The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
for Jonny Brock and Clare Gorst
and all other Arlingtonians for
tea, sympathy and a sofa
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the west-
ern spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting
this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignifi-
cant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly
primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the
people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were
suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the
movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole
it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of
them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake
in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the
trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had
been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people
for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth
suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she
finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time
it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a
terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.
This is not her story.
But it is the story of that terrible stupid catastrophe and some of its
consequences.
It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy – not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible
catastrophe occurred, never seen or heard of by any Earthman.
Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.
In fact it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the
great publishing houses of Ursa Minor – of which no Earthman had ever heard
either.
Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one
– more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than
Fifty More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon
Colluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong,
Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?
In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the
Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia
Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though
2
it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly
inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important
respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words Don’t Panic
inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its extraordi-
nary consequences, and the story of how these consequences are inextricably
intertwined with this remarkable book begins very simply.
It begins with a house.
3
Chapter 1
The house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village. It stood on
its own and looked over a broad spread of West Country farmland. Not a
remarkable house by any means – it was about thirty years old, squattish,
squarish, made of brick, and had four windows set in the front of a size and
proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye.
The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur
Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in. He
had lived in it for about three years, ever since he had moved out of London
because it made him nervous and irritable. He was about thirty as well,
dark haired and never quite at ease with himself. The thing that used to
worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he
was looking so worried about. He worked in local radio which he always used
to tell his friends was a lot more interesting than they probably thought. It
was, too – most of his friends worked in advertising.
On Wednesday night it had rained very heavily, the lane was wet and
muddy, but the Thursday morning sun was bright and clear as it shone on
Arthur Dent’s house for what was to be the last time
It hadn’t properly registered with Arthur that the council wanted to
knock down his house and build an bypass instead.
At eight o’clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn’t feel very good. He
woke up blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his room, opened a window,
saw a bulldozer, found his slippers, and stomped off to the bathroom to wash.
Toothpaste on the brush – so. Scrub.
Shaving mirror – pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted it. For a moment
it reflected a second bulldozer through the bathroom window. Properly ad-
justed, it reflected Arthur Dent’s bristles. He shaved them off, washed, dried,
and stomped off to the kitchen to find something pleasant to put in his mouth.
Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn.
The word bulldozer wandered through his mind for a moment in search
4
of something to connect with.
The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one.
He stared at it. ”Yellow,” he thought and stomped off back to his bedroom
to get dressed.
Passing the bathroom he stopped to drink a large glass of water, and
another. He began to suspect that he was hung over. Why was he hung
over? Had he been drinking the night before? He supposed that he must
have been. He caught a glint in the shaving mirror. ”Yellow,” he thought
and stomped on to the bedroom.
He stood and thought. The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the pub. He
vaguely remembered being angry, angry about something that seemed im-
portant. He’d been telling people about it, telling people about it at great
length, he rather suspected: his clearest visual recollection was of glazed
looks on other people’s faces. Something about a new bypass he had just
found out about. It had been in the pipeline for months only no one seemed
to have known about it. Ridiculous. He took a swig of water. It would sort
itself out, he’d decided, no one wanted a bypass, the council didn’t have a
leg to stand on. It would sort itself out.
God what a terrible hangover it had earned him though. He looked
at himself in the wardrobe mirror. He stuck out his tongue. ”Yellow,” he
thought. The word yellow wandered through his mind in search of something
to connect with.
Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a big
yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path.
Mr. L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a
carbon-based life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty,
fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though
he didn’t know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan,
though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes
that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges
left in Mr. L. Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness
about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats.
He was by no means a great warrior: in fact he was a nervous worried
man. Today he was particularly nervous and worried because something had
gone seriously wrong with his job – which was to see that Arthur Dent’s
house got cleared out of the way before the day was out.
”Come off it, Mr. Dent,”, he said, ”you can’t win you know. You can’t lie
in front of the bulldozer indefinitely.” He tried to make his eyes blaze fiercely
but they just wouldn’t do it.
Arthur lay in the mud and squelched at him.
5
”I’m game,” he said, ”we’ll see who rusts first.”
”I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept it,” said Mr. Prosser gripping
his fur hat and rolling it round the top of his head, ”this bypass has got to
be built and it’s going to be built!”
”First I’ve heard of it,” said Arthur, ”why’s it going to be built?”
Mr. Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put it
away again.
”What do you mean, why’s it got to be built?” he said. ”It’s a bypass.
You’ve got to build bypasses.”
Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point A to
point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A very fast.
People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given
to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people of point B are
so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people
of point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just
once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.
Mr. Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D wasn’t anywhere in partic-
ular, it was just any convenient point a very long way from points A, B and
C. He would have a nice little cottage at point D, with axes over the door,
and spend a pleasant amount of time at point E, which would be the nearest
pub to point D. His wife of course wanted climbing roses, but he wanted
axes. He didn’t know why – he just liked axes. He flushed hotly under the
derisive grins of the bulldozer drivers.
He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally uncomfortable
on each. Obviously somebody had been appallingly incompetent and he
hoped to God it wasn’t him.
Mr. Prosser said: ”You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or
protests at the appropriate time you know.”
”Appropriate time?” hooted Arthur. ”Appropriate time? The first I
knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked
him if he’d come to clean the windows and he said no he’d come to demolish
the house. He didn’t tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped
a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.”
”But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office
for the last nine month.”
”Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yes-
terday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention
to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything.”
”But the plans were on display . . . ”
”On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
”That’s the display department.”
6
”With a flashlight.”
”Ah, well the lights had probably gone.”
