The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Further Radio Scripts Read online

Page 8


  FX: Seagulls.

  MANUFACTURER 1: Right, there you go, lad. Copy of yer book, stack of dried habra leaves to copy it onto. Just make the odd mistake, then er, correct it in the usual way. Er, ’ere’s your emolument. (Sotto) Carry on like that, son, there’s plenty more where that came from, eh?

  THE VOICE: And he did. (Beat) Many people now claim, though, that the poems became suddenly worthless. Other people argue that they are exactly the same as they always were, so what’s changed?

  This prompted the first people to set up the Campaign for Real Time to try and stop this sort of thing going on. One of its principal activists, the Magrathean planet-designer Slartibartfast, is currently using the Room of Informational Illusions aboard the Starship Bistromath to give Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect an important – and very realistic – history lesson . . .

  FX: Starships battle, planets are destroyed, lives lost. The soundtrack music is stirring and portentous.

  DOCUMENTARY VOICE: (On soundtrack) These, then, were the Krikkit Wars; the greatest devastation ever visited upon our Galaxy.

  ARTHUR: Oh dear!

  SLARTIBARTFAST: (Cheerfully shouting, whilst rummaging about) Don’t look so apprehensive, Earthman, it’s just a documentary.

  ARTHUR: I know, but it seems so real.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Well, it was. When it happened.

  DOCUMENTARY VOICE: And let us not forget – and in just a moment I’ll be able to suggest a way which will help us always to remember – that before the Krikkit Wars –

  SLARTIBARTFAST: This is not a good bit . . . Do not agree to buy anything at this point. Terribly sorry, I can’t seem to find the remote control . . .

  DOCUMENTARY VOICE: The symbol known as the Wikkit Gate! The three pillars . . .

  ARTHUR: I’m sure I’ve seen that before . . .

  FORD PREFECT: (Snorts, waking up) What?

  ARTHUR: That arrangement of sticks on the asteroid . . . It looks stupefyingly familiar . . .

  SLARTIBARTFAST: The asteroid is the Lock. The Wikkit Gate is the Key.

  FORD PREFECT: I like those girls floating around it. Bit like angels . . .

  ARTHUR: Apart from the clothes. Angels usually wear them.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: (Still rummaging for remote) Erm . . . where is that . . .

  DOCUMENTARY VOICE: There is not a world in the Galaxy where this symbol is not revered to this day. Even in primitive worlds it persists in racial memories.

  FX: The sound of leather upon willow, applause.

  ARTHUR: Three stumps, two bails? Well, that’s a wicket . . .

  SLARTIBARTFAST: That’s right, the Wikkit Gate.

  DOCUMENTARY VOICE: This it is that now locks away their world until the end of eternity.

  ARTHUR: Krikkit? Wikkit? Extraordinary.

  FX: Dramatic music slips into very tacky muzak.

  DOCUMENTARY VOICE: This . . . is not the real key, of course. That, as we all know, was destroyed and lost for ever. This, my friends, is a replica; hand-tooled by skilled craftsmen into a memento you will be proud to own, in memory of those who fell.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: (Fiddling with remote) Ah! Found it! There . . .

  DOCUMENTARY VOICE: Now, let us all bow our heads in payment . . .

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Just don’t nod.

  DOCUMENTARY VOICE: (Slows to halt) I promisssse tooo paaaaaaay . . .

  FX: Music winds down. Lights come on.

  INT. – STARSHIP BISTROMATH – ROOM OF INFORMATIONAL ILLUSIONS

  FX: Mellow hum.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: You’re getting the gist?

  ARTHUR: I hope that’s what it is.

  FX: Fast spooling rewind of documentary, under:

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Let me spool back a few billion years (Hums) . . . Yes, yes, nearly there. Ah! Stand by for the Informational Illusion—

  FX: Tape spooling wows down.

  EXT. – KRIKKIT – LATE EVENING

  FX: Gentle wind blowing, owls and crickets sounding, a pleasant night atmos. The faint scent of jasmine, a hint of new-mown hay, feet walking through soft lush grasses . . .

  FORD PREFECT: (Taking the air) Hm. This is more like it. Soft grass, nice evening breeze. Is this Earth?

