Gone. Random was in it. It was impossible for Arthur to know this, but he just went ahead and knew it anyway. She was gone. He had had his stint at being a parent and could scarcely believe how badly he had done at it. He tried to continue run- ning, but his feet were dragging, his knee was hurting like fury and he knew that he was too late.
He could not conceive that he could feel more wretched and awful than this, but he was wrong.
He limped his way at last to the cave where Random had sheltered and opened the box. The ground bore the indentations of the spacecraft that had landed there only minutes before, but of Random there was no sign. He wandered disconsolately into the cave, found the empty box and piles of missing matter pellets strewn around the place. He felt a little cross about that. He’d tried to teach her about cleaning up after herself. Feeling a bit cross with her about something like that helped him feel less desolate about her leaving. He knew he had no means of finding her.
His foot knocked against something unexpected. He bent down to pick it up, and was thoroughly surprised to discover what it was. It was his old Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. How did that come to be in the cave? He had never returned to collect it from the scene of the crash. He had not wanted to revisit the crash and he had not wanted the Guide again. He had reckoned he was here on Lamuella, making sandwiches for good. How did it come to be in the cave? It was active. The words on the cover flashed DON’T PANIC at him.
He went out of the cave again into the dim and damp moonlight. He sat on a rock to have a look through the old Guide, and then discovered it wasn’t a rock, it was a person.
18
Arthur leapt to his feet with a start of fear. It would be hard to say which he was more frightened of: that he. might have hurt the person he had inadvertently sat on or that the person he had inadvertently sat on would hurt him back.
There seemed, on inspection, to be little immediate cause for alarm on the second count. Whoever it was he had sat on was unconscious. That would probably go a great deal of the way towards explaining what he was doing lying there. He seemed to be breathing OK, though. Arthur felt his pulse. That was OK as well.
He was lying on his side, half curled up. It was so long ago and far away when Arthur had last done First Aid that he really couldn’t remember what it was he was supposed to do. The first thing he was supposed to do, he remembered, was to have a First Aid kit about his person. Damn.
Should he roll him on to his back or not? Suppose he had any broken bones? Suppose he swallowed his tongue? Suppose he sued him? Who, apart from anything else, was he?
At that moment the unconscious man groaned loudly and rolled himself over.
Arthur wondered if he should –
He looked at him.
He looked at him again.
He looked at him again, just to make absolutely sure.
Despite the fact that he had been thinking he was feeling about as low as he possibly could, he experienced a terrible sinking feeling.
The figure groaned again and slowly opened his eyes. It took him a while to focus, then he blinked and stiffened.
`You!’ said Ford Prefect.
`You!’ said Arthur Dent.
Ford groaned again.
`What do you need to have explained this time?’ he said, and closed his eyes in some kind of despair.
Five minutes later he was sitting up and rubbing the side of his head, where he had quite a large swelling.
`Who the hell was that woman?’ he said. `Why are we sur- rounded by squirrels, and what do they want?’
`I’ve been pestered by squirrels all night,’ said Arthur. `They keep on trying to give me magazines and stuff.’