So long and thankx for all the fish
 

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable  end  of
the  western  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 insignificant 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 her story.

\chapter{}

That evening it was dark early, which was normal for the time  of
year. It was cold and windy, which was normal.

It started to rain, which was particularly normal.

A spacecraft landed, which was not.

There was nobody around  to  see  it  except  some  spectacularly
stupid  quadrupeds  who  hadn't the faintest idea what to make of
it, or whether they were meant to make anything of it, or eat it,
or what. So they did what they did to everything which was to run
away from it and try  to  hide  under  each  other,  which  never
worked.

It slipped down out of the clouds, seemingly balanced on a single
beam of light.

From a distance you would scarcely have noticed  it  through  the
lightning  and  the  storm  clouds, but seen from close to it was
strangely beautiful - a grey craft of  elegantly  sculpted  form:
quite small.

Of course, one never has the slightest notion what size or  shape
different species are going to turn out to be, but if you were to
take the findings of the latest Mid-Galactic Census report as any
kind of accurate guide to statistical averages you would probably
guess that the craft would hold about six people, and  you  would
be right.

You'd probably guessed that anyway. The Census report, like  most
such  surveys,  had  cost  an  awful lot of money and didn't tell
anybody anything they didn't already know  -  except  that  every
single person in the Galaxy had 2.4 legs and owned a hyena. Since
this was clearly not true the whole thing had  eventually  to  be
scrapped.

The craft slid quietly down through the rain, its  dim  operating
lights  wrapping it in tasteful rainbows. It hummed very quietly,
a hum which became gradually louder and deeper as  it  approached
the ground, and which at an altitude of six inches became a heavy
throb.

At last it dropped and was quiet.

A hatchway opened. A short flight of steps unfolded itself.

A light appeared in the opening, a  bright  light  streaming  out
into the wet night, and shadows moved within.

A tall figure appeared in the light, looked around, flinched, and
hurried  down  the steps, carrying a large shopping bag under its
arm.

It turned and gave a single abrupt wave back at the ship. Already
the rain was streaming through its hair.

''Thank you,'' he called out, ''thank you very ...''

He was interrupted by a sharp crack of  thunder.  He  glanced  up
apprehensively,  and  in  response  to  a  sudden thought quickly
started to rummage through the large plastic shopping bag,  which
he now discovered had a hole in the bottom.

It had large characters printed on the side which read (to anyone
who  could  decipher  the  Centaurian  alphabet)  Duty free Mega-
Market, Port Brasta, Alpha Centauri. Be  Like  the  Twenty-Second
Elephant with Heated Value in Space - Bark!

''Hold on!'' the figure called, waving at the ship.

The steps, which had started to fold themselves back through  the
hatchway, stopped, re-unfolded, and allowed him back in.

He emerged again a few seconds  later  carrying  a  battered  and
threadbare towel which he shoved into the bag.

He waved again, hoisted the bag under his arm, and started to run
for  the shelter of some trees as, behind him, the spacecraft had
already begun its ascent.

Lightning flitted through the sky and made the figure pause for a
moment,  and  then  hurry  onwards, revising his path to give the
trees a wide berth. He moved swiftly across the ground,  slipping
here  and  there,  hunching  himself  against  the rain which was
falling now  with  ever-increasing  concentration,  as  if  being
pulled from the sky.

His feet sloshed through  the  mud.  Thunder  grumbled  over  the
hills.  He  pointlessly  wiped the rain off his face and stumbled
on.

More lights.

Not lightning this time, but  more  diffused  and  dimmer  lights
which played slowly over the horizon and faded.

The figure paused again on seeing them, and  then  redoubled  his
steps,  making directly towards the point on the horizon at which
they had appeared.

And now the ground was becoming  steeper,  sloping  upwards,  and
after  another  two  or  three hundred yards it led at last to an
obstacle. The figure paused  to  examine  the  barrier  and  then
dropped  the  bag  he  was  carrying over it before climbing over
himself.

Hardly had the figure touched the ground on the other  side  when
there came sweeping out of the rain towards him a machine, lights
streaming through the wall of water. The figure pressed  back  as
the  machine  streaked  towards  him. it was a low bulbous shape,
like a small whale surfing - sleek, grey and rounded  and  moving
at terrifying speed.

The figure instinctively threw up his hands to  protect  himself,
but  was  hit only by a sluice of water as the machine swept past
and off into the night.

It was  illuminated  briefly  by  another  flicker  of  lightning
crossing the sky, which allowed the soaked figure by the roadside
a split-second to read a small sign at the back  of  the  machine
before it disappeared.

To the figure's apparent incredulous astonishment the sign  read,
''My other car is also a Porsche.''

\chapter{}

Rob McKeena was a miserable bastard and he knew it  because  he'd
had a lot of people point it out to him over the years and he saw
no reason to disagree with them except the obvious one which  was
that  he  liked  disagreeing  with people, particularly people he
disliked, which included, at the last count, everyone.

He heaved a sigh and shoved down a gear.

The hill was beginning to steepen and his lorry  was  heavy  with
Danish thermostatic radiator controls.

It wasn't that he was naturally predisposed to be  so  surly,  at
least  he  hoped  not.  It  was just the rain which got him down,
always the rain.

It was raining now, just for a change.

It was a  particular  type  of  rain  he  particularly  disliked,
particularly  when he was driving. He had a number for it. It was
rain type 17.

He had read somewhere that  the  Eskimos  had  over  two  hundred
different  words for snow, without which their conversation would
probably have got very  monotonous.  So  they  would  distinguish
between  thin  snow  and  thick  snow, light snow and heavy snow,
sludgy snow, brittle snow, snow that came in flurries, snow  that
came  in  drifts,  snow  that  came  in  on  the  bottom  of your
neighbour's boots all over your nice clean igloo floor, the snows
of  winter, the snows of spring, the snows you remember from your
childhood that were so much better than any of your modern  snow,
fine snow, feathery snow, hill snow, valley snow, snow that falls
in the morning, snow that falls at night, snow that falls all  of
a  sudden  just  when  you  were going out fishing, and snow that
despite all your efforts to train them, the huskies  have  pissed
on.

Rob McKeena had two hundred and  thirty-one  different  types  of
rain entered in his little book, and he didn't like any of them.

He shifted down another gear and the lorry heaved its revs up. It
grumbled  in  a  comfortable  sort  of  way  about all the Danish
thermostatic radiator controls it was carrying.

Since he had left Denmark the previous  afternoon,  he  had  been
through  types  33  (light  pricking drizzle which made the roads
slippery), 39 ( heavy spotting), 47 to 51 (vertical light drizzle
through   to   sharply   slanting   light   to  moderate  drizzle
freshening), 87 and 88 (two  finely  distinguished  varieties  of
vertical  torrential  downpour),  100  (post-downpour  squalling,
cold), all the seastorm types between 192 and 213 at  once,  123,
124,  126,  127  (mild and intermediate cold gusting, regular and
syncopated cab-drumming), 11 (breezy droplets), and now his least
favourite of all, 17.

Rain type 17 was a dirty blatter battering against his windscreen
so  hard  that it didn't make much odds whether he had his wipers
on or off.

He tested this theory by turning them  off  briefly,  but  as  it
turned  out  the  visibility  did  get quite a lot worse. It just
failed to get better again when he turned them back on.

In fact one of the wiper blades began to flap off.

Swish swish swish flop swish flop swish  swish  flop  swish  flop
swish flop flop flop scrape.

He pounded his steering wheel,  kicked  the  floor,  thumped  his
cassette  player  till it suddenly started playing Barry Manilow,
thumped it again till it stopped, and swore and swore  and  swore
and swore and swore.

It was at the very moment that his fury was  peaking  that  there
loomed  swimmingly  in his headlights, hardly visible through the
blatter, a figure by the roadside.

A poor bedraggled figure, strangely attired, wetter than an otter
in a washing machine, and hitching.

''Poor miserable sod,'' thought Rob McKeena to  himself,  realizing
that  here  was somebody with a better right to feel hard done by
than himself, ''must be chilled to the  bone.  Stupid  to  be  out
hitching  on  a filthy night like this. All you get is cold, wet,
and lorries driving through puddles at you.''

He shook his head grimly, heaved another sigh, gave the  wheel  a
turn and hit a large sheet of water square on.

''See what I mean?'' he thought to himself as he  ploughed  swiftly
through it. ''You get some right bastards on the road.''

Splattered in his rear mirror a couple of seconds later  was  the
reflection of the hitch-hiker, drenched by the roadside.

For a moment he felt good about this. A moment or  two  later  he
felt  bad  about  feeling  good about it. Then he felt good about
feeling bad about feeling good about it and, satisfied, drove  on
into the night.

At least it made up for having been  finally  overtaken  by  that
Porsche  he  had  been  diligently  blocking  for the last twenty
miles.

And as he drove on, the rainclouds dragged  down  the  sky  after
him,  for, though he did not know it, Rob McKeena was a Rain God.
All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a
succession  of  lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they
loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him, and to water
him.

\chapter{}

The next two lorries were not driven by Rain Gods, but  they  did
exactly the same thing.

The figure trudged, or rather  sloshed,  onwards  till  the  hill
resumed and the treacherous sheet of water was left behind.

After a while the rain began to ease and the moon put in a  brief
appearance from behind the clouds.

A Renault drove by, and  its  driver  made  frantic  and  complex
signals  to  the  trudging  figure to indicate that he would have
been delighted to give the figure a lift, only he  couldn't  this
time  because  he  wasn't  going in the direction that the figure
wanted to go, whatever direction that might be, and he  was  sure
the  figure  would understand. He concluded the signalling with a
cheery thumbs-up sign, as if to say that he hoped the figure felt
really  fine  about  being cold and almost terminally wet, and he
would catch him the next time around.

The figure trudged on. A Fiat passed and did exactly the same  as
the Renault.

A Maxi passed on the other side  of  the  road  and  flashed  its
lights  at  the  slowly  plodding figure, though whether this was
meant to convey a ''Hello'' or a ''Sorry we're going the other  way''
or  a  ''Hey  look,  there's someone in the rain, what a jerk'' was
entirely unclear. A green strip across the top of the  windscreen
indicated  that  whatever the message was, it came from Steve and
Carola.

The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder  there  was
now  grumbled  over  more  distant  hills, like a man saying ''And
another thing ...'' twenty minutes after admitting he's  lost  the
argument.

The air was clearer now, the night cold. Sound  travelled  rather
well. The lost figure, shivering desperately, presently reached a
junction, where a side road turned off to the left. Opposite  the
turning stood a signpost which the figure suddenly hurried to and
studied with feverish curiosity, only twisting away  from  it  as
another car passed suddenly.

And another.

The first whisked by with complete disregard, the second  flashed
meaninglessly. A Ford Cortina passed and put on its brakes.

Lurching with surprise, the figure bundled his bag to  his  chest
and  hurried  forward towards the car, but at the last moment the
Cortina span its wheels in the wet and carreered off up the  road
rather amusingly.

The figure slowed to a stop and stood there, lost and dejected.

As it chanced, the following day the driver of the  Cortina  went
into  hospital  to  have  his  appendix out, only due to a rather
amusing mix up the surgeon removed his leg in error,  and  before
the   appendectomy   could   be   rescheduled,  the  appendicitis
complicated into an entertainingly serious  case  of  peritonitis
and justice, in its way, was served.

The figure trudged on.

A Saab drew to a halt beside him.

Its window wound down and a friendly voice said, ''Have  you  come
far?''

The figure turned toward it. He stopped and grasped the handle of
the door.

The figure, the car and its door handle  were  all  on  a  planet
called the Earth, a world whose entire entry in the Hitch Hiker's
Guide to the Galaxy comprised the two words ''Mostly harmless''.

The man who wrote this entry was called Ford Prefect, and he  was
at this precise moment on a far from harmless world, sitting in a
far from harmless bar, recklessly causing trouble.

\chapter{}

Whether it was because he was drunk,  ill  or  suicidally  insane
would  not  have  been  apparent to a casual observer, and indeed
there were no casual observers in the Old Pink  Dog  Bar  on  the
lower  South  Side of Han Dold City because it wasn't the sort of
place you could afford to do things casually in if you wanted  to
stay  alive.  Any  observers  in  the  place would have been mean
hawklike observers, heavily armed,  with  painful  throbbings  in
their  heads  which  caused  them  to  do  crazy things when they
observed things they didn't like.

One of those nasty hushes had descended on the place, a  sort  of
missile crisis sort of hush.

Even the evil-looking bird perched  on  a  rod  in  the  bar  had
stopped  screeching out the names and addresses of local contract
killers, which was a service it provided for free.

All eyes were on Ford Prefect. Some of them were on stalks.

The particular way in which he was choosing  to  dice  recklessly
with  death today was by trying to pay for a drinks bill the size
of a small defence budget with an American  Express  Card,  which
was not acceptable anywhere in the known Universe.

''What are you worried about?'' he asked in a cheery kind of voice.
''The expiration date? Have you guys never heard of Neo-Relativity
out here? There's whole new areas of physics which can take  care
of   this   sort   of  thing.  Time  dilation  effects,  temporal
relastatics ...''

''We are not worried about the expiration date,'' said the  man  to
whom  he addressed these remarks, who was a dangerous barman in a
dangerous city. His voice was a low soft purr, like the low  soft
purr  made  by the opening of an ICBM silo. A hand like a side of
meat tapped on the bar top, lightly denting it.

''Well, that's good then,'' said  Ford,  packing  his  satchel  and
preparing to leave.

The tapping finger reached out and rested lightly on the shoulder
of Ford Prefect. It prevented him from leaving.

Although the finger was attached to a slablike hand, and the hand
was  attached  to a clublike forearm, the forearm wasn't attached
to anything at all, except in the metaphorical sense that it  was
attached  by  a  fierce  doglike loyalty to the bar which was its
home. It had previously been more conventionally attached to  the
original  owner  of the bar, who on his deathbed had unexpectedly
bequeathed it to medical science.  Medical  science  had  decided
they  didn't like the look of it and had bequeathed it right back
to the Old Pink Dog Bar.

The new barman didn't believe in the supernatural or poltergeists
or  anything kooky like that, he just knew an useful ally when he
saw one. The hand sat on the  bar.  It  took  orders,  it  served
drinks,  it  dealt murderously with people who behaved as if they
wanted to be murdered. Ford Prefect sat still.

''We are not worried about  the  expiration  date,''  repeated  the
barman,  satisfied that he now had Ford Prefect's full attention.
''We are worried about the entire piece of plastic.''

''What?'' said Ford. He seemed a little taken aback.

''This,'' said the barman, holding out the card  as  if  it  was  a
small  fish  whose soul had three weeks earlier winged its way to
the Land Where Fish are Eternally Blessed, ''we don't accept it.''

Ford wondered briefly whether to raise the fact  that  he  didn't
have  any  other  means  of  payment  on him, but decided for the
moment to soldier on. The disembodied hand was now  grasping  his
shoulder lightly but firmly between its finger and thumb.

''But you don't understand,''  said  Ford,  his  expression  slowly
ripening  from  a  little  taken abackness into rank incredulity.
''This is the American Express Card.  It  is  the  finest  way  of
settling bills known to man. Haven't you read their junk mail?''

The cheery quality of Ford's voice was beginning to grate on  the
barman's  ears.  It sounded like someone relentlessly playing the
kazoo during one of the more sombre passages of a War Requiem.

One of the bones  in  Ford's  shoulder  began  to  grate  against
another one of the bones in his shoulder in a way which suggested
that the hand had learnt the principles of  pain  from  a  highly
skilled chiropracter. He hoped he could get this business settled
before the hand started to grate one of the bones in his shoulder
against any of the bones in different parts of his body. Luckily,
the shoulder it was holding was not the one he  had  his  satchel
slung over.

The barman slid the card back across the bar at Ford.

''We have never,'' he said with  muted  savagery,  ''heard  of  this
thing.''

This was hardly surprising.

Ford had only  acquired  it  through  a  serious  computer  error
towards the end of the fifteen years' sojourn he had spent on the
planet Earth. Exactly how serious, the American  Express  Company
had  got  to know very rapidly, and the increasingly strident and
panic-stricken demands of its  debt  collection  department  were
only  silenced  by the unexpected demolition of the entire planet
by the Vogons to make way for a new hyperspace bypass.

He had kept it ever since because he found it useful to  carry  a
form of currency that no one would accept.

''Credit?'' he said. ''Aaaargggh ...''

These two words were usually coupled together in the Old Pink Dog
Bar.

''I thought,'' gasped Ford, ''that this was  meant  to  be  a  class
establishment ...''

He glanced around at the motley collection of  thugs,  pimps  and
record  company  executives  that skulked on the edges of the dim
pools of light with which the dark shadows  of  the  bar's  inner
recesses  were pitted. They were all very deliberately looking in
any direction but his now, carefully picking up  the  threads  of
their  former  conversations  about murders, drug rings and music
publishing deals. They knew what would happen now and didn't want
to watch in case it put them off their drinks.

''You gonna  die,  boy,''  the  barman  murmured  quietly  at  Ford
Prefect,  and  the evidence was on his side. The bar used to have
one of those signs hanging up which said, ''Please don't  ask  for
credit  as  a  punch  in  the  mouth  often  offends'', but in the
interest of strict accuracy this was altered  to,  ''Please  don't
ask  for  credit  because having your throat torn out by a savage
bird while a disembodied hand smashes your head against  the  bar
often  offends''.  However,  this  made  an unreadable mess of the
notice, and anyway didn't have the same ring to  it,  so  it  was
taken  down  again. It was felt that the story would get about of
its own accord, and it had.

''Lemme look at the bill again,'' said Ford. He picked  it  up  and
studied  it thoughtfully under the malevolent gaze of the barman,
and the equally malevolent gaze of the bird, which was  currently
gouging great furrows in the bar top with its talons.

It was a rather lengthy piece of paper.

At the bottom of it was a number which looked like one  of  those
serial  numbers  you  find  on the underside of stereo sets which
always takes so long to copy on to the registration form. He had,
after all, been in the bar all day, he had been drinking a lot of
stuff with bubbles in it, and he  had  bought  an  awful  lot  of
rounds  for  all  the  pimps,  thugs  and  record  executives who
suddenly couldn't remember who he was.

He cleared his throat rather  quietly  and  patted  his  pockets.
There  was,  as he knew, nothing in them. He rested his left hand
lightly but firmly on the half-opened flap of  his  satchel.  The
disembodied hand renewed its pressure on his right shoulder.

''You see,'' said the barman, and his face seemed to wobble  evilly
in  front  of  Ford's,  ''I have a reputation to think of. You see
that, don't you?''

This is it, thought Ford. There was nothing else for it.  He  had
obeyed  the  rules,  he  had  made a bona fide attempt to pay his
bill, it had been rejected. He was now in danger of his life.

''Well,'' he said quietly, ''if it's your reputation ...''

With a sudden flash of speed he opened his  satchel  and  slapped
down  on  the  bar top his copy of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the
Galaxy and the official card which  said  that  he  was  a  field
researcher for the Guide and absolutely not allowed to do what he
was now doing.

''Want a write-up?''

The barman's  face  stopped  in  mid-wobble.  The  bird's  talons
stopped in mid-furrow. The hand slowly released its grip.

''That,'' said the barman in a barely audible whisper, from between
dry lips, ''will do nicely, sir.''

\chapter{}

The Hitch Hiker's Guide  to  the  Galaxy  is  a  powerful  organ.
Indeed, its influence is so prodigious that strict rules have had
to be drawn up by its editorial staff to prevent its  misuse.  So
none  of  its field researchers are allowed to accept any kind of
services, discounts or preferential  treatment  of  any  kind  in
return for editorial favours unless:

a) they have made a bona fide attempt to pay for a service in the
normal way;

b) their lives would be otherwise in danger;

c) they really want to.

Since invoking the third rule always involved giving the editor a
cut, Ford always preferred to much about with the first two.

He stepped out along the street, walking briskly.

The air was stifling, but he liked it  because  it  was  stifling
city  air,  full of excitingly unpleasant smells, dangerous music
and the sound of warring police tribes.

He carried his satchel with an easy swaying  motion  so  that  he
could  get  a good swing at anybody who tried to take it from him
without asking. It contained everything he owned,  which  at  the
moment wasn't much.

A limousine careered down the street, dodging between  the  piles
of  burning  garbage,  and  frightening  an old pack animal which
lurched, screeching, out of its way, stumbled against the  window
of a herbal remedies shop, set off a wailing alarm, blundered off
down the street, and then pretended to fall down the steps  of  a
small  pasta  restaurant  where it knew it would get photographed
and fed.

Ford was walking north. He thought he was probably on his way  to
the  spaceport,  but  he  had thought that before. He knew he was
going through that part of the city where  people's  plans  often
changed quite abruptly.

''Do you want to have a good time?'' said a voice from a doorway.

''As far as I can tell,'' said Ford, ''I'm having one. Thanks.''

''Are you rich?'' said another.

This made Ford laugh.

He turned and opened his arms in  a  wide  gesture.  ''Do  I  look
rich?'' he said.

''Don't know,'' said the girl. ''Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you'll  get
rich. I have a very special service for rich people ...''

''Oh yes?'' said Ford, intrigued but careful. ''And what's that?''

''I tell them it's OK to be rich.''

Gunfire erupted from a window high above them, but it was only  a
bass  player  getting shot for playing the wrong riff three times
in a row, and bass players are two a penny in Han Dold City.

Ford stopped and peered into the dark doorway.

''You what?'' he said.

The girl laughed and stepped forward a little out of the  shadow.
She  was  tall, and had that kind of self-possessed shyness which
is a great trick if you can do it.

''It's my big number,'' she said. ''I  have  a  Master's  degree  in
Social  Economics  and  can  be  very convincing. People love it.
Especially in this city.''

''Goosnargh,'' said Ford Prefect, which was a special  Betelgeusian
word he used when he knew he should say something but didn't know
what it should be.

He sat on a step, took from his satchel a bottle of that Ol' Janx
Spirit  and a towel. He opened the bottle and wiped the top of it
with the  towel,  which  had  the  opposite  effect  to  the  one
intended,  in  that  the  Ol'  Janx  Spirit  instantly killed off
millions of the germs which had been slowly building up  quite  a
complex  and  enlightened civilization on the smellier patches of
the towel.

''Want some?'' he said, after he'd had a swig himself.

She shrugged and took the proffered bottle.

They sat for a while, peacefully  listening  to  the  clamour  of
burglar alarms in the next block.

''As it happens, I'm owed a lot of money,'' said  Ford,  ''so  if  I
ever get hold of it, can I come and see you then maybe?''

''Sure, I'll be here,'' said the girl. ''So how much is a lot?''

''Fifteen years' back pay.''

''For?''

''Writing two words.''

''Zarquon,'' said the girl. ''Which one took the time?''

''The first one. Once I'd got that the second one  just  came  one
afternoon after lunch.''

A huge electronic drum kit hurtled through the window high  above
them and smashed itself to bits in the street in front of them.

It soon became apparent that some of the burglar  alarms  on  the
next  block  had been deliberately set off by one police tribe in
order to lay an ambush for the other. Cars with screaming  sirens
converged  on  the area, only to find themselves being picked off
by copters which came thudding through the air between the city's
mountainous tower blocks.

''In fact,'' said Ford, having to shout  now  above  the  din,  ''it
wasn't  quite  like that. I wrote an awful lot, but they just cut
it down.''

He took his copy of the Guide back out of his satchel.

''Then the planet got demolished,'' he shouted. ''Really  worthwhile
job, eh? They've still got to pay me, though.''

''You work for that thing?'' the girl yelled back.

''Yeah.''

''Good number.''

''You want to see the stuff I wrote?'' he shouted. ''Before it  gets
erased? The new revisions are due to be released tonight over the
net. Someone must have found out that the planet I spent  fifteen
years  on  has been demolished by now. They missed it on the last
few revisions, but it can't escape their notice for ever.''

''It's getting impossible to talk isn't it?''

''What?''

She shrugged and pointed upwards.

There was a copter above them now which seemed to be involved  in
a  side skirmish with the band upstairs. Smoke was billowing from
the building. The sound engineer was hanging out of the window by
his  fingertips,  and  a  maddened  guitarist  was beating on his
fingers with a burning guitar. The helicopter was firing  at  all
of them.

''Can we move?''

They wandered down the street, away from the noise. They ran into
a  street  theatre  group which tried to do a short play for them
about the problems of the  inner  city,  but  then  gave  up  and
disappeared into the small restaurant most recently patronized by
the pack animal.

All the time, Ford was poking  at  the  interface  panel  of  the
Guide.  They  ducked into an alleyway. Ford squatted on a garbage
can while information began to  flood  over  the  screen  of  the
Guide.

He located his entry.

''Earth: Mostly harmless.''

Almost immediately the screen became a mass of system messages.

''Here it comes,'' he said.

''Please wait,'' said the messages. ''Entries are being updated over
the Sub.Etha Net. This entry is being revised. The system will be
down for ten seconds.''

At the end of the alley a steel grey limousine crawled past.

''Hey look,'' said the girl, ''if you get paid, look me  up.  I'm  a
working  girl,  and  there  are  people over there who need me. I
gotta go.''

She brushed aside Ford's half-articulated protests, and left  him
sitting  dejectedly on his garbage can preparing to watch a large
swathe of his working life being swept away  electronically  into
the ether.

Out in the street things had calmed down  a  little.  The  police
battle  had  moved  off  to  other  sectors  of the city, the few
surviving members of the rock band had agreed to recognize  their
musical  differences  and pursue solo careers, the street theatre
group were re-emerging from the pasta restaurant  with  the  pack
animal, telling it they would take it to a bar they knew where it
would be treated with a little respect, and a little way  further
on the steel grey limousine was parked silently by the kerbside.

The girl hurried towards it.
 

Behind her, in the darkness of the alley, a green flickering glow
was  bathing  Ford  Prefect's  face,  and  his  eyes  were slowly
widening in astonishment.

For where he had expected to find nothing, an erased,  closed-off
entry,  there  was  instead  a  continuous stream of data - text,
diagrams, figures and images,  moving  descriptions  of  surf  on
Australian  beaches,  Yoghurt  on  Greek  islands, restaurants to
avoid in Los  Angeles,  currency  deals  to  avoid  in  Istanbul,
weather  to  avoid  in  London,  bars to go everywhere. Pages and
pages of it. It was all there, everything he had written.

With a deepening frown of blank incomprehension he went backwards
and  forwards  through  it,  stopping  here  and there at various
entries.

''Tips for aliens  in  New  York:  Land  anywhere,  Central  Park,
anywhere. No one will care, or indeed even notice.

''Surviving: get a job as cab driver immediately. A  cab  driver's
job  is  to  drive  people anywhere they want to go in big yellow
machines called taxis. Don't worry if  you  don't  know  how  the
machine  works and you can't speak the language, don't understand
the geography or indeed the basic physics of the area,  and  have
large  green  antennae growing out of your head. Believe me, this
is the best way of staying inconspicuous.

''If your body is really weird try showing it  to  people  in  the
streets for money.

''Amphibious life forms from any of the worlds  in  the  Swulling,
Noxios  or  Nausalia  systems  will  particularly  enjoy the East
River, which is said to be richer  in  those  lovely  life-giving
nutrients  then the finest and most virulent laboratory slime yet
achieved.

''Having fun: This is the big section. It is  impossible  to  have
more fun without electrocuting your pleasure centres ...''

Ford flipped the switch which he saw was now marked ''Mode Execute
Ready''  instead  of  the now old-fashioned ''Access Standby'' which
had so long ago replaced the appallingly stone-aged ''Off''.

This was a planet he had seen completely destroyed, seen with his
own  two  eyes  or  rather, blinded as he had been by the hellish
disruption of air and light, felt with his own two  feet  as  the
ground  had  started  to  pound  at  him  like a hammer, bucking,
roaring, gripped by tidal waves of  energy  pouring  out  of  the
loathsome  yellow  Vogon  ships.  And  then at last, five seconds
after the moment he had determined as  being  the  last  possible
moment   had  already  passed,  the  gently  swinging  nausea  of
dematerialization as he  and  Arthur  Dent  had  been  beamed  up
through the atmosphere like a sports broadcast.

There was no mistake, there couldn't have  been.  The  Earth  had
definitely  been  destroyed.  Definitely, definitely. Boiled away
into space.

And yet here - he activated the Guide again - was his  own  entry
on  how  you  would  set about having a good time in Bournemouth,
Dorset, England, which he had always prided himself on  as  being
one  of  the  most  baroque  pieces  of  invention  he  had  ever
delivered. He read it again and shook his head in sheer wonder.

Suddenly he realized what the answer to the problem was,  and  it
was  this,  that  something  very  weird  was  happening;  and if
something very weird was happening, he thought, he wanted  it  to
be happening to him.

He stashed the Guide back in his satchel and hurried  out  on  to
the street again.