  ARTHUR: It does look a bit Home Counties. But very cold.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Seems warm enough to me.

  FORD PREFECT: Very unwelcoming . . . It looks appealing but feels impersonal.

  ARTHUR: Hm. Like a good-looking woman writing you a parking ticket. But this cricket angle . . .

  SLARTIBARTFAST: We’ll walk down to that village and I’ll tell you about it.

  FX: Walking through grass momentarily up, then:

  SLARTIBARTFAST: The game you know as cricket is just one of those curious freaks of racial memory. Of all the races in the Galaxy, only the English could possibly revive the memory of the most horrific wars ever to sunder the Universe and transform it into what I’m afraid is generally regarded as an incomprehensibly dull and pointless game.

  ARTHUR: Ah no, fair play . . .

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Rather fond of cricket myself, as it happens – but in most people’s eyes you have been inadvertently guilty of the most grotesque bad taste. Particularly the bit about the little red ball hitting the wicket. Very nasty.

  ARTHUR: Oh.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: These Krikkit men are the ones who started it all, and it will all start tonight.

  ARTHUR: Oh, is something dreadful about to happen? (Looking up) The battlecruisers with the white robots aren’t about to arrive overhead, are they? Oh. My God . . .

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Nothing is about to attack you here. This is where it all started. The place itself. Krikkit – as it was ten billion years ago.

  ARTHUR: There aren’t any stars . . .

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Shhh. Listen and watch.

  Music: Distant singing – Krikkit song.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIANS: (Singing)

  Our lovely world’s so lovely

  And everything’s so nice . . .

  SLARTIBARTFAST: The Masters of Krikkit.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIANS: (Singing)

  . . . And everyone’s so happy

  Beneath the ink-black sky . . .

  ARTHUR: Yes . . . Well, they seem nice enough, not that I trust appearances any more.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIANS: (Singing)

  She’s the only one for me

  I’m under her spell

  I can’t resist

  We walked hand in hand

  Above the grass

  Then in the dark we kissed

  Our lovely world’s so lovely . . .

  ARTHUR: What a strange song . . . They’re ‘beneath the ink-black skies, hand in hand, above the grass’. Not ‘under the moon’ or ‘beneath the stars’ as you might expect . . . I suppose because it’s so black overhead.

  FORD PREFECT: Arthur.

  ARTHUR: Yes?

  FORD PREFECT: Why are you tiptoeing?

  ARTHUR: Er – was I?

  FORD PREFECT: Yes. We’re still on the Starship Bistromath. This is a recorded Informational Illusion. You could walk past those people blowing a euphonium for all the notice they’ll take.

  ARTHUR: I’ll bear that in mind.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: You know of course what’s about to happen?

  FORD PREFECT: Me? No.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Did you not learn ancient galactic history at school?

  FORD PREFECT: I was in the cybercubicle behind Zaphod Beeblebrox. It was always the same three hands going up. His.

  ARTHUR: You know, I get the distinct feeling of being alone in the universe.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Not so the people of Krikkit. Their solar system – their single sun with its single world – was, as you see, surrounded by a huge dust cloud. So there was never anything to see in the sky, except their sun. The reason they never thought ‘We are alone in the Universe’ is that until this night they don’t know about the Universe. Until this night.

  FX: Rippling thunder, thin roaring scream overhead.

>   (The Krikkit civilians stop singing. They talk in a reverent, new age sort of way)

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 1: Hear that, brothers?

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 2: What a strange and disagreeable sound. Surely it is not the wind in the trees.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 3: It is not of the earth, or the air. I mislike it greatly but cannot fathom its origin.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 1: Friends, this cannot be, for it is not possible . . .

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 2: The sound we hear comes from above . . .

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 3: Ah! Behold! A fiery streak in the void!

  FORD PREFECT: Wow!

  ARTHUR: Can’t they see it’s a spaceship – or the wreckage of one – coming out of the blackness?

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Why would they look? They have no idea anything could exist up there. Until tonight . . .

  FX: Spaceship debris impacts with an explosion.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 1: Brothers . . . We must go see what manner of visitation is upon us.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 2: Lead on. I will sing of what we find.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 3: (Bravely) I too will follow . . .

