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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy / Руководство для путешествующих автостопом по Галактике

© Шитова А. В., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2018

© ООО «Издательство «Антология», 2018

* * *

Very far in the unfashionable end of the Galaxy lies a small yellow sun. Orbiting this sun at a distance of about ninety-two million miles is a tiny blue-green planet whose ape-descended [1] life forms are so primitive that they still think digital watches are a great idea.

This planet has – or had – a problem, which was this: most of the people on it (even the ones with digital watches) were unhappy most of the time. Many thought that they had all made a big mistake coming down from the trees. And some even said that no one should have ever left the oceans.

Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of them involved the small green pieces of paper. And so the problem remained.

And then, one Thursday, almost 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[2], one girl sitting alone in a small cafe 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. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe happened, and the idea was lost forever.

This is not her story. But it is the story of that terribly stupid catastrophe.

It is also the story of a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe, never seen or heard of by any Earthman). It is a remarkable book. In fact, it was probably the most remarkable book ever published by the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor [3].

It is also a very successful book – more popular than Oolon Colluphid’s philosophical bestsellers Where God Was Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who Is This God Person Anyway?

In many of the more relaxed civilizations of the Galaxy, The Hitchhiker’s Guide has already beaten the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the main source of all knowledge and wisdom. Why? There are two reasons. First, it is a bit cheaper. Secondly, it has the words DONT’T PANIC written in large friendly letters on its cover.

But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its extraordinary consequences, and the story of this remarkable book begins very simply.

It begins with a house.

Chapter 1

The house stood alone on the edge of the village and looked over the farmland. It was not a remarkable house – it was about thirty years old, small, made of brick, with four windows in the front that failed to please the eye[4].

The only person for whom this house was special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because he was the one who lived in it. He had lived in it for about three years, ever since he had left London because it made him nervous. He was about thirty as well, with dark hair, and never quite comfortable with himself. What used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was so worried about. He worked in local radio, and he always used to tell his friends that his job was a lot more interesting than they probably thought.

On Wednesday night it had rained very heavily, the road was wet and muddy, but the Thursday morning sun was bright and clear as it shone on Arthur Dent’s house for the last time.

Arthur hadn’t quite realized that the local council was planning to demolish his house and build a bypass[5] instead.

* * *

At eight o’clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn’t feel very good. He woke up, got up, walked round his room, opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found his slippers, and walked to the bathroom to wash.

He put toothpaste on the brush and looked at himself in the mirror. For a moment it reflected a second bulldozer outside the bathroom window. Arthur Dent shaved, washed, dried, and walked to the kitchen to find something pleasant to put in his mouth.

Kettle, fridge, milk, coffee.

The word bulldozer went through Arthur’s mind for a moment, trying to find something to connect with. The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one. He stared at it. “Yellow,” he thought and walked back to his bedroom to get dressed.

Passing the bathroom, he stopped to drink a large glass of water, and another. He suspected that he had a hangover. Why? Had he been drinking the night before? Maybe. “Yellow,” he thought again and went to the bedroom.

There he stood for a while[6] and thought.

The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the pub.

He remembered being angry about something that seemed important. He’d been telling people about it. Telling people about it for too long, he suspected, remembering the looks on other people’s faces. Something about a new bypass he had just found out about. No one had heard about it. Ridiculous. It wouldn’t work, he had decided, because no one wanted a bypass.

God, what a terrible hangover it had brought him though. He looked at himself in the mirror. “Yellow,” he thought. The word yellow went through his mind, trying to find something to connect with.

Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a big yellow bulldozer that was going up his garden path.

* * *

Mr. L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty and fat, and worked for the local council.

Mr. L. Prosser was a nervous, worried man. Today he was especially nervous and worried because something had gone seriously wrong with his job – which was to see that Arthur Dent’s house was cleared out of the way before the end of the day.

“Come on, Mr. Dent,” he said, “you can’t win, you know. You can’t lie in front of the bulldozer forever.”

Arthur lay in the mud and looked at him.

“I’m staying here,” he said, “and we’ll see who rusts first.”

“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Prosser, “this bypass has to be built, and it’s going to be built!”

“First time I’ve heard of it,” said Arthur. “Why does it have to be built?”

Mr. Prosser shook his finger at him. “What do you mean, why does it have to be built?” he said. “It’s a bypass. We’ve got to build bypasses.”

Bypasses help some people drive from point A to point B very fast, while other people drive from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C – right in between – often wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people of point B want to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people of point A want to get there. They often wish that people would just finally decide where the hell they wanted to be.

Mr. Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D was just any point a very long way from points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage at point D and have a good time at point E, which would be the nearest pub to point D. His wife, of course, would be against it.

Now Mr. Prosser sweated under the grins of the bulldozer drivers. Obviously somebody had been terribly incompetent, and he hoped to God it wasn’t him.

Mr. Prosser said: “You had a chance to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know.”

“Appropriate time?” asked Arthur. “Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman came to my home yesterday. I asked him if he’d come to clean the windows and he said no he’d come to demolish the house. He didn’t tell me straight away[7], of course. Oh no. First he cleaned a couple of windows and made me pay for it. Then he told me.”

