"What do you think you're doing, monkeyman?" he demanded, shoving Arthur onto the table the accursed drink machine hunkered on.
"Nothing," Arthur growled, shoving his hands in his dressing gown pockets and lurching off to find someone more interesting to talk to. "Share and enjoy!" the machine called out behind him, as if he had some intention of doing either, the first of which was a bad idea if you wanted to keep any friends in your life and the second of which was practically an impossibility (though there had been that one cup of tea, Arthur reflected calmly). He ended up in front of Random's door, where he knocked and waited.
"What?" snarled Random from within.
"Just seeing how you were doing," called Arthur, a bit too cheerily for his own good.
"Is this ship going to start moving anytime soon?" she demanded, coming to the door and making a face when she saw who it was.
"I don't know, ask Ford," Arthur replied and left.
Meanwhile, in the engine room, Ford was beating on the wall with a wrench. Every few seconds he would give a grunt. To Zaphod, this appeared to have very little effect, if any, on the ship. There were some very nice grooves appearing in the wall, but other than that, his efforts appeared futile.
"Ford..."
"Leave me alone. I know exactly what I'm doing."
"Yeah, pounding on the wall, as if that's going to have some sort of-"
"Shut up! I know what I'm doing!" Ford grumbled, and went back to tinkering with the Golden Bail of Prosperity itself. Suddenly a blue light filled the room, Zaphod screamed like a schoolgirl (as he was wont to do), and Ford went flying backwards into the wall he had previously been pounding on.
"Welcome to the Heart of Gold," a smooth female voice calmly piled on top of their confusion. "Do not be alarmed-"
"Shut up," grunted Ford, or what had previously been Ford and was now a crumpled heap on the floor with a wrench protruding from it. At that precise moment, Colin bumbled in through the open door.
"I hate you, Ford Prefect," he said calmly and left.
"Ba...wha...who...er..." Ford said intelligently.
"Huh? I ju...der...um..." Zaphod added. "Did that robot-?"
"Yes. It hates me," Ford said, recovering what was left of his dignity and sang froid (and also a certain wrench) from the floor. "I think we have a problem."
"But the ship works! Now we can get off this miserable rathole planet!" Zaphod said, patting him a little too hard on the back with two of his hands. Ford coughed and staggered to his feet.
"Yeah. Right." He stumbled off toward the kitchen, where, he hoped, he would find a drink or three. He did, but he also found Arthur.
"Hello, monkeyman," he greeted.
"You too?" Arthur muttered, stabbing listlessly at the steak he had ordered.
At that moment on the bridge, Zaphod was experiencing problems. Not the usual sort of problem Zaphod was accustomed to running into, like finding out your girlfriend is your third cousin, or the usual Ford Prefect sort of problem, nor even the problem of discovering the planet you have crash landed on is home to someone your mercenaries "disposed of" a long time ago. This was the sort of problem where a sleek spaceship lands on yours and a tall, grey-green alien walks out of it, insults you, goes back into its spaceship, and leaves.
Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged smiled priggishly at Zaphod. "Zaphod Beeblebrox," he intoned.
"Yeah?"
"You are a wad of that which is found between one's toes on the feet of one's head, sauteed lightly in garlic and burnt to a crisp."
"Hey, what?"
But the alien was gone.
"Yeah, whatever, man! I think you need to work on your insults, because that SUCKED!" Zaphod yelled after the departing ship and slipped quietly into a drunken stupor, assisted greatly by three Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters he'd left sitting around the night before.
Trillian and Tricia McMillan were arguing.
"So you're some other version of me?" Tricia demanded.
"No," Trillian replied, "You're some other version of me. It has to do with the probability of me going back to get my bag or just leaving with Zaphod. When I made the decision to leave, obviously some other me was created."
"Whatever," Tricia said. "So how many of me...um, us...were there?"
"Who cares?" Trillian said, a bit crassly. "They're all dead now."
"Where are we going?" asked Arthur.
"I don't know, go ask Zaphod." Ford slurped at his drink and then sat still, staring in fascination at the tablecloth. It wasn't all that fascinating (just a purple and green floral pattern), but Ford was too drunk to know that. Just then Eddie began speaking to them.
"Hi everybody! We're headed straight for the third sun of Kakrafoon!" he said in a voice that was far too cheerful for that sort of news.
"I thought Hotblack's stuntship destroyed Kakrafoon's only sun," Arthur exclaimed, alarmed.
"Apparently there's three," Ford belched nonchalantly.
"Not for long," Arthur pointed out. "Can't Zaph steer?"
"He's a bit drunk for that," Ford said.
"And you're not?" Arthur stomped off to steer the ship himself.