`You have a leader?’
`Yes.’
`What’s his name?’
`We do not know.’
`What does he say his name is, for Christ’s sake? Sorry I’ll need to edit that. What does he say his name is?’
`He does not know.’
`So how do you all know he’s the leader?’
`He seized control. He said someone has to do something round here.’
`Ah! , said Tricia, seizing on a clue. `Where is “here”?’
`Rupert.’
`What?’
`Your people call it Rupert. The tenth planet from your sun. We have settled there for many years. It is highly cold and uninteresting there. But good for monitoring.’
`Why are you monitoring us?’
`It is all we know to do.’
`OK,’ said Tricia. `Right. What is the problem that your leader says you have?’
`Triangulation.’
`I beg your pardon?’
`Astrology is a very precise science. We know this.’
`Well…’ said Tricia, then left it at that.
`But it is precise for you here on Earth.’
`Ye… e… s…’ She had a horrible feeling she was getting a vague glimmering of something.
`So when Venus is rising in Capricorn, for instance, that is from Earth. How does that work if we are out on Rupert? What if the Earth is rising in Capricorn? It is hard for us to know. Amongst the things we have forgotten, which we think are many and profound, is trigonometry.’
`Let me get this straight,’ said Tricia. `You want me to come with you to… Rupert…’
`Yes.’
`To recalculate your horoscopes for you to take account of the relative positions of Earth and Rupert?’
`Yes.’
`Do I get an exclusive?’
`Yes.’
`I’m your girl,’ said Tricia, thinking that at the very least she could sell it to the National Enquirer.
As she boarded the craft that would take her off to the furthest limits of the Solar System, the first thing that met her eyes was a bank of video monitors across which thousands of images were sweeping. A fourth alien was sitting watching them, but was focused on one particular screen that held a steady image. It was a replay of the impromptu interview which Tricia had just conducted with his three colleagues. He looked up when he saw her apprehensively climbing in.
`Good evening, Ms McMillan,’ he said. `Nice camera work.’
6
Ford Prefect hit the ground running. The ground was about three inches further from the ventilation shaft than he remembered it so he misjudged the point at which he would hit the ground, started running too soon, stumbled awkwardly and twisted his ankle. Damn! He ran off down the corridor anyway, hobbling slightly.
All over the building, alarms were erupting into their usual frenzy of excitement. He dived for cover behind the usual storage cabinets, glanced around to check that he was unseen, and started rapidly to fish around inside his satchel for the usual things he needed.
His ankle, unusually, was hurting like hell.
The ground was not only three inches further from the ven- tilation shaft than he remembered, it was also on a different planet than he remembered, but it was the three inches that had caught him by surprise. The offices of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy were quite often shifted at very short notice to another planet, for reasons of local climate, local hostility, power bills or tax, but they were always reconstructed exactly the same way, almost to the very molecule. For many of the company’s employees, the layout of their offices represented the only constant they knew in a severely distorted personal uni- verse.
Something, though, was odd.
This was not in itself surprising, thought Ford as he pulled out his lightweight throwing towel. Virtually everything in his life was, to a greater or lesser extent, odd. It was just that this was odd in a slightly different way than he was used to things being odd, which was, well, strange. He couldn’t quite get it into focus immediately.
He got out his No.3 gauge prising tool. The alarms were going in the same old way that he knew well. There was a kind of music to them that he could almost hum along to. That was all very familiar. The world outside had been a new one on Ford. He had not been to Saquo-Pilia Hensha before, and he had liked it. It had a kind of carnival atmosphere to it.