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"Three pints?" said Arthur "At lunchtime?"

The nored him He said, "Time is an illusion Lunchtime doubly so"

"Very deep," said Arthur, "you should send that in to the Reader's Digest They've got

a page for people like you"

"Drink up"

"Why three pints all of a sudden?"

"Muscle relaxant, you'll need it"

"Muscle relaxant?"

"Muscle relaxant"

Arthur stared into his beer

"Did I do anything wrong today," he said, "or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?"

"Alright," said Ford, "I'll try to explain How long have we known each other?"

"How long?" Arthur thought "Er, about five years, maybe six," he said "Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time"

"Alright," said Ford "Hoould you react if I said that I'm not from Guildford after all, but froeuse?"

Arthur shrugged in a so-so sort of way

"I don't know," he said, taking a pull of beer "Why--do you think it's the sort of thing you're likely to say?"

Ford gave up It really wasn't worth bothering at theabout to end He just said:

"Drink up"

He added, perfectly factually:

"The world's about to end"

Arthur gave the rest of the pub another wan smile The rest of the pub frowned at hi at them and mind his own business

"Thislow over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays"

Chapter 3

On this particular Thursday, soh the ionosphere s in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike sos, silent as birds They soared with ease, basking in electro, preparing

The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their presence, which was just how they wanted it for the s went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, Wooh the they'd been looking for all these years

The only place they registered at all was on a small black device called a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic which winked away quietly to itself It nestled in the darkness inside a leather satchel which Ford Prefect wore habitually round his neck The contents of Ford Prefect's satchel were quite interesting in fact and would have made any Earth physicist's eyes pop out of his head, which is why he always concealed the-eared scripts for plays he pretended he was auditioning for stuffed in the top Besides the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic and the scripts he had an Electronic Thumb--a short squat black rod, smooth and matt with a couple of flat switches and dials at one end; he also had a device which looked rather like a largish electronic calculator This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a es" could be summoned at a moment's notice It looked insanely co plastic cover it fitted into had the words Don't Panic printed on it in large friendly letters The other reason was that this device was in fact that reat publishing corporations of Ursa Minor--The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitch hiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in

Beneath that in Ford Prefect's satchel were a few biros, a notepad, and a largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels

A towel, it says, is about thean interstellar hitch hiker can have Partly it has great practical value--you can wrap it around you for warlan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliantthe heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fublatter Beast of Traal (a ly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you--daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in enal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seeh

More iical value For so: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his toith him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, coear, space suit etc, etc Further will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other iteht accidentally have "lost" What the strag will think is that any h it, sluh, and still knohere his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with

Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knohere his towel is" (Sass: know, be aware of, uy; frood: really auy)

Nestling quietly on top of the towel in Ford Prefect's satchel, the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic began to wink e yellow soan to fan out At Jodrell Bank, so cup of tea

"You got a toith you?" said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur

Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him

"Why? What, noshould I have?" He had given up being surprised, there didn't seeer

Ford clicked his tongue in irritation