Slowly he began to focus on the newspaper. He cocked his head on one side with a slight frown.
– I’ve seen that one before, – he said. His eyes wandered slowly up to the date, which Ford was idly tapping at. His face froze for a second or two and then began to do that terribly slow crashing trick which Arctic ice-floes do so spectacularly in the spring.
– And the other thing, – said Ford, – is that you appear to have a bone in your beard. – He tossed back his tea.
Outside the refreshment tent, the sun was shining on a happy crowd. It shone on white hats and red faces. It shone on ice lollies and melted them. It shone on the tears of small children whose ice lollies had just melted and fallen off the stick. It shone on the trees, it flashed off whirling cricket bats, it gleamed off the utterly extraordinary object which was parked behind the sight-screens and which nobody appeared to have noticed. It beamed on Ford and Arthur as they emerged blinking from the refreshment tent and surveyed the scene around them.
Arthur was shaking.
– Perhaps, – he said, – I should…
– No, – said Ford sharply.
– What? – said Arthur.
– Don’t try and phone yourself up at home.
– How did you know?…
Ford shrugged.
– But why not? – said Arthur.
– People who talk to themselves on the phone, – said Ford, – never learn anything to their advantage.
– But…
– Look, – said Ford. He picked up an imaginary phone and dialled an imaginary dial.
– Hello? – he said into the imaginary mouthpiece. – Is that Arthur Dent? Ah, hello, yes. This is Arthur Dent speaking. Don’t hang up.
He looked at the imaginary mouthpiece in disappointment.
– He hung up, – he said, shrugged, and put the imaginary phone neatly back on its imaginary hook.
– This is not my first temporal anomaly, – he added.
A glummer look replaced the already glum look on Arthur Dent’s face.
– So we’re not home and dry, – he said.
– We could not even be said, – replied Ford, – to be home and vigorously towelling ourselves off.
The game continued. The bowler approached the wicket at a lope, a trot, and then a run. He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball. The batsman swung and thwacked it behind him over the sight-screens. Ford’s eyes followed the trajectory of the ball and jogged momentarily. He stiffened. He looked along the flight path of the ball again and his eyes twitched again.
– This isn’t my towel, – said Arthur, who was rummaging in his rabbit-skin bag.
– Shhh, – said Ford. He screwed his eyes up in concentration.
– I had a Golgafrinchan jogging towel, – continued Arthur, – it was blue with yellow stars on it. This isn’t it.
– Shhh, – said Ford again. He covered one eye and looked with the other.
– This one’s pink, – said Arthur, – it isn’t yours is it?
– I would like you to shut up about your towel, – said Ford.
– It isn’t my towel, – insisted Arthur, – that is the point I am trying to…
– And the time at which I would like you to shut up about it, continued Ford in a low growl, – is now.
– All right, – said Arthur, starting to stuff it back into the primitively stitched rabbit-skin bag. – I realize that it is probably not important in the cosmic scale of things, it’s just odd, that’s all. A pink towel suddenly, instead of a blue one with yellow stars.
Ford was beginning to behave rather strangely, or rather not actually beginning to behave strangely but beginning to behave in a way which was strangely different from the other strange ways in which he more regularly behaved. What he was doing was this. Regardless of the bemused stares it was provoking from his fellow members of the crowd gathered round the pitch, he was waving his hands in sharp movements across his face, ducking down behind some people, leaping up behind others, then standing still and blinking a lot. After a moment or two of this he started to stalk forward slowly and stealthily wearing a puzzled frown of concentration, like a leopard that’s not sure whether it’s just seen a half-empty tin of cat food half a mile away across a hot and dusty plain.
– This isn’t my bag either, – said Arthur suddenly.
Ford’s spell of concentration was broken. He turned angrily on Arthur.
– I wasn’t talking about my towel, – said Arthur. – We’ve established that that isn’t mine. It’s just that the bag into which I was putting the towel which is not mine is also not mine, though it is extraordinarily similar. Now personally I think that that is extremely odd, especially as the bag was one I made myself on prehistoric Earth. These are also not my stones, – he added, pulling a few flat grey stones out of the bag. – I was making a collection of interesting stones and these are clearly very dull ones.
