The next one didn’t resume the story till five years later, and you can, claim some, take discretion too far. “This Arthur Dent,” comes the cry from the furthest reaches of the galaxy, and has even now been found inscribed on a mysterious deep space probe thought to originate from an alien galaxy at a distance too hideous to contemplate, “what is he, man or mouse? Is he interested in nothing more than tea and the wider issues of life? Has he no spirit? has he no passion? Does he not, to put it in a nutshell, fuck?”
Those who wish to know should read on. Others may wish to skip on to the last chapter which is a good bit and has Marvin in it.
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Chapter 26
Arthur Dent allowed himself for an unworthy moment to think, as they drifted up, that he very much hoped that his friends who had always found him pleasant but dull, or more latterly, odd but dull, were having a good time in the pub, but that was the last time, for a while, that he thought of them.
They drifted up, spiralling slowly around each other, like sycamore seeds falling from sycamore trees in the autumn, except going the other way.
And as they drifted up their minds sang with the ecstatic knowledge that either what they were doing was completely and utterly and totally impossible or that physics had a lot of catching up to do.
Physics shook its head and, looking the other way, concentrated on keeping the cars going along the Euston Road and out towards the Westway flyover, on keeping the streetlights lit and on making sure that when somebody on Baker Street dropped a cheeseburger it went splat upon the ground.
Dwindling headily beneath them, the beaded strings of light of London – London, Arthur had to keep reminding himself, not the strangely coloured fields of Krikkit on the remote fringes of the galaxy, lighted freckles of which faintly spanned the opening sky above them, but London – swayed, swaying and turning, turned.
“Try a swoop,” he called to Fenchurch.
“What?”
Her voice seemed strangely clear but distant in all the vast empty air. It was breathy and faint with disbelief – all those things, clear, faint, distant, breathy, all at the same time.
“We’re flying …” she said.
“A trifle,” called Arthur, “think nothing of it. Try a swoop.”
“A sw-”
Her hand caught his, and in a second her weight caught it too, and stunningly, she was gone, tumbling beneath him, clawing wildly at nothing.
Physics glanced at Arthur, and clotted with horror he was gone too, sick with giddy dropping, every part of him screaming but his voice.
They plummeted because this was London and you really couldn’t do this sort of thing here.
He couldn’t catch her because this was London, and not a million miles from here, seven hundred and fifty-six, to be exact, in Pisa, Galileo had clearly demonstrated that two falling bodies fell at exactly the same rate of acceleration irrespective of their relative weights.
They fell.
Arthur realized as he fell, giddily and sickeningly, that if he was going to hang around in the sky believing everything that the Italians had to say about physics when they couldn’t even keep a simple tower straight, that they were in dead trouble, and damn well did fall faster than Fenchurch.
He grappled her from above, and fumbled for a tight grip on her shoulders. He got it.
Fine. They were now falling together, which was all very sweet and romantic, but didn’t solve the basic problem, which was that they were falling, and the ground wasn’t waiting around to see if he had any more clever tricks up his sleeve, but was coming up to meet them like an express train.
He couldn’t support her weight, he hadn’t anything he could support it with or against. The only thing he could think was that they were obviously going to die, and if he wanted anything other than the obvious to happen he was going to have to do something other than the obvious. Here he felt he was on familiar territory.