He led her off to where the waiter had been waiting all this time at the table. Arthur followed them feeling very lost and alone.

Ford waded off through the throng to renew an old acquaintance.

“Hey, er, Hotblack,” he called out, “how you doing? Great to see you big boy, how’s the noise? You’re looking great, really very, very fat and unwell. Amazing.” He slapped the man on the back and was mildly surprised that it seemed to elicit no response. The Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters swilling around inside him told him to plunge on regardless.

“Remember the old days?” he said. “We used to hang out, right? The Bistro Illegal, remember? Slim’s Throat Emporium? The Evildrome Boozarama, great days, eh?”

Hotblack Desiato offered no opinion as to whether they were great days or not. Ford was not perturbed.

“And when we were hungry we’d pose as public health inspectors, you remember that? And go around confiscating meals and drinks, right? Till we got food poisoning. Oh, and then there were the long nights of talking and drinking in those smelly rooms above the Café Lou in Gretchen Town, New Betel, and you were always in the next room trying to write songs on your ajuitar and we all hated them. And you said you didn’t care, and we said we did because we hated them so much.” Ford’s eyes were beginning to mist over.

“And you said you didn’t want to be a star,” he continued, wallowing in nostalgia, “because you despised the star system. And we said — Hadra and Sulijoo and me — that we didn’t think you had the option. And what do you do now? You buy star systems!”

He turned and solicited the attention of those at nearby tables.

“Here,” he said, “is a man who buys star systems!”

Hotblack Desiato made no attempt either to confirm or deny this fact, and the attention of the temporary audience waned rapidly.

“I think someone’s drunk,” muttered a purple bushlike being into his wineglass.

Ford staggered slightly, and sat down heavily on the chair facing Hotblack Desiato.

“What’s that number you do?” he said, unwisely grabbing at a bottle for support and tipping it over — into a nearby glass as it happened. Not to waste a happy accident, he drained the glass.

“That really huge number,” he continued, “how does it go? ‘Bwarm! Bwarm! Baderr!!’ something, and in the stage act you do it ends up with this ship crashing right into the sun, and you actually do it!”

Ford crashed his fist into his other hand to illustrate this feat graphically. He knocked the bottle over again.

“Ship! Sun! Wham bang!” he cried. “I mean forget lasers and stuff, you guys are into solar flares and real sunburn! Oh, and terrible songs.”

His eyes followed the stream of liquid glugging out of the bottle onto the table. Something ought to be done about it, he thought.

“Hey, you want a drink?” he said. It began to sink into his squelching mind that something was missing from this reunion, and that the missing something was in some way connected with the fact that the fat man sitting opposite him in the platinum suit and the silvery hat had not yet said “Hi, Ford” or “Great to see you after all this time,” or in fact anything at all. More to the point he had not yet even moved.

“Hotblack?” said Ford.

A large meaty hand landed on his shoulder from behind and pushed him aside. He slid gracelessly off his seat and peered upward to see if he could spot the owner of this discourteous hand. The owner was not hard to spot, on account of his being something of the order of seven feet tall and not slightly built with it. In fact he was built the way one builds leather sofas, shiny, lumpy and with lots of solid stuffing. The suit into which the man’s body had been stuffed looked as if its only purpose in life was to demonstrate how difficult it was to get this sort of body into a suit. The face had the texture of an orange and the color of an apple, but there the resemblance to anything sweet ended.

“Kid …” said a voice which emerged from the man’s mouth as if it had been having a really rough time down in his chest.

“Er, yeah?” said Ford conversationally. He staggered back to his feet again and was disappointed that the top of his head didn’t come further up the man’s body.

“Beat it,” said the man.

“Oh yeah?” said Ford, wondering how wise he was being. “And who are you?”

The man considered this for a moment. He wasn’t used to being asked this sort of question. Nevertheless, after a while he came up with an answer.

“I’m the guy who’s telling you to beat it,” he said, “before you get it beaten for you.”

“Now listen,” said Ford nervously — he wished his head would stop spinning, settle down and get to grips with the situation—“Now listen,” he continued, “I am one of Hotblack’s oldest friends and …”

He glanced at Hotblack Desiato, who still hadn’t moved so much as an eyelash.

“ … and …” said Ford again, wondering what would be a good word to say after “and.”

The large man came up with a whole sentence to go after “and.” He said it.

“And I am Mr. Desiato’s bodyguard,” it went, “and I am responsible for his body, and I am not responsible for yours, so take it away before it gets damaged.”

“Now wait a minute,” said Ford.

“No minutes!” boomed the bodyguard. “No waiting! Mr. Desiato speaks to no one!”

“Well, perhaps you’d let him say what he thinks about the matter himself,” said Ford.

“He speaks to no one!” bellowed the bodyguard.

Ford glanced anxiously at Hotblack again and was forced to admit to himself that the bodyguard seemed to have the facts on his side. There was still not the slightest sign of movement, let alone keen interest in Ford’s welfare.

“Why?” said Ford. “What’s the matter with him?”

The bodyguard told him.

Chapter 17

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, while the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet — or more frequently around a completely different planet.

Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.

Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band’s public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties.

This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.

Ford staggered back to the table where Zaphod, Arthur and Trillian were sitting waiting for the fun to begin.

“Gotta have some food,” said Ford.

“Hi, Ford,” said Zaphod. “You speak to the big noise boy?”

Ford waggled his head noncommittally.

“Hotblack? I sort of spoke to him, yeah.”

“What’d he say?”

“Well, not a lot really. He’s … er …”

“Yeah?”

“He’s spending a year dead for tax reasons. I’ve got to sit down.”

He sat down.

The waiter approached.