The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy (Summary)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

 

Summary

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy series fiction franchise created bby Douglas Adams. It is originally a radio comedy broadcasted on BBC in 1978. The first novel of the series was published in 1979. It opens by describing Earth as an “insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat id,ea.” Moving on, Adams points out that humankind has one particularly aggravating problem: everybody is always unhappy. Many people suggest possible solutions for this condition, but the majority of these proposals are “concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper.” This, Adams maintains, is unhelpful, since money has nothing to do with humanity’s unhappiness—after all, “the small green pieces of paper” aren’t the ones who are unhappy.

Many humans believe that “they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place,” and others even think that nobody should have ever “left the oceans.” Despite this pessimism, a young woman finally realizes the heart of humanity’s problems, suddenly understanding how to make the world a happy place. This takes place on a random Thursday “nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change.” Unfortunately, the girl who has this unspeakable breakthrough never gets to tell anybody because a “terrible, stupid catastrophe” takes place right after she figures out how to make the world good.

This novel, Adams says, is not about the girl who knew how to fix the world. Instead, it’s the story of a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is “not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or even heard of by any Earthman.” Despite this, it is a very “remarkable” book that many other beings use as a guide of sorts as they make their way through the galaxy. “In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy,” Adams writes, “the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom.” In “large friendly letters,” its cover reads: “DON’T PANIC.”

One Thursday morning, Arthur Dent wakes up in his home, which looks out over a “broad spread of West Country farmland” in England. As he gradually comes back to consciousness, he realizes that he’s dreadfully hungover. He hauls himself out of bed and stands in front of the window, where he sees—but does not register—a bulldozer sitting ominously outside. Preoccupied with his hangover, Arthur goes about getting himself ready for the day, mindlessly making himself coffee in the kitchen and yawning all the while. Bulldozer, he thinks, unsure of why the word has found its way into his head. Yellow, he muses. Ignoring this, he returns to the bedroom to get dressed, slowly remembering that he went to the pub last night because something had made him quite angry.

Arthur thinks about the previous night, recalling that he had been telling people about something important—something having to do with “a new bypass he’d just found out about.” Apparently, this bypass has been “in the pipeline for months,” but nobody “seemed to have known about it.” As he sips a glass of water, he tells himself that everything will work out—after all, nobody wants a bypass, so the planning council won’t have “a leg to stand on.” Yellow, he thinks again, the word drifting through his mind “in search of something to connect with.” Fifteen seconds later, he’s outside “lying in front of a big yellow bulldozer” that has been “advancing up his garden path.”

The construction foreman, Mr. L. Prosser, is not thrilled to see Arthur lying in front of his bulldozer. Adams describes him as a forty-year-old man who is “fat and shabby” and works for the local council. “Curiously enough, though he didn’t know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan,” Adams notes, adding that nobody would ever guess this based on Prosser’s outward appearance or temperament. Indeed, Prosser is a “nervous, worried man,” not a “great warrior.” When Arthur puts himself before the bulldozer, Prosser grows especially “nervous,” realizing that something has gone “seriously wrong with his job, which [is] to see that Arthur Dent’s house [gets] cleared out of the way before the day [is] out.” “Come off it, Mr. Dent,” he says, “you can’t win, you know. You can’t lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely.”

Arthur assures Prosser that he’s willing to stay in front of the bulldozer for a long time. “This bypass has got to be built and it’s going to be built!” In this moment, Adams describes a bypass as something that allows people to move from “point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast.” This is because people always want to be elsewhere, never able to make up their minds. Prosser, though, knows that he wants to be anywhere but in front of Arthur’s house. As his workers look at him with “derisive grins,” he anxiously tells Arthur: “You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know.” This enrages Arthur, who yells: “Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday.”

Mr. Prosser insists that the plans for this bypass have been “available in the local planning office for the last nine months.” “Oh yes,” Arthur replies, “well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you?” In response, Mr. Prosser claims that these plans were on display, but Arthur challenges this, too, saying: “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” Although Prosser upholds that the cellar is the display department, Arthur reveals that the plans were “in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’”

At this point, Adams takes a moment to discuss the fact that Arthur’s good friend, Ford Prefect, is “from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.” Unbeknownst to Arthur, Ford arrived on Earth fifteen years ago while conducting research for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Wanting to renew the guidebook’s entry for Earth, Ford hitchhiked to the planet but soon became stranded, since very few space travelers visit Earth. Since then, he has pretended to be an out-of-work actor living the life of an “unruly boxer” who likes to “gate-crash university parties, get badly drunk and start making fun of any astrophysicists he [can] find.” By the time Ford reaches Arthur’s house on this particular Thursday morning, Prosser has already tried a number of techniques to get Arthur out of the way, and has nearly resigned himself to the fact that he won’t succeed.

Ford stands over Arthur and asks if he’s busy. “Am I busy?” Arthur replies. “Well, I’ve just got all these bulldozers and things to lie in front of because they’ll knock my house down if I don’t, but other than that…well, no, not especially, why?” Unable to understand sarcasm, Ford says, “Good, is there anywhere we can talk?” He then urges his friend to come to the pub with him, saying that they simply must drink—and quickly, too. Arthur refuses, saying he has to stay so that Prosser doesn’t knock down his house, but Ford insists that he has to tell him “the most important thing” he’ll ever hear. He also adds that Arthur will need a “very stiff drink.”

Ford walks over to Prosser to convince him that he shouldn’t knock down Arthur’s house in their absence. “Has Mr. Dent come to his senses yet?” Prosser asks Ford. “Can we for the moment assume that he hasn’t?” Ford replies, adding: “And we can also assume that he’s going to be staying here all day?” When Prosser agrees to this hypothetical suggestion, Ford says, “So all your men are going to be standing around all day doing nothing?” Prosser admits that this is likely the case. “Well,” Ford continues, “if you’re resigned to doing that anyway, you don’t actually need him to lie here all the time do you?” Pressing Prosser in this manner, Ford manages to convince the foreman that there’s no difference whether or not Arthur is in front of the bulldozer or not, suggesting that it won’t matter much if they go to the pub for a while.

