Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams [49]
He lay, panting heavily in the wet air, and tried feeling bits of himself to see where he might be hurt. Wherever he touched himself, he encountered a pain. After a short while he worked out that this was because it was his hand that was hurting. He seemed to have sprained his wrist. His back, too, was hurting, but he soon satisfied himself that he was not badly hurt, but just bruised and a little shaken, as who wouldn’t be. He couldn’t understand what a building would be doing flying through the clouds.
On the other hand, he would have been a little hard pressed to come up with any convincing explanation of his own presence, so he decided that he and the building were just going to have to accept each other. He looked up from where he was lying. A wall of pale but stained stone slabs rose up behind him, the building proper. He seemed to be stretched out on some sort of ledge or lip that extended outward for about three or four feet all the way around. It was a hunk of the ground in which the party building had had its foundations, and which it had taken along with itself to keep itself bound together at the bottom end.
Nervously, he stood up and suddenly, looking out over the edge, he felt nauseous with vertigo. He pressed himself back against the wall, wet with mist and sweat. His head was swimming freestyle, but his stomach was doing the butterfly.
Even though he had got up here under his own power, he could now not even bear to contemplate the hideous drop in front of him. He was not about to try his luck jumping. He was not about to move an inch closer to the edge.
Clutching his tote bag he edged along the wall, hoping to find a doorway in. The solid weight of the can of olive oil was a great reassurance to him.
He was edging in the direction of the nearest corner, in the hope that the wall around the corner might offer more in the way of entrances than this one, which offered none.
The unsteadiness of the building’s flight made him feel sick with fear, and, after a short time, he took the towel from out of his bag, and did something with it which once again justified its supreme position in the list of useful things to take with you when you hitchhike round the Galaxy—he put it over his head so he wouldn’t have to see what he was doing.
His feet edged along the ground. His outstretched hand edged along the wall.
Finally he came to the corner, and as his hand rounded the corner, it encountered something that gave him such a shock he nearly fell off. It was another hand.
The two hands gripped each other.
He desperately wanted to use his other hand to pull the towel away from his eyes, but it was holding the bag with the olive oil, the retsina and the postcards of Santorini, and he very much didn’t want to put it down.
He experienced one of those “self moments, one of those moments when you suddenly turn around and look at yourself and think”Who am I? What am I up to? What have I achieved? Am I doing well?” He whimpered very slightly.
He tried to free his hand, but he couldn’t. The other hand was holding his tightly. He had no recourse but to edge onward toward the corner. He leaned around it and shook his head in an attempt to dislodge the towel. This seemed to provoke a sharp cry of some unfathomable emotion from the owner of the other hand.
The towel was whipped from his head and he found his eyes peering into those of Ford Prefect. Beyond him stood Slartibartfast, and beyond them he could clearly see a porchway and a large closed door.
They were both pressed back against the wall, eyes wild with terror as they stared out into the thick blind cloud around them, and tried to resist the lurching and swaying of the building.
“Where the zarking photon have you been?” hissed Ford, panic-stricken.
“Er, well,” stuttered Arthur, not really knowing how to sum it all up that briefly, “here and there. What are you doing here?”
Ford turned his wild eyes on Arthur again.
“They won’t let us in without a bottle,