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 38
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 39
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 40
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
