Back on the bridge, Trillian was berating Zaphod, who still hadn't entirely grasped the situation.

"Why did you have to do that to her?" she demanded.

"Do what?"

"Just…be you!"

"Who else would I be?" queried Zaphod, genuinely puzzled.

Ignoring him, Trillian added: "Why did you scare her away?"

"Hey, I didn't do anything! She ran out!"

At that moment, Arthur and Fenchurch came through the doors at the end of the bridge, saving Zaphod from the rest of Trillian's admonitions.

"Oh good, you can try and talk to him!" Trillian marched off towards her room.

Arthur watched curiously. "You know, I can sometimes see a very strong resemblance between her and our daughter. What was all that about, anyway?"

Zaphod shrugged, quite a complicated gesture for somebody with three arms.

"No idea. Anyway, I'm going to go and see if I can make this headache into a migraine," he announced, standing up. "See you monkeys later."

He swept dramatically through the closest set of doors.

"I wonder what that was about," said Fenchurch.

"I honestly don't know," replied Arthur. "It is Zaphod, so it could be anything. Probably safest not to ask."

Fenchurch smiled. Arthur looked down at the monitor, which was still showing the planet surface of Megalamore. He was surprisingly sober now – Mirana had that effect on people – and he was able to reflect on the drunken theory he had proposed earlier.

"Fenchurch?"

"Mm?"

"You know the Answer to life, the universe and-"

"Everything?" finished Fenchurch. "Of course; what about it?"

"Ford and I were talking about trying to find the Question earlier."

Arthur explained the plan whilst Fenchurch fished around in her handbag, eventually producing a very battered copy of the Guide.

"Do you think the Guide will have anything to say about it?"

"Haven't we checked that already?"

"I don't think so."

"Well, it's worth a try," decided Arthur.

Fenchurch tapped a code into the Guide and waited for the entry.

"Here it is."

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Entry 8,112,487 - The Ultimate Question

The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is a source of much debate amongst scholars and almost every other life-form in the Universe. The computer Deep Thought was created to find the answer to the Ultimate Question, which it then did, the answer being forty-two. However, there was a problem, which was this: nobody actually knew what the Question was. There is a theory which states that if the Ultimate Question and the Ultimate Answer are ever known simultaneously in the same universe, then said universe will cease to exist and may well be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. There is another theory which states this has already happened.* Yet another theory states that if the Question and the Answer are found at the same time, a wave of happiness, peace and contentment will sweep across the universe, with all the dreadful consequences that would entail. Without war, misery and general depression, nothing would ever happen. It is frankly remarkable how much encroaching deathness focuses minds which otherwise would be rather average.

*This theory applies to entries 4,185; 8,140,763 and 39,274, based on the fact that there is no reason to waste a perfectly good theory on one entry, and especially not when you have seven entries to extend before lunch.

End of entry.

"Well, that's strange," said Fenchurch.

"That's just the Guide for you." Arthur looked up at the broad screen on the wall in front of him. "Computer?"

"Hi there!" it chirped.

"What's the probability of finding everyone in the Universe who knows the Answer to the Ultimate Question?"

The computer whirred. Eventually, it declared:

"Very nearly infinite."

"And how long would it take?"

"Only a few thousand years."

Arthur's shoulders slumped.

"Well, there goes that idea. Pass me the Guide, Fenchurch."

She passed it over without a word and Arthur flicked through the index.

"Fancy a holiday?" he asked.

"Where to?"

"I don't know. How about…Bellatrix Gamma?" responded Arthur, typing another code in.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Entry 4,618,915 - Bellatrix Gamma

Bellatrix Gamma is a beautiful planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelguese which narrowly escaped the Collapsing Hrung Disaster which destroyed Betelgeuse Seven, and as a result took over the planet's tourism trade, selling "We Escaped The Hrung" merchandise to anybody who stood still for more than five minutes at a time. Due to the astrophysical anomaly which spared them and the booming tourist industry, Bellatrix Gamma is now famous and so mind-bogglingly rich that it holds the record for the most swimming pools per hundred square metres in the galaxy – Salph having been disqualified after the judges discovered that for the competition the locals had merely built walls in the vast and violently blue sea in a vain attempt to be famous for something.