Walking north he again passed a steel grey  limousine  parked  by
the  kerbside,  and  from  a nearby doorway he heard a soft voice
saying, ''It's OK, honey, it's really OK, you got to learn to feel
good  about  it.  Look at the way the whole economy is structured
...''

Ford grinned, detoured round the next  block  which  was  now  in
flames,  found  a police helicopter which was standing unattended
in the street, broke into it, strapped himself  in,  crossed  his
fingers and sent it hurtling inexpertly into the sky.

He weaved terrifyingly up through the canyoned walls of the city,
and once clear of them, hurtled through the black and red pall of
smoke which hung permanently above it.

Ten minutes later, with all the copter's sirens blaring  and  its
rapid-fire  cannon  blasting  at  random  into  the  clouds, Ford
Prefect brought it careering down among the gantries and  landing
lights  at  Han Dold spaceport, where it settled like a gigantic,
startled and very noisy gnat.

Since he hadn't damaged it too much he was able to  trade  it  in
for a first class ticket on the next ship leaving the system, and
settled into one of its huge, voluptuous body-hugging seats.

This was going to be fun, he thought  to  himself,  as  the  ship
blinked  silently  across  the insane distances of deep space and
the cabin service got into its full extravagant swing.

''Yes please,'' he said  to  the  cabin  attendants  whenever  they
glided up to offer him anything at all.

He smiled with a curious kind of manic joy as  he  flipped  again
through  the  mysteriously re-instated entry on the planet Earth.
He had a major piece of unfinished business that he would now  be
able  to  attend  to,  and  was  terribly  pleased  that life had
suddenly furnished him with a serious goal to achieve.

It suddenly occurred to him to wonder where Arthur Dent was,  and
if he knew.
 

Arthur Dent was one thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven light
years away in a Saab, and anxious.

Behind him in the backseat was a girl who had made him crack  his
head  on the door as he climbed in. He didn't know if it was just
because she was the first female of his own species that  he  had
laid  eyes  on  in  years,  or what it was, but he felt stupefied
with, with ... This is absurd, he told  himself.  Calm  down,  he
told himself. You are not, he continued to himself in the firmest
internal voice he could muster, in a fit and rational state.  You
have  just hitch-hiked over a hundred thousand light years across
the galaxy, you are very tired, a little confused  and  extremely
vulnerable. Relax, don't panic, concentrate on breathing deeply.

He twisted round in his seat.

''Are you sure she's all right?'' he said again.

Beyond the fact that she was, to him, heartthumpingly  beautiful,
he could make out very little, how tall she was, how old she was,
the exact shading of her hair. And nor could he ask her  anything
about herself because, sadly, she was completely unconscious.

''She's just drugged,'' said her brother, shrugging, not moving his
eyes from the road ahead.

''And that's all right, is it?'' said Arthur, in alarm.

''Suits me,'' he said.

''Ah,'' said Arthur. ''Er,'' he added after a moment's thought.

The conversation so far had been going astoundingly badly.

After an initial flurry of opening hellos, he and Russell  -  the
wonderful  girl's  brother's  name  was Russell, a name which, to
Arthur's mind, always suggested burly men with  blond  moustaches
and blow-dried hair, who would at the slightest provocation start
wearing velvet tuxedos and frilly shirtfronts and would then have
to  be forcibly restrained from commentating on snooker matches -
had quickly discovered they didn't like each other at all.

Russell was a burly man. He had a blond moustache. His  hair  was
fine and blow dried. To be fair to him - though Arthur didn't see
any necessity for this beyond the sheer mental exercise of  it  -
he,  Arthur, was looking pretty grim himself. A man can't cross a
hundred thousand light years, mostly in  other  people's  baggage
compartments,  without beginning to fray a little, and Arthur had
frayed a lot.

''She's not a junkie,'' said Russell suddenly,  as  if  he  clearly
thought  that  someone  else  in  the  car might be. ''She's under
sedation.''

''But that's terrible,'' said Arthur, twisting round to look at her
again.  She seemed to stir slightly and her head slipped sideways
on her shoulder. Her dark hair fell across  her  face,  obscuring
it.

''What's the matter with her, is she ill?''

''No,'' said Russell, ''merely barking mad.''

''What?'' said Arthur, horrified.

''Loopy, completely bananas. I'm taking her back to  the  hospital
and  telling  them to have another go. They let her out while she
still thought she was a hedgehog.''

''A hedgehog?''

Russell hooted his horn fiercely at the car that came  round  the
corner towards them half-way on to their side of the road, making
them swerve. The anger seemed to make him feel better.

''Well, maybe not a hedgehog,'' he said  after  he'd  settled  down
again.  ''Though  it would probably be simpler to deal with if she
did. If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably  you  just
give  'em  a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them
to sort it out for themselves, come down  again  when  they  feel
better.  At  least medical science could deal with it, that's the
point. Seems that's no good enough for Fenny, though.''

''Fenny ...?''

''You know what I got her for Christmas?''

''Well, no.''

''Black's Medical Dictionary.''

''Nice present.''

''I thought so. Thousands of diseases in it, all  in  alphabetical
order.''

''You say her name is Fenny?''

''Yeah. Take your pick, I said. Anything  in  here  can  be  dealt
with. The proper drugs can be prescribed. But no, she has to have
something different. Just to make life difficult.  She  was  like
that at school, you know.''

''Was she?''

''She was. Fell over playing hockey and broke a  bone  nobody  had
ever heard of.''

''I can see how that would be irritating,'' said Arthur doubtfully.
He was rather disappointed to discover her name was Fenny. It was
a rather silly, dispiriting name, such as an unlovely maiden aunt
might  vote  herself  if  she  couldn't  sustain the name Fenella
properly.

''Not that I wasn't sympathetic,'' continued Russell, ''but  it  did
get a bit irritating. She was limping for months.''

He slowed down.

''This is your turning isn't it?''

''Ah, no,'' said Arthur, ''five miles  further  on.  If  that's  all
right.''

''OK,'' said Russell after a very tiny pause to  indicate  that  it
wasn't, and speeded up again.

It was in fact Arthur's turning, but he  couldn't  leave  without
finding  out  something  more  about this girl who seemed to have
taken such a grip on his mind without even waking  up.  He  could
take either of the next two turnings.

They led back to the village that had been his home, though  what
he  would  find there he hesitated to imagine. Familiar landmarks
had been flitting by, ghostlike, in the dark, giving rise to  the
shudders  that only very very normal things can create, when seen
where the mind is unprepared  for  them,  and  in  an  unfamiliar
light.

By his own personal time scale, so far as he could  estimate  it,
living  as he had been under the alien rotations of distant suns,
it was eight years since he had left, but what  time  had  passed
here  he  could hardly guess. Indeed, what events had passed were
beyond his exhausted comprehension because this planet, his home,
should not be here.

Eight years ago, at lunchtime, this planet had  been  demolished,
utterly  destroyed, by the huge yellow Vogon ships which had hung
in the lunchtime sky as if the law of gravity was no more than  a
local regulation, and breaking it no more than a parking offence.

''Delusions,'' said Russell.

''What?'' said Arthur, started out of his train of thought.

''She says she suffers from strange delusions that she's living in
the  real  world.  It's no good telling her that she is living in
the real world because she just says that's why the delusions are
so  strange.  Don't  know  about  you,  but  I  find that kind of
conversation pretty exhausting. Give her the tablets and piss off
for  a  beer is my answer. I mean you can only muck about so much
can't you?''

Arthur frowned, not for the first time.

''Well ...''

''And all this dreams and nightmare stuff. And the  doctors  going
on about strange jumps in her brainwave patterns.''

''Jumps?''

''This,'' said Fenny.

Arthur whirled round in his seat and  stared  into  her  suddenly
open  but utterly vacant eyes. Whatever she was looking at wasn't
in the car. Her eyes fluttered, her head jerked  once,  and  then
she was sleeping peacefully.

''What did she say?'' he asked anxiously.

''She said `this'.''

''This what?''

''This what? How the heck  should  I  know?  This  hedgehog,  that
chimney  pot,  the  other  pair  of Don Alfonso's tweezers. She's
barking mad, I thought I'd mentioned that.''

''You don't seem to care very much.'' Arthur tried  to  say  it  as
matter-of-factly as possible but it didn't seem to work.

''Look, buster ...''

''OK, I'm sorry. It's none of my business. I  didn't  mean  it  to
sound   like  that,''  said  Arthur.  ''I  know  you  care  a  lot,
obviously,'' he added, lying. ''I know that you have to  deal  with
it  somehow.  You'll  have  to excuse me. I just hitched from the
other side of the Horsehead Nebula.''

He stared furiously out of the window.

He was astonished that of all the sensations fighting for room in
his  head  on  this  night as he returned to the home that he had
thought had vanished into oblivion for ever,  the  one  that  was
compelling him was an obsession with this bizarre girl of whom he
knew nothing other than that she had said ''this'' to him, and that
he wouldn't wish her brother on a Vogon.

''So, er, what were the jumps, these jumps you mentioned?'' he went
on to say as quickly as he could.

''Look, this is my sister, I don't even know why  I'm  talking  to
you about ...''

''OK, I'm sorry. Perhaps you'd better let me out. This is ...''

At the moment he said it, it became impossible, because the storm
which had passed them by suddenly erupted again. Lightning belted
through the sky, and someone seemed to be pouring something which
closely resembled the Atlantic Ocean over them through a sieve.

Russell swore and steered intently for a few seconds as  the  sky
blattered at them. He worked out his anger by rashly accelerating
to pass a  lorry  marked  ''McKeena's  All-Weather  Haulage''.  The
tension eased as the rain subsided.

''It started with all that business of the CIA agent they found in
the  reservoir,  when  everybody  had  all the hallucinations and
everything, you remember?''

Arthur wondered for a moment whether to mention again that he had
just hitch-hiked back from the other side of the Horsehead Nebula
and was for this and various other related and astounding reasons
a little out of touch with recent events, but he decided it would
only confuse matters further.

''No,'' he said.

''That was the moment she cracked up. She was in a cafe somewhere.
Rickmansworth.  Don't know what she was doing there, but that was
where she cracked up. Apparently she stood up,  calmly  announced
that   she   had   undergone  some  extraordinary  revelation  or
something, wobbled a bit, looked confused, and finally  collapsed
screaming into an egg sandwich.''

Arthur winced. ''I'm very sorry to hear that,'' he  said  a  little
stiffly.

Russell made a sort of grumping noise.

''So what,'' said Arthur in an attempt to  piece  things  together,
''was the CIA agent doing in the reservoir?''

''Bobbing up and down of course. He was dead.''

''But what ...''

''Come on,  you  remember  all  that  stuff.  The  hallucinations.
Everyone  said  it was a cock up, the CIA trying experiments into
drug warfare or something. Some crackpot theory that  instead  of
invading a country it would be much cheaper and more effective to
make everyone think they'd been invaded.''

''What hallucinations were those exactly ...?'' said  Arthur  in  a
rather quiet voice.

''What do you mean, what hallucinations?  I'm  talking  about  all
that  stuff  with  the big yellow ships, everyone going crazy and
saying we're going to die, and then pop,  they  vanished  as  the
effect wore off. The CIA denied it which meant it must be true.''

Arthur's head went a little swimmy. His hand grabbed at something
to  steady himself, and gripped it tightly. His mouth made little
opening and closing movements as if it was on  his  mind  to  say
something, but nothing emerged.

''Anyway,'' continued Russell, ''whatever drug it was it didn't seem
to  wear off so fast with Fenny. I was all for suing the CIA, but
a lawyer friend of mine said it would be like trying to attack  a
lunatic asylum with a banana, so ...'' He shrugged.

''The Vogon ...'' squeaked Arthur. ''The yellow ships ... vanished?''

''Well, of  course  they  did,  they  were  hallucinations,''  said
Russell, and looked at Arthur oddly. ''You trying to say you don't
remember any of this? Where have you been for heaven's sake?''

This was, to Arthur, such an astonishingly good question that  he
half-leapt out of his seat with shock.

''Christ!!!'' yelled Russell, fighting to control the car which was
suddenly  trying  to  skid.  He  pulled  it out of the path of an
oncoming lorry and swerved up on to a  grass  bank.  As  the  car
lurched  to  a  halt,  the  girl  in  the back was thrown against
Russell's seat and collapsed awkwardly.

Arthur twisted round in horror.

''Is she all right?'' he blurted out.

Russell swept his hands angrily back through his blow-dried hair.
He tugged at his blond moustache. He turned to Arthur.

''Would you please,'' he said, ''let go of the handbrake?''

\chapter{}

From here it was a four-mile walk to his village: a further  mile
to  the turning, to which the abominable Russell had now fiercely
declined to take him, and from there a  further  three  miles  of
winding country lane.

The Saab seethed off into the night. Arthur  watched  it  go,  as
stunned  as  a  man  might  be who, having believed himself to be
totally blind for five years,  suddenly  discovers  that  he  had
merely been wearing too large a hat.

He shook his head sharply in the hope that it might dislodge some
salient  fact  which  would  fall into place and make sense of an
otherwise utterly bewildering Universe,  but  since  the  salient
fact, if there was one, entirely failed to do this, he set off up
the road again, hoping that a good vigorous walk, and maybe  even
some good painful blisters, would help to reassure him of his own
existence at least, if not his sanity.

It was 10.30 when he arrived,  a  fact  he  discovered  from  the
steamed  and  greasy  window of the Horse and Groom pub, in which
there had hung for many years a battered old Guiness clock  which
featured  a  picture  of  an  emu with a pint glass jammed rather
amusingly down its throat.

This was the pub at which he had  passed  the  fateful  lunchtime
during which first his house and then the entire planet Earth had
been demolished, or rather had seemed to be demolished. No,  damn
it,  had  been  demolished,  because  if it hadn't then where the
bloody heck had he been for the last eight years, and how he  had
got  there  if not in one of the big yellow Vogon ships which the
appalling Russell had just been telling  him  were  merely  drug-
induced  hallucinations,  and yet if it had been demolished, what
was he currently standing on ...?

He jammed the brake on this line of  thought  because  it  wasn't
going  to  get  him any further than it had the last twenty times
he'd been over it.

He started again.

This was the pub at which he had  passed  the  fateful  lunchtime
during  which  whatever  it was had happened that he was going to
sort out later had happened, and ...

It still didn't make sense.

He started again.

This was the pub in which ...

This was a pub.

Pubs served drinks and he couldn't half do with one.

Satisfied that his jumbled thought processes had at last  arrived
at  a  conclusion, and a conclusion he was happy with, even if it
wasn't the one he had set out to achieve, he strode  towards  the
door.

And stopped.

A small black wire-haired terrier ran out from behind a low  wall
and then, catching sight of Arthur, began to snarl.

Now Arthur knew this dog, and he knew it well. It belonged to  an
advertising  friend  of  his,  and  was  called Know-Nothing-Bozo
because the way its hair stood up on its head it reminded  people
of  the  President of the United States, and the dog knew Arthur,
or at least should do. It was a stupid dog, could not  even  read
an  autocue,  which  way  why some people had protested about its
name, but it should at least have been able to  recognize  Arthur
instead  of  standing there, hackles raised, as if Arthur was the
most fearful apparition ever to intrude  upon  its  feeble-witted
life.

This prompted Arthur to go and peer at  the  window  again,  this
time with an eye not for the asphyxiating emu but for himself.

Seeing himself for the first time suddenly in a familiar context,
he had to admit that the dog had a point.

He looked a lot like something a farmer would use to scare  birds
with,  and  there was no doubt but that to go into the pub in his
present condition would excite comments of a  raucous  kind,  and
worse  still, there would doubtless be several people in there at
the moment whom he knew, all of whom would be  bound  to  bombard
him  with questions which, at the moment, he felt ill-equipped to
deal with.

Will Smithers, for instance, the owner of  Know-Nothing-Bozo  the
Non-Wonder  Dog, an animal so stupid that it had been sacked from
one of Will's own commercials  for  being  incapable  of  knowing
which  dog  food it was supposed to prefer, despite the fact that
the meat in all the other bowls had had engine  oil  poured  over
it.

Will would definitely be in there. Here was his dog, here was his
car,  a  grey  Porsche  928S with a sign in the back window which
read, ''My other car is also a Porsche.'' Damn him.

He stared at it and realized that he had just  learned  something
he hadn't known before.

Will Smithers, like most of  the  overpaid  and  under-scrupulous
bastards  Arthur knew in advertising made a point of changing his
car every August so that he could tell people his accountant made
him  do  it,  though the truth was that his accountant was trying
like hell to stop him, what with all the alimony he had  to  pay,
and  so  on  -  and  this  was the same car Arthur remembered him
having before. The number plate proclaimed its year.

Given that it was now winter, and that the event which had caused
Arthur  so  much  trouble  eight  of  his  personal years ago had
occurred at the beginning of September, less than  six  or  seven
months could have passed here.

He stood terribly still for a moment  and  let  Know-Nothing-Bozo
jump  up  and  down  yapping at him. He was suddenly stunned by a
realization he could no longer avoid, which was this: he was  now
an alien on his own world. Try as he might, no one was even to be
able to believe his story. Not only did it sound perfectly potty,
but it was flatly contradicted by the simplest observable facts.

Was this really the Earth? Was there  the  slightest  possibility
that he had made some extraordinary mistake?

The pub in front of him was unbearably familiar to him  in  every
detail - every brick, every piece of peeling paint; and inside he
could sense its familiar stuffy, noisy warmth, its exposed beams,
its  unauthentic  cast-iron  light  fittings, its bar sticky with
beer that people he knew had put their elbows in,  overlooked  by
cardboard  cutouts  of  girls with packets of peanuts stapled all
over their breasts. It was all the stuff of his home, his world.

He even knew this blasted dog.

''Hey, Know-Nothing!''

The sound of Will Smithers' voice meant he had to decide what  do
to quickly. If he stood his ground he would be discovered and the
whole circus would begin. To hide would only postpone the moment,
and it was bitterly cold now.

The fact that it was Will made the choice easier. It wasn't  that
Arthur  disliked  him  as  such - Will was quite fun. It was just
that he was fun in such  an  exhausting  way  because,  being  in
advertising,  he  always  wanted  you to know how much fun he was
having and where he had got his jacket from.

Mindful of this, Arthur hid behind a van.

''Hey, Know-Nothing, what's up?''

The door opened and Will  came  out,  wearing  a  leather  flying
jacket  that  he'd  got  a  mate  of  his  at  the  Road Research
Laboratory to crash a car into specially, in order  to  get  that
battered  look.  Know-Nothing yelped with delight and, having got
the attention it wanted, was happy to forget Arthur.

Will was with some friends, and they had a game they played  with
the dog.

''Commies!'' they all shouted  at  the  dog  in  chorus.  ''Commies,
commies, commies!!!''

The dog went berserk with barking, prancing up and down,  yapping
its  little  heart  out,  beside itself in transports of ecstatic
rage.  They  all  laughed  and  cheered  it  on,  then  gradually
dispersed to their various cars and disappeared into the night.

Well that clears one thing up, thought  Arthur  from  behind  the
van, this is quite definitely the planet I remember.

\chapter{}

His house was still there.

How or why, he had no idea. He had decided to go and have a  look
while  he  was  waiting for the pub to empty, so that he could go
and ask the landlord for a bed for the night when  everyone  else
had gone. And there it was.

He hurriedly let himself in with the key he kept  under  a  stone
frog in the garden, because, astoundingly, the phone was ringing.

He had heard it faintly all the way up the lane and  had  started
to run as soon as he realized where the sound was coming from.

The door had  to  be  forced  open  because  of  the  astonishing
accumulation  of junk mail on the doormat. It jammed itself stuck
on  what  he  would  later  discover  were  fourteen   identical,
personally  addressed  invitations  to apply for a credit card he
already had, seventeen identical  threatening  letters  for  non-
payment  of  bills  on a credit card he didn't have, thirty-three
identical letters saying that he personally  had  been  specially
selected  as  a  man of taste and discrimination who knew what he
wanted and where he  was  going  in  today's  sophisticated  jet-
setting  world  and  would  he  therefore like to buy some grotty
wallet, and also a dead tabby kitten.

He rammed himself through the relatively narrow opening  afforded
by  all  this,  stumbled  through  a  pile of wine offers that no
discriminating connoisseur would want to miss, slithered  over  a
heap of beach villa holidays, blundered up the dark stairs to his
bedroom and got to the phone just as it stopped ringing.

He collapsed, panting, on to his cold, musty-smelling bed and for
a  few  minutes stopped trying to prevent the world from spinning
round his head in the way it obviously wanted to.

When it had enjoyed its little spin and had calmed  down  a  bit,
Arthur  reached  out  for  the bedside light, not expecting it to
come on. To his surprise it did. This appealed to Arthur's  sense
of  logic.  Since  the Electricity Board cut him off without fail
every time he paid his bill, it seemed only reasonable that  they
should  leave  him  connected  when he didn't. Sending them money
obviously only drew attention to yourself.

The room was much as he had left  it,  i.e.  festeringly  untidy,
though  the  effect  was muted a little by a thick layer of dust.
Half-read books and magazines nestled amongst piles of  half-used
towels.  Half  pairs  of  socks  reclined  in  half-drunk cups of
coffee. What was once a half-eaten sandwich had  now  half-turned
into  something  that  Arthur entirely didn't want to know about.
Bung a fork of lightning through this lot, he thought to himself,
and you'd start the evolution of life all over again.

There was only one thing in the room that was different.

For a moment or so he couldn't see what the one  thing  that  was
different was, because it too was covered in a film of disgusting
dust. Then his eyes caught it and stopped.

It was next to a battered old television on  which  it  was  only
possible  to  watch  Open University Study Courses, because if it
tried to show anything more exciting it would break down.

It was a box.

Arthur pushed himself up on his elbows and peered at it.

It was a grey box, with a kind of dull lustre to  it.  It  was  a
cubic  grey  box,  just over a foot on a side. It was tied with a
single grey ribbon, knotted into a neat bow on the top.

He got up, walked over and touched it in  surprise.  Whatever  it
was  was  clearly  gift-wrapped,  neatly and beautifully, and was
waiting for him to open it.

Cautiously, he picked it up and carried it back to  the  bed.  He
brushed  the dust off the top and loosened the ribbon. The top of
the box was a lid, with a flap tucked into the body of the box.

He untucked it and looked into the box. In it was a glass  globe,
nestling in fine grey tissue paper. He drew it out, carefully. It
wasn't a proper globe because it was open at the bottom,  or,  as
Arthur realized turning it over, at the top, with a thick rim. It
was a bowl. A fish bowl.

It was made of the most wonderful  glass  perfectly  transparent,
yet  with  an extraordinary silver-grey quality as if crystal and
slate had gone into its making.

Arthur slowly turned it over and over in his hands. It was one of
the  most beautiful objects he had ever seen, but he was entirely
perplexed by it. He looked into  the  box,  but  other  than  the
tissue  paper  there was nothing. On the outside of the box there
was nothing.

He turned  the  bowl  round  again.  It  was  wonderful.  It  was
exquisite. But it was a fish bowl.

He tapped it with his thumbnail and  it  rang  with  a  deep  and
glorious  chime  which  was  sustained  for  longer  than  seemed
possible, and when at last it faded seemed not to die away but to
drift off into other worlds, as into a deep sea dream.

Entranced, Arthur turned it round yet again, and  this  time  the
light from the dusty little bedside lamp caught it at a different
angle and glittered on some fine abrasions  on  the  fish  bowl's
surface.  He  held  it  up, adjusting the angle to the light, and
suddenly saw clearly the finely engraved shapes of words shadowed
on the glass.

''So Long,'' they said, ''and Thanks ...''

And that was all. He blinked, and understood nothing.

For fully five more  minutes  he  turned  the  object  round  and
around,  held  it to the light at different angles, tapped it for
its mesmerizing chime and pondered on the meaning of the  shadowy
letters but could find none. Finally he stood up, filled the bowl
with water from the tap and put it back on the table next to  the
television.  He  shook  the  little  Babel  fish from his ear and
dropped it, wriggling, into the bowl. He wouldn't be  needing  it
any more, except for watching foreign movies.

He returned to lie on his bed, and turned out the light.

He lay still and quiet.  He  absorbed  the  enveloping  darkness,
slowly relaxed his limbs from end to end, eased and regulated his
breathing, gradually cleared his mind of all thought, closed  his
eyes and was completely incapable of getting to sleep.
 

The night was uneasy with rain. The rain  clouds  themselves  had
now  moved on and were currently concentrating their attention on
a small transport cafe just  outside  Bournemouth,  but  the  sky
through  which they had passed had been disturbed by them and now
wore a damply ruffled air, as if it  didn't  know  what  else  it
might not do it further provoked.

The moon was out in a watery way. It looked like a ball of  paper
from  the  back  pocket  of  jeans that have just come out of the
washing machine, and which only time and ironing would tell if it
was an old shopping list or a five pound note.

The wind flicked about a little, like the tail of a horse  that's
trying  to  decide  what sort of mood it's in tonight, and a bell
somewhere chimed midnight.

A skylight creaked open.

It was stiff and had to be jiggled and persuaded a little because
the  frame was slightly rotten and the hinges had at some time in
its life been rather sensibly painted over, but eventually it was
open.

A strut was found to prop it and a figure struggled out into  the
narrow gully between the opposing pitches of the roof.

It stood and watched the sky in silence.

The figure was  completely  unrecognizable  as  the  wild-looking
creature  who had burst crazily into the cottage a little over an
hour ago. Gone was the ragged threadbare dressing  gown,  smeared
with  the  mud  of  a  hundred  worlds,  stained  with  junk food
condiment from a hundred grimy spaceports, gone was  the  tangled
mane  of  hair,  gone  the  long  and  knotted beard, flourishing
ecosystem and all.

Instead,  there  was  Arthur  Dent  the  smooth  and  casual,  in
corduroys  and a chunky sweater. His hair was cropped and washed,
his chin clean shaven. Only the eyes still said that whatever  it
was the Universe thought it was doing to him, he would still like
it please to stop.

They were not the same eyes with which he had last looked out  at
this particular scene, and the brain which interpreted the images
the eyes resolved was not the  same  brain.  There  had  been  no
surgery involved, just the continual wrenching of experience.

The night seemed like an alive thing to him at this  moment,  the
dark earth around him a being in which he was rooted.

He could feel like a tingle on distant nerve ends the flood of  a
far  river,  the  roll  of  invisible  hills,  the  knot of heavy
rainclouds parked somewhere away to the south.

He could sense, too, the  thrill  of  being  a  tree,  which  was
something  he  hadn't expected. He knew that it felt good to curl
your toes in the earth, but he'd never  realized  it  could  feel
quite  as good as that. He could sense an almost unseemly wave of
pleasure reaching out to him all the way from the New Forest.  He
must try this summer, he thought, and see what having leaves felt
like.

From another direction he felt the sensation  of  being  a  sheep
startled   by   a   flying   saucer,   but   it   was   virtually
indistinguishable from the feeling of being a sheep  startled  by
anything  else  it  ever encountered, for they were creatures who
learned very little on their journey through life, and  would  be
startled  to see the sun rising in the morning, and astonished by
all the green stuff in the fields.

He was surprised to find he could feel the sheep  being  startled
by  the  sun  that  morning,  and  the  morning before, and being
startled by a clump of trees the day before  that.  He  could  go
further  and  further  back,  but  it  got  dull  because  all it
consisted of was sheep  being  startled  by  things  they'd  been
startled by the day before.

He left the sheep and let his mind  drift  outwards  sleepily  in
developing ripples. It felt the presence of other minds, hundreds
of them, thousands in a web, some  sleepy,  some  sleeping,  some
terribly excited, one fractured.

One fractured.

He passed it fleetingly and tried to feel for it  again,  but  it
eluded  him like the other card with an apple on it in Pelmanism.
He felt a spasm of excitement because he knew  instinctively  who
it  was, or at least knew who it was he wanted it to be, and once
you know what it is you want to  be  true,  instinct  is  a  very
useful device for enabling you to know that it is.

He instinctively knew that it was Fenny and  that  he  wanted  to
find  her;  but  he  could  not. By straining too much for it, he
could feel he was losing this strange new faculty, so he  relaxed
the search and let his mind wander more easily once more.

And again, he felt the fracture.

Again he couldn't find it. This time, whatever his  instinct  was
busy  telling  him it was all right to believe, he wasn't certain
that it was Fenny - or perhaps it was a different  fracture  this
time.  It  had  the  same disjointed quality but it seemed a more
general feeling of fracture, deeper, not a single mind, maybe not
a mind at all. It was different.

He let his mind sink slowly and widely into the Earth,  rippling,
seeping, sinking.

He was following the Earth through its days,  drifting  with  the
rhythms  of  its  myriad  pulses, seeping through the webs of its
life, swelling with its tides, turning with  its  weight.  Always
the fracture kept returning, a dull disjointed distant ache.

