of the more ludicrous and dangerous pieces of misinformation contained in the book. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an indispensable companion to all those who are keen to make sense of life in an infinitely complex and confusing Universe, for though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does at least make the reassuring claim, that where it is inaccurate it is at least definitely inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it's always reality that's got it wrong. This was the gist of the notice. It said "The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate." This has led to some interesting consequences. For instance, when the Editors of the Guide were sued by the families of those who had died as a result of taking the entry on the planet Traal literally (it said "Ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very good meal for visiting tourists" instead of "Ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very good meal of visiting tourists") they claimed that the first version of the sentence was the more aesthetically pleasing, summoned a qualified poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty and hoped thereby to prove that the guilty party was Life itself for failing to be either beautiful or true. The judges concurred, and in a moving speech held that Life itself was in contempt of court, and duly confiscated it from all those there present before going off to enjoy a pleasant evening's ultragolf. Zaphod Beeblebrox entered the foyer. He strode up to the insect receptionist. "OK," he said, "Where's Zarniwoop? Get me Zarniwoop." "Excuse me, sir?" said the insect icily. It did not care to be addressed in this manner. "Zarniwoop. Get him, right? Get him now." "Well, sir," snapped the fragile little creature, "if you could be a little cool about it..." Look," said Zaphod, "I'm up to here with cool, OK? I'm so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat inside me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis. Now will you move before you blow it?" "Well, if you'd let me explain, sir," said the insect tapping the most petulant of all the tentacles at its disposal, "I'm afraid that isn't possible right now as Mr. Zarniwoop is on an intergalactic cruise." Hell, thought Zaphod. "When he's going to be back?" he said. "Back sir? He's in his office." Zaphod paused while he tried to sort this particular thought out in his mind. He didn't succeed. "This cat's on an intergalactic cruise... in his office?" He leaned forward and gripped the tapping tentacle. "Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird me. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal." "Well, just who do you think you are, honey?" flounced the insect quivering its wings in rage, "Zaphod Beeblebrox or something?" "Count the heads," said Zaphod in a low rasp. The insect blinked at him. It blinked at him again. "You are Zaphod Beeblebrox?" it squeaked. "Yeah," said Zaphod, "but don't shout it out or they'll all want one." "The Zaphod Beeblebrox?" "No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn't you hear I come in six packs?" The insect rattled its tentacles together in agitation. "But sir," it squealed, "I just heard on the sub-ether radio report. It said that you were dead..." "Yeah, that's right," said Zaphod, "I just haven't stopped moving yet. Now. Where do I find Zarniwoop?" "Well, sir, his office is on the fifteenth floor, but..." "But he's on an intergalactic cruise, yeah, yeah, how do I get to him." "The newly installed Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Vertical People Transporters are in the far corner sir. But sir..." Zaphod was turning to go. He turned back. "Yeah?" he said. "Can I ask you why you want to see Mr. Zarniwoop?" "Yeah," said Zaphod, who was unclear on this point himself, "I told myself I had to." "Come again sir?" Zaphod leaned forward, conspirationally. "I just materialized out of thin air in one of your cafes," he said, "as a result of an argument with the ghost of my great grandfather. No sooner had I got there that my former self, the one that operated on my brain, popped into my head and said 'Go see Zarniwoop'. I have never heard of the cat. That is all I know. That and the fact that I've got to find the man who rules the Universe." He winked. "Mr. Beeblebrox, sir," said the insect in awed wonder, "you're so weird you should be in movies." "Yeah," said Zaphod patting the thing on a glittering pink wing, "and you, baby, should be in real life." The insect paused for a moment to recover from its agitation and then reached out a tentacle to answer a ringing phone. A metal hand restrained it. "Excuse me," said the owner of the metal hand in a voice that would have made an insect of a more sentimental disposition collapse in tears. This was not such an insect, and it couldn't stand robots. "Yes, sir," it snapped, "can I help you?" "I doubt it," said Marvin. "Well in that case, if you'll just excuse me..." Six of the phones were now ringing. A million things awaited the insect's attention. "No one can help me," intoned Marvin. "Yes, sir, well..." "Not that anyone tried of course." The restraining metal hand fell limply by Marvin's side. His head hung forward very slightly. "Is that so," said the insect tartly. "Hardly worth anyone's while to help a menial robot is it?" "I'm sorry, sir, if..." "I mean where's the percentage in being kind or helpful to a robot if it doesn't have any gratitude circuits?" "And you don't have any?" said the insect, who didn't seem to be able to drag itself out of this conversation. "I've never had occasion to find out," Marvin informed it. "Listen, you miserable heap of maladjusted metal..." "Aren't you going to ask me what I want?" The insect paused. Its long thin tongue darted out and licked its eyes and darted back again. "Is it worth it?" it asked. "Is anything?" said Marvin immediately. "What... do... you... want?" "I'm looking for someone." "Who?" hissed the insect. "Zaphod Beeblebrox," said Marvin, "he's over there." The insect shook with rage. It could hardly speak. "Then why did you ask me?" it screamed. "I just wanted something to talk to," said Marvin. "What!" "Pathetic isn't it?" With a grinding of gears Marvin turned and trundled off. He caught up with Zaphod approaching the elevators. Zaphod span round in astonishment. "Hey... Marvin!" he said, "Marvin! How did you get here?" Marvin was forced to say something which came very hard to him. "I don't know," he said. "But..." "One moment I was sitting in your ship feeling very depressed, and the next moment I was standing here feeling utterly miserable. An Improbability Field I expect." "Yeah," said Zaphod, "I expect my great grandfather sent you along to keep me company." "Thanks a bundle grandad," he added to himself under his breath. "So, how are you?" he said aloud. "Oh, fine," said Marvin, "if you happen to like being me which personally I don't." "Yeah, yeah," said Zaphod as the elevator doors opened. "Hello," said the elevator sweetly, "I am to be your elevator for this trip to the floor of your choice. I have been designed by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation to take you, the visitor to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, into these their offices. If you enjoy your ride, which will be swift and pleasurable, then you may care to experience some of the other elevators which have recently been installed in the offices of the Galactic tax department, Boobiloo Baby Foods and the Sirian State Mental Hospital, where many ex-Sirius Cybernetics Corporation executives will be delighted to welcome your visits, sympathy, and happy tales of the outside world." "Yeah," said Zaphod, stepping into it, "what else do you do besides talk?" "I go up," said the elevator, "or down." "Good," said Zaphod, "We're going up." "Or down," the elevator reminded him. "Yeah, OK, up please." There was a moment of silence. "Down's very nice," suggested the elevator hopefully. "Oh yeah?" "Super." "Good," said Zaphod, "Now will you take us up?" "May I ask you," inquired the elevator in its sweetest, most reasonable voice, "if you've considered all the possibilities that down might offer you?" Zaphod knocked one of his heads against the inside wall. He didn't need this, he thought to himself, this of all things he had no need of. He hadn't asked to be here. If he was asked at this moment where he would like to be he would probably have said he would like to be lying on the beach with at least fifty beautiful women and a small team of experts working out new ways they could be nice to him, which was his usual reply. To this he would probably have added something passionate on the subject of food. One thing he didn't want to be doing was chasing after the man who ruled the Universe, who was only doing a job which he might as well keep at, because if it wasn't him it would only be someone else. Most of all he didn't want to be standing in an office block arguing with an elevator. "Like what other possibilities?" he asked wearily. "Well," the voice trickled on like honey on biscuits, "there's the basement, the microfiles, the heating system... er..." It paused. "Nothing particularly exciting," it admitted, "but they are alternatives." "Holy Zarquon," muttered Zaphod, "did I ask for an existentialist elevator?" he beat his fists against the wall. "What's the matter with the thing?" he spat. "It doesn't want to go up," said Marvin simply, "I think it's afraid." "Afraid?" cried Zaphod, "Of what? Heights? An elevator that's afraid of heights?" "No," said the elevator miserably, "of the future..." "The future?" exclaimed Zaphod, "What does the wretched thing want, a pension scheme?" At that moment a commotion broke out in the reception hall behind them. From the walls around them came the sound of suddenly active machinery. "We can all see into the future," whispered the elevator in what sounded like terror, "it's part of our programming." Zaphod looked out of the elevator-an agitated crowd had gathered round the elevator area, pointing and shouting. Every elevator in the building was coming down, very fast. He ducked back in. "Marvin," he said, "just get this elevator go up will you? We've got to get to Zarniwoop." "Why?" asked Marvin dolefully. "I don't know," said Zaphod, "but when I find him, he'd better have a very good reason for me wanting to see him."

Modern elevators are strange and complex entities. The ancient electric winch and "maximum-capacity-eight-persons" jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter as a packet of mixed nuts does to the entire west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital. This is because they operate on the curios principle of "defocused temporal perception". In other words they have the capacity to see dimly into the immediate future, which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing, and making friends that people were previously forced to do whist waiting for elevators. Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking. An impoverished hitch-hiker visiting any planets in the Sirius star system these days can pick up easy money working as a counsellor for neurotic elevators.

At the fifteenth floor the elevator doors opened quickly. "Fifteenth," said the elevator, "and remember, I'm only doing this because I like your robot." Zaphod and Marvin bundled out of the elevator which instantly snapped its doors shut and dropped as fast as its mechanism would take it. Zaphod looked around warily. The corridor was deserted and silent and gave no clue as to where Zarniwoop might be found. All the doors that led off the corridor were closed and unmarked. They were standing close to the bridge which led across from one tower of the building to the other. Through a large window the brilliant sun of Ursa Minor Beta threw blocks of light in which danced small specks of dust. A shadow flitted past momentarily. "Left in the lurch by a lift," muttered Zaphod, who was feeling at his least jaunty. They both stood and looked in both directions. "You know something?" said Zaphod to Marvin. "More that you can possibly imagine." "I'm dead certain this building shouldn't be shaking," Zaphod said. It was just a light tremor through the soles of his feet-and another one. In the sunbeams the flecks of dust danced more vigorously. Another shadow flitted past. Zaphod looked at the floor. "Either," he said, not very confidently, "they've got some vibro system for toning up your muscles while you work, or..." He walked across to the window and suddenly stumbled because at that moment his Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive sunglasses had turned utterly black. A large shadow flitted past the window with a sharp buzz. Zaphod ripped off his sunglasses, and as he did so the building shook with a thunderous roar. He leapt to the window. "Or," he said, "this building's being bombed!" Another roar cracked through the building. "Who in the Galaxy would want to bomb a publishing company?" asked Zaphod, but never heard Marvin's reply because at that moment the building shook with another bomb attack. He tried to stagger back to the elevator-a pointless manoeuvre he realized, but the only one he could think of. Suddenly, at the end of the corridor leading at right angles from this one, he caught sight of a figure as it lunged into view, a man. The man saw him. "Beeblebrox, over here!" he shouted. Zaphod eyed him with distrust as another bomb blast rocked the building. "No," called Zaphod, "Beeblebrox over here! Who are you?" "A friend!" shouted back the man. He ran towards Zaphod. "Oh yeah?" said Zaphod, "Anyone's friend in particular, or just generally well disposed of people?" The man raced along the corridor, the floor bucking beneath his feet like an excited blanket. He was short, stocky and weatherbeaten and his clothes looked as if they'd been twice round the Galaxy and back with him in them. "Do you know," Zaphod shouted in his ear when he arrived, "your building's being bombed?" The man indicated his awareness. It suddenly stopped being light. Glancing round at the window to see why, Zaphod gaped as a huge sluglike, gunmetal-green spacecraft crept through the air past the building. Two more followed it. "The government you deserted is out to get you, Zaphod," hissed the man, "they've sent a squadron of Frogstar Fighters." "Frogstar Fighters!" muttered Zaphod, "Zarquon!" "You get the picture?" "What are Frogstar Fighters?" Zaphod was sure he'd heard someone talk about them when he was President, but he never paid much attention to official matters. The man was pulling him back through a door. He went with him. With a searing whine a small black spider-like object shot through the air and disappeared down the corridor. "What was that?" hissed Zaphod. "Frogstar Scout robot class A out looking for you," said the man. "Hey yeah?" "Get down!" From the opposite direction came a larger black spider-like object. It zapped past them. "And that was...?" "A Frogstar Scout robot class B out looking for you." "And that?" said Zaphod, as a third one seared through the air. "A Frogstar Scout robot class C out looking for you." "Hey," chuckled Zaphod to himself, "pretty stupid robots eh?" From over the bridge came a massive rumbling hum. A gigantic black shape was moving over it from the opposite tower, the size and shape of a tank. "Holy photon, what's that?" "A tank," said the man, "Frogstar Scout robot class D come to get you." "Should we leave?" "I think we should." "Marvin!" called Zaphod. "What do you want?" Marvin rose from a pile of rubble further down the corridor and looked at them. "You see that robot coming towards us?" Marvin looked at the gigantic black shape edging forward towards them over the bridge. He looked down at his own small metal body. He looked back up at the tank. "I suppose you want me to stop it," he said. "Yeah." "Whilst you save your skins." "Yeah," said Zaphod, "get in there!" "Just so long," said Marvin, "as I know where I stand." The man tugged at Zaphod's arm, and Zaphod followed him off down the corridor. A point occurred to him about this. "Where are we going?" he said. "Zarniwoop's office." "Is this any time to keep an appointment?" "Come on."

Chapter 7

Marvin stood at the end of the bridge corridor. He was not in fact a particularly small robot. His silver body gleamed in the dusty sunbeams and shook with the continual barrage which the building was still undergoing. He did, however, look pitifully small as the gigantic black tank rolled to a halt in front of him. The tank examined him with a probe. The probe withdrew. Marvin stood there. "Out of my way little robot," growled the tank. "I'm afraid," said Marvin, "that I've been left here to stop you." The probe extended again for a quick recheck. It withdrew again. "You? Stop me?" roared the tank. "Go on!" "No, really I have," said Marvin simply. "What are you armed with?" roared the tank in disbelief. "Guess," said Marvin. The tank's engines rumbled, its gears ground. Molecule-sized electronic relays deep in its micro-brain flipped backwards and forwards in consternation. "Guess?" said the tank.

Zaphod and the as yet unnamed man lurched up one corridor, down a second and along a third. The building continued to rock and judder and this puzzled Zaphod. If they wanted to blow the building up, why was it taking so long? With difficulty they reached one of a number of totally anonymous unmarked doors and heaved at it. With a sudden jolt it opened and they fell inside. All this way, thought Zaphod, all this trouble, all this not-lying-on-the-beach-having-a-wonderful-time, and for what? A single chair, a single desk and a single dirty ashtray in an undecorated office. The desk, apart from a bit of dancing dust and single, revolutionary form of paper clip, was empty. "Where," said Zaphod, "is Zarniwoop?" feeling that his already tenuous grasp of the point of this whole exercise was beginning to slip. "He's on an intergalactic cruise," said the man. Zaphod tried to size the man up. Earnest type, he thought, not a barrel of laughs. He probably apportioned a fair whack of his time to running up and down heaving corridors, breaking down doors and making cryptic remarks in empty offices. "Let me introduce myself," the man said, "My name is Roosta, and this is my towel." "Hello Roosta," said Zaphod. "Hello, towel," he added as Roosta held out to him a rather nasty old flowery towel. Not knowing what to do with it, he shook it by the corner. Outside the window, one of the huge slug-like, gunmetal-green spaceships growled past.

