Volume 2 - The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe Read online

  The man was pulling him back through a door. He went with him.

  With a searing whine a small black spiderlike object shot through the air and disappeared down the corridor.

  “What was that?” hissed Zaphod.

  “Frogstar Scout robot class A out looking for you,” said the man.

  “Hey, yeah?”

  “Get down!”

  From the opposite direction came a larger black spiderlike object. It zapped past them.

  “And that was …?”

  “A Frogstar Scout robot class A out looking for you.”

  “And that?” said Zaphod, as a third one seared through the air.

  “A Frogstar Scout robot class C out looking for you.”

  “Hey,” chuckled Zaphod to himself, “pretty stupid robots, eh?”

  From over the bridge came a massive rumbling hum. A gigantic black shape was moving over it from the opposite tower, the size and shape of a tank.

  “Holy photon, what’s that?” breathed Zaphod.

  “A tank,” said the man. “Frogstar Scout robot class D come to get you.”

  “Should we leave?”

  “I think we should.”

  “Marvin!” called Zaphod.

  “What do you want?”

  Marvin rose from a pile of rubble farther down the corridor and looked at them.

  “You see that robot coming toward us?”

  Marvin looked at the gigantic black shape edging forward toward them over the bridge. He looked down at his own small metal body. He looked back up at the tank.

  “I suppose you want me to stop it,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “While you save your skins.” “Yeah,” said Zaphod, “get in there!”

  “Just so long,” said Marvin, “as I know where I stand.”

  The man tugged at Zaphod’s arm, and Zaphod followed him off down the corridor.

  A point occurred to him about this.

  “Where are we going?” he said.

  “Zarniwoop’s office.”

  “Is this any time to keep an appointment?”

  “Come on.”

  7

  Marvin stood at the end of the bridge corridor. He was not in fact a particularly small robot. His silver body gleamed in the dusty sunbeams and shook with the continual barrage which the building was still undergoing.

  He did, however, look pitifully small as the gigantic black tank rolled to a halt in front of him. The tank examined him with a probe. The probe withdrew.

  Marvin stood there.

  “Out of my way little robot,” growled the tank.

  “I’m afraid,” said Marvin, “that I’ve been left here to stop you.”

  The probe extended again for a quick recheck. It withdrew again.

  “You? Stop me?” roared the tank. “Go on!”

  “No, really I have,” said Marvin simply.

  “What are you armed with?” roared the tank in disbelief.

  “Guess,” said Marvin.

  The tank’s engines rumbled, its gears ground. Molecule-size electronic relays deep in its microbrain flipped backward and forward in consternation.

  “Guess?” said the tank.

  Zaphod and the as yet unnamed man lurched up one corridor, down a second and along a third. The building continued to rock and shudder and this puzzled Zaphod. If they wanted to blow the bulding up, why was it taking so long?

  With difficulty they reached one of a number of totally anonymous unmarked doors and heaved at it. With a sudden jolt it opened and they fell inside.

  All this way, thought Zaphod, all this trouble, all this not-lying-on-the-beach-having-a-wonderful-time, and for what? A single chair, a single desk and a single dirty ashtray in an undecorated office. The desk, apart from a bit of dancing dust and single, revolutionary new form of paper clip, was empty.

  “Where,” said Zaphod, “is Zarniwoop?” feeling that his already tenuous grasp of the point of this whole exercise was beginning to slip.

  “He’s on an intergalactic cruise,” said the man.

  Zaphod tried to size the man up. Earnest type, he thought, not a barrel of laughs. He probably apportioned a fair whack of his time to running up and down heaving corridors, breaking down doors and making cryptic remarks in empty offices.

  “Let me introduce myself,” the man said. “My name is Roosta, and this is my towel.”

  “Hello Roosta,” said Zaphod.

  “Hello, towel,” he added as Roosta held out to him a rather nasty old flowery towel. Not knowing what to do with it, he shook it by the corner.

