“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“That’s the point, it’s out of date now,” said Ford, sliding the book back into its cover.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 hitchhikers 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 in your ear.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Arthur, rather politely he thought.

Ford was holding up a small glass jar which quite clearly had a small yellow fish wriggling around in it. Arthur blinked at him. He wished there was something simple and recognizable he could grasp hold of. He would have felt safe if alongside the Dentrassi underwear, the piles of Squornshellous mattresses and the man from Betelgeuse holding up a small yellow fish and offering to put it in his ear he had been able to see just a small packet of corn flakes. He couldn’t, and he didn’t feel safe.

Suddenly a violent noise leapt at them from no source that he could identify. He gasped in terror at what sounded like a man trying to gargle whilst fighting off a pack of wolves.

“Shush!” said Ford. “Listen, it might be important.”

“Im… important?”

“It’s the Vogon captain making an announcement on the T’annoy.”

“You mean that’s how the Vogons talk?”

“Listen!”

“But I can’t speak Vogon!”

“You don’t need to. Just put that fish in your ear.”

Ford, with a lightning movement, clapped his hand to Arthur’s ear, and he had the sudden sickening sensation of the fish slithering deep into his aural tract. Gasping with horror he scrabbled at his ear for a second or so, but then slowly turned goggle-eyed with wonder. He was experiencing the aural equivalent of looking at a picture of two black silhouetted faces and suddenly seeing it as a picture of a white candlestick. Or of looking at a lot of coloured dots on a piece of paper which suddenly resolve themselves into the figure six and mean that your optician is going to charge you a lot of money for a new pair of glasses.

He was still listening to the howling gargles, he knew that, only now it had taken on the semblance of perfectly straightforward English.

This is what he heard…

“Howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl gargle gargle howl gargle gargle gargle howl slurrp uuuurgh should have a good time. Message repeats. This is your captain speaking, so stop whatever you’re doing and pay attention. First of all I see from our instruments that we have a couple of hitchhikers aboard. Hello wherever you are. I just want to make it totally clear that you are not at all welcome. I worked hard to get where I am today, and I didn’t become captain of a Vogon constructor ship simply so I could turn it into a taxi service for a load of degenerate freeloaders. I have sent out a search party, and as soon that they find you I will put you off the ship. If you’re very lucky I might read you some of my poetry first.”

“Secondly, we are about to jump into hyperspace for the journey to Barnard’s Star. On arrival we will stay in dock for a seventy-two hour refit, and no one’s to leave the ship during that time. I repeat, all planet leave is cancelled. I’ve just had an unhappy love affair, so I don’t see why anybody else should have a good time. Message ends.”

The noise stopped.

Arthur discovered to his embarrassment that he was lying curled up in a small ball on the floor with his arms wrapped round his head. He smiled weakly.

“Charming man,” he said. “I wish I had a daughter so I could forbid her to marry one…”

“You wouldn’t need to,” said Ford. “They’ve got as much sex appeal as a road accident. No, don’t move,” he added as Arthur began to uncurl himself, “you’d better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”

“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”

“You ask a glass of water.”

Arthur thought about this.

“Ford,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“What’s this fish doing in my ear?”

“It’s translating for you. It’s a Babel fish. Look it up in the book if you like.”

He tossed over The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and then curled himself up into a foetal ball to prepare himself for the jump.

At that moment the bottom fell out of Arthur’s mind.

His eyes turned inside out. His feet began to leak out of the top of his head.

The room folded flat about him, spun around, shifted out of existence and left him sliding into his own navel.