"Yes, go on," said Marvin to the huge battle machine, "you'll never guess." "Errmmm..." said the machine, vibrating with unaccustomed thought, "laser beams?" Marvin shook his head solemnly. "No," muttered the machine in its deep guttural rumble, "Too obvious. Anti-matter ray?" it hazarded. "Far too obvious," admonished Marvin. "Yes," grumbled the machine, somewhat abashed, "Er... how about an electron ram?" This was new to Marvin. "What's that?" he said. "One of these," said the machine with enthusiasm. From its turret emerged a sharp prong which spat a single lethal blaze of light. Behind Marvin a wall roared and collapsed as a heap of dust. The dust billowed briefly, then settled. "No," said Marvin, "not one of those." "Good though, isn't it?" "Very good," agreed Marvin. "I know," said the Frogstar battle machine, after another moment's consideration, "you must have one of those new Xanthic Re-Structron Destabilized Zenon Emitters!" "Nice, aren't they?" said Marvin. "That's what you've got?" said the machine in considerable awe. "No," said Marvin. "Oh," said the machine, disappointed, "then it must be..." "You're thinking along the wrong lines," said Marvin, "You're failing to take into account something fairly basic in the relationship between men and robots." "Er, I know," said the battle machine, "is it..." it tailed off into thought again. "Just think," urged Marvin, "they left me, an ordinary, menial robot, to stop you, a gigantic heavy-duty battle machine, whilst they ran off to save themselves. What do you think they would leave me with?" "Oooh, er," muttered the machine in alarm, "something pretty damn devastating I should expect." "Expect!" said Marvin, "oh yes, expect. I'll tell you what they gave me to protect myself with shall I." "Yes, alright," said the battle machine, bracing itself. "Nothing," said Marvin. There was a dangerous pause. "Nothing?" roared the battle machine. "Nothing at all," intoned Marvin dismally, "not an electronic sausage." The machine heaved about with fury. "Well, doesn't that just take the biscuit!" it roared, "Nothing, eh? Just don't think, do they?" "And me," said Marvin in a soft low voice, "with this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side." "Makes you spit, doesn't it?" "Yes," agreed Marvin with feeling. "Hell that makes me angry," bellowed the machine, "think I'll smash that wall down!" The electron ram stabbed out another searing blaze of light and took out the wall next to the machine. "How do you think I feel?" said Marvin bitterly. "Just ran off and left you, did they?" the machine thundered. "Yes," said Marvin. "I think I'll shoot down their bloody ceiling as well!" raged the tank. It took out the ceiling of the bridge. "That's very impressive," murmured Marvin. "You ain't seeing nothing yet," promised the machine, "I can take out this floor too, no trouble!" It took out the floor, too. "Hell's bells!" the machine roared as it plummeted fifteen storeys and smashed itself to bits on the ground below. "What a depressingly stupid machine," said Marvin and trudged away.

Chapter 8

"So, do we just sit here, or what?" said Zaphod angrily, "what do these guys out here want?" "You, Beeblebrox," said Roosta, "they're going to take you to the Frogstar-the most totally evil world in the Galaxy." "Oh, yeah?" said Zaphod. "They'll have to come and get me first." "They have come and got you," said Roosta, "look out of the window." Zaphod looked, and gaped. "The ground's going away!" he gasped, "where are they taking the ground?" "They're taking the building," said Roosta, "we're airborne." Clouds streaked past the office window. Out in the open air again Zaphod could see the ring of dark green Frogstar Fighters round the uprooted tower of the building. A network of force beams radiated in from them and held the tower in a firm grip. Zaphod shook his head in perplexity. "What have I done to deserve this?" he said, "I walk into a building, they take it away." "It's not what you've done they're worried about," said Roosta, "it's what you're going to do." "Well don't I get a say in that?" "You did, years ago. You'd better hold on, we're in for a fast and bumpy journey." "If I ever meet myself," said Zaphod, "I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's hit me." Marvin trudged in through the door, looked at Zaphod accusingly, slumped in a corner and switched himself off.

On the bridge of the Heart of Gold, all was silent. Arthur stared at the rack in front of him and thought. He caught Trillian's eyes as she looked at him inquiringly. He looked back at the rack. Finally he saw it. He picked up five small plastic squares and laid them on the board that lay just in front of the rack. The five squares had on them the five letters E, X, Q, U and I. He laid them next to the letters S, I, T, E. "Exquisite," he said, "on a triple word score. Scores rather a lot I'm afraid." The ship bumped and scattered some of the letters for the 'n'th time. Trillian sighed and started to sort them out again. Up and down the silent corridors echoed Ford Prefect's feet as he stalked the ship thumping dead instruments. Why did the ship keep shaking? he thought. Why did it rock and sway? Why could he not find out where they were? Where, basically, were they?

The left-hand tower of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offices streaked through interstellar space at a speed never equalled either before or since by any other office block in the Universe. In a room halfway up it, Zaphod Beeblebrox strode angrily. Roosta sat on the edge of the desk doing some routine towel maintenance. "Hey, where did you say this building was flying to?" demanded Zaphod. "The Frogstar," said Roosta, "the most totally evil place in the Universe." "Do they have food there?" said Zaphod. "Food? You're going to the Frogstar and you're worried about whether they got food?" "Without food I may not make it to the Frogstar." Out of the window, they could see nothing but the flickering light of the force beams, and vague green streaks which were presumably the distorted shapes of the Frogstar Fighters. At this speed, space itself was invisible, and indeed unreal. "Here, suck this," said Roosta, offering Zaphod his towel. Zaphod stared at him as if he expected a cuckoo to leap out of his forehead on a small spring. "It's soaked in nutrients," explained Roosta. "What are you, a messy eater or something?" said Zaphod. "The yellow stripes are high in protein, the green ones have vitamin B and C complexes, the little pink flowers contain wheatgerm extracts." Zaphod took and looked at it in amazement. "What are the brown stains?" he asked. "Bar-B-Q sauce," said Roosta, "for when I get sick of wheatgerm." Zaphod sniffed it doubtfully. Even more doubtfully, he sucked a corner. He spat it out again. "Ugh," he stated. "Yes," said Roosta, "when I've had to suck that end I usually need to suck the other end a bit too." "Why," asked Zaphod suspiciously, "what's in that?" "Anti-depressants," said Roosta. "I've gone right off this towel, you know," said Zaphod handing it back. Roosta took it back from him, swung himself off the desk, walked round it, sat in the chair and put his feet up. "Beeblebrox," he said, sticking his hands behind his head, "have you any idea what's going to happen to you on the Frogstar?" "They're going to feed me?" hazarded Zaphod hopefully. "They're going to feed you," said Roosta, "into the Total Perspective Vortex!" Zaphod had never heard of this. He believed that he had heard of all the fun things in the Galaxy, so he assumed that the Total Perspective Vortex was not fun. He asked what it was. "Only," said Roosta, "the most savage psychic torture a sentinent being can undergo." Zaphod nodded a resigned nod. "So," he said, "no food, huh?" "Listen!" said Roosta urgently, "you can kill a man, destroy his body, break his spirit, but only the Total Perspective Vortex can annihilate a man's soul! The treatment lasts seconds, but the effect lasts the rest of your life!" "You ever had a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster?" asked Zaphod sharply. "This is worse." "Phreeow!" admitted Zaphod, much impressed. "Any idea why these guys might want to do this to me?" he added a moment later. "They believe it will be the best way of destroying you for ever. They know what you're after." "Could they drop me a note and let me know as well?" "You know," said Roosta, "you know, Beeblebrox. You want to meet the man who rules the Universe." "Can he cook?" said Zaphod. On reflection he added: "I doubt if he can. If he could cook a good meal he wouldn't worry about the rest of the Universe. I want to meet a cook." Roosta sighed heavily. "What are you doing here anyway?" demanded Zaphod, "what's all this got to so with you?" "I'm just one of those who planned this thing, along with Zarniwoop, along with Yooden Vranx, along with your great grandfather, along with you, Beeblebrox." "Me?" "Yes, you. I was told you had changed, I didn't realize how much." "But..." "I am here to do one job. I will do it before I leave you." "What job, man, what are you talking about?" "I will do it before I leave you." Roosta lapsed into an impenetrable silence. Zaphod was terribly glad.

Chapter 9

The air around the second planet of the Frogstar system was stale and unwholesome. The dank winds that swept continually over its surface swept over salt flats, dried up marshland, tangled and rotting vegetation and the crumbling remains of ruined cities. No life moved across its surface. The ground, like that of many planets in this part of the Galaxy, had long been deserted. The howl of the wind was desolate enough as it gusted through the old decaying houses of the cities; it was more desolate as it whipped about the bottoms of the tall black towers that swayed uneasily here and there about the surface of this world. At the top of these towers lived colonies of large, scraggy, evil smelling birds, the sole survivors of the civilization that once lived here. The howl of the wind was at its most desolate, however, when it passed over a pimple of a place set in the middle of a wide grey plain on the outskirts of the largest of the abandoned cities. This pimple of a place was the thing that had earned this world the reputation of being the most totally evil place in the Galaxy. From without it was simply a steel dome about thirty feet across. From within it was something more monstrous than the mind can comprehend. About a hundred yards or so away, and separated from it by a pockmarked and blasted stretch of the most barren land imaginable was what would probably have to be described as a landing pad of sorts. That is to say that scattered over a largish area were the ungainly hulks of two or three dozen crash-landed buildings. Flitting over and around these buildings was a mind, a mind that was waiting for something. The mind directed its attention into the air, and before very long a distant speck appeared, surrounded by a ring of smaller specks. The larger speck was the left-hand tower of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy office building, descending through the stratosphere of Frogstar World B. As it descended, Roosta suddenly broke the long uncomfortable silence that had grown up between the two men. He stood up and gathered his towel into a bag. He said: "Beeblebrox, I will now do the job I was sent here to do." Zaphod looked up at him from where he was sitting in a corner sharing unspoken thoughts with Marvin. "Yeah?" he said. "The building will shortly be landing. When you leave the building, do not go out of the door," said Roosta, "go out of the window." "Good luck," he added, and walked out of the door, disappearing from Zaphod's life as mysteriously as he had entered it. Zaphod leapt up and tried the door, but Roosta had already locked it. He shrugged and returned to the corner. Two minutes later, the building crashlanded amongst the other wreckage. Its escort of Frogstar Fighters deactivated their force beams and soared off into the air again, bound for Frogstar World A, an altogether more congenial spot. They never landed on Frogstar World B. No one did. No one ever walked on its surface other than the intended victims of the Total Perspective Vortex. Zaphod was badly shaken by the crash. He lay for a while in the silent dusty rubble to which most of the room had been reduced. He felt that he was at the lowest ebb he had ever reached in his life. He felt bewildered, he felt lonely, he felt unloved. Eventually he felt he ought to get whatever it was over with. He looked around the cracked and broken room. The wall had split round the door frame, and the door hung open. The window, by some miracle was closed and unbroken. For a while he hesitated, then he thought that if his strange and recent companion had been through all that he had been through just to tell him what he had told him, then there must be a good reason for it. With Marvin's help he got the window open. Outside it, the cloud of dust aroused by the crash, and the hulks of the other buildings with which this one was surrounded, effectively prevented Zaphod from seeing anything of the world outside. Not that this concerned him unduly. His main concern was what he saw when he looked down. Zarniwoop's office was on the fifteenth floor. The building had landed at a tilt of about forty-five degrees, but still the descent looked heart-stopping. Eventually, stung by the continuous series of contemptuous looks that Marvin appeared to be giving him, he took a deep breath and clambered out on to the steeply inclined side of the building. Marvin followed him, and together they began to crawl slowly and painfully down the fifteen floors that separated them from the ground. As he crawled, the dank air and dust choked his lungs, his eyes smarted and the terrifying distance down made his heads spin. The occasional remark from Marvin of the order of "This is the sort of thing you lifeforms enjoy is it? I ask merely for information," did little to improve his state of mind. About half-way down the side of the shattered building they stopped to rest. It seemed to Zaphod as he lay there panting with fear and exhaustion that Marvin seemed a mite more cheerful than usual. Eventually he realized this wasn't so. The robot just seemed cheerful in comparison with his own mood. A large, scraggy black bird came flapping through the slowly settling clouds of dust and, stretching down its scrawny legs, landed on an inclined window ledge a couple of yards from Zaphod. It folded its ungainly wings and teetered awkwardly on its perch. Its wingspan must have been something like six feet, and its head and neck seemed curiously large for a bird. Its face was flat, the beak underdeveloped, and half-way along the underside of its wings the vestiges of something handlike could be clearly seen. In fact, it looked almost human. It turned its heavy eyes on Zaphod and clicked its beak in a desultory fashion. "Go away," said Zaphod. "OK," muttered the bird morosely and flapped off into the dust again. Zaphod watched its departure in bewilderment. "Did that bird just talk to me?" he asked Marvin nervously. He was quite prepared to believe the alternative explanation, that he was in fact hallucinating. "Yes," confirmed Marvin. "Poor souls," said a deep, ethereal voice in Zaphod's ear. Twisting round violently to find the source of the voice nearly caused Zaphod to fall off the building. He grabbed savagely at a protruding window fitting and cut his hand on it. He hung on, breathing heavily. The voice had no visible source whatever-there was no one there. Nevertheless, it spoke again. "A tragic history behind them, you know. A terrible blight." Zaphod looked wildly about. The voice was deep and quiet. In other circumstances it would even be described as soothing. There is, however, nothing soothing about being addressed by a disembodied voice out of nowhere, particularly if you are, like Zaphod Beeblebrox, not at your best and hanging from a ledge eight storeys up a crashed building. "Hey, er..." he stammered. "Shall I tell you their story?" inquired the voice quietly. "Hey, who are you?" panted Zaphod. "Where are you?" "Later then, perhaps," murmured the voice. "I am Gargravarr. I am the Custodian of the Total Perspective Vortex." "Why can't I see..." "You will find your progress down the building greatly facilitated," the voice lifted, "if you move about two yards to your left. Why don't you try it?" Zaphod looked and saw a series of short horizontal grooves leading all the way down the side of the building. Gratefully he shifted himself across to them. "Why don't I see you again at the bottom?" said the voice in his ear, and as it spoke it faded. "Hey," called out Zaphod, "Where are you..." "It'll only take a couple of minutes..." said the voice very faintly. "Marvin," said Zaphod earnestly to the robot squatting dejectedly next to him, "Did a... did a voice just..." "Yes," Marvin replied tersely. Zaphod nodded. He took out his Peril Sensitive Sunglasses again. They were completely black, and by now quite badly scratched by the unexpected metal object in his pocket. He put them on. He would find his way down the building more comfortably if he didn't actually have to look at what he was doing. Minutes later he clambered over the ripped and mangled foundations of the building and, once more removing his sunglasses, he dropped to the ground. Marvin joined him a moment or so later and lay face down in the dust and rubble, from which position he seemed too disinclined to move. "Ah, there you are," said the voice suddenly in Zaphod's ear, "excuse me leaving you like that, it's just that I have a terrible head for heights. At least," it added wistfully, "I did have a terrible head for heights." Zaphod looked around slowly and carefully, just to see if he had missed something which might be the source of the voice. All he saw, however, was the dust, the rubble and the towering hulks of the encircling buildings. "Hey, er, why can't I see you?" he said, "why aren't you here?" "I am here," said the voice slowly, "my body wanted to come but it's a bit busy at the moment. Things to do, people to see." After what seemed like a sort of ethereal sigh it added, "You know how it is with bodies." Zaphod wasn't sure about this. "I thought I did," he said. "I only hope it's gone for a rest cure," continued the voice, "the way it's been living recently it must be on its last elbows." "Elbows?" said Zaphod, "don't you mean last legs?" The voice said nothing for a while. Zaphod looked around uneasily. He didn't know if it was gone or was still there or what it was doing. Then the voice spoke again. "So, you are to be put into the Vortex, yes?" "Er, well," said Zaphod with a very poor attempt at nonchalance, "this cat's in no hurry, you know. I can just slouch about and take in a look at the local scenery, you know?" "Have you seen the local scenery?" asked the voice of Gargravarr. "Er, no." Zaphod clambered over the rubble, and rounded the corner of one of the wrecked buildings that was obscuring his view. He looked out at the landscape of Frogstar World B. "Ah, OK," he said, "I'll just sort of slouch about then." "No," said Gargravarr, "the Vortex is ready for you now. You must come. Follow me." "Er, yeah?" said Zaphod, "and how am I meant to do that?" "I'll hum for you," said Gargravarr, "follow the humming." A soft keening sound drifted through the air, a pale, sad sound that seemed to be without any kind of focus. It was only by listening very carefully that Zaphod was able to detect the direction from which it was coming. Slowly, dazedly, he stumbled off in its wake. What else was there to do?