  Outside the window, one of the huge sluglike, gunmetal-green spaceships growled past.

  “Yes, go on,” said Marvin to the huge battle machine, “you’ll never guess.”

  “Errrmmm …” said the machine, vibrating with unaccustomed thought, “laser beams?”

  Marvin shook his head solemnly.

  “No,” muttered the machine in its deep guttural rumble. “Too obvious. Antimatter ray?” it hazarded.

  “Far too obvious,” admonished Marvin.

  “Yes,” grumbled the machine, somewhat abashed. “Er … how about an electron ram?”

  This was new to Marvin.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “One of these,” said the machine with enthusiasm.

  From its turret emerged a sharp prong which spat a single lethal blaze of light. Behind Marvin a wall roared and collapsed as a heap of dust. The dust billowed briefly, then settled.

  “No,” said Marvin, “not one of those.”

  “Good though, isn’t it?”

  “Very good,” agreed Marvin.

  “I know,” said the Frogstar battle machine, after another moment’s consideration, “you must have one of those new Xanthic Restructron Destabilized Zenon Emitters!”

  “Nice, aren’t they?” said Marvin.

  “That’s what you’ve got?” said the machine in considerable awe.

  “No,” said Marvin.

  “Oh,” said the machine, disappointed, “then it must be …”

  “You’re thinking along the wrong lines,” said Marvin. “You’re failing to take into account something fairly basic in the relationship between men and robots.”

  “Er, I know,” said the battle machine, “is it …?” It trailed off into thought again.

  “Just think,” urged Marvin, “they left me, an ordinary, menial robot, to stop you, a gigantic heavy-duty battle machine, while they ran off to save themselves. What do you think they would leave me with?”

  “Oooh, er,” muttered the machine in alarm, “something pretty damn devastating I should expect.”

  “Expect!” said Marvin. “Oh yes, expect. I’ll tell you what they gave me to protect myself with, shall I?”

  “Yes, all right,” said the battle machine, bracing itself.

  “Nothing,” said Marvin.

  There was a dangerous pause.

  “Nothing?” roared the battle machine.

  “Nothing at all,” intoned Marvin dismally, “not an electronic sausage.”

  The machine heaved about with fury.

  “Well, doesn’t that just take the biscuit!” it roared. “Nothing, eh? Just don’t think, do they?”

  “And me,” said Marvin in a soft low voice, “with this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.”

  “Makes you spit, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” agreed Marvin with feeling.

  “Hell, that makes me angry,” bellowed the machine. “Think I’ll smash that wall down!”

  The electron ram stabbed out another searing blaze of light and took out the wall next to the machine.

  “How do you think I feel?” said Marvin bitterly.

  “Just ran off and left you, did they?” the machine thundered.

  “Yes,” said Marvin.

  “I think I’ll shoot down their bloody ceiling as well!” raged the tank.

  It took out the ceiling of the bridge.

&n
bsp; “That’s very impressive,” murmured Marvin.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” promised the machine. “I can take out this floor too, no trouble!”

  It took out the floor too.

  “Hell’s bells!” the machine roared as it plummeted fifteen stories and smashed itself to bits on the ground below.

  “What a depressingly stupid machine,” said Marvin and trudged away.

  8

  “So, do we just sit here, or what?” said Zaphod angrily; “what do these guys out here want?”

  “You, Beeblebrox,” said Roosta. “They’re going to take you to the Frogstar—the most totally evil world in the Galaxy.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Zaphod. “They’ll have to come and get me first.”

  “They have come and got you,” said Roosta. “Look out the window.”

  Zaphod looked, and gaped.

  “The ground’s going away!” he gasped. “Where are they taking the ground?”

  “They’re taking the building,” said Roosta. “We’re airborne.”

  Clouds streaked past the office window.

  Out in the open air again Zaphod could see the ring of dark green Frogstar Fighters around the uprooted tower of the building. A network of force beams radiated in from them and held the tower in a firm grip.

