– Terrible impotent feeling, isn’t it? - said Arthur, but the others ignored him.

In the centre of the area of light which the robots were approaching, a square-shaped crack appeared in the ground. The crack defined itself more and more distinctly, and soon it became clear that a block of the ground, about six feet square, was slowly rising.

At the same time they became aware of some other movement, but it was almost sublimal, and for a moment or two it was not clear what it was that was moving.

Then it became clear.

The asteroid was moving. It was moving slowly in towards the Dust Cloud, as if being hauled in inexorably by some celestial angler in its depths.

They were to make in real life the journey through the Cloud which they had already made in the Room of Informational Illusions. They stood frozen in silence. Trillian frowned.

An age seemed to pass. Events seemed to pass with spinning slowness, as the leading edge of the asteroid passed into the vague and soft outer perimeter of the Cloud.

And soon they were engulfed in a thin and dancing obscurity. They passed on through it, on and on, dimly aware of vague shapes and whorls indistinguishable in the darkness except in the corner of the eye.

The Dust dimmed the shafts of brilliant light. The shafts of brilliant light twinkled on the myriad specks of Dust.

Trillian, again, regarded the passage from within her own frowning thoughts.

And they were through it. Whether it had taken a minute or half an hour they weren’t sure, but they were through it and confronted with a fresh blankness, as if space were pinched out of existence in front of them.

And now things moved quickly.

A blinding shaft of light seemed almost to explode from out of the block which had risen three feet out of the ground, and out of that rose a smaller Perspex block, dazzling with interior dancing colours.

The block was slotted with deep groves, three upright and two across, clearly designed to accept the Wikkit key.

The robots approached the Lock, slotted the Key into its home and stepped back again. The block twisted round of is own accord, and space began to alter.

As space unpinched itself, it seemed agonizingly to twist the eyes of the watchers in their sockets. They found themselves staring, blinded, at an unravelled sun which stood now before them where it seemed only seconds before there had not been even empty space. It was a second or two before they were even sufficiently aware of what had happened to throw their hands up over their horrified blinded eyes. In that second or two, they were aware of a tiny speck moving slowly across the eye of that sun.

They staggered back, and heard ringing in their ears the thin and unexpected chant of the robots crying out in unison.

– Krikkit! Krikkit! Krikkit! Krikkit!

The sound chilled them. It was harsh, it was cold, it was empty, it was mechanically dismal.

It was also triumphant.

They were so stunned by these two sensory shocks that they almost missed the second historic event.

Zaphod Beeblebrox, the only man in history to survive a direct blast attack from the Krikkit robots, ran out of the Krikkit warship brandishing a Zap gun.

– OK, - he cried, - the situation is totally under control as of this moment in time.

The single robot guarding the hatchway to the ship silently swung his battleclub, and connected it with the back of Zaphod’s left head.

– Who the zark did that? - said the left head, and lolled sickeningly forward.

His right head gazed keenly into the middle distance.

– Who did what? - it said.

The club connected with the back of his right head.

Zaphod measured his length as a rather strange shape on the ground.

Within a matter of seconds the whole event was over. A few blasts from the robots were sufficient to destroy the Lock for ever. It split and melted and splayed its contents brokenly. The robots marched grimly and, it almost seemed, in a slightly disheartened manner, back into their warship which, with a “foop”, was gone.

Trillian and Ford ran hectically round and down the steep incline to the dark, still body of Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Chapter 26

– I don’t know, - said Zaphod, for what seemed to him like the thirty-seventh time, - they could have killed me, but they didn’t. Maybe they just thought I was a kind of wonderful guy or something. I could understand that.

The others silently registered their opinions of this theory.

Zaphod lay on the cold floor of the flight deck. His back seemed to wrestle the floor as pain thudded through him and banged at his heads.

– I think, - he whispered, - that there is something wrong with those anodized dudes, something fundamentally weird.

– They are programmed to kill everybody, - Slartibartfast pointed out.

– That, - wheezed Zaphod between the whacking thuds, - could be it. - He didn’t seem altogether convinced.

– Hey, baby, - he said to Trillian, hoping this would make up for his previous behaviour.

– You all right? - she said gently.

– Yeah, - he said, - I’m fine.

– Good, - she said, and walked away to think. She stared at the huge visiscreen over the flight couches and, twisting a switch, she flipped local images over it. One image was the blankness of the Dust Cloud. One was the sun of Krikkit. One was Krikkit itself. She flipped between them fiercely.

– Well, that’s goodbye Galaxy, then, - said Arthur, slapping his knees and standing up.

– No, - said Slartibartfast, gravely. - Our course is clear. - He furrowed his brow until you could grow some of the smaller root vegetables in it. He stood up, he paced around. When he spoke again, what he said frightened him so much he had to sit down again.

– We must go down to Krikkit, - he said. A deep sigh shook his old frame and his eyes seemed almost to rattle in their sockets.

– Once again, - he said, - we have failed pathetically. Quite pathetically.

– That, - said Ford quietly, - is because we don’t care enough. I told you.

He swung his feet up on the instrument panel and picked fitfully at something on one of his fingernails.

– But unless we determine to take action, - said the old man querulously, as if struggling against something deeply insouciant in his nature, - then we shall all be destroyed, we shall all die. Surely we care about that?

– Not enough to want to get killed over it, - said Ford. He put on a sort of hollow smile and flipped it round the room at anyone who wanted to see it.

Slartibartfast clearly found this point of view extremely seductive and he fought against it. He turned again to Zaphod who was gritting his teeth and sweating with the pain.

– You surely must have some idea, - he said, - of why they spared your life. It seems most strange and unusual.

– I kind of think they didn’t even know, - shrugged Zaphod. - I told you. They hit me with the most feeble blast, just knocked me out, right? They lugged me into their ship, dumped me into a corner and ignored me. Like they were embarrassed about me being there. If I said anything they knocked me out again. We had some great conversations. “Hey… ugh!” “Hi there… ugh!” “I wonder…ugh!” Kept me amused for hours, you know. - He winced again.

He was toying with something in his fingers. He held it up. It was the Gold Bail - the Heart of Gold, the heart of the Infinite Improbability Drive. Only that and the Wooden Pillar had survived the destruction of the Lock intact.

– I hear your ship can move a bit, - he said. - So how would you like to zip me back to mine before you…

– Will you not help us? - said Slartibartfast.

– I’d love to stay and help you save the Galaxy, - insisted Zaphod, rising himself up on to his shoulders, - but I have the mother and father of a pair of headaches, and I feel a lot of little headaches coming on. But next time it needs saving, I’m your guy. Hey, Trillian baby?