 “And if you want to pop off for a quick [drink] yourself later on, we can always cover for you in return,” Ford says to Prosser. “Thank you very much,” Prosser says, confused but unwilling to admit it. “So,” Ford concludes, “if you would just like to come over here and lie down…” Seeing Prosser’s confusion, he says, “Ah, I’m sorry, perhaps I hadn’t made myself fully clear. Somebody’s got to lie in front of the bulldozers, haven’t they? Or there won’t be anything to stop them driving into Mr. Dent’s house, will there?” After another brief back and forth, Prosser finally agrees and situates himself in the mud. As they set off for the pub, Arthur asks if Prosser can be trusted. “Myself I’d trust him to the end of the Earth,” Ford assures him. “Oh yes, and how far’s that?” Arthur snorts. “About twelve minutes away,” Ford replies.

Arriving at the pub, Ford orders six pints of beer—three a piece for Arthur and himself. “And quickly please,” he tells the bartender. “The world’s about to end.” He then turns his attention to Arthur, telling him to drink the three pints quickly. He claims that Arthur is going to need the beer in his system as a muscle relaxant. “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?” he asks. Arthur merely shrugs, saying, “I don’t know. Why, do you think it’s the sort of thing you’re likely to say?” Ford doesn’t respond to this, instead telling Arthur to drink up and repeating that the world is about to end. “This must be a Thursday,” Arthur mutters. “I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”

As Arthur and Ford drink, a fleet of “huge yellow chunky slablike somethings” move through the “ionosphere” above Earth. Ford is the only person on the planet who knows of their presence, since he picked up their signal on a small device called the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic. This is a gadget he keeps in his “leather satchel,” which he always wears around his neck. Other notable items inside this satchel are: an “Electronic Thumb” that helps him hitchhike through the galaxy, a digitized copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and—most important of all—a towel, which is the “most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have” because it is versatile and easy to carry. In any case, Ford’s Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic blinked into action the night before, when the mysterious ships appeared above. Now, as he sits with Arthur, it begins to strobe more rapidly.

A crash sounds, but Ford tells Arthur not to worry. “They haven’t started yet,” he says. “It’s probably just your house being knocked down.” Looking outside, Arthur sees that Ford is right: Prosser has started demolishing his home. As Arthur leaps out of his seat, Ford urges him to “let them have their fun” because it “hardly makes any difference at this stage” whether or not Arthur’s house remains standing. Ignoring his friend, Arthur rushes outside and runs toward his house. Before following his friend, Ford tosses another large bill to the bartender and tells him to keep the change. The bartender then looks at him and shivers, picking up on “tiny subliminal signals” issuing from Ford—“this signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far [a] being is from the place of his birth,” Adams notes. This happens when a person undergoes great stress.

Since Ford is very far from his home planet, the bartender is overwhelmed by the signals he sends. As a result, he suddenly understands that the world is going to end. “Are you serious, sir?” he asks, terrified. Ford confirms that he is, in fact, serious, adding that the planet has roughly two minutes left before total destruction. “Isn’t there anything we can do about it then?” the bartender asks. Ford assures him that there’s nothing to be done, and the pub goes quiet. Clearing his throat, the bartender makes an announcement. “Last orders, please,” he calls.

Meanwhile, the “huge yellow machines” continue their descent. As Arthur runs toward his house yelling at the top of his lungs, he fails to notice that the construction workers have started fleeing their bulldozers. Mr. Prosser, for his part, is staring into the sky at one of the “huge yellow somethings.” Chaos begins to break out all over the world as people rush around and crane their necks to see the otherworldly ships. Ford, of course, knows what’s happening—his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic woke him up the night before, calling his attention to the imminent arrival of these alien ships. Although he has been waiting fifteen years to hitch a ride off of Earth, he’s disappointed to learn that the newly arrived ships belong to a certain alien species known as the Vogons. Nonetheless, he prepares himself to board their ships, making sure he has his towel ready.

 

The Vogons’ spaceships hover motionless in the sky and take control of every radio, television, cassette recorder, and speaker on Earth. “People of Earth, your attention, please,” a voice says. “This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.” After this announcement, terror breaks out. Seeing this, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz comes back onto the announcement system and says, “There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years.”

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz informs all Earth-dwellers that it’s too late to “lodge any formal complaint” about the planet’s destruction. After a moment, somebody somewhere on Earth finds the wavelength of the Vogon broadcast and sends a message back to the ship, though nobody but the Vogons hear it. “What do you mean, you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri?” booms Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz’s voice again. “For heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light-years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to taken an interest in local affairs that’s your own lookout.” He then orders his fleet to “energize the demolition beams,” and after a stretch of “terrible ghastly silence” there comes a “terrible ghastly noise,” and the Earth winks out of existence.

While the Vogons destroy Earth, the President of the Galaxy prepares for a public appearance on a far-off planet. His name is Zaphod Beeblebrox, and he’s about to unveil a new spaceship called the Heart of Gold. Zaphod has been looking forward to this day ever since he became president. In fact, the Heart of Gold is the reason he became president, “a decision that had sent shock waves of astonishment throughout the Imperial Galaxy.” “Zaphod Beeblebrox?” everybody wondered. “President? Not the Zaphod Beeblebrox? Not the President?” Many people saw Zaphod’s presidency as proof that “the whole of known creation had finally gone bananas.” However, this is exactly what makes Zaphod a perfect president, since the position always goes to a controversial figure who “wields no real power whatsoever.” Indeed, Zaphod’s job is “not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.”

Zaphod—who has two heads and a third arm—speeds along in a boat, driving toward the location where he will unveil the Heart of Gold. Zooming up on his speedboat, he dazzles the crowd, which is actually just a collection of three billion people watching from home using “the eyes of a small robot tri-D camera.” Zaphod exits the boat and enters a large floating globe with a couch hovering in its center. Lounging on the couch while the designers of the Heart of Gold stand outside the globe, Zaphod smiles, pleased with how he must look. After allowing the globe to be thrown about on the water, Zaphod exits and prepares to make his address. “Hi,” he says, after the audience applause dies down. “Hi,” he says again. Looking out into the crowd, he finds Trillian, “a girl that [he] picked up recently while visiting a planet.”

Although the press is eager for Zaphod to give them a good quote, “one of the officials of the party” decides that Zaphod is “clearly not in a mood to read the deliciously turned speech.” As such, this official flips a switch in his pocket and unveils the Heart of Gold. It is shaped like a “sleek running shoe, perfectly white and mind-bogglingly beautiful.” At its center—though nobody can see this—there lies a device that makes “this starship unique in the history of the Galaxy.” “Wow,” Zaphod says. “That is really amazing. That really is truly amazing. That is so amazingly amazing I think I’d like to steal it.” The crowd laughs at this, finding it a “marvelous presidential quote.” Having said this, Zaphod lifts his heads, yells out in major thirds, throws a bomb, and runs through “the sea of suddenly frozen beaming smiles.”