And now he was flying through a land  of  light;  the  light  was
time,  the  tides  of  it were days receding. The fracture he had
sensed, the second fracture,  lay  in  the  distance  before  him
across  the  land,  the  thickness  of  a  single hair across the
dreaming landscape of the days of Earth.

And suddenly he was upon it.

He danced dizzily over the edge as the  dreamland  dropped  sheer
away beneath him, a stupefying precipice into nothing, him wildly
twisting, clawing  at  nothing,  flailing  in  horrifying  space,
spinning, falling.

Across the jagged chasm had been another land, another  time,  an
older  world,  not fractured from, but hardly joined: two Earths.
He woke.

A  cold  breeze  brushed  the  feverish  sweat  standing  on  his
forehead.  The  nightmare  was spent and so, he felt, was he. His
shoulders dropped, he gently rubbed his eyes with the tips of his
fingers.  At last he was sleepy as well as very tired. As to what
it meant, if it meant anything at all, he would think about it in
the  morning;  for now he would go to bed and sleep. His own bed,
his own sleep.

He could see his house in the distance and wondered why this was.
It  was  silhouetted  against the moonlight and he recognized its
rather dull blockish shape. He looked about him and noticed  that
he  was about eighteen inches above the rose bushes of one of his
neighbours,  John  Ainsworth.  His  rose  bushes  were  carefully
tended,  pruned  back  for  the  winter,  strapped  to  canes and
labelled, and Arthur wondered what he was doing  above  them.  He
wondered  what was holding him there, and when he discovered that
nothing was holding him there he crashed awkwardly to the ground.

He picked himself up, brushed himself down and  hobbled  back  to
his house on a sprained ankle. He undressed and toppled into bed.

While he was asleep the phone  rang  again.  It  rang  for  fully
fifteen  minutes  and  caused  him  to turn over twice. It never,
however, stood a chance of waking him up.

\chapter{}

Arthur awoke feeling wonderful, absolutely  fabulous,  refreshed,
overjoyed  to  be home, bouncing with energy, hardly disappointed
at all to discover it was the middle of February.

He almost danced to the  fridge,  found  the  three  least  hairy
things  in  it, put them on a plate and watched them intently for
two minutes. Since they made no attempt to move within that  time
he called them breakfast and ate them. Between them they killed a
virulent space disease he's picked up without knowing it  in  the
Flargathon  Gas  Swamps a few days earlier, which otherwise would
have killed off half the population of  the  Western  Hemisphere,
blinded  the  other  half  and driven everyone else psychotic and
sterile, so the Earth was lucky there.

He felt strong, he felt healthy. He vigorously cleared  away  the
junk mail with a spade and then buried the cat.

Just as he was finishing that, the phone went, but he let it ring
while he maintained a moment's respectful silence. Whoever it was
would ring back if it was important.

He kicked the mud off his shoes and went back inside.

There had been a small number of significant letters in the piles
of  junk  -  some  documents  from the council, dated three years
earlier, relating to the proposed demolition of  his  house,  and
some  other letters about the setting up of a public inquiry into
the whole bypass scheme in the area; there was also an old letter
from  Greenpeace,  the  ecological  pressure  group  to  which he
occasionally made  contributions,  asking  for  help  with  their
scheme  to  release  dolphins  and orcas from captivity, and some
postcards from friends, vaguely complaining that he never got  in
touch these days.

He collected these together and put  them  in  a  cardboard  file
which  he marked ''Things To Do''. Since he was feeling so vigorous
and dynamic that morning, he even added the word ''Urgent!''

He unpacked his towel and another few odd bits  and  pieces  from
the  plastic  bag he had acquired at the Port Brasta Mega-Market.
The slogan on the side was a clever and elaborate pun  in  Lingua
Centauri  which  was  completely  incomprehensible  in  any other
language and therefore entirely pointless for a Duty Free Shop at
a spaceport. The bag also had a hole in it so he threw it away.

He realized with a sudden twinge that something  else  must  have
dropped  out  in  the  small  spacecraft  that had brought him to
Earth, kindly going out of its way to drop him right  beside  the
A303.  He  had  lost his battered and spaceworn copy of the thing
which had helped him find his way across the unbelievable  wastes
of space he had traversed. He had lost the Hitch Hiker's Guide to
the Galaxy.

Well, he told himself, this time I really  won't  be  needing  it
again.

He had some calls to make.

He had decided how to deal with the mass  of  contradictions  his
return  journey  precipitated,  which  was  that  he would simply
brazen it out.

He phoned the BBC and asked to be put through to  his  department
head.

''Oh, hello, Arthur Dent here. Look, sorry I haven't been  in  for
six months but I've gone mad.''

''Oh, not to worry. Thought it was probably something  like  that.
Happens here all the time. How soon can we expect you?''

''When do hedgehogs stop hibernating?''

''Sometime in spring I think.''

''I'll be in shortly after that.''

''Rightyho.''

He flipped through the Yellow Pages and  made  a  short  list  of
numbers to try.

''Oh hello, is that the Old Elms Hospital? Yes, I was just phoning
to see if I could have a word with Fenella, er ... Fenella - Good
Lord, silly me, I'll forget my own name next, er, Fenella - isn't
this ridiculous? Patient of yours, dark haired girl, came in last
night ...''

''I'm afraid we don't have any patients called Fenella.''

''Oh, don't you? I mean Fiona of course, we just call her Fen ...''

''I'm sorry, goodbye.''

Click.

Six conversations along these lines began to take their  toll  on
his  mood  of  vigorous,  dynamic  optimism,  and he decided that
before it deserted him entirely he would take it down to the  pub
and parade it a little.

He  had  had  the  perfect  idea  for   explaining   away   every
inexplicable weirdness about himself at a stroke, and he whistled
to himself as he pushed open the door which had  so  daunted  him
last night.

''Arthur!!!!''

He grinned cheerfully at the boggling eyes  that  stared  at  him
from  all  corners of the pub, and told them all what a wonderful
time he'd had in Southern California.

\chapter{}

He accepted another pint and took a pull at it.

''Of course, I had my own personal alchemist too.''

''You what?''

He was getting silly and he knew  it.  Exuberance  and  Hall  and
Woodhouse best bitter was a mixture to be wary of, but one of the
first effects it had is to stop you being wary of things, and the
point  at  which Arthur should have stopped and explained no more
was the point at which he started instead to get inventive.

''Oh yes,'' he insisted with a happy glazed smile. ''It's  why  I've
lost so much weight.''

''What?'' said his audience.

''Oh yes,'' he said  again.  ''The  Californians  have  rediscovered
alchemy. Oh yes.''

He smiled again.

''Only,'' he said, ''it's in a much more useful form than that which
in  ...''  He paused thoughtfully to let a little grammar assemble
in his head. ''In which the ancients used to practise  it.  Or  at
least,'' he added, ''failed to practise it. They couldn't get it to
work you know. Nostradamus and that lot. Couldn't cut it.''

''Nostradamus?'' said one of his audience.

''I didn't think he was an alchemist,'' said another.

''I thought,'' said a third, ''he was a seer.''

''He became a seer,'' said Arthur to his  audience,  the  component
parts  of which were beginning to bob and blur a little, ''because
he was such a lousy alchemist. You should know that.''

He took another pull at his beer. It was  something  he  had  not
tasted for eight years. He tasted it and tasted it.

''What has alchemy got to do,'' asked a bit of the audience,  ''with
losing weight?''

''I'm glad you asked that,'' said Arthur. ''Very glad.  And  I  will
now  tell  you  what  the  connection  is between ...'' He paused.
''Between those two things. The things you  mentioned.  I'll  tell
you.''

He paused and manoeuvred his thoughts. It was like  watching  oil
tankers doing three-point turns in the English Channel.

''They've discovered how to turn excess body fat  into  gold,''  he
said, in a sudden blur of coherence.

''You're kidding.''

''Oh yes,'' he said, ''no,'' he corrected himself, ''they have.''

He rounded on the doubting part of his audience, which was all of
it, and so it took a little while to round on it completely.

''Have you been to California?'' he demanded. ''Do you know the sort
of stuff they do there?''

Three members of his audience said  they  had  and  that  he  was
talking nonsense.

''You haven't seen anything,'' insisted Arthur. ''Oh yes,'' he added,
because someone was offering to buy another round.

''The evidence,'' he said, pointing at himself, and not missing  by
more  than  a  couple  of  inches, ''is before your eyes. Fourteen
hours in a trance,'' he said, ''in a tank. In a trance. I was in  a
tank.  I  think,''  he  added after a thoughtful pause, ''I already
said that.''

He waited patiently while the next round was duly distributed. He
composed  the  next bit of his story in his mind, which was going
to be something about the tank needing to be orientated  along  a
line  dropped  perpendicularly  from  the Pole Star to a baseline
drawn between Mars and Venus, and was about to  start  trying  to
say it when he decided to give it a miss.

''Long time,'' he said instead, ''in a tank. In a trance.'' He looked
round severely at his audience, to make sure it was all following
attentively.

He resumed.

''Where was I?'' he said.

''In a trance,'' said one.

''In a tank,'' said another.

''Oh yes,'' said Arthur. ''Thank you. And slowly,'' he said  pressing
onwards,  ''slowly,  slowly  slowly,  all your excess body fat ...
turns ... to ...'' he paused for effect, ''subcoo  ...  subyoo  ...
subtoocay ...'' - he paused for breath - ''subcutaneous gold, which
you can have surgically removed. Getting out of the tank is hell.
What did you say?''

''I was just clearing my throat.''

''I think you doubt me.''

''I was clearing my throat.''

''She was clearing her throat,'' confirmed a  significant  part  of
the audience in a low rumble.

''Oh yes,'' said  Arthur,  ''all  right.  And  you  then  split  the
proceeds  ...''  he  paused  again for a maths break, ''fifty-fifty
with the alchemist. Make a lot of money!''

He looked swayingly around at his audience, and  could  not  help
but be aware of an air of scepticism about their jumbled faces.

He felt very affronted by this.

''How else,''  he  demanded,  ''could  I  afford  to  have  my  face
dropped?''

Friendly arms began to help him home. ''Listen,'' he protested,  as
the  cold  February breeze brushed his face, ''looking lived-in is
all the rage in California at the moment. You've got to  look  as
if you've seen the Galaxy. Life, I mean. You've got to look as if
you've seen life. That's what I got. A face drop. Give  me  eight
years, I said. I hope being thirty doesn't come back into fashion
or I've wasted a lot of money.''

He lapsed into silence for a while as the friendly arms continued
to help him along the lane to his house.

''Got in yesterday,'' he mumbled. ''I'm very happy to  be  home.  Or
somewhere very like it ...''

''Jet  lag,''  muttered  one  of  his  friends.  ''Long  trip   from
California. Really mucks you up for a couple of days.''

''I don't think he's been there  at  all,''  muttered  another.  ''I
wonder where he has been. And what's happened to him.''

After a little sleep Arthur got up and pottered round the house a
bit.  He  felt  woozy  and a little low, still disoriented by the
journey. He wondered how he was going to find Fenny.

He sat and looked at the fish  bowl.  He  tapped  it  again,  and
despite  being  full of water and a small yellow Babel fish which
was gulping its way around rather dejectedly, it still chimed its
deep and resonant chime as clearly and mesmerically as before.

Someone is trying to thank me, he thought to himself. He wondered
who, and for what.

\chapter{}

''At the third stroke it will be one ... thirty-two ... and twenty
seconds.

''Beep ... beep ... beep.''

Ford Prefect suppressed a little  giggle  of  evil  satisfaction,
realized  that  he  had no reason to suppress it, and laughed out
loud, a wicked laugh.

He switched the incoming signal through from the Sub-Etha Net  to
the  ship's  hi-fi system, and the odd, rather stilted, sing-song
voice spoke out with remarkable clarity round the cabin.

''At the third stroke it will be one ... thirty-two ... and thirty
seconds.

''Beep ... beep ... beep.''

He tweaked the volume up just a little while  keeping  a  careful
eye on a rapidly changing table of figures on the ship's computer
display. For the length of time he had in mind, the  question  of
power  consumption became significant. He didn't want a murder on
his conscience.

''At the third stroke it will be one ... thirty-two ... and  forty
seconds.

''Beep ... beep ... beep.''

He checked around the  small  ship.  He  walked  down  the  short
corridor. ''At the third stroke ...''

He stuck his head into  the  small,  functional,  gleaming  steel
bathroom.

''it will be ...''

It sounded fine in there.

He looked into the tiny sleeping quarters.

''... one ... thirty-two ...''

It sounded a bit muffled. There was a towel hanging over  one  of
the speakers. He took down the towel.

''... and fifty seconds.''

Fine.

He checked out the packed cargo hold, and wasn't at all satisfied
with  the sound. There was altogether too much crated junk in the
way. He stepped back out and waited for  the  door  to  seal.  He
broke open a closed control panel and pushed the jettison button.
He didn't know why he hadn't thought of that before. A  whooshing
rumbling  noise  died  away quickly into silence. After a pause a
slight hiss could be heard again.

It stopped.

He waited for the green light to show and then  opened  the  door
again on the now empty cargo hold.

''... one ... thirty-three ... and fifty seconds.''

Very nice.

''Beep ... beep ... beep.''

He then went and had a last thorough examination of the emergency
suspended  animation  chamber,  which  was  where he particularly
wanted it to be heard.

''At the third stroke it will be  one  ...  thirty  ...  four  ...
precisely.''

He shivered  as  he  peered  down  through  the  heavily  frosted
covering  at  the  dim bulk of the form within. One day, who knew
when, it would wake, and when it did, it would know what time  it
was. Not exactly local time, true, but what the heck.

He double-checked the computer display  above  the  freezer  bed,
dimmed the lights and checked it again.

''At the third stroke it will be ...''

He tiptoed out and returned to the control cabin.

''... one ... thirty-four and twenty seconds.''

The voice sounded as clear as if he was hearing it over  a  phone
in London, which he wasn't, not by a long way.

He gazed out into  the  inky  night.  The  star  the  size  of  a
brilliant  biscuit  crumb  he  could  see  in  the  distance  was
Zondostina, or as it was known on the world from which the rather
stilted, sing-song voice was being received, Pleiades Zeta.

The bright orange curve that filled over half  the  visible  area
was  the  giant  gas  planet  Sesefras  Magna, where the Xaxisian
battleships docked, and just rising over its horizon was a  small
cool blue moon, Epun.

''At the third stroke it will be ...''

For twenty minutes he sat and watched as the gap between the ship
and  Epun  closed,  as the ship's computer teased and kneaded the
numbers that would bring it into a loop around the  little  moon,
close   the  loop  and  keep  it  there,  orbiting  in  perpetual
obscurity.

''One ... fifty-nine ...''

His original plan had been to close down all external  signalling
and  radiation from the ship, to render it as nearly invisible as
possible unless you were actually looking at it,  but  then  he'd
had an idea he preferred. It would now emit one single continuous
beam, pencil-thin, broadcasting the incoming time signal  to  the
planet  of the signal's origin, which it would not reach for four
hundred years, travelling at light  speed,  but  where  it  would
probably cause something of a stir when it did.

''Beep ... beep ... beep.''

He sniggered.

He didn't like to think of himself as  the  sort  of  person  who
giggled  or  sniggered,  but  he  had  to  admit that he had been
giggling and sniggering almost continuously for well over half an
hour now.

''At the third stroke ...''

The ship was now locked almost perfectly into its perpetual orbit
round a little known and never visited moon. Almost perfect.

One thing only remained. He ran again the computer simulation  of
the  launching  of  the  ship's  little Escape-O-Buggy, balancing
actions,  reactions,  tangential  forces,  all  the  mathematical
poetry of motion, and saw that it was good.

Before he left, he turned out the lights.

As his tiny little cigar tube of an escape craft  zipped  out  on
the  beginning  of  its  three-day  journey to the orbiting space
station Port Sesefron, it rode for a few seconds a  long  pencil-
thin  beam of radiation that was starting out on a longer journey
still.

''At the third stroke, it will be two ... thirteen ...  and  fifty
seconds.''

He giggled and sniggered. He would have laughed out loud  but  he
didn't have the room.

''Beep ... beep ... beep.''

\chapter{}

''April showers I hate especially.''

However noncommittally Arthur grunted, the man seemed  determined
to  talk  to  him.  He  wondered  if he should get up and move to
another table, but there didn't seem to be one free in the  whole
cafeteria. He stirred his coffee fiercely.

''Bloody April showers. Hate hate hate.''

Arthur stared, frowning, out of the window. A light, sunny  spray
of  rain  hung  over the motorway. Two months he'd been back now.
Slipping back into his old life had in fact been laughably  easy.
People  had  such  extraordinarily short memories, including him.
Eight years of crazed wanderings round the Galaxy now  seemed  to
him not so much like a bad dream as like a film he had videotaped
from the tv and now kept  in  the  back  of  a  cupboard  without
bothering to watch.

One effect that still lingered though, was his joy at being back.
Now  that  the  Earth's  atmosphere  had closed over his head for
good,  he  thought,  wrongly,  everything  within  it  gave   him
extraordinary  pleasure.  Looking  at  the silvery sparkle of the
raindrops he felt he had to protest.

''Well, I like them,'' he said suddenly, ''and for all  the  obvious
reasons.  They're light and refreshing. They sparkle and make you
feel good.''

The man snorted derisively.

''That's what they all say,'' he said, and glowered darkly from his
corner seat.

He was a lorry driver. Arthur  knew  this  because  his  opening,
unprovoked  remark  had been, ''I'm a lorry driver. I hate driving
in the rain. Ironic isn't it? Bloody ironic.''

If there was a sequitur hidden in this  remark,  Arthur  had  not
been  able  to  divine  it  and  had merely given a little grunt,
affable but not encouraging.

But the man had not been deterred then, and was not deterred now.
''They  all  say  that  about  bloody April showers,'' he said. ''So
bloody nice, so bloody refreshing, such charming bloody weather.''

He leaned forward, screwing his face up as if he was going to say
something about the government.

''What I want to know is this,'' he said, ''if it's going to be nice
weather,  why,''  he almost spat, ''can't it be nice without bloody
raining?''

Arthur gave up. He decided to leave his coffee, which was too hot
to drink quickly and too nasty to drink cold.

''Well, there you go,'' he said and instead got up himself. ''Bye.''

He stopped off at the service  station  shop,  then  walked  back
through the car park, making a point of enjoying the fine play of
rain on his face. There was even, he  noticed,  a  faint  rainbow
glistening over the Devon hills. He enjoyed that too.

He climbed into his battered  but  adored  old  black  Golf  GTi,
squealed  the  tyres,  and  headed out past the islands of petrol
pumps and on to the slip road back towards the motorway.

He was wrong in thinking that the atmosphere  of  the  Earth  had
closed finally and for ever above his head.

He was wrong to think that it  would  ever  be  possible  to  put
behind  him  the  tangled  web  of  irresolutions  into which his
galactic travels had dragged him.

He was wrong to think he could now forget  that  the  big,  hard,
oily,   dirty,  rainbow-hung  Earth  on  which  he  lived  was  a
microscopic dot on a microscopic dot  lost  in  the  unimaginable
infinity of the Universe.

He drove on, humming, being wrong about all these things.

The reason he was wrong was standing by the  slip  road  under  a
small umbrella.

His jaw sagged. He sprained his ankle against the brake pedal and
skidded so hard he very nearly turned the car over.

''Fenny!'' he shouted.

Having narrowly avoided hitting her with the actual car,  he  hit
her  instead  with  the  car door as he leant across and flung it
open at her.

It caught her hand and knocked  away  her  umbrella,  which  then
bowled wildly away across the road.

''Shit!'' yelled Arthur as helpfully as he cold, leapt out  of  his
own  door,  narrowly  avoided  being  run  down by McKeena's All-
Weather Haulage, and watched in horror as  it  ran  down  Fenny's
umbrella instead. The lorry swept along the motorway and away.

The  umbrella  lay  like  a  recently  swatted   daddy-long-legs,
expiring sadly on the ground. Tiny gusts of wind made it twitch a
little.

He picked it up.

''Er,'' he said. There didn't seem to be a lot of point in offering
the thing back to her.

''How did you know my name?'' she said.

''Er, well,'' he said. ''Look, I'll get you another one ...''

He looked at her and tailed off.

She was tallish with dark hair which fell in waves around a  pale
and  serious  face.  Standing  still,  alone,  she  seemed almost
sombre, like a statue to some important but unpopular virtue in a
formal  garden.  She seemed to be looking at something other than
what she looked as if she was looking at.

But when she smiled, as she did now, it was as  if  she  suddenly
arrived  from  somewhere.  Warmth and life flooded into her face,
and impossibly graceful movement into her body.  The  effect  was
very disconcerting, and it disconcerted Arthur like hell.

She grinned, tossed her bag into the back and  swivelled  herself
into the front seat.

''Don't worry about the umbrella,'' she said to him as she  climbed
in.  ''It  was  my  brother's  and  he  can't  have liked it or he
wouldn't have given it to me.'' She  laughed  and  pulled  on  her
seatbelt. ''You're not a friend of my brother's are you?''

''No.''

Her voice was the only part of her which didn't say ''Good''.

Her physical presence there  in  the  car,  his  car,  was  quite
extraordinary  to  Arthur. He felt, as he let the car pull slowly
away, that he could hardly  think  or  breathe,  and  hoped  that
neither of these functions were vital to his driving or they were
in trouble.

So what he had experienced in the other car, her  brother's  car,
the  night  he  had  returned  exhausted  and bewildered from his
nightmare years in the stars had not been the  unbalance  of  the
moment,  or,  if it had been, he was at least twice as unbalanced
now, and quite liable to fall  off  whatever  it  is  that  well-
balanced people are supposed to be balancing on.

''So ...'' he said, hoping to  kick  the  conversation  off  to  an
exciting start.

''He was meant to pick me up - my brother - but phoned to  say  he
couldn't make it. I asked about buses but the man started to look
at the calendar rather than a timetable, so I decided  to  hitch.
So.''

''So.''

''So here I am. And what I would like to know, is how you know  my
name.''

''Perhaps we ought to first sort out,'' said Arthur,  looking  back
over  his shoulder as he eased his car into the motorway traffic,
''where I'm taking you.''

Very close, he hoped, or long away. Close would  mean  she  lived
near him, a long way would mean he could drive her there.

''I'd like to go to Taunton,'' she said,  ''please.  If  that's  all
right. It's not far. You can drop me at ...''

''You live in Taunton?'' he said, hoping that he'd managed to sound
merely  curious  rather  than  ecstatic.  Taunton was wonderfully
close to him. He could ...

''No, London,'' she said. ''There's a train in just under an hour.''

It was the worst thing possible. Taunton was only minutes away up
the  motorway. He wondered what to do, and while he was wondering
with horror heard himself saying, ''Oh, I can take you to  London.
Let me take you to London ...''

Bungling idiot. Why on Earth had he said  ''let''  in  that  stupid
way? He was behaving like a twelve-year-old.

''Are you going to London?'' she asked.

''I wasn't,'' he said, ''but ...'' Bungling idiot.

''It's very kind of you,'' she said, ''but really no. I like  to  go
by train.'' And suddenly she was gone. Or rather, that part of her
which brought her to life was gone. She looked  rather  distantly
out of the window and hummed lightly to herself.

He couldn't believe it.

Thirty seconds into the conversation, and already he'd blown it.

Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of
accumulated  evidence  about  the  way  grown  men behave, do not
behave like this.

Taunton 5 miles, said the signpost.

He gripped the steering wheel so tightly the car wobbled. He  was
going to have to do something dramatic.

''Fenny,'' he said.

She glanced round sharply at him.

''You still haven't told me how ...''

''Listen,'' said Arthur, ''I will tell  you,  though  the  story  is
rather strange. Very strange.''

She was still looking at him, but said nothing.

''Listen ...''

''You said that.''

''Did I? Oh. There are things I must talk to you about, and things
I  must  tell you ... a story I must tell you which would ...'' He
was thrashing about. He wanted something along the lines of  ''Thy
knotted  and combined locks to part, and each particular quill to
stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine'' but  didn't
think  he  could  carry  it  off  and  didn't  like  the hedgehog
reference.

''... which would take more than five miles,'' he  settled  for  in
the end, rather lamely he was afraid.

''Well ...''

''Just supposing,'' he said, ''just supposing'' - he didn't know what
was  coming  next,  so he thought he'd just sit back and listen -
''that there was some extraordinary way in  which  you  were  very
important  to me, and that, though you didn't know it, I was very
important to you, but it all went for nothing because we only had
five  miles  and  I  was  a  stupid  idiot  at knowing how to say
something very important to someone I've only just  met  and  not
crash  into  lorries at the same time, what would you say ...'' he
paused helplessly, and looked at her, ''I ... should do?''

''Watch the road!'' she yelped.

''Shit!''

He narrowly avoided careering into the side of a hundred  Italian
washing machines in a German lorry.

''I think,'' she said, with a momentary sigh of relief, ''you should
buy me a drink before my train goes.''

\chapter{}

There is, for some reason, something especially grim  about  pubs
near  stations,  a  very particular kind of grubbiness, a special
kind of pallor to the pork pies.

Worse than the pork pies, though, are the sandwiches.

There is a feeling  which  persists  in  England  that  making  a
sandwich  interesting,  attractive, or in any way pleasant to eat
is something sinful that only foreigners do.

''Make 'em dry,''  is  the  instruction  buried  somewhere  in  the
collective national consciousness, ''make 'em rubbery. If you have
to keep the buggers fresh, do it by washing 'em once a week.''

It is by eating sandwiches in pubs on  Saturday  lunchtimes  that
the  British  seek to atone for whatever their national sins have
been. They're not altogether clear what those sins are, and don't
want to know either. Sins are not the sort of things one wants to
know about. But whatever their sins are they are amply atoned for
by the sandwiches they make themselves eat.

If there is  anything  worse  than  the  sandwiches,  it  is  the
sausages  which sit next to them. Joyless tubes, full of gristle,
floating in a sea of something hot and sad, stuck with a  plastic
pin in the shape of a chef's hat: a memorial, one feels, for some
chef who hated the world, and died, forgotten and alone among his
cats on a back stair in Stepney.

The sausages are for the ones who know what their  sins  are  and
wish to atone for something specific.

''There must be somewhere better,'' said Arthur.

''No time,'' said Fenny, glancing at her watch. ''My train leaves in
half an hour.''

They sat at a small wobbly table. On it were some dirty  glasses,
and  some  soggy  beermats with jokes printed on them. Arthur got
Fenny a tomato juice, and himself a pint of yellow water with gas
in  it.  And  a couple of sausages. He didn't know why. He bought
them for something to do while the gas settled in his glass.

The barman dunked Arthur's change in a pool of beer on  the  bar,
for which Arthur thanked him.

''All right,'' said Fenny, glancing at her watch, ''tell me what  it
is you have to tell me.''

She sounded, as well she might, extremely sceptical, and Arthur's
heart  sank.  Hardly, he felt, the most conductive setting to try
to explain to her as she sat there, suddenly cool and  defensive,
that in a sort of out-of-body dream he had had a telepathic sense
that the mental breakdown she had  suffered  had  been  connected
with  the fact that, appearances to the contrary nonwithstanding,
the Earth had been demolished to make way for  a  new  hyperspace
bypass,  something  which  he alone on Earth knew anything about,
having virtually witnessed it from a Vogon  spaceship,  and  that
furthermore  both  his body and soul ached for her unbearably and
he needed to got to bed with her as soon as was humanly possible.

''Fenny,'' he started.

''I wonder if you'd like to buy some tickets for our raffle?  It's
just a little one.''

He glanced up sharply.

''To raise money for Anjie who's retiring.''

''What?''

''And needs a kidney machine.''

He was being leant over by  a  rather  stiffly  slim  middle-aged
woman with a prim knitted suit and a prim little perm, and a prim
little smile that probably got licked by prim little dogs a lot.

She was holding out a small  book  of  cloakroom  tickets  and  a
collecting tin.

''Only ten pence each,'' she said, ''so you could probably even  buy
two.  Without  breaking the bank!'' She gave a tinkly little laugh
and then a curiously long  sigh.  Saying  ''Without  breaking  the
bank''  had  obviously given her more pleasure than anything since
some GIs had been billeted on her in the war.

''Er, yes, all right,''  said  Arthur,  hurriedly  digging  in  his
pocket and producing a couple of coins.

With infuriating slowness, and prim theatricality, if  there  was
such  a  thing, the woman tore off two tickets and handed them to
Arthur.

''I do hope you win,'' she said with a smile that suddenly  snapped
together  like  a  piece  of advanced origami, ''the prizes are so
nice.''

''Yes, thank you,''  said  Arthur,  pocketing  the  tickets  rather
brusquely and glancing at his watch.

He turned towards Fenny.

So did the woman with the raffle tickets.

''And what about you, young lady?'' she  said.  ''It's  for  Anjie's
kidney  machine.  She's  retiring  you see. Yes?'' She hoisted the
little smile even further up her face. She would have to stop and
let it go soon or the skin would surely split.

