– Yes, - added another, - and the balance of nature. It just seemed to us that if the whole of the rest of the Universe is destroyed it will somehow upset the balance of nature. We’re quite keen on ecology, you see. - His voice trailed away unhappily.

– And sport, - said another, loudly. This got a cheer of approval from the others.

– Yes, - agreed the first, - and sport… - He looked back at his fellows uneasily and scratched fitfully at his cheek. He seemed to be wrestling with some deep inner confusion, as if everything he wanted to say and everything he thought were entirely different things, between which he could see no possible connection.

– You see, - he mumbled, - some of us… - and he looked around again as if for confirmation. The others made encouraging noises. - Some of us, - he continued, - are quite keen to have sporting links with the rest of the Galaxy, and though I can see the argument about keeping sport out of politics, I think that if we want to have sporting links with the rest of the Galaxy, which we do, then it’s probably a mistake to destroy it. And indeed the rest of the Universe… - his voice trailed away again -… which is what seems to be the idea now…

– Wh… - said Slartibartfast. - Wh…

– Hhhh…? - said Arthur.

– Dr… - said Ford Prefect.

– OK, - said Trillian. - Let’s talk about it. - She walked forward and took the poor confused Krikkiter by the arm. He looked about twenty-five, which meant, because of the peculiar manglings of time that had been going on in this area, that he would have been just twenty when the Krikkit Wars were finished, ten billion years ago.

Trillian led him for a short walk through the torchlight before she said anything more. He stumbled uncertainly after her. The encircling torch beams were drooping now slightly as if they were abdicating to this strange, quiet girl who alone in the Universe of dark confusion seemed to know what she was doing.

She turned and faced him, and lightly held both his arms. He was a picture of bewildered misery.

– Tell me, - she said.

He said nothing for a moment, whilst his gaze darted from one of her eyes to the other.

– We… - he said, - we have to be alone… I think. - He screwed up his face and then dropped his head forward, shaking it like someone trying to shake a coin out of a money box. He looked up again. - We have this bomb now, you see, - he said, - it’s just a little one.

– I know, - she said.

He goggled at her as if she’d said something very strange about beetroots.

– Honestly, - he said, - it’s very, very little.

– I know, - she said again.

– But they say, - his voice trailed on, - they say it can destroy everything that exists. And we have to do that, you see, I think. Will that make us alone? I don’t know. It seems to be our function, though, - he said, and dropped his head again.

– Whatever that means, - said a hollow voice from the crowd.

Trillian slowly put her arms around the poor bewildered young Krikkiter and patted his trembling head on her shoulder.

– It’s all right, - she said quietly but clearly enough for all the shadowy crowd to hear, - you don’t have to do it.

She rocked him.

– You don’t have to do it, - she said again.

She let him go and stood back.

– I want you to do something for me, - she said, and unexpectedly laughed.

– I want, - she said, and laughed again. She put her hand over her mouth and then said with a straight face, - I want you to take me to your leader, - and she pointed into the War Zones in the sky. She seemed somehow to know that their leader would be there.

Her laughter seemed to discharge something in the atmosphere. From somewhere at the back of the crowd a single voice started to sing a tune which would have enabled Paul McCartney, had he written it, to buy the world.

Chapter 30

Zaphod Beeblebrox crawled bravely along a tunnel, like the hell of a guy he was. He was very confused, but continued crawling doggedly anyway because he was that brave.

He was confused by something he had just seen, but not half as confused as he was going to be by something he was about to hear, so it would now be best to explain exactly where he was.

He was in the Robot War Zones many miles above the surface of the planet Krikkit.

The atmosphere was thin here and relatively unprotected from any rays or anything which space might care to hurl in his direction.

He had parked the starship Heart of Gold amongst the huge jostling dim hulks that crowded the sky here above Krikkit, and had entered what appeared to be the biggest and most important of the sky buildings, armed with nothing but a Zap gun and something for his headaches.

He had found himself in a long, wide and badly lit corridor in which he was able to hide until he worked out what he was going to do next. He hid because every now and then one of the Krikkit robots would walk along it, and although he had so far led some kind of charmed life at their hands, it had nevertheless been an extremely painful one, and he had no desire to stretch what he was only half-inclined to call his good fortune.

He had ducked, at one point, into a room leading off the corridor, and had discovered it to be a huge and, again, dimly lit chamber.

In fact, it was a museum with just one exhibit - the wreckage of a spacecraft. It was terribly burnt and mangled, and, now that he had caught up with some of the Galactic history he had missed through his failed attempts to have sex with the girl in the cybercubicle next to him at school, he was able to put in an intelligent guess that this was the wrecked spaceship which had drifted through the Dust Cloud all those billions of years ago and started the whole business off.

But, and this is where he had become confused, there was something not at all right about it.

It was genuinely wrecked. It was genuinely burnt, but a fairly brief inspection by an experienced eye revealed that it was not a genuine spacecraft. It was as if it was a full-scale model of one - a solid blueprint. In other words it was a very useful thing to have around if you suddenly decided to build a spaceship yourself and didn’t know how to do it. It was not, however, anything that would ever fly anywhere itself.

He was still puzzling over this - in fact he’d only just started to puzzle over it - when he became aware that a door had slid open in another part of the chamber, and another couple of Krikkit robots had entered, looking a little glum.

Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion was the better part of valour so was cowardice the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a cupboard.

The cupboard in fact turned out to be the top part of a shaft which led down through an inspection hatch into a wide ventilation tunnel. He led himself down into it and started to crawl along it, which is where we found him.

He didn’t like it. It was cold, dark and profoundly uncomfortable, and it frightened him. At the first opportunity - which was another shaft a hundred yards further along - he climbed back up out of it.

This time he emerged into a smaller chamber, which appeared to be a computer intelligence centre. He emerged in a dark narrow space between a large computer bank and the wall.

He quickly learned that he was not alone in the chamber and started to leave again, when he began to listen with interest to what the other occupants were saying.

– It’s the robots, sir, - said one voice. - There’s something wrong with them.

– What, exactly?

These were the voices of two War Command Krikkiters. All the War Commanders lived up in the sky in the Robot War Zones, and were largely immune to the whimsical doubts and uncertainties which were afflicting their fellows down on the surface of the planet.