– Hmmmm.

He inched his way up the corridor as if he would rather be yarding his way down it, which was true.

He was within two yards of the door to the bridge when he suddenly realized to his horror that it was going to be nice to him, and he stopped dead. He hadn’t been able to turn off the doors’ courtesy voice circuits.

This doorway to the bridge was concealed from view within it because of the excitingly chunky way in which the bridge had been designed to curve round, and he had been hoping to enter unobserved.

He leant despondently back against the wall again and said some words which his other head was quite shocked to hear.

He peered at the dim pink outline of the door, and discovered that in the darkness of the corridor he could just about make out the Sensor Field which extended out into the corridor and told the door when there was someone there for whom it must open and to whom it must make a cheery and pleasant remark.

He pressed himself hard back against the wall and edged himself towards the door, flattening his chest as much as he possibly could to avoid brushing against the very, very dim perimeter of the field. He held his breath, and congratulated himself on having lain in bed sulking for the last few days rather than trying to work out his feelings on chest expanders in the ship’s gym.

He then realized he was going to have to speak at this point.

He took a series of very shallow breaths, and then said as quickly and as quietly as he could:

– Door, if you can hear me, say so very, very quietly.

Very, very quietly, the door murmured:

– I can hear you.

– Good. Now, in a moment, I’m going to ask you to open. When you open I do not want you to say that you enjoyed it, OK?

– OK.

– And I don’t want you to say to me that I have made a simple door very happy, or that it is your pleasure to open for me and your satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done, OK?

– OK.

– And I do not want you to ask me to have a nice day, understand?

– I understand.

– OK, - said Zaphod, tensing himself, - open now.

The door slid open quietly. Zaphod slipped quietly through. The door closed quietly behind him.

– Is that the way you like it, Mr. Beeblebrox? - said the door out loud.

– I want you to imagine, - said Zaphod to the group of white robots who swung round to stare at him at that point, - that I have an extremely powerful Kill-O-Zap blaster pistol in my hand.

There was an immensely cold and savage silence. The robots regarded him with hideously dead eyes. They stood very still. There was something intensely macabre about their appearance, especially to Zaphod who had never seen one before or even known anything about them. The Krikkit Wars belonged to the ancient past of the Galaxy, and Zaphod had spent most of his early history lessons plotting how he was going to have sex with the girl in the cybercubicle next to him, and since his teaching computer had been an integral part of this plot it had eventually had all its history circuits wiped and replaced with an entirely different set of ideas which had then resulted in it being scrapped and sent to a home for Degenerate Cybermats, whither it was followed by the girl who had inadvertently fallen deeply in love with the unfortunate machine, with the result (a) that Zaphod never got near her and (b) that he missed out on a period of ancient history that would have been of inestimable value to him at this moment.

He stared at them in shock.

It was impossible to explain why, but their smooth and sleek white bodies seemed to be the utter embodiment of clean, clinical evil. From their hideously dead eyes to their powerful lifeless feet, they were clearly the calculated product of a mind that wanted simply to kill. Zaphod gulped in cold fear.

They had been dismantling part of the rear bridge wall, and had forced a passage through some of the vital innards of the ship. Through the tangled wreckage Zaphod could see, with a further and worse sense of shock, that they were tunnelling towards the very heart of the ship, the heart of the Improbability Drive that had been so mysteriously created out of thin air, the Heart of Gold itself.

The robot closest to him was regarding him in such a way as to suggest that it was measuring every smallest particle of his body, mind and capability. And when it spoke, what it said seemed to bear this impression out. Before going on to what it actually said, it is worth recording at this point that Zaphod was the first living organic being to hear one of these creatures speak for something over ten billion years. If he had paid more attention to his ancient history lessons and less to his organic being, he might have been more impressed by this honour.

The robot’s voice was like its body, cold, sleek and lifeless. It had almost a cultured rasp to it. It sounded as ancient as it was.

It said:

– You do have a Kill-O-Zap blaster pistol in your hand.

Zaphod didn’t know what it meant for a moment, but then he glanced down at his own hand and was relieved to see that what he had found clipped to a wall bracket was indeed what he had thought it was.

– Yeah, - he said in a kind of relieved sneer, which is quite tricky, - well, I wouldn’t want to overtax your imagination, robot. - For a while nobody said anything, and Zaphod realized that the robots were obviously not here to make conversation, and that it was up to him.

– I can’t help noticing that you have parked your ship, - he said with a nod of one of his heads in the appropriate direction, - through mine.

There was no denying this. Without regard for any kind of proper dimensional behaviour they had simply materialized their ship precisely where they wanted it to be, which meant that it was simply locked through the Heart of Gold as if they were nothing more than two combs.

Again, they made no response to this, and Zaphod wondered if the conversation would gather any momentum if he phrased his part of it in the form of questions.

– …haven’t you? - he added.

– Yes, - replied the robot.

– Er, OK, - said Zaphod. - So what are you cats doing here?

Silence.

– Robots, - said Zaphod, - what are you robots doing here?

– We have come, - rasped the robot, - for the Gold of the Bail.

Zaphod nodded. He waggled his gun to invite further elaboration. The robot seemed to understand this.

– The Gold Bail is part of the Key we seek, - continued the robot, - to release our Masters from Krikkit.

Zaphod nodded again. He waggled his gun again.

– The Key, - continued the robot simply, - was disintegrated in time and space. The Golden Bail is embedded in the device which drives your ship. It will be reconstituted in the Key. Our Masters shall be released. The Universal Readjustment will continue.

Zaphod nodded again.

– What are you talking about? - he said.

A slightly pained expression seemed to cross the robot’s totally expressionless face. He seemed to be finding the conversation depressing.

– Obliteration, - it said. - We seek the Key, - it repeated, - we already have the Wooden Pillar, the Steel Pillar and the Perspex Pillar. In a moment we will have the Gold Bail…

– No you won’t.

– We will, - stated the robot.

– No you won’t. It makes my ship work.

– In a moment, - repeated the robot patiently, - we will have the Gold Bail…

– You will not, - said Zaphod.

– And then we must go, - said the robot, in all seriousness, - to a party.

– Oh, - said Zaphod, startled. - Can I come?

– No, - said the robot. - We are going to shoot you.

– Oh yeah? - said Zaphod, waggling his gun.

– Yes, - said the robot, and they shot him.

Zaphod was so surprised that they had to shoot him again before he fell down.