“But Mr. Dent, the plans have been in the local planning ofcif e for the last nine months.”

“Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went there to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t really tried to call people’s attention to them[8], had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything.”

“But the plans were on display…”

“On display? I had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well the lights had probably gone.”[9]

“So had the stairs[10].”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes, I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked cabinet in an old lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.”

A cloud passed in the sky. Its shadow fell over Arthur Dent as he lay in the cold mud.

Mr. Prosser frowned. “It’s not a very nice house anyway,” he said.

“I’m sorry, but I happen to like it.”[11]

“You’ll like the bypass.”

“Oh shut up,” said Arthur Dent. “Shut up and go away, and take your bloody[12] bypass with you!”

Mr. Prosser’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times while his mind showed him pleasant visions of Arthur Dent’s house burning. He pulled himself together.[13]

“Mr. Dent,” he said.

“Hello? Yes?” said Arthur.

“Some information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll over you?”

“How much?” said Arthur.

“None at all,” said Mr. Prosser, and walked nervously of.f

* * *

By a curious coincidence, “none at all” is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not an ape-descendant from Guildford[14] as he used to tell people, but was in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse[15].

Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.

This friend had first arrived on the planet about fifteen Earth years before, and he had worked hard to join the Earth society – with, it must be said, some success. For example, he had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out-of-work actor, which was true enough.

He had made one mistake though. He had chosen the name “Ford Prefect[16]” for himself, thinking it was totally ordinary.

He was neither tall nor dark or handsome[17]. His hair was ginger. There was something a bit strange about him, but it was difficult to say what it was. Maybe it was that his eyes didn’t blink often enough. Or maybe it was that he smiled a bit too much.

Most of the friends he had made on Earth thought he was eccentric but harmless – a boozer with some unusual habits. For example, he would often join university parties, get badly drunk and start making fun of any astrophysicist he could find till they threw him out.

Sometimes he would get into a strange mood and stare into the sky, hypnotized, until someone asked him what he was doing.

Then he would relax and smile. “Oh, just looking for flying saucers[18],” he would joke and everyone would laugh and ask him what kind of flying saucers he was looking for.

“Green ones!” he would reply with a grin, laugh wildly for a moment and then suddenly run to the nearest bar and buy a round of drinks[19].

Evenings like this usually ended badly. Ford would get drunk on whisky. Then, walking down the night streets, he would often ask passing policemen if they knew the way to Betelgeuse. The policemen would usually say something like, “Don’t you think it’s time you went home, sir?”

“I’m trying to, I’m trying to,” was what Ford usually replied.

In fact what he was really looking for when he stared into the night sky was any kind of flying saucer at all. The reason he said green was because green was the traditional space uniform color of the Betelgeuse scouts.

Ford Prefect hoped to see any flying saucer at all because fifteen years was a long time to spend anywhere, especially somewhere as dull as the Earth. Ford wished he would see a flying saucer soon because he knew how to flag them down[20] and get a lift from them. He knew how to see the Marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairan[21] dollars a day.

In fact, Ford Prefect was a researcher for that remarkable book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

* * *

Human beings[22] adapt very well, and by lunchtime life around Arthur’s house had turned into a routine. It was Arthur’s role to lie in the mud, sometimes asking for his lawyer, his mother, or a good book. It was Mr. Prosser’s role to give Arthur yet another For-the-Public-Good talk, the March-of-Progress talk, the They-Knocked-My-House-Down-Once-You-Know, Never-Looked-Back talk. And it was the bulldozer drivers’ role to sit around drinking coffee and trying to see how they could turn the situation to their financial advantage.

The Earth moved slowly in its course, and the sun was beginning to dry the mud Arthur lay in.

A shadow moved across him.

“Hello, Arthur,” said the shadow.

Arthur looked up and was surprised to see Ford Prefect standing above him.

“Ford! Hello, how are you?”

“Fine,” said Ford, “look, are you busy?”

“Am I busy?” exclaimed Arthur. “Well, I’ve just got all these bulldozers and other things to lie in front of because they’ll demolish my house if I don’t, but other than that… well, no, not especially, why?”

They don’t have sarcasm on Betelgeuse, and Ford Prefect often failed to notice it.

He said, “Good, is there anywhere we can talk?”

“What?” said Arthur Dent.

For a few seconds Ford seemed to ignore him, and stared into the sky. Then suddenly he sat down beside Arthur.

“We’ve got to talk,” he said.

“Fine,” said Arthur, “talk.”

“And drink,” said Ford. “It’s very important that we talk and drink. Now. We’ll go to the pub in the village.” He looked into the sky again, nervously.

“Look, don’t you understand?” shouted Arthur. He pointed at Prosser. “That man wants to demolish my house!”

Ford looked at him, puzzled. “Well, he can do it while you’re away, can’t he?” he asked.

“But I don’t want him to!”

“Ah.”

“Look, what’s the matter with you, Ford?” said Arthur.

“Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. Listen to me – I’ve got to tell you the most important thing you’ve ever heard. I’ve got to tell you now, and I’ve got to tell you this in the pub.”

“But why?”

“Because you are going to need a very strong drink.”

Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur suddenly felt that his will was weakening.

He didn’t know that this was because of an old drinking game that Ford learned to play in the hyperspace[23] ports of the star system of Orion Beta. The game was played like this: two contestants would sit at a table, with a glass in front of each of them. Between them would be placed a bottle of Janx Spirit[24]. Each contestant would then concentrate their will on the bottle and try to pour spirit into the glass of his opponent – who would then have to drink it. The bottle would then be refilled. The game would be played again. And again. If you started to lose, you would probably keep losing, because one of the effects of Janx Spirit is to block telepsychic power[25]. Ford Prefect usually played to lose.

Ford stared at Arthur, who began to think that maybe he really wanted to go to the Horse and Groom pub after all.

“But what about my house..?” he asked.

Ford glanced at Mr. Prosser, and suddenly had an idea.

“He wants to knock your house down?”

“Yes, he wants to build…”

“And he can’t because you’re lying in front of the bulldozers?”

“Yes, and…”

“I’m sure we can do something about it,” said Ford. “Excuse me!” he shouted.

Mr. Prosser (who was arguing with the bulldozer drivers’ representative about whether or not Arthur Dent was a mental health hazard[26], and how much they’d get paid if he was) looked around. He was surprised and a bit worried to see that Arthur had company.

“Yes? Hello?” he called. “Has Mr. Dent changed his mind[27] yet?”

“Can we for the moment,” called Ford, “assume that he hasn’t?”

“Well?” asked Mr. Prosser.

“And can we also assume,” said Ford, “that he’s going to be staying here all day?”

“So?”

“So all your men are going to be standing around all day, doing nothing?”

“Could be, could be…”

“Well, if you’re okay doing that anyway, you don’t actually need him to lie here all the time, do you?”

“What?”

“You don’t,” said Ford patiently, “actually need him here.”

Mr. Prosser thought about this.

“Well no…”, he said, “not exactly need…”

Prosser was worried. He thought that one of the two of them wasn’t making a lot of sense.

Ford said, “So if you could just pretend that he’s actually here, then he and I could go off to the pub for half an hour. How does that sound?”

Mr. Prosser thought it sounded perfectly crazy.

“That sounds perfectly reasonable,” he said, wondering who he was trying to convince.

“And if you later want to go for a quick one[28] yourself,” said Ford, “we can always cover up for you[29].”

“Thank you very much,” said Mr. Prosser who didn’t know how to play this game anymore, “thank you very much, yes, that’s very kind…” He frowned, then smiled, then tried to do both at once, and failed.

“So,” continued Ford Prefect, “now you could come here and lie down…”

“What?” said Mr. Prosser.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” said Ford, “maybe I hadn’t made myself clear. Somebody has to lie in front of the bulldozers, or there won’t be anything to stop them driving into Mr. Dent’s house, right?”

“What?” said Mr. Prosser again.

“It’s very simple,” said Ford, “my client, Mr. Dent, says that he will stop lying here in the mud if you come and lie instead of him.”

“What are you talking about?” said Arthur, but Ford kicked him with his shoe to be quiet.

“You want me,” said Mr. Prosser, “to come and lie there…”

“Yes.”

“In front of the bulldozer?”

“Yes.”

“Instead of Mr. Dent.”

“Yes.”

“In the mud.”

“In, as you say it, the mud.”

Mr. Prosser sighed. This was more like the world as he knew it. “And in return you will[30] take Mr. Dent with you to the pub?”

“That’s it,” said Ford. “That’s it exactly.”

Mr. Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped.

“Promise?” he said.

“Promise,” said Ford. He turned to Arthur. “Come on,” he said to him, “get up and let the man lie down.”

Arthur stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream.

Ford gestured to Prosser who sadly sat down in the mud. He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. The mud was all round his bottom and his arms and even got into his shoes.

Ford looked at him and frowned.

“And no knocking down Mr. Dent’s house while he’s away, all right?” he said.

“The thought about the possibility of it,” said Mr. Prosser, “hadn’t even begun crossing my mind.”

He saw the bulldozer drivers’ representative, let his head sink into the mud and closed his eyes. He was trying to find arguments to prove that he was not now a mental health hazard himself. He wasn’t sure about it though. Mr. Prosser shook slightly and sobbed. What a day!

What a day! Ford Prefect knew that it didn’t matter now if Arthur’s house was knocked down or not.

Arthur was still very worried.

“But can we trust him?” he said.

“I’d trust him to the end of the Earth,” said Ford.

“Oh yes,” said Arthur, “and how far is that?”

“About twelve minutes away,” said Ford, “come on, I need a drink.”

Chapter 2

Here’s what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It says that alcohol is a colorless liquid made by the fermentation of sugars that has an intoxicating effect on some life forms.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink ever is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster[31]. It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like your brains are smashed by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.

The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you’ll have to pay for one, and what organizations will help you recover afterwards.

The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself.

Take the juice from one bottle of that Janx Spirit, it says. Pour into it some water from the seas of Santraginus V. Add three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin and four liters of Fallian marsh gas into the mixture. Add a drop of Qualactin Hypermint extract, smelling of all the dark Qualactin Zones, sweet and mystic. Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve in the drink. Sprinkle it with Zamphuor. Add an olive. Drink… but… very carefully…

Now you see why The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sells much better than the Encyclopedia Galactica.

* * *

“Six pints of beer,” said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse and Groom. “And quickly please – the world’s about to end[32].”

The barman of the Horse and Groom was an old man. He pushed his glasses up his nose and looked at Ford Prefect. Ford ignored him and stared out of the window, so the barman looked instead at Arthur who shrugged and said nothing.

So the barman said, “Oh yes, sir? Nice weather for it,” and started pouring pints. Then he tried again, “Going to watch the match this afternoon?”

Ford glanced at him. “No, no point[33],” he said, and looked back out of the window.

“Why is that, sir?” said the barman. “Arsenal[34] has no chance?”

“No, no,” said Ford, “it’s just that the world’s about to end.”

“Oh yes, sir, so you said,” said the barman, looking this time at Arthur. “Lucky escape for Arsenal if it did.”[35]

Ford looked back at him, surprised. “No, not really,” he said and frowned.

The barman sighed. “There you are, sir, six pints,” he said.

Arthur smiled at him and shrugged again. He turned and smiled at the rest of the pub just in case any of them had heard what was going on.

None of them had, and none of them could understand what he was smiling at them for.

A man sitting next to Ford at the bar looked at the two men, looked at the six pints, and grinned a stupid hopeful grin at them.

“Get off[36], they’re ours,” said Ford, giving him a look that would scare an Algolian Suntiger. Ford put a five-pound note on the bar. He said, “Keep the change.[37] You’ve got ten minutes left to spend it.”

The barman simply decided to walk away for a while.

“Ford,” said Arthur, “would you please tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Drink it,” said Ford, “you’ve got three pints.”

“Three pints?” said Arthur. “At lunchtime?”

The man next to Ford grinned again and nodded happily. Ford ignored him. He said, “Time is an illusion, especially lunchtime.”

“Very deep thought,” said Arthur, “you should send it to the Reader’s Digest[38].”

“Drink it.”

“Why three pints?”

“Muscle relaxant.[39] You’ll need it.”

“Muscle relaxant?”

“Muscle relaxant.”

Arthur stared into his beer. “Did I do anything wrong today,” he said, “or has the world always been like this?”

“All right,” said Ford, “I’ll try to explain. How long have we known each other?”

“How long?” Arthur thought. “For about five years, maybe six,” he said. “Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time[40].”

“All right,” said Ford. “What if I said that I’m not from Guildford, but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?”

Arthur shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, drinking beer. “Why?”

Ford gave up. It really wasn’t important at the moment when the world was about to end. He just said: “Drink it. The world’s about to end.”

Arthur gave the rest of the pub another smile. The rest of the pub frowned at him. A man waved at him to stop smiling at them and mind his own business[41].

“This must be Thursday,” said Arthur over his beer. “I never liked Thursdays.”

Chapter 3

On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere[42] many miles above the surface of the planet located near star Sol[43]; several somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow somethings, huge as office buildings, silent as birds. They moved easily, taking their time[44], grouping, preparing. The planet beneath them didn’t know of their presence, which was just how they wanted it to be. The huge yellow somethings went unnoticed even over Cape Canaveral[45].

The only place they registered was on a small black device called a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic which blinked quietly. It lay in the darkness inside Ford Prefect’s leather backpack. The contents of his bag were quite interesting, in fact, and would have made any Earth physicist’s eyes pop out of his head. Besides the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic he had an Electronic Thumb – a short black rod, smooth, with a couple of switches at one end; he also had a device which looked like a large electronic calculator. This had about a hundred small buttons and a screen on which any of a million “pages” could immediately appear. It looked very complicated, and this was one of the reasons why its plastic cover had the words Don’t Panic on it in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was in fact that most remarkable book that ever came out of the great publishing house of Ursa Minor – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would need several very large buildings to carry it in.

Besides that, in Ford Prefect’s bag there were a few pens, a notepad, and a large bath towel from Marks & Spencer[46].

* * *

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is the most useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly because it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you travel across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant sandy beaches of Santraginus V; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow river Moth; wet it for use in fighting; wrap it round your head to avoid the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a stupid animal, it thinks that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal[47], and of course dry yourself with it if it’s still clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has great psychological value. For some reason, if a non-hitchhiker (a strag) sees that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically think that he also has a toothbrush, soap, tin of biscuits, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather clothes, space suit etc., etc. Then the strag will happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the Galaxy and still know where his towel is is clearly a remarkable man. Thus there’s a phrase which has got into hitchhiking slang: “Hey, you know Ford Prefect? That’s a guy who really knows where his towel is.”

* * *

Lying quietly on top of the towel in Ford Prefect’s backpack, the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic began to blink more quickly. Miles above the surface of the planet the huge yellow somethings began to spread out.

“You got a towel with you?” said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur.

Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him. “Why? No. Should I have?” He had given up being surprised any longer.

Ford clicked his tongue in irritation. “Drink up[48],” he said.