  Zaphod shook his head in perplexity.

  “What have I done to deserve this?” he said. “I walk into a building, they take it away.”

  “It’s not what you’ve done they’re worried about,” said Roosta, “it’s what you’re going to do.”

  “Well don’t I get a say in that?”

  “You did, years ago. You’d better hold on, we’re in for a fast and bumpy journey.”

  “If I ever meet myself,” said Zaphod, “I’ll hit myself so hard I won’t know what’s hit me.”

  Marvin trudged in through the door, looked at Zaphod accusingly, slumped in a corner and switched himself off.

  On the bridge of the Heart of Gold, all was silent. Arthur stared at the rack in front of him and thought. He caught Trillian’s eyes as she looked at him inquiringly. He looked back at the rack.

  Finally he saw it.

  He picked up five small plastic squares and laid them on the board that lay just in front of the rack.

  The five squares had on them the five letters E, X, Q, U, and I. He laid them next to the letters S, I, T, E.

  “Exquisite,” he said, “on a triple word score. Scores rather a lot I’m afraid.”

  The ship bumped and scattered some of the letters for the nth time.

  Trillian sighed and started to sort them out again.

  Up and down the silent corridors echoed Ford Prefect’s feet as he stalked the ship thumping dead instruments.

  Why did the ship keep shaking? he thought.

  Why did it rock and sway?

  Why could he not find out where they were?

  Where, basically, were they?

  The left-hand tower of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy offices streaked through interstellar space at a speed never equaled either before or since by any other office block in the Universe.

  In a room halfway up it, Zaphod Beeblebrox strode angrily.

  Roosta sat on the edge of the desk doing some routine towel maintenance.

  “Hey, where did you say this building was flying to?” demanded Zaphod.

  “The Frogstar,” said Roosta, “the most totally evil place in the Universe.”

  “Do they have food there?” said Zaphod.

  “Food? You’re going to the Frogstar and you’re worried about whether they’ve got food?”

  “Without food I may not make it to the Frogstar.”

  Out of the window, they could see nothing but the flickering light of the force beams, and vague green streaks which were presumably the distorted shapes of the Frogstar Fighters. At this speed, space itself was invisible, and indeed unreal.

  “Here, suck this,” said Roosta, offering Zaphod his towel.

  Zaphod stared at him as if he expected a cuckoo to leap out of his forehead on a small spring.

  “It’s soaked in nutrients,” explained Roosta.

  “What are you, a messy eater or something?” said Zaphod.

  “The yellow stripes are high in protein, the green ones have vitamin B and C complexes, the little pink flowers contain wheatgerm extract.”

  Zaphod took and looked at it in amazement.

  “What are the brown stains?” he asked.

  “Bar-B-Q sauce,” said Roosta, “for when I get sick of wheatgerm.”

  Zaphod sniffed it doubtfully.

  Even more doubtfully, he sucked a corner. He spat it out again.

  “Ugh,” he stated.

  “Yes,” said Roosta, “when I’ve had to suck that end I usually need to suck the other end a bit too.”

  “Why,” asked Zaphod suspiciously, “what’s in that?”

  “Antidepressants,” said Roosta.

  “I’ve gone right off this towel, you know,” said Zaphod handing it back.

  Roosta took it back from him, swung himself off the desk, walked around it, sat in the chair and put his feet up.

  “Beeblebrox,” he said, sticking his hands behind his head, “have you any idea what’s going to happen to you on the Frogstar?”

  “They’re going to feed me?” hazarded Zaphod hopefully.

  “They’re going to feed you,” said Roosta, “into the Total Perspective Vortex!”

  Zaphod had never heard of this. He believed that he had heard of all the fun things in the Galaxy, so he assumed that the Total Perspective Vortex was not fun. He asked Roosta what it was.

  “Only,” said Roosta, “the most savage psychic torture a sentient being can undergo.”

