A/N: I haven't the faintest clue where I'm going with this. You can tell, can't you.

"Its always baffled me," he admitted, "but why is it that there are so many syllables in monosyllabic?"

"You're a moron. You know that, don't you."

The ship was strange; but I'd expected that. It would have been more odd, all told, if it had been perfectly natural to me to step onto an alien ship with a man who was not so much named Ix as named Ford. He was smiling at me in a way that I'm almost sure was meant to be reassuring. It made me very nervous.

"Can you tell me what's going on here? Or is it some sort of secret?"

"Yes," he said, rapidly, grinning, "a secret, a pact of destruction of everything on earth, of the earth itself in fact, and no one must ever know."

I narrowed my eyes at him and frowned.

"You're... joking?"

"Very good."

"So what's going on here, then?"

"The world," he said, dogmatically, "is going to be destroyed. Don't look so surprised. Its not like it hasn't happened before."

I leaned against the wall, but that didn't seem to be quite enough; so I found my way to something that looked curiously like a chair, and sat on it. It was bouncy but not uncomfortable. I looked suspiciously at Ford, who said obediently, "Why are you sitting on my pet?"

"Is it—"

"No."

"Its not really your pet?"

"No. That is a chair." He gave me that grin again, and slouched in a chair of his own, tapping his foot idly and jittering his fingers on the console that he'd seated himself next to. After a few minutes I realized that he wasn't really jittering his fingers nervously, as I'd though; he was actually pressing buttons. Buttons that would almost undoubtedly lead to the ship moving, which, I hated to think, would almost undoubtedly lead to my needing to be sick. I'd only ever been on one ship before, a cruise ship that Dirk had very sneakily insinuated himself on. Some people might call it accidentally getting on the bad side of a mean group of men, getting cracked on the head, and thrown onto a steamer bound for Africa, but he's my father, so I'm going to call it cleverly stowing away. On a steamer to Africa. Without any money and a seven year old who keeps throwing up over the side.

"Why me?" I said. Ford looked away from fiddling withthe buttons with some annoyance.

"Funny, I was going to ask the same question."

"Did you rescue anyone else?"

"No. No one else. Listen, Lemon, it is Lemon, isn't it, no mistaking that name, listen, Lemon, you must understand that there's no going back. The earth is going to be destroyed, and you are not. You have no home now. You have nowhere to run to when the world gets too crass and mean; of course you don't have to worry about the world getting crass and mean; just the rest of the universe. Are you going to cry? No matter how many times I do this, I don't seem to get any better at it."

I wasn't going to cry. "You've done this before?"

"Oh yes," he said candidly. "This is not my first temporal anomaly." He looked thoughtful for a minute. "As a matter of fact, I think I've said that before." He shook himself out of it and tapped at a few more buttons. "You seem to be taking it a bit better than Arthur did, at first. He nearly went berserk! Well perhaps not berserk. But he did look a bit startled. What's all this about unflappable Englishmen, I ask you. Arthur, now, he falls apart at the drop of a hat."

I shook my head and settled myself more comfortably in the chair. "Would you at least have the courtesy to inform me where we're headed?"

He stared at me for a minute. "Exactly like your father."

I waited. He blinked, very slowly, and ran a hand through his hair, standing it on end. It came away with a few ginger strands caught between his fingers, and he tossed these away with more wild abandon than such a simple action strictly merited, knocking another button or two with a wayward elbow.

"We're going somewhere nearly safe."

"Nearly safe?"

"As safe as any ship with Zaphod Beeblebrox and Trillian's daughter on it can be." The inexplicable italics were accompanied by a look that can only be explained as a growl made manifest.

"Which is?"

"Not very safe," he admitted with another suddensheepish grin. "But you're rescued. Can't you focus on being glad about that for a bit, and let me get on with things?" Without another word he turned back to the console, leaving me to think about the shapes of things. For an alien ship, it was strangely normal looking. There was a potted plant in the corner, and trim around the corners, painted a friendly yellow. I crossed my legs with some slight difficulty, hoping he wouldn't notice, and glanced to my left.

A porthole.

Correct term for a spaceship's window?

I don't know. I'm not an expert on these things.

Some sort of hole, anyway, if that isn't too rude a description. Through which I could see a lot of dust and rubble, which I stared at for a few seconds before total shock registered on my face and I collapsed with a total absence of ladylike grace, or so Ford informed me when he woke me up sometime later.

This is what had happened.

The earth had blown up.

Dirk Gently had been completely unaware of what was coming, but he was quite aware that something had happened. He opened his eyes to an odd whiteness and frowned, because he hadn't remembered passing out in the middle of a cloud the night before. A good old-fashioned London pea-souper was the first thing that leapt to his agile if somewhat-overtaxed mind, but there tended to be fewer angels in London than he could see at the moment.

One of them approached him and introduced himself, smiling gently, as Aziraphaele.

"Am I dead?" Dirk asked.

The gentle smile did not alter; it unnerved him somewhat.

"Well, lets put it this way. You've lived your life an agnostic, professing that God may or may not exist."

Dirk swallowed, dry-mouthed.

"Yes."

"Well." Aziraphaele spread his hands simply. "You're half right."