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, Adams notes, is quite ugly. Like all Vogons, his nose is long and his forehead small. Many of his attributes are due to the fact that the Vogons have never evolved—ever since they first “crawled out of the sluggish primeval seas of Vogsphere,” the Vogons have never changed. This is a testament to their stubborn nature, which makes them especially well equipped for “civil politics.” When the Vogons finally found a way to leave their wretched planet, they immediately traveled to a nearby location, where they became the “immensely powerful backbone of the Galactic Civil Service.” Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, Adams explains, is a “fairly typical Vogon in that he [is] thoroughly vile. Also, he [does] not like hitchhikers.”

The Vogons employ a race of aliens called the Dentrassis on their spaceships. The Dentrassis work as caterers on the Vogon ships but hate the Vogons. As such, they have no problem helping Ford and Arthur sneak onto the ship as stowaways. As the spaceship hurdles away from what used to be Earth, Arthur slowly wakes up in a dark cabin. When he asks Ford where they are, his friend says that they’ve safely survived the destruction of Earth by “hitch[ing] a lift” on a Vogon spaceship. “Are you trying to tell me that we just stuck out our thumbs and some green bug-eyed monster stuck his head out and said, ‘Hi fellas, hop right in, I can take you as far as the Basingstoke roundabout?” Arthur asks, and Ford confirms that this is the case, though the Thumb is electronic, and the roundabout is six light-years away.

Having just destroyed Earth, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz feels “vaguely irritable.” This is how he always feels after “demolishing populated planets.” As such, he wishes somebody would “come and tell him that it was all wrong so that he could shout at them and feel better.” To his delight, a Dentrassis server comes running into the room with an obvious grin on his face—a clear indication that something has gone wrong. After all, if a Dentrassi looks “that pleased with itself,” there must surely be something “going on somewhere on the ship that [Prostetnic] could get very angry indeed about.”

Meanwhile, Arthur bombards Ford with questions. Finally, Ford hands him The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and tells him to look up anything he might want to know. He shows him how the book works, explaining that Arthur must type in what he wants to find, since the book has been digitized. Together, they look at the entry for Vogons, which reads (in part): “Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy—not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous.” At the end of the entry, the book says: “On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.”

Ford explains why he was on Earth and tells Arthur that, unfortunately, the planet has been destroyed. He then urges Arthur to heed the guidebook’s most salient advice: “DON’T PANIC.” “You just come along with me and have a good time,” he says. “The Galaxy’s a fun place. You’ll need to have this fish in your ear.” Saying this, he takes out a small yellow fish. As he does so, the ship’s speakers burst to life, spewing a terrible sound that sounds to Arthur like “a man trying to gargle while fighting off a pack of wolves.” Ford tells him that this sound is the Vogon captain making an announcement.” He then shoves the yellow fish into Arthur’s ear canal, and suddenly Arthur can understand the announcement.

With the fish in his ear, Arthur listens to Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz’s announcement: “I see from our instruments that we have a couple of Hitchhikers aboard,” Prostetnic says. “Hello, wherever you are. I just want to make it totally clear that you are not at all welcome. I worked hard to get where I am today, and I didn’t become captain of a Vogon constructor ship simply so I could turn it into a taxi service for a load of degenerate freeloaders. I have sent out a search party, and as soon as they find you I will put you off the ship. If you’re very lucky I might read you some of my poetry first.” When the message ends, Ford tells Arthur that the fish in his ear is a Babel fish, which translates foreign languages into whatever language the listener understands.

Arthur realizes that, since Ford is a researcher for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, he must have been gathering information about Earth. Ford confirms that this is the case, saying that he was “able to extend the original entry a bit,” though the edition Arthur is holding is an old one. Still, Arthur is eager to see what the guidebook has to say about his home planet, which he suddenly misses dearly. When he finds the entry, he’s shocked by its brevity—the description of Earth is one word: “Harmless.” Ford tries to justify this, saying that there’s simply not enough room in the book to go into detail. Plus, he adds, nobody ever knew much about Earth. When Arthur asks him how he updated the entry, Ford tells him that he changed it to “Mostly Harmless.” Before Arthur can object to this, Ford hears footsteps outside the door.

Vogon poetry, Adams explains, is the “third worst in the Universe,” behind “that of the Azgoths of Kria”—whose poet laureate accidentally killed himself by reciting too much of his own wretched verse—and a woman named Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings from Greenbridge, Essex, England. Now, as Arthur and Ford are strapped into torturous “Poetry Appreciation chairs,” Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz smiles and begins reciting one of his original pieces. “Oh freddled gruntbuggly…,” he intones as Ford writhes involuntarily in his seat. “Thy micturations are to me- As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.” When he finishes, Prostetnic tells Arthur and Ford that they must choose between dying in space or telling him how much they liked his poetry. As Ford gasps for breath, Arthur heroically tells Prostetnic that he “quite liked” his verse. Rushing on, he says, “I thought that some of the metaphysical imagery was really particularly effective.”

Arthur continues to praise Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz’s poetry, even as Ford gapes at him in disbelief. Soon, though, he begins to grasp at words, unable to sustain this false flattery. Luckily, Ford eventually helps him, jumping in to finish Arthur’s statement that Prostetnic’s verse has “interesting rhythmic devices” that “counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor.” When Ford can’t think up what this underlying metaphor actually is, Arthur posits that the metaphor is one about the “humanity”—or “Vogonity”—of “the poet’s compassionate soul.” Having established this, Arthur forges on to say that this “compassion” “contrives through the medium of the verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other and one is left with a profound and vivid insight into…into…er…” At this point, Ford swoops in, declaring, “Into whatever it was the poem was about!”

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz considers for a moment the things Arthur and Ford have said about his poetry. “So what you’re saying is that I write poetry because underneath my mean callous heartless exterior I really just want to be loved, is that right?” he asks. When Ford confirms this, Prostetnic stands and says, “No, well, you’re completely wrong. I just write poetry to throw my mean callous heartless exterior into sharp relief. I’m going to throw you off the ship anyway. Guard! Take the prisoners to number three airlock and throw them out!” Ford and Arthur begin to struggle, but they find themselves helpless against the strength of a large Vogon guard. As they’re roughly escorted out of the room, Prostetnic sits back and says, “Hmmm, counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor…” After closing his eyes for a moment, he mutters, “Death’s too good for them.”

