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itchhikerGuide

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Arthur glanced around him once more, and then down at himself, at
the sweaty dishevelled clothes he had been lying in the mud in on
Thursday morning.
"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," he
muttered to himself.
"I beg your pardon?" said the old man mildly.
"Oh nothing," said Arthur, "only joking."
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Chapter 31
It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but
the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.
For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said "I seem to be
having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," a freak wormhole
opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried
his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of
space to a distant Galaxy where strange and warlike beings were
poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.
The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.
A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the
commander of the Vl'hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled
battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G'Gugvuntt leader squatting
opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with
a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to
unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged
the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.
The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that
very moment the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty
with my lifestyle drifted across the conference table.
Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful
insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage
terrible war for centuries.
Eventually of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over
a few thousand years, it was realized that the whole thing had
been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets
settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a
joint attack on our own Galaxy - now positively identified as the
source of the offending remark.
For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty
wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first
planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where
due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet
was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the
history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on
all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.
"It's just life," they say.
A short aircar trip brought Arthur and the old Magrathean to a
doorway. They left the car and went through the door into a
waiting room full of glass-topped tables and perspex awards.
Almost immediately, a light flashed above the door at the other
side of the room and they entered.
"Arthur! You're safe!" a voice cried.
"Am I?" said Arthur, rather startled. "Oh good."
The lighting was rather subdued and it took him a moment or so to
see Ford, Trillian and Zaphod sitting round a large table
beautifully decked out with exotic dishes, strange sweetmeats and
bizarre fruits. They were stuffing their faces.
"What happened to you?" demanded Arthur.
"Well," said Zaphod, attacking a boneful of grilled muscle, "our
guests here have been gassing us and zapping our minds and being
generally weird and have now given us a rather nice meal to make
it up to us. Here," he said hoiking out a lump of evil smelling
meat from a bowl, "have some Vegan Rhino's cutlet. It's delicious
if you happen to like that sort of thing."
"Hosts?" said Arthur. "What hosts? I don't see any ..."
A small voice said, "Welcome to lunch, Earth creature."
Arthur glanced around and suddenly yelped.
"Ugh!" he said. "There are mice on the table!"
There was an awkward silence as everyone looked pointedly at
Arthur.
He was busy staring at two white mice sitting in what looked like
whisky glasses on the table. He heard the silence and glanced
around at everyone.