It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly be right.

Waft higher and higher.

Try a few swoops, gentle ones at first, then drift above the treetops breathing regularly.

DO NOT WAVE AT ANYBODY.

When you have done this a few times you will find the moment of distraction rapidly becomes easier and easier to achieve.

You will then learn all sorts of things about how to control your flight, your speed, your maneuverability, and the trick usually lies in not thinking too hard about whatever you want to do, but just allowing it to happen as if it were going to anyway.

You will also learn about how to land properly, which is something you will almost certainly screw up, and screw up badly, on your first attempt.

There are private flying clubs you can join which help you achieve the all-important moment of distraction. They hire people with surprising bodies or opinions to leap out from behind bushes and exhibit and/or explain them at the critical moments. Few genuine hitchhikers will be able to afford to join these clubs, but some may be able to get temporary employment at them.

Trillian read this longingly, but reluctantly decided that Zaphod wasn’t really in the right frame of mind for attempting to fly, or for walking through mountains or for trying to get the Brantisvogan Civil Service to acknowledge a change of address card, which were the other things listed under the heading of RECREATIONAL IMPOSSIBILITIES.

Instead, she flew the ship to Allosimanius Syneca, a world of ice, snow, mind-hurtling beauty and stunning cold. The trek from the snow plains of Liska to the summit of the Ice Crystal Pyramids of Sastantua is long and grueling, even with jet skis and a team of Syneca Snowhounds, but the view from the top, a view which takes in the Stin Glacier Fields, the shimmering Prism Mountains and the far ethereal dancing icelights, is one which first freezes the mind and then slowly releases it to hitherto unexperienced horizons of beauty, and Trillian, for one, felt that she could do with a bit of having her mind slowly released to hitherto unexperienced horizons of beauty.

They went into a low orbit.

There lay the silverwhite beauty of Allosimanius Syneca beneath them.

Zaphod stayed in bed with one head stuck under a pillow and the other doing crosswords till late into the night.

Trillian nodded patiently again, counted to a sufficiently high number, and told herself that the important thing now was just to get Zaphod talking.

She prepared, by dint of deactivating all the robot kitchen synthomatics, the most fabulously delicious meal she could contrive — delicately oiled meats, scented fruits, fragrant cheeses, fine Aldebaran wines.

She carried it through to him and asked if he felt like talking things through.

“Zark off,” said Zaphod.

Trillian nodded patiently to herself, counted to an even higher number, tossed the tray lightly aside, walked to the transport room and just teleported herself the hell out of his life.

She didn’t even program any coordinates, she hadn’t the faintest idea where she was going, she just went — a random row of dots flowing through the Universe.

“Anything,” she said to herself as she left, “is better than this.”

“Good job, too,” muttered Zaphod to himself, turned over and failed to go to sleep.

The next day he restlessly paced the empty corridors of the ship, pretending not to look for her, though he knew she wasn’t there. He ignored the computer’s querulous demands to know just what the hell was going on around here by fitting a small electronic gag across a pair of its terminals.

After a while he began to turn down the lights. There was nothing to see. Nothing was about to happen.

Lying in bed one night — and night was now virtually continuous on the ship — he decided to pull himself together, to get things into some kind of perspective. He sat up sharply and started to pull clothes on. He decided that there must be someone in the Universe feeling more wretched, miserable and forsaken than himself, and he determined to set out and find him.

Halfway to the bridge it occurred to him that it might be Marvin and he returned to bed.

It was a few hours later than this as he stomped disconsolately about the darkened corridors swearing at cheerful doors, that he heard the “whop” said, and it made him very nervous.

He leaned tensely against the corridor wall and frowned like a man trying to unbend a corkscrew by telekinesis. He laid his fingertips against the wall and felt an unusual vibration. And now he could quite clearly hear slight noises, and could hear where they were coming from — they were coming from the bridge.

Moving his hand along the wall he came across something he was glad to find. He moved on a little farther, quietly.

“Computer?” he hissed.

“Mmmm?” said the computer terminal nearest him, equally quietly.

“Is there someone on this ship?”

“Mmmm,” said the computer.

“Who is it?”

“Mmmm mmm mmmmm,” said the computer.

“What?”

“Mmmmm mmmm mm mmmmmmmm.”

Zaphod buried one of his faces in two of his hands.

“Oh, Zarquon,” he muttered to himself. Then he stared up the corridor toward the entrance to the bridge in the dim distance from which more and purposeful noises were coming, and in which the gagged terminals were situated.

“Computer,” he hissed again.

“Mmmmm?”

“When I ungag you …”

“Mmmmm.”

“Remind me to punch myself in the mouth.”

“Mmmmm mmm?”

“Either one. Now just tell me this. One for yes, two for no. Is it dangerous?”

“Mmmm.”

“It is?”

“Mmmm.”

“You didn’t just go ‘mmmm’ twice?”

“Mmmm mmm.”

“Hmmmm.”

He inched his way up the corridor as if he would rather be yarding his way down it, which was true.

He was within two yards of the door to the bridge when he suddenly realized to his horror that it was going to be nice to him, and he stopped dead. He hadn’t been able to turn off the door’s courtesy voice circuits.

This doorway to the bridge was concealed from view within it because of the excitingly chunky way in which the bridge had been designed to curve round, and he had been hoping to enter unobserved.

He leaned despondently back against the wall again and said some words that his other head was quite shocked to hear.

He peered at the dim pink outline of the door, and discovered that in the darkness of the corridor he could just about make out the Sensor Field that extended out into the corridor and told the door when there was someone there for whom it must open and to whom it must make a cheery and pleasant remark.

He pressed himself hard back against the wall and edged himself toward the door, flattening his chest as much as he possibly could to avoid brushing against the very, very dim perimeter of the field. He held his breath, and congratulated himself on having lain in bed sulking for the last few days rather than trying to work out his feelings on chest expanders in the ship’s gym.

He then realized he was going to have to speak at this point.

He took a series of very shallow breaths, and then said as quickly and as quietly as he could, “Door, if you can hear me, say so very, very quietly.”

Very, very quietly, the door murmured, “I can hear you.”

“Good. Now, in a moment, I’m going to ask you to open. When you open I do not want you to say that you enjoyed it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And I don’t want you to say to me that I have made a simple door very happy, or that it is your pleasure to open for me and your satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And I do not want you to ask me to have a nice day, understand?”

“I understand.”

“Okay,” said Zaphod, tensing himself, “open now.”