”So had the stairs.”
”But look, you found the notice didn’t you?”
”Yes,” said Arthur, ”yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a
locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door
saying Beware of the Leopard.”
A cloud passed overhead. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent as he lay
propped up on his elbow in the cold mud. It cast a shadow over Arthur
Dent’s house. Mr. Prosser frowned at it.
”It’s not as if it’s a particularly nice house,” he said.
”I’m sorry, but I happen to like it.”
”You’ll like the bypass.”
”Oh shut up,” said Arthur Dent. ”Shut up and go away, and take your
bloody bypass with you. You haven’t got a leg to stand on and you know
it.”
Mr. Prosser’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times while his mind
was for a moment filled with inexplicable but terribly attractive visions of
Arthur Dent’s house being consumed with fire and Arthur himself running
screaming from the blazing ruin with at least three hefty spears protruding
from his back. Mr. Prosser was often bothered with visions like these and
they made him feel very nervous. He stuttered for a moment and then pulled
himself together.
”Mr. Dent,” he said.
”Hello? Yes?” said Arthur.
”Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage
that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?”
”How much?” said Arthur.
”None at all,” said Mr. Prosser, and stormed nervously off wondering
why his brain was filled with a thousand hairy horsemen all shouting at him.
By a curious coincidence, ”None at all” is exactly how much suspicion
the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not
descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of
Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he usually claimed.
Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.
This friend of his had first arrived on the planet some fifteen Earth years
previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself into Earth society –
with, it must be said, some success. For instance he had spent those fifteen
years pretending to be an out of work actor, which was plausible enough.
7
He had made one careless blunder though, because he had skimped a bit
on his preparatory research. The information he had gathered had led him
to choose the name ”Ford Prefect” as being nicely inconspicuous.
He was not conspicuously tall, his features were striking but not conspic-
uously handsome. His hair was wiry and gingerish and brushed backwards
from the temples. His skin seemed to be pulled backwards from the nose.
There was something very slightly odd about him, but it was difficult to say
what it was. Perhaps it was that his eyes didn’t blink often enough and
when you talked to him for any length of time your eyes began involuntarily
to water on his behalf. Perhaps it was that he smiled slightly too broadly
and gave people the unnerving impression that he was about to go for their
neck.
He struck most of the friends he had made on Earth as an eccentric, but
a harmless one – an unruly boozer with some oddish habits. For instance he
would often gatecrash university parties, get badly drunk and start making
fun of any astrophysicist he could find till he got thrown out.
Sometimes he would get seized with oddly distracted moods and stare
into the sky as if hypnotized until someone asked him what he was doing.
Then he would start guiltily for a moment, relax and grin.
”Oh, just looking for flying saucers,” he would joke and everyone would
laugh and ask him what sort of flying saucers he was looking for.
”Green ones!” he would reply with a wicked grin, laugh wildly for a
moment and then suddenly lunge for the nearest bar and buy an enormous
round of drinks.
Evenings like this usually ended badly. Ford would get out of his skull
on whisky, huddle into a corner with some girl and explain to her in slurred
phrases that honestly the colour of the flying saucers didn’t matter that much
really.
Thereafter, staggering semi-paralytic down the night streets he would of-
ten ask passing policemen if they knew the way to Betelgeuse. The policemen
would usually say something like, ”Don’t you think it’s about time you went
off home sir?”
”I’m trying to baby, I’m trying to,” is what Ford invariably replied on
these occasions.
In fact what he was really looking out for when he stared distractedly into
the night sky was any kind of flying saucer at all. The reason he said green
was that green was the traditional space livery of the Betelgeuse trading
scouts.
Ford Prefect was desperate that any flying saucer at all would arrive soon
because fifteen years was a long time to get stranded anywhere, particularly
somewhere as mindboggingly dull as the Earth.
8
Ford wished that a flying saucer would arrive soon because he knew how
to flag flying saucers down and get lifts from them. He knew how to see the
Marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairan dollars a day.
In fact, Ford Prefect was a roving researcher for that wholly remarkable
book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Human beings are great adaptors, and by lunchtime life in the environs
of Arthur’s house had settled into a steady routine. It was Arthur’s accepted
role to lie squelching in the mud making occasional demands to see his lawyer,
his mother or a good book; it was Mr. Prosser’s accepted role to tackle
Arthur with the occasional new ploy such as the For the Public Good talk,
the March of Progress talk, the They Knocked My House Down Once You
Know, Never Looked Back talk and various other cajoleries and threats; and
it was the bulldozer drivers’ accepted role to sit around drinking coffee and
experimenting with union regulations to see how they could turn the situation
to their financial advantage.
The Earth moved slowly in its diurnal course.
The sun was beginning to dry out the mud Arthur lay in.
A shadow moved across him again.
”Hello Arthur,” said the shadow.
Arthur looked up and squinting into the sun was startled to see Ford
Prefect standing above him.
”Ford! Hello, how are you?”
”Fine,” said Ford, ”look, are you busy?”
”Am I busy?” exclaimed Arthur. ”Well, I’ve just got all these bulldozers
and things to lie in front of because they’ll knock my house down if I don’t,
but other than that . . . well, no not especially, why?”
They don’t have sarcasm on Betelgeuse, and Ford Prefect often failed to
notice it unless he was concentrating. He said, ”Good, is there anywhere we
can talk?”
”What?” said Arthur Dent.
For a few seconds Ford seemed to ignore him, and stared fixedly into the
sky like a rabbit trying to get run over by a car. Then suddenly he squatted
down beside Arthur.
”We’ve got to talk,” he said urgently.