''Er, look, here you are,'' said Arthur, and pushed a  fifty  pence
piece at her in the hope that that would see her off.

''Oh, we are in the money, aren't we?'' said the woman, with a long
smiling sigh. ''Down from London are we?''

''No, that's all right, really,'' he said with a wave of his  hand,
and  she  started  with  an  awful  deliberation to peel off five
tickets, one by one.

''Oh, but you must have your tickets,'' insisted the woman, ''or you
won't  be able to claim your prize. They're very nice prizes, you
know. Very suitable.''

Arthur snatched the tickets, and said thank you as sharply as  he
could.

The woman turned to Fenny once again.

''And now, what about ...''

''No!'' Arthur nearly yelled. ''These are for  her,''  he  explained,
brandishing the five new tickets.

''Oh, I see! How nice!''

She smiled sickeningly at both of them.

''Well, I do hope you ...''

''Yes,'' snapped Arthur, ''thank you.''

The woman finally departed to the table next  to  theirs.  Arthur
turned desperately to Fenny, and was relieved to see that she was
rocking with silent laughter.

He sighed and smiled.

''Where were we?''

''You were calling me Fenny, and I was about to ask you not to.''

''What do you mean?''

She twirled the little wooden cocktail stick in her tomato juice.

''It's why I asked if you were a friend of my brother's. Or  half-
brother really. He's the only one who calls me Fenny, and I'm not
fond of him for it.''

''So what's ...?''

''Fenchurch.''

''What?''

''Fenchurch.''

''Fenchurch.''

She looked at him sternly.

''Yes,'' she said, ''and I'm watching you like  a  lynx  to  see  if
you're  going  to ask the same silly question that everybody asks
me until I want to scream. I shall be cross and  disappointed  if
you do. Plus I shall scream. So watch it.''

She smiled, shook her hair a little forward  over  her  face  and
peered at him from behind it.

''Oh,'' he said, ''that's a little unfair, isn't it?''

''Yes.''

''Fine.''

''All right,'' she said with a laugh, ''you can  ask  me.  Might  as
well get it over with. Better than have you call me Fenny all the
time.''

''Presumably ...'' said Arthur.

''We've only got two tickets left, you see, and since you were  so
generous when I spoke to you before ...''

''What?'' snapped Arthur.

The woman with the perm and the smile and the  now  nearly  empty
book  of cloakroom tickets was now waving the two last ones under
his nose.

''I thought I'd give the opportunity to you,  because  the  prizes
are so nice.''

She wrinkled up he nose a little confidentially.

''Very tasteful. I know you'll like them. And it  is  for  Anjie's
retirement present you see. We want to give her ...''

''A kidney machine, yes,'' said Arthur. ''Here.''

He held out two more ten  pence  pieces  to  her,  and  took  the
tickets.

A thought seemed to strike the woman. It struck her very  slowly.
You could watch it coming in like a long wave on a sandy beach.

''Oh dear,'' she said, ''I'm not interrupting anything am I?''

She peered anxiously at both of them.

''No it's fine,'' said Arthur. Everything that  could  possibly  be
fine,'' he insisted, ''is fine.

''Thank you,'' he added.

''I say,'' she said, in a delightful ecstacy of worry, ''you're  not
... in love, are you?''

''It's very hard to say,'' said Arthur. ''We haven't had a chance to
talk yet.''

He glanced at Fenchurch. She was grinning.

The woman nodded with knowing confidentiality.

''I'll let you see the prizes in a minute,'' she said, and left.

Arthur turned, with a sigh, back to the girl  that  he  found  it
hard to say whether he was in love with.

''You were about to ask me,'' she said, ''a question.''

''Yes,'' said Arthur.

''We can do it together if you like,'' said Fenchurch. ''Was I found
...''

''... in a handbag ...'' joined in Arthur.

''... in the Left Luggage Office ...'' they said together.

''... at Fenchurch street station,'' they finished.

''And the answer,'' said Fenchurch, ''is no.''

''Fine,'' said Arthur.

''I was conceived there.''

''What?''

''I was con-''

''In the Left Luggage Office?'' hooted Arthur.

''No, of course not. Don't be silly.  What  would  my  parents  be
doing  in  the Left Luggage Office?'' she said, rather taken aback
by the suggestion.

''Well, I don't know,'' spluttered Arthur, ''or rather ...''

''It was in the ticket queue.''

''The ...''

''The ticket queue. Or so they claim. They  refuse  to  elaborate.
They  only  say  you wouldn't believe how bored it is possible to
get in the ticket queue at Fenchurch Street Station.''

She sipped demurely at her tomato juice and looked at her watch.

Arthur continued to gurgle for a moment or two.

''I'm going to have to go in a minute  or  two,''  said  Fenchurch,
''and  you  haven't  begun  to  tell me whatever this terrifically
extraordinary thing is that you were so  keen  to  get  off  your
chest.''

''Why don't you let me drive you to London?''  said  Arthur.  ''It's
Saturday, I've got nothing particular to do, I'd ...''

''No,'' said Fenchurch, ''thank you, it's sweet of you,  but  no.  I
need  to  be  by  myself  for  a  couple of days.'' She smiled and
shrugged.

''But ...''

''You can tell me another time. I'll give you my number.''

Arthur's heart went boom boom churn churn as she scribbled  seven
figures in pencil on a scrap of paper and handed it to him.

''Now we can relax,'' she said  with  a  slow  smile  which  filled
Arthur till he thought he would burst.

''Fenchurch,'' he said, enjoying the name as he said it. ''I -''

''A box,'' said a trailing voice, ''of cherry  liqueurs,  and  also,
and  I  know  you'll  like  this, a gramophone record of Scottish
bagpipe music ...''

''Yes thank you, very nice,'' insisted Arthur.

''I just thought I'd let you have a look at them,'' said the permed
woman, ''as you're down from London ...''

She was holding them out proudly for Arthur too see. He could see
that  they  were  indeed  a  box  of cherry brandy liqueurs and a
record of bagpipe music. That was what they were.

''I'll let you have your drink in peace now,''  she  said,  patting
Arthur  lightly  on his seething shoulder, ''but I knew you'd like
to see.''

Arthur re-engaged his  eyes  with  Fenchurch's  once  again,  and
suddenly  was  at  a loss for something to say. A moment had come
and gone between the two of them, but the whole rhythm of it  had
been wrecked by that stupid, blasted woman.

''Don't worry,'' said Fenchurch, looking at him steadily from  over
the top of her glass, ''we will talk again.'' She took a sip.

''Perhaps,'' she added, ''it wouldn't have gone so well if it wasn't
for  her.''  She  gave  a  wry  little  smile and dropped her hair
forward over her face again.

It was perfectly true.

He had to admit it was perfectly true.

\chapter{}

That  night,  at  home,  as  he  was  prancing  round  the  house
pretending  to  be tripping through cornfields in slow motion and
continually exploding with sudden  laughter,  Arthur  thought  he
could  even  bear  to listen to the album of bagpipe music he had
won. It was eight o'clock and he decided he would  make  himself,
force  himself,  to  listen  to the whole record before he phoned
her. Maybe he should even leave it till tomorrow. That  would  be
the cool thing to do. Or next week sometime.

No. No games. He wanted her and  didn't  care  who  knew  it.  He
definitely and absolutely wanted her, adored her, longed for her,
wanted to do more things than there were names for with her.

He actually caught himself saying  thinks  like  ''Yippee''  as  he
prances  ridiculously  round  the  house. Her eyes, her hair, her
voice, everything ...

He stopped.

He would put on the record of bagpipe music. Then he  would  call
her.

Would he, perhaps, call her first?

No. What he would do was this. He would  put  on  the  record  of
bagpipe  music. He would listen to it, every last banshee wail of
it. Then he would call her. That was the correct order. That  was
what he would do.

He was worried about touching things in case they blew up when he
did so.

He picked up the record. It failed to blow up. He slipped it  out
of  its cover. He opened the record player, he turned on the amp.
They both survived. He giggled foolishly as he lowered the stylus
on to the disc.

He sat and listened solemnly to ''A Scottish Soldier''.

He listened to ''Amazing Grace''.

He listened to something about some glen or other.

He thought about his miraculous lunchtime.

They had just been on  the  point  of  leaving,  when  they  were
distracted  by an awful outbreak of ''yoo-hooing''. The appallingly
permed woman was waving to them across the room like some  stupid
bird  with  a broken wing. Everyone in the pub turned to them and
seemed to be expecting some sort of response.

They hadn't listened to the bit about how pleased and happy Anjie
was  going  to  be  about the  4.30p everyone had helped to raise
towards the cost of her kidney machine, had  been  vaguely  aware
that  someone  from the next table had won a box of cherry brandy
liqueurs, and took a moment or two to cotton on to the fact  that
the  yoo-hooing  lady  was  trying to ask them if they had ticket
number 37.

Arthur discovered that he had. He glanced angrily at his watch.

Fenchurch gave him a push.

''Go on,'' she said, ''go and get it. Don't be  bad  tempered.  Give
them  a nice speech about how pleased you are and you can give me
a call and tell me how it went. I'll want to hear the record.  Go
on.''

She flicked his arm and left.

The  regulars  thought  his  acceptance  speech  a  little  over-
effusive. It was, after all, merely an album of bagpipe music.

Arthur thought about it, and listened to the music, and  kept  on
breaking into laughter.

\chapter{}

Ring ring.

Ring ring.

Ring ring.

''Hello, yes? Yes, that's right. Yes. You'll  'ave  to  speak  up,
there's an awful lot of noise in 'ere. What?

''No, I only do the bar in the  evenings.  It's  Yvonne  who  does
lunch, and Jim, he's the landlord. No, I wasn't on. What?

''You'll have to speak up.

''What? No, don't know anything about no raffle. What?

''No, don't know nothing about it. 'Old on, I'll call Jim.''

The barmaid put her hand over the receiver and  called  over  the
noisy bar.

'''Ere, Jim, bloke on the phone says something about  he's  won  a
raffle. He keeps on saying it's ticket 37 and he's won.''

''No, there was a guy in the  pub  here  won,''  shouted  back  the
barman.

''He says 'ave we got the ticket.''

''Well how can he think he's won if he hasn't even got a ticket?''

''Jim says 'ow can you think you've won if you  ''aven't  even  got
the ticket. What?''

She put her hand over the receiver again.

''Jim, 'e keeps effing and blinding at me. Says there's  a  number
on the ticket.''

''Course there was a number on the ticket, it was a bloody  raffle
ticket wasn't it?''

'''E says 'e means its a telephone number on the ticket.''

''Put the phone down and serve the bloody customers, will you?''

\chapter{}

Eight hours  West  sat  a  man  alone  on  a  beach  mourning  an
inexplicable  loss.  He  could  only  think of his loss in little
packets of grief at a time, because the whole thing was too great
to be borne.

He watched the long slow Pacific waves come in  along  the  sand,
and  waited  and waited for the nothing that he knew was about to
happen. As the time came for it not to  happen,  it  duly  didn't
happen  and so the afternoon wore itself away and the sun dropped
beneath the long line of sea, and the day was gone.

The beach was a beach we shall  not  name,  because  his  private
house was there, but it was a small sandy stretch somewhere along
the hundreds of miles of coastline that first runs west from  Los
Angeles,  which  is  described  in  the  new edition of the Hitch
Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy in one entry as ''junky, wunky, lunky,
stunky,  and  what's that other word, and all kinds of bad stuff,
woo'', and in another, written only hours  later  as  ''being  like
several  thousand square miles of American Express junk mail, but
without the same sense of moral depth. Plus the air is, for  some
reason, yellow.''

The coastline runs west, and then turns north up to the misty bay
of  San  Francisco, which the Guide describes as a ''good place to
go. It's very easy to believe that everyone  you  meet  there  is
also  a  space traveller. Starting a new religion for you is just
their way of saying `hi'. Until you've settled  in  and  got  the
hang  of  the place it is best to say `no' to three questions out
of any given four that anyone may ask you, because there are some
very strange things going on there, some of which an unsuspecting
alien could die of.'' The hundreds of curling miles of cliffs  and
sand, palm trees, breakers and sunsets are described in the Guide
as ''Boffo. A good one.''

And somewhere on this good boffo stretch  of  coastline  lay  the
house of this inconsolable man, a man whom many regarded as being
insane. But this was only, as he would tell  people,  because  he
was.

One of the many many reasons why people thought  him  insane  was
because  of  the  peculiarity  of his house which, even in a land
where most people's houses were peculiar in one way  or  another,
was quite extreme in his peculiarness.

His house was called The Outside of the Asylum.

His name was simply John Watson, though he preferred to be called
-  and  some  of his friends had now reluctantly agreed to this -
Wonko the Sane.

In his house were a number of strange things,  including  a  grey
glass bowl with eight words engraved upon it.

We can talk of him much later on - this is just an  interlude  to
watch the sun go down and to say that he was there watching it.

He had lost everything he cared for, and was now  simply  waiting
for  the  end of the world - little realizing that it had already
been and gone.

\chapter{}

After a disgusting Sunday spent emptying rubbish  bins  behind  a
pub  in  Taunton,  and  finding  nothing,  no  raffle  ticket, no
telephone number,  Arthur  tried  everything  he  could  to  find
Fenchurch, and the more things he tried, the more weeks passed.

He raged and railed against himself, against  fate,  against  the
world  and its weather. He even, in his sorrow and his fury, went
and sat in the motorway service station cafeteria where he'd been
just before he met her.

''It's the drizzle that makes me particularly morose.''

''Please shut up about the drizzle,'' snapped Arthur.

''I would shut up if it would shut up drizzling.''

''Look ...''

''But I'll tell you what it will do when it  shuts  up  drizzling,
shall I?''

''No.''

''Blatter.''

''What?''

''It will blatter.''

Arthur stared over the rim  of  his  coffee  cup  at  the  grisly
outside  world.  It  was  a  completely pointless place to be, he
realized, and he had been driven  there  by  superstition  rather
than  logic.  However,  as if to bait him with the knowledge that
such coincidences could  in  fact  happen,  fate  had  chosen  to
reunite  him  with the lorry driver he had encountered there last
time.

The more he tried to ignore him, the more he found himself  being
dragged   back   into   the   gravitic  whirlpool  of  the  man's
exasperating conversation.

''I  think,''  said  Arthur  vaguely,  cursing  himself  for   even
bothering to say this, ''that it's easing off.''

''Ha!''

Arthur just shrugged. He should go. That's what he should do.  He
should just go.

''It never stops raining!'' ranted the lorry driver. He thumped the
table,  spilt his tea, and actually, for a moment, appeared to be
steaming.

You can't just walk off without responding to a remark like that.

''Of course it stops raining,''  said  Arthur.  It  was  hardly  an
elegant refutation, but it had to be said.

''It rains ... all ... the time,''  raved  the  man,  thumping  the
table again, in time to the words.

Arthur shook his head.

''Stupid to say it rains all the time ...'' he said.

The man's eyebrows shot up, affronted.

''Stupid? Why's it stupid? Why's it stupid to say it rains all the
time if it rains the whole time?''

''Didn't rain yesterday.''

''Did in Darlington.''

Arthur paused, warily.

''You going to ask me where I was yesterday?'' asked the man. ''Eh?''

''No,'' said Arthur.

''But I expect you can guess.''

''Do you.''

''Begins with a D.''

''Does it.''

''And it was pissing down there, I can tell you.''

''You don't want to sit there, mate,'' said a passing  stranger  in
overalls to Arthur cheerily. ''That's Thundercloud Corner that is.
Reserved special for old Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head  here.
There's  one  reserved  in  every  motorway caff between here and
sunny Denmark. Steer clear is my advice. 'Swhat we all do.  How's
it  going,  Rob? Keeping busy? Got your wet-weather tyres on? Har
har.''

He breezed by and went to tell  a  joke  about  Britt  Ekland  to
someone at a nearby table.

''See, none of them bastards take me seriously,'' said Rob McKeena.
''But,'' he added darkly, leaning forward and screwing up his eyes,
''they all know it's true!''

Arthur frowned.

''Like my wife,'' hissed the sole owner  and  driver  of  McKeena's
All-Weather  Haulage.  ''She  says it's nonsense and I make a fuss
and complain about nothing,  but,''  he  paused  dramatically  and
darted  out dangerous looks from his eyes, ''she always brings the
washing in when I phone to say I'm on me way home!'' He brandished
his coffee spoon. ''What do you make of that?''

''Well ...''

''I have a book,'' he went on, ''I have a book. A diary. Kept it for
fifteen  years.  Shows  every  single place I've ever been. Every
day. And also what the weather was like. And it  was  uniformly,''
he  snarled, '''orrible. All over England, Scotland, Wales I been.
All round the  Continent,  Italy,  Germany,  back  and  forth  to
Denmark, been to Yugoslavia. It's all marked in and charted. Even
when I went to visit my brother,'' he added, ''in Seattle.''

''Well,'' said Arthur, getting up to leave at last, ''perhaps  you'd
better show it to someone.''

''I will,'' said Rob McKeena.

And he did.

\chapter{}

Misery, dejection. More misery and more dejection.  He  needed  a
project and he gave himself one.

He would find where his cave had been.

On prehistoric Earth he had lived in a cave, not a nice  cave,  a
lousy cave, but ... There was no but. It had been a totally lousy
cave and he had hated it. But he had lived in it for  five  years
which made it home of some kind, and a person likes to keep track
of his homes. Arthur Dent was such a person and  so  he  went  to
Exeter to buy a computer.

That was what he really wanted, of course,  a  computer.  But  he
felt  he  ought  to  have  some serious purpose in mind before he
simply went and lashed out a lot of readies on what people  might
otherwise mistake as being just a thing to play with. So that was
his serious purpose. To pinpoint the exact location of a cave  on
prehistoric Earth. He explained this to the man in the shop.

''Why?'' said the man in the shop.

This was a tricky one.

''OK, skip that,'' said the man in the shop. ''How?''

''Well, I was hoping you could help me with that.''

The man sighed and his shoulders dropped.

''Have you much experience of computers?''

Arthur wondered whether to mention Eddie the  shipboard  computer
on the Heart of Gold, who could have done the job in a second, or
Deep Thought, or - but decided he wouldn't.

''No,'' he said.

''Looks like a fun afternoon,'' said the man in the  shop,  but  he
said it only to himself.

Arthur bought the Apple anyway. Over a few days he also  acquired
some  astronomical software, plotted the movements of stars, drew
rough little diagrams of how he seemed to remember the  stars  to
have  been in the sky when he looked up out of his cave at night,
and worked away busily at it for weeks,  cheerfully  putting  off
the conclusion he knew he would inevitably have to come to, which
was that the whole project was completely ludicrous.

Rough drawings from memory were futile. He didn't even  know  how
long  it  had been, beyond Ford Prefect's rough guess at the time
that it was ''a couple of million years'' and he simply didn't have
the maths.

Still, in the end he worked out a method  which  would  at  least
produce  a  result. He decided not to mind the fact that with the
extraordinary jumble of rules of thumb, wild  approximations  and
arcane  guesswork he was using he would be lucky to hit the right
galaxy, he just went ahead and got a result.

He would call it the right result. Who would know?

As it happened, through the myriad and  unfathomable  chances  of
fate,  he  got  it exactly right, though he of course would never
know that.  He  just  went  up  to  London  and  knocked  on  the
appropriate door.

''Oh. I thought you were going to phone me first.''

Arthur gaped in astonishment.

''You can only come in for a few minutes,''  said  Fenchurch.  ''I'm
just going out.''

\chapter{}

A summer's day  in  Islington,  full  of  the  mournful  wail  of
antique-restoring machinery.

Fenchurch was unavoidably  busy  for  the  afternoon,  so  Arthur
wandered in a blissed-out haze and looked at all the shops which,
in Islington, are quite an useful bunch, as anyone who  regularly
needs  old  woodworking  tools,  Boer  War  helmets, drag, office
furniture or fish will readily confirm.

The sun beat down over the roofgardens. It beat on architects and
plumbers.  It beat on barristers and burglars. It beat on pizzas.
It beat on estate agent's particulars.

It beat on Arthur as he went into a restored furniture shop.

''It's an interesting building,'' said the proprietor,  cheerfully.
''There's  a  cellar  with  a secret passage which connects with a
nearby pub. It was built for the Prince Regent apparently, so  he
could make his escape when he needed to.''

''You mean, in case anybody might catch him buying  stripped  pine
furniture,'' said Arthur

''No,'' said the proprietor, ''not for that reason.''

''You'll have to excuse me,'' said Arthur. ''I'm terribly happy.''

''I see.''

He wandered hazily on and found himself outside  the  offices  of
Greenpeace. he remembered the contents of his file marked ''Things
to do - urgent!'', which he hadn't opened again in  the  meantime.
He marched in with a cheery smile and said he'd come to give them
some money to help free the dolphins.

''Very funny,'' they told him, ''go away.''

This wasn't quite the response  he  had  expected,  so  he  tried
again.  This  time they got quite angry with him, so he just left
some money anyway and went back out into the sunshine.

Just after six he returned to Fenchurch's house in the  alleyway,
clutching a bottle of champagne.

''Hold this,'' she said, shoved  a  stout  rope  in  his  hand  and
disappeared  inside  through  the  large  white wooden doors from
which dangled a fat padlock off a black iron bar.

The house was a small converted  stable  in  a  light  industrial
alleyway   behind   the   derelict  Royal  Agricultural  Hall  of
Islington. As well as its  large  stable  doors  it  also  had  a
normal-looking  front door of smartly glazed panelled wood with a
black dolphin door knocker. The one odd thing about this door was
its  doorstep,  which  was nine feet high, since the door was set
into the  upper  of  the  two  floors  and  presumably  had  been
originally used to haul in hay for hungry horses.

An old pulley jutted out of the brickwork above the  doorway  and
it  was over this that the rope Arthur was holding was slung. The
other end of the rope held a suspended 'cello.

The door opened above his head.

''OK,'' said Fenchurch, ''pull on the rope, steady the 'cello.  Pass
it up to me.''

He pulled on the rope, he steadied the 'cello.

''I can't pull on the rope again,'' he said, ''without letting go of
the 'cello.''

Fenchurch leant down.

''I'm steadying the 'cello,'' she said. ''You pull on the rope.''

The 'cello eased up level with the  doorway,  swinging  slightly,
and Fenchurch manoeuvred it inside.

''Come on up yourself,'' she called down.

Arthur picked up his bag of  goodies  and  went  in  through  the
stable doors, tingling.

The bottom room, which he had seen  briefly  before,  was  pretty
rough and full of junk. A large old cast-iron mangle stood there,
a surprising number of kitchen sinks  were  piled  in  a  corner.
There  was  also,  Arthur was momentarily alarmed to see, a pram,
but it was very old and uncomplicatedly full of books.

The floor was old stained concrete, excitingly cracked. And  this
was  the  measure  of  Arthur's  mood as he stared up the rickety
wooden steps in the far corner. Even  a  cracked  concrete  floor
seemed to him an almost unbearably sensual thing.

''An architect friend of mine keeps on telling me how  he  can  do
wonderful  things  with  this  place,'' said Fenchurch chattily as
Arthur emerged through the floor.  ''He  keeps  on  coming  round,
standing  in  stunned amazement muttering about space and objects
and events and marvellous qualities of light, then says he  needs
a  pencil  and  disappears  for  weeks.  Wonderful  things  have,
therefore, so far failed to happen to it.''

In fact, thought Arthur as he looked about, the upper room was at
least  reasonably  wonderful  anyway.  It  was  simply decorated,
furnished with things made out of cushions and also a stereo  set
with  speakers  which  would  have  impressed the guys who put up
Stonehenge.

There were flowers  which  were  pale  and  pictures  which  were
interesting.

There was a sort of gallery structure in  the  roof  space  which
held  a  bed  and also a bathroom which, Fenchurch explained, you
could actually swing a cat in. ''But,'' she added, ''only if it  was
a reasonably patient cat and didn't mind a few nasty cracks about
the head. So. here you are.''

''Yes.''

They looked at each other for a moment.

The moment became a longer moment, and suddenly  it  was  a  very
long moment, so long one could hardly tell where all the time was
coming from.

For Arthur, who could usually contrive to feel self-conscious  if
left  alone for long enough with a Swiss Cheese plant, the moment
was one of sustained revelation. He felt on  the  sudden  like  a
cramped  and  zoo-born  animal who awakes one morning to find the
door to his cage hanging quietly open and the savannah stretching
grey  and  pink  to  the distant rising sun, while all around new
sounds are waking.

He wondered what the new sounds were as he gazed  at  her  openly
wondering face and her eyes that smiled with a shared surprise.

He hadn't realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a  voice
that  brings  you answers to the questions you continually ask of
it, had never consciously detected it  or  recognized  its  tones
till it now said something it had never said to him before, which
was ''Yes''.

Fenchurch dropped her eyes away at last, with a tiny shake of her
head.

''I know,'' she said. ''I shall have to remember,'' she added,  ''that
you  are  the sort of person who cannot hold on to a simple piece
of paper for two minutes without winning a raffle with it.''

She turned away.

''Let's go for a walk,'' she said quickly. ''Hyde Park. I'll  change
into something less suitable.''

She was dressed in a rather severe dark dress, not a particularly
shapely one, and it didn't really suit her.

''I wear it specially for my 'cello teacher,'' she  said.  ''He's  a
nice  boy,  but  I sometimes think all that bowing gets him a bit
excited. I'll be down in a moment.''

She ran lightly up the steps to the  gallery  above,  and  called
down, ''Put the bottle in the fridge for later.''

He noticed as he slipped the champagne bottle into the door  that
it had an identical twin to sit next to.

He walked over to the  window  and  looked  out.  He  turned  and
started to look at her records. From above he heard the rustle of
her dress fall to the ground. He talked to himself about the sort
of  person  he  was.  He  told  himself very firmly that for this
moment  at  least  he  would  keep  his  eyes  very  firmly   and
steadfastly  locked  on  to  the  spines of her records, read the
titles, nod appreciatively, count the blasted things  if  he  had
to. He would keep his head down.

This he completely, utterly and abjectly failed to do.

She was staring down at him with such intensity that  she  seemed
hardly to notice that he was looking up at her. Then suddenly she
shook her head, dropped  the  light  sundress  over  herself  and
disappeared quickly into the bathroom.

She emerged a moment later, all smiles and with a sunhat and came
tripping  down  the  steps with extraordinary lightness. It was a
strange kind of dancing motion she had. She saw that  he  noticed
it and put her head slightly on one side.

''Like it?'' she said.

''You look gorgeous,'' he said simply, because she did.

''Hmmmm,'' she said, as if he hadn't really answered her question.

She closed the upstairs front door which had stood open all  this
time, and looked around the little room to see that it was all in
a fit state to be left on its own  for  a  while.  Arthur's  eyes
followed  hers  around,  and  while  he  was looking in the other
direction she slipped something out of  a  drawer  and  into  the
canvas bag she was carrying.

Arthur looked back at her.

''Ready?''

''Did you know,'' she said with a  slightly  puzzled  smile,  ''that
there's something wrong with me?''

Her directness caught Arthur unprepared.

''Well,'' he said, ''I'd heard some vague sort of ...''

''I wonder how much you do know about me,'' she said. ''I you  heard
it  from where I think you heard then that's not it. Russell just
sort of makes stuff up, because he can't deal with what it really
is.''

A pang of worry went through Arthur.

''Then what is it?'' he said. ''Can you tell me?''

''Don't worry,'' she said, ''it's nothing bad at all. Just  unusual.
Very very unusual.''

She touched his hand, and  then  leant  forward  and  kissed  him
briefly.

''I shall be very interested to know,'' she said, ''if you manage to
work out what it is this evening.''

Arthur felt that if someone tapped him at  that  point  he  would
have  chimed,  like  the  deep  sustained  rolling chime his grey
fishbowl made when he flicked it with his thumbnail.

\chapter{}

Ford Prefect was irritated to be continually wakened by the sound
of gunfire.

He slid himself out of the  maintenance  hatchway  which  he  had
fashioned  into  a  bunk  for  himself  by  disabling some of the
noisier machinery in his vicinity and padding it with towels.  He
slung  himself  down  the access ladder and prowled the corridors
moodily.

They were claustrophobic and ill-lit, and what  light  there  was
was  continually  flickering and dimming as power surged this way
and that through the ship, causing heavy vibrations  and  rasping
humming noises.

That wasn't it, though.

He paused and leaned back against  the  wall  as  something  that
looked like a small silver power drill flew past him down the dim
corridor with a nasty searing screech.

That wasn't it either.

He clambered listlessly through a bulkhead door and found himself
in a larger corridor, though still ill-lit.

The ship lurched. It had been doing this a fair bit, but this was
heavier.  A  small  platoon  of robots weent by making a terrible
clattering.

Still not it, though.

Acrid smoke was drifting up from one end of the corridor,  so  he
walked along it in the other direction.

