The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Read Online Free Page B

relaxing cup of tea.
    “You got a towel with you?” said Ford suddenly to Arthur.
    Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him.
    “Why? What, no . . . should I have?” He had given up being surprised, there didn’t seem to be any point any longer.
    Ford clicked his tongue in irritation.
    “Drink up,” he urged.
    At that moment the dull sound of a rumbling crash from outside filtered through the low murmur of the pub, through the sound of the jukebox, through the sound of the man next to Ford hiccupping over the whisky Ford had eventually bought him.
    Arthur choked on his beer, leaped to his feet.
    “What’s that?” he yelped.
    “Don’t worry,” said Ford, “they haven’t started yet.”
    “Thank God for that,” said Arthur, and relaxed.
    “It’s probably just your house being knocked down,” said Ford, downing his last pint.
    “What?” shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford’s spell was broken. Arthur looked wildly around him and ran to the window.
    “My God, they are! They’re knocking my house down. What the hell am I doing in the pub, Ford?”
    “It hardly makes any difference at this stage,” said Ford, “let them have their fun.”
    “Fun?” yelped Arthur. “Fun!” He quickly checked out the window again that they were talking about the same thing.
    “Damn their fun!” he hooted, and ran out of the pub furiously waving a nearly empty beer glass. He made no friends at all in the pub that lunchtime.
    “Stop, you vandals! You home wreckers!” bawled Arthur. “You half-crazed Visigoths, stop, will you!”
    Ford would have to go after him. Turning quickly to the barman he asked for four packets of peanuts.
    “There you are, sir,” said the barman, slapping the packets on the bar, “twenty-eight pence if you’d be so kind.”
    Ford was very kind—he gave the barman another five-pound note and told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a momentary sensation that he didn’t understand because no one on Earth had ever experienced it before. In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is never possible to be farther than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace, which really isn’t very far, so such signals are too minute to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this moment under great stress, and he was born six hundred light-years away in the near vicinity of Betelgeuse.
    The barman reeled for a moment, hit by a shocking, incomprehensible sense of distance. He didn’t know what it meant, but he looked at Ford Prefect with a new sense of respect, almost awe.
    “Are you serious, sir?” he said in a small whisper which had the effect of silencing the pub. “You think the world’s going to end?”
    “Yes,” said Ford.
    “But, this afternoon.”
    Ford had recovered himself. He was at his flippest.
    “Yes,” he said gaily, “in less than two minutes I would estimate.”
    The barman couldn’t believe this conversation he was having, but he couldn’t believe the sensation he had just had either.
    “Isn’t there anything we can do about it then?” he said.
    “No, nothing,” said Ford, stuffing the peanuts into his pocket.
    Someone in the hushed bar suddenly laughed raucously at how stupid everyone had become.
    The man sitting next to Ford was a bit sozzled by now. His eyes weaved their way up to Ford.
    “I thought,” he said, “that if the world was going to end we were meant to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something.”
    “If you like, yes,” said Ford.
    “That’s what they told us in the army,” said the man, and his eyes began the long trek back toward his whisky.
    “Will that help?” asked the barman.
    “No,” said Ford, and gave him a friendly smile. “Excuse me,” he said, “I’ve got