A roar of excitement thrilled through the crowd and obliterated whatever it was that Ford said in reply to this piece of information. The cricket ball which had excited this reaction fell out of the sky and dropped neatly into Arthur’s mysterious rabbit-skin bag.
– Now I would say that that was also a very curious event, – said Arthur, rapidly closing the bag and pretending to look for the ball on the ground.
– I don’t think it’s here, – he said to the small boys who immediately clustered round him to join in the search, – it probably rolled off somewhere. Over there I expect. – He pointed vaguely in the direction in which he wished they would push off. One of the boys looked at him quizzically.
– You all right? – said the boy.
– No, – said Arthur.
– Then why you got a bone in your beard? – said the boy.
– I’m training it to like being wherever it’s put. – Arthur prided himself on saying this. It was, he thought, exactly the sort of thing which would entertain and stimulate young minds.
– Oh, – said the small boy, putting his head to one side and thinking about it. – What’s your name?
– Dent, – said Arthur, – Arthur Dent.
– You’re a jerk, Dent, – said the boy, – a complete asshole. – The boy looked past him at something else, to show that he wasn’t in any particular hurry to run away, and then wandered off scratching his nose. Suddenly Arthur remembered that the Earth was going to be demolished again in two days’ time, and just this once didn’t feel too bad about it.
Play resumed with a new ball, the sun continued to shine and Ford continued to jump up and down shaking his head and blinking.
– Something’s on your mind, isn’t it? – said Arthur.
– I think, – said Ford in a tone of voice which Arthur by now recognized as one which presaged something utterly unintelligible, – that there’s an SEP over there.
He pointed. Curiously enough, the direction he pointed in was not the one in which he was looking. Arthur looked in the one direction, which was towards the sight-screens, and in the other which was at the field of play. He nodded, he shrugged. He shrugged again.
– A what? – he said.
– An SEP.
– An S?…
– …EP.
– And what’s that?
– Somebody Else’s Problem.
– Ah, good, – said Arthur and relaxed. He had no idea what all that was about, but at least it seemed to be over. It wasn’t.
– Over there, – said Ford, again pointing at the sight-screens and looking at the pitch.
– Where? – said Arthur.
– There! – said Ford.
– I see, – said Arthur, who didn’t.
– You do? – said Ford.
– What? – said Arthur.
– Can you see, – said Ford patiently, – the SEP?
– I thought you said that was somebody else’s problem.
– That’s right.
Arthur nodded slowly, carefully and with an air of immense stupidity.
– And I want to know, – said Ford, – if you can see it.
– You do?
– Yes.
– What, – said Arthur, – does it look like?
– Well, how should I know, you fool? – shouted Ford. – If you can see it, you tell me.
Arthur experienced that dull throbbing sensation just behind the temples which was a hallmark of so many of his conversations with Ford. His brain lurked like a frightened puppy in its kennel. Ford took him by the arm.
– An SEP, – he said, – is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won’t see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye.
– Ah, – said Arthur, – then that’s why…
– Yes, – said Ford, who knew what Arthur was going to say.
–…you’ve been jumping up and…
– Yes.
–…down, and blinking…
– Yes.
–…and…
– I think you’ve got the message.
– I can see it, – said Arthur, – it’s a spaceship.
For a moment Arthur was stunned by the reaction this revelation provoked. A roar erupted from the crowd, and from every direction people were running, shouting, yelling, tumbling over each other in a tumult of confusion. He stumbled back in astonishment and glanced fearfully around. Then he glanced around again in even greater astonishment.
– Exciting, isn’t it? – said an apparition. The apparition wobbled in front of Arthur’s eyes, though the truth of the matter is probably that Arthur’s eyes were wobbling in front of the apparition. His mouth wobbled as well.
– W… w… w… w… – his mouth said.
– I think your team have just won, – said the apparition.
– W… w… w… w… – repeated Arthur, and punctuated each wobble with a prod at Ford Prefect’s back. Ford was staring at the tumult in trepidation.
– You are English, aren’t you? – said the apparition.
– W… w… w… w… yes – said Arthur.
– Well, your team, as I say, have just won. The match. It means they retain the Ashes. You must be very pleased. I must say, I’m rather fond of cricket, though I wouldn’t like anyone outside this planet to hear me saying that. Oh dear no.