”Fine,” said Arthur, ”talk.”
”And drink,” said Ford. ”It’s vitally important that we talk and drink.
Now. We’ll go to the pub in the village.”
He looked into the sky again, nervous, expectant.
”Look, don’t you understand?” shouted Arthur. He pointed at Prosser.
”That man wants to knock my house down!”
9
Ford glanced at him, puzzled. ”Well he can do it while you’re away can’t
he?” he asked.
”But I don’t want him to!”
”Ah.”
”Look, what’s the matter with you Ford?” said Arthur.
”Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. Listen to me – I’ve got to tell you the
most important thing you’ve ever heard. I’ve got to tell you now, and I’ve
got to tell you in the saloon bar of the Horse and Groom.”
”But why?”
”Because you are going to need a very stiff drink.”
Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur was astonished to find that his will
was beginning to weaken. He didn’t realize that this was because of an old
drinking game that Ford learned to play in the hyperspace ports that served
the madranite mining belts in the star system of Orion Beta.
The game was not unlike the Earth game called Indian Wrestling, and
was played like this:
Two contestants would sit either side of a table, with a glass in front of
each of them.
Between them would be placed a bottle of Janx Spirit (as immortalized
in that ancient Orion mining song ”Oh don’t give me none more of that Old
Janx Spirit/ No, don’t you give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit/ For
my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die/ Won’t
you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit”).
Each of the two contestants would then concentrate their will on the
bottle and attempt to tip it and pour spirit into the glass of his opponent –
who would then have to drink it.
The bottle would then be refilled. The game would be played again. And
again.
Once you started to lose you would probably keep losing, because one of
the effects of Janx spirit is to depress telepsychic power.
As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the final loser
would have to perform a forfeit, which was usually obscenely biological.
Ford Prefect usually played to lose.
Ford stared at Arthur, who began to think that perhaps he did want to
go to the Horse and Groom after all.
”But what about my house . . . ?” he asked plaintively.
Ford looked across to Mr. Prosser, and suddenly a wicked thought struck
him.
”He wants to knock your house down?”
”Yes, he wants to build . . . ”
10
”And he can’t because you’re lying in front of the bulldozers?”
”Yes, and . . . ”
”I’m sure we can come to some arrangement,” said Ford. ”Excuse me!”
he shouted.
Mr. Prosser (who was arguing with a spokesman for the bulldozer drivers
about whether or not Arthur Dent constituted a mental health hazard, and
how much they should get paid if he did) looked around. He was surprised
and slightly alarmed to find that Arthur had company.
”Yes? Hello?” he called. ”Has Mr. Dent come to his senses yet?”
”Can we for the moment,” called Ford, ”assume that he hasn’t?”
”Well?” sighed Mr. Prosser.
”And can we also assume,” said Ford, ”that he’s going to be staying here
all day?”
”So?”
”So all your men are going to be standing around all day doing nothing?”
”Could be, could be . . . ”
”Well, if you’re resigned to doing that anyway, you don’t actually need
him to lie here all the time do you?”
”What?”
”You don’t,” said Ford patiently, ”actually need him here.”
Mr. Prosser thought about this.
”Well no, not as such . . . ”, he said, ”not exactly need . . . ”
Prosser was worried. He thought that one of them wasn’t making a lot
of sense.
Ford said, ”So if you would just like to take it as read that he’s actually
here, then he and I could slip off down to the pub for half an hour. How does
that sound?”
Mr. Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty.
”That sounds perfectly reasonable,” he said in a reassuring tone of voice,
wondering who he was trying to reassure.
”And if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself later on,” said Ford,
”we can always cover up for you in return.”
”Thank you very much,” said Mr. Prosser who no longer knew how to
play this at all, ”thank you very much, yes, that’s very kind . . . ” He frowned,
then smiled, then tried to do both at once, failed, grasped hold of his fur hat
and rolled it fitfully round the top of his head. He could only assume that
he had just won.
”So,” continued Ford Prefect, ”if you would just like to come over here
and lie down . . . ”
”What?” said Mr. Prosser.
11
”Ah, I’m sorry,” said Ford, ”perhaps I hadn’t made myself fully clear.
Somebody’s got to lie in front of the bulldozers haven’t they? Or there won’t
be anything to stop them driving into Mr. Dent’s house will there?”
”What?” said Mr. Prosser again.
”It’s very simple,” said Ford, ”my client, Mr. Dent, says that he will stop
lying here in the mud on the sole condition that you come and take over from
him.”
”What are you talking about?” said Arthur, but Ford nudged him with
his shoe to be quiet.
”You want me,” said Mr. Prosser, spelling out this new thought to him-
self, ”to come and lie there . . . ”
”Yes.”
”In front of the bulldozer?”
”Yes.”
”Instead of Mr. Dent.”
”Yes.”
”In the mud.”
”In, as you say it, the mud.”
As soon as Mr. Prosser realized that he was substantially the loser after
all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulders: this was more like the
world as he knew it. He sighed.
”In return for which you will take Mr. Dent with you down to the pub?”
”That’s it,” said Ford. ”That’s it exactly.”
Mr. Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped.
”Promise?” he said.
”Promise,” said Ford. He turned to Arthur.
”Come on,” he said to him, ”get up and let the man lie down.”
Arthur stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream.
Ford beckoned to Prosser who sadly, awkwardly, sat down in the mud. He
felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered
whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. The mud folded itself round
his bottom and his arms and oozed into his shoes.
Ford looked at him severely.
”And no sneaky knocking down Mr. Dent’s house whilst he’s away, al-
right?” he said.
