Life, the Universe and Everything

In front of them, equidistant between their control desk and the middle of the chamber, where Trillian stood, as if on trial, was a slim white pillar about four feet tall. On top of it stood a small white globe, about three, maybe four inches in diameter.

Beside it stood a Krikkit robot with its multi-functional battleclub.

– In fact, - explained Trillian, - you are so dumb stupid - (She was sweating. Zaphod felt that this was an unattractive thing for her to be doing at this point) - you are all so dumb stupid that I doubt, I very much doubt, that you’ve been able to build the bomb properly without any help from Hactar for the last five years.

– Who’s this guy Hactar? - said Zaphod, squaring his shoulders.

If Marvin replied, Zaphod didn’t hear him. All his attention was concentrated on the screen.

One of the Elders of Krikkit made a small motion with his hand towards the Krikkit robot. The robot raised his club.

– There’s nothing I can do, - said Marvin. - It’s on an independent circuit from the others.

– Wait, - said Trillian.

The Elder made a small motion. The robot halted. Trillian suddenly seemed very doubtful of her own judgment.

– How do you know all this? - said Zaphod to Marvin at this point.

– Computer records, - said Marvin. - I have access.

– You’re very different, aren’t you, - said Trillian to the Elder Masters, - from your fellow worldlings down on the ground. You’ve spent all your lives up here, unprotected by the atmosphere. You’ve been very vulnerable. The rest of your race is very frightened, you know, they don’t want you to do this. You’re out of touch, why don’t you check up?

The Krikkit Elder grew impatient. He made a gesture to the robot which was precisely the opposite of the gesture he had last made to it.

The robot swung its battleclub. It hit the small white globe.

The small white globe was the supernova bomb.

It was a very, very small bomb which was designed to bring the entire Universe to an end.

The supernova bomb flew through the air. It hit the back wall of the council chamber and dented it very badly.

– So how does she know all this? - said Zaphod.

Marvin kept a sullen silence.

– Probably just bluffing, - said Zaphod. - Poor kid, I should never have left her alone.

Chapter 32

– Hactar! - called Trillian. - What are you up to?

There was no reply from the enclosing darkness. Trillian waited, nervously. She was sure that she couldn’t be wrong. She peered into the gloom from which she had been expecting some kind of response. But there was only cold silence.

– Hactar? - she called again. - I would like you to meet my friend Arthur Dent. I wanted to go off with a Thunder God, but he wouldn’t let me and I appreciate that. He made me realize where my affections really lay. Unfortunately Zaphod is too frightened by all this, so I brought Arthur instead. I’m not sure why I’m telling you all this.

– Hello? - she said again. - Hactar?

And then it came.

It was thin and feeble, like a voice carried on the wind from a great distance, half heard, a memory of a dream of a voice.

– Won’t you both come out, - said the voice. - I promise that you will be perfectly safe.

They glanced at each other, and then stepped out, improbably, along the shaft of light which streamed out of the open hatchway of the Heart of Gold into the dim granular darkness of the Dust Cloud.

Arthur tried to hold her hand to steady and reassure her, but she wouldn’t let him. He held on to his airline hold-all with its tin of Greek olive oil, its towel, its crumpled postcards of Santorini and its other odds and ends. He steadied and reassured that instead.

They were standing on, and in, nothing.

Murky, dusty nothing. Each grain of dust of the pulverized computer sparkled dimly as it turned and twisted slowly, catching the sunlight in the darkness. Each particle of the computer, each speck of dust, held within itself, faintly and weakly, the pattern of the whole. In reducing the computer to dust the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax had merely crippled the computer, not killed it. A weak and insubstantial field held the particles in slight relationships with each other.

Arthur and Trillian stood, or rather floated, in the middle of this bizarre entity. They had nothing to breathe, but for the moment this seemed not to matter. Hactar kept his promise. They were safe. For the moment.

– I have nothing to offer you by way of hospitality, - said Hactar faintly, - but tricks of the light. It is possible to be comfortable with tricks of the light, though, if that is all you have.

His voice evanesced, and in the dark dust a long velvet paisley-covered sofa coalesced into hazy shape.

Arthur could hardly bear the fact that it was the same sofa which had appeared to him in the fields of prehistoric Earth. He wanted to shout and shake with rage that the Universe kept doing these insanely bewildering things to him.

He let this feeling subside, and then sat on the sofa - carefully. Trillian sat on it too.

It was real.