Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams [80]
At least, nearly anything.
She turned to look for the girl. That must be her, with the wild hair and wild eyes. The girl turned toward her. And stared.
“Mother!” she screamed, and started to hurl rocks at Tricia.
Chapter 22
Daylight exploded around them. Hot, heavy sun. A desert plain stretched out ahead in a haze of heat. They thundered out into it.
“Jump!” shouted Ford Prefect.
“What?” shouted Arthur Dent, holding on for dear life.
There was no reply.
“What did you say?” shouted Arthur again, and then realized that Ford Prefect was no longer there. He looked around in panic and started to slip. Realizing he couldn’t hold on any longer, he pushed himself sideways as hard as he could and rolled into a ball as he hit the ground, rolling, rolling away from the pounding hooves.
What a day, he thought, as he started furiously coughing dust up out of his lungs. He hadn’t had a day as bad as this since the Earth had been blown up. He staggered up to his knees, and then up to his feet and started to run away. He didn’t know what from or what to, but running away seemed a prudent move.
He ran straight into Ford Prefect, who was standing there surveying the scene.
“Look,” said Ford. “That is precisely what we need.”
Arthur coughed up some more dust and wiped some other dust out of his hair and eyes. He turned, panting, to look at what Ford was looking at.
It didn’t look much like the domain of a King, or the King, or any kind of King. It looked quite inviting, though.
First, the context. This was a desert world. The dusty earth was packed hard and had neatly bruised every last bit of Arthur that hadn’t been already bruised by the festivities of the previous night. Some way ahead of them were great cliffs that looked like sandstone, eroded by the wind and what little rain presumably fell in these parts into wild and fantastic shapes, which matched the fantastic shapes of the giant cacti that sprouted here and there from the arid, orange landscape.
For a moment Arthur dared to hope they had unexpectedly arrived in Arizona or New Mexico or maybe South Dakota, but there was plenty of evidence that this was not the case.
The Perfectly Normal Beasts, for a start, were still thundering, still pounding. They swept up in their tens of thousands from the far horizon, disappeared completely for about half a mile, then swept off, thundering and pounding to the distant horizon opposite.
Then there were the spaceships parked in front of the bar & grill. Ah. The Domain of the King Bar & Grill. Bit of an anticlimax, thought Arthur to himself.
In fact only one of the spaceships was parked in front of the Domain of the King Bar & Grill. The other three were in a parking lot by the side of the bar & grill. It was the one in front that caught the eye, though. Wonderful-looking thing. Wild fins all over it, far, far too much chrome all over the fins and most of the actual bodywork painted in a shocking pink. It crouched there like an immense brooding insect and looked as if it was at any moment about to jump on something about a mile away.
The Domain of the King Bar & Grill was slap bang in the middle of where the Perfectly Normal Beasts would be charging if they didn’t take a minor transdimensional diversion on the way. It stood on its own, undisturbed. An ordinary bar & grill. A truck-stop diner. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Quiet. The Domain of the King.
“Gonna buy that spaceship,” said Ford, quietly.
“Buy it?” said Arthur. “That’s not like you. I thought you usually pinched them.”
“Sometimes you have to show a little respect,” said Ford.
“Probably have to show a little cash as well,” said Arthur. “How the hell much is that thing worth?”
With a tiny movement, Ford brought his Dine-O-Charge credit card up out of his pocket. Arthur noticed that the hand holding it was trembling very slightly.
“I’ll teach them to make me the restaurant critic …” breathed Ford.
“What do