”The mere thought,” growled Mr. Prosser, ”hadn’t even begun to spec-
ulate,” he continued, settling himself back, ”about the merest possibility of
crossing my mind.”
He saw the bulldozer driver’s union representative approaching and let his
head sink back and closed his eyes. He was trying to marshal his arguments
for proving that he did not now constitute a mental health hazard himself.
12
He was far from certain about this – his mind seemed to be full of noise,
horses, smoke, and the stench of blood. This always happened when he felt
miserable and put upon, and he had never been able to explain it to himself.
In a high dimension of which we know nothing the mighty Khan bellowed
with rage, but Mr. Prosser only trembled slightly and whimpered. He began
to fell little pricks of water behind the eyelids. Bureaucratic cock-ups, angry
men lying in the mud, indecipherable strangers handing out inexplicable
humiliations and an unidentified army of horsemen laughing at him in his
head – what a day.
What a day. Ford Prefect knew that it didn’t matter a pair of dingo’s
kidneys whether Arthur’s house got knocked down or not now.
Arthur remained very worried.
”But can we trust him?” he said.
”Myself I’d trust him to the end of the Earth,” said Ford.
”Oh yes,” said Arthur, ”and how far’s that?”
”About twelve minutes away,” said Ford, ”come on, I need a drink.”
13
Chapter 2
Here’s what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It says that
alcohol is a colourless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars and
also notes its intoxicating effect on certain carbon-based life forms.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that
the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your
brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.
The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic Gar-
gle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one and what
voluntary organizations exist to help you rehabilitate afterwards.
The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself.
Take the juice from one bottle of that Ol’ Janx Spirit, it says.
Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V – Oh
that Santraginean sea water, it says. Oh, those Santraginean fish!
Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the mixture (it must
be properly iced or the benzine is lost).
Allow four litres of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it, in memory of
all those happy Hikers who have died of pleasure in the Marshes of Fallia.
Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin Hypermint
extract, redolent of all the heady odours of the dark Qualactin Zones, subtle
sweet and mystic.
Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve, spreading
the fires of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of the drink.
Sprinkle Zamphuor.
Add an olive.
Drink . . . but . . . very carefully . . .
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sells rather better than the Ency-
clopedia Galactica.
”Six pints of bitter,” said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse and
Groom. ”And quickly please, the world’s about to end.”
14
The barman of the Horse and Groom didn’t deserve this sort of treatment,
he was a dignified old man. He pushed his glasses up his nose and blinked at
Ford Prefect. Ford ignored him and stared out of the window, so the barman
looked instead at Arthur who shrugged helplessly and said nothing.
So the barman said, ”Oh yes sir? Nice weather for it,” and started pulling
pints.
He tried again. ”Going to watch the match this afternoon then?”
Ford glanced round at him.
”No, no point,” he said, and looked back out of the window.
”What’s that, foregone conclusion then you reckon sir?” said the barman.
”Arsenal without a chance?”
”No, no,” said Ford, ”it’s just that the world’s about to end.”
”Oh yes, sir, so you said,” said the barman, looking over his glasses this
time at Arthur. ”Lucky escape for Arsenal if it did.”
Ford looked back at him, genuinely surprised.
”No, not really,” he said. He frowned.
The barman breathed in heavily. ”There you are sir, six pints,” he said.
Arthur smiled at him wanly and shrugged again. He turned and smiled
wanly at the rest of the pub just in case any of them had heard what was
going on.
None of them had, and none of them could understand what he was
smiling at them for.
A man sitting next to Ford at the bar looked at the two men, looked at
the six pints, did a swift burst of mental arithmetic, arrived at an answer he
liked and grinned a stupid hopeful grin at them.
”Get off,” said Ford, ”They’re ours,” giving him a look that would have
an Algolian Suntiger get on with what it was doing.
Ford slapped a five-pound note on the bar. He said, ”Keep the change.”
”What, from a fiver? Thank you sir.”
”You’ve got ten minutes left to spend it.”
The barman simply decided to walk away for a 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 five 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 office 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 stuffed 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 flat 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 flat 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 fitted 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 off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it as-
sumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very
ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and
of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some
reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his
towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of
a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of
string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the
strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items
that the hitchhiker might accidentally have ”lost”. What the strag will think
is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it,
slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his
towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase which has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in ”Hey, you
sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his
towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really to-
gether guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
Nestling quietly on top of the towel in Ford Prefect’s satchel, the Sub-
Etha Sens-O-Matic began to wink more quickly. Miles above the surface of
the planet the huge yellow somethings began to fan out. At Jodrell Bank,
someone decided it was time for a nice relaxing cup of tea.
”You got a towel with you?” said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur.
Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him.
18
”Why? What, no . . . should I have?” He had given up being surprised,
there didn’t seem to be any point any longer.
Ford clicked his tongue in irritation.
”Drink up,” he urged.
At that moment the dull sound of a rumbling crash from outside filtered
through the low murmur of the pub, through the sound of the jukebox,
through the sound of the man next to Ford hiccupping over the whisky Ford
had eventually bought him.
Arthur choked on his beer, leapt to his feet.
”What’s that?” he yelped.
”Don’t worry,” said Ford, ”they haven’t started yet.”
”Thank God for that,” said Arthur and relaxed.
”It’s probably just your house being knocked down,” said Ford, drowning
his last pint.
”What?” shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford’s spell was broken. Arthur
looked wildly around him and ran to the window.
”My God they are! They’re knocking my house down. What the hell am
I doing in the pub, Ford?”
”It hardly makes any difference at this stage,” said Ford, ”let them have
their fun.”