Chapter 10

The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore. Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do. For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire "intelligent" population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which tree they are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on the meaning of life, the futility of death and the importance of birth control, fight a few extremely minor wars, and eventually die strapped to the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches. In fact the only Oglaroonians who ever leave their tree are those who are hurled out of it for the heinous crime of wondering whether any of the other trees might be capable of supporting life at all, or indeed whether the other trees are anything other than illusions brought on by eating too many Oglanuts. Exotic though this behaviour may seem, there is no life form in the Galaxy which is not in some way guilty of the same thing, which is why the Total Perspective Vortex is as horrific as it is. For when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says "You are here."

The grey plain stretched before Zaphod, a ruined, shattered plain. The wind whipped wildly over it. Visible in the middle was the steel pimple of the dome. This, gathered Zaphod, was where he was going. This was the Total Perspective Vortex. As he stood and gazed bleakly at it, a sudden inhuman wail of terror emanated from it as of a man having his soul burnt from his body. It screamed above the wind and died away. Zaphod started with fear and his blood seemed to turn to liquid helium. "Hey, what was that?" he muttered voicelessly. "A recording," said Gargravarr, "of the last man who was put in the Vortex. It is always played to the next victim. A sort of prelude." "Hey, it really sounds bad..." stammered Zaphod, "couldn't we maybe slope off to a party or something for a while, think it over?" "For all I know," said Gargravarr's ethereal voice, "I'm probably at one. My body that is. It goes to a lot of parties without me. Says I only get in the way. Hey ho." "What is all this with your body?" said Zaphod, anxious to delay whatever it was that was going to happen to him. "Well, it's... it's busy you know," said Gargravarr hesitantly. "You mean it's got a mind of its own?" said Zaphod. There was a long and slightly chilly pause before Gargravarr spoke again. "I have to say," he replied eventually, "that I find that remark in rather poor taste." Zaphod muttered a bewildered and embarrassed apology. "No matter," said Gargravarr, "you weren't to know." The voice fluttered unhappily. "The truth is," it continued in tones which suggested he was trying very hard to keep it under control, "the truth is that we are currently undergoing a period of legal trial separation. I suspect it will end in divorce." The voice was still again, leaving Zaphod with no idea of what to say. He mumbled uncertainly. "I think we are probably not very well suited," said Gargravarr again at length, "we never seemed to be happy doing the same things. We always had the greatest arguments over sex and fishing. Eventually we tried to combine the two, but that only led to disaster, as you can probably imagine. And now my body refuses to let me in. It won't even see me..." He paused again, tragically. The wind whipped across the plain. "It says I only inhibit it. I pointed out that in fact I was meant to inhibit it, and it said that that was exactly the sort of smart alec remark that got right up a body's left nostril, and so we left it. It will probably get custody of my forename." "Oh..." said Zaphod faintly, "and what's that?" "Pizpot," said the voice, "My name is Pizpot Gargravarr. Says it all really doesn't it?" "Errr..." said Zaphod sympathetically. "And that is why I, as a disembodied mind, have this job, Custodian of the Total Perspective Vortex. No one will ever walk on the ground of this planet. Except the victims of the Vortex-they don't really count I'm afraid." "Ah..." "I'll tell you the story. Would you like to hear it?" "Er..." "Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet-people, cities shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of these shoe shops were increasing. It's a well known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result-collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds-you've seen one of them-who cursed their feet, cursed the ground, and vowed that none should walk on it again. Unhappy lot. Come, I must take you to the Vortex." Zaphod shook his head in bemusement and stumbled forward across the plain. "And you," he said, "you come from this hellhole pit do you?" "No no," said Gargravarr, taken aback, "I come from the Frogstar World C. Beautiful place. Wonderful fishing. I flit back there in the evenings. Though all I can do now is watch. The Total Perspective Vortex is the only thing on this planet with any function. It was built here because no one else wanted it on their doorstep." At that moment another dismal scream rent the air and Zaphod shuddered. "What can do that to a guy?" he breathed. "The Universe," said Gargravarr simply, "the whole infinite Universe. The infinite suns, the infinite distances between them, and yourself an invisible dot on an invisible dot, infinitely small." "Hey, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox, man, you know," muttered Zaphod trying to flap the last remnants of his ego. Gargravarr made no reply, but merely resumed his mournful humming till they reached the tarnished steel dome in the middle of the plain. As they reached it, a door hummed open in the side, revealing a small darkened chamber within. "Enter," said Gargravarr. Zaphod started with fear. "Hey, what, now?" he said. "Now." Zaphod peered nervously inside. The chamber was very small. It was steel-lined and there was hardly space in it for more than one man. "It... er... it doesn't look like any kind of Vortex to me," said Zaphod. "It isn't," said Gargravarr, "it's just the elevator. Enter." With infinite trepidation Zaphod stepped into it. He was aware of Gargravarr being in the elevator with him, though the disembodied man was not for the moment speaking. The elevator began its descent. "I must get myself into the right frame of mind for this," muttered Zaphod. "There is no right frame of mind," said Gargravarr sternly. "You really know how to make a guy feel inadequate." "I don't. The Vortex does." At the bottom of the shaft, the rear of the elevator opened up and Zaphod stumbled out into a smallish, functional, steel-lined chamber. At the far side of it stood a single upright steel box, just large enough for a man to stand in. It was that simple. It connected to a small pile of components and instruments via a single thick wire. "Is that it?" said Zaphod in surprise. "That is it." Didn't look too bad, thought Zaphod. "And I get in there do I?" said Zaphod. "You get in there," said Gargravarr, "and I'm afraid you must do it now." "OK, OK," said Zaphod. He opened the door of the box and stepped in. Inside the box he waited. After five seconds there was a click, and the entire Universe was there in the box with him.

Chapter 11

The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. To explain-since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation-every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake. The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. Trin Tragula-for that was his name-was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake. "Have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day. And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex-just to show her. And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it. To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

The door of the Vortex swung open. From his disembodied mind Gargravarr watched dejectedly. He had rather liked Zaphod Beeblebrox in a strange sort of way. He was clearly a man of many qualities, even if they were mostly bad ones. He waited for him to flop forwards out of the box, as they all did. Instead, he stepped out. "Hi!" he said. "Beeblebrox..." gasped Gargravarr's mind in amazement. "Could I have a drink please?" said Zaphod. "You... you... have been in the Vortex?" stammered Gargravarr. "You saw me, kid." "And it was working?" "Sure was." "And you saw the whole infinity of creation?" "Sure. Really neat place, you know that?" Gargravarr's mind was reeling in astonishment. Had his body been with him it would have sat down heavily with its mouth hanging open. "And you saw yourself," said Gargravarr, "in relation to it all?" "Oh, yeah, yeah." "But... what did you experience?" Zaphod shrugged smugly. "It just told me what I knew all the time. I'm a really terrific and great guy. Didn't I tell you, baby, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox!" His gaze passed over the machinery which powered the vortex and suddenly stopped, startled. He breathed heavily. "Hey," he said, "is that really a piece of fairy cake?" He ripped the small piece of confectionery from the sensors with which it was surrounded. "If I told you how much I needed this," he said ravenously, "I wouldn't have time to eat it." He ate it.

Chapter 12

A short while later he was running across the plain in the direction of the ruined city. The dank air wheezed heavily in his lungs and he frequently stumbled with the exhaustion he was still feeling. Night was beginning to fall too, and the rough ground was treacherous. The elation of his recent experience was still with him though. The whole Universe. He had seen the whole Universe stretching to infinity around him-everything. And with it had come the clear and extraordinary knowledge that he was the most important thing in it. Having a conceited ego is one thing. Actually being told by a machine is another. He didn't have time to reflect on this matter. Gargravarr had told him that he would have to alert his masters as to what had happened, but that he was prepared to leave a decent interval before doing so. Enough time for Zaphod to make a break and find somewhere to hide. What he was going to do he didn't know, but feeling that he was the most important person in the Universe gave him the confidence to believe that something would turn up. Nothing else on this blighted planet could give him much grounds for optimism. He ran on, and soon reached the outskirts of the abandoned city. He walked along cracked and gaping roads riddled with scrawny weeds, the holes filled with rotting shoes. The buildings he passed were so crumbled and decrepit he thought it unsafe to enter any of them. Where could he hide? He hurried on. After a while the remains of a wide sweeping road led off from the one down which he was walking, and at its end lay a vast low building, surrounded with sundry smaller ones, the whole surrounded by the remains of a perimeter barrier. The large main building still seemed reasonably solid, and Zaphod turned off to see if it might provide him with... well with anything. He approached the building. Along one side of it-the front it would seem since it faced a wide concreted apron area-were three gigantic doors, maybe sixty feet high. The far one of these was open, and towards this, Zaphod ran. Inside, all was gloom, dust and confusion. Giant cobwebs lay over everything. Part of the infrastructure of the building had collapsed, part of the rear wall had caved in, and a thick choking dust lay inches over the floor. Through the heavy gloom huge shapes loomed, covered with debris. The shapes were sometimes cylindrical, sometimes bulbous, sometimes like eggs, or rather cracked eggs. Most of them were split open or falling apart, some were mere skeletons. They were all spacecraft, all derelict. Zaphod wandered in frustration among the hulks. There was nothing here that remotely approached the serviceable. Even the mere vibration of his footsteps caused one precarious wreck to collapse further into itself. Towards the rear of the building lay one old ship, slightly larger than the others, and buried beneath even deeper piles of dust and cobwebs. Its outline, however, seemed unbroken. Zaphod approached it with interest, and as he did so, he tripped over an old feedline. He tried to toss the feedline aside, and to his surprise discovered that it was still connected to the ship. To his utter astonishment he realized that the feedline was also humming slightly. He stared at the ship in disbelief, and then back down at the feedline in his hands. He tore off his jacket and threw it aside. Crawling along on his hands and knees he followed the feedline to the point where it connected with the ship. The connection was sound, and the slight humming vibration was more distinct. His heart was beating fast. He wiped away some grime and laid an ear against the ship's side. He could only hear a faint, indeterminate noise. He rummaged feverishly amongst the debris lying on the floor all about him and found a short length of tubing, and a non-biodegradable plastic cup. Out of this he fashioned a crude stethoscope and placed it against the side of the ship. What he heard made his brains turn somersaults. The voice said: "Transtellar Cruise Lines would like to apologize to passengers for the continuing delay to this flight. We are currently awaiting the loading of our complement of small lemon-soaked paper napkins for your comfort, refreshment and hygiene during the journey. Meanwhile we thank you for your patience. The cabin crew will shortly be serving coffee and biscuits again." Zaphod staggered backwards, staring wildly at the ship. He walked around for a few moments in a daze. In so doing he suddenly caught sight of a giant departure board still hanging, but by only one support, from the ceiling above him. It was covered with grime, but some of the figures were still discernible. Zaphod's eyes searched amongst the figures, then made some brief calculations. His eyes widened. "Nine hundred years..." he breathed to himself. That was how late the ship was. Two minutes later he was on board. As he stepped out of the airlock, the air that greeted him was cool and fresh-the air conditioning was still working. The lights were still on. He moved out of the small entrance chamber into a short narrow corridor and stepped nervously down it. Suddenly a door opened and a figure stepped out in front of him. "Please return to your seat sir," said the android stewardess and, turning her back on him, she walked on down the corridor in front of him. When his heart had started beating again he followed her. She opened the door at the end of the corridor and walked through. He followed her through the door. They were now in the passenger compartment and Zaphod's heart stopped still again for a moment. In every seat sat a passenger, strapped into his or her seat. The passengers' hair was long and unkempt, their fingernails were long, the men wore beards. All of them were quite clearly alive-but sleeping. Zaphod had the creeping horrors. He walked slowly down the aisle as in a dream. By the time he was half-way down the aisle, the stewardess had reached the other end. She turned and spoke. "Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen," she said sweetly, "Thank you for bearing with us during this slight delay. We will be taking off as soon as we possibly can. If you would like to wake up now I will serve you coffee and biscuits." There was a slight hum. At that moment, all the passengers awoke. They awoke screaming and clawing at their straps and life support systems that held them tightly in their seats. They screamed and bawled and hollered till Zaphod thought his ears would shatter. They struggled and writhed as the stewardess patiently moved up the aisle placing a small cup of coffee and a packet of biscuits in front of each one of them. Then one of them rose from his seat. He turned and looked at Zaphod. Zaphod's skin was crawling all over his body as if it was trying to get off. He turned and ran from the bedlam. He plunged through the door and back into the corridor. The man pursued him. He raced in a frenzy to the end of the corridor, through the entrance chamber and beyond. He arrived on the flight deck, slammed and bolted the door behind him. He leant back against the door breathing hard. Within seconds, a hand started beating on the door. From somewhere on the flight deck a metallic voice addressed him. "Passengers are not allowed on the flight deck. Please return to your seat, and wait for the ship to take off. Coffee and biscuits are being served. This is your autopilot speaking. Please return to your seat." Zaphod said nothing. He breathed hard, behind him, the hand continued to knock on the door. "Please return to your seat," repeated the autopilot. "Passengers are not allowed on the flight deck." "I'm not a passenger," panted Zaphod. "Please return to your seat." "I am not a passenger!" shouted Zaphod again. "Please return to your seat." "I am not a... hello, can you hear me?" "Please return to your seat." You're the autopilot?" said Zaphod. "Yes," said the voice from the flight console. "You're in charge of this ship?" "Yes," said the voice again, "there has been a delay. Passengers are to be kept temporarily in suspended animation, for their comfort and convenience. Coffee and biscuits are being served every year, after which passengers are returned to suspended animation for their continued comfort and convenience. Departure will take place when the flight stores are complete. We apologize for the delay." Zaphod moved away from the door, on which the pounding had now ceased. He approached the flight console. "Delay?" he cried, "Have you seen the world outside this ship? It's a wasteland, a desert. Civilization's been and gone, man. There are no lemon-soaked paper napkins on the way from anywhere!" "The statistical likelihood," continued the autopilot primly, "is that other civilizations will arise. There will one day be lemon-soaked paper napkins. Till then there will be a short delay. Please return to your seat." "But..." But at that moment the door opened. Zaphod span round to see the man who had pursued him standing there. He carried a large briefcase. He was smartly dressed, and his hair was short. He had no beard and no long fingernails. "Zaphod Beeblebrox," he said, "My name is Zarniwoop. I believe you wanted to see me." Zaphod Beeblebrox wittered. His mouths said foolish things. He dropped into a chair. "Oh man, oh man, where did you spring from?" he said. "I've been waiting here for you," he said in a businesslike tone. He put the briefcase down and sat in another chair. "I am glad you followed instructions," he said, "I was a bit nervous that you might have left my office by the door rather than the window. Then you would have been in trouble." Zaphod shook his heads at him and burbled. "When you entered the door of my office, you entered my electronically synthesized Universe," he explained, "if you had left by the door you would have been back in the real one. The artificial one works from here." He patted the briefcase smugly. Zaphod glared at him with resentment and loathing. "What's the difference?" he muttered. "Nothing," said Zarniwoop, "they are identical. Oh-except that I think the Frogstar Fighters are grey in the real Universe." "What's going on?" spat Zaphod. "Simple," said Zarniwoop. His self assurance and smugness made Zaphod seethe. "Very simple," repeated Zarniwoop, "I discovered the coordinated at which this man could be found-the man who rules the Universe, and discovered that his world was protected by an Unprobability field. To protect my secret-and myself-I retreated to the safety of this totally artificial Universe and hid myself away in a forgotten cruise liner. I was secure. Meanwhile, you and I..." "You and I?" said Zaphod angrily, "you mean I knew you?" "Yes," said Zarniwoop, "we knew each other well." "I had no taste," said Zaphod and resumed a sullen silence. "Meanwhile, you and I arranged that you would steal the Improbability Drive ship-the only one which could reach the ruler's world-and bring it to me here. This you have now done I trust, and I congratulate you." He smiled a tight little smile which Zaphod wanted to hit with a brick. "Oh, and in case you were wondering," added Zarniwoop, "this Universe was created specifically for you to come to. You are therefore the most important person in this Universe. You would never," he said with an even more brickable smile, "have survived the Total Perspective Vortex in the real one. Shall we go?" "Where?" said Zaphod sullenly. He felt collapsed. "To your ship. The Heart of Gold. You did bring it I trust?" "No." "Where is your jacket?" Zaphod looked at him in mystification. "My jacket? I took it off. It's outside." "Good, we will go and find it." Zarniwoop stood up and gestured to Zaphod to follow him. Out in the entrance chamber again, they could hear the screams of the passengers being fed coffee and biscuits. "It has not been a pleasant experience waiting for you," said Zarniwoop. "Not pleasant for you!" bawled Zaphod, "How do you think..." Zarniwoop held up a silencing finger as the hatchway swung open. A few feet away from them they could see Zaphod's jacket lying in the debris. "A very remarkable and very powerful ship," said Zarniwoop, "watch." As they watched, the pocket on the jacket suddenly bulged. It split, it ripped. The small metal model of the Heart of Gold that Zaphod had been bewildered to discover in his pocket was growing. It grew, it continued to grow. It reached, after two minutes, its full size. "At an Improbability Level," said Zarniwoop, "of... oh I don't know, but something very large." Zaphod swayed. "You mean I had it with me all the time?" "Zarniwoop smiled. He lifted up his briefcase and opened it. He twisted a single switch inside it. "Goodbye artificial Universe," he said, "hello real one!" The scene before them shimmered briefly-and reappeared exactly as before. "You see?" said Zarniwoop, "exactly the same." "You mean," repeated Zaphod tautly, "that I had it with me all the time?" "Oh yes," said Zarniwoop, "of course. That was the whole point." "That's it," said Zaphod, "you can count me out, from hereon in you can count me out. I've had all I want of this. You play your own games." "I'm afraid you cannot leave," said Zarniwoop, "you are entwined in the Improbability field. You cannot escape." He smiled the smile that Zaphod had wanted to hit and this time Zaphod hit it.