The apparition gave what looked as if it might have been a mischievous grin, but it was hard to tell because the sun was directly behind him, creating a blinding halo round his head and illuminating his silver hair and beard in a way which was awesome, dramatic and hard to reconcile with mischievous grins.
– Still, – he said, – it’ll all be over in a couple of days, won’t it? Though as I said to you when we last met, I was very sorry about that. Still, whatever will have been, will have been.
Arthur tried to speak, but gave up the unequal struggle. He prodded Ford again.
– I thought something terrible had happened, – said Ford, – but it’s just the end of the game. We ought to get out. Oh, hello, Slartibartfast, what are you doing here?
– Oh, pottering, pottering, – said the old man gravely.
– That your ship? Can you give us a lift anywhere?
– Patience, patience, – the old man admonished.
– OK, – said Ford. – It’s just that this planet’s going to be demolished pretty soon.
– I know that, – said Slartibartfast.
– And, well, I just wanted to make that point, – said Ford.
– The point is taken.
And if you feel that you really want to hang around a cricket pitch at this point…
– I do.
– Then it’s your ship.
– It is.
– I suppose. – Ford turned away sharply at this point.
– Hello, Slartibartfast, – said Arthur at last.
– Hello, Earthman, – said Slartibartfast.
– After all, – said Ford, – we can only die once.
The old man ignored this and stared keenly on to the pitch, with eyes that seemed alive with expressions that had no apparent bearing on what was happening out there. What was happening was that the crowd was gathering itself into a wide circle round the centre of the pitch. What Slartibartfast saw in it, he alone knew.
Ford was humming something. It was just one note repeated at intervals. He was hoping that somebody would ask him what he was humming, but nobody did. If anybody had asked him he would have said he was humming the first line of a Noel Coward song called “Mad About the Boy” over and over again. It would then have been pointed out to him that he was only singing one note, to which he would have replied that for reasons which he hoped would be apparent, he was omitting the “about the boy” bit. He was annoyed that nobody asked.
– It’s just, – he burst out at last, – that if we don’t go soon, we might get caught in the middle of it all again. And there’s nothing that depresses me more than seeing a planet being destroyed. Except possibly still being on it when it happens. Or, – he added in an undertone, – hanging around cricket matches.
– Patience, – said Slartibartfast again. – Great things are afoot.
– That’s what you said last time we met, – said Arthur.
– They were, – said Slartibartfast.
– Yes, that’s true, – admitted Arthur.
All, however, that seemed to be afoot was a ceremony of some kind. It was being specially staged for the benefit of TV rather than the spectators, and all they could gather about it from where they were standing was what they heard from a nearby radio. Ford was aggressively uninterested.
He fretted as he heard it explained that the Ashes were about to be presented to the Captain of the English team out there on the pitch, fumed when told that this was because they had now won them for the n’th time, positively barked with annoyance at the information that the Ashes were the remains of a cricket stump, and when, further to this, he was asked to contend with the fact that the cricket stump in question had been burnt in Melbourne, Australia, in 1882, to signify the “death of English cricket”, he rounded on Slartibartfast, took a deep breath, but didn’t have a chance to say anything because the old man wasn’t there. He was marching out on to the pitch with terrible purpose in his gait, his hair, beard and robes swept behind him, looking very much as Moses would have looked if Sinai had been a well-cut lawn instead of, as it is more usually represented, a fiery smoking mountain.
– He said to meet him at his ship, – said Arthur.
– What in the name of zarking fardwarks is the old fool doing? – exploded Ford.
– Meeting us at his ship in two minutes, – said Arthur with a shrug which indicated total abdication of thought. They started off towards it. Strange sounds reached their ears. They tried not to listen, but could not help noticing that Slartibartfast was querulously demanding that he be given the silver urn containing the Ashes, as they were, he said, – vitally important for the past, present and future safety of the Galaxy, – and that this was causing wild hilarity. They resolved to ignore it.
What happened next they could not ignore. With a noise like a hundred thousand people saying “wop”, a steely white spaceship suddenly seemed to create itself out of nothing in the air directly above the cricket pitch and hung there with infinite menace and a slight hum.
Then for a while it did nothing, as if it expected everybody to go about their normal business and not mind it just hanging there.
