At Least She Had a Towel

Chapter 1

Disclaimer: If you're a literate, slightly clever organism with at least one eye and internet access (which, I assume you are since you're reading this) then you should be able to work out the fact that since Douglas Adams is no longer among the living he is not the author of this story. The actual author has stolen a few of his ideas, but promises to return them as soon as she's done with them and put them back right where she found them.

Author's Note: Has no canonical value whatsoever. Pick a random moment in Ford Prefect's life- be sure he's met Arthur, be sure it's some time after book 5 or 6 (you could always just assume that 6 never happened, but it doesn't really matter because nothing happens to Ford at all during 6 [except the blue hair thing]) and be sure he's alone and that's the moment in which this story will be taking place. Douglas Adams didn't give a lick about canon, why should I?

Key: *- See Guide entry at bottom

* *** *

The two story house on Earth Beta* was cold. Cold, and mostly empty, the only thing generating any heat in the house was its single inhabitant. This single inhabitant's name happens to be Lacy Claud. Lacy was not ugly, nor was she beautiful- in fact she just almost passed as pretty. Her hair was a slightly too dusty shade of red-ish orange, her teeth were slightly less white than they should've been, and her figure was slightly too curvy in some areas and slightly too straight in others. The only thing that could really be said to be striking about her was her electric turquoise eyes. They were, in fact, so freakishly large and stunning that people were intimidated by her very presence. So, in order to lead a some-what normal social life she wore thick-rimmed glasses.

Her house (or rather, her grandmother's house. Her grandmother was old and decrepit and Lacy felt it was her duty to stay with her in her old age. What Lacy did not know was that her grandmother was sneaking whiskey, cigarettes, and rent boys into the house at night. Her grandmum was a scrapper.) sat just outside of New London*. On that morning it was particularly cold and empty because during the night her grandmother had died of a heart attack. Strangely, when she was found in the morning she was completely naked and looked rather happy about the whole thing.

And so Lacy (or just Ace, as most people called her, except her grandmum who called her by her full name Legacy Claud) was alone again, in the cold house, with a clean white towel wrapped around her, crying. She was not crying because she was alone in a cold house with a towel wrapped around her- she was crying because she was alone in a cold house with a towel wrapped around her and she had suddenly realized (in the shower-as all great realizations come to humans when they are naked and under streams of hot water and soap) that her grandmum hadn't left her any money as inheritance because of the debt she was in from her expensive pleasures. So Ace's tears were tears of anger at her grandmum's lack of human gratitude. She couldn't stay in this house any longer. Lucky for her... she wouldn't have to.

* *** *

Ford Prefect felt, for the first time in his life, lucky that he was short. If he had been an inch taller the thin Ins-O-Late Hyper Steel that composed the air ducts of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's building would have had to bend and buckle to accommodate him. He crawled along, first on hands and knees, then on his stomach when the air ducts tapered.

Eventually, he would come across a security robot or an invisible motion sensor and be found out, but that could work to his advantage. He was attempting to come to some arrangement with the new management without actually coming near any of them. (This arrangement consisted of Ford finding, sneaking up on, and completely destroying the new Guide. Although he didn't know it yet because he figured that if he was planning to destroy the Guide it would find a way to not get destroyed. Logically, he thought, he'd just have to decide not to destroy it at all and accidentally happen to destroy it.)

His plan was a long-shot, but if he could get rid of the insane bird, he thought, maybe every planet or space base he set foot on wouldn't get blown up. He had nothing better to do, Arthur had disappeared again- presumably off to re-locate his sandwich planet- and Zaphod and Trillian were plucking his nerves even harder than Heart of Gold's computer. Ford's natural tendency was to avoid long lasting relationships like oil avoiding water. It was a hitchhiker thing he suspected.

Still, he wouldn't have minded having back up with the Vogons around.

"I must have a bloody death-wish", he thought out loud. The sound of whooshing oxygen grew louder and the vent grew colder. He stopped and tensed- either he was shivering involuntarily, or the whole building was. Groaning a bit, he found his way to the nearest vent and peered out.

The building was being moved. The vent was opposite a window. The window was facing east. On the east side of the building there happened to be a planet. Ford's LED colored eyes widened, the planet was blue, green, and white and bore a scary resemblance to a planet he had called "home-ish"* for 15 years. He grabbed at the Guide to (once again) look up the earth and see what it had to say, but in his hurry he flipped the "reverse" on his Electronic Thumb and activated it. He swore under his breath, corrected it, and prayed that nothing would come of it. Of course, something had.

* *** *

Ace sniffled and shrugged on a bathrobe over the towel, not bothering to tie it up. Pink tear tracks marred her face, no amount of makeup could cover the fact that she'd been crying. Ace idly planned her day as she applied the little make-up she wore. If she had still been in her 20's she would've invited some friends over and had a party to celebrate... no, commemorate...wait, mourn-yes, that's the word-her grandmum's passing.

She glared at the middle-aged woman in the mirror, apparently, caring for her bloody grandmother had ill-effects. The skin around her eyes was a little thinner and darker and her entire face had shifted down just the teeniest bit. Then those blasted eyes. Brighter than a laser-beam. They looked un-beta-earthly and alien to her. She shut her eyes tight and sighed.

The next scene before her wasn't all that radically different actually. First thing she registered were her eyes- next thing was that they weren't her eyes exactly. Then in rapid succession:

This is not my bathroom, this is not my house, that is not a mirror, and there's a stranger two centimeters away from the tip of my nose.

"Holy cra-!" A cold hand stifled her words.

"Shut up. If you make one more sound I'll send you right back to where you came from without an explanation, do you want that?" Ace shook her head vigorously and wrapped her towel around her tightly, closing her bathrobe in front of it. The man glanced down. " Ah... well at least you have a towel." he smirked "Right, I'm taking my hand away now." He slowly did so, and Ace tried to compose herself by taking short little breaths. This practice seemed to confuse Ford- he always found a few deep breaths would do the job.

"I'm F-"

"I don't care who you are just tell me how the hell I can get back to my house!" She said in a stage-whisper. The man had royally freaked her out. It was that simple- she was less terrified of her strange surroundings (some sort of freezing cold metal tunnel) than she was of him.

"Ok, going to give you a bit of advice. Don't panic- it never helps. And..." he paused infuriatingly.

"Yes, and what?" She raged.

"Better close that bathrobe." She gasped indignantly and her hand involuntarily batted him across the face.

"By Zarquon! Why would you do that? I just told you not to panic." he held his face as if it actually hurt. Ace was relieved for the break in his eccentrically energetic stare.

"You cheeky fool." She seethed

"Ok, that's it you're going back." Ford pulled the Electronic Thumb out of his satchel-Ace snatched it away. Not knowing what had happened here would send her to an asylum. The empty house could wait- Ace's current situation peaked her interest.

"No, wait, I'm sorry just..."

"Well, I can't send you back without that so..."

"Oh, this?" She questioned, holding up the small Electronic Thumb and promptly doing something that made her very happy- she snapped it in half. "Ha. Now you have to tell me exactly what I'm doing here." He stopped looking at her. His face clenched into a whole-hearted display of disbelief, he struggled to speak, but eventually found a handful of words that would allow themselves to be said through his bubbling anger.

"What the bloody hell did you do that for!" he found it difficult to whisper this, but it was necessary "Belgium!"

"'Scuse me, Belgium? Is that what you just said? Are we in New Belgium?"

"What? What... oh... no. New Belgium?" Ford said "No. Just look," he pointed out of the vent and Ace looked- seeing Beta Earth swirl below them. "Is that where you're from?"

"Oh my word." Ace stole a crestfallen glance at the remains of the Electronic Thumb. "I'm... not... on Beta Earth and I just broke the thing that could get me back. Is that right?"

"You're a quick one- quite refreshing actually that last humanoid I met was denser than Zaphod."

"And I assume that's pretty dense." Ford shrugged. "Now, explain to me exactly where I am and why I am here and who you are."

"Thought you didn't want to know that." He looked at her blankly- staring again for no apparent reason. She just wished that he'd blink. It was unraveling her nerves.

"It would appear that I have no choice but to find out- unless you have another way of getting me back down there" She jabbed a finger at the bright green and blue sphere bobbing happily in black star-speckled space.

"Nope. And, thanks to you, neither of us have a way out of here at all."

"What? Isn't this your space ship?" Ford snorted a quite laugh.

"Absolutely not!" He looked at her like the dewy-eyed betaearthling she was. "This is a building, the building where this used to be produced." He took out the small black electronic book. A wholly remarkable book with two words inscribed gayly on the front that rung a bell in Ace.

"Don't Panic. Wow, seems like I've heard that somewhere." She said, not entirely un-sarcastically. "Listen, I'm freezing, can't we get out of this vent thing?"

"The point of being in the vent thing is that we stay in the vent thing. The vent thing is crucial."

"I'm not sure that was coherent." Ford squinted a bit.

"No." He admitted quickly. "We can not get out of this 'vent thing'. Better?"

"Little bit. But why?"

"Because," he said slowly "there are some very nasty creatures in this building that would like nothing more than to read us a poem. I snuck on in order to not destroy the latest hay-wire version of this book," he pointed to the Guide "and in doing so accidentally destroy it. It's been hijacked by Vogons-aliens- and with its help they're doing generally bad things, blowing up planets and such. For my lifestyle to continue as it was before the Vo-aliens took over the Guide I'm going to have to do something about it. Got it?"

"Hold it- Vogon?"

"Aliens." Ford settled for a term she would understand.

"And you? Vogon?" Ford cringed- he'd have to quickly turn everything this girl knew about the universe upside down. He had to be gentle, humane even.

"Look it up in the book: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Alright not gentle and not humane but hey, quick way to learn. She typed it in and listened to the entry.

"Do I look like a Vogon to you darling?" His smile ate his face it was so large.

"Hard to tell." She mocked "What are you then?"

"I'm from Betelgeuse." Ace was thrown off guard by his intensity. Her throat clenched in on itself, making it difficult to reply.

"Really? You look human."

"You look Betelgeusian... you were born on earth, weren't you?"

"Earth? No, Alpha Earth's been gone forever. I'm from Beta Earth." Ford squinted at her and leaned in slightly forcing her to fall backwards in alarm, which was a shame because in such a tiny air duct there wasn't any room at all to fall backwards onto and they ended up a hair's width away. He sat back and shrugged again. "What!?" She whispered as harshly as she could without alerting anyone to their presence.

"It's just that most humans find it necessary to blink."

* *** *

Guide Entries

*The Guide has this to say about Beta Earth:

EXERPT An impossibly lovely place, you simply haven't lived until you've hitchhiked across Beta Earth. Constructed on the fertile ruins of Grentosis 3, Beta Earth is a haven for humanoid life forms (if you happen to have an extra finger or two you should get along fine, more than one head-forget it, you'll be put on display. It's still a rather sheltered and race-ist planet). It was built by a group of refugee humans who foretold the destruction of Earth (Alpha Earth to them) and sought out new lands. Don't worry about currency (not that you'd have any if you're reading this), they accept all forms of clean, legal tender (excluding the leaf which is neither legal or clean).

*See Beta Earth Entry

*The Guide has this to say about "home-ish"s:

Well obviously if you are a hitchhiker and find yourself in a home-like setting you won't be particularly pleased at this point. Let us remind you- Don't Panic, and don't get a mortgage. Also, don't become attached to your new home-ish-type-dwelling because if we know the universe (and we do) something will eventually, one day, happen to it.

Author's Note: Tada! Don't kill me, please, Ace is NOT A MARY SUE. I swear- she isn't, anyway Ford wouldn't be happy with a Mary Sue unless she came with a lifetime supply of alcohol.

(Ford. Drive One.)