Read Online The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - Free Book Online Page A

protesting out of the bridge. A steel door closed and the captain was on his own again. He hummed quietly and mused to himself, lightly fingering his notebook of verses.
    “Hmmm,” he said,
“counterpoint the surrealism of the underlyingmetaphor . . .”
He considered this for a moment, and then closed the book with a grim smile.
    “Death’s too good for them,” he said.
    The long steel-lined corridor echoed to the feeble struggles of the two humanoids clamped firmly under rubbery Vogon arm-pits.
    “This is great,” spluttered Arthur, “this is really terrific. Let go of me, you brute!”
    The Vogon guard dragged them on.
    “Don’t you worry,” said Ford, “I’ll think of something.” He didn’t sound hopeful.
    “Resistance is useless!” bellowed the guard.
    “Just don’t say things like that,” stammered Ford. “How can anyone maintain a positive mental attitude if you’re saying things like that?”
    “My God,” complained Arthur, “you’re talking about a positive mental attitude and you haven’t even had your planet demolished today. I woke up this morning and thought I’d have a nice relaxed day, do a bit of reading, brush the dog. . . . It’s now just after four in the afternoon and I’m already being thrown out of an alien spaceship six light-years from the smoking remains of the Earth!” He spluttered and gurgled as the Vogon tightened his grip.
    “All right,” said Ford, “just stop panicking!”
    “Who said anything about panicking?” snapped Arthur. “This is still just the culture shock. You wait till I’ve settled down into the situation and found my bearings.
Then
I’ll start panicking!”
    “Arthur, you’re getting hysterical. Shut up!” Ford tried desperately to think, but was interrupted by the guard shouting again.
    “Resistance is useless!”
    “And you can shut up as well!” snapped Ford.
    “Resistance is useless!”
    “Oh, give it a rest,” said Ford. He twisted his head till he was looking straight up into his captor’s face. A thought struck him.
    “Do you really enjoy this sort of thing?” he asked suddenly.
    The Vogon stopped dead and a look of immense stupidity seeped slowly over his face.
    “Enjoy?” he boomed. “What do you mean?”
    “What I mean,” said Ford, “is does it give you a full, satisfying life? Stomping around, shouting, pushing people out of spaceships . . .”
    The Vogon stared up at the low steel ceiling and his eyebrows almost rolled over each other. His mouth slacked. Finally he said, “Well, the hours are good. . . .”
    “They’d have to be,” agreed Ford.
    Arthur twisted his head round to look at Ford.
    “Ford, what are you doing?” he asked in an amazed whisper.
    “Oh, just trying to take an interest in the world around me, okay?” he said. “So the hours are pretty good then?” he resumed.
    The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths.
    “Yeah,” he said, “but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy. Except . . .” he thought again, which required looking at the ceiling, “except some of the shouting I quite like.” He filled his lungs and bellowed, “Resistance is . . .”
    “Sure, yes,” interrupted Ford hurriedly, “you’re good at that, I can tell. But if it’s mostly lousy,” he said, slowly giving the words time to reach their mark, “then why do you do it? What is it? The girls? The leather? The machismo? Or do you just find that coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge?”
    Arthur looked backward and forward between them in bafflement.
    “Er . . .” said the guard, “er . . . er . . . I dunno. I think I just sort of . . . do it really. My aunt said that spaceship guard was a good career for a young Vogon—you know, the uniform, the low-slung stun ray holster, the mindless tedium . . .”
    “There you are, Arthur,” said Ford with the air of someone reaching the