The mattress could feel deep in his innermost spring pockets that the robot dearly wished to be asked how long he had been trudging in this futile and fruitless manner, and with another quiet flurble he did so.

– Oh, just over the one-point-five-million mark, just over, - said Marvin airily. - Ask me if I ever get bored, go on, ask me.

The mattress did.

Marvin ignored the question, he merely trudged with added emphasis.

– I gave a speech once, - he said suddenly, and apparently unconnectedly. - You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number.

– Er, five, - said the mattress.

– Wrong, - said Marvin. - You see?

The mattress was much impressed by this and realized that it was in the presence of a not unremarkable mind. It willomied along its entire length, sending excited little ripples through its shallow algae-covered pool.

It gupped.

– Tell me, - it urged, - of the speech you once made, I long to hear it.

– It was received very badly, - said Marvin, - for a variety of reasons. I delivered it, - he added, pausing to make an awkward humping sort of gesture with his not-exactly-good arm, but his arm which was better than the other one which was dishearteningly welded to his left side, - over there, about a mile distance.

He was pointing as well as he could manage, and he obviously wanted to make it totally clear that this was as well as he could manage, through the mist, over the reeds, to a part of the marsh which looked exactly the same as every other part of the marsh.

– There, - he repeated. - I was somewhat of a celebrity at the time.

Excitement gripped the mattress. It had never heard of speeches being delivered on Squornshellous Zeta, and certainly not by celebrities. Water spattered off it as a thrill glurried across its back.

It did something which mattresses very rarely bother to do. Summoning every bit of its strength, it reared its oblong body, heaved it up into the air and held it quivering there for a few seconds whilst it peered through the mist over the reeds at the part of the marsh which Marvin had indicated, observing, without disappointment, that it was exactly the same as every other part of the marsh. The effort was too much, and it flodged back into its pool, deluging Marvin with smelly mud, moss and weeds.

– I was a celebrity, - droned the robot sadly, - for a short while on account of my miraculous and bitterly resented escape from a fate almost as good as death in the heart of a blazing sun. You can guess from my condition, - he added, - how narrow my escape was. I was rescued by a scrap-metal merchant, imagine that. Here I am, brain the size of… never mind.

He trudged savagely for a few seconds.

– He it was who fixed me up with this leg. Hateful, isn’t it? He sold me to a Mind Zoo. I was the star exhibit. I had to sit on a box and tell my story whilst people told me to cheer up and think positive. “Give us a grin, little robot,” they would shout at me, “give us a little chuckle.” I would explain to them that to get my face to grin wold take a good couple of hours in a workshop with a wrench, and that went down very well.

– The speech, - urged the mattress. - I long to hear of the speech you gave in the marshes.

– There was a bridge built across the marshes. A cyberstructured hyperbridge, hundreds of miles in length, to carry ion-buggies and freighters over the swamp.

– A bridge? - quirruled the mattress. - Here in the swamp?

– A bridge, - confirmed Marvin, - here in the swamp. It was going to revitalize the economy of the Squornshellous System. They spent the entire economy of the Squornshellous System building it. They asked me to open it. Poor fools.

It began to rain a little, a fine spray slid through the mist.

– I stood on the platform. For hundreds of miles in front of me, and hundreds of miles behind me, the bridge stretched.

– Did it glitter? - enthused the mattress.

– It glittered.

– Did it span the miles majestically?

– It spanned the miles majestically.

– Did it stretch like a silver thread far out into the invisible mist?

– Yes, - said Marvin. - Do you want to hear this story?

– I want to hear your speech, - said the mattress.

– This is what I said. I said, “I would like to say that it is a very great pleasure, honour and privilege for me to open this bridge, but I can’t because my lying circuits are all out of commission. I hate and despise you all. I now declare this hapless cyberstructure open to the unthinkable abuse of all who wantonly cross her.” And I plugged myself into the opening circuits.

Marvin paused, remembering the moment.

The mattress flurred and glurried. It flolloped, gupped and willomied, doing this last in a particularly floopy way.

– Voon, - it wurfed at last. - And it was a magnificent occasion?

– Reasonably magnificent. The entire thousand-mile-long bridge spontaneously folded up its glittering spans and sank weeping into the mire, taking everybody with it.

There was a sad and terrible pause at this point in the conversation during which a hundred thousand people seemed unexpectedly to say “wop” and a team of white robots descended from the sky like dandelion seeds drifting on the wind in tight military formation. For a sudden violent moment they were all there, in the swamp, wrenching Marvin’s false leg off, and then they were gone again in their ship, which said “foop”.

– You see the sort of thing I have to contend with? - said Marvin to the gobbering mattress.

Suddenly, a moment later, the robots were back again for another violent incident, and this time when they left, the mattress was alone in the swamp. He flolloped around in astonishment and alarm. He almost lurgled in fear. He reared himself to see over the reeds, but there was nothing to see, just more reeds. He listened, but there was no sound on the wind beyond the now familiar sound of half-crazed etymologists calling distantly to each other across the sullen mire.

The body of Arthur Dent span.

The Universe shattered into a million glittering fragments around it, and each particular shard span silently through the void, reflecting on its silver surface some single searing holocaust of fire and destruction.

And then the blackness behind the Universe exploded, and each particular piece of blackness was the furious smoke of hell.

And the nothingness behind the blackness behind the Universe erupted, and behind the nothingness behind the blackness behind the shattered Universe was at last the dark figure of an immense man speaking immense words.

– These, then, - said the figure, speaking from an immensely comfortable chair, - were the Krikkit Wars, the greatest devastation ever visited upon our Galaxy. What you have experienced…

Slartibartfast floated past, waving.

– It’s just a documentary, - he called out. - This is not a good bit. Terribly sorry, trying to find the rewind control…

–…is what billions of billions of innocent…

– Do not, - called out Slartibartfast floating past again, and fiddling furiously with the thing that he had stuck into the wall of the Room of Informational Illusions and which was in fact still stuck there, - agree to buy anything at this point.

–…people, creatures, your fellow beings…

Music swelled - again, it was immense music, immense chords. And behind the man, slowly, three tall pillars began to emerge out of the immensely swirling mist.

–…experienced, lived through - or, more often, failed to live through. Think of that, my friends. And let us not forget - and in just a moment I shall be able to suggest a way which will help us always to remember - that before the Krikkit Wars, the Galaxy was that rare and wonderful thing a happy Galaxy!