The applause of the crowd was tremendous. It wasn’t for them, but instinctively they bowed anyway, which was fortunate because the small red heavy ball that the crowd actually had been applauding whistled mere inches over Arthur’s head. They threw themselves back to the ground that seemed to spin hideously around them.

“What was that?” hissed Arthur.

“Something red,” hissed Ford back at him.

“Where are we?”

“Er, somewhere green.”

“Shapes,” muttered Arthur, “I need shapes.”

The applause of the crowd had been rapidly succeeded by gasps of astonishment, and the awkward titters of hundreds of people who could not yet make up their minds whether to believe what they had just seen or not.

“This your sofa?” said a voice.

“What was that?” whispered Ford.

Arthur looked up.

“Something blue,” he said.

“Shape?” asked Ford.

Arthur looked again.

“It is shaped,” he hissed at Ford, with his brow savagely furrowed, “like a policeman.”

They remained crouched there for a few moments, frowning deeply. The blue thing shaped like a policeman tapped them both on the shoulders.

“Come on, you two,” the shape said, “let’s go.”

These words had an electrifying effect on Arthur. He leaped to his feet and shot a series of startled glances at the panorama around him that had suddenly settled down into something of quite terrifying ordinariness.

“Where did you get this from?” he yelled at the policeman shape.

“What did you say?” said the startled shape.

“This is Lord’s Cricket Ground, isn’t it?” snapped Arthur. “Where did you find it, how did you get it here? I think,” he added, clasping his hand to his brow, “that I had better calm down.” He squatted down abruptly in front of Ford.

“It is a policeman,” he said. “What do we do?”

Ford shrugged. “What do you want to do?” he said.

“I want you,” said Arthur, “to tell me that I have been dreaming for the last five years.”

Ford shrugged again, and obliged.

“You’ve been dreaming for the last five years,” he said.

Arthur got to his feet.

“It’s all right, officer,” he said, “I’ve been dreaming for the last five years. Ask him,” he added, pointing at Ford, “he was in it.” Having said this, he sauntered off toward the edge of the pitch, brushing down his dressing gown. He then noticed his dressing gown and stopped. He stared at it. He turned around. He flung himself at the policeman.

“So where did I get these clothes from?” he howled.

He collapsed and lay twitching on the grass.

Ford shook his head.

“He’s had a bad two million years,” he said to the policeman, and together they heaved Arthur onto the sofa and carried him off the pitch and were only briefly hampered by the sudden disappearance of the sofa on the way.

Reactions to all this from the crowd were many and various. Most of them couldn’t cope with watching it, and listened to it on the radio instead.

“Well, this is an interesting incident, Brian,” said one radio commentator to another. “I don’t think there have been any mysterious materializations on the pitch since, oh, since, well, I don’t think there have been any, have there? That I recall?”

“Edgbaston 1932?”

“Ah, now what happened then …?”

“Well, Peter, I think it was Canter facing Willcox coming up to bowl from the pavilion end when a spectator suddenly ran straight across the pitch.’

There was a pause while the first commentator considered this.

“Ye … e … s …” he said, “yes, there’s nothing actually very mysterious about that, is there? He didn’t actually materialize, did he? Just ran on.”

“No, that’s true, but he did claim to have seen something materialize on the pitch.”

“Ah, did he.”

“Yes. An alligator, I think, of some description.”

“And what happened to the man?”

“Well, I think someone offered to take him off and give him some lunch, but he explained that he’d already had a rather good one, so the matter was dropped and Warwickshire went on to win by three wickets.”

“So, not very like this current instance. For those of you who’ve just tuned in, you may be interested to know that, er … two men, two rather scruffily attired men, and indeed a sofa — a Chesterfield I think?”

“Yes, a Chesterfield.”

“Have just materialized here in the middle of Lord’s Cricket Ground. But I don’t think they meant any harm, they’ve been very good-natured about it, and …”

“Sorry, can I interrupt you a moment, Peter, and say that the sofa has just vanished.”

“So it has. Well, that’s one mystery less. Still, it’s definitely one for the record books I think, particularly occurring at this dramatic moment in play, England now needing only twenty-four runs to win the series. The men are leaving the pitch in the company of a police officer, and I think everyone’s settling down now and play is about to resume.”

“Now, sir,” said the policeman after they had made a passage through the curious crowd and laid Arthur’s peacefully inert body on a blanket, “perhaps you’d care to tell me who you are, where you come from and what that little scene was all about?”

Ford looked at the ground for a moment as if steadying himself for something, then he straightened up and aimed a look at the policeman that hit him with the full force of every inch of the six light-years’ distance between Earth and Ford’s home near Betelgeuse.

“All right,” said Ford, very quietly, “I’ll tell you.”

“Yes, well, that won’t be necessary,” said the policeman hurriedly, “just don’t let whatever it was happen again.” The policeman turned around and wandered off in search of anyone who wasn’t from Betelgeuse. Fortunately, the cricket ground was full of them.

Arthur’s consciousness approached his body as from a great distance, and reluctantly. It had had some bad times in there. Slowly, nervously, it entered and settled down into its accustomed position.

Arthur sat up.

“Where am I?” he said.

“Lord’s Cricket Ground,” said Ford.

“Fine,” said Arthur, and his consciousness stepped out again for a quick breather. His body flopped back on the grass.

Ten minutes later, hunched over a cup of tea in the refreshment tent, the color started to come back to his haggard face.

“How you feeling?” asked Ford.

“I’m home,” said Arthur hoarsely. He closed his eyes and greedily inhaled the steam from his tea as if it were — well, as far as Arthur was concerned, as if it were tea, which it was.

“I’m home,” he repeated, “home. It’s England, it’s today, the nightmare is over.” He opened his eyes again and smiled serenely. “I’m where I belong,” he said in an emotional whisper.

“There are two things I feel I should tell you,” said Ford, tossing a copy of the Guardian over the table at him.

“I’m home,” said Arthur.

“Yes,” said Ford. “One is,” he said, pointing at the date at the top of the paper, “that the Earth will be demolished in two days’ time.”

“I’m home,” said Arthur, “tea,” he said, “cricket,” he added, with pleasure, “mown grass, wooden benches, white linen jackets, beer cans.…”

Slowly he began to focus on the newspaper. He cocked his head on one side with a slight frown.

“I’ve seen that one before,” he said. His eyes wandered slowly up to the date, which Ford was idly tapping at. His face froze for a second or two and then began to do that terribly slow crashing trick that Arctic ice floes do so spectacularly in the spring.

“And the other thing,” said Ford, “is that you appear to have a bone in your beard.” He tossed back his tea.

Outside the refreshment tent, the sun was shining on a happy crowd. It shone on white hats and red faces. It shone on Popsicles and melted them. It shone on the tears of small children whose Popsicles had just melted and fallen off the stick. It shone on the trees, it flashed off whirling cricket bats, it gleamed off the utterly extraordinary object that was parked behind the sight screens and that nobody appeared to have noticed. It beamed on Ford and Arthur as they emerged blinking from the refreshment tent and surveyed the scene around them.