Chapter 13

Ford Prefect bounded up to the bridge of the Heart of Gold. "Trillian! Arthur!" he shouted, "it's working! The ship's reactivated!" Trillian and Arthur were asleep on the floor. "Come on you guys, we're going off, we're off," he said kicking them awake. "Hi there guys!" twittered the computer, "it's really great to be back with you again, I can tell you, and I just want to say that..." "Shut up," said Ford, "tell us where the hell we are." "Frogstar World B, and man it's a dump," said Zaphod running on to the bridge, "hi, guys, you must be so amazingly glad to see me you don't even find words to tell me what a cool frood I am." "What a what?" said Arthur blearily, picking himself up from the floor and not taking any of this in. "I know how you feel," said Zaphod, "I'm so great even I get tongue-tied talking to myself. Hey it's good to see you Trillian, Ford, Monkeyman. Hey, er, computer...?" "Hi there, Mr. Beeblebrox sir, sure is a great honor to..." "Shut up and get us out of here, fast fast fast." "Sure thing, fella, where do you want to go?" "Anywhere, doesn't matter," shouted Zaphod, "yes it does!" he said again, "we want to go to the nearest place to eat!" "Sure thing," said the computer happily and a massive explosion rocket the bridge. When Zarniwoop entered a minute or so later with a black eye, he regarded the four wisps of smoke with interest.

Chapter 14

Four inert bodies sank through spinning blackness. Consciousness had died, cold oblivion pulled the bodies down and down into the pit of unbeing. The roar of silence echoed dismally around them and they sank at last into a dark and bitter sea of heaving red that slowly engulfed them, seemingly for ever. After what seemed an eternity the sea receded and left them lying on a cold hard shore, the flotsam and jetsam of the stream of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Cold spasms shook them, lights danced sickeningly around them. The cold hard shore tipped and span and then stood still. It shone darkly-it was a very highly polished cold hard shore. A green blur watched them disapprovingly. It coughed. "Good evening, madam, gentlemen," it said, "do you have a reservation?" Ford Prefect's consciousness snapped back like elastic, making his brain smart. He looked up woozily at the green blur. "Reservation?" he said weakly. "Yes, sir," said the green blur. "Do you need a reservation for the afterlife?" In so far as it is possible for a green blur to arch its eyebrows disdainfully, this is what the green blur now did. "Afterlife, sir?" it said. Arthur Dent was grappling with his consciousness the way one grapples with a lost bar of soap in the bath. "Is this the afterlife?" he stammered. "Well I assume so," said Ford Prefect trying to work out which way was up. He tested the theory that it must lie in the opposite direction from the cold hard shore on which he was lying, and staggered to what he hoped were his feet. "I mean," he said, swaying gently, "there's no way we could have survived that blast is there?" "No," muttered Arthur. He had raised himself on to his elbows but it didn't seem to improve things. He slumped down again. "No," said Trillian, standing up, "no way at all." A dull hoarse gurgling sound came from the floor. It was Zaphod Beeblebrox attempting to speak. "I certainly didn't survive," he gurgled, "I was a total goner. Wham bang and that was it." "Yeah, thanks to you," said Ford, "We didn't stand a chance. We must have been blown to bits. Arms, legs everywhere." "Yeah," said Zaphod struggling noisily to his feet. "If the lady and gentlemen would like to order drinks..." said the green blur, hovering impatiently beside them. "Kerpow, splat," continued Zaphod, "instantaneously zonked into our component molecules. Hey, Ford," he said, identifying one of the slowly solidifying blurs around him, "did you get that thing of your whole life flashing before you?" "You got that too?" said Ford, "your whole life?" "Yeah," said Zaphod, "at least I assume it was mine. I spent a lot of time out of my skulls you know." He looked at around him at the various shapes that were at last becoming proper shapes instead of vague and wobbling shapeless shapes. "So..." he said. "So what?" said Ford. "So here we are," said Zaphod hesitantly, "lying dead..." "Standing," Trillian corrected him. "Er, standing dead," continued Zaphod, "in this desolate..." "Restaurant," said Arthur Dent who had got to his feet and could now, much to his surprise, see clearly. That is to say, the thing that surprised him was not that he could see, but what he could see. "Here we are," continued Zaphod doggedly, "standing dead in this desolate..." "Five star..." said Trillian. "Restaurant," concluded Zaphod. "Odd isn't it?" said Ford. "Er, yeah." "Nice chandeliers though," said Trillian. They looked about themselves in bemusement. "It's not so much an afterlife," said Arthur, "more a sort of après vie." The chandeliers were in fact a little on the flashy side and the low vaulted ceiling from which they hung would not, in an ideal Universe, have been painted in that particular shade of deep turquoise, and even if it had been it wouldn't have been highlighted by concealed moodlighting. This is not, however, an ideal Universe, as was further evidenced by the eye-crossing patterns of the inlaid marble floor, and the way in which the fronting for the eighty-yard long marble-topped bar had been made. The fronting for the eighty-yard long marble-topped bar had been made by stitching together nearly twenty thousand Antarean Mosaic Lizard skins, despite the fact that the twenty thousand lizards concerned had needed them to keep their insides in. A few smartly dressed creatures were lounging casually at the bar or relaxing in the richly coloured body-hugging seats that were deployed here and there about the bar area. A young Vl'Hurg officer and his green steaming young lady passed through the large smoked glass doors at the far end of the bar into the dazzling light of the main body of the Restaurant beyond. Behind Arthur was a large curtained bay window. He pulled aside the corner of the curtain and looked out at a landscape which under normal circumstances would have given Arthur the creeping horrors. These were not, however, normal circumstances, for the thing that froze his blood and made his skin try to crawl up his back and off the top of his head was the sky. The sky was... An attendant flunkey politely drew the curtain back into place. "All in good time, sir," he said. Zaphod's eyes flashed. "Hey, hang about you dead guys," he said, "I think we're missing some ultra-important thing here you know. Something somebody said and we missed it." Arthur was profoundly relieved to turn his attention from what he had just seen. He said, "I said it was a sort of après..." "Yeah, and don't you wish you hadn't?" said Zaphod, "Ford?" "I said it was odd." "Yeah, shrewd but dull, perhaps it was..." "Perhaps," interrupted the green blur who had by this time resolved into the shape of a small wizened dark-suited green waiter, "perhaps you would care to discuss the matter over drinks..." "Drinks!" cried Zaphod, "that was it! See what you miss if you don't stay alert." "Indeed sir," said the waiter patiently. "If the lady and gentlemen would care to order drinks before dinner..." "Dinner!" Zaphod exclaimed with passion, "Listen, little green person, my stomach could take you home and cuddle you all night for the mere idea." "... and the Universe," concluded the waiter, determined not to be deflected on his home stretch, "will explode later for your pleasure." Ford's head swivelled towards him. He spoke with feeling. "Wow," he said, "What sort of drinks do you serve in this place?" The waiter laughed a polite little waiter's laugh. "Ah," he said, "I think sir has perhaps misunderstood me." "Oh, I hope not," breathed Ford. The waiter coughed a polite little waiter's cough. "It is not unusual for our customers to be a little disoriented by the time journey," he said, "so if I might suggest..." "Time journey?" said Zaphod. "Time journey?" said Ford. "Time journey?" said Trillian. "You mean this isn't the afterlife?" said Arthur. The waiter smiled a polite little waiter's smile. He had almost exhausted his polite little waiter repertoire and would soon be slipping into his role of a rather tight lipped and sarcastic little waiter. "Afterlife sir?" he said, "No sir." "And we're not dead?" said Arthur. The waiter tightened his lips. "Aha, ha," he said, "Sir is most evidently alive, otherwise I would not attempt to serve sir." In an extraordinary gesture which is pointless attempting to describe, Zaphod Beeblebrox slapped both his foreheads with two of his arms and one of his thighs with the other. "Hey guys," he said, "This is crazy. We finally did it. We finally got to where we were going. This is Milliways!" "Yes sir," said the waiter, laying on the patience with a trowel, "this is Milliways-the Restaurant at the End of the Universe." "End of what?" said Arthur. "The Universe," repeated the waiter, very clearly and unnecessarily distinctly. "When did that end?" said Arthur. "In just a few minutes, sir," said the waiter. He took a deep breath. He didn't need to do this since his body was supplied with the peculiar assortment of gases it required for survival from a small intravenous device strapped to his leg. There are times, however, when whatever your metabolism you have to take a deep breath. "Now, if you would care to order drinks at last," he said, "I will then show you to your table." Zaphod grinned two manic grins, sauntered over to the bar and bought most of it.

Chapter 15

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the entire history of catering. It has been built on the fragmented remains of... it will be built on the fragmented... that is to say it will have been built by this time, and indeed has been- One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is also no problem about changing the course of history-the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end. The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you for instance how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations whilst you are actually travelling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own father or mother. Most readers get as far as the Future Semi-Conditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up: and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be. To resume: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the entire history of catering. It is built on the fragmented remains of an eventually ruined planet which is (wioll haven be) enclosed in a vast time bubble and projected forward in time to the precise moment of the End of the Universe. This is, many would say, impossible. In it, guests take (willan on-take) their places at table and eat (willan on-eat) sumptuous meals whilst watching (willing watchen) the whole of creation explode around them. This is, many would say, equally impossible. You can arrive (mayan arivan on-when) for any sitting you like without prior (late fore-when) reservation because you can book retrospectively, as it were when you return to your own time. (you can have on-book haventa forewhen presooning returningwenta retrohome.) This is, many would now insist, absolutely impossible. At the Restaurant you can meet and dine with (mayan meetan con with dinan on when) a fascinating cross-section of the entire population of space and time. This, it can be explained patiently, is also impossible. You can visit it as many times as you like (mayan on-visit re-onvisiting... and so on-for further tense-corrections consult Dr. Streetmentioner's book) and be sure of never meeting yourself, because of the embarrassment this usually causes. This, even if the rest were true, which it isn't, is patently impossible, say the doubters. All you have to do is deposit one penny in a savings account in your own era, and when you arrive at the End of Time the operation of compound interest means that the fabulous cost of your meal has been paid for. This, many claim, is not merely impossible but clearly insane, which is why the advertising executives of the star system of Bastablon came up with this slogan: "If you've done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?"

