DISCLAIMER

I don't own Arthur Dent or any other characters or concepts from the Hitchhiker's Trilogy (in five parts). They belong to the (regrettably) deceased Douglas Adams. I'm just playing with his toys.

Zaphod sat in the bridge of the Heart of Gold with his legs propped up against one of Eddy's consoles. With two of his hands, and one of his heads, he was busy sculpting a small brown figurine from a small brown greasy lump. It was in fact earwax. Zaphod was currently working on a Jatravartid and had already completed 37 pairs of arms. An assortment of twenty or so other figurines scattered throughout the bridge were a mute testimony to the amount of time Zaphod had on his hands, and the amount of earwax you can produce with four ears and two thick heads.

Zaphod would pause once in a while, and slug another glass of trans-galactic gargle blaster down one of his throats. He wasn't entirely sure how many he had had. By his own (blurry) count it was either seven or seventeen. Since he couldn't decide, he decided to have another and make it and even dozen.

With his third arm, and other head, Zaphod was reprogramming Eddy. Now, on the list of things you should never do, like argue with a man holding a gun, or give yourself a haircut with a chainsaw is the helpful hint to never reprogram your ship's computer while under the influence of some trans-galactic gargle blaster. No matter how many glasses you have had, seven, seventeen or twelve. But we'll get to that in a minute.

The Heart of Gold's other passenger, Trillian, was in her quarters watching reruns of 'Coronation Street'. On her head she was wearing a towel, on her face she was wearing avocado spread, from her shoulders to her knees she was wearing a fake satin dressing gown and on her feet were pink bunny slippers. It's important that you visualize this correctly.

So Trillian was sitting there, in her strange attire and watching 'Coronation Street' when the ship hiccuped.

This caught her completely by surprise. To add to her astonishment, the ship flip-flopped a little like a fish out of water. At this point, Trillian decided to storm her way to the bridge and yell at Zaphod, Eddy or both.

On the bridge, Zaphod faintly heard a smugly satisfied voice say, "Thank you for making a simple door very happy." This was followed by a very angry voice, "Oh shut up you maladjusted, over-intelligent piece of rusted machinery, before I turn you into scrap metal."

Zaphod turned around, and screamed out of sheer terror.

Remember what Trillian was wearing, now picture her standing there, with her hands resting defiantly on her fake-satin clad hips and her avocado smeared face in a scowl. Now pretend that you are drunk, with two heads, and are seeing four such apparitions. Now scream. In case you are wondering, that's exactly how Zaphod saw it.

In an effort to reduce the damage to the ocular sections of his brain, Zaphod somehow managed, with his three hands, to cover almost three eyes. So he saw a little more than one Trillian.

Trillian patiently waited for him to finish before she started yelling at him.

Zaphod didn't get most of it, but what he did get was something like this.

"How can you…with so much time on your hands no wonder…you were better off president at least then you were something… I'm sick and tired of…all you do is sit on your brain and…you are nothing but a low down, pathetic, earwax factory with three (*censored*) holes!"

As emphasis, she reached over and squashed the miniature Jatravartid, who had had 48 pairs of arms. Now he had none.

"I want you to stop playing with your earwax, get yourself sobered up, and fix Eddy! I'm going to change, when I come back, I want to be able to fly somewhere."

And with that she stormed off. As the last echoes of "It is a pleasure to open before you, and close behind you with the satisfaction of a job well done" reverberated in the almost empty bridge, Zaphod picked up his lump of Jatravartid and started all over again.

Eddy merely said, "Banana splits have a nutritional value of…"

As Trillian stomped back to her quarters she fumed. She was mad. Not mad in the psychotic sense, but mad in the angry sense. She'd been cooped up in this tiny ship with that two-headed freak for too long. She needed a note of sanity in her life. And that is when she started thinking of Ford. Not that he was sane, just that he could usually reign in Zaphod. She wondered what Ford was up to. She wondered if he had managed to get himself killed yet. She wondered when lunch would be.

Ford, was at that precise moment, running for his life.

He was on some obscure planet where the chief entertainment was either hanging around in a bar and drinking, or hanging around in a bar and killing people. Up until a few moments ago, Ford was happily sitting in a bar and drinking. The people around him seemed like the rough kind of type who would rather be involved in the other available form of entertainment. But he on the other hand was content to continue with what he was doing.

This changed suddenly when an argument came up. One of the thugs remarked that he could run twenty kilometers in ten minutes, and had in fact done so yesterday.

Another thug said that that was impossible, nobody could run that far in ten minutes. In fact, most people couldn't even run that far at all.

The first thug said that he could and that he did.

The second thug said this was impossible.

In an effort to end the argument, Ford said, "I can't run twenty kilometers to save my life."

Now this did end the argument, but not the way he planned. When he finished saying this, the two thugs looked at each other, nodded, grabbed Ford and left the bar seeking other entertainment.

They took him to a race course and said, "You're going to run twenty kilometers now, and if you don't, we'll kill ya."

Too late Ford realized that the whole argument was an act to find some more interesting entertainment. So Ford began running.

And that's where we picked him up, at around the nineteenth kilometer.

When Ford was finally done, he looked to where the two thugs had been standing, and saw the whole crowd from the bar. They applauded him, and then shot somebody who happened to be walking by.

Ford sighed as he tried to catch his breath, quite a difficult thing to do by the way. He suddenly wished that Zaphod were with him.

Meanwhile, on the Heart of Gold, Trillian had calmed down somewhat, put on a nice outfit and returned to the bridge to find Zaphod at his Jatravartid again, which now had 19 pairs of arms. She sighed, there was nothing to do really, just wait for it to pass. But in the meantime…

Turning to Eddy she said, "Take us to a nice vacation planet. I don't care where, just somewhere with nice beaches and a relaxed atmosphere."

Eddy responded with a cheery "Right away. Two banana splits coming right up!"

A/N: You have just finished reading chapter 5. Evidently it came sooner that I expected. I hope you enjoyed it, and some positive feedback in the form of reviews would be nice. It will be a while, and I mean it this time, before the next chapter comes up. When I say a while, I mean something around two weeks. I'm sorry. I know that you will all be very disappointed, but I'm not going to be home for the next week or so. Such is life.