locked off. Well, I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear them. That's my choice. I'm not going to be anybody's puppet, particularly not my own.”
Zaphod banged the console in fury, oblivious to the dumbfolded looks he was attracting.
“The old me is dead!” he raved, “Killed himself! The dead shouldn't hang about trying to interfere with the living!”
“And yet you summon me up to help you out of a scrape,” said the ghost.
“Ah,” said Zaphod, sitting down again, “well that's different isn't it?”
He grinned at Trillian, weakly.
“Zaphod,” rasped the apparition, “I think the only reason I waste my breath on you is that being dead I don't have any other use for it.”
“OK,” said Zaphod, “why don't you tell me what the big secret is. Try me.”
“Zaphod, you knew when you were President of the Galaxy, as did Yooden Vranx before you, that the President is nothing. A cipher. Somewhere in the shadows behind is another man, being, something, with ultimate power. That man, or being, or something, you must find – the man who controls this Galaxy, and – we suspect – others. Possibly the entire Universe.”
“Why?”
“Why?” exclaimed an astonished ghost, “Why? Look around you lad, does it look to you as if it's in very good hands?”
“It's alright.”
The old ghost glowered at him.
“I will not argue with you. You will simply take this ship, this Improbability Drive ship to where it is needed. You will do it. Don't think you can escape your purpose. The Improbability Field controls you, you are in its grip. What's this?”
He was standing tapping at one of the terminals of Eddie the Shipboard Computer. Zaphod told him.
“What's it doing?”
“It is trying,” said Zaphod with wonderful restraint, “to make tea.”
“Good,” said his great grandfather, “I approve of that. Now Zaphod, ”he said, turning and wagging a finger at him, “I don't know if you are really capable of succeeding in your job. I think you will not be able to avoid it. However, I am too long dead and too tired to care as much as I did. The principal reason I am helping you now is that I couldn't bear the thought of you and your modern friends slouching about up here. Understood?”
“Yeah, thanks a bundle.”
“Oh, and Zaphod?”
“Er, yeah?”
“If you ever find you need help again, you know, if you're in trouble, need a hand out of a tight corner…”
“Yeah?”
“Please don't hesitate to get lost.”
Within the space of one second, a bolt of light flashed from the wizened old ghost's hands to the computer, the ghost vanished, the bridge filled with billowing smoke and the Heart of Gold leapt an unknown distance through the dimensions of time and space.
4
Ten light years away, Gag Halfrunt jacked up his smile by several notches. As he watched the picture on his vision screen, relayed across the sub-ether from the bridge of the Vogon ship, he saw the final shreds of the Heart of Gold's force-shield ripped away, and the ship itself vanish in a puff of smoke.
Good, he thought.
The end of the last stray survivors of the demolition he had ordered on the planet Earth, he thought.
The final end of this dangerous (to the psychiatric profession) and subversive (also to the psychiatric profession) experiment to find the Question to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, he thought.
There would be some celebration with his fellows tonight, and in the morning they would meet again their unhappy, bewildered and highly profitable patients, secure in the knowledge that the Meaning of Life would not now be, once and for all, well and truly sorted out, he thought.
“Family's always embarrassing isn't it?” said Ford to Zaphod as the smoke began to clear.
He paused, then looked about.
“Where's Zaphod?” he said.
Arthur and Trillian looked about blankly. They were pale and shaken and didn't know where Zaphod was.
“Marvin?” said Ford, “Where's Zaphod?”
A moment later he said:
“Where's Marvin?”
The robot's corner was empty.
The ship was utterly silent. It lay in thick black space. Occasionally it rocked and swayed. Every instrument was dead, every vision screen was dead. They consulted the computer. It said:
“I regret that I have been temporarily closed to all communication. Meanwhile, here is some light music.”
They turned off the light music.
They searched every corner of the ship in increasing bewilderment and alarm. Everywhere was dead and silent. Nowhere was there any trace of Zaphod or of Marvin.
One of the last areas they checked was the small bay in which the Nutri-Matic machine was located.
On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was a small tray, on which sat three bone china cups and saucers, a bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot full of the best tea Arthur had ever tasted, and a small printed note saying “Wait”.
5
Ursa Minor Beta is, some say, one of the most appalling places in the known Universe.
Although it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny and more full of wonderfully exciting people than a pomegranate is of pips, it can hardly be insignificant that when a recent edition of Playbeing magazine headlined an article with the words “When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are tired of life”, the suicide rate quadrupled overnight.
Not that there are any nights on Ursa Minor Beta.
It is a West Zone planet which by an inexplicable and somewhat suspicious freak of topography consists almost entirely of subtropical coastline. By an equally suspicious freak of temporal relastatics, it is nearly always Saturday afternoon just before the beach bars close.
No adequate explanation for this has been forthcoming from the dominant lifeforms on Ursa Minor Beta, who spend most of their time attempting to achieve spiritual enlightenment by running round swimming pools, and inviting Investigation Officials form the Galactic Geo-Temporal Control Board to “have a nice diurnal anomaly”.
There is only one city on Ursa Minor Beta, and that is only called a city because the swimming pools are slightly thicker on the ground there than elsewhere.
If you approach Light City by air – and there is no other way of approaching it, no roads, no port facilities – if you don't fly they don't want to see you in Light City – you will see why it has this name. Here the sun shines brightest of all, glittering on the swimming pools, shimmering on the white, palm-lined boulevards, glistening on the healthy bronzed specks moving up and down them, gleaming off the villas, the hazy airpads, the beach bars and so