Chapter 16

At the bar, Zaphod was rapidly becoming as tired as a newt. His heads knocked together and his smiles were coming out of synch. He was miserably happy. "Zaphod," said Ford, "whilst you're still capable of speech, would you care to tell me what the photon happened? Where have you been? Where have we been? Small matter, but I'd like it cleared up." Zaphod's left head sobered up, leaving his right to sink further into the obscurity of drink. "Yeah," he said, "I've been around. They want me to find the man who rules the Universe, but I don't care to meet him. I believe the man can't cook." His left head watched his right head saying this and then nodded. "True," it said, "have another drink." Ford had another Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the drink which has been described as the alcoholic equivalent of a mugging-expensive and bad for the head. Whatever had happened, Ford decided, he didn't really care too much. "Listen Ford," said Zaphod, "everything's cool and froody." "You mean everything's under control." "No," said Zaphod, "I do not mean everything's under control. That would not be cool and froody. If you want to know what happened let's just say I had the whole situation in my pocket. OK?" Ford shrugged. Zaphod giggled into his drink. It frothed up over the side of the glass and started to eat its way into the marble bar top. A wild-skinned sky-gypsy approached them and played electric violin at them until Zaphod gave him a lot of money and he agreed to go away again. The gypsy approached Arthur and Trillian sitting in another part of the bar. "I don't know what this place is," said Arthur, "but I think it gives me the creeps." "Have another drink," said Trillian, "Enjoy yourself." "Which?" said Arthur, "the two are mutually exclusive." "Poor Arthur, you're not really cut out for this life are you?" "You call this life?" "You're beginning to sound like Marvin." "Marvin's the clearest thinker I know. How do you think we make this violinist go away?" The waiter approached. "Your table is ready," he said. Seen from the outside, which it never is, the Restaurant resembles a giant glittering starfish beached on a forgotten rock. Each of its arms houses the bars, the kitchens, the forcefield generators which protect the entire structure and the decayed planet on which it sits, and the Time Turbines which slowly rock the whole affair backwards and forwards across the crucial moment. In the centre sits the gigantic golden dome, almost a complete globe, and it was into this area that Zaphod, Ford, Arthur and Trillian now passed. At least five tons of glitter alone had gone into it before them, and covered every available surface. The other surfaces were not available because they were already encrusted with jewels, precious sea shells from Santraginus, gold leaf, mosaic tiles, lizard skins and a million unidentifiable embellishments and decorations. Glass glittered, silver shone, gold gleamed, Arthur Dent goggled. "Wowee," said Zaphod, "Zappo." "Incredible!" breathed Arthur, "the people...! The things...!" "The things," said Ford Prefect quietly, "are also people." "The people..." resumed Arthur, "the... other people..." "The lights...!" said Trillian. "The tables..." said Arthur. "The clothes...!" said Trillian. The waiter thought they sounded like a couple of bailiffs. "The End of the Universe is very popular," said Zaphod threading his way unsteadily through the throng of tables, some made of marble, some of rich ultra-mahagony, some even of platinum, and at each a party of exotic creatures chatting amongst themselves and studying menus. "People like to dress up for it," continued Zaphod, "Gives it a sense of occasion." The tables were fanned out in a large circle around a central stage area where a small band were playing light music, at least a thousand tables was Arthur's guess, and interspersed amongst them were swaying palms, hissing fountains, grotesque statuary, in short all the paraphernalia common to all Restaurants where little expense has been spared to give the impression that no expense has been spared. Arthur glanced around, half expecting to see someone making an American Express commercial. Zaphod lurched into Ford, who lurched back into Zaphod. "Wowee," said Zaphod. "Zappo," said Ford. "My great granddaddy must have really screwed up the computer's works, you know," said Zaphod, "I told it to take us to the nearest place to eat and it sends us to the End of the Universe. Remind me to be nice to it one day." He paused. "Hey, everybody's here you know. Everybody who was anybody." "Was?" said Arthur. "At the End of the Universe you have to use the past tense a lot," said Zaphod, "'cos everything's been done you know. Hi, guys," he called out to a nearby party of giant iguana lifeforms, "How did you do?" "Is that Zaphod Beeblebrox?" asked one iguana of another iguana. "I think so," replied the second iguana. "Well doesn't that just take the biscuit," said the first iguana. "Funny old thing, life," said the second iguana. "It's what you make of it," said the first and they lapsed back into silence. They were waiting for the greatest show in the Universe. "Hey, Zaphod," said Ford, grabbing for his arm and, on account of the third Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, missing. He pointed a swaying finger. "There's an old mate of mine," he said, "Hotblack Desiato! See the man at the platinum table with the platinum suit on?" Zaphod tried to follow Ford's finger with his eyes but it made him feel dizzy. Finally he saw. "Oh yeah," he said, then recognition came a moment later. "Hey," he said, "did that guy ever make it megabig! Wow, bigger than the biggest thing ever. Other than me." "Who's he supposed to be?" asked Trillian. "Hotblack Desiato?" said Zaphod in astonishment, "you don't know? You never heard of Disaster Area?" "No," said Trillian, who hadn't. "The biggest," said Ford, "loudest..." "Richest..." suggested Zaphod. "... rock band in the history of..." he searched for the word. "... history itself," said Zaphod. "No," said Trillian. "Zowee," said Zaphod, "here we are at the End of the Universe and you haven't even lived yet. Did you miss out." He led her off to where the waiter had been waiting all this time at the table. Arthur followed them feeling very lost and alone. Ford waded off through the throng to renew an old acquaintance. "Hey, er, Hotblack," he called out, "how you doing? Great to see you big boy, how's the noise? You're looking great, really very, very fat and unwell. Amazing." He slapped the man on the back and was mildly surprised that it seemed to elict no response. The Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters swirling round inside him told him to plunge on regardless. "Remember the old days?" he said, "We used to hang out, right? The Bistro Illegal, remember? Slim's Throat Emporium? The Evildrome Boozarama, great days eh?" Hotblack Desiato offered no opinion as to whether they were great days or not. Ford was not perturbed. "And when we were hungry we'd pose as public health inspectors, you remember that? And go around confiscating meals and drinks right? Till we got food poisoning. Oh, and then there were the long nights of talking and drinking in those smelly rooms above the Cafe Lou in Gretchen Town, New Betel, and you were always in the next room trying to write songs on your ajuitar and we all hated them. And you said you didn't care, and we said we did because we hated them so much." Ford's eyes were beginning to mist over. "And you said you didn't want to be a star," he continued, wallowing in nostalgia, "because you despised the star system. And we said, Hadra and Sulijoo and me, that we didn't think you had the option. And what do you do now? You buy star systems!" He turned and solicited the attention of those at nearby tables. "Here," he said, "is a man who buys star systems!" Hotblack Desiato made no attempt either to confirm or deny this fact, and the attention of the temporary audience waned rapidly. "I think someone's drunk," muttered a purple bush-like being into his wine glass. Ford staggered slightly, and sat down heavily on the chair facing Hotblack Desiato. "What's that number you do?" he said, unwisely grabbing at a bottle for support and tipping it over-into a nearby glass as it happened. Not to waste a happy accident, he drained the glass. "That really huge number," he continued, "how does it go? 'Bwarm! Bwarm! Baderr!!' something, and in the stage act you do it ends up with this ship crashing right into the sun, and you actually do it!" Ford crashed his fist into his other hand to illustrate this feat graphically. He knocked the bottle over again. "Ship! Sun! Wham bang!" he cried. "I mean forget lasers and stuff, you guys are into solar flares and real sunburn! Oh, and terrible songs." His eyes followed the stream of liquid glugging out of the bottle on to the table. Something ought to be done about it, he thought. "Hey, you want a drink?" he said. It began to sink into his squelching mind that something was missing from this reunion, and that the missing something was in some way connected with the fact that the fat man sitting opposite him in the platinum suit and the silvery trilby had not yet said "Hi, Ford" or "Great to see you after all this time," or in fact anything at all. More to the point he had not yet even moved. "Hotblack?" said Ford. A large meaty hand landed on his shoulder from behind and pushed him aside. He slid gracelessly off his seat and peered upwards to see if he could spot the owner of this discourteous hand. The owner was not hard to spot, on account of his being something of the order of seven feet tall and not slightly built with it. In fact he was built the way one builds leather sofas, shiny, lumpy and with lots of solid stuffing. The suit into which the man's body had been stuffed looked as if it's only purpose in life was to demonstrate how difficult it was to get this sort of body into a suit. The face had the texture of an orange and the colour of an apple, but there the resemblance to anything sweet ended. "Kid..." said a voice which emerged from the man's mouth as if it had been having a really rough time down in his chest. "Er, yeah?" said Ford conversationally. He staggered back to his feet again and was disappointed that the top of his head didn't come further up the man's body. "Beat it," said the man. "Oh yeah?" said Ford, wondering how wise he was being, "and who are you?" The man considered this for a moment. He wasn't used to being asked this sort of question. Nevertheless, after a while he came up with an answer. "I'm the guy who's telling you to beat it," he said, "before you get it beaten for you." "Now listen," said Ford nervously-he wished his head would stop spinning, settle down and get to grips with the situation-"Now listen," he continued, "I am one of Hotblack's oldest friends and..." He glanced at Hotblack Desiato, who still hadn't moved so much as an eyelash. "... and..." said Ford again, wondering what would be a good word to say after "and". The large man came up with a whole sentence to go after "and". He said it. "And I am Mr. Desiato's bodyguard," it went, "and I am responsible for his body, and I am not responsible for yours, so take it away before it gets damaged." "Now wait a minute," said Ford. "No minutes!" boomed the bodyguard, "no waiting! Mr. Desiato speaks to no one!" "Well perhaps you'd let him say what he thinks about the matter himself," said Ford. "He speaks to no one!" bellowed the bodyguard. Ford glanced anxiously at Hotblack again and was forced to admit to himself that the bodyguard seemed to have the facts on his side. There was still not the slightest sign of movement, let alone keen interest in Ford's welfare. "Why?" said Ford, "What's the matter with him?" The bodyguard told him.

Chapter 17

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet-or more frequently around a completely different planet. Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason. Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band's public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties. This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.

Ford staggered back to the table where Zaphod, Arthur and Trillian were sitting waiting for the fun to begin. "Gotta have some food," said Ford. "Hi, Ford," said Zaphod, "you speak to the big noise boy?" Ford waggled his head noncommittally. "Hotblack? I sort of spoke to him, yeah." "What'd he say?" "Well, not a lot really. He's... er..." "Yeah?" "He's spending a year dead for tax reasons. I've got to sit down." He sat down. The waiter approached. "Would you like to see the menu?" he said, "or would you like to meet the Dish of the Day?" "Huh?" said Ford. "Huh?" said Arthur. "Huh?" said Trillian. "That's cool," said Zaphod, "we'll meet the meat."

