The sky sang and screamed with the rage of it all and buffeted the ground with shock waves.

And suddenly, with a foop, the Krikkit ship was gone.

The party blundered helplessly across the sky like a man leaning against an unexpectedly open door. It span and wobbled on its hover jets. It tried to right itself and wronged itself instead. It staggered back across the sky again.

For a while these staggerings continued, but clearly they could not continue for long. The party was now a mortally wounded party. All the fun had gone out of it, as the occasional brokenbacked pirouette could not disguise.

The longer, at this point, that it avoided the ground, the heavier was going to be the crash when finally it hit it.

Inside, things were not going well either. They were going monstrously badly, in fact, and people were hating it and saying so loudly. The Krikkit robots had been.

They had removed the Award for The Most Gratuitous Use Of The Word “Fuck” In A Serious Screenplay, and in its place had left a scene of devastation that left Arthur feeling almost as sick as a runner-up for a Rory.

– We would love to stay and help, - shouted Ford, picking his way over the mangled debris, - only we’re not going to.

The party lurched again, provoking feverish cries and groans from amongst the smoking wreckage.

– We have to go and save the Universe, you see, - said Ford. - And if that sounds like a pretty lame excuse, then you may be right. Either way, we’re off.

He suddenly came across an unopened bottle lying, miraculously unbroken, on the ground.

– Do you mind if we take this? - he said. - You won’t be needing it.

He took a packet of potato crisps too.

– Trillian? - shouted Arthur in a shocked and weakened voice. In the smoking mess he could see nothing.

– Earthman, we must go, - said Slartibartfast nervously.

– Trillian? - shouted Arthur again.

A moment or two later, Trillian staggered, shaking, into view, supported by her new friend the Thunder God.

– The girl stays with me, - said Thor. - There’s a great party going on in Valhalla, we’ll be flying off…

– Where were you when all this was going on? - said Arthur.

– Upstairs, - said Thor, - I was weighing her. Flying’s a tricky business you see, you have to calculate wind…

– She comes with us, - said Arthur.

– Hey, - said Trillian, - don’t I…

– No, - said Arthur, - you come with us.

Thor looked at him with slowly smouldering eyes. He was making some point about godliness and it had nothing to do with being clean.

– She comes with me, - he said quietly.

– Come on, Earthman, - said Slartibartfast nervously, picking at Arthur’s sleeve.

– Come on, Slartibartfast, - said Ford, picking at the old man’s sleeve. Slartibartfast had the teleport device.

The party lurched and swayed, sending everyone reeling, except for Thor and except for Arthur, who stared, shaking, into the Thunder God’s black eyes.

Slowly, incredibly, Arthur put up what appeared to be his tiny little fists.

– Want to make something of it? - he said.

– I beg your minuscule pardon? - roared Thor.

– I said, - repeated Arthur, and he could not keep the quavering out of his voice, - do you want to make something of it? - He waggled his fists ridiculously.

Thor looked at him with incredulity. Then a little wisp of smoke curled upwards from his nostril. There was a tiny little flame in it too.

He gripped his belt.

He expanded his chest to make it totally clear that here was the sort of man you only dared to cross if you had a team of Sherpas with you.

He unhooked the shaft of his hammer from his belt. He held it up in his hands to reveal the massive iron head. He thus cleared up any possible misunderstanding that he might merely have been carrying a telegraph pole around with him.

– Do I want, - he said, with a hiss like a river flowing through a steel mill, - to make something of it?

– Yes, - said Arthur, his voice suddenly and extraordinarily strong and belligerent. He waggled his fists again, this time as if he meant it.

– You want to step outside? - he snarled at Thor.

– All right! - bellowed Thor, like an enraged bull (or in fact like an enraged Thunder God, which is a great deal more impressive), and did so.

– Good, - said Arthur, - that’s got rid of him. Slarty, get us out of here.

Chapter 23

– All right, - shouted Ford at Arthur, - so I’m a coward, the point is I’m still alive. - They were back aboard the Starship Bistromath, so was Slartibartfast, so was Trillian. Harmony and concord were not.

– Well, so am I alive, aren’t I? - retaliated Arthur, haggard with adventure and anger. His eyebrows were leaping up and down as if they wanted to punch each other.

– You damn nearly weren’t, - exploded Ford.

Arthur turned sharply to Slartibartfast, who was sitting in his pilot couch on the flight deck gazing thoughtfully into the bottom of a bottle which was telling him something he clearly couldn’t fathom. He appealed to him.

– Do you think he understands the first word I’ve been saying? - he said, quivering with emotion.

– I don’t know, - replied Slartibartfast, a little abstractedly. - I’m not sure, - he added, glancing up very briefly, - that I do. - He stared at his instruments with renewed vigor and bafflement. - You’ll have to explain it to us again, - he said.

– Well…

– But later. Terrible things are afoot.

He tapped the pseudo-glass of the bottle bottom.

– We fared rather pathetically at the party, I’m afraid, - he said, - and our only hope now is to try to prevent the robots from using the Key in the Lock. How in heaven we do that I don’t know, - he muttered. - Just have to go there, I suppose. Can’t say I like the idea at all. Probably end up dead.

– Where is Trillian anyway? - said Arthur with a sudden affectation of unconcern. What he had been angry about was that Ford had berated him for wasting time over all the business with the Thunder God when they could have been making a rather more rapid escape. Arthur’s own opinion, and he had offered it for whatever anybody might have felt it was worth, was that he had been extraordinarily brave and resourceful.

The prevailing view seemed to be that his opinion was not worth a pair of fetid dingo’s kidneys. What really hurt, though, was that Trillian didn’t seem to react much one way or the other and had wandered off somewhere.

– And where are my potato crisps? - said Ford.

– They are both, - said Slartibartfast, without looking up, - in the Room of Informational Illusions. I think that your young lady friend is trying to understand some problems of Galactic history. I think the potato crisps are probably helping her.