He passed a series of observation monitors  let  into  the  walls
behind plates of toughened but still badly scratched perspex.

One of them showed some horrible  green  scaly  reptilian  figure
ranting  and raving about the Single Transferable Vote system. It
was hard to tell whether he was for or against it, but he clearly
felt very strongly about it. Ford turned the sound down.

That wasn't it, though.

He passed another monitor. It was showing a commercial  for  some
brand  of  toothpaste that would apparently make you feel free if
you used it. There was nasty blaring music with it too, but  that
wasn't it.

He came upon another, much larger three-dimensional  screen  that
was monitoring the outside of the vast silver Xaxisian ship.

As he  watched,  a  thousand  horribly  beweaponed  Zirzla  robot
starcruisers  came  searing  round  the  dark  shadow  of a moon,
silhouetted against the blinding disc of the star Xaxis, and  the
ship  simultaneously  unleashed  a  vicious  blaze  of  hideously
incomprehensible forces from all its orifices against them.

That was it.

Ford shook his head irritably and rubbed his eyes. He slumped  on
the  wrecked  body  of a dull silver robot which clearly had been
burning earlier on, but had now cooled down enough to sit on.

He yawned and dug his copy of the  Hitch  Hiker's  Guide  to  the
Galaxy  out  of his satchel. He activated the screen, and flicked
idly through  some  level  three  entries  and  some  level  four
entries.  He  was  looking for some good insomnia cures. He found
Rest, which was what he reckoned he needed.  He  found  Rest  and
Recuperation  and  was  about  to  pass on when he suddenly had a
better idea. He looked up at the monitor screen. The  battle  was
raging  more  fiercely  every second and the noise was appalling.
The ship juddered, screamed, and lurched  as  each  new  bolt  of
stunning energy was delivered or received.

He looked back down at the Guide again and flipped through a  few
likely  locations.  He suddenly laughed, and then rummaged in his
satchel again.

He pulled out a small memory dump module, wiped off the fluff and
biscuit  crumbs,  and plugged it into an interface on the back of
the Guide.

When all the information that he could  think  was  relevant  had
been  dumped  into  the  module, he unplugged it again, tossed it
lightly in the palm of his  hand,  put  the  Guide  away  in  his
satchel,  smirked, and went in search of the ship's computer data
banks.

\chapter{}

''The purpose of having the sun go low in  the  evenings,  in  the
summer,  especially  in  parks,'' said the voice earnestly, ''is to
make girl's breasts bob up and down more clearly to the eye. I am
convinced that this is the case.''

Arthur and Fenchurch giggled about this to  each  other  as  they
passed. She hugged him more tightly for a moment.

''And I am certain,'' said the frizzy ginger-haired youth with  the
long  thin  nose  who  was epostulating from his deckchair by the
side of the Serpentine, ''that if one worked the argument through,
one  would find that it flowed with perfect naturalness and logic
from everything,'' he insisted to his thin  dark-haired  companion
who was slumped in the next door deckchair feeling dejected about
his spots, ''that Darwin was going on about. This is certain. This
is indisputable. And,'' he added, ''I love it.''

He  turned  sharply  and  squinted  through  his  spectacles   at
Fenchurch.  Arthur  steered  her away and could feel her silently
quaking.

''Next guess,'' she said, when she had stopped giggling, ''come on.''

''All right,'' he said,  ''your  elbow.  Your  left  elbow.  There's
something wrong with your left elbow.''

''Wrong again,'' she said, ''completely wrong. You're on  completely
the wrong track.''

The summer sun was sinking through the tress in the park, looking
as  if - Let's not mince words. Hyde Park is stunning. Everything
about it is stunning except for the rubbish on  Monday  mornings.
Even  the ducks are stunning. Anyone who can go through Hyde Park
on a summer's evening and not feel moved by it is probably  going
through in an ambulance with the sheet pulled over their face.

It is a park in which people do more  extraordinary  things  than
they  do  elsewhere.  Arthur  and Fenchurch found a man in shorts
practising the bagpipes to himself under a tree. The piper paused
to  chase  off  an  American couple who had tried, timidly to put
some coins on the box his bagpipes came in.

''No!'' he shouted at them, ''go away! I'm only practising.''

He started resolutely to reinflate his bag, but  even  the  noise
this made could not disfigure their mood.

Arthur put his arms around her and moved them slowly downwards.

''I don't think it can be your bottom,'' he said  after  a  while,''
there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with that at all.''

''Yes,'' she agreed, ''there's  absolutely  nothing  wrong  with  my
bottom.''

They kissed for so  long  that  eventually  the  piper  went  and
practised on the other side of the tree.

''I'll tell you a story,'' said Arthur.

''Good.''

They found a patch of grass which was relatively free of  couples
actually  lying  on  top  of  each  other and sat and watched the
stunning ducks and the low sunlight rippling on the  water  which
ran beneath the stunning ducks.

''A story,'' said Fenchurch, cuddling his arm to her.

''Which will tell you something of the sort of things that  happen
to me. It's absolutely true.''

''You know sometimes people tell you stories that are supposed  to
be  something that happened to their wife's cousin's best friend,
but actually probably got made up somewhere along the line.''

''Well, it's like one of those stories, except  that  it  actually
happened,  and I know it actually happened, because the person it
actually happened to was me.''

''Like the raffle ticket.''

Arthur laughed. ''Yes. I had a train to catch,''  he  went  on.  ''I
arrived at the station ...''

''Did I ever tell you,'' interrupted Fenchurch, ''what  happened  to
my parents in a station?''

''Yes,'' said Arthur, ''you did.''

''Just checking.''

Arthur glanced at his watch. ''I suppose we could think of getting
back,'' he said.

''Tell me the story,'' said Fenchurch firmly. ''You arrived  at  the
station.''

''I was about twenty minutes early. I'd got the time of the  train
wrong. I suppose it is at least equally possible,'' he added after
a moment's reflection, ''that British Rail had got the time of the
train wrong. Hadn't occurred to me before.''

''Get on with it.'' Fenchurch laughed.

''So I bought a newspaper, to do the crossword, and  went  to  the
buffet to get a cup of coffee.''

''You do the crossword?''

''Yes.''

''Which one?''

''The Guardian usually.''

''I think it tries to be too cute. I prefer  the  Times.  Did  you
solve it?''

''What?''

''The crossword in the Guardian.''

''I haven't had a chance to look at it  yet,''  said  Arthur,  ''I'm
still trying to buy the coffee.''

''All right then. Buy the coffee.''

''I'm buying it. I am also,'' said Arthur, ''buying some biscuits.''

''What sort?''

''Rich Tea.''

''Good choice.''

''I like them. Laden with all these new possessions, I go and  sit
at a table. And don't ask me what the table was like because this
was some time ago and I can't remember. It was probably round.''

''All right.''

''So let me give you the layout. Me sitting at the  table.  On  my
left,  the  newspaper.  On  my  right,  the cup of coffee. In the
middle of the table, the packet of biscuits.''

''I see it perfectly.''

''What you don't see,'' said Arthur, ''because I  haven't  mentioned
him  yet,  is the guy sitting at the table already. He is sitting
there opposite me.''

''What's he like?''

''Perfectly ordinary. Briefcase. Business suit. He  didn't  look,''
said Arthur, ''as if he was about to do anything weird.''

''Ah. I know the type. What did he do?''

''He did this. He leaned across the table, picked up the packet of
biscuits, tore it open, took one out, and ...''

''What?''

''Ate it.''

''What?''

''He ate it.''

Fenchurch looked at him in astonishment. ''What on Earth  did  you
do?''

''Well, in the circumstances I did what any red-blooded Englishman
would do. I was compelled,'' said Arthur, ''to ignore it.''

''What? Why?''

''Well, it's not the sort of thing you're trained  for  is  it?  I
searched  my soul, and discovered that there was nothing anywhere
in my upbringing, experience or even primal instincts to tell  me
how  to  react  to  someone who has quite simply, calmly, sitting
right there in front of me, stolen one of my biscuits.''

''Well, you could ...'' Fenchurch thought about it. ''I must say I'm
not sure what I would have done either. So what happened?''

''I stared furiously at the crossword,'' said Arthur. ''Couldn't  do
a  single clue, took a sip of coffee, it was too hot to drink, so
there was nothing for it. I braced  myself.  I  took  a  biscuit,
trying  very  hard not to notice,'' he added, ''that the packet was
already mysteriously open ...''

''But you're fighting back, taking a tough line.''

''After my fashion,  yes.  I  ate  the  biscuit.  I  ate  it  very
deliberately  and  visibly,  so that he would have no doubt as to
what it was I was doing. When I eat a biscuit,'' Arthur said,  ''it
stays eaten.''

''So what did he do?''

''Took another one. Honestly,'' insisted Arthur, ''this  is  exactly
what  happened.  He  took  another  biscuit,  he ate it. Clear as
daylight. Certain as we are sitting on the ground.''

Fenchurch stirred uncomfortably.

''And the  problem  was,''  said  Arthur,  ''that  having  not  said
anything  the  first  time, it was somehow even more difficult to
broach the subject the second  time  around.  What  do  you  say?
`Excuse  me  ...  I couldn't help noticing, er ...' Doesn't work.
No, I ignored  it  with,  if  anything,  even  more  vigour  than
previously.''

''My man ...''

''Stared at the crossword, again, still couldn't budge  a  bit  of
it,  so  showing  some  of  the  spirit  that  Henry  V did on St
Crispin's Day ...''

''What?''

''I went into the breach again. I  took,''  said  Arthur,  ''another
biscuit. And for an instant our eyes met.''

''Like this?''

''Yes, well, no, not quite like that. But they met.  Just  for  an
instant.  And  we  both  looked away. But I am here to tell you,''
said Arthur, ''that there was a little  electricity  in  the  air.
There  was  a little tension building up over the table. At about
this time.''

''I can imagine.''

''We went through the whole packet like this.  Him,  me,  him,  me
...''

''The whole packet?''

''Well it was only eight biscuits but it seemed like a lifetime of
biscuits  we were getting through at this point. Gladiators could
hardly have had a tougher time.''

''Gladiators,'' said Fenchurch, ''would have had to  do  it  in  the
sun. More physically gruelling.''

''There is that. So. When the empty packet was lying dead  between
us  the  man  at  last got up, having done his worst, and left. I
heaved a sigh of relief, of course. As it happened, my train  was
announced  a  moment or two later, so I finished my coffee, stood
up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper ...''

''Yes?''

''Were my biscuits.''

''What?'' said Fenchurch. ''What?''

''True.''

''No!'' She gasped and tossed herself back on the grass laughing.

She sat up again.

''You completely nitwit,'' she hooted, ''you almost  completely  and
utterly foolish person.''

She pushed him backwards, rolled over him, kissed him and  rolled
off again. He was surprised at how light she was.

''Now you tell me a story.''

''I thought,'' she said putting on a low  husky  voice,  ''that  you
were very keen to get back.''

''No hurry,'' he said airily, ''I want you to tell me a story.''

She looked out over the kale and pondered.

''All right,'' she said, ''it's only a short one. And not funny like
yours, but ... Anyway.''

She looked down. Arthur could feel that it was one of those sorts
of  moments.  The air seemed to stand still around them, waiting.
Arthur wished that the  air  would  go  away  and  mind  its  own
business.

''When I was a kid,'' she said. ''These sort of stories always start
like this, don't they, `When I was a kid ...' Anyway. This is the
bit where the girl suddenly says, `When I was a kid'  and  starts
to  unburden herself. We have got to that bit. When I was a kid I
had this picture hanging over the foot of my bed ... What do  you
think of it so far?''

''I like it. I think it's moving well. You're getting the  bedroom
interest  in  nice  and  early.  We  could  probably do with some
development with the picture.''

''It was one of those  pictures  that  children  are  supposed  to
like,''  she  said,  ''but  don't. Full of endearing little animals
doing endearing things, you know?''

''I know. I was plagued with them too. Rabbits in waistcoats.''

''Exactly. These rabbits were in fact on a raft, as were  assorted
rats and owls. There may even have been a reindeer.''

''On the raft.''

''On the raft. And a boy was sitting on the raft.''

''Among the rabbits in waistcoats and the owls and the reindeer.''

''Precisely there. A boy of the cheery gypsy ragamuffin variety.''

''Ugh.''

''The picture worried me, I must say. There was an otter  swimming
in  front  of the raft, and I used to lie awake at night worrying
about this otter having to pull the raft, with all these wretched
animals  on it who shouldn't even be on a raft, and the otter had
such a thin tail to pull it with I thought it must  hurt  pulling
it all the time. Worried me. Not badly, but just vaguely, all the
time.

''Then one day - and remember I'd been  looking  at  this  picture
every  night  for  years - I suddenly noticed that the raft had a
sail. Never seen it before. The  otter  was  fine,  he  was  just
swimming along.''

She shrugged.

''Good story?'' she said.

''Ends weakly,'' said Arthur, ''leaves the audience crying `Yes, but
what  of  it?' Fine up till there, but needs a final sting before
the credits.''

Fenchurch laughed and hugged her legs.

''It was just such a sudden revelation, years of almost  unnoticed
worry  just  dropping  away,  like taking off heavy weights, like
black and white becoming colour, like a dry stick suddenly  being
watered. The sudden shift of perspective that says `Put away your
worries, the world is a good and perfect place.  It  is  in  fact
very  easy.' You probably thing I'm saying that because I'm going
to say that I felt like that this afternoon or  something,  don't
you?''

''Well, I ...'' said Arthur, his composure suddenly shattered.

''Well, it's all right,'' she said, ''I did. That's exactly  what  I
felt.  But  you  see,  I've  felt  that  before,  even  stronger.
Incredibly strongly. I'm afraid I'm a bit of  a  one,''  she  said
gazing off into the distance, ''for sudden startling revelations.''

Arthur was at  sea,  could  hardly  speak,  and  felt  it  wiser,
therefore, for the moment not to try.

''It was very  odd,''  she  said,  much  as  one  of  the  pursuing
Egyptians  might have said that the behaviour of the Red Sea when
Moses waved his rod at it was a little on the strange side.

''Very odd,'' she repeated, ''for days before, the strangest feeling
had  been building in me, as if I was going to give birth. No, it
wasn't like that in fact, it was more as if I was being connected
into  something,  bit by bit. No, not even that; it was as if the
whole of the Earth, through me, was going to ...''

''Does the number,'' said Arthur gently, ''forty-two  mean  anything
to you at all?''

''What? No, what are you talking about?'' exclaimed Fenchurch.

''Just a thought,'' murmured Arthur.

''Arthur, I mean this, this is very real to me, this is serious.''

''I was being perfectly serious,''  said  Arthur.  ''It's  just  the
Universe I'm never quite sure about.''

''What do you mean by that?''

''Tell me the rest of it,'' he said. ''Don't worry if it sounds odd.
Believe  me,  you  are  talking  to someone who has seen a lot of
stuff,'' he added, ''that is odd. And I don't mean biscuits.''

She nodded, and seemed to believe him. Suddenly, she gripped  his
arm.

''It was so simple,'' she said, ''so wonderfully and extraordinarily
simple, when it came.''

''What was it?'' said Arthur quietly.

''Arthur, you see,'' she said, ''that's what I no longer  know.  And
the loss is unbearable. If I try to think back to it, it all goes
flickery and jumpy, and if I try too hard, I get as  far  as  the
teacup and I just black out.''

''What?''

''Well, like your story,'' she said, ''the best bit  happened  in  a
cafe.  I  was  sitting there, having a cup of tea. This was after
days of this build up, the feeling of becoming  connected  up.  I
think I was buzzing gently. And there was some work going on at a
building site opposite the cafe, and I was  watching  it  through
the window, over the rim of my teacup, which I always find is the
nicest way of watching other people working. And suddenly,  there
it  was  in  my  mind, this message from somewhere. And it was so
simple. It made such sense of  everything.  I  just  sat  up  and
thought,  `Oh! Oh, well that's all right then.' I was so startled
I almost dropped my teacup, in fact I think I did drop it.  Yes,''
she  added  thoughtfully,  ''I'm  sure  I did. How much sense am I
making?''

''It was fine up to the bit about the teacup.''

She shook her head, and shook it again, as if trying to clear it,
which is what she was trying to do.

''Well that's it,'' she said. ''Fine up to the bit about the teacup.
That was the point at which it seemed to me quite literally as if
the world exploded.''

''What ...?''

''I  know  it  sounds   crazy,   and   everybody   says   it   was
hallucinations,  but  if  that  was  hallucinations  then  I have
hallucinations in big screen 3D with 16-track  Dolby  Stereo  and
should  probably  hire  myself  out  to people who are bored with
shark movies. It was as if the ground was literally  ripped  from
under my feet, and ... and ...''

She patted the grass lightly, as if  for  reassurance,  and  then
seemed to change her mind about what she was going to say.

''And I woke up in hospital. I suppose I've been in and  out  ever
since.  And  that's  why  I have an instinctive nervousness,'' she
said, ''of sudden startling revelations that's everything's  going
to be all right.'' She looked up at him.

Arthur had simply ceased  to  worry  himself  about  the  strange
anomalies surrounding his return to his home world, or rather had
consigned them to that part of his mind marked ''Things  to  think
about - Urgent.'' ''Here is the world,'' he had told himself. ''Here,
for whatever reason, is the world, and here it stays. With me  on
it.''  But  now  it seemed to go swimmy around him, as it had that
night in the car when Fenchurch's brother had told him the  silly
stories  about  the  CIA  agent  in the reservoir. The trees went
swimmy. The lake went swimmy, but this was perfectly natural  and
nothing  to be alarmed by because a grey goose had just landed on
it. The geese were having a great relaxed time and had  no  major
answers they wished to know the questions to.

''Anyway,'' said Fenchurch, suddenly and brightly and with a  wide-
eyed smile, ''there is something wrong with part of me, and you've
got to find out what it is. We'll go home.''

Arthur shook his head.

''What's the matter?'' she said.

Arthur had shaken his head, not to disagree with  her  suggestion
which  he  thought  was a truly excellent one, one of the world's
great suggestions, but because he was just for a moment trying to
free himself of the recurring impression he had that just when he
was least expecting it the Universe would suddenly leap out  from
behind a door and go boo at him.

''I'm just trying to get this entirely clear  in  my  mind,''  said
Arthur,  ''you  say you felt as if the Earth actually ... exploded
...''

''Yes. More than felt.''

''Which is what everybody else  says,''  he  said  hesitantly,  ''is
hallucinations?''

''Yes, but Arthur that's ridiculous. People think that if you just
say  `hallucinations' it explains anything you want it to explain
and eventually whatever it is you can't understand will  just  go
away.  It's  just a word, it doesn't explain anything. It doesn't
explain why the dolphins disappeared.''

''No,'' said Arthur. ''No,'' he added thoughtfully.  ''No,''  he  added
again, even more thoughtfully. ''What?'' he said at last.

''Doesn't explain the dolphins disappearing.''

''No,'' said Arthur, ''I see that. Which dolphins do you mean?''

''What do you mean which dolphins? I'm talking about when all  the
dolphins disappeared.''

She put her hand on his knee, which made  him  realize  that  the
tingling  going up and down his spine was not her gently stroking
his back, and must instead be one of the nasty creepy feelings he
so often got when people were trying to explain things to him.

''The dolphins?''

''Yes.''

''All the dolphins,'' said Arthur, ''disappeared?''

''Yes.''

''The dolphins? You're saying the  dolphins  all  disappeared?  Is
this,''  said Arthur, trying to be absolutely clear on this point,
''what you're saying?''

''Arthur where have you been for heaven's sake? The  dolphins  all
disappeared on the same day I ...''

She stared him intently in his startled eyes.

''What ...?''

''No dolphins. All gone. Vanished.''

She searched his face.

''Did you really not know that?''

It was clear from his startled expression that he did not.

''Where did they go?'' he asked.

''No one knows. That's what vanished means.''  She  paused.  ''Well,
there is one man who says he knows about it, but everyone says he
lives in California,'' she said, ''and is mad. I  was  thinking  of
going  to see him because it seems the only lead I've got on what
happened to me.''

She shrugged, and then looked at him long and  quietly.  She  lay
her hand on the side of his face.

''I really would like to know where you've  been,''  she  said.  ''I
think something terrible happened to you then as well. And that's
why we recognized each other.''

She glanced around the park, which was now  being  gathered  into
the clutches of dusk.

''Well,'' she said, ''now you've got someone you can tell.''

Arthur slowly let out a long year of a sigh.

''It is,'' he said, ''a very long story.''

Fenchurch leaned across him and drew over her canvas bag.

''Is it anything to do with this?'' she said. The  thing  she  took
out  of her bag was battered and travelworn as it had been hurled
into prehistoric rivers, baked under the sun that shines so redly
on  the  deserts  of  Kakrafoon, half-buried in the marbled sands
that fringe the heady vapoured oceans of Santraginus V, frozen on
the  glaciers  of  the moon of Jaglan Beta, sat on, kicked around
spaceships, scuffed and generally abused, and  since  its  makers
had  thought  that  these  were  exactly the sorts of things that
might happen to it, they had thoughtfully encased it in a  sturdy
plastic  cover  and written on it, in large friendly letters, the
words ''Don't Panic''.

''Where did you get this?'' said Arthur, startled, taking  it  from
her.

''Ah,'' she said, ''I thought it was yours. In  Russell's  car  that
night. You dropped it. Have you been to many of these places?''

Arthur drew the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy from its cover.
It  was like a small, thin, flexible lap computer. He tapped some
buttons till the screen flared with text.

''A few,'' he said.

''Can we go to them?''

''What? No,'' said Arthur abruptly,  then  relented,  but  relented
warily.  ''Do  you want to?'' he said, hoping for the answer no. It
was an act of great generosity on his part not to say, ''You don't
want to, do you?'' which expects it.

''Yes,'' she said. ''I want to know what  the  message  was  that  I
lost,  and where it came from. Because I don't think,'' she added,
standing up and looking round the increasing gloom of  the  park,
''that it came from here.''

''I'm not even sure,'' she further added, slipping her  arm  around
Arthur's waist, ''that I know where here is.''

\chapter{}

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is, as  has  been  remarked
before  often and accurately, a pretty startling kind of a thing.
It is, essentially, as the  title  implies,  a  guide  book.  The
problem  is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a
sizeable portion of which are continually clogging up the  civil,
commercial  and  criminal  courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and
especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this.

The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem.

This is:

Change.

Read it through again and you'll get it.

The Galaxy is a rapidly changing place.  There  is,  frankly,  so
much  of  it,  every  bit  of  which  is continually on the move,
continually changing. A bit of a nightmare, you might think,  for
a scrupulous and conscientious editor diligently striving to keep
this massively detailed and complex electronic  tome  abreast  of
all  the  changing  circumstances  and conditions that the Galaxy
throws up every minute of every hour of every day, and you  would
be wrong. Where you would be wrong would be in failing to realize
that the editor, like all the editors of the Guide has ever  had,
has  no  real  grasp  of  the meanings of the words ''scrupulous'',
''conscientious'' or ''diligent'', and tends to  get  his  nightmares
through a straw.

Entries tend to get  updated  or  not  across  the  Sub-Etha  Net
according to if they read good.

Take for example, the case of Brequinda on the Foth  of  Avalars,
famed  in myth, legend and stultifyingly dull tri-d mini-serieses
as home of the magnificent and magical Fuolornis Fire Dragon.

In Ancient days, when Fragilis sang and Saxaquine of the Quenelux
held  sway,  when  the air was sweet and the nights fragrant, but
everyone somehow managed to be, or so they claimed, though how on
earth  they  could  have  thought  that  anyone was even remotely
likely to believe such a preposterous claim  what  with  all  the
sweet  air  and  fragrant  nights  and whatnot is anyone's guess,
virgins, it was not possible to heave a brick on Brequinda in the
Foth  of  Avalars without hitting at least half a dozen Fuolornis
Fire Dragons.

Whether you would want to do that is another matter.

Not  that  Fire  Dragons  weren't  an  essentially   peace-loving
species,  because  they  were.  They  adored it to bits, and this
wholesale adoring of things to  bits  was  often  in  itself  the
problem:  one so often hurts the one one loves, especially if one
is a Fuolornis Fire Dragon with breath like a rocket booster  and
teeth  like a park fence. Another problem was that once they were
in the mood they often went on to hurt quite a lot  of  the  ones
that  other  people loved as well. Add to all that the relatively
small number of madmen who actually went around the place heaving
bricks,  and  you end up with a lot of people on Brequinda in the
Foth of Avalars getting seriously hurt by dragons.

But did they mind? They did not.

Were they heard to bemoan their fate? No.

The Fuolornis Fire Dragons were revered throughout the  lands  of
Brequinda  in  the  Foth of valors for their savage beauty, their
noble ways and their habit of biting  people  who  didn't  revere
them.

Why was this?

The answer was simple.

Sex.

There is, for some unfathomed reason, something almost unbearably
sexy  about having huge fire-breathing magical dragons flying low
about the sky on moonlit nights which were already dangerously on
the sweet and fragrant side.

Why this should be so, the romance-besotted people  of  Brequinda
in  the  Foth  of  Avalars could not have told you, and would not
have stopped to discuss the matter once the  effect  was  up  and
going,  for  no  sooner would a flock of half a dozen silk-winged
leather-bodied Fuolornis Fire Dragons heave into sight across the
evening  horizon  than half the people of Brequinda are scurrying
off into the woods with the other half, there  to  spend  a  busy
breathless  night together and emerge with the first rays of dawn
all smiling and happy and still claiming, rather endearingly,  to
be virgins, if rather flushed and sticky virgins.

Pheromones, some researchers said.

Something sonic, others claimed.

The place was always stiff with researchers trying to get to  the
bottom of it all and taking a very long time about it.

Not surprisingly, the Guide's graphically enticing description of
the  general  state  of  affairs  on this planet has proved to be
astonishingly popular amongst hitch-hikers who  allow  themselves
to  be  guided  by it, and so it has simply never been taken out,
and it is therefore left to latter-day travellers to find out for
themselves  that  today's  modern  Brequinda in the City State of
Avalars is now little more than concrete, strip joints and Dragon
Burger Bars.

\chapter{}

The night in Islington was sweet and fragrant.

There were, of course, no Fuolornis Fire  Dragons  about  in  the
alley,  but  if  any  had chanced by they might just as well have
sloped off across the road for a pizza, for they were  not  going
to be needed.

Had an emergency cropped up while they were still in  the  middle
of  their American Hots with extra anchovy they could always have
sent across a message to put Dire Straits on the stereo, which is
now known to have much the same effect.

''No,'' said Fenchurch, ''not yet.''

Arthur put Dire Straits on the stereo. Fenchurch pushed ajar  the
upstairs front door to let in a little more of the sweet fragrant
night air. They both sat on some of the  furniture  made  out  of
cushions, very close to the open bottle of champagne.

''No,'' said Fenchurch, ''not till you've  found  out  what's  wrong
with  me,  which  bit. But I suppose,'' she added very, very, very
quietly, ''that we may as well start with where your hand is now.''

Arthur said, ''So which way do I go?''

''Down,'' said Fenchurch, ''on this occasion.''

He moved his hand.

''Down,'' she said, ''is in fact the other way.''

''Oh yes.''

Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability  to  make  a  Schecter
Custom  Stratocaster  hoot  and  sing  like  angels on a Saturday
night, exhausted from being good all week  and  needing  a  stiff
beer  -  which  is  not strictly relevant at this point since the
record hadn't yet got to that bit, but there  will  be  too  much
else  going  on when it does, and furthermore the chronicler does
not intend to sit here with a track list and a stopwatch,  so  it
seems  best  to  mention  it  now  while  things are still moving
slowly.

''And so we come,'' said Arthur, ''to your knee. There is  something
terribly and tragically wrong with your left knee.''

''My left knee,'' said Fenchurch, ''is absolutely fine.''

''Do it is.''

''Did you know that ...''

''What?''

''Ahm, it's all right. I can tell you do. No, keep going.''

''So it has to be something to do with your feet ...''

She  smiled  in  the  dim  light,  and  wriggled  her   shoulders
noncommittally  against the cushions. Since there are cushions in
the Universe, on Squornshellous Beta to be exact, two  worlds  in
from  the  swampland of the mattresses, that actively enjoy being
wriggled against, particularly if it's noncommittally because  of
the  syncopated way in which the shoulders move, it's a pity they
weren't there. They weren't, but such is life.

Arthur held  her  left  foot  in  his  lap  and  looked  it  over
carefully.  All  kinds of stuff about the way her dress fell away
from  her  legs  was  making  it  difficult  for  him  to   think
particularly clearly at this point.

''I have to admit,'' he said, ''that I really don't  know  what  I'm
looking for.''

''You'll know when you find it,''  she  said.  ''Really  you  will.''
There was a slight catch in her voice. ''It's not that one.''

Feeling increasingly puzzled, Arthur let her left  foot  down  on
the  floor  and  moved  himself  around so that he could take her
right foot. She moved forward, put her arms round and kissed him,
because  the  record  had  got to that bit which, if you knew the
record, you would know made it impossible not to do this.