As the Vogon guard takes Ford and Arthur to the airlock, Ford tries to trick him into letting them go. Before long, he has the guard questioning his purpose in life, but then the large Vogon dismisses this line of thinking and throws them into the airlock, where they have little to do but bide their time before their inevitable deaths. Thinking to himself, Arthur reflects upon the fact that almost nothing from Earth exists anymore. “This is terrific,” he thinks, “Nelson’s Column has gone, McDonald’s has gone, all that’s left is me and the words Mostly harmless. Any second now all that will be left is Mostly harmless. And yesterday the planet seemed to be going so well.” As he thinks about this, the airlock begins to hiss, and then Ford and Arthur pop “into outer space like corks from a toy gun.”

According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a person can hold “a lungful of air” in space for roughly thirty seconds. However, this does very little to help that person survive, since “the chances of getting picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against.” Interestingly enough, this figure is also “the telephone number of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good party and met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get off with—she went off with a gate-crasher.” Despite the odds against their survival, Adams notes, Arthur and Ford are rescued twenty-nine seconds after getting ejected from the Vogon spaceship.

On the spaceship that rescued Ford and Arthur, a computer babbles to itself “in alarm” because it senses that an airlock has opened and closed “for no apparent reason.” This, Adams says, is because “reason was in fact out to lunch.” Indeed, a hole briefly opened in the Galaxy for “exactly a nothingth of a second.” This hole itself was a “nothingth of an inch wide.” When it closed, “lots of paper hats and party balloons fell out of it and drifted off through the Universe.” These aren’t the only unlikely items to have fallen out of the hole—among them were also a team of very tall market analysts and 239,000 “lightly fried eggs.”

Ford and Arthur are confused to find that the inside of the spaceship that rescued them looks exactly like a familiar location in England. They also watch a number of unlikely things pass by, like “huge children” bouncing “heavily along.” As they observe the spaceship’s oddities, a voice comes over an intercom and says, “Two to the power of one hundred thousand to one against and falling.” Ford recognizes this as a measure of probability, but doesn’t know what else to make of the announcement—other than that the figure refers to something quite improbable.

“Ford,” Arthur gasps, “you’re turning into a penguin.” The intercom voice then returns and recites another measure of probability. Afterwards, it tells Arthur and Ford to relax because they’re safe, even if Ford has turned into a penguin. Arthur, for his part, notices that his limbs are detaching from his body. “Welcome to the Starship Heart of Gold,” says the voice. “Please do not be alarmed by anything you see or hear around you. You are bound to feel some initial ill effects as you have been rescued from certain death at an improbability level of two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand to one against—possibly much higher. We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway.”

 “Arthur!” Ford says. “This is fantastic! We’ve been picked up by a ship powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive!” He then goes on to explain that he has heard rumors of this device but has always assumed it didn’t really exist. Despite his enthusiasm, though, Arthur has a hard time paying attention, for he’s busy trying to keep an “infinite amount of monkeys” from entering the room to discuss their script for Hamlet.

Adams describes the Infinite Improbability Drive, explaining that it enables one to cross “vast interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a second.” This, he says, is the story of its creation: a group of scientists have for a long time been able to generate “small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea).” However, nobody knew how to make a machine that would generate infinite improbability, which would enable a spaceship to propel itself “across the mind-paralyzing distances between the farthest stars.” After considerable amounts of research, these scientists declared that “such a machine was virtually impossible.”

Thinking about the problem of creating an infinite improbability machine, a young student realized that if “such a machine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability.” From there, he understood that all he needed to do was “work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea…and turn it on!” The only thing that surprised him more than his ability to create this coveted machine, Adams notes, is that a group of scientists lynched him after his breakthrough because they “finally realized that the one thing they really couldn’t stand was a smart-ass.”

In the Heart of Gold’s main cabin, Zaphod and Trillian listen to the computerized voice read out measures of probability. “Four to one against and falling,” the voice calls out. “Three to one…two…one…probability factor of one to one…we have normality, I repeat we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.” Zaphod turns to Trillian and asks what she thinks of the situation they’re in—whom have they picked up, and if it’s a good idea to take on hitchhikers after having stolen the Galaxy’s most famous spaceship. Trillian tells him it’s not worth thinking about, since they had no choice: the Heart of Gold picked up the hitchhikers on its own. “But that’s incredible,” Zaphod says. “No, Zaphod,” Trillian replies. “Just very very improbable.”

Trillian sends a robot named Marvin to fetch the hitchhikers. “I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed,” Marvin mutters. After some convincing, he finally leaves the cabin and goes looking for Arthur and Ford, who are beginning to feel a bit more normal, especially since their surroundings have at last become the recognizable interior of a spaceship. Ford even finds a sales brochure that advertises the Heart of Gold’s most impressive features. “They make a big thing of the ship’s cybernetics,” he remarks, reading that all of the robots and computers onboard are equipped with GPP, or “Genuine People Personalities.” “Sounds ghastly,” Arthur says, at which point Marvin arrives and agrees, saying, “Absolutely ghastly. Just don’t even talk about it.” He then mocks the sales brochure, saying, “All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you.”

 “Come on,” Marvin says to Ford and Arthur, “I’ve been ordered to take you down to the bridge. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? ’Cos I don’t.” When Ford asks which government runs this spaceship, Marvin tells him that it has been stolen by Zaphod Beeblebrox, and something “extraordinary happen[s]” to Ford’s face, as “at least five entirely separate and distinct expressions of shock and amazement pile up on it in a jumbled mess.” Moving through one last door, he turns to Arthur and says, “Did that robot say Zaphod Beeblebrox?”

Back in the main cabin, Trillian asks Zaphod if he can find any hidden meaning in the coordinates where they accidentally picked up the hitchhikers. As he thinks aloud in what seems to be a very stupid way, she wonders about his intelligence. She wonders if he pretends to be stupid to catch people off guard and force them to think for him. Alternatively, she wonders if he actually is stupid. “He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so,” Adams notes, “but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about it.”