At that moment the dull sound of a crash from outside was heard over the low hum of the pub, over the sound of the jukebox, over the sound of the man next to Ford drinking the whisky Ford had eventually bought him.

Arthur jumped to his feet. “What’s that?” he yelled.

“Don’t worry,” said Ford, “they haven’t started yet.”

“Thank God for that,” said Arthur and relaxed.

“It’s probably just your house being knocked down,” said Ford, finishing his last pint.

“What?” shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford’s spell was broken. Arthur looked wildly around him and ran to the window.

“My God, they are! They’re knocking my house down. What the hell am I doing in the pub, Ford?”

“It hardly makes any difference at this stage,” said Ford, “let them have their fun.”

“Fun?” yelled Arthur. “Fun?” He quickly looked out of the window again to check if they were talking about the same thing. “Damn their fun!” he shouted and ran out of the pub angrily waving an almost empty beer glass. He made no friends at all in the pub that lunchtime.

“Stop, you vandals!” yelled Arthur. “Stop!”

Ford had to go after him. Turning quickly to the barman he asked for four packets of peanuts.

“There you are, sir,” said the barman, putting the packets on the bar, “twenty-eight pence if you’d be so kind.”

Ford was very kind – he gave the barman another five-pound note and told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he had a momentary sensation which he didn’t understand because no one on Earth had ever had it before.

In moments of great stress, every life form gives out a tiny signal. This signal simply means how far that being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is never possible to be further than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace, which really isn’t very far, so such signals are too tiny to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this moment under great stress, and he was born 600 light years away in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.

For a moment the barman was hit by a shocking sensation of distance. He didn’t know what it meant, but he looked at Ford Prefect with respect.

“Are you serious, sir?” he said in a small whisper that made the whole pub silent. “You think the world’s going to end?”

“Yes,” said Ford.

“This afternoon?”

“Yes,” he said happily, “in less than two minutes.”

The barman couldn’t believe it, but he couldn’t believe the sensation he had just had either.

“Isn’t there anything we can do about it then?” he said.

“No, nothing,” said Ford, stufnif g the peanuts into his pockets.

Someone in the bar suddenly laughed at how stupid everyone had become. The man sitting next to Ford was a bit drunk by now. His looked up at Ford.

“I thought,” he said, “that if the world was going to end, we had to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something.”

“If you like, yes,” said Ford.

“That’s what they told us in the army,” said the man and looked back down at his whisky. “Will that help?” asked the barman.

“No,” said Ford and gave him a friendly smile. “Excuse me, I’ve got to go.” With a wave, he left.

The pub was silent for a moment longer, failing to understand that in a minute and a half they would suddenly turn into hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide[49].

Then the barman cleared his throat. He heard himself say: “Last orders, please.”

* * *

The huge yellow machines began to go down and to move faster.

Ford knew they were there. This wasn’t the way he had wanted it.

Running up the road, Arthur had almost reached his house. He didn’t notice how cold it had suddenly become, he didn’t notice the wind, he didn’t notice the sudden rain. He didn’t notice anything but the bulldozers rolling over what had been his home.

“You barbarians!” he yelled. “I’ll sue the council!”

Ford was running after him very fast. Very, very fast.

“I’ll kill you!” yelled Arthur.

Arthur didn’t notice that the men were actually running away from the bulldozers; he didn’t notice that Mr. Prosser was staring into the sky. What Mr. Prosser had noticed was those huge yellow somethings that were moving through the clouds. Impossibly huge yellow somethings.

“And then I’ll do it again!” yelled Arthur, still running, “until I… until you…”

Arthur tripped and fell on his back. At last he noticed that something was going on. He looked up.

“What the hell’s that?” he shrieked.

Whatever it was moved across the sky and tore it apart with terrible noise.

It’s difficult to say exactly what the people on the surface of the planet were doing now because they didn’t really know what they were doing. None of it made any sense: running into houses, running out of houses, screaming at the noise. All around the world city streets filled with people, cars crashed into each other as the noise fell on them.

Only one man stood and watched the sky, with terrible sadness in his eyes and rubber plugs in his ears[50]. He knew exactly what was happening and had known since his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic had started blinking in the night and woken him up. It was what he had waited for all these years, but when he had got the signal, sitting alone in his small dark room, coldness had gripped his heart. Of all the races in the Galaxy who could have come and said a big hello to planet Earth, he thought, it just didn’t have to be the Vogons.

Still he knew what he had to do. As the Vogon craft moved through the air high above him, he opened his bag. He threw away a couple of things. He wouldn’t need them where he was going. Everything was ready, everything was prepared.

He knew where his towel was.

* * *

A sudden silence hit the Earth. It was worse than the noise. For a while nothing happened.

The great ships hung in the air, over every nation on Earth. They hung, huge, heavy, steady in the sky, against the law of nature. Many people went into shock as their minds tried to understand what they were looking at. The ships just hung in the sky.

And still nothing happened.

Then there was a whisper, a sudden whisper of sound. Every hi-fi system in the world, every radio, every television, every cassette recorder in the world quietly turned itself on. Every tin can, every dust bin, every window, every car, every wine glass, every piece of rusty metal became activated.

