All there had been was the “whop.”

It seemed an awfully long way to bring an awfully large number of people just to say one word.

He started nervously to edge his way in the direction of the bridge. There at least he would feel in control. He stopped again. The way he was feeling he didn’t think he was an awfully good person to be in control.

The first shock of that moment, thinking back, had been discovering that he actually had a soul.

In fact he’d always more or less assumed that he had one as he had a full complement of everything else, and indeed two of some things, but suddenly actually to encounter the thing lurking there deep within him had given him a severe jolt.

And then to discover (this was the second shock) that it wasn’t the totally wonderful object that he felt a man in his position had a natural right to expect had jolted him again.

Then he had thought about what his position actually was and the renewed shock had nearly made him spill his drink. He drained it quickly before anything serious happened to it. He then had another quick one to follow the first one down and check that it was all right.

“Freedom,” he said aloud.

Trillian came onto the bridge at that point and said several enthusiastic things on the subject of freedom.

“I can’t cope with it,” he said darkly, and sent a third drink down to see why the second hadn’t yet reported on the condition of the first. He looked uncertainly at both of her and preferred the one on the right.

He poured a drink down his other throat with the plan that it would head the previous one off at the pass, join forces with it, and together they would get the second to pull itself together. Then all three would go off in search of the first, give it a good talking to.

He felt uncertain as to whether the fourth drink had understood all that so he sent down a fifth to explain the plan more fully and a sixth for moral support.

“You’re drinking too much,” said Trillian.

His heads collided trying to sort out the four of her he could now see into a whole person. He gave up and looked at the navigation screen and was astonished to see a quite phenomenal number of stars.

“Excitement and adventure and really wild things,” he muttered.

“Look,” she said in a sympathetic tone of voice, and sat down near him, “it’s quite understandable that you’re going to feel a little aimless for a bit.”

He boggled at her. He had never seen anyone sit on their own lap before.

“Wow,” he said. He had another drink.

“You’ve finished the mission you’ve been on for years.”

“I haven’t been on it. I’ve tried to avoid being on it.”

“You’ve still finished it.”

He grunted. There seemed to be a terrific party going on in his stomach.

“I think it finished me,” he said. “Here I am, Zaphod Beeblebrox, I can go anywhere, do anything. I have the greatest ship in the known sky, a girl with whom things seem to be working out pretty well.…”

“Are they?”

“As far as I can tell. I’m not an expert in personal relationships.…”

Trillian raised her eyebrows.

“I am,” he added, “one hell of a guy, I can do anything I want only I just don’t have the faintest idea what.”

He paused.

“One thing,” he further added, “has suddenly ceased to lead to another,” in contradiction of which he had another drink and slid gracelessly off his chair.

While he slept it off, Trillian did a little research in the ship’s copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It had some advice to offer on drunkenness.

“Go to it,” it said, “and good luck.”

It was cross-referenced to the entry concerning the size of the Universe and ways of coping with that.

Then she found the entry on Han Wavel, an exotic holiday planet, and one of the wonders of the Galaxy. Han Wavel is a world that consists largely of fabulous ultraluxury hotels and casinos, all of which have been formed by the natural erosion of wind and rain.

The chances of this happening are more or less one to infinity against. Little is known of how this came about because none of the geophysicists, probability statisticians, meteoranalysts or bizarrologists who are so keen to research it can afford to stay there.

“Terrific,” thought Trillian to herself, and within a few hours, the great white running shoe ship was slowly powering down out of the sky beneath a hot brilliant sun toward a brightly colored sandy spaceport. The ship was clearly causing a sensation on the ground, and Trillian was enjoying herself. She heard Zaphod moving around and whistling somewhere in the ship.

“How are you?” she said over the general intercom.

“Fine,” he said brightly, “terribly well.”

“Where are you?”

“In the bathroom.”

“What are you doing?”

“Staying here.”

After an hour or two it became clear that he meant it and the ship returned to the sky without having once opened its hatchway.

“Heigh-ho,” said Eddie the Computer.

Trillian nodded patiently, tapped her fingers a couple of times and pushed the intercom switch.

“I think that enforced fun is probably not what you need at this point.”

“Probably not,” replied Zaphod from wherever he was.

“I think a bit of physical challenge would help draw you out of yourself.”

“Whatever you think, I think,” said Zaphod.

RECREATIONAL IMPOSSIBILITIES was a heading that caught Trillian’s eye when, a short while later, she sat down to flip through the Guide again, and as the Heart of Gold rushed at improbable speeds in an indeterminate direction, she sipped a cup of something undrinkable from the Nutri-matic Drinks Dispenser and read about how to fly.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying.

There is an art, it says, or, rather, a knack to flying.

The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.

The first part is easy.

All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt.

That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.

Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.

Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.

One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It’s no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won’t. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you’re halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss it.

It is notoriously difficult to prize your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people’s failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.

If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinity, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.

This is a moment for superb and delicate concentration.

Bob and float, float and bob.

Ignore all considerations of your own weight and simply let yourself waft higher.

Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this point because they are unlikely to say anything helpful.

They are most likely to say something along the lines of “Good God, you can’t possibly be flying!”