Trillian consults a map of the universe and isolates the area where they picked up the hitchhikers, pointing out that it’s in the same sector as where she originally joined Zaphod. “Hey, yeah,” he says, marveling at how coincidental this is, especially since they were—at the time of picking up the hitchhikers—supposed to be moving through a different part of the galaxy. Annoyed, Trillian reminds him that this is because they’re using the Improbability Drive to travel. “You explained it to me yourself,” she says. “We pass through every point in the Universe.” Wanting to figure out just how improbable it was to take on these hitchhikers in the same location that Trillian originally joined him, Zaphod orders the main onboard computer to solve the problem. However, its cheery disposition annoys him so much that he decides to answer the question himself using a pencil and paper.

When Arthur and Ford enter the Heart of Gold’s main cabin, Zaphod casually greets Ford in a purposefully nonchalant manner. “Ford, hi, how are you? Glad you could drop in,” he says. Ford matches Zaphod’s nonchalance, explaining off-handedly to Arthur that Zaphod is a friend and a distant cousin. Arthur then reveals that he too has met Zaphod before. When Arthur was at a party on earth, Zaphod prevented him from going home with a girl he was flirting with. “I wasn’t doing very well with her,” he admits. “I’d been trying all evening.” When he finally got a chance to talk to her, Arthur says, Zaphod sidled up, interrupted them, and said, “Hey, doll, is this guy boring you? Why don’t you talk to me instead? I’m from a different planet.”

After telling this story, Arthur is flabbergasted to find the woman who rejected him standing next to Zaphod. “You must admit he did turn out to be from another planet,” says Trillian, referring to Zaphod. “Tricia McMillan?” Arthur asks. “What are you doing here?” Trillian responds by telling him that she left earth before it was destroyed. “After all, with a degree in math and another in astrophysics what else was there to do? It was either that or the dole queue again on Monday.” Unsettled by just how many strange coincidences have just taken place, Zaphod asks Trillian if “this sort of thing” is going to happen each time they use the Improbability Drive. “Very probably, I’m afraid,” she responds.

As the Heart of Gold speeds through “the night of space,” its passengers have trouble sleeping. To pass the time, Trillian watches her two pet mice, whom she brought from earth in a cage. While she does this, Zaphod finds himself unable to sleep because he senses something strange going on in his mind. Namely, he feels as if he won’t “let himself think about” something, but he doesn’t know what it is. As everybody but Arthur abandons the attempt to get some rest, they convene in the control room, where Trillian tells Zaphod that they’re nearing the planet he has been wanting to find. This planet, he tells Ford, is “the most improbable planet that ever existed.”

Adams provides an excerpt from The Guide’s entry for a planet called Magrathea. In “ancient times,” it reads, the Galaxy was rich. In fact, people became so wealthy that their lives began to feel “rather dull and niggly.” They attributed this discontent to the various insufficiencies of their own worlds, deciding that they “settled on” the wrong planets. As such, they began hiring specialists to design “custom-made luxury planets.” This project took place on Magrathea, “where hyperstatial engineers sucked matter through white holes in space to form it into dream planets” that were “made to meet the exacting standards that the Galaxy’s richest men naturally came to expect.” Unfortunately, this business venture was so profitable that Magrathea became significantly richer than any other planet, throwing the Galaxy into “abject poverty” that instigated an economic crash. Since then, Magrathea has “disappeared,” and people no longer believe it ever existed at all.

Arthur suddenly wakes up and finds Ford shouting at Zaphod. “You’re crazy, Zaphod,” says the wayward hitchhiker. “Magrathea is a myth, a fairy story.” To prove that they are indeed orbiting Magrathea, Zaphod wakes up the onboard computer, who says, “Hi there! This is Eddie, your shipboard computer, and I’m feeling just great, guys, and I know I’m just going to get a bundle of kicks out of any program you care to run through me.” Eddie then confirms that the ship is approaching Magrathea. Although Zaphod finds himself annoyed by Eddie’s chipper attitude, he asks the computer to let them see the planet. When Magrathea blinks into clarity on the onboard screen, Ford clings to his doubt, skeptically asking why Zaphod wants to reach such a planet in the first place. Unable to give a straightforward answer, Zaphod says he thinks it’s the “fame” and “money” that attracts him.

As the Heart of Gold glides ever closer to Magrathea, a transmission from the ghostly planet—which has been inactive for 5,000,000 years—plays over the ship’s speakers. “Greetings to you,” a voice says. “This is a recorded announcement, as I’m afraid we’re all out at the moment. The commercial council of Magrathea thanks you for your esteemed visit but regrets that the entire planet is temporarily closed for business. Thank you. If you would care to leave your name and the address of a planet where you can be contacted, kindly speak when you hear the tone.” Trillian points out that the planet seems to want them to leave, but Zaphod ignores this, saying that it’s “just a recording.”

The spaceship draws closer to Magrathea, and another recorded message sounds over the speakers: “We would like to assure you that as soon as our business is resumed announcements will be made in all fashionable magazines and color supplements, when your clients will once again be able to select from all that’s best in contemporary geography. Meanwhile, we thank our clients for their kind interest and would ask them to leave. Now.” In defiance of his fellow passengers’ desire to leave, Zaphod forges onward, eventually receiving a final message that politely informs everybody on the Heart of Gold that there are now two guided missiles making their way toward the spaceship.

Hey, this is terrific!” Zaphod shouts. “Someone down there is trying to kill us!” When Arthur asks him what he’s talking about, Zaphod points out that this means they “must be on to something.” He then orders Eddie to take “evasive action,” but Eddie informs them that the controls have been overridden by some external force. As the missiles near the ship, Ford tries to steer the craft manually, ultimately turning them upside down and turning them around so that they begin traveling toward the missiles. In a moment of panic, Arthur has a brilliant idea. Running to the spaceship’s console, he activates the Improbability Drive. Suddenly, everything is calm again, though the interior of the ship has undergone a redesign. “What the hell happened?” asks Zaphod, who finds himself lounging in a “wickerwork sun chair.”

The crew on the Heart of Gold discovers that the Improbability Drive has turned the missiles into a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias, respectively. As the sperm whale careens toward Magrathea, it springs into thought, thinking, “Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?” Gradually, it begins to piece together the facts of its existence, delighted by the sensation of air rushing over its body and by the feeling of being alive. “What’s this thing suddenly coming toward me very fast?” it wonders. “So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide-sounding name like…ground! That’s it! That’s a good name—ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?” With this, it splatters on the surface of Magrathea. The bowl of petunias, on the other hand, thinks only one thing: “Oh no, not again.”