Before the Earth was gone, it turned into the greatest public address system[51] ever built. But there was no concert, no music, no siren, just a simple message.

“People of Earth, your attention please,” a voice said, and it was wonderful. Wonderful, perfect sound.

“This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council,” the voice continued. “As you know, the plans for development of the regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route[52] through your star system, and your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take less that two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.”

The public address ended.

Terror moved slowly through the crowds of the people of Earth. They started to panic, but there was nowhere to run to.

Seeing all this, the Vogons turned on their public address again. It said: “There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the plans and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department on Alpha Centauri[53] for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to complain, and it’s too late to start making a fuss[54] about it now.”

The public address was silent again and its echo drifted across the land. The huge ships turned slowly in the sky. On the underside of each ship a hatchway[55] opened, an empty black space.

By this time somebody somewhere had used a radio transmitter and sent a message back to the Vogon ships, on behalf of[56] the planet. Nobody ever heard what it said, they only heard the answer.

The public address was turned on again. The voice was annoyed. It said:

“What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? For heaven’s sake[57], mankind, it’s only four light years away! I’m sorry, but if you don’t take any interest in the local affairs, that’s your own problem. Energize the demolition beams.”

Light poured out of the hatchways.

“I don’t know,” said the voice on the PA again, “bloody apathetic planet, I’ve no sympathy at all.” It cut off.[58]

There was a terrible silence.

There was a terrible noise.

There was a terrible silence.

The Vogon Constructor fleet moved away into the black starry void.

Chapter 4

Far away, at the other end of the Galaxy, five hundred thousand light years from the star Sol, Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Imperial Galactic Government, sped across the seas of Damogran in his ion-drive[59] delta-boat. Damogran the hot; Damogran the remote; Damogran the almost totally unknown.

Damogran – the secret home of the Heart of Gold.

The boat sped on across the water. Damogran is such an inconveniently arranged planet. It consists only of large desert islands separated by very pretty but annoyingly wide oceans.

The boat sped on and on.

Because of this inconvenient arrangement Damogran has always been a deserted planet. This is why the Imperial Galactic Government chose Damogran for the Heart of Gold project, because it was so deserted and the Heart of Gold was so secret.

The boat sped across the sea, the sea that lay between the main islands of the only archipelago on the whole planet. Zaphod Beeblebrox was on his way from the tiny spaceport on Easter Island (by coincidence, in Galacticspeke[60], easter means “small, flat and light brown”) to the Heart of Gold island, which by another coincidence was called France.

But it was not a coincidence that today, the day of culmination of the project, the great day when the Heart of Gold would finally be introduced to the Galaxy, was also a great day of culmination for Zaphod Beeblebrox. It was for the sake of this day that he had first decided to run for the President[61], a decision which had shocked everyone in the Imperial Galaxy – Zaphod Beeblebrox? President? Not the [62] Zaphod Beeblebrox? Not the President?

Many had decided that the whole Creation had finally gone crazy. Zaphod Beeblebrox – adventurer, ex-hippy, good-timer, manic self-publicist[63], terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out of his mind[64] – President?

Yes, President.

* * *

Full title: President of the Imperial Galactic Government. The term Imperial is kept though the real Emperor is almost dead and has been so for many centuries. In the last moments of his dying coma he was locked in a stasis field[65] which simply keeps him in this state. All his heirs are now long dead, and this means that power has simply and effectively moved to the Governmental Assembly and a President elected by that Assembly.

The President is actually a figurehead – he has no real power whatsoever. He is chosen by the government, but the President is always a strange choice, always a fascinating character. His job is to draw attention away from the power. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had – he has already spent two of his ten Presidential years in prison for fraud.

Very, very few people realize that the President and the Government have no power at all, and of these very few people only six know whom the political power belongs to. Most of the others secretly believe that the decision-making is done by a computer. They can’t be more wrong.[66]

So only six people in the Galaxy understood the principle on which the Galaxy was governed, and they knew that once Zaphod Beeblebrox had announced his plan to run for President it was more or less done: he was the ideal candidate.

What they failed to understand was why Zaphod was doing it.

* * *

Zaphod grinned and sped up the boat. Today was the day. Today was the day when they would realize what Zaphod had been planning. Today was what Zaphod Beeblebrox’s Presidency was all about. Today was also his two-hundredth birthday, but that was just another coincidence.

As he steered his boat across the seas of Damogran he smiled quietly to himself about what a wonderful exciting day it was going to be. He relaxed and spread his two arms lazily along the back of his seat, steering with an extra arm he’d recently fitted just below his right one.

“Hey,” he said to himself, “you’re a real cool boy, you know.”

But he was still nervous.

* * *

The island of France was about twenty miles long, five miles wide, sandy and crescent shaped, forming a huge bay. Its coastline was mostly cliffs. On top of the cliffs stood the reception committee. It consisted of the engineers and researchers who had built the Heart of Gold – mostly humanoid, but here and there were a few reptiloids, two or three green maximegalacticans, an octopoid or two, and a Hooloovoo (a Hooloovoo is a super-intelligent shade of the color blue). All except the Hooloovoo were wearing their multicolored lab coats; the Hooloovoo had been shaped into a prism for the occasion.