End of entry.

"What do you think?" queried Arthur.

"Sounds good."

"And it sounds like it has bars, so Ford should be happy."

At that moment, the ship juddered violently.

"What was that?" said Fenchurch.

"I think somebody just turned the Improbability Drive on, guys," answered Eddie brightly – but Arthur was sure that, just for a minute, he could hear a hint of guilt in the computer's voice.

Behind them, the doors opened and Marvin stomped in.

"Hello, Marvin," sighed Arthur.

"Hello. I just want to inform you that I'm feeling utterly miserable."

"I'd guessed that much."

Fenchurch took the Guide from Arthur.

"We're going on holiday now, Marvin," she declared with forced cheeriness. "That'll be nice, won't it?"

"Will it?" droned Marvin.

Arthur muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath about zarking robots.

"I suppose you want to know why I'm here," added Marvin dully.

"Not particularly."

"Zaphod sent me. He wants you to go to the controls."

"Why?"

Marvin shot him a withering look through his brooding red eyes.

"Do you think he would condescend to tell a mere robot what he sent me for? His exact words were: `Hey, metalmouth, go tell Ford and his monkey to meet me at the control panel.' Here I am, brain the size of a…oh, never mind. You never listen anyway. Nobody ever listens."

Marvin clanked off through the doors, which wisely kept quiet. The last time one of the ship's doors had wished the robot a good day, he had launched into a depressing soliloquy which had driven the door which led to the computer banks to commit suicide.

Arthur looked helplessly at Fenchurch.

"I suppose we'd better go and see what he wants. Computer?" he asked.

A screen lit up in the corner.

"Hi there! This is Eddie, your shipboard computer, and may I say that I am having a really great day! How can I help you?"

"What's the time?"

There was a pause.

"Just that?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!"

"I've got a very nice-"

"Just the time please, computer," repeated Arthur firmly.

Eddie sighed. "Forty-seven minutes and thirty-one seconds past three o'clock in the morning."

"Well, let's go and find out what Zaphod's doing, then…" said Fenchurch resignedly.

Arthur nodded unenthusiastically and followed her to the control panel, where the ex-President of the Galaxy was waiting: one hand clutching a copy of the Guide, one holding a Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blaster and the other administering industrial strength pain-killers to one of his heads. Ford Prefect was sitting on a chair in the corner, cradling a bottle of Old Janx Spirit in one arm and singing quietly to himself.

"I see Ford hasn't quite got over the effect of Mirana," Arthur commented.

Fenchurch giggled, drawing Zaphod's attention.

"Hey, monkeyman, Fenchurch," he called out. "Look at this!"

They moved over to the screen.

"Look at that, man. We are in a deserted dust bowl-"

"I thought we were above Megalamore," interrupted Arthur.

Zaphod waved him away with his Gargle-Blaster, accidentally spilling some on a row of important-looking buttons.

"Not any more, kid – someone switched on the Improbability Drive-"

"Is that why there's an elk in my room?" interjected Trillian, emerging from a side door. "I was wondering about that."

"Actually, it's a Rigellan Star Moose," corrected Ford. "More horns. Antlers. Whatever they have."

The astrophysicist marched over to join them.

"Well then, who put the Drive on?" she asked. "Arthur?"

"Not me."

"Fenchurch?"

"I don't even know where the button is."

"Ford?"

"I was getting drunk. Am getting drunk. I was busy."

"Zaphod?"

He shrugged, spilling some more Gargle-Blaster.

"Not knowingly."

"You've been drinking those things for hours, you can't be doing anything knowingly." Trillian frowned. "Well, wherever we are-"

"What about me?" demanded a dull voice.

"What about you, Marvin?" she enquired sweetly.

"You didn't ask me whether I'd put the Improbability Drive on," he replied, clanking towards Trillian.

"Did you?"

"No," he droned. "But it would have been nice to have been considered for once. Not that you think of me. I'm just your menial robot. Would you like me to pick a piece of paper up for you? I'm sure I could manage that."

Trillian rolled her eyes and ignored him. Suddenly, a thought struck her.

"Random. Random?" she called.

There was no answer. A frenzied search showed that her daughter was missing, presumed space-borne.