I apologise in advance for the number of times I have used the phrase "At that moment" in this chapter. I'm working on cutting down on them, but I'm not doing very well, as you will probably be able to spot…

In her spacepod, Random fretted. She knew her parents would catch up with her eventually, but she would cross that hyperspace junction when she came to it. For now, she wanted to drink, go to a party and just generally have a really wild time; but not necessarily in that order. Which was why she was hurtling towards the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy buildings on Megalamore beta, where she was almost guaranteed to have all three.

It was at this point that she discovered that, after one of Ford's ill-advised drunken expeditions, there was no fuel left.

"Zark," she swore.

The pod whirled slowly down onto the planet surface; or rather, where the planet surface would have been if somebody hadn't built a huge H-shaped block of offices. Instead, the spacepod ended up landing square in the centre of the 2nd Hippest Place in the Galaxy, as selected by Playbeing readers.

The 1st Hippest Place in the Galaxy was, at that moment, moving backwards and forwards on a huge white ship floating in a mysterious dustbowl.

"I don't get it. Why would the kid switch on the Improbability Drive if she was just going to jump ship?" it asked.

It, incidentally, was Zaphod Beeblebrox's left head, which was slightly soberer than his right, but only just.

"Don't you see? Otherwise we would have gone down to the planet surface-" began Trillian.

"We would?"

"Yes!" She turned on Ford. "Do you recognize these coordinates?"

He struggled to his feet and glanced at the white rows of numbers and letters scrolling across the screen.

"I think…oh, Zarquon."

"What?"

"Planet Vogesphere."

"Er…" said Fenchurch nervously.

"Yes?"

"I don't want to alarm you, but I think there's a fleet of Vogon ships coming up to meet us."

"If you didn't want to alarm us, why did you tell us that?" groaned Ford.

"So we could take evasive action?" suggested Fenchurch.

Zaphod sighed, produced his scratched and battered sunglasses from his pocket and slipped them onto his left set of eyes, electing to cover the others with a towel.

"What are you doing?" asked Arthur.

"I don't want to see my life flash before my eyes." He paused. "Except for the bits about Eccentrica Gallumbits."

"Leave it, Arthur. It's probably a good thing, anyway," Trillian sighed. "The last thing we need is Zaphod having an anxiety attack. Hold on tight!"

It was at that moment that the Heart of Gold became a giant glass aubergine, which confined the topics of conversation somewhat.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of anxiety:

Anxiety is regrettably an all too common emotion throughout the universe. Will I get the bills paid on time? Is my planet about to get demolished by Vogons? Is the Ravenous Bug-Blatter Beast of Traal going to realize that although I have my eyes shut I'm actually still here? These are just a few causes of anxiety in sapient life-forms today.

The Hoonds of Architrival V deal with anxiety in a very unusual way. Whenever anything which may cause anxiety occurs, a Hoond will run away, hide under a rock and declare that they don't exist, therefore whatever is happening does not apply to or affect them. Remarkably, this approach has worked very well and the Hoonds are one of the happiest life-forms in the Galaxy.

End of entry.

"Aargh!"

This was the noise which was coming from the giant glass aubergine as it plummeted to the planet's surface, moving faster than the Ravenous Bug-Blatter Beast of Traal on seeing a Vogon's grandmother.

"Zarking fardwarks!" yelled Ford. "What the hell did you do?"

"I turned the Improbability Drive back on," replied Trillian calmly.

"Well turn the bloody thing off again!" he directed.

"I can't! The button's gone!"

"What?"

"In case you hadn't noticed, we are now in what appears to be a large space-borne aubergine!" snapped Trillian.

"Yes, I noticed that. At first I'd thought I'd gone mad – again – but…is this glass?" said Arthur.

He tapped the wall thoughtfully and was rewarded with a plink not unlike the sound made by the bowl from the dolphins when flicked.

"Here, try this," suggested Ford, pointing to a large seed on what used to be the control panel.

"Well, I suppose it's worth a try," replied Trillian grimly.

Down below, the Vogons who had been sent up to protect their planet from a suspected attack were puzzled, to say the least. There was absolutely nothing in their manual on what to do when your intended prey turns, somewhat improbably, into a glass aubergine; so they were, quite frankly, stuck.

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz stalked down the moodily-lit corridor of the scout ship in a foul temper, which did nothing to improve his already hideous countenance. He had been demoted to the Vogesphere Defence Squad after the Earth debacle; and now, after too many years chasing insignificant space crafts away, he had his big chance. Unfortunately, a few seconds after the Heart of Gold had been sighted, it had been replaced with a surprisingly large glass vegetable. This understandably made him rather irate.

