None of them had, and none of them could understand what he was smiling at them for.
A man sitting next to Ford at the bar looked at the two men, looked at the six pints, did a swift burst of mental arithmetic, arrived at an answer he liked and grinned a stupid hopeful grin at them.
Get off, said Ford, Theyre ours, giving him a look that would have an Algolian Suntiger get on with what it was doing.
Ford slapped a five-pound note on the bar. He said, Keep the change.
What, from a fiver? Thank you sir.
Youve got ten minutes left to spend it.
The barman simply decided to walk away for a bit.
Ford, said Arthur, would you please tell me what the hell is going on?
Drink up, said Ford, youve got three pints to get through.
Three pints? said Arthur. At lunchtime?
The man next to Ford grinned and nodded happily. Ford ignored him. He said, Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
Very deep, said Arthur, you should send that in to the Readers Digest. Theyve got a page for people like you.
Drink up.
Why three pints all of a sudden?
Muscle relaxant, youll need it.
Muscle relaxant?
Muscle relaxant.
Arthur stared into his beer.
Did I do anything wrong today, he said, or has the world always been like this and Ive been too wrapped up in myself to notice?
Alright, said Ford, Ill try to explain. How long have we known each other?
How long? Arthur thought. Er, about five years, maybe six, he said. Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time.
Alright, said Ford. How would you react if I said that Im not from Guildford after all, but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?
Arthur shrugged in a so-so sort of way.
I dont know, he said, taking a pull of beer. Whydo you think its the sort of thing youre likely to say?
Ford gave up. It really wasnt worth bothering at the moment, what with the world being about to end. He just said:
Drink up.
He added, perfectly factually:
The worlds about to end.
Arthur gave the rest of the pub another wan smile. The rest of the pub frowned at him. A man waved at him to stop smiling at them and mind his own business.
This must be Thursday, said Arthur musing to himself, sinking low over his beer, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Chapter 3
The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their presence, which
was just how they wanted it for the moment. The huge yellow somethings went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through themwhich was a pity because it was exactly the sort of thing theyd been looking for all these years.
The only place they registered at all was on a small black device called a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic which winked away quietly to itself. It nestled in the darkness inside a leather satchel which Ford Prefect wore habitually round his neck. The contents of Ford Prefects satchel were quite interesting in fact and would have made any Earth physicists eyes pop out of his head, which is why he always concealed them by keeping a couple of dog-eared scripts for plays he pretended he was auditioning for stuffed in the top. Besides the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic and the scripts he had an Electronic Thumba short squat black rod, smooth and matt with a couple of flat switches and dials at one end; he also had a device which looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million pages could be summoned at a moments notice. It looked insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words Dont Panic printed on it in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was in fact that most remarkable of all books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa MinorThe Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy . The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitch hiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in.
Beneath that in Ford Prefects satchel were a few biros, a notepad, and a largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical valueyou can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you cant see it, it cant see youdaft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.