Life, the Universe, and Everything

by Douglas Adams

Nervously, he stood up and, suddenly, looking out over the edge, he felt nauseous with vertigo. He pressed himself back against the wall, wet with mist and sweat. His head was swimming freestyle, but someone in his stomach was doing the butterfly.

The unsteadiness of the building’s flight made him feel sick with fear, and after a short time he took the towel from out of his holdall and did something with it which once again justified its supreme position in the list of useful things to take with you when you hitch hike round the Galaxy. He put it over his head so he wouldn’t have to see what he was doing.

He experienced one of those ‘self’ moments, one of those moments when you suddenly turn around and look at yourself and think: ‘Who am I? What am I up to? What have I achieved? Am I doing well?’ He whimpered very slightly.

‘Think of the danger to the Universe . . .’ ‘The Universe,’ said Arthur, ‘is big enough and old enough to look after itself for half an hour.

din.

Annual Ursa Minor Alpha Recreational Illusions Institute Awards Ceremony,

‘The Most Gratuitous Use Of The Word “Fuck” In A Serious Screenplay.

The longer, at this point, that it avoided the ground, the heavier was going to be the crash when finally it hit it.

‘We have to go and save the Universe, you see,’ said Ford. ‘And if that sounds like a pretty lame excuse, then you may be right. Either way, we’re off.’

Thor looked at him with slowly smouldering eyes. He was making some point about godliness and it had nothing to do with being clean.

‘Well, that’s goodbye Galaxy, then,’ said Arthur, slapping his knees and standing up.

‘Once again,’ he said, ‘we have failed pathetically. Quite pathetically.’ ‘That,’ said Ford quietly, ‘is because we don’t care enough, I told you.’

He was shaking so much that if he’d fired at anybody at that moment he probably would have burnt his signature on them.

Previous best score, seven million five hundred and ninety-seven thousand, two hundred and . . .’

handling his gun as if he was just holding it for someone else who’d just popped off somewhere but would be back in a minute,

‘Wh . . .’ said Slartibartfast. ‘Wh . . .’ ‘Hhhh . . . ?’ said Arthur. ‘Dr . . .’ said Ford Prefect. ‘OK,’ said Trillian.

this strange, quiet girl who alone in this Universe of dark confusion seemed to know what she was doing.

From somewhere at the back of the crowd a single voice started to sing a tune which would have enabled Paul McCartney, had he written it, to buy the world.

Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion was the better part of valour, so was cowardice the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a cupboard.

‘Whoever heard of a robot sulking?’

That young girl,’ he added unexpectedly, ‘is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.’

‘She’s just a kid. Cute, yeah, but temperamental. You know how it is with women. Or perhaps you don’t. I assume you don’t.

‘your history is just a series of freakishly improbable events. And I know an improbable event when I see one.

‘Good idea, if you ask me. They won’t get it to work, though.’ ‘Why not, if it’s so brilliant?’ ‘It’s brilliant,’ said Marvin, ‘they’re not.

They think they’ve got it right but they haven’t. They’re as stupid as any other organic life form. I hate them.’

‘I would like you to meet my friend Arthur Dent. I wanted to go off with a Thunder God, but he wouldn’t let me and I appreciate that. He made me realize where my affections really lay. Unfortunately Zaphod is too frightened by all this, so I brought Arthur instead.

He let this feeling subside, and then sat on the sofa – carefully. Trillian sat on it too. It was real. At least, if it wasn’t real, it did support them, and as that is what sofas are supposed to do, this, by any test that mattered, was a real sofa.

‘Well, that,’ said Arthur, ‘would appear to be that.’

‘I have also helped saved the Universe,’ called Arthur to anyone who was prepared to listen, in other words no one.

He spent a lot of time flying. He learnt to communicate with birds and discovered that their conversation was fantastically boring.

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.