  (They move off very thoughtfully)

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  THE VOICE: Some speak of the starship Heart of Gold, some of the Starship Bistromath and some in hushed tones of the Starship Titanic. But whilst these and other great spaceships which come to mind, such as the Galactic Fleet battleships, the GSS Daring, the GSS Audacity and the GSS Suicidal Insanity, are all regarded with awe, pride, enthusiasm, affection, regret, jealousy, resentment, in fact most of the better-known emotions, the craft which regularly commands the most actual astonishment was Krikkit One, the first spaceship ever built by the people of Krikkit. This is not because it was a wonderful ship. It was not. It was a crazy piece of near junk and looked for all the Galaxy as if it had been knocked up in somebody’s backyard, which was, in fact, precisely where it had been knocked up. The most astonishing thing about the ship was not that it was done well (it wasn’t, see above) but that it was done at all – as the period of time which elapsed between the moment that the people of Krikkit discovered that there was such a thing as space and the launching of their first spaceship, was – as near as dammit is to dommit – almost exactly a year.

  INT. – STARSHIP KRIKKIT ONE

  FX: Gurgling, interspersed with rather dodgy and not very hi-tech background FX:

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 1: Stand by, Brothers Number Two and Number Three.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 2: Standing by, Brother Number One.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 3: Standing by, Brother Number One.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 1: Push blue switch.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 2: Pushing blue switch . . .

  ARTHUR: And this is going to fly, is it?

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 1: Brother Number Three . . .

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Just strap yourself in.

  FORD PREFECT: Can’t we fast-forward through this spaceship bit?

  SLARTIBARTFAST: (Hushed) Certainly not. Watch and learn. This is the pivotal event.

  Some kind of Krikkit countdown is running underneath:

  FORD PREFECT: The wiring isn’t even insulated.

  ARTHUR: I’ve heard of low-tech, but these controls are bathroom fittings.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: You are perfectly safe. It’s an Informational Illusion, which you will find extremely instructive and not a little harrowing.

  ARTHUR: These singer-songwriting people stripped down the wreckage of that crashed ship and within a year built this?

  FORD PREFECT: Just relax and be harrowed.

  ARTHUR: I can do that. Ha . . .

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Second thoughts, you’d better hold on.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 1: Lift off.

  FX: Ship lifts off. A definite hint of a ‘wop’ in the effect.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 2: All systems optimal.

  FORD PREFECT: No way – no way – does anyone design and build a ship like this in a year. No matter how motivated. Prove it to me and I still won’t believe it.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Yes, well, the Masters of Krikkit did. Their historic mission was to find out if there was anything or anywhere beyond the blackness, from which the wrecked spaceship could have come. Actually, I think I will fast-forward a bit . . .

  FX: The action around them speeds up, then slows down again after Slarti’s cue:

  SLARTIBARTFAST: That’s the Krikkit men flying to the edge of their solar system – the inner perimeter of the hollow dust cloud which surrounds their sun and home planet. Now watch. They’re on the brink of breaking through it. History is gathering itself.

  FX: Action slows to normal pace again.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Three – two – one –

  Music: Huge momentous Saint-Saens organ-type chord as the night sky lights up around them.

  FX: Lots of sub rumble please, Deeley, as much as we can get out of the desk in Soundhouse 3 without snapping the elastic . . .

  KRIKKIT CIVILIANS: (Gasp simultaneously) Aaaah.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Behold – the Universe! The staggering jewels of the night in their infinite dust!

  KRIKKIT CIVILIANS: Ooooh.

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Imagine the impact of this vision on a species whose entire philosophy demands that they are the only sentient creatures in Creation!

  FORD PREFECT: Insanity?

  ARTHUR: Bitter but rational disappointment?

  SLARTIBARTFAST: No.

  ARTHUR: (Beat) So how did they react on the first sight of the Universe?

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Very simply.

  KRIKKIT CIVILIAN 1: (Cold, dispassionate) It’ll have to go.

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  FX: a steady and untroubling musical drone unfolds, layered with the sounds of the Book’s illustrative animations.