All of them were excited and thrilled.

* * *

Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.

The crowd gasped[67] as the shiny Presidential speedboat entered the bay, splashing water in every direction. In fact, it didn’t need to touch the water at all because it was running on a cushion of ionized atoms – but just for effect it had thin blades which could be lowered into the water.

Zaphod loved effect: it was what he was best at.

He turned the wheel sharply, the boat spun around wildly and stopped on the rocking waves.

Zaphod ran out onto the deck and waved and grinned at over three billion people. The three billion people weren’t actually there, but they watched his every move through the eyes of a small robot tri-D camera which hovered in the air nearby. The antics of the President always made amazingly popular tri-D; that’s what they were for.

Zaphod grinned again.

Three billion and six people didn’t know it, but today they would see the biggest antic ever.

The robot camera gave a close-up of the more popular of the President’s two heads and he waved again. He was mostly humanoid in appearance except for the extra head and third arm. His fair hair stuck out in every direction, his blue eyes shone, and his chins were almost always unshaven.

A huge transparent globe floated next to his boat, rolling and shining in the brilliant sun. Inside it there was a wide red leather sofa: the more the globe rolled on the waves, the more the sofa stayed perfectly still.

Again, all was done for effect.

Zaphod stepped through the wall of the globe and relaxed on the sofa. He spread his two arms lazily along the back and with the third one he brushed some dust off his knee. His heads looked around, smiling.

Water boiled up under the globe. The globe went up in the air. Up, up it climbed.

Zaphod smiled, picturing himself.

At the top of the cliff the globe hovered for a moment, then rolled down a small platform and stopped.

To great applause Zaphod Beeblebrox stepped out of the globe.

The President of the Galaxy had arrived.

He waited for the applause to die down, then raised his hands in greeting.

“Hi,” he said.

A government spider came up to him and tried to put a copy of his prepared speech into his hands. Pages three to seven of the speech were at the moment floating in the Damogran Sea about five miles away from the bay. Pages one and two had been stolen by a Damogran Eagle and had already become a part of his new nest.

Zaphod Beeblebrox would not need his prepared speech this time.

“Hi,” he said again.

Everyone smiled at him, or, at least, almost everyone. He saw Trillian in the crowd. Trillian was a girl that Zaphod had picked up recently while visiting a planet, just for fun, incognito. She was slim, humanoid, with long black hair, a full mouth, a strange little nose and ridiculously brown eyes. Trillian wasn’t anybody special, or so Zaphod said. She just went around with him a lot and told him what she thought of him.

“Hi honey,” he said to her.

She gave him a quick smile and looked away. Then she looked back for a moment and smiled more warmly – but by this time he was looking at something else.

“Hi,” Zaphod said to a small group of creatures from the press who were standing nearby, wishing that he would stop saying “hi” and give his speech which they could quote.

He grinned at them because he knew that in a few moments he would be giving them one hell of a quote[68].

The next thing he said though was not a lot of use to them either.

One of the officials had decided that the President was clearly not in a mood to read the speech that had been written for him, and had pressed a button on the remote control device[69] in his pocket. Away in front of them a huge white dome split in the middle and slowly opened. Everyone gasped although they had known perfectly well it was going to do that because they had built it that way.

Beneath the dome there was a huge starship, one hundred and fifty meters long, shaped like a running shoe, perfectly white and beautiful. At the heart of it, unseen, was a small gold box which contained a marvelous device that made this starship unique in the history of the Galaxy, a device after which the ship had been named – The Heart of Gold.

“Wow,” said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold.

There wasn’t much else he could say.

He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press. “Wow.”

The crowd turned their faces towards him, waiting. He winked at Trillian who raised her eyebrows. She knew what he was going to say and thought that he was a terrible showoff.

“That is really amazing,” Zaphod said. “That really is truly amazing. That is so amazingly amazing that I think I’d like to steal it.”

An absolutely marvelous Presidential quote. The crowd laughed, the newsmen happily pushed buttons on their Sub-Etha News-Matics, and the President grinned.

As he grinned he touched the small Paralyso-Matic bomb that lay quietly in his pocket.

Finally he couldn’t wait any longer. He lifted his heads up to the sky, let out a wild cry, threw the bomb to the ground and ran forward through the sea of suddenly frozen smiles.

Chapter 5

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz did not have pleasant looks, even for a Vogon. His huge nose rose high above his small piggy forehead. His dark green rubbery skin was thick and waterproof enough for him to survive at sea.

Not that he ever went swimming[70] of course. His busy schedule did not allow it. He was what he was because billions of years ago when the Vogons had first crawled out of the primeval seas of Vogsphere and had lain panting on the planet’s virgin shores, with the first rays of the bright Vogsol sun shining on them that morning… the evolution had simply given up on them there and then, turning away in disgust as if they were an ugly and unfortunate mistake. They never evolved again; they should never have survived.

The fact that they survived shows stubbornness of these creatures. Evolution? they said to themselves, Who needs it?, and what nature refused to do for them they simply did without[71] until the time they were able to solve some anatomical problems with surgery.

Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been working hard to make up for[72] their earlier mistake. They created jeweled crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall colorful trees which the Vogons cut down and burned the crab meat with; elegant gazelle-like creatures which the Vogons caught and sat on. They were useless as transport, but the Vogons sat on them anyway, breaking their backs.

Thus the planet Vogsphere spent the unhappy millennia until the Vogons suddenly discovered the possibility of interstellar travel. In a few short Vog years every Vogon had migrated to the Megabrantis, the political hub of the Galaxy, and now formed the powerful Galactic Civil Service[73]. They have tried learning things, they have tried becoming more stylish and sociable, but mostly the modern Vogons are not that different from their primitive ancestors. Every year they import twenty-seven thousand jeweled crabs from their native planet and spend a happy drunken night smashing them to pieces with iron mallets.

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was a typical Vogon.

Also, he did not like hitchhikers.

* * *

Somewhere in a small dark cabin deep in the Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz’s flagship, a small match was lit nervously. The owner of the match was not a Vogon, but he knew all about them and was right to be nervous. His name was Ford Prefect.

* * *

Ford Prefect’s original name is only pronounceable in a Betelgeusian dialect, now extinct since the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758 which destroyed all the old Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven. Ford’s father was the only man on the whole planet who survived the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster, by an extraordinary coincidence that he was never able to explain. The whole thing is a mystery: no one ever knew what a Hrung was or why it had fallen on Betelgeuse Seven. Ford’s father went to live on Betelgeuse Five where he both fathered and uncled Ford[74]

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Примечания

1

произошедшие от обезьян

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2

для разнообразия

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3

созвездие Малая Медведица

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4

не радовали глаз

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5

зд. объездная дорога

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6

некоторое время

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7

сразу, напрямую

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8

привлечь к ним внимание общественности

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9

Ну, наверное, просто света не было.

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10

Ага, и лестницы тоже.

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11

Но так уж вышло, что он мне нравится.

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12

чёртов / проклятый (разг.)

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13

Он взял себя в руки.

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14

Гилфорд – город в Юго-Восточной Англии (прим. сост.)

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15

Бетельгейзе – яркая звезда в созвездии Ориона; одна из крупнейших среди известных астрономам звёзд (прим. сост.)

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16

Так назывался легковой автомобиль, выпускавшийся британским филиалом компании «Форд» в 1938–1961 гг. По задумке автора, инопланетянин выбрал себе такое имя, так как считал автомобили доминантной формой жизни (прим. сост.)

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17

tall, dark and handsome (идиом.) – красавчик

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18

летающие тарелки

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19

покупал всем присутствующим выпить за свой счёт

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20

остановить, привлечь их внимание

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21

Альтаир – самая яркая звезда в созвездии Орла (прим. сост.)

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22

человеческие существа

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23

гиперпространство – четырёхмерное пространство

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24

зд. алкогольный напиток

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зд. телепатические способности

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представлял опасность для их психического здоровья

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27

передумал

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28

пропустить рюмочку

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29

мы за вас тут подежурим

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30

а вы за это / взамен

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31

зд. пангалактический грызлодёр «Мозгобойный»

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32

а то скоро наступит конец света

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33

В этом нет смысла.

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34

Футбольный клуб «Арсенал»; основан рабочими артиллерийского завода в Лондоне в 1886 г. (прим. сост.)

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35

«Арсеналу» это было бы на руку

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36

Отвали (разг.)

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37

Сдачи не надо.

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38

«Ридерз дайджест» – один из самых популярных американских журналов для семейного чтения (прим. сост.)

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39

Для расслабления мышц.

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40

и в основном всё было в пределах разумного

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41

а заниматься своим делом

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42

Ионосфера – верхние слои атмосферы планеты (прим. сост.)

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43

зд. Солнце

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44

не спеша

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45

Мыс Канаверал – мыс на атлантическом побережье США, штат Флорида, на котором расположена военная база ВВС и космический центр имени Кеннеди (прим. сост.)

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46

«Маркс и Спенсер» – самый крупный британский производитель одежды, товаров для дома и пр. (прим. сост.)

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47

сигнал бедствия

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48

Допивай.

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49

водород, кислород и окись углерода

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50

затычки, беруши

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51

система оповещения населения

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52

гиперпространственный скоростной путь

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53

Альфа Центавра – самая близкая к Солнцу звёздная система (прим. сост.)

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54

поднимать шум (разг.)

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55

зд. шлюз

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56

от имени / от лица

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57

бога ради

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58

Вещание прекратилось.

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59

зд. ионный двигатель

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60

зд. на галактическом наречии

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61

именно ради этого дня он и решил баллотироваться в президенты

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62

тот самый

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63

искатель приключений, экс-хиппи, любитель поотрываться, маниакальный саморекламщик

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64

с поехавшей крышей

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65

Стазисное квантовое поле, в котором время не властно над объектом (прим. сост.)

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66

Они как никогда далеки от истины.

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67

толпа ахнула

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68

им будет что процитировать

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69

пульт дистанционного управления

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70

Не то чтобы он когда-либо ходил купаться

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71

просто обходились без этого

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72

компенсировать / возместить

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73

галактический чиновничий аппарат

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74

стал одновременно отцом и дядей Форда

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