The Heart of Gold lands safely on Magrathea. As everybody prepares to venture onto the planet’s surface, Trillian discovers that her pet mice have escaped their cage, but nobody except her seems to care. In fact, they’re too preoccupied with the Heart of Gold’s new voice, which Zaphod explains he changed in the hopes of altering the system’s cloying personality. After a brief argument with Eddie—who has taken on the identity of a nagging parent—the group finally exits the spaceship and makes its way onto the barren landscape of Magrathea. Before long, they come upon a crater created by the sperm whale’s impact. To Zaphod’s delight, the whale’s crash has opened a hole to “the interior of the planet,” which he decides to enter. Excited to venture into a place “where no man has trod these five million years,” he sets off.

As the group (minus Arthur and Marvin, who remain above ground) stomps down a passageway, Ford asks Zaphod why he wanted to find Magrathea in the first place. Zaphod answers by saying that he stole the Heart of Gold “to look for a lot of things,” including the planet. Ultimately, though, he doesn’t actually know what he’s looking for. “I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good,” he says. “I freewheel a lot. I get an idea to do something, and, hey, why not, I do it. I reckon I’ll become President of the Galaxy, and it just happens, it’s easy. I decide to steal this ship. I decide to look for Magrathea, and it all just happens. Yeah, I work out how it can best be done, right, but it always works out.”

Continuing his monologue about the nature of his decision making, Zaphod explains that if he stops to think about why he has done something, he suddenly has an urge to stop pondering his actions. Last night, he says, he was thinking about this strange phenomenon. Wanting to get to the bottom of his mental process, he went to “the ship’s medical bay” and plugged himself into “the encephalographic screen,” where he looked at an overview of “all the tests [he] had to go through under Government medical officers before [his] nomination for presidency could be properly ratified.” After searching in vain for quite some time, he finally discovered “a whole section in the middle of both [of his] brains that related only to each other and not to anything else around them.” According to Zaphod, “some bastard had cauterized all the synapses and electronically traumatized” these sections of his brain.

When Ford asks who Zaphod thinks did this to him, Zaphod says that the person burned their initials into his brain—a signature of sorts. The letters that he found are “Z.B.”: Zaphod Beeblebrox. Just as he reveals this to Ford and Trillian, “a steel shutter slam[s] down behind them and gas start[s] to pour into the chamber.” Right before the three friends pass out, Zaphod says, “I’ll tell you about it later.”

On the surface of Magrathea, Arthur walks around feeling bored. To alleviate the tedium of waiting, he skims The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, reading a strange story about Zaphod himself, who once convinced a studious graduate student during a night of drinking to get to the bottom of an all-consuming question: what happens to the countless ballpoint pens that have been lost throughout the Galaxy? Closing The Guide, Arthur strikes up an idle conversation with Marvin, who calls the magnificent double-sun sunset “rubbish.” Leaving the depressed robot alone, Arthur wanders around as night falls rapidly. In the quick onslaught of darkness, he suddenly walks into an old man.

“You choose a cold night to visit our dead planet,” says the old man Arthur has just walked into. He is wearing a long robe and standing by an “aircar.” He tells Arthur that the Magratheans have been sleeping since the crash of the Galactic economy 5,000,000 years ago. Since custom-built planets are “luxury commodit[ies],” they’ve decided to hibernate until the recession ends. “The computers were index-linked to the Galactic stock-market prices, you see,” says the old man, “so that we’d all be revived when everybody else had rebuilt the economy enough to afford our rather expensive services.” He then urges Arthur to get into his “aircar” so they can travel into the “bowels” of Magrathea, where his people are slowly waking. “What is your name, by the way?” Arthur asks. Pausing with a look of sadness on his face, the old man says, “My name is Slartibartfast.”

“It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem,” notes Adams. Humans, for instance, have assumed for centuries that they’re the most intelligent beings on Earth, but this was never true. In fact, dolphins were smarter, and “had long known of the impending destruction of the planet.” In fact, the dolphins even tried to warn humankind of the danger, “but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means.” Apparently, there was only one other species that was smarter than the dolphins, “and they spent a lot of their time in behavioral research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.”

When Arthur and Slartibartfast arrive on the factory floor deep inside Magrathea, Arthur looks with “a kind of wonderful horror” at the magnificent and odd things suspended from the ceiling—the “spherical shapes” and “delicate traceries of metal and light.” Arthur asks if the Magratheans are starting their business again after their long hibernation, but Slartibartfast tells him that “the Galaxy isn’t nearly rich enough to support” that yet. “No,” he continues, “we’ve been awakened to perform just one extraordinary commission for very…special clients from another dimension. It may interest you…there in the distance in front of us.” Following Slartibartfast’s outstretched finger, Arthur catches a glimpse of his home planet. “The Earth…” he says in awe. “Well,” replies Slartibartfast, “the Earth Mark Two in fact.”

Dumbfounded, Arthur asks if Slartibartfast made the Earth. “Oh yes,” the old man answers. “Did you ever go to a place…I think it was called Norway?” Arthur says that he never made it to Norway, to which Slartibartfast says, “Pity, that was one of mine. Won an award, you know. Lovely crinkly edges. I was most upset to hear of its destruction.” As Arthur grumbles, Slartibartfast muses, “Yes. Five minutes later and it wouldn’t have mattered so much.”  This confuses Arthur, but Slartibartfast only says, “The mice were furious.” “Yes, well, so I expect were the dogs and cats and duck-billed platypuses,” says Arthur sarcastically. “Ah,” responds Slartibartfast, “but they hadn’t paid for it, you see, had they?” He then reveals that Earth was “commissioned, paid for, and run by mice,” and that it was destroyed “five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it was built.”

Because Earth was destroyed “five minutes before” it fulfilled its purpose, Slartibartfast explains, the Magratheans have been hired to build it again. Arthur, for his part, has trouble coming to terms with the fact that his planet was run by mice, but Slartibartfast maintains that mice “are not quite as they appear.” Indeed, they are “merely the protrusion into our dimension of vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings.” He then adds that these beings have been experimenting on humans. Hearing this, Arthur insists that humans were the ones experimenting on mice, but Slartibartfast helps him see that the mice manipulated humans into thinking they were in control when they really weren’t. “How better to disguise their real natures, and how better to guide your thinking. Suddenly running down a maze the wrong way, eating the wrong bit of cheese, unexpectedly dropping dead of myxomatosis.”