"Report!" he barked.

"Sir!" The nervous Vogon lieutenant attempted a salute and ended up hitting himself quite hard on the forehead. "The Heart of Gold is now within firing range. But…"

"But what?"

"You might want to look at this, sir."

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz stomped over to the dull grey screen on the control panel. The Heart of Gold was shifting shapes, from aubergine to ugly yellow Vogon constructor ship to – the Vogon squinted – some kind of rubber ring, passing briefly through the form of what appeared to be an old blue telephone box.

"What the…oh, I'll zarking get them this time!" he snarled. "Energize the demolition beams."

The Vogon lieutenant coughed politely.

"This is a scout ship, sir, we don't have-" He met Jeltz's unpleasantly beady gaze and gulped. "I'll energize the demolition beams, sir."

He scurried off thankfully in the opposite direction, leaving Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz staring at the screen.

"I'll get you this time, Beeblebrox," he vowed.

"Er…" hazarded Arthur from the floor.

"Shut up, Arthur," interrupted Ford, who was standing with Trillian trying to regain control of the ship. "What do you reckon – are we still on the Improbability Drive, or is the Universe just playing silly buggers again?"

"Hard to say," replied Trillian distantly. "I think we're moving, which would mean that we were on the Drive, but I can't steer the bloody thing, which would suggest that the Universe is being daft."

"Have you tried setting the coordinates?" queried Arthur.

They all looked at the control panel, which at that moment was a rather pleasant walnut coffee table with brass fittings.

"How?" enquired Trillian.

Ford sighed. "Pass. All we can do is hope that the ship turns into something we can control."

At that point, the Rigellan Star Moose trotted up to the bridge and stared at Ford with big, sorrowful eyes. He told it to sod off.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Entry no. 21,980 Entry: The Rigellan Star Moose

The Rigellan Star Moose is one of the most important creatures in the history of the planet Rigel, second only to the Cavorting Muntjacs who emigrated from their planet early in their evolutionary cycle in search of pasture and interesting things to cavort at. The Star Moose possesses remarkable eyes, the like of which have never been seen outside Galactic Sector PZ9 Plural J Lambda, where the Flanuellans preside. The eyes of the beast have a certain brown, melting quality which made the first hunter to happen upon them to throw down his spear and vow never to eat meat again. As Rigel is an arid, dusty planet with little vegetation, the hunter lasted around a week before starving to death. The Star Moose had this effect on many different races throughout the planet's history, until one day a brave soul called Untravarkle Q (or Q, as his more devoted followers call him) spake the now sacred words: `Bugger this for a game of soldiers' and killed the creatures. This meant that when Rigel was invaded by the Flanuellans, owners of similarly beautiful eyes, the descendants of Untravarkle simply shot them. The conflict was recognized as one of the shortest inter-planetary battles in the history of the galaxy, lasting only two hours and three minutes before the invaders gave up and went home. This made the Rigellan Star Moose and Untravarkle's descendants very popular; the fact that the Flanuellans, embittered by the fruitless expedition, declared war on the entire galaxy a few years later is part of a completely different story.

End of entry.

Arthur struggled to get up, but found himself hindered by a giant elk-like animal with four large antlers. He looked up into the Star Moose's melting brown eyes and immediately felt that, somehow, the Universe was a kinder and much nicer place. Unfortunately, it was at around that moment that the Moose was shot in the side and went down like a tree. The owner of the gun which had fired the fatal shot whooped.

"How good was that, kid?" enthused Zaphod, hefting his Kill-O-Zap gun with his third arm.

"Zaphod, will you please concentrate!" snarled Trillian. "We're trying to get out of a life and death situation here, which will preferably end with the former option!"

"Really? Oh, well, wake me up when it's over, will you?"

He hoisted himself back into the captain's chair (which, inexplicably, was still there and completely unchanged, even though the Heart of Gold was at that moment a riotously coloured double-decker bus) and slid his Joo-Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive sunglasses back on. Trillian rolled her eyes and struggled with the bright yellow steering wheel, trying to get some control over the ship's direction. As she desperately pulled at the steering, it morphed into a sleek black controller of an Angel 3000 Starbuggy.

"Yes!"

She grabbed hold of it and jerked the ship away from the surface of Planet Vogesphere, accelerating dangerously. The Starbuggy shot up out of firing range of the Vogons and into deep space, laser tracers chasing them vainly out of the dustbowl.

This is a post for Project PULL, set up by Bookaholic711. For more information, visit my profile. Thanks!