“Good grief,” said Arthur, “is this really the interior of a flying saucer?”
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz heaved his unpleasant green body round the control bridge. He always felt vaguely irritable after demolishing populated planets. He wished that someone would come and tell him that it was all wrong so that he could shout at them and feel better. He flopped as heavily as he could on to his control seat in the hope that it would break and give him something to be genuinely angry about, but it only gave a complaining sort of creak.
“Go away!” he shouted at a young Vogon guard who entered the bridge at that moment. The guard vanished immediately, feeling rather relieved. He was glad it wouldn't now be him who delivered the report they'd just received. The report was an official release which said that a wonderful new form of spaceship drive was at this moment being unveiled at a government research base on Damogran which would henceforth make all hyperspatial express routes unnecessary.
Another door slid open, but this time the Vogon captain didn't shout because it was the door from the galley quarters where the Dentrassis prepared his meals. A meal would be most welcome.
A huge furry creature bounded through the door with his lunch tray. It was grinning like a maniac.
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was delighted. He knew that when a Dentrassi looked that pleased with itself there was something going on somewhere on the ship that he could get very angry indeed about.
Ford and Arthur stared about them.
“Well, what do you think?” said Ford.
“It's a bit squalid, isn't it?”
Ford frowned at the grubby mattress, unwashed cups and unidentifiable bits of smelly alien underwear that lay around the cramped cabin.
“Well, this is a working ship, you see,” said Ford. “These are the Dentrassi sleeping quarters.”
“I thought you said they were called Vogons or something.”
“Yes,” said Ford, “the Vogons run the ship, the Dentrassis are the cooks, they let us on board.”
“I'm confused,” said Arthur.
“Here, have a look at this,” said Ford. He sat down on one of the mattresses and rummaged about in his satchel. Arthur prodded the mattress nervously and then sat on it himself: in fact he had very little to be nervous about, because all mattresses grown in the swamps of Squornshellous Zeta are very thoroughly killed and dried before being put to service. Very few have ever come to life again.
Ford handed the book to Arthur.
“What is it?” asked Arthur.
“The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a sort of electronic book. It tells you everything you need to know about anything. That's its job.”
Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands.
“I like the cover,” he said. “Don't Panic. It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day.”
“I'll show you how it works,” said Ford. He snatched it from Arthur who was still holding it as if it was a two-week-dead lark and pulled it out of its cover.
“You press this button here you see and the screen lights up giving you the index.”
A screen, about three inches by four, lit up and characters began to flicker across the surface.
“You want to know about Vogons, so I enter that name so.” His fingers tapped some more keys. “And there we are.”
The words Vogon Constructor Fleets flared in green across the screen.
Ford pressed a large red button at the bottom of the screen and words began to undulate across it. At the same time, the book began to speak the entry as well in a still quiet measured voice. This is what the book said.
'Vogon Constructor Fleets. Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy – not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat and recycled as firelighters.
'The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
“On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.”
Arthur blinked at it.
“What a strange book. How did we get a lift then?”
“That's the point, it's out of date now,” said Ford, sliding the book back into its cover. “I'm doing the field research for the New Revised Edition, and one of the things I'll have to include is a bit about how the Vogons now employ Dentrassi cooks which gives us a rather useful little loophole.”
A pained expression crossed Arthur's face. “But who are the Dentrassi?” he said.
“Great guys,” said Ford. “They're the best cooks and the best drink mixers and they don't give a wet slap about anything else. And they'll always help hitch hikers aboard, partly because they like the company, but mostly because it annoys the Vogons. Which is exactly the sort of thing you need to know if you're an impoverished hitch hiker trying to see the marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairan Dollars a day. And that's my job. Fun, isn't it?”
Arthur looked lost.
“It's amazing,” he said and frowned at one of the other mattresses.
“Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I intended,” said Ford. “I came for a week and got stuck for fifteen years.”
“But how did you get there in the first place then?”
“Easy, I got a lift with a teaser.”
“A teaser?”
“Yeah.”
“Er, what is…”
“A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.”
“Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.
“Yeah”, said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor soul whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae on their heads and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really.” Ford leant back on the mattress with his hands behind his head and looked infuriatingly pleased with himself.
“Ford,” insisted Arthur, “I don't know if this sounds like a silly 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.”
Ford frowned to himself and seemed to roll the thought around his mind.
“Yes, I can understand that,” he said at last.
“Understand that!” shouted Arthur. “Understand that!”
Ford sprang up.
“Keep looking at the book!” he hissed urgently.
“What?”
“Don't Panic.”
“I'm not panicking!”
“Yes you are.”
“Alright so I'm panicking, what else is there to do?”
“You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy's a fun place. You'll need to have this fish