In a small room in one of the arms of the Restaurant complex a tall, thin, gangling figure pulled aside a curtain and oblivion looked him in the face. It was not a pretty face, perhaps because oblivion had looked him in it so many times. It was too long for a start, the eyes too sunken and too hooded, the cheeks too hollow, his lips were too thin and too long, and when they parted his teeth looked too much like a recently polished bay window. The hands that held the curtain were long and thin too: they were also cold. They lay lightly along the folds of the curtain and gave the impression that if he didn't watch them like a hawk they would crawl away of their own accord and do something unspeakable in a corner. He let the curtain drop and the terrible light that had played on his features went off to play somewhere more healthy. He prowled around his small chamber like a mantis contemplating an evening's preying, finally settling on a rickety chair by a trestle table, where he leafed through a few sheets of jokes. A bell rang. He pushed the thin sheaf of papers aside and stood up. His hands brushed limply over some of the one million rainbow-coloured sequins with which his jacket was festooned, and he was gone through the door. In the Restaurant the lights dimmed, the band quickened its pace, a single spotlight stabbed down into the darkness of the stairway that led up to the centre of the stage. Up the stairs bounded a tall brilliantly coloured figure. He burst on to the stage, tripped lightly up to the microphone, removed it from its stand with one swoop of his long thin hand and stood for a moment bowing left and right to the audience acknowledging their applause and displaying to them his bay window. He waved to his particular friends in the audience even though there weren't any there, and waited for the applause to die down. He held up his hand and smiled a smile that stretched not merely from ear to ear, but seemed to extend some way beyond the mere confines of his face. "Thank you ladies and gentlemen!" he cried, "thank you very much. Thank you so much." He eyed them with a twinkling eye. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "The Universe as we know it has now been in existence for over one hundred and seventy thousand million billion years and will be ending in a little over half an hour. So, welcome one and all to Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe!" With a gesture he deftly conjured another round of spontaneous applause. With another gesture he cut it. "I am your host for tonight," he said, "my name is Max Quordlepleen..." (Everybody knew this, his act was famous throughout the known Galaxy, but he said it for the fresh applause it generated, which he acknowledged with a disclaiming smile and wave.) "... and I've just come straight from the very very other end of time, where I've been hosting a show at the Big Bang Burger Bar-where I can tell you we had a very exciting evening ladies and gentlemen-and I will be with you right through this historic occasion, the End of History itself!" Another burst of applause died away quickly as the lights dimmed down further. On every table candles ignited themselves spontaneously, eliciting a slight gasp from all the diners and wreathing them in a thousand tiny flickering lights and a million intimate shadows. A tremor of excitement thrilled through the darkened Restaurant as the vast golden dome above them began very very slowly to dim, to darken, to fade. Max's voice was hushed as he continued. "So, ladies and gentlemen," he breathed, "the candles are lit, the band plays softly, and as the force-shielded dome above us fades into transparency, revealing a dark and sullen sky hung heavy with the ancient light of livid swollen stars, I can see we're all in for a fabulous evening's apocalypse!" Even the soft tootling of the band faded away as stunned shock descended on all those who had not seen this sight before. A monstrous, grisly light poured in on them, -a hideous light, -a boiling, pestilential light, -a light that would have disfigured hell. The Universe was coming to an end. For a few interminable seconds the Restaurant span silently through the raging void. Then Max spoke again. "For those of you who ever hoped to see the light at the end of the tunnel," he said, "this is it." The band struck up again. "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen," cried Max, "I'll be back with you again in just a moment, and meanwhile I leave you in the very capable hands of Mr. Reg Nullify and his cataclysmic Combo. Big hand please ladies and gentlemen for Reg and the boys!" The baleful turmoil of the skies continued. Hesitantly the audience began to clap and after a moment or so normal conversation resumed. Max began his round of the tables, swapping jokes, shouting with laughter, earning his living. A large dairy animal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox's table, a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on its lips. "Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?" It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them. Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox. "Something off the shoulder perhaps?" suggested the animal, "Braised in a white wine sauce?" "Er, your shoulder?" said Arthur in a horrified whisper. "But naturally my shoulder, sir," mooed the animal contentedly, "nobody else's is mine to offer." Zaphod leapt to his feet and started prodding and feeling the animal's shoulder appreciatively. "Or the rump is very good," murmured the animal. "I've been exercising it and eating plenty of grain, so there's a lot of good meat there." It gave a mellow grunt, gurgled again and started to chew the cud. It swallowed the cud again. "Or a casserole of me perhaps?" it added. "You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?" whispered Trillian to Ford. "Me?" said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes, "I don't mean anything." "That's absolutely horrible," exclaimed Arthur, "the most revolting thing I've ever heard." "What's the problem Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring his attention to the animal's enormous rump. "I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing here inviting me to," said Arthur, "it's heartless." "Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten," said Zaphod. "That's not the point," Arthur protested. Then he thought about it for a moment. "Alright," he said, "maybe it is the point. I don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just... er..." The Universe raged about him in its death throes. "I think I'll just have a green salad," he muttered. "May I urge you to consider my liver?" asked the animal, "it must be very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months." "A green salad," said Arthur emphatically. "A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur. "Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I shouldn't have green salad?" "Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am." It managed a very slight bow. "Glass of water please," said Arthur. "Look," said Zaphod, "we want to eat, we don't want to make a meal of the issues. Four rare steaks please, and hurry. We haven't eaten in five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years." The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle. "A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good," it said, "I'll just nip off and shoot myself." He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur. "Don't worry, sir," he said, "I'll be very humane." It waddled unhurriedly off into the kitchen. A matter of minutes later the waiter arrived with four huge steaming steaks. Zaphod and Ford wolfed straight into them without a second's hesitation. Trillian paused, then shrugged and started into hers. Arthur stared at his feeling slightly ill. "Hey, Earthman," said Zaphod with a malicious grin on the face that wasn't stuffing itself, "what's eating you?" And the band played on. All around the Restaurant people and things relaxed and chatted. The air was filled with talk of this and that, and with the mingled scents of exotic plants, extravagant foods and insidious wines. For an infinite number of miles in every direction the universal cataclysm was gathering to a stupefying climax. Glancing at his watch, Max returned to the stage with a flourish. "And now, ladies and gentlemen," he beamed, "is everyone having one last wonderful time?" "Yes," called out the sort of people who call out "yes" when comedians ask them if they're having a wonderful time. "That's wonderful," enthused Max, "absolutely wonderful. And as the photon storms gather in swirling crowds around us, preparing to tear apart the last of the red hot suns, I know you're all going to settle back and enjoy with me what I know we will find all an immensely exciting and terminal experience." He paused. He caught the audience with a glittering eye. "Believe me, ladies and gentlemen," he said, "there's nothing penultimate about this one." He paused again. Tonight his timing was immaculate. Time after time he had done this show, night after night. Not that the word night had any meaning here at the extremity of time. All there was the endless repetition of the final moment, as the Restaurant rocked slowly forward over the brink of time's furthest edge-and back again. This "night" was good though, the audience was writhing in the palm of his sickly hand. His voice dropped. They had to strain to hear him. "This," he said, "really is the absolute end, the final chilling desolation, in which the whole majestic sweep of creation becomes extinct. This ladies and gentlemen is the proverbial 'it'." He dropped his voice still lower. In the stillness, a fly would not have dared clear its throat. "After this," he said, "there is nothing. Void. Emptiness. Oblivion. Absolute nothing..." His eyes glittered again-or did they twinkle?" "Nothing... except of course for the sweet trolley, and a fine selection of Aldebaran liqueurs!" The band gave him a musical sting. He wished they wouldn't, he didn't need it, not an artist of his calibre. He could play the audience like his own musical instrument. They were laughing with relief. He followed on. "And for once," he cried cheerily, "you don't need to worry about having a hangover in the morning-because there won't be any more mornings!" He beamed at his happy, laughing audience. He glanced up at the sky, going through the same dead routine every night, but his glance was only for a fraction of a second. He trusted it to do its job, as one professional trusts another. "And now," he said, strutting about the stage, "at the risk of putting a damper on the wonderful sense of doom and futility here this evening, I would like to welcome a few parties." He pulled a card from his pocket. "Do we have..." he put up a hand to hold back the cheers, "Do we have a party here from the Zansellquasure Flamarion Bridge Club from beyond the Vortvoid of Qvarne? Are they here?" A rousing cheer came from the back, but he pretended not to hear. He peered around trying to find them. "Are they here?" he asked again, to elict a louder cheer. He got it, as he always did. "Ah, there they are. Well, last bids lads-and no cheating, remember this is a very solemn moment." He lapped up the laughter. "And do we also have, do we have... a party of minor deities from the Halls of Asgard?" Away to his right came a rumble of thunder. Lightning arced across the stage. A small group of hairy men with helmets sat looking very pleased with themselves, and raised their glasses to him. Hasbeens, he thought to himself. "Careful with that hammer, sir," he said. They did their trick with the lightning again. Max gave them a very thin lipped smile. "And thirdly," he said, "thirdly a party of Young Conservatives from Sirius B, are they here?" A party of smartly dressed young dogs stopped throwing rolls at each other and started throwing rolls at the stage. They yapped and barked unintelligibly. "Yes," said Max, "well this is all your fault, you realize that?" "And finally," said Max, quieting the audience down and putting on his solemn face, "finally I believe we have with us here tonight, a party of believers, very devout believers, from the Church of the Second Coming of the Great Prophet Zarquon." There were about twenty of them, sitting right out on the edge of the floor, ascetically dressed, sipping mineral water nervously, and staying apart from the festivities. They blinked resentfully as the spotlight was turned on them. "There they are," said Max, "sitting there, patiently. He said he'd come again, and he's kept you waiting a long time, so let's hope he's hurrying fellas, because he's only got eight minutes left!" The party of Zarquon's followers sat rigid, refusing to be buffeted by the waves of uncharitable laughter which swept over them. Max restrained his audience. "No, but seriously though folks, seriously though, no offence meant. No, I know we shouldn't make fun of deeply held beliefs, so I think a big hand please for the Great Prophet Zarquon..." The audience clapped respectfully. "... wherever he's got to!" He blew a kiss to the stony-faced party and returned to the centre of the stage. He grabbed a tall stool and sat on it. "It's marvellous though," he rattled on, "to see so many of you here tonight-no isn't it though? Yes, absolutely marvellous. Because I know that so many of you come here time and time again, which I think is really wonderful, to come and watch this final end of everything, and then return home to your own eras... and raise families, strive for new and better societies, fight terrible wars for what you know to be right... it really gives one hope for the future of all lifekind. Except of course," he waved at the blitzing turmoil above and around them, "that we know it hasn't got one..." Arthur turned to Ford-he hadn't quite got this place worked out in his mind. "Look, surely," he said, "if the Universe is about to end... don't we go with it?" Ford gave him a three-Pan-Galactic-Gargle-Blaster look, in other words a rather unsteady one. "No," he said, "look," he said, "as soon as you come into this dive you get held in this sort of amazing force-shielded temporal warp thing. I think." "Oh," said Arthur. He turned his attention back to a bowl of soup he'd managed to get from the waiter to replace his steak. "Look," said Ford, "I'll show you." He grabbed at a napkin off the table and fumbled hopelessly with it. "Look," he said again, "imagine this napkin, right, as the temporal Universe, right? And this spoon as a transductional mode in the matter curve..." It took him a while to say this last part, and Arthur hated to interrupt him. "That's the spoon I was eating with," he said. "Alright," said Ford, "imagine this spoon..." he found a small wooden spoon on a tray of relishes, "this spoon..." but found it rather tricky to pick up, "no, better still this fork..." "Hey would you let go of my fork?" snapped Zaphod. "Alright," said Ford, "alright, alright. Why don't we say... why don't we say that this wine glass is the temporal Universe..." "What, the one you've just knocked on the floor?" "Did I do that?" "Yes." "Alright," said Ford, "forget that. I mean... I mean, look, do you know-do you know how the Universe actually began for a kick off?" "Probably not," said Arthur, who wished he'd never embarked on any of this. "Alright," said Ford, "imagine this. Right. You get this bath. Right. A large round bath. And it's made of ebony." "Where from?" said Arthur, "Harrods was destroyed by the Vogons." "Doesn't matter." "So you keep saying." "Listen." "Alright." "You get this bath, see? Imagine you've got this bath. And it's ebony. And it's conical." "Conical?" said Arthur, "What sort of..." "Shhh!" said Ford. "It's conical. So what you do is, you see, you fill it with fine white sand, alright? Or sugar. Fine white sand, and/or sugar. Anything. Doesn't matter. Sugar's fine. And when it's full, you pull the plug out... are you listening?" "I'm listening." "You pull the plug out, and it all just twirls away, twirls away you see, out of the plughole." "I see." "You don't see. You don't see at all. I haven't got to the clever bit yet. You want to hear the clever bit?" "Tell me the clever bit." "I'll tell you the clever bit." Ford thought for a moment, trying to remember what the clever bit was. "The clever bit," he said, "is this. You film it happening." "Clever." "That's not the clever bit. This is the clever bit, I remember now that this is the clever bit. The clever bit is that you then thread the film in the projector... backwards!" "Backwards?" "Yes. Threading it backwards is definitely the clever bit. So then, you just sit and watch it, and everything just appears to spiral upwards out of the plughole and fill the bath. See?" "And that's how the Universe began is it?" said Arthur. "No," said Ford, "but it's a marvellous way to relax." He reached for his wine glass. "Where's my wine glass?" he said. "It's on the floor." "Ah." Tipping back his chair to look for it, Ford collided with the small green waiter who was approaching the table carrying a portable telephone. Ford excused himself to the waiter explaining that it was because he was extremely drunk. The waiter said that that was quite alright and that he perfectly understood. Ford thanked the waiter for his kind indulgence, attempted to tug his forelock, missed by six inches and slid under the table. "Mr. Zaphod Beeblebrox?" inquired the waiter. "Er, yeah?" said Zaphod, glancing up from his third steak. "There is a phone call for you." "Hey, what?" "A phone call, sir." "For me? Here? Hey, but who knows where I am?" One of his minds raced. The other dawdled lovingly over the food it was still shovelling in. "Excuse me if I carry on, won't you?" said his eating head and carried on. There were now so many people after him he'd lost count. He shouldn't have made such a conspicuous entrance. Hell, why not though, he thought. How do you know you're having fun if there's no one watching you have it? "Maybe someone here tipped off the Galactic Police," said Trillian. "Everyone saw you come in." "You mean they want to arrest me over the phone?" said Zaphod, "Could be. I'm a pretty dangerous dude when I'm concerned." "Yeah," said a voice from under the table, "you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel." "Hey, what is this, Judgment Day?" snapped Zaphod. "Do we get to see that as well?" asked Arthur nervously. "I'm in no hurry," muttered Zaphod, "OK, so who's the cat on the phone?" He kicked Ford. "Hey get up there, kid," he said to him, "I may need you." "I am not," said the waiter, "personally acquainted with the metal gentlemen in question, sir..." "Metal?" "Yes, sir." "Did you say metal?" "Yes, sir. I said that I am not personally acquainted with the metal gentleman in question..." "OK, carry on." "But I am informed that he has been awaiting your return for a considerable number of millennia. It seems you left here somewhat precipitately." "Left here?" said Zaphod, "are you being strange? We only just arrived here." "Indeed, sir," persisted the waiter doggedly, "but before you arrived here, sir, I understand that you left here." Zaphod tried this in one brain, then in the other. "You're saying," he said, "that before we arrived here, we left here?" This is going to be a long night, thought the waiter. "Precisely, sir," he said. "Put your analyst on danger money, baby," advised Zaphod. "No, wait a minute," said Ford, emerging above table level again, "where exactly is here?" "To be absolutely exact sir, it is Frogstar World B." "But we just left there," protested Zaphod, "we left there and came to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe." "Yes, sir," said the waiter, feeling that he was now into the home stretch and running well, "the one was constructed on the ruins of the other." "Oh," said Arthur brightly, "you mean we've travelled in time but not in space." "Listen you semi-evolved simian," cut in Zaphod, "go climb a tree will you?" Arthur bristled. "Go bang your heads together four-eyes," he advised Zaphod. "No, no," the waiter said to Zaphod, "your monkey has got it right, sir." Arthur stuttered in fury and said nothing apposite, or indeed coherent. "You jumped forward... I believe five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years whilst staying in exactly the same place," explained the waiter. He smiled. He had a wonderful feeling that he had finally won through against what had seemed to be insuperable odds. "That's it!" said Zaphod, "I got it. I told the computer to send us to the nearest place to eat, that's exactly what it did. Give or take five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years, we never moved. Neat." They all agreed this was very neat. "But who," said Zaphod, "is the cat on the phone?" "Whatever happened to Marvin?" said Trillian. Zaphod clapped his hands to his heads. "The Paranoid Android! I left him moping about on Frogstar B." "When was this?" "Well, er, five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years ago I suppose," said Zaphod, "Hey, er, hand me the rap-rod, Plate Captain." The little waiter's eyebrows wandered about his forehead in confusion. "I beg your pardon, sir?" he said. "The phone, waiter," said Zaphod, grabbing it off him. "Shee, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off." "Indeed, sir." "Hey, Marvin, is that you?" said Zaphod into the phone, "How you doing, kid?" There was a long pause before a thin low voice came up the line. "I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed," it said. Zaphod cupped his hands over the phone. "It's Marvin," he said. "Hey, Marvin," he said into the phone again, "we're having a great time. Food, wine, a little personal abuse and the Universe going foom. Where can we find you?" Again the pause. "You don't have to pretend to be interested in me you know," said Marvin at last, "I know perfectly well I'm only a menial robot." "OK, OK," said Zaphod, "but where are you?" "'Reverse primary thrust, Marvin,' that's what they say to me, 'open airlock number three, Marvin. Marvin, can you pick up that piece of paper?' Can I pick up that piece of paper! Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to..." "Yeah, yeah," sympathized Zaphod hardly at all. "But I'm quite used to being humiliated," droned Marvin, "I can even go and stick my head in a bucket of water if you like. Would you like me to go and stick my head in a bucket of water? I've got one ready. Wait a minute." "Er, hey, Marvin..." interrupted Zaphod, but it was too late. Sad little clunks and gurgles came up the line. "What's he saying?" asked Trillian. "Nothing," said Zaphod, "he just phoned up to wash his head at us." "There," said Marvin, coming back on the line and bubbling a bit, "I hope that gave satisfaction..." "Yeah, yeah," said Zaphod, "now will you please tell us where you are?" "I'm in the car park," said Marvin. "The car park?" said Zaphod, "what are you doing there?" "Parking cars, what else does one do in a car park?" "OK, hang in there, we'll be right down." In one movement Zaphod leapt to his feet, threw down the phone and wrote "Hotblack Desiato" on the bill. "Come on guys," he said, "Marvin's in the car park. Let's get on down." "What's he doing in the car park?" asked Arthur. "Parking cars, what else? Dum dum." "But what about the End of the Universe? We'll miss the big moment." "I've seen it. It's rubbish," said Zaphod, "nothing but a gnab gib." "A what?" "Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let's get zappy." Few of the other diners paid them any attention as they weaved their way through the Restaurant to the exit. Their eyes were riveted on the horror of the skies. "An interesting effect to watch for," Max was telling them, "is in the upper left-hand quadrant of the sky, where if you look very carefully you can see the star system Hastromil boiling away into the ultra-violet. Anyone here from Hastromil?" There were one or two slightly hesitant cheers from somewhere at the back. "Well," said Max beaming cheerfully at them, "it's too late to worry about whether you left the gas on now."

Chapter 18

The main reception foyer was almost empty but Ford nevertheless weaved his way through it. Zaphod grasped him firmly by the arm and manoeuvred him into a cubicle standing to one side of the entrance hall. "What are you doing to him?" asked Arthur. "Sobering him up," said Zaphod and pushed a coin into a slot. Lights flashed, gases swirled. "Hi," said Ford stepping out a moment later, "where are we going?" "Down to the car park, come on." "What about the personnel Time Teleports?" said Ford, "Get us straight back to the Heart of Gold." "Yeah, but I've cooled on that ship. Zarniwoop can have it. I don't want to play his games. Let's see what we can find." A Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter took them down deep into the substrata beneath the Restaurant. They were glad to see it had been vandalized and didn't try to make them happy as well as take them down. At the bottom of the shaft the lift doors opened and a blast of cold stale air hit them. The first thing they saw on leaving the lift was a long concrete wall with over fifty doors in it offering lavatory facilities for all of fifty major lifeforms. Nevertheless, like every car park in the Galaxy throughout the entire history of car parks, this car park smelt predominantly of impatience. They turned a corner and found themselves on a moving catwalk that traversed a vast cavernous space that stretched off into the dim distance. It was divided off into bays each of which contained a space ship belonging to one of the diners upstairs, some smallish and utilitarian mass production models, others vast shining limoships, the playthings of the very rich. Zaphod's eyes sparkled with something that may or may not have been avarice as he passed over them. In fact it's best to be clear on this point-avarice is definitely what it was. "There he is," said Trillian, "Marvin, down there." They looked where she was pointing. Dimly they could see a small metal figure listlessly rubbing a small rag on one remote corner of a giant silver suncruiser. At short intervals along the moving catwalk, wide transparent tubes led down to floor level. Zaphod stepped off the catwalk into one and floated gently downwards. The others followed. Thinking back to this later, Arthur Dent thought it was the single most enjoyable experience of his travels in the Galaxy. "Hey, Marvin," said Zaphod striding over towards to him, "Hey, kid, are we pleased to see you." Marvin turned, and in so far as it is possible for a totally inert metal face to look reproachfully, this is what it did. "No you're not," he said, "no one ever is." "Suit yourself," said Zaphod and turned away to ogle the ships. Ford went with him. Only Trillian and Arthur actually went up to Marvin. "No, really we are," said Trillian and patted him in a way that he disliked intensely, "hanging around waiting for us all this time." "Five hundred and seventy-six thousand million, three thousand five hundred and seventy-nine years," said Marvin, "I counted them." "Well, here we are now," said Trillian, felling-quite correctly in Marvin's view-that it was a slightly foolish thing to say. "The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of decline." He paused just long enough to make them feel they ought to say something, and then interrupted. "It's the people you meet in this job that really get you down," he said and paused again. Trillian cleared her throat. "Is that..." "The best conversation I had was over forty million years ago," continued Marvin. Again the pause. "Oh d..." "And that was with a coffee machine." He waited. "That's a..." "You don't like talking to me do you?" said Marvin in a low desolate tone. Trillian talked to Arthur instead.