Then she gave him her right foot.

He stroked it, ran his fingers round her ankle, under  her  toes,
along her instep, could find nothing wrong with it.

She watched him with great amusement, laughed and shook her head.

''No, don't stop,'' she said, but it's not that one now.''

Arthur stopped, and frowned at her left foot on the floor.

''Don't stop.''

He stroked her right foot, ran  his  fingers  around  her  ankle,
under  her  toes,  along  her  instep  and  said,  ''You mean it's
something to do with which leg I'm holding ...?''

She did another of the shrugs which would have brought  such  joy
into the life of a simple cushion from Squornshellous Beta.

He frowned.

''Pick me up,'' she said quietly.

He let her right foot down to the floor and stood up. So did she.
He  picked her up in his arms and they kissed again. This went on
for a while, then she said, ''Now put me down again.''

Still puzzled, he did so.

''Well?''

She looked at him almost challengingly.

''So what's wrong with my feet?'' she said.

Arthur still did not understand. He sat on the  floor,  then  got
down  on  his hands and knees to look at her feet, in situ, as it
were,  in  their  normal  habitat.  And  as  he  looked  closely,
something  odd  struck  him.  He  pit  his head right down to the
ground and peered. There was a long pause. He sat back heavily.

''Yes,'' he said, ''I see what's wrong with your  feet.  They  don't
touch the ground.''

''So ... so what do you think ...?''

Arthur looked up at her quickly and  saw  the  deep  apprehension
making her eyes suddenly dark. She bit her lip and was trembling.

''What do ...'' she stammered. ''Are you ...?'' She  shook  the  hair
forwards over her eyes that were filling with dark fearful tears.

He stood up quickly, put his arms  around  her  and  gave  her  a
single kiss.

''Perhaps you can do what I can do,'' he said, and walked  straight
out of her upstairs front door.

The record got to the good bit.

\chapter{}

The battle raged on about the star  of  Xaxis.  Hundreds  of  the
fierce  and horribly beweaponed Zirzla ships had now been smashed
and wrenched to atoms by the withering  forces  the  huge  silver
Xaxisian ship was able to deploy.

Part of the moon had gone too, blasted away by those same blazing
forceguns  that  ripped  the  very fabric of space as they passed
through it.

The Zirzla ships that remained, horribly beweaponed  though  they
were,  were now hopelessly outclassed by the devastating power of
the Xaxisian ship, and were fleeing for cover behind the  rapidly
disintegrating  moon, when the Xaxisian ship, in hurtling pursuit
behind them, suddenly announced that it needed a holiday and left
the field of battle.

All was redoubled fear and consternation for a  moment,  but  the
ship was gone.

With the stupendous powers at its command it flitted across  vast
tracts  of  irrationally shaped space, quickly, effortlessly, and
above all, quietly.

Deep in his greasy, smelly bunk, fashioned out of  a  maintenance
hatchway,  Ford  Prefect  slept among his towels, dreaming of old
haunts. He dreamed at one point in his slumbers of New York.

In his dream he was walking late at night along  the  East  Side,
beside  the river which had become so extravagantly polluted that
new lifeforms were now emerging from it spontaneously,  demanding
welfare and voting rights.

One of those now floated past, waving. Ford waved back.

The thing thrashed to the shore and struggled up the bank.

''Hi,'' it said, ''I've just been created. I'm completely new to the
Universe in all respects. Is there anything you can tell me?''

''Phew,'' said Ford, a little nonplussed, ''I  can  tell  you  where
some bars are, I guess.''

''What about love and happiness. I sense  deep  needs  for  things
like that,'' it said, waving its tentacles. ''Got any leads there?''

''You can get some like what you require,'' said Ford, ''on  Seventh
Avenue.''

''I instinctively feel,'' said the creature, urgently, ''that I need
to be beautiful. Am I?''

''You're pretty direct, aren't you?''

''No point in mucking about. Am I?''

''To me?'' said Ford. ''No. But listen,'' he added  after  a  moment,
''most  people  make  out,  you  know. Are there and like you down
there?''

''Search me, buster,'' said the creature, ''as I said, I'm new here.
Life is entirely strange to me. What's it like?''

Here was something that Ford  felt  he  could  speak  about  with
authority.

''Life,'' he said, ''is like a grapefruit.''

''Er, how so?''

''Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled  on  the  outside,
wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and
some people have half a one for breakfast.''

''Is there anyone else out there I can talk to?''

''I expect so,'' said Ford. ''Ask a policeman.''

Deep in his bunk, Ford Prefect wriggled  and  turned  on  to  his
other  side.  It  wasn't  his  favourite type of dream because it
didn't have Eccentrica Gallumbits, the Triple-Breasted  Whore  of
Eroticon  VI  in  it, whom many of his dreams did feature. But at
least it was a dream. At least he was asleep.

\chapter{}

Luckily there was a strong updraft in the  alley  because  Arthur
hadn't  done  this  sort  of  thing  for  a  while, at least, not
deliberately, and deliberately is exactly the  way  you  are  not
meant to do it.

He swung down sharply, nearly catching himself a nasty  crack  on
the  jaw  with  the  doorstep  and  tumbled  through  the air, so
suddenly stunned with what a profoundly stupid thing he had  just
done  that  he completely forgot the bit about hitting the ground
and didn't.

A nice trick, he thought to himself, if you can do it.

The ground was hanging menacingly above his head.

He tried not to think about the ground, what  an  extraordinarily
big  thing it was and how much it would hurt him if it decided to
stop hanging there and suddenly fell on him. He  tried  to  think
nice  thoughts  about lemurs instead, which was exactly the right
thing to do because he couldn't at that moment remember precisely
what  a  lemur  was,  if it was one of those things that sweep in
great majestic herds across the plains of wherever it was  or  if
that  was  wildebeests, so it was a tricky kind of thing to think
nice thoughts about without simply resorting to an icky  sort  of
general  well-disposedness  towards things, and all this kept his
mind well occupied while his body tried to  adjust  to  the  fact
that it wasn't touching anything.

A Mars bar wrapper fluttered down the alleyway.

After a seeming moment of  doubt  and  indecision  it  eventually
allowed  the  wind  to  ease  it, fluttering, between him and the
ground.

''Arthur ...''

The ground was still hanging menacingly above his  head,  and  he
thought  it was probably time to do something about that, such as
fall away from it, which is  what  he  did.  Slowly.  Very,  very
slowly.

As he fell slowly, very,  very  slowly,  he  closed  his  eyes  -
carefully, so as not to jolt anything.

The feel of his eyes closing ran down his whole body. Once it had
reached  his  feet,  and the whole of his body was alerted to the
fact that his eyes were now closed and was not panicked by it, he
slowly, very, very slowly, revolved his body one way and his mind
the other.

That should sort the ground out.

He could feel the air clear about him now,  breezing  around  him
quite  cheerfully,  untroubled  by  his  being there, and slowly,
very, very slowly, as from a deep and distant  sleep,  he  opened
his eyes.

He had flown before, of course, flown many times on Krikkit until
all the birdtalk had driven him scatty, but this was different.

Here he was on his own world, quietly, and without fuss, beyond a
slight  trembling  which could have been attributable to a number
of things, being in the air.

Ten or fifteen feet below him was the hard tarmac and a few yards
off to the right the yellow street lights of Upper Street.

Luckily the alleyway was dark since the light which was  supposed
to  see it through the night was on an ingenious timeswitch which
meant it came on just before lunchtime and went off again as  the
evening  was  beginning  to  draw  in.  He was, therefore, safely
shrouded in a blanket of dark obscurity.

He slowly, very, very slowly, lifted his head to  Fenchurch,  who
was  standing  in silent breathless amazement, silhouetted in her
upstairs doorway.

Her face was inches from his.

''I was about to ask you,'' she said in a low trembly voice,  ''what
you  were  doing.  But  then I realized that I could see what you
were doing. You were flying. So it seemed,'' she went on  after  a
slight wondering pause, ''like a bit of a silly question.''

Arthur said, ''Can you do it?''

''No.''

''Would you like to try?''

She bit her lip and shook her head, not so much to  say  no,  but
just in sheer bewilderment. She was shaking like a leaf.

''It's quite easy,'' urged Arthur, ''if you don't know  how.  That's
the important bit. Be not at all sure how you're doing it.''

Just to demonstrate how easy it was  he  floated  away  down  the
alley,  fell  upwards  quite dramatically and bobbed back down to
her like a banknote on a breath of wind.

''Ask me how I did that.''

''How ... did you do that?''

''No idea. Not a clue.''

She shrugged in bewilderment. ''So how can I ...?''

Arthur bobbed down a little lower and held out his hand.

''I want you to try,'' he said, ''to  step  on  my  hand.  Just  one
foot.''

''What?''

''Try it.''

Nervously, hesitantly, almost, she told herself, as  if  she  was
trying  to  step on the hand of someone who was floating in front
of her in midair, she stepped on to his hand.

''Now the other.''

''What?''

''Take the weight off your back foot.''

''I can't.''

''Try it.''

''Like this?''

''Like that.''

Nervously, hesitantly, almost, she told  herself,  as  if  -  She
stopped  telling herself what what she was doing was like because
she had a feeling she didn't altogether want to know.

She fixed her eyes very very firmly on the guttering of the  roof
of  the  decrepit  warehouse opposite which had been annoying her
for weeks because it was  clearly  going  to  fall  off  and  she
wondered  if  anyone was going to do anything about it or whether
she ought to say something to somebody, and didn't  think  for  a
moment  about  the  fact  that  she  was standing on the hands of
someone who wasn't standing on anything at all.

''Now,'' said Arthur, ''take your weight off your left foot.''

She thought that the warehouse belonged to the carpet company who
had  their  offices round the corner, and took the weight off her
left foot, so she should probably  go  and  see  them  about  the
gutter.

''Now,'' said Arthur, ''take the weight off your right foot.''

''I can't.''

''Try.''

She hadn't seen the guttering from quite this angle  before,  and
it  looked to her now as if as well as the mud and gunge up there
there might also be a bird's nest. If she leaned forward  just  a
little and took her weight off her right foot, she could probably
see it more clearly.

Arthur was alarmed to see that someone  down  in  the  alley  was
trying  to  steal her bicycle. He particularly didn't want to get
involved in an argument at the moment  and  hoped  that  the  guy
would do it quietly and not look up.

He had the quiet shifty look  of  someone  who  habitually  stole
bicycles  in  alleys  and  habitually didn't expect to find their
owners hovering several feet above them. He was relaxed  by  both
these   habits,   and   went  about  his  job  with  purpose  and
concentration, and when he found that  the  bike  was  unarguably
bound  by  hoops  of  tungsten carbide to an iron bar embedded in
concrete, he peacefully bent both its wheels and went on his way.

Arthur let out a long-held breath.

''See what a piece of eggshell I have found you,''  said  Fenchurch
in his ear.

\chapter{}

Those who are regular followers of the doings of Arthur Dent  may
have  received  an  impression of his character and habits which,
while it includes the truth  and,  of  course,  nothing  but  the
truth,  falls  somewhat  short,  in its composition, of the whole
truth in all its glorious aspects.

And the reasons for this are  obvious.  Editing,  selection,  the
need  to  balance  that  which  is interesting with that which is
relevant and cut out all the tedious happenstance.

Like this for instance. ''Arthur Dent went to bed. He went up  the
stairs, all fifteen of them, opened the door, went into his room,
took off his shoes and socks and then all the rest of his clothes
one  by one and left them in a neatly crumpled heap on the floor.
He put on his pyjamas, the blue ones with the stripe.  He  washed
his  face  and  hands,  cleaned  his teeth, went to the lavatory,
realized that he had once again got this all in the wrong  order,
had  to wash his hands again and went to bed. He read for fifteen
minutes, spending the first ten minutes of that  trying  to  work
out  where  in the book he had got to the previous night, then he
turned out the light and within a minute or so more was asleep.

''It was dark. He lay on his left side for a good hour.

''After that he moved restlessly in his sleep  for  a  moment  and
then  turned  over to sleep on his right side. Another hour after
this his eyes flickered briefly and  he  slightly  scratched  his
nose,  though  there was still a good twenty minutes to go before
he turned back on to his left side. And so he  whiled  the  night
away, sleeping.

''At four he got up and went to the lavatory again. He opened  the
door to the lavatory ...'' and so on.

It's guff. It doesn't advance the action. It makes for  nice  fat
books  such  as  the  American  market thrives on, but it doesn't
actually get you anywhere. You don't, in short, want to know.

But there are other omissions as well, beside  the  teethcleaning
and  trying  to  find  fresh  socks variety, and in some of these
people have often seemed inordinately interested.

What, they want to know, about all that stuff off  in  the  wings
with Arthur and Trillian, did that ever get anywhere?

To which the answer is, of course, mind your own business.

And what, they say, was he up to all those nights on  the  planet
Krikkit?  Just  because  the  planet  didn't  have Fuolornis Fire
Dragons or Dire Straits doesn't mean that everyone  just  sat  up
every night reading.

Or to take a more specific example, what about  the  night  after
the  committee  meeting  party  on Prehistoric Earth, when Arthur
found himself sitting on a hillside watching the moon  rise  over
the  softly  burning trees in company with a beautiful young girl
called Mella, recently escaped from a lifetime of  staring  every
morning  at a hundred nearly identical photographs of moodily lit
tubes of toothpaste in  the  art  department  of  an  advertising
agency  on  the  planet  Golgafrincham.  What then? What happened
next? And the answer is, of course, that the book ended.

The next one didn't resume the story till five years  later,  and
you can, claim some, take discretion too far. ''This Arthur Dent,''
comes the cry from the furthest reaches of the  galaxy,  and  has
even  now  been  found inscribed on a mysterious deep space probe
thought to originate from an  alien  galaxy  at  a  distance  too
hideous  to  contemplate,  ''what  is  he,  man  or  mouse?  Is he
interested in nothing more than tea and the wider issues of life?
Has  he no spirit? has he no passion? Does he not, to put it in a
nutshell, fuck?''

Those who wish to know should read on. Others may wish to skip on
to the last chapter which is a good bit and has Marvin in it.

\chapter{}

Arthur Dent allowed himself for an unworthy moment to  think,  as
they drifted up, that he very much hoped that his friends who had
always found him pleasant but dull, or  more  latterly,  odd  but
dull,  were  having a good time in the pub, but that was the last
time, for a while, that he thought of them.

They drifted  up,  spiralling  slowly  around  each  other,  like
sycamore  seeds falling from sycamore trees in the autumn, except
going the other way.

And as they  drifted  up  their  minds  sang  with  the  ecstatic
knowledge  that  either  what  they were doing was completely and
utterly and totally impossible or  that  physics  had  a  lot  of
catching up to do.

Physics shook its head and, looking the other  way,  concentrated
on  keeping  the cars going along the Euston Road and out towards
the Westway flyover, on  keeping  the  streetlights  lit  and  on
making  sure  that  when  somebody  on  Baker  Street  dropped  a
cheeseburger it went splat upon the ground.

Dwindling headily beneath them, the beaded strings  of  light  of
London  -  London,  Arthur had to keep reminding himself, not the
strangely coloured fields of Krikkit on the remote fringes of the
galaxy, lighted freckles of which faintly spanned the opening sky
above them, but London - swayed, swaying and turning, turned.

''Try a swoop,'' he called to Fenchurch.

''What?''

Her voice seemed strangely clear but  distant  in  all  the  vast
empty  air.  It  was breathy and faint with disbelief - all those
things, clear, faint, distant, breathy, all at the same time.

''We're flying ...'' she said.

''A trifle,'' called Arthur, ''think nothing of it. Try a swoop.''

''A sw-''

Her hand caught his, and in a second her weight  caught  it  too,
and  stunningly,  she  was  gone,  tumbling  beneath him, clawing
wildly at nothing.

Physics glanced at Arthur, and clotted with horror  he  was  gone
too,  sick  with  giddy dropping, every part of him screaming but
his voice.

They plummeted because this was London and you really couldn't do
this sort of thing here.

He couldn't catch her because this was London, and not a  million
miles  from  here,  seven  hundred and fifty-six, to be exact, in
Pisa, Galileo had clearly demonstrated that  two  falling  bodies
fell  at  exactly  the  same rate of acceleration irrespective of
their relative weights.

They fell.

Arthur realized as he fell, giddily and sickeningly, that  if  he
was going to hang around in the sky believing everything that the
Italians had to say about physics when they couldn't even keep  a
simple  tower  straight, that they were in dead trouble, and damn
well did fall faster than Fenchurch.

He grappled her from above, and fumbled for a tight grip  on  her
shoulders. He got it.

Fine. They were now falling together, which was  all  very  sweet
and  romantic, but didn't solve the basic problem, which was that
they were falling, and the ground wasn't waiting around to see if
he had any more clever tricks up his sleeve, but was coming up to
meet them like an express train.

He couldn't support her  weight,  he  hadn't  anything  he  could
support  it  with  or  against. The only thing he could think was
that they were obviously going to die, and if he wanted  anything
other  than  the  obvious  to  happen  he was going to have to do
something other than the obvious. Here he felt he was on familiar
territory.

He let go of her, pushed her away, and when she turned  her  face
to him in a gasp of stunned horror, caught her little finger with
his little finger and swung her back upwards,  tumbling  clumsily
up after her.

''Shit,'' she said, as she sat panting and breathless on absolutely
nothing  at  all, and when she had recovered herself they fled on
up into the night.

Just below cloud level they paused and  scanned  where  they  had
impossibly  come. The ground was something not to regard with any
too firm or steady an eye, but merely to glance at, as  it  were,
in passing.

Fenchurch tried some little swoops, daringly, and found  that  if
she  judged  herself  just right against a body of wind she could
pull off some really quite dazzling ones with a little  pirouette
at the end, followed by a little drop which made her dress billow
around her, and this is where readers who are keen to  know  what
Marvin  and  Ford  Prefect  have been up to all this while should
look ahead to later chapters, because Arthur now  could  wait  no
longer and helped her take it off.

It drifted down and away whipped by the wind until it was a speck
which  finally  vanished,  and  for  various  complicated reasons
revolutionized the life of  a  family  on  Hounslow,  over  whose
washing line it was discovered draped in the morning.

In a mute embrace,  they  drifted  up  till  they  were  swimming
amongst the misty wraiths of moisture that you can see feathering
around the wings of an aeroplane but never feel because  you  are
sitting  warm inside the stuffy aeroplane and looking through the
little scratchy perspex window while somebody  else's  son  tries
patiently to pour warm milk into your shirt.

Arthur and Fenchurch  could  feel  them,  wispy  cold  and  thin,
wreathing  round  their  bodies, very cold, very thin. They felt,
even Fenchurch, now protected from the elements by only a  couple
of  fragments from Marks and Spencer, that if they were not going
to let the force of  gravity  bother  them,  then  mere  cold  or
paucity of atmosphere could go and whistle.

The two fragments from Marks and Spencer which, as Fenchurch rose
now  into the misty body of the clouds, Arthur removed very, very
slowly, which is the only way it's possible to do it when  you're
flying  and  also  not  using  your  hands,  went  on  to  create
considerable havoc in the morning in, respectively, counting from
top to bottom, Isleworth and Richmond.

They were in the cloud for a long time, because  it  was  stacked
very  high,  and  when  finally  they  emerged  wetly  above  it,
Fenchurch slowly spinning like a  starfish  lapped  by  a  rising
tidepool, they found that above the clouds is where the night get
seriously moonlit.

The light is darkly brilliant. There are different  mountains  up
there, but they are mountains, with their own white arctic snows.

They had emerged at the top of  the  high-stacked  cumulo-nimbus,
and  now  began  lazily  to drift down its contours, as Fenchurch
eased Arthur in turn from his clothes, prised him  free  of  them
till  all  were  gone,  winding their surprised way down into the
enveloping whiteness.

She kissed him, kissed his neck, his chest, and  soon  they  were
drifting  on,  turning  slowly,  in a kind of speechless T-shape,
which might have caused even a Fuolornis  Fire  Dragon,  had  one
flown  past,  replete  with  pizza, to flap its wings and cough a
little.

There were, however, no Fuolornis Fire Dragons in the clouds  nor
could  there  be  for,  like  the  dinosaurs,  the dodos, and the
Greater  Drubbered  Wintwock   of   Stegbartle   Major   in   the
constellation  Fraz,  and  unlike  the  Boeing  747  which  is in
plentiful supply, they are sadly extinct, and the Universe  shall
never know their like again.

The reason that a Boeing 747 crops up rather unexpectedly in  the
above  list  is not unconnected with the fact that something very
similar happened in the lives of Arthur and Fenchurch a moment or
two later.

They are big things, terrifyingly big. You know when  one  is  in
the  air  with you. There is a thunderous attack of air, a moving
wall of screaming wind, and you get  tossed  aside,  if  you  are
foolish enough to be doing anything remotely like what Arthur and
Fenchurch were doing in its close vicinity, like  butterflies  in
the Blitz.

This time, however, there was a heart-sickening fall or  loss  of
nerve,  a  re-grouping  moments  later  and  a wonderful new idea
enthusiastically signalled through the buffeting noise.

Mrs E. Kapelsen of Boston, Massachusetts  was  an  elderly  lady,
indeed,  she  felt  her life was nearly at an end. She had seen a
lot of it, been puzzled by some, but, she was a little uneasy  to
feel  at this late stage, bored by too much. It had all been very
pleasant, but perhaps a  little  too  explicable,  a  little  too
routine.

With a sigh she flipped up the little plastic window shutter  and
looked out over the wing.

At first she thought she ought to call the stewardess,  but  then
she  thought  no,  damn it, definitely not, this was for her, and
her alone.

By the time her two inexplicable people finally slipped back  off
the  wing  and  tumbled into the slipstream she had cheered up an
awful lot.

She  was  mostly  immensely  relieved  to  think  that  virtually
everything that anybody had ever told her was wrong.
 

The following morning Arthur and Fenchurch slept very late in the
alley despite the continual wail of furniture being restored.

The following night they did it all over again,  only  this  time
with Sony Walkmen.

\chapter{}

''This is all very wonderful,'' said Fenchurch a  few  days  later.
''But  I do need to know what has happened to me. You see, there's
this difference between us. That you lost something and found  it
again,  and  I  found  something  and  lost it. I need to find it
again.''

She had to go out for the day, so Arthur settled down for  a  day
of telephoning.

Murray Bost Henson was a journalist on one  of  the  papers  with
small pages and big print. It would be pleasant to be able to say
that he was none the worse for it, but sadly, this  was  not  the
case.  He happened to be the only journalist that Arthur knew, so
Arthur phoned him anyway.

''Arthur  my  old  soup  spoon,  my  old   silver   turreen,   how
particularly  stunning  to  hear  from you. Someone told me you'd
gone off into space or something.''

Murray had his own special kind of conversation language which he
had  invented  for his own use, and which no one else was able to
speak or even to follow. Hardly any of it meant anything at  all.
The bits which did mean anything were often so wonderfully buried
that no one could ever spot them slipping past in the avalance of
nonsense.  The  time  when you did find out, later, which bits he
did mean, was often a bad time for all concerned.

''What?'' said Arthur.

''Just a rumour my old elephant tusk, my little green  baize  card
table,  just  a  rumour. Probably means nothing at all, but I may
need a quote from you.''

''Nothing to say, just pub talk.''

''We thrive on it, my old prosthetic limb, we thrive on  it.  Plus
it would fit like a whatsit in one of those other things with the
other stories of the week, so  it  could  be  just  to  have  you
denying it. Excuse me, something has just fallen out of my ear.''

There was a slight pause, at the end of which Murray Bost  Henson
came back on the line sounding genuinely shaken.

''Just remembered,'' he said, ''what  an  odd  evening  I  had  last
night.  Anyway  my  old,  I won't say what, how do you feel about
having ridden on Halley's Comet?''

''I haven't,'' said Arthur  with  a  suppressed  sigh,  ''ridden  on
Halley's Comet.''

''OK, How do you feel about not having ridden on Halley's Comet?''

''Pretty relaxed, Murray.''

There was a pause while Murray wrote this down.

''Good enough for me, Arthur, good enough for Ethel and me and the
chickens. Fits in with the general weirdness of the week. Week of
the Weirdos, we're thinking of calling it. Good, eh?''

''Very good.''

''Got a ring to it. First we have this man it always rains on.''

''What?''

''It's the absolute stocking top  truth.  All  documented  in  his
little  black  book,  it all checks out at every single funloving
level. The Met Office is going ice cold thick banana  whips,  and
funny  little  men in white coats are flying in from all over the
world with their little rulers and boxes and drip feeds. This man
is  the  bee's  knees, Arthur, he is the wasp's nipples. He is, I
would go so far as to say, the entire set of erogenous  zones  of
every major flying insect of the Western world. We're calling him
the Rain God. Nice, eh?''

''I think I've met him.''

''Good ring to it. What did you say?''

''I may have met him. Complains all the time, yes?''

''Incredible! You met the Rain God?''

''If it's the same guy. I told him to stop  complaining  and  show
someone his book.''

There was an impressed pause from Murray Bost Henson's end of the
phone.

''Well, you did a bundle. An absolute bundle has  absolutely  been
done  by  you.  Listen,  do  you know how much a tour operator is
paying that guy not to go to Malaga  this  year?  I  mean  forget
irrigating  the Sahara and boring stuff like that, this guy has a
whole new career ahead of him, just avoiding  places  for  money.
The  man's  turning into a monster, Arthur, we might even have to
make him win the bingo.

''Listen, we may want to do a feature on you, Arthur, the Man  Who
Made the Rain God Rain. Got a ring to it, eh?''

''A nice one, but ...''

''We may need to photograph you under a garden shower, but that'll
be OK. Where are you?''

''Er, I'm in Islington. Listen, Murray ...''

''Islington!''

''Yes ...''

''Well, what about the  real  weirdness  of  the  week,  the  real
seriously  loopy  stuff.  You  know  anything  about these flying
people?''

''No.''

''You must have. This is the real seethingly crazy  one.  This  is
the  real  meatballs in the batter. Locals are phoning in all the
time to say there's this couple who go flying nights.  We've  got
guys  down  in  our  photo  labs working through the night to put
together a genuine photograph. You must have heard.''

''No.''

''Arthur, where have you been? Oh, space, right, I got your quote.
But  that  was  months  ago.  Listen, it's night after night this
week, my old cheesegrater, right on your patch. This couple  just
fly  around  the  sky  and  start doing all kinds of stuff. And I
don't mean looking through walls or pretending to be  box  girder
bridges. You don't know anything?''

''No.''

''Arthur, it's been almost inexpressibly delicious conversing with
you, chumbum, but I have to go. I'll send the guy with the camera
and the hose. Give me the address, I'm ready and writing.''

''Listen, Murray, I called to ask you something.''

''I have a lot to do.''

''I just wanted to find out something about the dolphins.''

''No story. Last year's news. Forget 'em. They're gone.''

''It's important.''

''Listen, no one will touch it. You can't  sustain  a  story,  you
know,  when  the  only news is the continuing absence of whatever
the story's about. Not our territory  anyway,  try  the  Sundays.
Maybe  they'll  run  a  little  `Whatever  Happened  to ''Whatever
Happened to the Dolphins''' story in a  couple  of  years,  around
August.  But  what's  anybody  going  to  do now? `Dolphins still
gone'? `Continuing Dolphin Absence'?  `Dolphins  -  Further  Days
Without Them'? The story dies, Arthur. It lies down and kicks its
little feet in the air and presently goes  to  the  great  golden
spike in the sky, my old fruitbat.''

''Murray, I'm not interested in whether it's a story. I just  want
to  find  out  how I can get in touch with that guy in California
who claims to know something about it. I thought you might know.''

\chapter{}

''People are beginning to  talk,''  said  Fenchurch  that  evening,
after they had hauled her 'cello in.

''Not only talk,'' said Arthur, ''but print,  in  big  bold  letters
under  the  bingo  prizes.  Which is why I thought I'd better get
these.''

He showed her the long narrow booklets of airline tickets.

''Arthur!'' she said, hugging him. ''Does that mean you  managed  to
talk to him?''

''I  have  had  a  day,''  said  Arthur,  ''of  extreme   telephonic
exhaustion.  I  have  spoken  to  virtually  every  department of
virtually every paper in Fleet street, and I finally tracked  his
number down.''

''You've obviously been working hard, you're drenched  with  sweat
poor darling.''

''Not with sweat,'' said Arthur  wearily.  ''A  photographer's  just
been. I tried to argue, but - never mind, the point is, yes.''

''You spoke to him.''

''I spoke to his wife. She said he was too weird to  come  to  the
phone right now and could I call back.''

He sat down heavily, realized he was missing something  and  went
to the fridge to find it.

''Want a drink?''

''Would commit murder to get one. I always know I'm in for a tough
time  when  my  'cello teacher looks me up and down and says, `Ah
yes, my dear, I think a little Tchaikovsky today.'.''

