the Vogons suddenly discovered the principles of interstellar travel. Within a few short Vog years every last Vogon had migrated to the Megabrantis cluster, the political hub of the Galaxy, and they now formed the immensely powerful backbone of the Galactic Civil Service.

He ran with the fear of death in him, under him, over him and grabbing hold of his hair.

"How are you?" she said over the general intercom. "Fine," he said brightly, "terribly well." "Where are you?" "In the bathroom." "What are you doing?" "Staying here."

The left-hand tower of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offices streaked through interstellar space at a speed never equalled either before or since by any other office block in the Universe.

People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people of point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people of point A are so keen to get there.

"No way," said Ford

Arthur continued to gurgle for a moment or two.

A girl with a strident voice leapt to her feet and used it. "Shut up, you two," she said, "I want to table a motion." "You mean boulder a motion," tittered a hairdresser. "Order, order!" yapped the management consultant.

Arthur followed them feeling very lost and alone.

"There must be some way off this zarking planet."

Arthur shone his torch full on Prak's face. "We thought," he said, "that you were meant to be telling the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth." "Oh, that," said Prak. "Yeah. I was. I finished. There's not nearly as much of it as people imagine. Some of it's pretty funny, though."

There was a moment's expectant pause whilst panels slowly came to life on the front of the console. Lights flashed on and off experimentally and settled down into a businesslike pattern. A soft low hum came from the communication channel.

"Estimated journey time, three weeks," it continued further. It beeped again. "There to meet with a "small slug," it beeped, "of the genus A-Rth-Urp-Hil-Ipdenu." "I believe," it added, after a slight pause during which it beeped, "that you had decided to call it a brainless prat."

Whatever the privations of this world were, she went to sleep every night profoundly grateful for the fact that whatever she had to face in the morning it wouldn't be a hundred almost identical photographs of moodily lit tubes of toothpaste.

"Funny," he intoned funerally, "how just when you think life can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does."

"The domain of the King!" shouted Old Thrashbarg back. "King?" shouted Arthur in surprise. "What King?" The Perfectly Normal Beast was swaying and rocking restlessly under him. "What do you mean, what King?" shouted Old Thrashbarg. "The King."

And when he opened his eyes again, there in front of him stood the figure of the man or creature, or whatever it was, that he had supposedly been persecuting all this time. "HhhhhhrrrrrraaaaaaHHHHHH!" said Agrajag.

It had indeed been an error.

"Where land meets water. Where earth meets air. Where body meets mind. Where space meets time. We like to be on one side, and look at the other." Arthur got terribly excited. This was exactly the sort of thing he'd been promised in the brochure.

The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.

"Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!" The marketing girl soured him with a look. "All right, Mr Wiseguy," she said, "you're so clever, you tell us what colour it should be." The crowd went wild.

"Right," said Ford, "I'm going to have a look." He glanced round at the others. "Is no one going to say, No you can't possibly, let me go instead?" They all shook their heads.

Life was, in short, ridiculously easy and for a while at least they were able to cope with the problems of aimlessness and isolation by deciding to ignore them.

the alien with the expensive complexion, leaned back in its single seat. His name was Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. He was a man with a purpose. Not a very good purpose, as he would have been the first to admit, but it was at least a purpose and it did at least keep him on the move.

A shadow moved across him again. "Hello, Arthur," said the shadow. Arthur looked up and squinting into the sun was startled to see Ford Prefect standing above him.

For instance, in one corner of the eastern Galactic arm lies the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire "intelligent" population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree.

Arthur squatted and felt the Informational Illusion of the soil and the grass. He ran it through his fingers. The soil seemed heavy and rich, the grass strong. It was hard to avoid the impression that this was a thoroughly delightful place in all respects.

This is all for the best, because in the long run a good solid war is less psychologically damaging than a protracted game of Brockian Ultra-Cricket.

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

They were never tested under laboratory conditions, of course, because they never occurred in laboratories — not in reputable laboratories at least.

"Ford," he said. "Yeah?" "What's this fish doing in my ear?" "It's translating for you. It's a Babel fish."

An extension of the ship's field enabled them to stand there, by once again exploiting the mind's predisposition to have tricks played on it: the problems of falling up off the tiny mass of the asteroid, or of not being able to breathe, simply became Somebody Else's.

This was fun, thought Ford, giving Colin a friendly pat. Colin was about the first genuinely useful robot Ford had ever encountered.

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.

"Go!" whispered Old Thrashbarg urgently, to Ford. "Go! Go now!" Ford leapt up on to the great creature's back, scrabbling amongst its thick knotty fur for purchase, grasping great handfuls of the stuff to hold him steady once he was in position.

The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the "Star Sprangled Banner", but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.

"Come," called the old man, "come now or you will be late." "Late?" said Arthur. "What for?" "What is your name, human?" "Dent. Arthur Dent," said Arthur. "Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent," said the old man, sternly. "It's a sort of threat you see."

Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it. "It's just life," they say.

The Nutri-Matic explained about tea to the ship's computer. The computer boggled, linked logic circuits with the NutriMatic and together they lapsed into a grim silence. Arthur watched and waited for a while, but nothing further happened. He thumped it, but still nothing happened.

"They've garble warble farble!" shouted Slartibartfast in his thin tremulous voice.

with the instinctive correctness that self-preservation instils in the mind, that he mustn't try to think about it, that if he did, the law of gravity would suddenly glance sharply in his direction and demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing up there, and all would suddenly be lost.

they passed a law decreeing that anyone who had to carry a weapon as part of his normal Silastic work (policemen, security guards, primary school teachers, etc.) had to spend at least forty-five minutes every day punching a sack of potatoes in order to work off his or her surplus aggressions.

The angry hitch hiker continued to glare at his monstrously expensive fruit juice. "Worst thing that ever happened to the Guide, moving to Ursa Minor Beta," he grumbled, "they've all gone soft."

"Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm standing?"

"If you would care to discover what happened seven and a half million years later, on the great day of the Answer, allow me to invite you to my study where you can experience the events yourself on our Sens-O-Tape records."

"This is my last body. My last life. This is my revenge body. My kill-Arthur-Dent body. My last chance. I had to fight to get it, too."

"Look," said Zaphod, "we want to eat, we don't want to make a meal of the issues. Four rare steaks please, and hurry. We haven't eaten in five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years."

"This isn't my bag either," said Arthur suddenly.

"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."

Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!"