Further down the chamber Ford Prefect had found something of which he very much liked the look, several such things in fact. "Zaphod," he said in a quiet voice, "just look at some of these little star trolleys..." Zaphod looked and liked. The craft they were looking at was in fact pretty small but extraordinary, and very much a rich kid's toy. It was not much to look at. It resembled nothing so much as a paper dart about twenty feet long made of thin but tough metal foil. At the rear end was a small horizontal two-man cockpit. It had a tiny charm-drive engine, which was not capable of moving it at any great speed. The thing it did have, however, was a heat-sink. The heat-sink had a mass of some two thousand billion tons and was contained within a black hole mounted in an electromagnetic field situated half-way along the length of the ship, and this heat-sink enabled the craft to be manoeuvred to within a few miles of a yellow sun, there to catch and ride the solar flares that burst out from its surface. Flare-riding is one of the most exotic and exhilarating sports in existence, and those who can dare and afford it are amongst the most lionized men in the Galaxy. It is also of course stupefyingly dangerous-those who don't die riding invariably die of sexual exhaustion at one of the Daedalus Club's Après-Flare parties. Ford and Zaphod looked and passed on. "And this baby," said Ford, "the tangerine star buggy with the black sunbusters..." Again, the star buggy was a small ship-a totally misnamed one in fact, because the one thing it couldn't manage was interstellar distances. Basically it was a sporty planet hopper dolled up to something it wasn't. Nice lines though. They passed on. The next one was a big one and thirty yards long-a coach built limoship and obviously designed with one aim in mind, that of making the beholder sick with envy. The paintwork and accessory detail clearly said "Not only am I rich enough to afford this ship, I am also rich enough not to take it seriously." It was wonderfully hideous. "Just look at it," said Zaphod, "multi-cluster quark drive, perspulex running boards. Got to be a Lazlar Lyricon custom job." He examined every inch. "Yes," he said, "look, the infra-pink lizard emblem on the neutrino cowling. Lazlar's trade mark. The man has no shame." "I was passed by one of these mothers once, out by the Axel Nebula," said Ford, "I was going flat out and this thing just strolled past me, star drive hardly ticking over. Just incredible." Zaphod whistled appreciatively. "Ten seconds later", said Ford, "it smashed straight into the third moon of Jaglan Beta." "Yeah, right?" "Amazing looking ship though. Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow." Ford looked round the other side. "Hey, come and see," he called out, "there's a big mural painted on this side. A bursting sun-Disaster Area's trade mark. This must be Hotblack's ship. Lucky old bugger. They do this terrible song you know which ends with a stuntship crashing into the sun. Meant to be an amazing spectacle. Expensive in stunt ships though." Zaphod's attention however was elsewhere. His attention was riveted on the ship standing next to Hotblack Desiato's limo. His mouths hung open. "That," he said, "that... is really bad for the eyes..." Ford looked. He too stood astonished. It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon, twenty yards long, very clean, very sleek. There was just one remarkable thing about it. "It's so... black!" said Ford Prefect, "you can hardly make out its shape... light just seems to fall into it!" Zaphod said nothing. He had simply fallen in love. The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost impossible to tell how close you were standing to it. "Your eyes just slide off it..." said Ford in wonder. It was an emotional moment. He bit his lip. Zaphod moved forward to it, slowly, like a man possessed-or more accurately like a man who wanted to possess. His hand reached out to stroke it. His hand stopped. His hand reached out to stroke it again. His hand stopped again. "Come and feel the surface," he said in a hushed voice. Ford put his hand out to feel it. His hand stopped. "You... you can't..." he said. "See?" said Zaphod, "it's just totally frictionless. This must be one mother of a mover..." He turned to look at Ford seriously. At least, one of his heads did-the other stayed gazing in awe at the ship. "What do you reckon, Ford?" he said. "You mean... er..." Ford looked over his shoulder. "You mean stroll off with it? You think we should?" "No." "Nor do I." "But we're going to, aren't we?" "How can we not?" They gazed a little longer, till Zaphod suddenly pulled himself together. "We better shift soon," he said. "In a moment or so the Universe will have ended and all the Captain Creeps will be pouring down here to find their bourge-mobiles." "Zaphod," said Ford. "Yeah?" "How do we do it?" "Simple," said Zaphod. He turned. "Marvin!" he called. Slowly, laboriously, and with a million little clanking and creaking noises that he had learned to simulate, Marvin turned round to answer the summons. "Come on over here," said Zaphod, "We've got a job for you." Marvin trudged towards them. "I won't enjoy it," he said. "Yes you will," enthused Zaphod, "there's a whole new life stretching out ahead of you." "Oh, not another one," groaned Marvin. "Will you shut up and listen!" hissed Zaphod, "this time there's going to be excitement and adventure and really wild things." "Sounds awful," Marvin said. "Marvin! All I'm trying to ask you..." "I suppose you want me to open this spaceship for you?" "What? Er... yes. Yeah, that's right," said Zaphod jumpily. He was keeping at least three eyes on the entrance. Time was short. "Well I wish you'd just tell me rather than try to engage my enthusiasm," said Marvin, "because I haven't got one." He walked on up to the ship, touched it, and a hatchway swung open. Ford and Zaphod stared at the opening. "Don't mention it," said Marvin, "Oh, you didn't." He trudged away again. Arthur and Trillian clustered round. "What's happening?" asked Arthur. "Look at this," said Ford, "look at the interior of this ship." "Weirder and weirder," breathed Zaphod. "It's black," said Ford, "Everything in it is just totally black..."

In the Restaurant, things were fast approaching the moment after which there wouldn't be any more moments. All eyes were fixed on the dome, other than those of Hotblack Desiato's bodyguard, which were looking intently at Hotblack Desiato, and those of Hotblack Desiato himself which the bodyguard had closed out of respect. The bodyguard leaned forward over the table. Had Hotblack Desiato been alive, he probably would have deemed this a good moment to lean back, or even go for a short walk. His bodyguard was not a man which improved with proximity. On account of his unfortunate condition, however, Hotblack Desiato remained totally inert. "Mr. Desiato, sir?" whispered the bodyguard. Whenever he spoke, it looked as if the muscles on either side of his mouth were clambering over each other to get out of the way. "Mr. Desiato? Can you hear me?" Hotblack Desiato, quit naturally, said nothing. "Hotblack?" hissed the bodyguard. Again, quite naturally, Hotblack Desiato did not reply. Supernaturally, however, he did. On the table in front of him a wine glass rattled, and a fork rose an inch or so and tapped against the glass. It settled on the table again. The bodyguard gave a satisfied grunt. "It's time we get going, Mr. Desiato," muttered the bodyguard, "don't want to get caught in the rush, not in your condition. You want to get to the next gig nice and relaxed. There was a really big audience for it. One of the best. Kakrafoon. Five-hundred seventy-six thousand and two million years ago. Had you will have been looking forward to it?" The fork rose again, waggled in a non-committal sort of way and dropped again. "Ah, come on," said the bodyguard, "it's going to have been great. You knocked 'em cold." The bodyguard would have given Dr. Dan Streetmentioner an apoplectic attack. "The black ship going into the sun always gets 'em, and the new one's a beauty. Be real sorry to see it go. If we get on down there, I'll set the black ship autopilot and we'll cruise off in the limo. OK?" The fork tapped once in agreement, and the glass of wine mysteriously emptied itself. The bodyguard wheeled Hotblack Desiato's chair out of the Restaurant. "And now," cried Max from the centre of the stage, "the moment you've all been waiting for!" He flung his arms into the air. Behind him, the band went into a frenzy of percussion and rolling synthochords. Max had argued with them about this but they had claimed it was in their contract that that's what they would do. His agent would have to sort it out. "The skies begin to boil!" he cried. "Nature collapses into the screaming void! In twenty seconds' time, the Universe itself will be at an end! See where the light of infinity bursts in upon us!" The hideous fury of destruction blazed about them-and at that moment a still small trumpet sounded as from an infinite distance. Max's eyes swivelled round to glare at the band. None of them seemed to be playing a trumpet. Suddenly a wisp of smoke was swirling and shimmering on the stage next to him. The trumpet was joined by more trumpets. Over five hundred times Max had done this show, and nothing like this had ever happened before. He drew back in alarm from the swirling smoke, and as he did so, a figure slowly materialized inside, the figure of an ancient man, bearded, robed and wreathed in light. In his eyes were stars and on his brow a golden crown. "What's this?" whispered Max, wild-eyed, "what's happening?" At the back of the Restaurant the stony-faced party from the Church of the Second Coming of the Great Prophet Zarquon leapt ecstatically to their feet chanting and crying. Max blinked in amazement. He threw up his arms to the audience. "A big hand please, ladies and gentlemen," he hollered, "for the Great Prophet Zarquon! He has come! Zarquon has come again!" Thunderous applause broke out as Max strode across the stage and handed his microphone to the Prophet. Zarquon coughed. He peered round at the assembled gathering. The stars in his eyes blinked uneasily. He handled the microphone with confusion. "Er..." he said, "hello. Er, look, I'm sorry I'm a bit late. I've had the most ghastly time, all sorts of things cropping up at the last moment." He seemed nervous of the expectant awed hush. He cleared his throat. "Er, how are we for time?" he said, "have I just got a min-" And so the Universe ended.

Chapter 19

One of the major selling point of that wholly remarkable travel book, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, apart from its relative cheapness and the fact that it has the words DON'T PANIC written in large friendly letters on its cover, is its compendious and occasionally accurate glossary. The statistics relating to the geo-social nature of the Universe, for instance, are deftly set out between pages nine hundred and thirty-eight thousand and twenty-four and nine hundred and thirty-eight thousand and twenty-six; and the simplistic style in which they are written is partly explained by the fact that the editors, having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information off the back of a packet of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few footnoted in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly tortuous Galactic Copyright laws. It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the book backwards in time through a temporal warp, and then successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement of the same laws. Here is a sample:

The Universe-some information to help you live in it.

1~Area: Infinite.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of the word "Infinite". Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, "wow, that's big", time. Infinity is just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.

2~Imports: None.

It is impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no outside to import things in from.

3~Exports: None.

See imports.

4~Population: None.

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

5~Monetary Units: None.

In fact there are three freely convertible currencies in the Galaxy, but none of them count. The Altairan Dollar has recently collapsed, the Flaninian Pobble Bead is only exchangeable for other Flaninian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles across each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change. From this basic premise it is very simple to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged imagination.

6~Art: None.

The function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and there simply isn't a mirror big enough-see point one. 7~Sex: None.

Well, in fact there is an awful lot of this, largely because of the total lack of money, trade, banks, art, or anything else that might keep all the non-existent people of the Universe occupied. However, it is not worth embarking on a long discussion of it now because it really is terribly complicated. For further information see Guide chapters seven, nine, ten, eleven, fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one to eighty-four inclusive, and in fact most of the rest of the Guide.

Chapter 20

The Restaurant continued existing, but everything else had stopped. Temporal relastatics held it and protected it in a nothingness that wasn't merely a vacuum, it was simply nothing-there was nothing in which a vacuum could be said to exist. The force-shielded dome had once again been rendered opaque, the party was over, the diners were leaving, Zarquon had vanished along with the rest of the Universe, the Time Turbines were preparing to pull the Restaurant back across the brink of time in readiness for the lunch sitting, and Max Quordlepleen was back in his small curtained dressing room trying to raise his agent on the tempophone. In the car park stood the black ship, closed and silent. In to the car park came the late Mr. Hotblack Desiato, propelled along the moving catwalk by his bodyguard. They descended one of the tubes. As they approached the limoship a hatchway swung down from its side, engaged the wheels of the wheelchair and drew it inside. The bodyguard followed, and having seen his boss safely connected up to his death-support system, moved up to the small cockpit. Here he operated the remote control system which activated the autopilot in the black ship lying next to the limo, thus causing great relief to Zaphod Beeblebrox who had been trying to start the thing for over ten minutes. The black ship glided smoothly forward out of its bay, turned, and moved down the central causeway swiftly and quietly. At the end it accelerated rapidly, flung itself into the temporal launch chamber and began the long journey back into the distant past.

The Milliways Lunch Menu quotes, by permission, a passage from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The passage is this:

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?"

