The computer looked normal size for a black spaceborne computer satellite — about a thousand miles across.

The illusion that the one was sitting on top of the other was the thing that made the eyes twist.

“All right,” said Trillian firmly. She stood up from the sofa. She felt that she was being asked to feel too comfortable and to accept too many illusions.

“Very good,” she said “Can you construct real things, too? I mean solid objects?”

Again, there was the pause before the answer, as if the pulverized mind of Hactar had to collect its thoughts from the millions and millions of miles over which it was scattered.

“Ah,” he sighed, “you are thinking of the spaceship.”

Thoughts seemed to drift by them and through them, like waves through the ether.

“Yes,” he acknowledged, “I can. But it takes enormous effort and time. All I can do in my … particle state, you see, is encourage and suggest. Encourage and suggest. And suggest …”

The image of Hactar on the couch seemed to billow and waver, as if finding it hard to maintain itself.

It gathered new strength.

“I can encourage and suggest,” it said, “tiny pieces of space debris — the odd minute meteor, a few molecules here, a few hydrogen atoms there — to move together. I encourage them together. I can tease them into shape, but it takes many eons.”

“So, did you make,” asked Trillian again, “the model of the wrecked spacecraft?”

“Er … yes,” murmured Hactar, “I have made … a few things. I can move them about. I made the spacecraft. It seemed best to do.”

Something at this point made Arthur pick up his tote bag from where he had left it on the sofa and grasp it tightly.

The mist of Hactar’s ancient shattered mind swirled about them as if uneasy dreams were moving through it.

“I repented, you see,” he murmured dolefully. “I repented of sabotaging my own design for the Silastic Armorfiends. It was not my place to make such decisions. I was created to fulfill a function and I failed in it. I negated my own existence.”

Hactar sighed, and they waited in silence for him to continue his story.

“You were right,” he said at length. “I deliberately nurtured the planet of Krikkit till they would arrive at the same state of mind as the Silastic Armorfiends, and require of me the design of the bomb I failed to make the first time. I wrapped myself around the planet and coddled it. Under the influence of events I was able to engineer, and influences I was able to generate, they learned to hate like maniacs. I had to make them live in the sky. On the ground my influences were too weak.

“Without me, of course, when they were locked away from me in the envelope of Slo-Time, their responses became very confused and they were unable to manage.

“Ah well, ah well,” he added, “I was only trying to fulfill my function.”

And very gradually, very, very slowly, the images in the cloud began to fade, gently to melt away.

And then suddenly, they stopped fading.

“There was also the matter of revenge, of course,” said Hactar, with a sharpness that was new in his voice.

“Remember,” he said, “that I was pulverized, and then left in a crippled and semi-impotent state for billions of years. I honestly would rather like to wipe out the Universe. You would feel the same way, believe me.”

He paused again, as eddies swept through the dust.

“But primarily,” he said in his former, wistful tone, “I was trying to fulfill my function. Ah well.”

Trillian said, “Does it worry you that you have failed?”

“Have I failed?” whispered Hactar. The image of the computer on the psychiatrist’s couch began slowly to fade again.

“Ah well, ah well,” the fading voice intoned again, “no, failure doesn’t bother me now.”

“You know what we have to do?” said Trillian, her voice cold and businesslike.

“Yes,” said Hactar, “you’re going to disperse me. You are going to destroy my consciousness. Please be my guest — after all these eons, oblivion is all I crave. If I haven’t already fulfilled my function, then it’s too late now. Thank you and good night.”

The sofa vanished.

The tea table vanished.

The couch and the computer vanished. The walls were gone. Arthur and Trillian made their cautious way back into the Heart of Gold.

“Well, that,” said Arthur, “would appear to be that.”

The flames danced higher in front of him and then subsided. A few last licks and they were gone, leaving him with just a pile of Ashes, where a few minutes previously there had been the Wooden Pillar of Nature and Spirituality.

He scooped them off the hob of the Heart of Gold’s Gamma Barbecue, put them in a paper bag and walked back onto the bridge.

“I think we should take them back,” he said. “I feel that very strongly.”

He had already had an argument with Slartibartfast on this matter, and eventually the old man had got annoyed and left. He had returned to his own ship, the Bistromath, had a furious row with the waiter and disappeared off into an entirely subjective idea of what space was.

The argument had arisen because Arthur’s idea of returning the Ashes to Lord’s Cricket Ground at the same moment they were originally taken would involve traveling back in time a day or so, and this was precisely the sort of gratuitous and irresponsible mucking about that the Campaign for Real Time was trying to put a stop to.

“Yes,” Arthur had said, “but you try and explain that to the M.C.C.,” and would hear no more against the idea.

“I think,” he said again and stopped. The reason he started to say it again was that no one had listened to him the first time, and the reason he stopped was that it looked fairly clear that no one was going to listen to him this time either.

Ford, Zaphod and Trillian were watching the visiscreen intently. Hactar was dispersing under pressure from a vibration field which the Heart of Gold was pumping into it.

“What did it say?” asked Ford.

“I thought I heard it say,” said Trillian in a puzzled voice, “ ‘What’s done is done … I have fulfilled my function.…’ ”

“I think we should take these back,” said Arthur, holding up the bag containing the Ashes. “I feel that very strongly.”

Chapter 33

The sun was shining calmly on a scene of complete havoc.

Smoke was still billowing across the burnt grass in the wake of the theft of the Ashes by the Krikkit robots. Through the smoke people were running panic-stricken, colliding with each other, tripping over stretchers, being arrested.

One policeman was attempting to arrest Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged for insulting behavior, but was unable to prevent the tall gray green alien from returning to his ship and arrogantly flying away, thus causing even more panic and pandemonium.

In the middle of this suddenly materialized for the second time that afternoon the figures of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, who had teleported down out of the Heart of Gold which was now in parking orbit round the planet.

“I can explain,” shouted Arthur. “I have the Ashes! They’re in this bag.”

“I don’t think you have their attention,” said Ford.

“I have also helped save the Universe,” called Arthur to anyone who was prepared to listen, in other words no one.

“That should have been a crowd stopper,” said Arthur to Ford.

“It wasn’t,” said Ford.

Arthur accosted a policeman who was running past.

“Excuse me,” he said, “the Ashes. I’ve got them. They were stolen by those white robots a moment ago. I’ve got them in this bag. They were part of the Key to the Slo-Time envelope, you see, and well, anyway, you can guess the rest, the point is I’ve got them and what should I do with them?”

The policeman told him, but Arthur could only assume that he was speaking metaphorically.