Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams [69]
Quite a few thoughts collided in Arthur Dent’s mind at this moment, but he didn’t seem to be able to stop running. Time suddenly seemed to be going terribly, terribly slowly, but still he didn’t seem to be able to stop running.
Moving as if through syrup he slowly turned his troubled head and looked at his own hand, the hand that was holding the small hard red ball.
His feet were pounding slowly onward, unstoppably, as he stared at the ball gripped in his helpless hand. It was emitting a deep red glow, and flashing intermittently. And still his feet were pounding inexorably forward.
He looked at the Krikkit robot again standing implacably still and purposeful in front of him, battleclub raised in readiness. Its eyes were burning with a deep cold fascinating light, and Arthur could not move his own eyes from them. He seemed to be looking down a tunnel at them—nothing on either side seemed to exist.
Some of the thoughts that were colliding in his mind at this time were these:
He felt a hell of a fool.
He felt that he should have listened rather more carefully to a number of things he had heard said, phrases that now pounded round his mind as his feet pounded onward to the point where he would inevitably release the ball to the Krikkit robot, who would inevitably strike it.
He remembered Hactar saying, “Have I failed? Failure doesn’t bother me.”
He remembered the account of Hactar’s dying words, “What’s done is done. I have fulfilled my function.”
He remembered Hactar saying that he had managed to make “a few things.”
He remembered the sudden movement in his tote bag that had made him grip it tightly to himself when he was in the Dust Cloud.
He remembered that he had traveled back in time a couple of days to come to Lord’s again.
He also remembered that he wasn’t a very good bowler.
He felt his arm coming round, gripping tightly onto the ball that he now knew for certain was the supernova bomb, which Hactar had built himself and planted on him, the bomb which would cause the Universe to come to an abrupt and premature end.
He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.
He would feel very, very embarrassed meeting everybody.
He hoped, he hoped, he hoped that his bowling was as bad as he remembered it to be, because that seemed to be the only thing now standing between this moment and universal oblivion.
He felt his legs pounding, he felt his arm coming round, he felt his feet connecting with the airline bag he’d stupidly left lying on the ground in front of him, he felt himself falling heavily forward, but having his mind so terribly full of other things at this point, he completely forgot about hitting the ground and didn’t.
Still holding the ball firmly in his right hand he soared up into the air whimpering with surprise.
He wheeled and whirled through the air, spinning out of control.
He twisted down toward the ground, flinging himself hectically through the air, at the same time hurling the bomb harmlessly off into the distance.
He hurtled toward the astounded robot from behind. It still had its multifunctional battleclub raised, but had suddenly been deprived of anything to hit.
With a sudden mad outburst of strength, he wrested the battleclub from the grip of the startled robot, executed a dazzling banking turn in the air, hurtled back down in a furious power dive and with one crazy swing knocked the robot’s head from the robot’s shoulders.
“Are you coming now?” said Ford.
Chapter 34
nd at the end they traveled again.
There was a time when Arthur Dent would not. He said that the Bistromathic Drive had revealed to him that time and distance were one, that mind and Universe were one, that perception and reality were one, and that the more one traveled the