The Menu goes on to suggest that Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, would be a very agreeable and sophisticated answer to that third question. What it doesn't go on to say is that though it will usually take a large civilization many thousands of years to pass through the How, Why and Where phases, small social groupings under stressful conditions can pass through them with extreme rapidity. "How are we doing?" said Arthur Dent. "Badly," said Ford Prefect. "Where are we going?" said Trillian. "I don't know," said Zaphod Beeblebrox. "Why not?" demanded Arthur Dent. "Shut up," suggested Zaphod Beeblebrox and Ford Prefect. "Basically, what you're trying to say," said Arthur Dent, ignoring this suggestion, "is that we're out of control." The ship was rocking and swaying sickeningly as Ford and Zaphod tried to wrest control from the autopilot. The engined howled and whined like tired children in a supermarket. "It's the wild colour scheme that freaks me," said Zaphod whose love affair with this ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight, "Every time you try to operate on of these weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you've done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?" The walls of the swaying cabin were also black, the ceiling was black, the seats-which were rudimentary since the only important trip this ship was designed for was supposed to be unmanned-were black, the control panel was black, the instruments were black, the little screws that held them in place were black, the thin tufted nylon floor covering was black, and when they had lifted up a corner of it they had discovered that the foam underlay also was black. "Perhaps whoever designed it had eyes that responded to different wavelengths," offered Trillian. "Or didn't have much imagination," muttered Arthur. "Perhaps," said Marvin, "he was feeling very depressed." In fact, though they weren't to know it, the decor had been chosen in honour of its owner's sad, lamented, and tax-deductible condition. The ship gave a particularly sickening lurch. "Take it easy," pleaded Arthur, "you're making me space sick." "Time sick," said Ford, "we're plummeting backwards through time." "Thank you," said Arthur, "now I think I really am going to be ill." "Go ahead," said Zaphod, "we could do with a little colour about this place." "This is meant to be a polite after-dinner conversation is it?" snapped Arthur. Zaphod left the controls for Ford to figure out, and lurched over to Arthur. "Look, Earthman," he said angrily, "you've got a job to do, right? The Question to the Ultimate Answer, right?" "What, that thing?" said Arthur, "I thought we'd forgotten about that." "Not me, baby. Like the mice said, it's worth a lot of money in the right quarters. And it's all locked up in that head thing of yours." "Yes but..." "But nothing! Think about it. The Meaning of Life! We get our fingers on that we can hold every shrink in the Galaxy up to ransom, and that's worth a bundle. I owe mine a mint." Arthur took a deep breath without much enthusiasm. "Alright," he said, "but where do we start? How should I know? They say the Ultimate Answer or whatever is Forty-two, how am I supposed to know what the question is? It could be anything. I mean, what's six times seven?" Zaphod looked at him hard for a moment. Then his eyes blazed with excitement. "Forty-two!" he cried. Arthur wiped his palm across his forehead. "Yes," he said patiently," I know that." Zaphod's faces fell. "I'm just saying that the question could be anything at all," said Arthur, "and I don't see how I am meant to know." "Because," hissed Zaphod, "you were there when your planet did the big firework." "We have a thing on Earth..." began Arthur. "Had," corrected Zaphod. "... called tact. Oh never mind. Look, I just don't know." A low voice echoed dully round the cabin. "I know," said Marvin. Ford called out from the controls he was still fighting a losing battle with. "Stay out of this Marvin," he said, "this is organism talk." "It's printed in the Earthman's brainwave patterns," continued Marvin, "but I don't suppose you'll be very interested in knowing that." "You mean," said Arthur, "you mean you can see into my mind?" "Yes," said Marvin. Arthur stared in astonishment. "And...?" he said. "It amazes me how you can manage to live in anything that small." "Ah," said Arthur, "abuse." "Yes," confirmed Marvin. "Ah, ignore him," said Zaphod, "he's only making it up." "Making it up?" said Marvin, swivelling his head in a parody of astonishment, "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it." "Marvin," said Trillian in the gentle, kindly voice that only she was still capable of assuming in talking to this misbegotten creature, "if you knew all along, why then didn't you tell us?" Marvin's head swivelled back to her. "You didn't ask," he said simply. "Well, we're asking you now, metal man," said Ford, turning round to look at him. At that moment the ship suddenly stopped rocking and swaying, the engine pitch settled down to a gentle hum. "Hey, Ford," said Zaphod, "that sounds good. Have you worked out the controls of this boat?" "No," said Ford, "I just stopped fiddling with them. I reckon we just go to wherever this ship is going and get off it fast." "Yeah, right," said Zaphod. "I could tell you weren't really interested," murmured Marvin to himself and slumped into a corner and switched himself off. "Trouble is," said Ford, "that the one instrument in this while ship that is giving any reading is worrying me. If it is what I think it is, and if it's saying what I think it's saying, then we've already gone too far back into the past. Maybe as much as two million years before our own time." Zaphod shrugged. "Time is bunk," he said. "I wonder who this ship belongs to anyway," said Arthur. "Me," said Zaphod. "No. Who it really belongs to." "Really me," insisted Zaphod, "look, property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property. Therefore this ship is mine, OK?" "Tell the ship that," said Arthur. Zaphod strode over to the console. "Ship," he said, banging on the panels, "this is your new owner speaking to..." He got no further. Several things happened at once. The ship dropped out of time travel mode and re-emerged into real space. All the controls on the console, which had been shut down for the time trip now lit up. A large vision screen above the console winked into life revealing a wide starscape and a single very large sun dead ahead of them. None of these things, however, were responsible for the fact that Zaphod was at the same moment hurled bodily backwards against the rear of the cabin, as were all the others. They were hurled back by a single thunderous clap of noise that thuddered out of the monitor speakers surrounding the vision screen.

Chapter 21

Down on the dry, red world of Kakrafoon, in the middle of the vast Rudlit Desert, the stage technicians were testing the sound system. That is to say, the sound system was in the desert, not the stage technicians. They had retreated to the safety of Disaster Area's giant control ship which hung in orbit some four hundred miles above the surface of the planet, and they were testing the sound system from there. Anyone within five miles of the speaker silos wouldn't have survived the tuning up. If Arthur Dent had been within five miles of the speaker silos then his expiring thought would have been that in both size and shape the sound rig closely resembled Manhattan. Risen out of the silos, the neutron phase speaker stacks towered monstrously against the sky, obscuring the banks of plutonium reactors and seismic amps behind them. Buried deep in concrete bunkers beneath the city of speakers lay the instruments that the musicians would control from their ship, the massive photon-ajuitar, the bass detonator and the Megabang drum complex. It was going to be a noisy show. Aboard the giant control ship, all was activity and bustle. Hotblack Desiato's limoship, a mere tadpole beside it, had arrived and docked, and the lamented gentleman was being transported down the high vaulted corridors to meet the medium who was going to interpret his psychic impulses on to the ajuitar keyboard. A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till it could be proved conclusively to him that he wasn't a fish. The bass player was busy machine-gunning his bedroom and the drummer was nowhere on board. Frantic inquiries led to the discovery that he was standing on a beach on Santraginus V over a hundred light years away where, he claimed, he had been happy over half an hour now and had found a small stone that would be his friend. The band's manager was profoundly relieved. It meant that for the seventeenth time on this tour the drums would be played by a robot and that therefore the timing of the cymbalistics would be right. The sub-ether was buzzing with the communications of the stage technicians testing the speaker channels, and this it was that was being relayed to the interior of the black ship. Its dazed occupants lay against the back wall of the cabin, and listened to the voices on the monitor speakers. "OK, channel nine on power," said a voice, "testing channel fifteen..." Another thumping crack of noise walloped through the ship. "Channel fifteen AOK," said another voice. A third voice cut in. "The black stunt ship is now in position," it said, "it's looking good. Gonna be a great sundive. Stage computer on line?" A computer voice answered. "On line," it said. "Take control of the black ship." "Black ship locked into trajectory programme, on standby." "Testing channel twenty." Zaphod leaped across the cabin and switched frequencies on the sub-ether receiver before the next mind-pulverizing noise hit them. He stood there quivering. "What," said Trillian in a small quiet voice, "does sundive mean?" "It means," said Marvin, "that the ship os going to dive into the sun. Sun... Dive. It's very simple to understand. What do you expect if you steal Hotblack Desiato's stunt ship?" "How do you know..." said Zaphod in a voice that would make a Vegan snow lizard feel chilly, "that this is Hotblack Desiato's stuntship?" "Simple," said Marvin, "I parked it for him." "The why... didn't... you... tell us!" "You said you wanted excitement and adventure and really wild things." "This is awful," said Arthur unnecessarily in the pause which followed. "That's what I said," confirmed Marvin. On a different frequency, the sub-ether receiver had picked up a public broadcast, which now echoed round the cabin. "... fine weather for the concert here this afternoon. I'm standing here in front of the stage," the reporter lied, "in the middle of the Rudlit Desert, and with the aid of hyperbinoptic glasses I can just about make out the huge audience cowering there on the horizon all around me. Behind me the speaker stacks rise like a sheer cliff face, and high above me the sun is shining away and doesn't know what's going to hit it. The environmentalist lobby do know what's going to hit it, and they claim that the concert will cause earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, irreparable damage to the atmosphere, and all the usual things that environmentalists usually go on about. "But I've just had a report that a representative of Disaster Area met with the environmentalists at lunchtime, and had them all shot, so nothing now lies in the way of..." Zaphod switched it off. He turned to Ford. "You know what I'm thinking?" he said. "I think so," said Ford. "Tell me what you think I'm thinking." "I think you're thinking it's time we get off this ship." "I think you're right," said Zaphod. "I think you're right," said Ford. "How?" said Arthur. "Quiet," said Ford and Zaphod, "we're thinking." "So this is it," said Arthur, "we're going to die." "I wish you'd stop saying that," said Ford. It is worth repeating at this point the theories that Ford had come up with, on his first encounter with human beings, to account for their peculiar habit of continually stating and restating the very very obvious, as it 'It's a nice day," or "You're very tall," or "So this is it, we're going to die." His first theory was that if human beings didn't keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably seized up. After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this-"If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working." In fact, this second theory is more literally true of the Belcebron people of Kakrafoon. The Belcebron people used to cause great resentment and insecurity amongst neighboring races by being one of the most enlightened, accomplished, and above all quiet civilizations in the Galaxy. As a punishment for this behaviour, which was held to be offensively self righteous and provocative, a Galactic Tribunal inflicted on them that most cruel of all social diseases, telepathy. Consequently, in order to prevent themselves broadcasting every slightest thought that crossed their minds to anyone within a five mile radius, they now have to talk very loudly and continuously about the weather, their little aches and pains, the match this afternoon and what a noisy place Kakrafoon had suddenly become. Another method of temporarily blotting out their minds is to play host to a Disaster Area concert. The timing of the concert was critical. The ship had to begin its dive before the concert began in order to hit the sun six minutes and thirty-seven seconds before the climax of the song to which it related, so that the light of the solar flares had time to travel out to Kakrafoon. The ship had already been diving for several minutes by the time that Ford Prefect had completed his search of the other compartments of the black ship. He burst back into the cabin. The sun of Kakrafoon loomed terrifyingly large on the vision screen, its blazing white inferno of fusing hydrogen nuclei growing moment by moment as the ship plunged onwards, unheeding the thumping and banging of Zaphod's hands on the control panel. Arthur and Trillian had the fixed expressions of rabbits on a night road who think that the best way of dealing with approaching headlights is to stare them out. Zaphod span round, wild-eyed. "Ford," he said, "how many escape capsules are there?" "None," said Ford. Zaphod gibbered. "Did you count them?" he yelled. "Twice," said Ford, "did you manage to raise the stage crew on the radio?" "Yeah," said Zaphod, bitterly, "I said there were a whole bunch of people on board, and they said to say 'hi' to everybody." Ford goggled. "Didn't you tell them who we were?" "Oh yeah. They said it was a great honour. That and something about a restaurant bill and my executors." Ford pushed Arthur aside and leaned forward over the control console. "Does none of this function?" he said savagely. "All overridden." "Smash the autopilot." "Find it first. Nothing connects." There was a moment's cold silence. Arthur was stumbling round the back of the cabin. He stopped suddenly. "Incidentally," he said, "what does teleport mean?" Another moment passed. Slowly, the others turned to face him. "Probably the wrong moment to ask," said Arthur, "It's just I remember hearing you use the word a short while ago and I only bring it up because..." "Where," said Ford Prefect quietly, "does it say teleport?" "Well, just over here in fact," said Arthur, pointing at a dark control box in the rear of the cabin, "Just under the word 'emergency', above the word 'system' and beside the sign saying 'out of order'." In the pandemonium that instantly followed, the only action to follow was that of Ford Prefect lunging across the cabin to the small black box that Arthur had indicated and stabbing repeatedly at the single small black button set into it. A six-foot square panel slid open beside it revealing a compartment which resembled a multiple shower unit that had found a new function in life as an electrician's junk store. Half-finished wiring hung from the ceiling, a jumble of abandoned components lay strewn on the floor, and the programming panel lolled out of the cavity in the wall into which it should have been secured. A junior Disaster Area accountant, visiting the shipyard where this ship was being constructed, had demanded to know of the works foreman why the hell they were fitting an extremely expensive teleport into a ship which only had one important journey to make, and that unmanned. The foreman had explained that the teleport was available at a ten percent discount and the accountant had explained that this was immaterial; the foreman had explained that it was the finest, most powerful and sophisticated teleport that money could buy and the accountant had explained that the money did not wish to buy it; the foreman had explained that people would still need to enter and leave the ship and the accountant had explained that the ship sported a perfectly serviceable door; the foreman had explained that the accountant could go and boil his head and the accountant had explained to the foreman that the thing approaching him rapidly from his left was a knuckle sandwich. After the explanations had been concluded, work was discontinued on the teleport which subsequently passed unnoticed on the invoice as "Sund. explns." at five times the price. "Hell's donkeys," muttered Zaphod as he and Ford attempted to sort through the tangle of wiring. After a moment or so Ford told him to stand back. He tossed a coin into the teleport and jiggled a switch on the lolling control panel. With a crackle and spit of light, the coin vanished. "That much of it works," said Ford, "however, there is no guidance system. A matter transference teleport without guidance programming could put you... well, anywhere." The sun of Kakrafoon loomed huge on the screen. "Who cares," said Zaphod, "we go where we go." "And," said Ford, "there is no autosystem. We couldn't all go. Someone would have to stay and operate it." A solemn moment shuffled past. The sun loomed larger and larger. "Hey, Marvin kid," said Zaphod brightly, "how you doing?" "Very badly I suspect," muttered Marvin.

A shortish while later, the concert on Kakrafoon reached an unexpected climax. The black ship with its single morose occupant had plunged on schedule into the nuclear furnace of the sun. Massive solar flares licked out from it millions of miles into space, thrilling and in a few cases spilling the dozen or so Flare Riders who had been coasting close to the surface of the sun in anticipation of the moment. Moments before the flare light reached Kakrafoon the pounding desert cracked along a deep faultline. A huge and hitherto undetected underground river lying far beneath the surface gushed to the surface to be followed seconds later by the eruption of millions of tons of boiling lava that flowed hundreds of feet into the air, instantaneously vaporizing the river both above and below the surface in an explosion that echoed to the far side of the world and back again. Those-very few-who witnessed the event and survived swear that the whole hundred thousand square miles of the desert rose into the air like a mile-thick pancake, flipped itself over and fell back down. At that precise moment the solar radiation from the flares filtered through the clouds of vaporized water and struck the ground. A year later, the hundred thousand square mile desert was thick with flowers. The structure of the atmosphere around the planet was subtly altered. The sun blazed less harshly in the summer, the cold bit less bitterly in the winter, pleasant rain fell more often, and slowly the desert world of Kakrafoon became a paradise. Even the telepathic power with which the people of Kakrafoon had been cursed was permanently dispersed by the force of the explosion. A spokesman for Disaster Area-the one who had had all the environmentalists shot-was later quoted as saying that it had been "a good gig". Many people spoke movingly of the healing powers of music. A few sceptical scientists examined the records of the events more closely, and claimed that they had discovered faint vestiges of a vast artificially induced Improbability Field drifting in from a nearby region of space.

Chapter 22

Arthur woke up and instantly regretted it. Hangovers he'd had, but never anything on this scale. This was it, this was the big one, this was the ultimate pits. Matter transference beams, he decided, were not as much fun as, say, a good solid kick in the head. Being for the moment unwilling to move on account of a dull stomping throb he was experiencing, he lay a while and thought. The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically one of them not being worth all the bother. On Earth-when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass-the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another-particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish. And what about matter transference beams? Any form of transport which involved tearing you apart atom by atom, flinging those atoms through the sub-ether, and then jamming them back together again just when they were getting their first taste of freedom for years had to be bad news. Many people had thought exactly this before Arthur Dent and had even gone to the lengths of writing songs about it. Here is one that used regularly to be chanted by huge crowds outside the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Teleport Systems factory on Happi-Werld III:

Aldebaran's great, OK, Algol's pretty neat, Betelgeuse's pretty girls, Will knock you off your feet. They'll do anything you like, Real fast and then real slow, But if you have to take me apart to get me there, Then I don't want to go.

Singing, Take me apart, take me apart, What a way to roam, And if you have to take me apart to get me there, I'd rather stay at home.

Sirius is paved with gold So I've heard it said By nuts who then go on to say "See Tau before you're dead." I'll gladly take the high road Or even take the low, But if you have to take me apart to get me there, Then I, for one, won't go.