The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy | Page 7

bit.
"Ford," said Arthur, "would you please tell me what the hell is going
on?" "Drink up," said Ford, "you've got three pints to get through."
"Three pints?" said Arthur. "At lunchtime?"
The man next to ford grinned and nodded happily. Ford ignored him.
He said, "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." "Very deep," said Arthur, "you should send that in to the Reader's Digest.
They've got a page for people like you."
"Drink up."
"Why three pints all of a sudden?"
15

"Muscle relaxant, you'll need it."
"Muscle relaxant?"
"Muscle relaxant."
Arthur stared into his beer.
"Did I do anything wrong today," he said, "or has the world always been
like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?" "All right," said Ford, "I'll try to explain. How long have we known each
other?" "How long?" Arthur thought. "Er, about ve years, maybe six," he said.
"Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time." "All right," said Ford. "How would you react if I said that I'm not from
Guildford after all, but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of
Betelgeuse?" Arthur shrugged in a so-so sort of way.
"I don't know," he said, taking a pull of beer. "Why { do you think it's
the sort of thing you're likely to say?"
Ford gave up. It really wasn't worth bothering at the moment, what with
the world being about to end. He just said: "Drink up." He added, perfectly factually: "The world's about to end."
Arthur gave the rest of the pub another wan smile. The rest of the pub
frowned at him. A man waved at him to stop smiling at them and mind his
own business. "This must be Thursday," said Arthur musing to himself, sinking low over
his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
16

Chapter 3
On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the iono-
sphere many miles above the surface of the planet; several somethings in fact,
several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as oce build-
ings, silent as birds. They soared with ease, basking in electromagnetic rays
from the star Sol, biding their time, grouping, preparing. The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their pres-
ence, which was just how they wanted it for the moment. The huge yellow
somethings went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape Canaveral
without a blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them {
which was a pity because it was exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking
for all these years. The only place they registered at all was on a small black device called a
Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic which winked away quietly to itself. It nestled in the
darkness inside a leather satchel which Ford Prefect wore habitually round
his neck. The contents of Ford Prefect's satchel were quite interesting in fact
and would have made any Earth physicist's eyes pop out of his head, which
is why he always concealed them by keeping a couple of dog-eared scripts
for plays he pretended he was auditioning for stued in the top. Besides
the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic and the scripts he had an Electronic Thumb {
a short squat black rod, smooth and matt with a couple of
at switches
and dials at one end; he also had a device which looked rather like a largish
electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny
at press buttons and a
screen about four inches square on which any one of a million "pages" could
be summoned at a moment's notice. It looked insanely complicated, and this
was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it tted into had the words
Don't Panic printed on it in large friendly letters. The other reason was
that this device was in fact that most remarkable of all books ever to come
out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor { The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy . The reason why it was published in the form of a micro
sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book
17

form, an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large
buildings to carry it around in. Beneath that in Ford Prefect's satchel were a few biros, a notepad, and
a largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the
subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar
hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value { you can wrap it
around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta;
you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, in-
haling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which
shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft
down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-tohand-combat; wrap
it round your head to ward o noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal,