“Er …”

“In the long run.”

“Er, yes.”

And the Messenger did understand the reason, and he returned to his people in the Forest. But as he approached them, as he walked through the Forest and among the trees, he found that all he could remember of the reason was how terribly clear the argument had seemed. What it actually was, he couldn’t remember at all.

And this, of course, was a great comfort when next the Tribesmen and the Princes came hacking and burning their way through the Forest, killing every Forest Dweller in their way.

Prak paused in his story and coughed pathetically.

“I was the Messenger,” he said, “after the battles precipitated by the appearance of your ship, which were particularly savage. Many of our people died. I thought I could bring the reason back. I went, and was told it by the Leader of the Princes, but on the way back it slipped and melted away in my mind like snow in the sun. That was many years ago, and much has happened since then.”

He looked up at Arthur, and giggled again very gently.

“There is one other thing I can remember from the truth drug, apart from the frogs, and that is God’s last message to his creation. Would you like to hear it?”

For a moment they didn’t know whether to take him seriously.

“’S true,” he said, “for real. I mean it.”

His chest heaved weakly and he struggled for breath. His head lolled slightly.

“I wasn’t very impressed with it when I first knew what it was,” he said, “but now I think back to how impressed I was by the Prince’s reason, and how soon afterward I couldn’t recall it at all, I think it might be a lot more helpful. Would you like to know what it is? Would you?”

They nodded dumbly.

“I bet you would. If you’re that interested I suggest you go and look for it. It is written in thirty-foot-high letters of fire on top of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet Preliumtarn, third out from the sun Zarss in Galactic Sector QQ7 ActiveJ Gamma. It is guarded by the Lajestic Vantrashell of Lob.”

There was a long silence following this announcement, which was finally broken by Arthur.

“Sorry, it’s where?” he said.

“It is written,” repeated Prak, “in thirty-foot-high letters of fire on top of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet Preliumtarn, third out from the …”

“Sorry,” said Arthur again, “which mountains?”

“The Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet …”

“Which land was that? I didn’t quite catch it.”

“Sevorbeupstry, on the planet …”

“Sevorbe what?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Prak, and died testily.

In the following days Arthur thought a little about this message, but in the end he decided that he was not going to allow himself to be drawn by it, and insisted on following his original plan of finding a nice little world somewhere to settle down and lead a quiet retired life. Having saved the Universe twice in one day he thought that he could take things a little easier from now on.

They dropped him off on the planet Krikkit, which was now once again a pleasant idyllic pastoral world, even if the songs did occasionally get on his nerves.

He spent a lot of time flying.

He learned to communicate with birds and discovered that their conversation was fantastically boring. It was all to do with wind speed, wingspans, power-to-weight ratios and a fair bit about berries. Unfortunately, he discovered, once you have learned birdspeak you quickly come to realize that the air is full of it the whole time, just inane bird chatter. There is no getting away from it.

For that reason Arthur eventually gave up the sport and learned to live on the ground and love it, despite the inane chatter he heard down there as well.

One day he was walking through the fields humming a ravishing tune he’d heard recently when a silver spaceship descended from the sky and landed in front of him.

A hatchway opened, a ramp extended and a tall gray green alien marched out and approached him.

“Arthur Phili …” it said, then glanced sharply at him, and down at his clipboard. It frowned. It looked up at him again.

“I’ve done you before, haven’t I?” it said.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has — or rather, had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time.

Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so the idea was lost, seemingly for ever.

This is her story.

That evening it was dark early, which was normal for the time of year. It was cold and windy, which was normal.

It started to rain, which was particularly normal.

A spacecraft landed, which was not.

There was nobody around to see it except for some spectacularly stupid quadrupeds who hadn’t the faintest idea what to make of it, or whether they were meant to make anything of it, or eat it, or what. So they did what they did to everything, which was to run away from it and try to hide under each other, which never worked.

It slipped down out of the clouds, seeming to be balanced on a single beam of light.

From a distance you would scarcely have noticed it through the lightning and the storm clouds, but seen from close up to it was strangely beautiful — a gray craft of elegantly sculpted form; quite small.

Of course, one never has the slightest notion what size or shape different species are going to turn out to be, but if you were to take the findings of the latest Mid-Galactic Census report as any kind of accurate guide to statistical averages you would probably guess that the craft would hold about six people, and you would be right.