”Fun?” yelped Arthur. ”Fun!” He quickly checked out of the window
again that they were talking about the same thing.
”Damn their fun!” he hooted and ran out of the pub furiously waving a
nearly empty beer glass. He made no friends at all in the pub that lunchtime.
”Stop, you vandals! You home wreckers!” bawled Arthur. ”You half
crazed Visigoths, stop will you!”
Ford would have to go after him. Turning quickly to the barman he asked
for four packets of peanuts.
”There you are sir,” said the barman, slapping the packets on the bar,
”twenty-eight pence if you’d be so kind.”
Ford was very kind – he gave the barman another five-pound note and
told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then looked at
Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a momentary sensation that he
didn’t understand because no one on Earth had ever experienced it before. In
moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny sublimal
signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense
of how far that being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is never
possible to be further than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace,
which really isn’t very far, so such signals are too minute to be noticed. Ford
Prefect was at this moment under great stress, and he was born 600 light
years away in the near vicinity of Betelgeuse.
19
The barman reeled for a moment, hit by a shocking, incomprehensible
sense of distance. He didn’t know what it meant, but he looked at Ford
Prefect with a new sense of respect, almost awe.
”Are you serious, sir?” he said in a small whisper which had the effect of
silencing the pub. ”You think the world’s going to end?”
”Yes,” said Ford.
”But, this afternoon?”
Ford had recovered himself. He was at his flippest.
”Yes,” he said gaily, ”in less than two minutes I would estimate.”
The barman couldn’t believe the conversation he was having, but he
couldn’t believe the sensation he had just had either.
”Isn’t there anything we can do about it then?” he said.
”No, nothing,” said Ford, stuffing the peanuts into his pockets.
Someone in the hushed bar suddenly laughed raucously at how stupid
everyone had become.
The man sitting next to Ford was a bit sozzled by now. His eyes waved
their way up to Ford.
”I thought,” he said, ”that if the world was going to end we were meant
to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something.”
”If you like, yes,” said Ford.
”That’s what they told us in the army,” said the man, and his eyes began
the long trek back down to his whisky.
”Will that help?” asked the barman.
”No,” said Ford and gave him a friendly smile. ”Excuse me,” he said,
”I’ve got to go.” With a wave, he left.
The pub was silent for a moment longer, and then, embarrassingly enough,
the man with the raucous laugh did it again. The girl he had dragged along
to the pub with him had grown to loathe him dearly over the last hour or
so, and it would probably have been a great satisfaction to her to know that
in a minute and a half or so he would suddenly evaporate into a whiff of
hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide. However, when the moment came
she would be too busy evaporating herself to notice it.
The barman cleared his throat. He heard himself say: ”Last orders,
please.”
The huge yellow machines began to sink downward and to move faster.
Ford knew they were there. This wasn’t the way he had wanted it.
Running up the lane, Arthur had nearly reached his house. He didn’t
notice how cold it had suddenly become, he didn’t notice the wind, he didn’t
20
notice the sudden irrational squall of rain. He didn’t notice anything but the
caterpillar bulldozers crawling over the rubble that had been his home.
”You barbarians!” he yelled. ”I’ll sue the council for every penny it’s got!
I’ll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled . . . until
. . . until . . . until you’ve had enough.”
Ford was running after him very fast. Very very fast.
”And then I’ll do it again!” yelled Arthur. ”And when I’ve finished I will
take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!”
Arthur didn’t notice that the men were running from the bulldozers; he
didn’t notice that Mr. Prosser was staring hectically into the sky. What
Mr. Prosser had noticed was that huge yellow somethings were screaming
through the clouds. Impossibly huge yellow somethings.
”And I will carry on jumping on them,” yelled Arthur, still running, ”until
I get blisters, or I can think of anything even more unpleasant to do, and
then . . . ”
Arthur tripped, and fell headlong, rolled and landed flat on his back. At
last he noticed that something was going on. His finger shot upwards.
”What the hell’s that?” he shrieked.
Whatever it was raced across the sky in monstrous yellowness, tore the
sky apart with mind-buggering noise and leapt off into the distance leaving
the gaping air to shut behind it with a bang that drove your ears six feet
into your skull.
Another one followed and did the same thing only louder.
It’s difficult to say exactly what the people on the surface of the planet
were doing now, because they didn’t really know what they were doing them-
selves. None of it made a lot of sense running into houses, running out of
houses, howling noiselessly at the noise. All around the world city streets
exploded with people, cars slewed into each other as the noise fell on them
and then rolled off like a tidal wave over hills and valleys, deserts and oceans,
seeming to flatten everything it hit.
Only one man stood and watched the sky, stood with terrible sadness in
his eyes and rubber bungs in his ears. He knew exactly what was happening
and had known ever since his Sub-Etha Sens-OMatic had started winking in
the dead of night beside his pillar and woken him with a start. It was what
he had waited for all these years, but when he had deciphered the signal
pattern sitting alone in his small dark room a coldness had gripped him and
squeezed his heart. Of all the races in all of the Galaxy who could have come
and said a big hello to planet Earth, he thought, didn’t it just have to be the
Vogons.
Still he knew what he had to do. As the Vogon craft screamed through the
air high above him he opened his satchel. He threw away a copy of Joseph and
21
the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, he threw away a copy of Godspell : He
wouldn’t need them where he was going. Everything was ready, everything
was prepared.
He knew where his towel was.
A sudden silence hit the Earth. If anything it was worse than the noise.
For a while nothing happened.
The great ships hung motionless in the air, over every nation on Earth.
