Read Online The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - Free Book Online

salt and protein. The beer you had should have cushioned your system a bit.”
    “Whhhrrr …” said Arthur Dent. He opened his eyes. “It’s dark,” he said.
    “Yes,” said Ford Prefect, “it’s dark.”
    “No light,” said Arthur Dent. “Dark, no light.”
    One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in
It’s a nice day
, or
You’re very tall
, or
Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right?
At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behavior. If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried about the terrible number of things they didn’t know about.
    “Yes,” he agreed with Arthur, “no light.” He helped Arthur to some peanuts. “How do you feel?” he asked him.
    “Like a military academy,” said Arthur, “bits of me keep on passing out.”
    Ford stared at him blankly in the darkness.
    “If I asked you where the hell we were,” said Arthur weakly, “would I regret it?”
    Ford stood up. “We’re safe,” he said.
    “Oh good,” said Arthur.
    “We’re in a small galley cabin,” said Ford, “in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.”
    “Ah,” said Arthur, “this is obviously some strange usage of the word
safe
that I wasn’t previously aware of.”
    Ford struck another match to help him search for a light switch.
    Monstrous shadows leaped and loomed again. Arthur struggled to his feet and hugged himself apprehensively. Hideous alien shapes seemed to throng about him, the air was thick with musty smells which sidled into his lungs without identifying themselves, and a low irritating hum kept his brain from focusing.
    “How did we get here?” he asked, shivering slightly.
    “We hitched a lift,” said Ford.
    “Excuse me?” said Arthur. “Are you trying to tell me that we just stuck out our thumbs and some green bug-eyed monster stuck his head out and said, ‘Hi fellas, hop right in, I can take you as far as the Basingstoke roundabout’?”
    “Well,” said Ford, “the Thumb’s an electronic sub-etha signaling device, the roundabout’s at Barnard’s Star six light-years away, but otherwise, that’s more or less right.”
    “And the bug-eyed monster?”
    “Is green, yes.”
    “Fine,” said Arthur, “when can I go home?”
    “You can’t,” said Ford Prefect, and found the light switch.
    “Shade your eyes …” he said, and turned it on.
    Even Ford was surprised.
    “Good grief,” said Arthur, “is this really the interior of a flying saucer?”
    Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz heaved his unpleasant green body round the control bridge. He always felt vaguely irritable after demolishing populated planets. He wished that someone would come and tell him that it was all wrong so that he could shout at them and feel better. He flopped as heavily as he could onto his control seat in the hope that it would break and give him something to be genuinely angry about, but it only gave a complaining sort of creak.
    “Go away!” he shouted at a young Vogon guard who entered the bridge at that moment. The guard vanished immediately, feeling rather relieved. He was glad it wouldn’t now be him who delivered the report they’d just received. The report was an official release which said that a wonderful new form of spaceship drive was at this moment being unveiled at a Government research base on Damogran which would henceforth make all hyperspatial express routes unnecessary.
    Another door slid open, but this