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"This," said Slartibartfast, "is where we make most of our planets you see"

"Youto forain now?"

"No no, good heavens no," exclaih to support us yet No, we've been awakened to perform just one extraordinary commission for veryspecial clients from another dimension It may interest youthere in the distance in front of us"

Arthur followed the oldstructure he was pointing out It was indeed the only one of the n of activity about it, though this wasone could put one's finger on

At the h the structure and revealed in stark relief the patterns that were forh blobby shapes that were as familiar to him as the shapes of words, part of the furniture of his es rushed around his mind and tried to find somewhere to settle down and make sense

Part of his brain told hi at and what the shapes represented whilst another quite sensibly refused to countenance the idea and abdicated responsibility for any further thinking in that direction

The flash caain, and this time there could be no doubt

"The Earth" whispered Arthur

"Well, the Earth Mark Two in fact," said Slartibartfast cheerfully "We're inal blueprints"

There was a pause

"Are you trying to tell inallymade the Earth?"

"Oh yes," said Slartibartfast "Did you ever go to a placeI think it was called Norway?"

"No," said Arthur, "no, I didn't"

"Pity," said Slartibartfast, "that was one of es I was most upset to hear about its destruction"

"You were upset!"

"Yes Five minutes later and it wouldn't havecock-up"

"Huh?" said Arthur

"The mice were furious"

"The mice were furious?"

"Oh yes," said the old man mildly

"Yes, well, so I expect were the dogs and cats and duckbilled platypuses, but"

"Ah, but they hadn't paid for it, you see, had they?"

"Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of tiave up and went mad now?"

For a while the aircar flew on in aard silence Then the old man tried patiently to explain

"Earthman, the planet you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice It was destroyed five minutes before the coot to build another one"

Only one word registered with Arthur

"Mice?" he said

"Indeed, Earthman"

"Look, sorry--are we talking about the little white furry things with the cheese fixation and wo in early sixties sit coms?"

Slartibartfast coughed politely

"Earthman," he said, "it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of speech Rerathea for five million years and know little of these early sixties sit coms of which you speak These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear They are ent pan-dis The whole business with the cheese and the squeaking is just a front"

The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued

"They've been experi on you, I'm afraid"

Arthur thought about this for a second, and then his face cleared

"Ah no," he said, "I see the source of thenow No, look, you see, what happened was that we used to do experiments on them They were often used in behavioural research, Pavlov and all that sort of stuff So what happened was that thebells, run aroundprocess could be examined From our observations of their behaviour ere able to learn all sorts of things about our own"

Arthur's voice tailed off