The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide, #1)

by Douglas Adams

The great ships hung motionless in the sky, over every nation on Earth. Motionless they hung, huge, heavy,

steady in the sky, a blasphemy against nature. Many people went straight into shock as their minds tried to encompass what they were looking at. The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.

question, but what am I doing here?’ ‘Well, you know that,’ said Ford. ‘I rescued you from the Earth.’ ‘And what’s happened to the Earth?’

‘Ah. It’s been demolished.’ ‘Has it,’ said Arthur levelly. ‘Yes. It just boiled away into space.’ ‘Look,’ said Arthur, ‘I’m a bit upset about that.’

‘Look,’ said Arthur, ‘would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?’

Arthur glanced around him once more, and then down at himself, at the sweaty dishevelled clothes he had been lying in the mud in on Thursday morning. ‘I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle,’ he muttered to himself.

‘Now see here, guy,’ said the voice on the loud hailer, ‘you’re not dealing with any dumb two-bit trigger-pumping morons with low hairlines, little piggy eyes and no conversation, we’re a couple of intelligent caring guys that you’d probably quite like if you met us socially! I don’t go around gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it afterwards in seedy space-rangers’ bars, like some cops I could mention! I go around shooting people gratuitously and then I agonize about it afterwards for hours to my girlfriend!’ ‘And I write novels!’ chimed in the other cop. ‘Though I haven’t had any of them published yet, so I better warn you, I’m in a meeeean mood!’

ACAB