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itchhikerGuide

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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
Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you."
"Drink up."
"Why three pints all of a sudden?"
"Muscle relaxant, you'll 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 I've been too wrapped up in myself to
notice?"
"Alright," said Ford, "I'll 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 I'm 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 don't know," he said, taking a pull of beer. "Why - do you
think it's the sort of thing you're likely to say?"
Ford gave up. It really wasn't worth bothering at the moment,
what with the world being about to end. He just said:
"Drink up."
He added, perfectly factually:
"The world's 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
On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through
the ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet;
several somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky
slablike somethings, huge as office buildings, silent as birds.
They soared with ease, basking in electromagnetic rays from the
star Sol, biding their time, grouping, preparing.
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 them - which was a pity because it was
exactly the sort of thing they'd 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
Prefect's satchel were quite interesting in fact and would have
made any Earth physicist's 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 Thumb - a 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 moment's notice. It looked insanely
complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic
cover it fitted into had the words Don't 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 Minor - The Hitch Hiker's
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 Prefect's satchel were a few biros, a
notepad, and a largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer.