A/N: Wow! I was all set to be nice and quick updating this, then real life did a whole lot of horrible things to me, and well...Sorry for the wait anyway - thank-you, lovely reviewing people - I might not have stayed up till one am to get this one out if it weren't for you :-D

Chapter 2: Dampness

Ford flicked the torch around the room. The thin beam picked out stacks of blue and white striped somethings, neatly ranged round the walls. They had the glistening uniformity of a group of objects destined to be 'stock'. He flashed the light down again. Arthur lay on his back in about half an inch of water, which lapped darkly around his hair and the bottoms of Ford's shoes. Behind his shoes, it washed around the base of another of the blue and white things. It was oozing gently into the water, and Ford was sure he felt it tremble as he wriggled his wet bottom in discomfort. It was a mattress: an extremely comfortable (if very wet), pocket-sprung mattress. And it was humming.

Ford got up. He poked Arthur with his toe, but Arthur didn't move. Ford bent down, his satchel swinging dangerously from his shoulder, mere inches from Arthur's nose. He drew his electronic thumb from it once more and prodded tentatively at the mattress. It undulated along its length, sending little waves out into the water. Ford stood up quickly,

'Was that you?' He asked, feeling slightly foolish, but reminding himself that he had come across worse in the past.

'Yes, flurble...what's your name?' it asked innocently. Ford paused for a second to consider, then pushed the thumb back into his satchel and said,

'Ford Prefect, what's yours?'

'Zem!' It said happily, and Ford reached surreptitiously for his copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The mattress silomed one end of itself up out of the water and appeared to take a look around,

'Somebody,' it announced with a gurgle, 'Is lying on the floor.'

'Yes, I know,' said Ford, 'He's called Arthur Dent.'

'Oh, voon,' said the mattress, rearing even higher, apparently to get a better look, 'Why,' it said, laying particular stress on the word, 'is he lying there like that?' Ford glanced down at Arthur,

'Because he fainted,' he said, thinking as he said it that it would probably be a good idea to get him up off the floor soon. The mattress seemed to consider for a moment, then it deflated a little, obviously deciding that fainting was a bad thing. It released itself and sank rapidly onto the floor, sending a tidal wave of stale water cascading across Arthur's face and into Ford's shoes,

'Globber,' it globbered. Arthur spluttered and woke. He became aware very quickly that he would have been better off staying out of it, as he now seemed to be soaked from head to toe and his nose was full of stench,

'Oh, really. This is too much.' He muttered irritatedly. Then he coughed and pushed himself off the floor,

'Hello, Arthurdent!' said the mattress cheerily. Arthur conducted a brief negotiation with his legs to keep himself upright, narrowly won the exchange, and stared at Ford,

'What was that?' he asked, with commendably low panic levels,

'Zem.' Explained Ford patiently, 'Here.' He thrust the Hitchhiker's Guide at Arthur and looked back at the mattress,

'Um...' he started, uncertain as to how he might put his question sensitively, he decided he couldn't, and forged ahead, 'D'you mind if we sit on you?' he asked. Arthur took a step closer to him, still clutching the Guide and looking desperately worried. He lost his footing on the wet floor, barrelled into Ford, and sent them both sprawling on the mattress, whether it liked it or not.

'Not at all!' laughed the mattress, and willomied under them.

'So...' Ford continued, trying to break a silence he was finding rather awkward, particularly as Arthur's hand was fumbling unconsciously in the vicinity of his groin as he attempted to raise himself, and it was having an unfortunate effect upon Ford, 'what's it like being a mattress?' The mattress wendled itself deeper into its puddle,

'What's a mattress?' it helvoed inquisitively, Ford raised his eyebrows and grabbed Arthur's elbow as it came sailing past the end of his nose. He hauled Arthur around so that he was sitting in a more or less respectable, upright position,

'You are,' he said. Then deciding he may as well add to his hitchhiking knowledge, he asked, 'Why, what do you call yourself?'

'Zem!!' cried the mattress, in a way that could only be described as joyful. Ford sighed,

'No, I mean how do you refer to your species?'

'We are all Zem. What is your name?'

'Ford Prefect.' said Ford, and to prevent what he feared was inevitable, he added, 'And this is Arthur Dent. Say hello, Arthur.' Arthur wearily said,

'Hello,' at the same moment that the mattress piped up,

'Hello, Arthur!'

Arthur put out his hand and clutched Ford's arm, feeling very much in need of a little reassurance. He was sitting on an alien spaceship on a mattress that seemed to be alive and fairly chatty. That, he could cope with. That was not a problem, given the unlikely things he had seen during his recent travels with Ford. However, he was also wet and therefore starting to get cold. He had not eaten properly for a day or so, he was still suffering from an unprecedented shortage of tea, and he had a horrible feeling that this pervasive smell was going to linger in his dressing gown long after they had managed to get off this particular gem of a hitchhiker's berth. These were things with which he definitely could not cope.

'Ford, I'm rather wet,' he said. His tone of voice seemed to alert the mattress to a problem.

'Is it an unpleasant thing for you? To be wet, flurble?' Arthur nodded,

'Yes.' Then, because he felt that he could be misleading this innocent creature, he added, 'I mean, it is unpleasant in these circumstances. I don't have any spare clothes, you see...My planet was blown up with all my clothes in it, so if these ones are wet...well, I can't do very much about it. And I'm getting cold because I'm wet, and unless you know where there is a handy hot-air vent, I'm not going to dry out and get warm for quite some time. Then there's the fact of the smell. I don't suppose it bothers you particularly...I don't know whether you can smell it at all...I suppose not, not that I mind if this is a smell you like...I don't mean to offend. It's just that to the human nose it is not the nicest smell in the world. Then again you see, in other circumstances, I like to be wet. When I'm having a bath for example...not that I've had one for a while. They don't seem to have baths on many places outside Earth. It's all sonic showers and telekinetic sand scrubs and ionic dousing. Nothing as good as a nice hot bath. I don't suppose you've ever had a bath. It really is one of the most pleasant ways to spend an evening. Up to your neck in bubbles and such...If you can ignore the phone and the doorbell, that is.' He paused to think, while Ford rested his chin patiently on his hands. He was in no rush, after all. Arthur continued,

'I like getting wet in the rain too,' he said, his eyes misting over slightly, 'On a dark evening in winter, when you're on your way home from work, and it's Friday and you don't have a care in the world because you haven't been invited to anything over the weekend, and you know that the heating came on half an hour ago at home, so it'll be just warm enough when you get in, and it will just get warmer as you cool down. Then you know you can have a nice hot cup of tea and a bath, and come down in your dressing gown afterwards and eat some toast or a jacket potato and sit in front of the television all night...' He trailed off.

'Voom. It seems to me,' said the mattress, 'That this is something you miss greatly, and your present circumstances do little to alleviate your suffering. Therefore, I globber for you. Globber.' It globbered miserably into the darkness that encroached upon them as Ford's torch started to fade to a dull, irritating glow that lit their surroundings just enough to show that there were things to trip over, without showing exactly where their edges might be.

Arthur brought the Guide up in front of his face, and Ford watched multi-coloured patterns wander across his nose and cheeks, and little starbursts shine brightly, then fade in his eyes as the screen whirled its way through animation after animation. He sighed and looked away, starting to pick idly at the damp binding on the end of the mattress.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy states unequivocally that mattresses are slaughtered and dried out before being shipped out to worlds where the inhabitants get a much better night's sleep if they are lying on a a large, pocket sprung bag of fluff and orthopaedic contouring materials. As Arthur read, he realised that the example on which he now sat had either defied this rule, or had defied the greater law of nature which states, even more firmly, that things which have been slaughtered do not strike up cheery conversations with people who happen to sit on them (naturally, this does not refer to members of the Society for the Promotion of Happiness and an Interest in Novelty Xylophones After Death – a society whose second aim was born out of the desire of the founding members to have the acronym 'SPHINX', an idea which was scuppered by the need to add the 'After Death' bit in order to point the fact of their cheerful undead status. The main founder protests constantly that 'SPHINXAD' is the only correct form for Sphinx in the plural, and in fact, for some years now, the main agenda item of most society meetings has been thinking up ways to get this fact accepted across the Galactic disc).

Arthur brought down the Guide. It came as no surprise that mattresses were living creatures. After all he had seen and done since the Earth was destroyed, he very much doubted that anything could really surprise him any more. With the possible exception of getting a decent cup of tea served to him. He handed it back to Ford, who took it and shoved it back in his satchel.

'Arthur, you're getting me very wet.' Arthur, who had cosied in a little closer to Ford in an attempt to warm up, shifted himself back away, but not very far,

'Sorry,' he said. The mattress shivered from end to end.

'It seems odd to me,' it flurbled, 'that you have such great feelings for each other, yet you sit apart when it is warmer together.'

Arthur felt a cold little shudder start at his neck and wander listlessly down his spine, poking him with chilly fingers as it went. The source of his discomfort was hard to pinpoint, but it had something to do with what the mattress had just said. He shuffled a little further away from Ford and tried to urge his mouth back into speaking mode to answer this alien piece of soft-furnishing.

Ford stiffened at the mattress's words. He chose to ignore it, and fumbled in his satchel, but since there was nothing in there that he particularly wanted, he eventually had to admit defeat and close it again, covering for himself with a poor impression of a man who had had a sudden and desperate urge to check that his satchel was neatly packed.

The mattress mollied quizzically,

'Are you going to explain to me why this is, flurble?' Ford and Arthur looked up at the same moment and caught each others' eyes. They looked quickly away again.

Arthur was just considering saying something along the lines of, 'I don't know what you're talking about', when there was the sort of clanging, grinding sound you only get on very large cargo ships that are about to open their main hold doors and deposit their non-fragile freight onto whatever happens to be beneath them at the time.

The floor, as far as they could tell in the dark, tilted up into the air, and the mattress, with Ford and Arthur on it, began to slide down the new slope, following a small river of stagnant swamp-water. Ford snatched at his satchel, hauling it onto the mattress and winding the strap securely round his arm. Then he gripped the edge firmly with that hand and reached behind him to grab at Arthur, who had lost his sense of direction when the mattress started to move, and was in danger of rolling straight off the back. Ford dug his hand into Arthur's dressing gown and twirled a fistful of the wet wool around his hand, yanking Arthur up alongside him, before throwing his arm over his back and gripping the other side of the mattress with that hand, pinning Arthur under him.

They sailed out into thin air, like a pair of bedraggled moths pinned to a piece of rather luxuriously padded mount board, or the most ungainly flying carpet ever to have been seen in the universe. Around them, bales of more, heavy, soaking mattresses cascaded under the law of gravity, narrowly avoiding collisions with the humanoid-bearing individual, twirling and swooping in eye-bending patterns of spinning stripes as the air currents caught them. There was a faint light in the sky, but they didn't see it, both considering it to be a prudent move to keep their eyes firmly shut. Arthur's dressing gown skirts billowed around them as they dried out in the fast moving air, they yelled and the mattress cried,

'Wheeeee!' as they hurtled towards the ground.

Why is the mattress alive? What kind of ship unloads its cargo at 10,000 feet? What does the mattress's perspicacious comment mean for Ford and Arthur? Does that matter, given that they are about to hit the ground at a fair rate of knots? Please review to find out and I'll try not to take so long this time!