  THE VOICE: Although it’s been said that on Earth alone in our Galaxy has Krikkit (or cricket) been treated as fit subject for a game, and that for this reason the Earth has been shunned, this does only apply to our Galaxy. And more specifically, to our dimension. In some of the higher dimensions, they feel they can more or less please themselves and have been playing a peculiar game called Brockian Ultra-Cricket for their transdimensional equivalent of billions of years.

  A full set of rules is so massively complicated that the only time they were all bound together in a single volume they underwent gravitational collapse and became a black hole. All that is known of the game can be found in the archives of the BUCC.

  INT. – ARCHIVES

  FX: Old 35mm cinema projector starts up, as if showing a rather scratchy old film.

  HENRY BLOFELD: (Wows in, on soundtrack) Rule One: Grow at least three extra legs.

  FX: Popping sounds.

  HENRY BLOFELD: You won’t need them, but, my dear old thing, it does help to keep the crowds amused.

  FRED TRUEMAN: And now it’s Perkins galloping out to extremely silly square leg.

  HENRY BLOFELD: Rule Two: Find one good Brockian Ultra-Cricket player. Clone him ten few times. This saves an enormous amount of tedious selection and training.

  FX: Crowds, and cheering running underneath.

  HENRY BLOFELD: (cont’d) Three: Put your team and the opposing team in a large field and build a high wall round them. The reason for this is that a crowd that has just watched a rather humdrum game experiences far less life-affirmation than a crowd that believes it has just missed the most dramatic event in sporting history.

  Four: Throw assorted items of sporting equipment over the wall for the players. Anything will do – cricket bats, basecube bats, tennis guns, skis, anything you can get a good swing with.

  FX: Sounds of Brockian cricketers laying about each other with the above objects.

  HENRY BLOFELD: (cont’d) Rule Five: The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with whatever they find to hand. Whenever a player scores a ‘hit’ –

  FX: Shovel in face clang!

  HENRY BLOFELD: – on another player he should immediately run away a
nd apologize from a safe distance – usually through a megaphone.

  FRED TRUEMAN: (Through megaphone) Sorry!

  HENRY BLOFELD: Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins.

  FX: Projector off. Soundtrack wows to stop.

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  THE VOICE: Curiously enough, the more popular the game grows in the higher dimensions, the less it’s actually played, since most of the competing teams are now in a state of permanent warfare over the interpretation of those rules. This is all for the best, because in the long run a good solid war is always less psychologically damaging than a protracted game of Brockian Ultra-Cricket. However, for Zaphod Beeblebrox, a badly mixed Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster has a similarly deleterious effect . . .

  INT. – STARSHIP HEART OF GOLD

  FX: Zaphod stomps about. Ice cubes rattle in cocktail, under:

  ZAPHOD: (Gulps, spits) Where did I go wrong? (Figuring to self) Janx Spirit, Santraginean sea water, Arcturan Mega-gin, marsh gas, Hypermint extract, tooth of Suntiger . . . (Stops) Maybe it’s the olive . . .

  FX: Door whirr.

  DOOR: Mmm. It is my pleasure to open for you . . .

  ZAPHOD: Zark off.

  DOOR: . . . and my satisfaction –

  ZAPHOD: Zark off!

  DOOR: – to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.

  FX: (Muffled) Krikkit ship appearing with a noise like a hundred thousand people saying ‘wop’.

  FX: Zaphod stops.

  ZAPHOD: Door. Did you hear that?

  DOOR: Do you wish me to open for you again? It would be my—

  ZAPHOD: No, shut up. (Thinking hard) Trillian has jumped ship. I’m alone on the Heart of Gold. I’ve put an electronic gag across that zarking computer’s speech terminals. All non-essential systems are closed down and we’re drifting in a remote area of the Galaxy. So which particular hundred thousand people would turn up at this point and say a totally unexpected ‘wop’?

  FX: A sound becoming more distinct – eleven Krikkit robots’ feet running on metal decking. They are moving through the ship, hatches politely opening and closing to allow their passage. It’s inexorable and getting closer, under:

  ZAPHOD: I’m not imagining this . . . Computer?