Adams states that life is full of difficult questions. Millions of years ago, he explains, “a race of hyperintelligent pandimensional beings” got tired of “the constant bickering about the meaning of life.” As such, they decided to build a supercomputer to answer their questions. “The size of a small city,” this computer was named Deep Thought. When Deep Thought was finally turned on, two programmers named Lunkwill and Fook asked it if it was the most powerful computer “in all time.” Deep Thought answered by saying that it was the second most powerful—the first, it explained, had not yet been built; this computer would be Deep Thought’s predecessor. Moving on, the programmers asked Deep Thought to tell them “the Answer” to “Life, the Universe and Everything.” Deep Thought confirmed that there was indeed a “simple answer,” but told them that it would take some thinking.

Suddenly, two philosophers burst into the room where Lunkwill and Fook are talking to Deep Thought. These men are Majikthise and Vroomfondel, and they are part of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons. What they want—what they demand—is for Deep Thought to be turned off. “You just let the machines get on with the adding up,” says Majikthise, “and we’ll take care of the eternal verities, thank you very much. You want to check your legal position, you do, mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we’re straight out of a job, aren’t we?” Jumping in, Vroomfondel adds, “That’s right, we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”

Interrupting the philosophers, Deep Thought points out that its “circuits are now irrevocably committed to calculating the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” but that the program will take 7,500,000 years to run. “It occurs to me,” Deep Thought says, “that running a program like this is bound to create an enormous amount of popular publicity for the whole area of philosophy in general. Everyone’s going to have their own theories about what answer I’m eventually going to come up with, and who better to capitalize on that media market than you yourselves? So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other violently enough and maligning each other in the popular press, and so long as you have clever agents, you can keep yourselves on the gravy train for life.” This satisfies the philosophers, who happily turn around and leave the disappointed progammers alone.

After listening to Slartibartfast tell him this story about Deep Thought, Arthur admits he doesn’t understand what the tale has to do with Earth. Slartibartfast tells him that this is because he hasn’t heard the whole story, then invites him to his office, where he plays him a recording of the “great day of the Answer,” which was documented on a Sens-O-Tape 7,500,000 years after Lunkwill and Fook asked Deep Thought about the meaning of “Life, the Universe and Everything.” Slartibartfast hands Arthur two wires, which transport the earthling into a virtual world, where he can watch the recorded proceedings. Hovering above the scene, Arthur observes two hyperintelligent pandimensional beings address a large crowd. “Never again will we wake up in the morning and think Who am I? What is My purpose in Life?” yells one of them, and the crowd goes wild with applause.

Using the Sens-O-Tape, Arthur drifts into a room where two men named Loonquawl and Pouchg address Deep Thought as it rouses itself to provide an answer to the question of “Life, the Universe, and Everything.” Deep Thought confirms that it has found this answer, adding, “Though I don’t think that you’re going to like it.” After awkwardly deflecting Loonquawl and Pouchg’s enthusiasm and stalling for a moment, Deep Thought finally delivers the highly sought-after answer. “Forty-two,” it says.

“Fort-two!” shouts Loonquawl. “Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?” Defensively, Deep Thought assures the pandimensional beings that the answer has been checked quite “thoroughly.” “I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is,” Deep Thought posits. Pouchg and Loonquawl find this absurd, repeating that they want to know the answer to “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.” Again, though, Deep Thought challenges them, asking what this question actually is. When the pandimensional beings are unable to think up a satisfactory response, Deep Thought suggests that once they understand “what the question actually is,” then they’ll comprehend the meaning of the answer.

Exasperated, Loonquawl and Pouchg ask Deep Thought to simply tell them the “Ultimate Question,” but the computer informs them that this is impossible. However, Deep Thought assures them, there is a computer that can tell them what they need to know. “I speak of none but the computer that is to come after me, Deep Thought says. “A computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate—and yet I will design it for you. A computer that can calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form part of its operational matrix. And you yourselves shall take on new forms and go down into the computer to navigate its ten-million-year program!” Deep Thought decides that this supercomputer will be called Earth.

While Arthur learns about the hyperintelligent pandimensional beings in Slartibartfast’s office, Trillian and Ford try to rouse Zaphod from his gas-induced slumber. Finally, they manage to wake him by telling him he’s currently sleeping on a floor of gold. Jumping up, he examines his surroundings, which Ford explains are made up of Magrathea’s catalog of the worlds they’ve built. “Trillian and I came round a while ago,” Ford says. “We shouted and yelled till somebody came and then carried on shouting and yelling till they got fed up and put us in their planet catalog to keep us busy till they were ready to deal with us. This is all Sens-O-Tape.” Above, a sign appears in the air that reads: Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud.

As the Sens-O-Tape shifts around them, Zaphod continues telling Ford and Trillian about the oddity he found in his brains. “Whatever happened to my mind, I did it,” he says. “And I did it in such a way that it wouldn’t be detected by the Government screening tests. And I wasn’t to know anything about it myself. Pretty crazy, right?” Going on, he says, “What’s so secret that I can’t let anybody know I know it, not the Galactic Government, not even myself? And the answer is I don’t know. Obviously. But I put a few things together and I can begin to guess.” He then talks about when he first decided to run for president, which was “shortly after the death of President Yooden Vranx.”

When Zaphod was young he and Ford hijacked Yooden Vranx’s “Arcturan megafreighter.” These ships were hard to infiltrate, but Zaphod managed to do it. This impressed Yooden, so he welcomed the two youngsters aboard and partied with them before teleporting them to a high security prison. Now, Zaphod reveals that Yooden visited him right before he died and told him about the Heart of Gold. “It was his idea that I should steal it,” he adds. This, it seems, is why Zaphod decided to become president in the first place. It’s also why Zaphod altered his brain to hide his plans. “I don’t seem to be letting myself into any of my secrets,” he says. “Still, I can understand that. I wouldn’t trust myself further than I could spit a rat.” Just then, a Magrathean enters and says, “The mice will see you now.”