Motionless they hung, huge, heavy, steady in the sky, a blasphemy against
nature. Many people went straight into shock as their minds tried to encom-
pass what they were looking at. The ships hung in the sky in much the same
way that bricks don’t.
And still nothing happened.
Then there was a slight whisper, a sudden spacious whisper of open am-
bient sound. Every hi fi set in the world, every radio, every television, every
cassette recorder, every woofer, every tweeter, every mid-range driver in the
world quietly turned itself on.
Every tin can, every dust bin, every window, every car, every wine glass,
every sheet of rusty metal became activated as an acoustically perfect sound-
ing board.
Before the Earth passed away it was going to be treated to the very
ultimate in sound reproduction, the greatest public address system ever built.
But there was no concert, no music, no fanfare, just a simple message.
”People of Earth, your attention please,” a voice said, and it was won-
derful. Wonderful perfect quadrophonic sound with distortion levels so low
as to make a brave man weep.
”This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Coun-
cil,” the voice continued. ”As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for de-
velopment of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hy-
perspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet
is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less
that two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.”
The PA died away.
Uncomprehending terror settled on the watching people of Earth. The
terror moved slowly through the gathered crowds as if they were iron fillings
on a sheet of board and a magnet was moving beneath them. Panic sprouted
again, desperate fleeing panic, but there was nowhere to flee to.
Observing this, the Vogons turned on their PA again. It said:
”There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts
and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department
22
on Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time
to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss
about it now.”
The PA fell silent again and its echo drifted off across the land. The huge
ships turned slowly in the sky with easy power. On the underside of each a
hatchway opened, an empty black space.
By this time somebody somewhere must have manned a radio transmitter,
located a wavelength and broadcasted a message back to the Vogon ships,
to plead on behalf of the planet. Nobody ever heard what they said, they
only heard the reply. The PA slammed back into life again. The voice was
annoyed. It said:
”What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? For heaven’s
sake mankind, it’s only four light years away you know. I’m sorry, but if you
can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that’s your own lookout.
”Energize the demolition beams.”
Light poured out into the hatchways.
”I don’t know,” said the voice on the PA, ”apathetic bloody planet, I’ve
no sympathy at all.” It cut off.
There was a terrible ghastly silence.
There was a terrible ghastly noise.
There was a terrible ghastly silence.
The Vogon Constructor fleet coasted away into the inky starry void.
23
Chapter 4
Far away on the opposite spiral arm of the Galaxy, five hundred thousand
light years from the star Sol, Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Imperial
Galactic Government, sped across the seas of Damogran, his ion drive delta
boat winking and flashing in the Damogran sun.
Damogran the hot; Damogran the remote; Damogran the almost totally
unheard of.
Damogran, secret home of the Heart of Gold.
The boat sped on across the water.
It would be some time before it
reached its destination because Damogran is such an inconveniently arranged
planet. It consists of nothing but middling to large desert islands separated
by very pretty but annoyingly wide stretches of ocean.
The boat sped on.
Because of this topological awkwardness Damogran has always remained
a deserted planet. This is why the Imperial Galactic Government chose
Damogran for the Heart of Gold project, because it was so deserted and the
Heart of Gold was so secret.
The boat zipped and skipped across the sea, the sea that lay between the
main islands of the only archipelago of any useful size on the whole planet.
Zaphod Beeblebrox was on his way from the tiny spaceport on Easter Island
(the name was an entirely meaningless coincidence – in Galacticspeke, easter
means small flat and light brown) to the Heart of Gold island, which by
another meaningless coincidence was called France.
One of the side effects of work on the Heart of Gold was a whole string
of pretty meaningless coincidences.
But it was not in any way a coincidence that today, the day of culmi-
nation of the project, the great day of unveiling, the day that the Heart of
Gold was finally to be introduced to a marvelling Galaxy, was also a great
day of culmination for Zaphod Beeblebrox. It was for the sake of this day
that he had first decided to run for the Presidency, a decision which had
sent waves of astonishment throughout the Imperial Galaxy – Zaphod Bee-
24
blebrox? President? Not the Zaphod Beeblebrox? Not the President? Many
had seen it as a clinching proof that the whole of known creation had finally
gone bananas.
Zaphod grinned and gave the boat an extra kick of speed.
Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippy, good timer, (crook? quite
possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often
thought to be completely out to lunch.
President?
No one had gone bananas, not in that way at least.
Only six people in the entire Galaxy understood the principle on which
the Galaxy was governed, and they knew that once Zaphod Beeblebrox had
announced his intention to run as President it was more or less a fait accompli:
he was the ideal presidency fodder.1
What they completely failed to understand was why Zaphod was doing
it.
He banked sharply, shooting a wild wall of water at the sun.
Today was the day; today was the day when they would realize what
Zaphod had been up to. Today was what Zaphod Beeblebrox’s Presidency
was all about. Today was also his two hundredth birthday, but that was just
another meaningless coincidence.
As he skipped his boat across the seas of Damogran he smiled quietly to
himself about what a wonderful exciting day it was going to be. He relaxed
and spread his two arms lazily across the seat back. He steered with an
1President: full title President of the Imperial Galactic Government.
The term Imperial is kept though it is now an anachronism. The hereditary Emperor
is nearly dead and has been so for many centuries. In the last moments of his dying coma
he was locked in a statis field which keeps him in a state of perpetual unchangingness. All
his heirs are now long dead, and this means that without any drastic political upheaval,
power has simply and effectively moved a rung or two down the ladder, and is now seen
to be vested in a body which used to act simply as advisers to the Emperor – an elected
Governmental assembly headed by a President elected by that assembly. In fact it vests
in no such place.