''I called again,'' said Arthur, ''and she  said  that  he  was  3.2
light years from the phone and I should call back.''

''Ah.''

''I called again. ''She said the situation had improved. He was now
a mere 2.6 light years from the phone but it was still a long way
to shout.''

''You don't suppose,'' said Fenchurch,  doubtfully,  ''that  there's
anyone else we can talk to?''

''It gets worse,'' said Arthur, ''I spoke to someone  on  a  science
magazine  who  actually  knows  him, and he said that John Watson
will not only believe, but will  actually  have  absolute  proof,
often  dictated  to  him  by  angels with golden beards and green
wings  and  Doctor  Scholl  footwear,  that  the   month's   most
fashionable  silly  theory  is  true. For people who question the
validity of these visions he will triumphantly produce the  clogs
in question, and that's as far as you get.''

''I didn't realize it was that bad,'' said Fenchurch  quietly.  She
fiddled listlessly with the tickets.

''I phoned Mrs Watson again,'' said Arthur. ''Her name, by the  way,
and you may wish to know this, is Arcane Jill.''

''I see.''

''I'm glad you see. I thought you mightn't believe any of this, so
when  I  called  her  this  time  I  used the telephone answering
machine to record the call.''

He went across to the telephone machine  and  fiddled  and  fumed
with  all  its  buttons for a while, because it was the one which
was particularly recommended by Which?  magazine  and  is  almost
impossible to use without going mad.

''Here it is,'' he said at last, wiping the sweat from his brow.

The  voice  was  thin  and  crackly  with  its   journey   to   a
geostationary  satellite  and  back,  but  it was also hauntingly
calm.

''Perhaps I should explain,''  Arcane  Jill  Watson's  voice  said,
''that  the  phone  is in fact in a room that he never comes into.
It's in the Asylum you see. Wonko the Sane does not like to enter
the  Asylum  and  so  he  does  not.  I feel you should know this
because it may save you phoning. If you would like to  meet  him,
this  is  very easily arranged. All you have to do is walk in. He
will only meet people outside the Asylum.''

Arthur's voice, at  its  most  mystified:  ''I'm  sorry,  I  don't
understand. Where is the asylum?''

''Where is the Asylum?'' Arcane Jill Watson again. ''Have  you  ever
read the instructions on a packet of toothpicks?''

On the tape, Arthur's voice had to admit that he had not.

''You may want to do that. You may find that it  clarifies  things
for you a little. You may find that it indicates to you where the
Asylum is. Thank you.''

The sound of the phone line went dead. Arthur turned the  machine
off.

''Well, I suppose we can regard that as an  invitation,''  he  said
with a shrug. ''I actually managed to get the address from the guy
on the science magazine.''

Fenchurch looked up at him again with  a  thoughtful  frown,  and
looked at the tickets again.

''Do you think it's worth it?'' she said.

''Well,'' said Arthur, ''the one thing  that  everyone  I  spoke  to
agrees  on,  apart  from  the  fact  that they all thought he was
barking mad, is that he does know more than any man living  about
dolphins.''

\chapter{}

''This is an important announcement. This is  flight  121  to  Los
Angeles.  If  your travel plans today do not include Los Angeles,
now would be the perfect time to disembark.''

\chapter{}

They rented a car in Los Angeles from  one  of  the  places  that
rents out cars that other people have thrown away.

''Getting it to go round corners is a bit of a problem,'' said  the
guy  behind the sunglasses as he handed them the keys, ''sometimes
it's simpler just to get out and find a car that's going in  that
direction.''

They stayed for one night in a hotel on  Sunset  Boulevard  which
someone had told them they would enjoy being puzzled by.

''Everyone there is either English or odd or both. They've  got  a
swimming  pool  where  you  can  go  and watch English rock stars
reading Language, Truth and Logic for the photographers.''

It was true. There was one and  that  was  exactly  what  he  was
doing.

The garage attendant didn't think much of their car, but that was
fine because they didn't either.

Late in the evening they drove through the Hollywood hills  along
Mulholland  Drive and stopped to look out first over the dazzling
sea of floating light that is Los Angeles, and later  stopped  to
look  across  the  dazzling sea of floating light that is the San
Fernando Valley. They agreed that the  sense  of  dazzle  stopped
immediately  at the back of their eyes and didn't touch any other
part  of  them  and  came  away  strangely  unsatisfied  by   the
spectacle. As dramatic seas of light went, it was fine, but light
is meant to illuminate something, and having driven through  what
this  particularly  dramatic  sea  of light was illuminating they
didn't think much of it.

They slept late and restlessly and awoke at lunchtime when it was
stupidly hot.

They drove out along the freeway to Santa Monica for their  first
look  at  the Pacific Ocean, the ocean which Wonko the Sane spent
all his days and a good deal of his nights looking at.

''Someone told me,'' said Fenchurch, ''that they once overheard  two
old  ladies on this beach, doing what we're doing, looking at the
Pacific Ocean for the first time in their lives. And  apparently,
after  a  long  pause,  one of them said to the other, `You know,
it's not as big as I expected.'''

Their mood lifted further as the  sun  began  to  move  down  the
western  half of the sky, and by the time they were back in their
rattling car and driving towards a sunset  that  no  one  of  any
sensibility  would  dream  of building a city like Los Angeles on
front  of,  they  were   suddenly   feeling   astonishingly   and
irrationally happy and didn't even mind that the terrible old car
radio would only play two stations, and those simultaneously.  So
what, they were both playing good rock and roll.

''I know he will be able to help us,'' said Fenchurch determinedly.
''I  know  he  will.  What's  his  name again, that he likes to be
called?''

''Wonko the Sane.''

''I know that he will be able to help us.''

Arthur wondered if he would and hoped that he  would,  and  hoped
that  what Fenchurch had lost could be found here, on this Earth,
whatever this Earth might prove to be.

He hoped, as he had hoped continually  and  fervently  since  the
time  they  had  talked  together on the banks of the Serpentine,
that he would not be called upon to  try  to  remember  something
that  he  had very firmly and deliberately buried in the furthest
recesses of his memory, where he hoped it would cease to  nag  at
him.
 

In Santa Barbara they stopped at a fish restaurant in what seemed
to be a converted warehouse.

Fenchurch had red mullet and said it was delicious.

Arthur had a swordfish steak and said it made him angry.

He grabbed a passing waitress by the arm and berated her.

''Why's this fish so bloody good?'' he demanded, angrily.

''Please  excuse  my  friend,''  said  Fenchurch  to  the  startled
waitress. ''I think he's having a nice day at last.''

\chapter{}

If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of  the  David
Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another
David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the  upper  of  the
first  two  David  Bowies  and wrapped the whole business up in a
dirty beach robe you  would  then  have  something  which  didn't
exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would
find hauntingly familiar.

He was tall and he gangled.

When he sat in his deckchair gazing at the Pacific, not  so  much
with  any kind of wild surmise any longer as with a peaceful deep
dejection, it was a little difficult to tell  exactly  where  the
deckchair  ended and he began, and you would hesitate to put your
hand on, say, his forearm in case the  whole  structure  suddenly
collapsed with a snap and took your thumb off.

But his smile when he turned it on you was quite  remarkable.  It
seemed to be composed of all the worst things that life can do to
you,  but  which,  when  he  briefly  reassembled  them  in  that
particular  order  on  his face, made you suddenly fee, ''Oh. Well
that's all right then.''

When he spoke, you were glad that he used the smile that made you
feel like that pretty often.

''Oh yes,'' he said, ''they come and see me. They  sit  right  here.
They sit right where you're sitting.''

He was talking of the angels with the  golden  beards  and  green
wings and Dr Scholl sandals.

''They eat nachos which they say they can't get  where  they  come
from.  They do a lot of coke and are very wonderful about a whole
range of things.''

''Do they?'' said Arthur. ''Are they? So, er ... when is this  then?
When do they come?''

He gazed out at the Pacific as well. There were little sandpipers
running  along  the margin of the shore which seemed to have this
problem: they needed to find their food in the sand which a  wave
had  just  washed  over, but they couldn't bear to get their feet
wet. To deal with this problem they  ran  with  an  odd  kind  of
movement as if they'd been constructed by somebody very clever in
Switzerland.

Fenchurch was sitting on the sand, idly drawing  patterns  in  it
with her fingers.

''Weekends, mostly,'' said Wonko the  Sane,  ''on  little  scooters.
They are great machines.'' He smiled.

''I see,'' said Arthur. ''I see.''

A tiny cough from Fenchurch attracted his attention and he looked
round  at her. She had scratched a little stick figure drawing in
the sand of the two of them  in  the  clouds.  For  a  moment  he
thought  she was trying to get him excited, then he realized that
she was rebuking him. ''Who are we,'' she was saying, ''to say  he's
mad?''

His house was certainly peculiar, and since this  was  the  first
thing  that Fenchurch and Arthur had encountered it would help to
know what it was like.

What it was like was this:

It was inside out.

Actually inside out, to the extent that they had to park  on  the
carpet.

All along what one would normally call the outer wall, which  was
decorated in a tasteful interior-designed pink, were bookshelves,
also a couple of those odd three-legged tables with semi-circular
tops  which  stand  in such a way as to suggest that someone just
dropped the wall straight through them, and pictures  which  were
clearly designed to soothe.

Where it got really odd was the roof.

It folded back on itself like something that Maurits  C.  Escher,
had he been given to hard nights on the town, which is no part of
this narrative's purpose to suggest was the case,  though  it  is
sometimes  hard,  looking  at  his pictures, particularly the one
with the awkward steps, not to  wonder,  might  have  dreamed  up
after having been on one, for the little chandeliers which should
have been hanging inside were on the outside pointing up.

Confusing.

The sign above the front  door  said,  ''Come  Outside'',  and  so,
nervously, they had.

Inside, of course, was where the Outside  was.  Rough  brickwork,
nicely  done painting, guttering in good repair, a garden path, a
couple of small trees, some rooms leading off.

And the inner walls stretched down, folded curiously, and  opened
at  the  end  as  if, by an optical illusion which would have had
Maurits C. Escher frowning and wondering  how  it  was  done,  to
enclose the Pacific Ocean itself.

''Hello,'' said John Watson, Wonko the Sane.

Good, they thought to themselves, ''Hello''  is  something  we  can
cope with.

''Hello,'' they said, and all surprisingly was smiles.

For quite a while he seemed curiously reluctant to talk about the
dolphins,  looking  oddly  distracted  and saying, ''I forget ...''
whenever they were mentioned, and had shown  them  quite  proudly
round the eccentricities of his house.

''It gives me pleasure,'' he said, ''in a curious kind of  way,  and
does  nobody  any harm,'' he continued, ''that a competent optician
couldn't correct.''

They liked him. He had an open, engaging quality and seemed  able
to mock himself before anybody else did.

''Your  wife,''  said  Arthur,  looking  around,  ''mentioned   some
toothpicks.''  He said it with a hunted look, as if he was worried
that she might suddenly leap out from behind the door and mention
them again.

Wonko the Sane laughed. It was a light easy  laugh,  and  sounded
like one he had used a lot before and was happy with.

''Ah yes,'' he said, ''that's to so with the day I finally  realized
that  the  world had gone totally mad and built the Asylum to put
it in, poor thing, and hoped it would get better.''

This was the point at which Arthur began to feel a little nervous
again.

''Here,'' said Wonko the Sane, ''we  are  outside  the  Asylum.''  He
pointed  again  at  the  rough  brickwork,  the  pointing and the
guttering. ''Go through that door,'' he pointed at the  first  door
through  which  they had originally entered, ''and you go into the
Asylum. I've tried to decorate it  nicely  to  keep  the  inmates
happy,  but  there's  very little one can do. I never go in there
now myself. If ever I am tempted, which these days I rarely am, I
simply look at the sign written over the door and shy away.''

''That one?'' said Fenchurch, pointing, rather puzzled, at  a  blue
plaque with some instructions written on it.

''Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I
have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what
I had to do.''

The sign said:

Hold stick near centre of its  length.  Moisten  pointed  end  in
mouth.  insert  in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle
in-out motion.

''It seemed to me,'' said Wonko the sane,  ''that  any  civilization
that  had  so  far  lost  its head as to need to include a set of
detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks,  was  no
longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.''

He gazed out at the Pacific again, as if daring it  to  rave  and
gibber  at  him,  but  it  lay  there  calmly and played with the
sandpipers.

''And in case it crossed your mind to wonder, as I can see how  it
possibly  might, I am completely sane. Which is why I call myself
Wonko the Sane, just to reassure people on this point.  Wonko  is
what  my mother called me when I was a kid and clumsy and knocked
things over, and sane is what I am, and how,'' he added, with  one
of  his  smiles  that  made  you feel, ''Oh. Well that's all right
then.'' ''I intend to remain. Shall we go on to the beach  and  see
what we have to talk about?''

They went out on to the beach, which was where he started talking
about  angels  with  golden  beards and green wings and Dr Scholl
sandals.

''About the dolphins ...'' said Fenchurch gently, hopefully.

''I can show you the sandals,'' said Wonko the Sane.

''I wonder, do you know ...''

''Would you like me to  show  you,''  said  Wonko  the  Sane,  ''the
sandals?  I  have  them.  I'll  get them. They are made by the Dr
Scholl company, and the angels say that  they  particularly  suit
the  terrain they have to work in. They say they run a concession
stand by the message. When I say I don't  know  what  that  means
they say no, you don't, and laugh. Well, I'll get them anyway.''

As he walked back towards the inside, or the outside depending on
how  you  looked at it, Arthur and Fenchurch looked at each other
in a wondering and slightly desperate  sort  of  way,  then  each
shrugged and idly drew figures in the sand.

''How are the feet today?'' said Arthur quietly.

''OK. It doesn't feel so odd in the sand. Or  in  the  water.  The
water touches them perfectly. I just think this isn't our world.''

She shrugged.

''What do you think he meant,'' she said, ''by the message?''

''I don't know,'' said Arthur, though the memory of  a  man  called
Prak who laughed at him continuously kept nagging at him.

When Wonko  returned  he  was  carrying  something  that  stunned
Arthur.  Not  the  sandals,  they were perfectly ordinary wooden-
bottomed sandals.

''I just thought you'd like to see,'' he said, ''what angels wear on
their  feet.  Just  out  of  curiousity.  I'm not trying to prove
anything, by the way. I'm a scientist and I know what constitutes
proof.  But  the  reason I call myself by my childhood name is to
remind myself that a scientist must also  be  absolutely  like  a
child.  If  he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether
it was what he thought he was going to see  or  not.  See  first,
think  later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will
only see what you were expecting. Most  scientists  forget  that.
I'll  show you something to demonstrate that later. So, the other
reason I call myself Wonko the Sane is so that people will  think
I  am a fool. That allows me to say what I see when I see it. You
can't possibly be a scientist if you mind  people  thinking  that
you're  a  fool.  Anyway,  I  also  thought you might like to see
this.''

This was the thing that  Arthur  had  been  stunned  to  see  him
carrying,  for  it  was  a wonderful silver-grey glass fish bowl,
seemingly identical to the one in Arthur's bedroom.

Arthur had been trying  for  some  thirty  seconds  now,  without
success,  to  say,  ''Where did you get that?'' sharply, and with a
gasp in his voice.

Finally his time had come, but he missed it by a millisecond.

''Where did you get that?'' said Fenchurch, sharply and with a gasp
in her voice.

Arthur glanced at Fenchurch sharply and with a gasp in his  voice
said, ''What? Have you seen one of these before?''

''Yes,'' she said, ''I've got one. Or at least I did  have.  Russell
nicked  it  to  put  his golfballs in. I don't know where it came
from, just that I was angry with Russell  for  nicking  it.  Why,
have you got one?''

''Yes, it was ...''

They both became aware that Wonko the Sane was  glancing  sharply
backwards  and forwards between them, and trying to get a gasp in
edgeways.

''You have one of those too?'' he said to both of them.

''Yes.'' They both said it.

He looked long and calmly at each of them, then he  held  up  the
bowl to catch the light of the Californian sun.

The bowl seemed almost to sing with the sun, to  chime  with  the
intensity of its light, and cast darkly brilliant rainbows around
the sand and upon them. He turned it, and turned it.  They  could
see  quite  clearly in the fine tracery of its etchwork the words
''So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish.''

''Do you know,'' asked Wonko quietly, ''what it is?''

They each shook their  heads  slowly,  and  with  wonder,  almost
hypnotized  by  the flashing of the lightning shadows in the grey
glass.

''It is a farewell gift from the dolphins,'' said Wonko  in  a  low
quiet  voice,  ''the  dolphins  whom I loved and studied, and swam
with, and fed with fish, and even tried to learn their  language,
a   task   which   they  seemed  to  make  impossibly  difficult,
considering the fact that  I  now  realize  they  were  perfectly
capable of communicating in ours if they decided they wanted to.''

He shook his head with a slow, slow smile, and then looked  again
at Fenchurch, and then at Arthur.

''Have you ...'' he said to Arthur, ''what have you done with yours?
May I ask you that?''

''Er, I keep a fish in it,'' said Arthur, slightly embarrassed.  ''I
happened  to have this fish I was wondering what to do with, and,
er, there was this bowl.'' He tailed off.

''You've done nothing else? No,'' he said, ''if you had,  you  would
know.'' He shook his head again.

''My wife kept wheatgerm in ours,'' resumed Wonko,  with  some  new
tone in his voice, ''until last night ...''

''What,'' said Arthur slowly and hushedly, ''happened last night?''

''We ran out of wheatgerm,'' said  Wonko,  evenly.  ''My  wife,''  he
added,  ''has  gone to get some more.'' He seemed lost with his own
thoughts for a moment.

''And what happened then?'' said Fenchurch, in the same  breathless
tone.

''I washed it,'' said Wonko. ''I washed it very carefully, very very
carefully,  removing  every last speck of wheatgerm, then I dried
it slowly with a lint-free cloth, slowly, carefully,  turning  it
over  and  over.  Then I held it to my ear. Have you ... have you
held one to your ear?''

They both shook their heads, again slowly, again dumbly.

''Perhaps,'' he said, ''you should.''

\chapter{}

The deep roar of the ocean.

The break of waves on further shores than thought can find.

The silent thunders of the deep.

And from among it, voices calling, and yet  not  voices,  humming
trillings, wordlings, the half-articulated songs of thought.

Greetings,  waves  of  greetings,  sliding  back  down  into  the
inarticulate, words breaking together.

A crash of sorrow on the shores of Earth.

Waves  of  joy  on  -  where?  A   world   indescribably   found,
indescribably arrived at, indescribably wet, a song of water.

A fugue of voices now, clamouring  explanations,  of  a  disaster
unavertable,  a world to be destroyed, a surge of helplessness, a
spasm of despair, a dying fall, again the break of words.

And then the fling of hope, the finding of a shadow Earth in  the
implications  of enfolded time, submerged dimensions, the pull of
parallels, the deep pull, the spin of will, the hurl and split of
it, the flight. A new Earth pulled into replacement, the dolphins
gone.

Then stunningly a single voice, quite clear.

''This bowl was brought to you by the Campaign to Save the Humans.
We bid you farewell.''

And then the sound of long, heavy, perfectly grey bodies  rolling
away into an unknown fathomless deep, quietly giggling.

\chapter{}

That night they stayed Outside the Asylum  and  watched  TV  from
inside it.

''This is what I wanted you to see,'' said Wonko the Sane when  the
news  came  around again, ''an old colleague of mine. He's over in
your country running an investigation. Just watch.''

It was a press conference.

''I'm afraid I can't comment on the name Rain God at this  present
time,  and  we  are calling him an example of a Spontaneous Para-
Causal Meteorological Phenomenon.''

''Can you tell us what that means?''

''I'm not altogether sure. Let's be  straight  here.  If  we  find
something  we  can't  understand we like to call it something you
can't understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let  you
go  around  calling  him  a Rain God, then that suggests that you
know something we don't, and I'm afraid we couldn't have that.

''No, first we have to call it something which says it's ours, not
yours,  then  we  set  about finding some way of proving it's not
what you said it is, but something we say it is.

''And if it turns out that you're right, you'll  still  be  wrong,
because  we will simply call him a ... er `Supernormal ...' - not
paranormal or supernatural because you think you know what  those
mean  now, no, a `Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer'.
We'll probably want to shove a  `Quasi'  in  there  somewhere  to
protect ourselves. Rain God! Huh, never heard such nonsense in my
life. Admittedly, you wouldn't catch me  going  on  holiday  with
him.  Thanks,  that'll be all for now, other than to say `Hi!' to
Wonko if he's watching.''

\chapter{}

On the way home there was a woman sitting next  to  them  on  the
plane who was looking at them rather oddly.

They talked quietly to themselves.

''I still have to know,'' said Fenchurch, ''and I strongly feel that
you know something that you're not telling me.''

Arthur sighed and took out a piece of paper.

''Do you have a pencil?'' he said. She dug around and found one.

''What are you doing, sweetheart?'' she said, after  he  had  spent
twenty  minutes  frowning,  chewing the pencil, scribbling on the
paper, crossing things out, scribbling again, chewing the  pencil
again and grunting irritably to himself.

''Trying to remember an address someone once gave me.''

''Your life would be an awful lot  simpler,''  she  said,  ''if  you
bought yourself an address book.''

Finally he passed the paper to her.

''You look after it,'' he said.

She looked at it. Among all the  scratchings  and  crossings  out
were  the  words  ''Quentulus  Quazgar  Mountains.  Sevorbeupstry.
Planet of Preliumtarn. Sun-Zarss. Galactic Sector  QQ7  Active  J
Gamma.''

''And what's there?''

''Apparently,'' said Arthur,  ''it's  God's  Final  Message  to  His
Creation.''

''That sounds a bit more like it,'' said Fenchurch. ''How do we  get
there?''

''You really ...?''

''Yes,'' said Fenchurch firmly, ''I really want to know.''

Arthur looked out of the scratchy little perspex  window  at  the
open sky outside.

''Excuse me,'' said the woman who had been looking at  them  rather
oddly, suddenly, ''I hope you don't think I'm rude. I get so bored
on these long flights, it's nice to talk to somebody.  My  name's
Enid Kapelsen, I'm from Boston. Tell me, do you fly a lot?''

\chapter{}

They went to Arthur's house in the West Country, shoved a  couple
of  towels and stuff in a bag, and then sat down to do what every
Galactic hitch hiker ends up spending most of his time doing.

They waited for a flying saucer to come by.

''Friend of mine did this for  fifteen  years,''  said  Arthur  one
night as they sat forlornly watching the sky.

''Who was that?''

''Called Ford Prefect.''

He caught himself doing something he had never really expected to
do again.

He wondered where Ford Prefect was.

By an extraordinary coincidence, the following day there were two
reports  in  the  paper,  one  concerning  the  most  astonishing
incidents with a flying saucer, and the other about a  series  of
unseemly riots in pubs.

Ford Prefect turned up the day after that looking hung  over  and
complaining that Arthur never answered the phone.

In fact he looked extremely ill,  not  merely  as  if  he'd  been
pulled  through  a hedge backwards, but as if the hedge was being
simultaneously pulled backwards through a combine  harvester.  He
staggered  into Arthur's sitting room, waving aside all offers of
support, which was an error, because the  effort  caused  him  to
lose his balance altogether and Arthur had eventually to drag him
to the sofa.

''Thank you,'' said Ford, ''thank you very much. Have  you  ...''  he
said, and fell asleep for three hours.

''... the faintest idea'' he continued suddenly, when  he  revived,
''how  hard  it  is  to tap into the British phone system from the
Pleiades? I can see that you haven't, so I'll tell you,'' he said,
''over  the  very  large mug of black coffee that you are about to
make me.''

He followed Arthur wobbily into the kitchen.

''Stupid operators keep asking you where you're calling  from  and
you  try and tell them Letchworth and they say you couldn't be if
you're coming in on that circuit. What are you doing?''

''Making you some black coffee.''

''Oh.'' Ford seemed oddly disappointed. He looked about  the  place
forlornly.

''What's this?'' he said.

''Rice Crispies.''

''And this?''

''Paprika.''

''I see,'' said Ford, solemnly, and put the two  items  back  down,
one  on  top  of  the  other,  but  that  didn't  seem to balance
properly, so he put the other on top of the one and  that  seemed
to work.

''A little space-lagged,'' he said. ''What was I saying?''

''About not phoning from Letchworth.''

''I wasn't. I explained this to the lady. `Bugger  Letchworth,'  I
said, `if that's your attitude. I am in fact calling from a sales
scoutship of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, currently on the
sub-light-speed  leg of a journey between the stars known on your
world, though not necessarily to you, dear lady.' - I said  `dear
lady',''  explained Ford Prefect, ''because I didn't want her to be
offended by my implication that she was an ignorant cretin ...''

''Tactful,'' said Arthur Dent.

''Exactly,'' said Ford, ''tactful.''

He frowned.

''Space-lag,'' he said, ''is very bad for sub-clauses.  You'll  have
to  assist  me  again,'' he continued, ''by reminding me what I was
talking about.''

''`Between the stars,''' said Arthur, ''`known on your world, though
not necessarily to you, dear lady, as ...'''

''`Pleiades  Epsilon   and   Pleiades   Zeta,'''   concluded   Ford
triumphantly. ''This conversation lark is quite gas isn't it?''

''Have some coffee.''

''Thank you, no. `And the reason,' I said, `why I am bothering you
with  it  rather than just dialling direct as I could, because we
have some pretty sophisticated telecommunications  equipment  out
here  in the Pleiades, I can tell you, is that the penny pinching
son of a starbeast piloting this son  of  a  starbeast  spaceship
insists that I call collect. Can you believe that?'''

''And could she?''

''I don't know. She had hung up,'' said Ford, ''by  this  time.  So!
What do you suppose,'' he asked fiercely, ''I did next?''

''I've no idea, Ford,'' said Arthur.

''Pity,'' said Ford, ''I was hoping you could remind  me.  I  really
hate  those  guys  you  know.  They  really are the creeps of the
cosmos, buzzing around the celestial infinite  with  their  junky
little  machines  that  never  work  properly  or,  when they do,
perform functions that no sane man would require of them and,'' he
added savagely, ''go beep to tell you when they've done it!''

This was perfectly true, and a very respectable view widely  held
by  right  thinking people, who are largely recognizable as being
right thinking people by the mere fact that they hold this view.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in a  moment  of  reasoned
lucidity  which  is almost unique among its current tally of five
million, nine hundred and seventy-five thousand, five hundred and
nine  pages,  says  of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation product
that ''it is very easy to be blinded to the essential  uselessness
of  them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to
work at all.

''In other words - and this is the rock solid principle  on  which
the  whole  of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded -
their fundamental design flaws are  completely  hidden  by  their
superficial design flaws.''

''And this guy,'' ranted Ford, ''was on a  drive  to  sell  more  of
them!  His  five-year mission to seek out and explore strange new
worlds, and sell  Advanced  Music  Substitute  Systems  to  their
restaurants,  elevators  and  wine  bars!  Or if they didn't have
restaurants,  elevators  and  wine  bars  yet,  to   artificially
accelerate  their  civilization growth until they bloody well did
have! Where's that coffee!''

''I threw it away.''

''Make some more. I have now remembered what I did next.  I  saved
civilization as we know it. I knew it was something like that.''

He stumbled determinedly back into the  sitting  room,  where  he
seemed  to  carry  on  talking  to  himself,  tripping  over  the
furniture and making beep beep noises.

A couple of minutes later, wearing his very placid  face,  Arthur
followed him.

Ford looked stunned.

''Where have you been?'' he demanded.

''Making some coffee,'' said Arthur, still wearing his very  placid
face.  He  had  long  ago  realized that the only way of being in
Ford's company successfully was to keep a  large  stock  of  very
placid faces and wear them at all times.

''You missed the best bit!'' raged Ford. ''You missed the bit  where
I  jumped  the guy! Now,'' he said, ''I shall have to jump him, all
over him!''

He hurled himself recklessly at a chair and broke it.

''It was better,'' he said sullenly, ''last time,'' and waved vaguely
in the direction of another broken chair which he had already got
trussed up on the dining table.

''I see,'' said Arthur, casting a placid eye over  the  trussed  up
wreckage, ''and, er, what are all the ice cubes for?''

''What?'' screamed Ford. ''What? You missed that bit too? That's the
suspended  animation  facility!  I  put  the guy in the suspended
animation facility. Well I had to didn't I?''

''So it would seem,'' said Arthur, in his placid voice.

''Don't touch that!!!'' yelled Ford.

Arthur, who was about to replace the phone, which  was  for  some
mysterious  reason  lying  on  the  table,  off the hook, paused,
placidly.

''OK,'' said Ford, calming down, ''listen to it.''

Arthur put the phone to his ear.

''It's the speaking clock,'' he said.