Back in Slartibartfast’s office, Arthur and the old man discuss the fact that Deep Thought designed Earth, and that the Vogons destroyed it five minutes before the program was finished. “Ten million years of planning and work gone just like that,” Slartibartfast says. Reflecting that an entire civilization could develop “five times over in that time,” he adds, “Well, that’s bureaucracy for you.” Arthur says that he thinks he sensed this, since for his whole life he has felt as if something “big” and “sinister” has been going on. “No,” Slartibartfast says, “that’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.” He then outlines his personal philosophy, saying, “I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.”

Slartibartfast tells Arthur that he won an award for designing Norway, but he doesn’t attach too much significance to it—it’s just an award. Now, he’s tasked with designing Africa for the Earth Mark Two, but his bosses don’t want him to give the continent fjords because they aren’t “equatorial enough.” Changing the subject, the old man tells Arthur that it’s time for him to meet the mice. “Your arrival on the planet has caused considerable excitement. It has already been hailed, so I gather, as the third most improbable event in the history of the universe.” Following Slartibartfast out of the office, Arthur dejectedly mutters, “I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style.”

 “It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives,” Adams writes, “but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.” In keeping with this, when Arthur says, “I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style,” a “freak wormhole” opens in space and carries his words “to a distant Galaxy where strange and warlike beings [are] poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.” The two war leaders are having a fateful meeting when Arthur’s phrase floats between them. In one of their languages, this sentence is “the most dreadful insult imaginable.” As a result, the two populations begin a long and horrific war. Thousands of years later, the two sides realize it was a simple mistake, uniting forces to wage war on Arthur’s galaxy. They therefore launch a fleet of battleships toward Earth, all of which plummet into a dog’s mouth.

Slartibartfast brings Arthur to a waiting room, where he finds his friends feasting on an exquisite lunch. After he greets them, he hears a tiny voice that says, “Welcome to lunch, Earth creature.” Looking down, he sees Trillian’s mice on the table. “Arthur,” Trillian says, “this is Benjy mouse. And this is Frankie mouse.” The mice, who are sitting inside what look like two futuristic whiskey glasses, greet him before dismissing Slartibartfast and informing him that they “won’t be needing the new Earth any longer.” As he exits, the old man rants angrily about the work he’s already done on Africa.

“Now, Earth creature,” says Benjy mouse, “the situation we have in effect is this. We have, as you know, been more or less running your planet for the last ten million years in order to find this wretched thing called the Ultimate Question.” Interrupting, Arthur says, “Why?” In response, Frankie mouse says, “No—we already thought of that one, but it doesn’t fit the answer. Why? Forty-two…you see, it doesn’t work.” He then admits that they’re tired of running experiments on Earth and daunted by the idea of doing the entire thing again. “It was by the merest lucky chance that Benjy and I finished our particular job and left the planet early for a quick holiday, and have since manipulated our way back to Magrathea by the good offices of your friends.” Magrathea, Benjy interjects, is a “gateway” back to their dimension.

Since leaving Earth, Benjy and Frankie have received a very lucrative offer to “do the 5D chat show and lecture circuit” in their own dimension. “But we’ve got to have product, you see,” Frankie says. “I mean, ideally we still need the Ultimate Question in some form or other.” They need something, they tell Arthur, that “sounds good.” This is why they need Arthur, who is “a last generation product of [the Earth’s] computer matrix.” This means that his brain is “an organic part of the penultimate configuration of the computer program.” Because of this, the mice think that the Ultimate Question is “encoded” within him. “So we want to buy it off you,” Benjy says. For a moment, Arthur thinks the mice want to buy the question from him, but they soon make clear what they really want: his entire brain.

Arthur rears back in his chair as the mice try to convince him to give them his brain, saying that they can give him a simple electronic replacement. As he tries to inch away, the mice lift off the table in their glass cases and start moving toward Arthur. Meanwhile, Trillian, Ford, and Zaphod try to pull Arthur away while opening the door. Unfortunately, a group of heavily-armored Magratheans block their way. Miraculously, though, a planet-wide alarm system bleats into the air, stopping everybody in their tracks.

“Emergency! Emergency!” a voice blares over Magrathea. “Hostile ship has landed on planet. Armed intruders in section 8A. Defense stations, defense stations!” As Arthur and his friends slip away, Benjy and Frankie complain to each other about their predicament, deciding that their only option is to formulate a “fake” question that sounds “plausible.” After thinking for a moment, Frankie suggests, “How many roads must a man walk down?” Benjy likes this, and the two mice begin to celebrate. Meanwhile, Arthur and his friends are now half a mile away, running down corridors and hallways and trying to escape. The “intruders” that have landed on Magrathea are “cops” trying to arrest Zaphod for stealing the Heart of Gold. Having cornered the group (who hides behind a wall), the cops yell at Zaphod to emerge, shooting all the while.

Without warning, the cops’ guns go silent. Gradually emerging from behind their protective wall, Zaphod, Ford, Trillian, and Arthur discover that the cops have died because “the tiny life-support system computer” on their space suits has malfunctioned (these cops are methane-breathing creatures that can’t survive on Magrathea). “Let’s get shot of this hole,” says Zaphod. “If whatever I’m supposed to be looking for is here, I don’t want it.” Saying this, he grabs one of the cops’ guns and shoots a computer before making off with his friends in an aircar parked nearby—this, Arthur recognizes, is Slartibartfast’s vehicle. When they get inside, he finds a note affixed to one of the buttons. “This is probably the best button to press,” the note reads.

When Arthur and his friends reach the surface of Magrathea once more in the aircraft, they find the police spaceship parked next to the Heart of Gold. Oddly enough, it looks “dark and silent.” Like the cops themselves, it’s clear that this ship is dead. As Ford walks toward it, he finds Marvin, who is lying face-down on the ground. “Don’t feel you have to take any notice of me, please,” Marvin intones. “That ship hated me,” he says, referring to the police craft. When Ford asks what happened, Marvin explains that he got “very bored and depressed” and decided to plug himself into the ship’s “external computer feed.” “I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it,” he says. “And what happened?” asks Ford. “It committed suicide,” Marvin says.

Later that night, the Heart of Gold speeds through space. To keep himself entertained, Arthur reads The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—if he has to live in space, he figures, he might as well learn about it. “The history of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases,” The Guide says, listing these phases as Survival, Inquiry, and Sophistication—these are “otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.” “For instance,” The Guide says, “the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?” As Arthur reads, Zaphod comes and asks if he’s hungry. When he says that he is, Zaphod says, “Okay, baby, hold tight. We’ll take a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.”