The President in particular is very much a figurehead – he wields no real power what-
soever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to
display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the
President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating charac-
ter. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria
Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had –
he has already spent two of his ten Presidential years in prison for fraud. Very very few
people realize that the President and the Government have virtually no power at all, and
of these very few people only six know whence ultimate political power is wielded. Most
of the others secretly believe that the ultimate decision-making process is handled by a
computer. They couldn’t be more wrong.
25
extra arm he’d recently fitted just beneath his right one to help improve his
ski-boxing.
”Hey,” he cooed to himself, ”you’re a real cool boy you.” But his nerves
sang a song shriller than a dog whistle.
The island of France was about twenty miles long, five miles across the
middle, sandy and crescent shaped. In fact it seemed to exist not so much as
an island in its own right as simply a means of defining the sweep and curve
of a huge bay. This impression was heightened by the fact that the inner
coastline of the crescent consisted almost entirely of steep cliffs. From the
top of the cliff the land sloped slowly down five miles to the opposite shore.
On top of the cliffs stood a reception committee.
It consisted in large part of the engineers and researchers who had built
the Heart of Gold – mostly humanoid, but here and there were a few reptiloid
atomineers, two or three green slyph-like maximegalacticans, an octopoid
physucturalist or two and a Hooloovoo (a Hooloovoo is a super-intelligent
shade of the color blue). All except the Hooloovoo were resplendent in their
multicolored ceremonial lab coats; the Hooloovoo had been temporarily re-
fracted into a free standing prism for the occasion.
There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through all of them.
Together and between them they had gone to and beyond the furthest limits
of physical laws, restructured the fundamental fabric of matter, strained,
twisted and broken the laws of possibility and impossibility, but still the
greatest excitement of all seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash
round his neck.
(An orange sash was what the President of the Galaxy
traditionally wore.) It might not even have made much difference to them if
they’d known exactly how much power the President of the Galaxy actually
wielded: none at all. Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of
the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away
from it.
Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.
The crowd gasped, dazzled by sun and seemanship, as the Presidential
speedboat zipped round the headland into the bay. It flashed and shone as
it came skating over the sea in wide skidding turns.
In fact it didn’t need to touch the water at all, because it was supported
on a hazy cushion of ionized atoms – but just for effect it was fitted with
thin finblades which could be lowered into the water. They slashed sheets
of water hissing into the air, carved deep gashes into the sea which swayed
crazily and sank back foaming into the boat’s wake as it careered across the
bay.
Zaphod loved effect: it was what he was best at.
He twisted the wheel sharply, the boat slewed round in a wild scything
26
skid beneath the cliff face and dropped to rest lightly on the rocking waves.
Within seconds he ran out onto the deck and waved and grinned at over
three billion people. The three billion people weren’t actually there, but they
watched his every gesture through the eyes of a small robot tri-D camera
which hovered obsequiously in the air nearby. The antics of the President
always made amazingly popular tri-D; that’s what they were for.
He grinned again. Three billion and six people didn’t know it, but today
would be a bigger antic than anyone had bargained for.
The robot camera homed in for a close up on the more popular of his two
heads and he waved again. He was roughly humanoid in appearance except
for the extra head and third arm. His fair tousled hair stuck out in random
directions, his blue eyes glinted with something completely unidentifiable,
and his chins were almost always unshaven.
A twenty-foot-high transparent globe floated next to his boat, rolling and
bobbing, glistening in the brilliant sun. Inside it floated a wide semi-circular
sofa upholstered in glorious red leather: the more the globe bobbed and
rolled, the more the sofa stayed perfectly still, steady as an upholstered rock.
Again, all done for effect as much as anything.
Zaphod stepped through the wall of the globe and relaxed on the sofa.
He spread his two arms lazily along the back and with the third brushed
some dust off his knee. His heads looked about, smiling; he put his feet up.
At any moment, he thought, he might scream.
Water boiled up beneath the bubble, it seethed and spouted. The bubble
surged into the air, bobbing and rolling on the water spout. Up, up it
climbed, throwing stilts of light at the cliff. Up it surged on the jet, the
water falling from beneath it, crashing back into the sea hundreds of feet
below.
Zaphod smiled, picturing himself.
A thoroughly ridiculous form of transport, but a thoroughly beautiful
one.
At the top of the cliff the globe wavered for a moment, tipped on to a
railed ramp, rolled down it to a small concave platform and riddled to a halt.
To tremendous applause Zaphod Beeblebrox stepped out of the bubble,
his orange sash blazing in the light.
The President of the Galaxy had arrived.
He waited for the applause to die down, then raised his hands in greeting.
”Hi,” he said.
A government spider sidled up to him and attempted to press a copy of his
prepared speech into his hands. Pages three to seven of the original version
were at the moment floating soggily on the Damogran sea some five miles out
from the bay. Pages one and two had been salvaged by a Damogran Frond
27
Crested Eagle and had already become incorporated into an extraordinary
new form of nest which the eagle had invented. It was constructed largely
of papier maˆche´ and it was virtually impossible for a newly hatched baby
eagle to break out of it. The Damogran Frond Crested Eagle had heard of
the notion of survival of the species but wanted no truck with it.
Zaphod Beeblebrox would not be needing his set speech and he gently
deflected the one being offered him by the spider.
”Hi,” he said again.