''Beep, beep, beep,'' said Ford, ''is exactly what  is  being  heard
all  over  that  guy's  ship,  while he sleeps, in the ice, going
slowly round a little-known moon of Sesefras  Magna.  The  London
Speaking Clock!''

''I see,'' said Arthur again, and decided that now was the time  to
ask the big one.

''Why?'' he said, placidly.

''With a bit of luck,'' said Ford, ''the phone  bill  will  bankrupt
the buggers.''

He threw himself, sweating, on to the sofa.

''Anyway,'' he said, ''dramatic arrival don't you think?''

\chapter{}

The flying saucer in which  Ford  Prefect  had  stowed  away  had
stunned the world.

Finally there  was  no  doubt,  no  possibility  of  mistake,  no
hallucinations,  no  mysterious  CIA  agents  found  floating  in
reservoirs.

This time it was real, it was definite. It was  quite  definitely
definite.

It had come down with a wonderful disregard for anything  beneath
it  and  crushed  a large area of some of the most expensive real
estate in the world, including much of Harrods.

The thing was massive, nearly a  mile  across,  some  said,  dull
silver  in colour, pitted, scorched and disfigured with the scars
of unnumbered vicious space battles fought with savage forces  by
the light of suns unknown to man.

A hatchway opened, crashed down through the Harrods  Food  Halls,
demolished  Harvey  Nicholls, and with a final grinding scream of
tortured architecture, toppled the Sheraton Park Tower.

After a long,  heart-stopping  moment  of  internal  crashes  and
grumbles  of  rending  machinery, there marched from it, down the
ramp, an immense silver robot, a hundred feet tall.

It held up a hand.

''I come in peace,'' it said, adding after a long moment of further
grinding, ''take me to your Lizard.''

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as  he  sat
with Arthur and watched the non-stop frenetic news reports on the
television, none of which had  anything  to  say  other  than  to
record  that  the  thing had done this amount of damage which was
valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had  killed  this
totally  other  number  of people, and then say it again, because
the robot was doing nothing more  than  standing  there,  swaying
very   slightly,   and   emitting  short  incomprehensible  error
messages.

''It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see ...''

''You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?''

''No,'' said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational  and
coherent  than  he had been, having finally had the coffee forced
down  him,  ''nothing  so  simple.  Nothing   anything   like   so
straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders
are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards role the
people.''

''Odd,'' said Arthur, ''I thought you said it was a democracy.''

''I did,'' said Ford. ''It is.''

''So,'' said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse,
''why don't people get rid of the lizards?''

''It honestly doesn't occur to them,'' said Ford. ''They've all  got
the  vote,  so  they  all  pretty much assume that the government
they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they
want.''

''You mean they actually vote for the lizards?''

''Oh yes,'' said Ford with a shrug, ''of course.''

''But,'' said Arthur, going for the big one again, ''why?''

''Because if they didn't vote for a lizard,'' said Ford, ''the wrong
lizard might get in. Got any gin?''

''What?''

''I said,'' said Ford, with an increasing air of  urgency  creeping
into his voice, ''have you got any gin?''

''I'll look. Tell me about the lizards.''

Ford shrugged again.

''Some people say that the lizards are the best  thing  that  ever
happened  to them,'' he said. ''They're completely wrong of course,
completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it.''

''But that's terrible,'' said Arthur.

''Listen, bud,'' said Ford, ''if I had one Altairan dollar for every
time  I  heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the
Universe and say `That's terrible' I  wouldn't  be  sitting  here
like  a  lemon looking for a gin. But I haven't and I am. Anyway,
what are you looking so placid and  moon-eyed  for?  Are  you  in
love?''

Arthur said yes, he was, and said it placidly.

''With someone who knows where the gin bottle is? Do I get to meet
her?''

He did because Fenchurch came in at that moment with  a  pile  of
newspapers  she'd  been  into  the village to buy. She stopped in
astonishment at the wreckage on the table and the  wreckage  from
Betelgeuse on the sofa.

''Where's the gin?'' said Ford to Fenchurch. And to  Arthur,  ''What
happened to Trillian by the way?''

''Er, this is  Fenchurch,''  said  Arthur,  awkwardly.  ''There  was
nothing with Trillian, you must have seen her last.''

''Oh, yeah,'' said Ford, ''she went off with Zaphod somewhere.  They
had  some kids or something. At least,'' he added, ''I think that's
what they were. Zaphod's calmed down a lot you know.''

''Really?'' said Arthur, clustering hurriedly  round  Fenchurch  to
relieve her of the shopping.

''Yeah,'' said Ford, ''at least one of his heads is now  saner  than
an emu on acid.''

''Arthur, who is this?'' said Fenchurch.

''Ford Prefect,''  said  Arthur.  ''I  may  have  mentioned  him  in
passing.''

\chapter{}

For a total of three days and nights the giant silver robot stood
in  stunned  amazement  straddling  the remains of Knightsbridge,
swaying slightly and trying to work out a number of things.

Government deputations came to see it, ranting journalists by the
truckload  asked  each other questions on the air about what they
thought of it, flights of fighter bombers tried  pathetically  to
attack  it  -  but  no  lizards  appeared. It scanned the horizon
slowly.

At night it was at its most spectacular, floodlit by the teams of
television  crews  who covered it continuously as it continuously
did nothing.

It thought and thought and eventually reached a conclusion.

It would have to send out its service robots.

It should have thought of that before, but it was having a number
of problems.

The tiny flying robots came screeching out of  the  hatchway  one
afternoon  in  a  terrifying  cloud  of  metal.  They  roamed the
surrounding  terrain,  frantically  attacking  some  things   and
defending others.

One of them at last found a pet shop with some  lizards,  but  it
instantly  defended  the  pet shop for democracy so savagely that
little in the area survived.

A turning point came when  a  crack  team  of  flying  screechers
discovered  the  Zoo  in Regent's Park, and most particularly the
reptile house.

Learning a little caution from their  previous  mistakes  in  the
petshop,  the  flying  drills  and  fretsaws  brought some of the
larger and fatter iguanas to the giant silver robot, who tried to
conduct high-level talks with them.

Eventually the robot announced to  the  world  that  despite  the
full,  frank  and  wide-ranging  exchange of views the high level
talks had broken down, the lizards had been retired, and that it,
the  robot  would  take  a  short holiday somewhere, and for some
reason selected Bournemouth.

Ford Prefect, watching it on TV, nodded, laughed, and had another
beer.

Immediate preparations were made for its departure.

The flying toolkits screeched and sawed  and  drilled  and  fried
things  with  light throughout that day and all through the night
time, and in the  morning,  stunningly,  a  giant  mobile  gantry
started  to  roll  westwards on several roads simultaneously with
the robot standing on it, supported within the gantry.

Westward it crawled, like a strange carnival buzzed around by its
servants  and  helicopters and news coaches, scything through the
land until at last it came to Bournemouth, where the robot slowly
freed itself from it transport system's embraces and went and lay
for ten days on the beach.

It was, of course, by far the most exciting thing that  had  ever
happened to Bournemouth.

Crowds gathered daily along the perimeter which  was  staked  out
and guarded as the robot's recreation area, and tried to see what
it was doing.

It was doing nothing. It was lying on the beach. It was  lying  a
little awkwardly on its face.

It was a journalist from a  local  paper  who,  late  one  night,
managed  to  do what no one else in the world had so far managed,
which was to strike up a brief intelligible conversation with one
of the service robots guarding the perimeter.

It was an extraordinary breakthrough.

''I think there's a story in it,'' confided the journalist  over  a
cigarette  shared  through  the steel link fence, ''but it needs a
good local angle. I've got a little list of questions  here,''  he
went  on,  rummaging  awkwardly  in an inner pocket, ''perhaps you
could get him, it, whatever you call him,  to  run  through  them
quickly.''

The little flying ratchet screwdriver said it would see  what  it
cold do and screeched off.

A reply was never forthcoming.

Curiously, however, the questions on the piece of paper  more  or
less  exactly  matched  the questions that were going through the
massive battle-scarred industrial quality circuits of the robot's
mind. They were these:

''How do you feel about being a robot?''

''How does it feel to be from outer space?'' and

''How do you like Bournemouth?''

Early the following day things started to be packed up and within
a  few  days  it  became apparent that the robot was preparing to
leave for good.

''The point is,'' said Fenchurch  to  Ford,  ''can  you  get  us  on
board?''

Ford looked wildly at his watch.

''I have some  serious  unfinished  business  to  attend  to,''  he
exclaimed.

\chapter{}

Crowds thronged as close as they could to the giant silver craft,
which  wasn't  very.  The  immediate perimeter was fenced off and
patrolled by the tiny flying service robots.  Staked  out  around
that  was the army, who had been completely unable to breach that
inner perimeter, but were damned if anybody was going  to  breach
them.  They in turn were surrounded by a cordon of police, though
whether they were there to protect the public from  the  army  or
the  army  from  the  public,  or  to  guarantee the giant ship's
diplomatic immunity and prevent it getting  parking  tickets  was
entirely unclear and the subject of much debate.

The inner perimeter fence was  now  being  dismantled.  The  army
stirred uncomfortably, uncertain of how to react to the fact that
the reason for their being there seemed as if it was simply going
to get up and go.

The giant robot had lurched back aboard the  ship  at  lunchtime,
and  now it was five o'clock in the afternoon and no further sign
had been seen of it. Much had been heard  -  more  grindings  and
rumblings  from  deep  within  the  craft, the music of a million
hideous malfunctions; but the sense of  tense  expectation  among
the  crowd  was born of the fact that they tensely expected to be
disappointed. This wonderful extraordinary thing  had  come  into
their lives, an now it was simply going to go without them.

Two people were particularly aware of this sensation. Arthur  and
Fenchurch  scanned  the  crowd  anxiously,  unable  to  find Ford
Prefect in it anywhere, or any sign that  he  had  the  slightest
intention of being there.

''How reliable is he?'' asked Fenchurch in a sinking voice.

''How reliable?'' said Arthur. He gave a hollow laugh. ''How shallow
is the ocean?'' he said. ''How cold is the sun?''

The last parts of the robot's gantry transport were being carried
on  board,  and the few remaining sections of the perimeter fence
were now stacked at the bottom of  the  ramp  waiting  to  follow
them. The soldiers on guard round the ramp bristled meaningfully,
orders were barked back and forth, hurried conferences were held,
but nothing, of course, could be done about any of it.

Hopelessly, and with no clear  plan  now,  Arthur  and  Fenchurch
pushed  forward  through the crowd, but since the whole crowd was
also trying to push forward through  the  crowd,  this  got  them
nowhere.

And within a few minutes more nothing remained outside the  ship,
every  last link of the fence was aboard. A couple of flying fret
saws and a spirit level seemed to do one last  check  around  the
site, and then screamed in through the giant hatchway themselves.

A few seconds passed.

The  sounds  of  mechanical  disarray  from  within  changed   in
intensity, and slowly, heavily, the huge steel ramp began to lift
itself back out  of  the  Harrods  Food  Halls.  The  sound  that
accompanied  it  was  the  sound  of  thousands of tense, excited
people being completely ignored.

''Hold it!''

A megaphone barked from a taxi which screeched to a halt  on  the
edge of the milling crowd.

''There has been,''  barked  the  megaphone,  ''a  major  scientific
break-in!  Through.  Breakthrough,'' it corrected itself. The door
flew open and a small man  from  somewhere  in  the  vicinity  of
Betelgeuse leapt out wearing a white coat.

''Hold it!'' he shouted again, and this  time  brandished  a  short
squad black rod with lights on it. The lights winked briefly, the
ramp paused in its ascent, and then in obedience to  the  signals
from the Thumb (which half the electronic engineers in the galaxy
are constantly trying to find fresh ways of  jamming,  while  the
other  half  are  constantly trying to find fresh ways of jamming
the jamming signals), slowly ground its way downwards again.

Ford Prefect grabbed his megaphone  from  out  of  the  taxi  and
started bawling at the crowd through it.

''Make way,'' he shouted,  ''make  way,  please,  this  is  a  major
scientific  breakthrough. You and you, get the equipment from the
taxi.''

Completely at random he pointed  at  Arthur  and  Fenchurch,  who
wrestled  their  way back out of the crowd and clustered urgently
round the taxi.

''All right, I want you to  clear  a  passage,  please,  for  some
important  pieces  of  scientific  equipment,'' boomed Ford. ''Just
everybody keep calm. It's all under control, there's  nothing  to
see. It is merely a major scientific breakthrough. Keep calm now.
Important scientific equipment. Clear the way.''

Hungry for new excitement, delighted at this sudden reprieve from
disappointment,  the crowd enthusiastically fell back and started
to open up.

Arthur was a little surprised to see  what  was  printed  on  the
boxes of important scientific equipment in the back of the taxi.

''Hang your coat over them,'' he muttered to Fenchurch as he heaved
them   out   to  her.  Hurriedly  he  manoeuvred  out  the  large
supermarket trolley that was also jammed against the  back  seat.
It  clattered  to  the ground, and together they loaded the boxes
into it.

''Clear a path, please,'' shouted Ford again.  ''Everything's  under
proper scientific control.''

''He said you'd pay,'' said the taxi-driver to Arthur, who dug  out
some  notes  and  paid him. There was the distant sound of police
sirens.

''Move along there,'' shouted Ford, ''and no one will get hurt.''

The crowd surged and closed behind  them  again,  as  frantically
they  pushed  and hauled the rattling supermarket trolley through
the rubble towards the ramp.

''It's all right,'' Ford continued to bellow. ''There's  nothing  to
see, it's all over. None of this is actually happening.''

''Clear the way, please,'' boomed a police megaphone from the  back
of the crowd. ''There's been a break-in, clear the way.''

''Breakthrough,''  yelled  Ford  in  competition.   ''A   scientific
breakthrough!''

''This is the police! Clear the way!''

''Scientific equipment! Clear the way!''

''Police! Let us through!''

''Walkmen!'' yelled Ford, and pulled half a  dozen  miniature  tape
players  from  his  pockets  and  tossed them into the crowd. The
resulting seconds of utter confusion  allowed  them  to  get  the
supermarket trolley to the edge of the ramp, and to haul it up on
to the lip of it.

''Hold tight,''  muttered  Ford,  and  released  a  button  on  his
Electronic  Thumb. Beneath them, the huge ramp juddered and began
slowly to heave its way upwards.

''Ok, kids,'' he said as the milling  crowd  dropped  away  beneath
them  and  they started to lurch their way along the tilting ramp
into the bowels of the ship, ''looks like we're on our way.''

\chapter{}

Arthur Dent was irritated to be continually wakened by the  sound
of gunfire.

Being careful not to wake Fenchurch, who was  still  managing  to
sleep  fitfully,  he slid his way out of the maintenance hatchway
which they had fashioned into a  kind  of  bunk  for  themselves,
slung  himself  down  the access ladder and prowled the corridors
moodily.

They were  claustrophobic  and  ill-lit.  The  lighting  circuits
buzzed annoyingly.

This wasn't it, though.

He paused and leaned backwards as a flying power drill flew  past
him  down  the  dim  corridor  with a nasty screech, occasionally
clanging against the walls like a confused bee as it did so.

That wasn't it either.

He clambered through a bulkhead  door  and  found  himself  in  a
larger  corridor.  Acrid smoke was drifting up from one end so he
walked towards the other.

He came to an observation monitor let  into  the  wall  behind  a
plate of toughened but still badly scratched perspex.

''Would you turn it down please?'' he said to Ford Prefect who  was
crouching in front of it in the middle of a pile of bits of video
equipment he'd taken from a shop window in Tottenham Court  Road,
having  first  hurled  a small brick through it, and also a nasty
heap of empty beer cans.

''Shhhh!'' hissed Ford, and peered with manic concentration at  the
screen. He was watching The Magnificent Seven.

''Just a bit,'' said Arthur.

''No!'' shouted Ford. ''We're just getting to the good bit!  Listen,
I finally got it all sorted out, voltage levels, line conversion,
everything, and this is the good bit!''

With a sigh and a  headache,  Arthur  sat  down  beside  him  and
watched  the good bit. He listened to Ford's whoops and yells and
''yeehay!''s as placidly as he could.

''Ford,'' he said eventually, when it was all over,  and  Ford  was
hunting  through a stack of cassettes for the tape of Casablanca,
''how come, if ...''

''This is the big one,'' said Ford. ''This is the one  I  came  back
for.  Do  you realize I never saw it all through? Always I missed
the end. I saw half of it again the night before the Vogons came.
When  they  blew  the place up I thought I'd never get to see it.
Hey, what happened with all that anyway?''

''Just life,'' said Arthur, and plucked a beer from a six-pack.

''Oh, that again,'' said Ford. ''I thought  it  might  be  something
like  that. I prefer this stuff,'' he said as Rick's Bar flickered
on to the screen. ''How come if what?''

''What?''

''You started to say, `how come if ...'''

''How come if you're so rude about the  Earth,  that  you  ...  oh
never mind, let's just watch the movie.''

''Exactly,'' said Ford.

\chapter{}

There remains little still to tell.

Beyond what used to be known  as  the  Limitless  Lightfields  of
Flanux   until  the  Grey  Binding  Fiefdoms  of  Saxaquine  were
discovered lying behind them, lie the Grey  Binding  Fiefdoms  of
Saxaquine. Within the Grey Binding Fiefdoms of Saxaquine lies the
star named Zarss, around which orbits the planet  Preliumtarn  in
which  is  the  land  of Sevorbeupstry, and it was to the land of
Sevorbeupstry that Arthur and Fenchurch came at  last,  a  little
tired by the journey.

And in the land of Sevorbeupstry, they  came  to  the  Great  Red
Plain  of  Rars,  which  was  bounded  on  the  South side by the
Quentulus Quazgar  Mountains,  on  the  further  side  of  which,
according  to the dying words of Prak, they would find in thirty-
foot-high letters of fire God's Final Message to His Creation.

According to Prak, if Arthur's memory saved him right, the  place
was  guarded  by the Lajestic Vantrashell of Lob, and so, after a
manner, it proved to be. He was a little man in a strange hat and
he sold them a ticket.

''Keep to the left, please,'' he said,  ''keep  to  the  left,''  and
hurried on past them on a little scooter.

They realized they were not the first to pass that way,  for  the
path  that  led  around the left of the Great Plain was well-worn
and dotted with booths. At one they bought a box of fudge,  which
had  been  baked  in an oven in a cave in the mountain, which was
heated by the fire of the letters that formed God's Final Message
to  His  Creation.  At  another  they  bought some postcards. The
letters had been blurred with an airbrush, ''so as  not  to  spoil
the Big Surprise!'' it said on the reverse.

''Do you know what the message is?'' they asked the wizened  little
lady in the booth.

''Oh yes,'' she piped cheerily, ''oh yes!''

She waved them on.

Every twenty miles or so  there  was  a  little  stone  hut  with
showers and sanitary facilities, but the going was tough, and the
high sun baked down on the Great Red Plain,  and  the  Great  Red
Plain rippled in the heat.

''Is it possible,'' asked Arthur at one of the larger  booths,  ''to
rent  one  of  those  little  scooters?  Like  the  one  Lajestic
Ventrawhatsit had.''

''The scooters,'' said the little lady who was serving  at  an  ice
cream bar, ''are not for the devout.''

''Oh  well,  that's  easy  then,''  said  Fenchurch,   ''we're   not
particularly devout. We're just interested.''

''Then you must turn back now,'' said the little lady severely, and
when  they  demurred, sold them a couple of Final Message sunhats
and a photograph of themselves with their arms tight around  each
other on the Great Red Plain of Rars.

They drank a couple of sodas in the shade of the booth  and  then
trudged out into the sun again.

''We're running out of border cream,'' said Fenchurch after  a  few
more miles. ''We can go to the next booth, or we can return to the
previous one which is nearer, but means we have  to  retrace  our
steps again.''

They stared ahead at the distant black speck winking in the  heat
haze; they looked behind themselves. They elected to go on.

They then discovered that they were not only not the  first  ones
to make this journey, but that they were not the only ones making
it now.

Some way ahead of them an awkward low shape  was  heaving  itself
wretchedly  along  the  ground, stumbling painfully slowly, half-
limping, half-crawling.

It was moving so slowly that before  too  long  they  caught  the
creature  up  and could see that it was made of worn, scarred and
twisted metal.

It groaned at them as they approached it, collapsing in  the  hot
dry dust.

''So much time,'' it groaned, ''oh so much time. And pain  as  well,
so much of that, and so much time to suffer it in too. One or the
other on its own I could probably manage. It's the  two  together
that really get me down. Oh hello, you again.''

''Marvin?'' said Arthur sharply, crouching down beside it. ''Is that
you?''

''You were always one,'' groaned the aged husk of the  robot,  ''for
the super-intelligent question, weren't you?''

''What is it?'' whispered  Fenchurch  in  alarm,  crouching  behind
Arthur, and grasping on to his arm. ''He's sort of an old friend,''
said Arthur. ''I ...''

''Friend!'' croaked the robot pathetically. The word died away in a
kind of crackle and flakes of rust fell out of its mouth. ''You'll
have to excuse me while I try and remember what the  word  means.
My  memory  banks  are  not what they were you know, and any word
which falls into disuse for  a  few  zillion  years  has  to  get
shifted down into auxiliary memory back-up. Ah, here it comes.''

The robot's battered head snapped up a bit as if in thought.

''Hmm,'' he said, ''what a curious concept.''

He thought a little longer.

''No,'' he said at last, ''don't think I ever  came  across  one  of
those. Sorry, can't help you there.''

He scraped a knee along pathetically in the dust, an  then  tried
to twist himself up on his misshapen elbows.

''Is there any last service you would like me to perform  for  you
perhaps?''  he asked in a kind of hollow rattle. ''A piece of paper
that perhaps you would like me to pick up for you? Or  maybe  you
would like me,'' he continued, ''to open a door?''

His head scratched round in its rusty neck bearings and seemed to
scan the distant horizon.

''Don't seem to be any doors around at present,'' he said, ''but I'm
sure  that if we waited long enough, someone would build one. And
then,'' he said slowly twisting his  head  around  to  see  Arthur
again,  ''I  could  open it for you. I'm quite used to waiting you
know.''

''Arthur,'' hissed Fenchurch in his ear sharply, ''you never told me
of this. What have you done to this poor creature?''

''Nothing,'' insisted Arthur sadly, ''he's always like this ...''

''Ha!'' snapped Marvin. ''Ha!'' he repeated. ''What  do  you  know  of
always?  You say `always' to me, who, because of the silly little
errands your organic lifeforms keep on sending  me  through  time
on,  am  now  thirty-seven  times older than the Universe itself?
Pick your words with a little more care,'' he coughed, ''and tact.''

He rasped his way through a coughing fit and resumed.

''Leave me,'' he said, ''go on ahead, leave me to struggle painfully
on  my  way.  My  time at last has nearly come. My race is nearly
run. I fully expect,'' he said,  feebly  waving  them  on  with  a
broken  finger, ''to come in last. It would be fitting. Here I am,
brain the size ...''

Between them they picked him up despite his feeble  protests  and
insults.  The metal was so hot it nearly blistered their fingers,
but he weighed surprisingly little, and hung limply between their
arms.

They carried him with them along the path that ran along the left
of the Great Red Plain of Rars toward the encircling mountains of
Quentulus Quazgar.

Arthur attempted to explain  to  Fenchurch,  but  was  too  often
interrupted by Marvin's dolorous cybernetic ravings.

They tried to see if they could get him some spare parts  at  one
of the booths, but Marvin would have none of it.

''I'm all spare parts,'' he droned.

''Let me be!'' he groaned.

''Every part of me,'' he moaned, ''has been replaced at least  fifty
times  ... except ...'' He seemed almost imperceptibly to brighten
for a moment. His head bobbed between them  with  the  effort  of
memory.  ''Do  you  remember,  the first time you ever met me,'' he
said at  last  to  Arthur.  ''I  had  been  given  the  intellect-
stretching  task  of  taking you up to the bridge? I mentioned to
you that I had this terrible pain in all the diodes down my  left
side?  That  I  had  asked for them to be replaced but they never
were?''

He left a longish pause before he continued. They carried him  on
between  them,  under  the  baking sun that hardly ever seemed to
move, let alone set.

''See if you can guess,'' said Marvin,  when  he  judged  that  the
pause  had  become  embarrassing  enough, ''which parts of me were
never replaced? Go on, see if you can guess.

''Ouch,'' he added, ''ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.''

At last they reached the last of  the  little  booths,  set  down
Marvin  between  them  and  rested in the shade. Fenchurch bought
some cufflinks for Russell, cufflinks that had set in them little
polished  pebbles  which  had  been  picked up from the Quentulus
Quazgar Mountains, directly underneath the  letters  of  fire  in
which was written God's Final Message to His Creation.

Arthur flipped through a little rack of devotional tracts on  the
counter, little meditations on the meaning of the Message.

''Ready?'' he said to Fenchurch, who nodded.

They heaved up Marvin between them.

They rounded the foot of the  Quentulus  Quazgar  Mountains,  and
there  was the Message written in blazing letters along the crest
of the Mountain. There was a  little  observation  vantage  point
with  a  rail built along the top of a large rock facing it, from
which you could get a good view. It had  a  little  pay-telescope
for  looking  at the letters in detail, but no one would ever use
it because the letters burned with the divine brilliance  of  the
heavens  and  would,  if  seen through a telescope, have severely
damaged the retina and optic nerve.

They gazed at God's Final Message in wonderment, and were  slowly
and  ineffably  filled  with a great sense of peace, and of final
and complete understanding.

Fenchurch sighed. ''Yes,'' she said, ''that was it.''

They had been staring at it for fully  ten  minutes  before  they
became aware that Marvin, hanging between their shoulders, was in
difficulties. The robot could no longer lift his  head,  had  not
read  the  message.  They lifted his head, but he complained that
his vision circuits had almost gone.

They found a coin and helped him to the telescope. He  complained
and  insulted  them,  but they helped him look at each individual
letter in turn, The first letter was a ''w'', the  second  an  ''e''.
Then  there was a gap. An ''a'' followed, then a ''p'', an ''o'' and an
''l''.

Marvin paused for a rest.

After a few moments they resumed and let him  see  the  ''o'',  the
''g'', the ''i'', the ''s'' and the ''e''.

The next two words were ''for'' and ''the''. The last one was a  long
one, and Marvin needed another rest before he could tackle it.

It started with an ''i'', then ''n'' then a ''c''. Next came an ''o'' and
an ''n'', followed by a ''v'', an ''e'', another ''n'' and an ''i''.

After a final pause, Marvin gathered his strength  for  the  last
stretch.

He read the ''e'', the ''n'', the ''c'' and at last the final ''e'',  and
staggered back into their arms.

''I think,'' he murmured at last, from deep  within  his  corroding
rattling thorax, ''I feel good about it.''

The lights went out in his eyes for absolutely the very last time
ever.

Luckily, there was a stall nearby where you could  rent  scooters
from guys with green wings.

\chapter{Epilogue}

One of the greatest benefactors of all lifekind  was  a  man  who
couldn't keep his mind on the job in hand.

Brilliant?

Certainly.

One of the  foremost  genetic  engineers  of  his  or  any  other
generation, including a number he had designed himself?

Without a doubt.

The problem was that he was far too interested in things which he
shouldn't  be  interested in, at least, as people would tell him,
not now.

He was also, partly  because  of  this,  of  a  rather  irritable
disposition.

So when his world was threatened  by  terrible  invaders  from  a
distant  star, who were still a fair way off but travelling fast,
he, Blart Versenwald III (his  name  was  Blart  Versenwald  III,
which  is  not strictly relevant, but quite interesting because -
never mind, that was his name and we  can  talk  about  why  it's
interesting  later),  was  sent  into  guarded  seclusion  by the
masters of his race  with  instructions  to  design  a  breed  of
fanatical   superwarriors  to  resist  and  vanquish  the  feared
invaders, do it quickly and, they told him, ''Concentrate!''

So he sat by a window  and  looked  out  at  a  summer  lawn  and
designed  and  designed and designed, but inevitably got a little
distracted  by  things,  and  by  the  time  the  invaders   were
practically  in  orbit  round them, had come up with a remarkable
new breed of super-fly that could, unaided, figure out how to fly
through  the  open  half  of a half-open window, and also an off-
switch   for   children.   Celebrations   of   these   remarkable
achievements  seemed doomed to be shortlived because disaster was
imminent as the alien ships were landing. But  astoundingly,  the
fearsome  invaders  who, like most warlike races were only on the
rampage because they couldn't cope  with  things  at  home,  were
stunned  by  Versenwald's  extraordinary breakthroughs, joined in
the celebrations and were instantly  prevailed  upon  to  sign  a
wide-ranging  series of trading agreements and set up a programme
of cultural exchanges. And, in an astonishing reversal of  normal
practice  in  the  conduct  of  such matters, everybody concerned
lived happily ever after.

There was a point to this story, but it has  temporarily  escaped
the chronicler's mind.

\end{documen