21
On the surface of Magrathea Arthur wandered about moodily. Ford had thoughtfully left him his copy of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to while away the time with. He pushed a few buttons at random. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited book and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time. One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates the experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then, after a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the biros he’d bought over the past few years. There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all the major centres of biro loss throughout the galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint little theory which quite caught the public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to highly biro-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the biro equivalent of the good life. And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make a fool of themselves in public. When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying. There did, however, remain the question of both the mysterious 60,000 Altairan dollars paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank account, and of course Zaphod Beeblebrox’s highly profitable second-hand biro business. Arthur read this, and put the book down. The robot still sat there, completely inert. Arthur got up and walked to the top of the crater. He walked around the crater. He watched two suns set magnificently over Magrathea. He went back down into the crater. He woke the robot up because even a manically depressed robot is better to talk to than nobody. “Night’s falling,” he said. “Look robot, the stars are coming out.” From the heart of a dark nebula it is possible to see very few stars, and only very faintly, but they were there to be seen. The robot obediently looked at them, then looked back. “I know,” he said. “Wretched isn’t it?” “But that sunset! I’ve never seen anything like it in my wildest dreams… the two suns! It was like mountains of fire boiling into space.” “I’ve seen it,” said Marvin. “It’s rubbish.” “We only ever had the one sun at home,” persevered Arthur, “I came from a planet called Earth you know.” “I know,” said Marvin, “you keep going on about it. It sounds awful.” “Ah no, it was a beautiful place.” “Did it have oceans?” “Oh yes,” said Arthur with a sigh, “great wide rolling blue oceans…” “Can’t bear oceans,” said Marvin. “Tell me,” inquired Arthur, “do you get on well with other robots?” “Hate them,” said Marvin. “Where are you going?” Arthur couldn’t bear any more. He had got up again. “I think I’ll just take another walk,” he said. “Don’t blame you,” said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later. Arthur slapped his arms about himself to try and get his circulation a little more enthusiastic about its job. He trudged back up the wall of the crater. Because the atmosphere was so thin and because there was no moon, nightfall was very rapid and it was by now very dark. Because of this, Arthur practically walked into the old man before he noticed him.