  Zaphod nodded a resigned nod.

  “So,” he said, “no food, huh?”

  “Listen!” said Roosta urgently. “You can kill a man, destroy his body, break his spirit, but only the Total Perspective Vortex can annihilate a man’s soul! The treatment lasts seconds, but the effects last the rest of your life!”

  “You ever had a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster?” asked Zaphod sharply.

  “This is worse.”

  “Phreeow!” admitted Zaphod, much impressed.

  “Any idea why these guys might want to do this to me?” he added a moment later.

  “They believe it will be the best way of destroying you forever. They know what you’re after.”

  “Could they drop me a note and let me know as well?”

  “You know,” said Roosta, “you know, Beeblebrox. You want to meet the man who rules the Universe.”

  “Can he cook?” said Zaphod. On reflection he added:

  “I doubt if he can. If he could cook a good meal he wouldn’t worry about the rest of the Universe. I want to meet a cook.”

  Roosta sighed heavily.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” demanded Zaphod, “what’s all this got to do with you?”

  “I’m just one of those who planned this thing, along with Zarniwoop, along with Yooden Vranx, along with your great-grandfather, along with you, Beeblebrox.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I was told you had changed, I didn’t realize how much.”

  “But …”

  “I am here to do one job. I will do it before I leave you.”

  “What job, man? What are you talking about?”

  “I will do it before I leave you.”

  Roosta lapsed into an impenetrable silence.

  Zaphod was terribly glad.

  9

  The air around the second planet of the Frogstar system was stale and unwholesome.

  The dank winds that swept continually over its surface swept over salt flats, dried up marshland, tangled and rotting vegetation and the crumbling remains of ruined cities. No life moved across its surface. The ground, like that of many planets in this part of the Galaxy, had long been deserted.

  The howl of the wind was desolate enough as it
gusted through the old decaying houses of the cities; it was more desolate as it whipped about the bottoms of the tall black towers that swayed uneasily here and there about the surface of this world. At the top of these towers lived colonies of large, scraggy, evil-smelling birds, the sole survivors of the civilization that once lived here.

  The howl of the wind was at its most desolate, however, when it passed over a pimple of a place set in the middle of a wide gray plain on the outskirts of the largest of the abandoned cities.

  This pimple of a place was the thing that had earned this world the reputation of being the most totally evil place in the Galaxy. From without it was simply a steel dome about thirty feet across. From within it was something more monstrous than the mind can comprehend.

  About a hundred yards or so away, and separated from it by a pockmarked and blasted stretch of the most barren land imaginable was what would probably have to be described as a landing pad of sorts. That is to say that scattered over a largish area were the ungainly hulks of two or three dozen crash-landed buildings.

  Flitting over and around these buildings was a mind, a mind that was waiting for something.

  The mind directed its attention into the air, and before very long a distant speck appeared, surrounded by a ring of smaller specks.

  The larger speck was the left-hand tower of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy office building, descending through the stratosphere of Frogstar World B.

  As it descended, Roosta suddenly broke the long uncomfortable silence that had grown up between the two men.

  He stood up and gathered his towel into a bag. He said:

  “Beeblebrox, I will now do the job I was sent here to do.”

  Zaphod looked up at him from where he was sitting in a corner sharing unspoken thoughts with Marvin.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “The building will shortly be landing. When you leave the building, do not go out of the door,” said Roosta, “go out of the window.”

  “Good luck,” he added, and walked out of the door, disappearing from Zaphod’s life as mysteriously as he had entered it.

  Zaphod leaped up and tried the door, but Roosta had already locked it. He shrugged and returned to the corner.

  Two minutes later, the building crash-landed amongst the other wreckage. Its escort of Frogstar Fighters deactivated their force beams and soared off into the air again, bound for Frogstar World A, an altogether more congenial spot. They never landed on Frogstar World B. No one did. No one ever walked on its surface other than the intended victims of the Total Perspective Vortex.