Everyone beamed at him, or, at least, nearly everyone. He singled out
Trillian from the crowd. Trillian was a gird that Zaphod had picked up
recently whilst visiting a planet, just for fun, incognito. She was slim, darkish,
humanoid, with long waves of black hair, a full mouth, an odd little nob of
a nose and ridiculously brown eyes. With her red head scarf knotted in that
particular way and her long flowing silky brown dress she looked vaguely
Arabic. Not that anyone there had ever heard of an Arab of course. The
Arabs had very recently ceased to exist, and even when they had existed
they were five hundred thousand light years from Damogran. Trillian wasn’t
anybody in particular, or so Zaphod claimed. She just went around with him
rather a lot and told him what she thought of him.
”Hi honey,” he said to her.
She flashed him a quick tight smile and looked away. Then she looked
back for a moment and smiled more warmly – but by this time he was looking
at something else.
”Hi,” he said to a small knot of creatures from the press who were standing
nearby wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get on with the quotes.
He grinned at them particularly because he knew that in a few moments he
would be giving them one hell of a quote.
The next thing he said though was not a lot of use to them. One of the
officials of the party had irritably decided that the President was clearly not
in a mood to read the deliciously turned speech that had been written for
him, and had flipped the switch on the remote control device in his pocket.
Away in front of them a huge white dome that bulged against the sky cracked
down in the middle, split, and slowly folded itself down into the ground.
Everyone gasped although they had known perfectly well it was going to do
that because they had built it that way.
Beneath it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred and fifty metres
long, shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white and mindboggingly
beautiful. At the heart of it, unseen, lay a small gold box which carried
within it the most brain-wretching device ever conceived, a device which
made this starship unique in the history of the galaxy, a device after which
the ship had been named – The Heart of Gold.
28
”Wow”, said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold. There wasn’t
much else he could say.
He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press. ”Wow.”
The crowd turned their faces back towards him expectantly. He winked
at Trillian who raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes at him. She knew
what he was about to say and thought him a terrible showoff.
”That is really amazing,” he said. ”That really is truly amazing. That is
so amazingly amazing I think I’d like to steal it.”
A marvellous Presidential quote, absolutely true to form. The crowd
laughed appreciatively, the newsmen gleefully punched buttons on their Sub-
Etha News-Matics and the President grinned.
As he grinned his heart screamed unbearably and he fingered the small
Paralyso-Matic bomb that nestled quietly in his pocket.
Finally he could bear it no more. He lifted his heads up to the sky, let
out a wild whoop in major thirds, threw the bomb to the ground and ran
forward through the sea of suddenly frozen smiles.
29
Chapter 5
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was not a pleasant sight, even for other Vogons. His
highly domed nose rose high above a small piggy forehead. His dark green
rubbery skin was thick enough for him to play the game of Vogon Civil
Service politics, and play it well, and waterproof enough for him to survive
indefinitely at sea depths of up to a thousand feet with no ill effects.
Not that he ever went swimming of course. His busy schedule would not
allow it. He was the way he was because billions of years ago when the
Vogons had first crawled out of the sluggish primeval seas of Vogsphere, and
had lain panting and heaving on the planet’s virgin shores. . . when the first
rays of the bright young Vogsol sun had shone across them that morning, it
was as if the forces of evolution ad simply given up on them there and then,
had turned aside in disgust and written them off as an ugly and unfortunate
mistake. They never evolved again; they should never have survived.
The fact that they did is some kind of tribute to the thickwilled slug-
brained stubbornness of these creatures. Evolution? they said to themselves,
Who needs it?, and what nature refused to do for them they simply did
without until such time as they were able to rectify the grosser anatomical
inconveniences with surgery.
Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been working
overtime to make up for their earlier blunder. They brought forth scintillating
jewelled scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron
mallets; tall aspiring trees with breathtaking slenderness and colour which
the Vogons cut down and burned the crab meat with; elegant gazellelike
creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch
and sit on. They were no use as transport because their backs would snap
instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway.
Thus the planet Vogsphere whiled away the unhappy millennia until the
Vogons suddenly discovered the principles of interstellar travel. Within a few
short Vog years every last Vogon had migrated to the Megabrantis cluster, the
political hub of the Galaxy and now formed the immensely powerful backbone
30
of the Galactic Civil Service. They have attempted to acquire learning, they
have attempted to acquire style and social grace, but in most respects the
modern Vogon is little different from his primitive forebears. Every year they
import twenty-seven thousand scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs from their
native planet and while away a happy drunken night smashing them to bits
with iron mallets.
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was a fairly typical Vogon in that he was thor-
oughly vile. Also, he did not like hitchhikers.
* * *
Somewhere in a small dark cabin buried deep in the intestines of Prostet-
nic Vogon Jeltz’s flagship, a small match flared nervously. The owner of the
match was not a Vogon, but he knew all about them and was right to be
nervous. His name was Ford Prefect.1
He looked about the cabin but could see very little; strange monstrous
shadows loomed and leaped with the tiny flickering flame, but all was quiet.
He breathed a silent thank you to the Dentrassis. The Dentrassis are an
unruly tribe of gourmands, a wild but pleasant bunch whom the Vogons had
recently taken to employing as catering staff on their long haul fleets, on the
strict understanding that they keep themselves very much to themselves.
This suited the Dentrassis fine, because they loved Vogon money, which
is one of the hardest currencies in space, but loathed the Vogons themselves.
The only sort of Vogon a Dentrassi liked to see was an annoyed Vogon.
It was because of this tiny piece of information that Ford Prefect was not
now a whiff of hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide.
He heard a slight groan. By the light of the match he saw a heavy shape
moving slightly on the floor. Quickly he shook the match out, reached in his
1Ford Prefect’s original name is only pronuncible in an obscure Betelgeusian dialect,
now virtually extinct since the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758
which wiped out all the old Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven. Ford’s father
was the only man on the entire planet