So long, and thanks for all the fish [38]
Arthur held her left foot in his lap and looked it over carefully. All kinds of stuff about the way her dress fell away from her legs was making it difficult for him to think particularly clearly at this point.
"I have to admit," he said, "that I really don't know what I'm looking for."
"You'll know when you find it," she said. "Really you will." There was a slight catch in her voice. "It's not that one."
Feeling increasingly puzzled, Arthur let her left foot down on the floor and moved himself around so that he could take her right foot. She moved forward, put her arms round and kissed him, because the record had got to that bit which, if you knew the record, you would know made it impossible not to do this.
Then she gave him her right foot.
He stroked it, ran his fingers round her ankle, under her toes, along her instep, could find nothing wrong with it.
She watched him with great amusement, laughed and shook her head.
"No, don't stop," she said, but it's not that one now."
Arthur stopped, and frowned at her left foot on the floor.
"Don't stop."
He stroked her right foot, ran his fingers around her ankle, under her toes, along her instep and said, "You mean it's something to do with which leg I'm holding ...?"
She did another of the shrugs which would have brought such joy into the life of a simple cushion from Squornshellous Beta.
He frowned.
"Pick me up," she said quietly.
He let her right foot down to the floor and stood up. So did she. He picked her up in his arms and they kissed again. This went on for a while, then she said, "Now put me down again."
Still puzzled, he did so.
"Well?"
She looked at him almost challengingly.
"So what's wrong with my feet?" she said.
Arthur still did not understand. He sat on the floor, then got down on his hands and knees to look at her feet, in situ, as it were, in their normal habitat. And as he looked closely, something odd struck him. He pit his head right down to the ground and peered. There was a long pause. He sat back heavily.
"Yes," he said, "I see what's wrong with your feet. They don't touch the ground."
"So ... so what do you think ...?"
Arthur looked up at her quickly and saw the deep apprehension making her eyes suddenly dark. She bit her lip and was trembling.
"What do ..." she stammered. "Are you ...?" She shook the hair forwards over her eyes that were filling with dark fearful tears.
He stood up quickly, put his arms around her and gave her a single kiss.
"Perhaps you can do what I can do," he said, and walked straight out of her upstairs front door.
The record got to the good bit.
Chapter 23
The battle raged on about the star of Xaxis. Hundreds of the fierce and horribly beweaponed Zirzla ships had now been smashed and wrenched to atoms by the withering forces the huge silver Xaxisian ship was able to deploy.
Part of the moon had gone too, blasted away by those same blazing forceguns that ripped the very fabric of space as they passed through it.
The Zirzla ships that remained, horribly beweaponed though they were, were now hopelessly outclassed by the devastating power of the Xaxisian ship, and were fleeing for cover behind the rapidly disintegrating moon, when the Xaxisian ship, in hurtling pursuit behind them, suddenly announced that it needed a holiday and left the field of battle.
All was redoubled fear and consternation for a moment, but the ship was gone.
With the stupendous powers at its command it flitted across vast tracts of irrationally shaped space, quickly, effortlessly, and above all, quietly.
Deep in his greasy, smelly bunk, fashioned out of a maintenance hatchway, Ford Prefect slept among his towels, dreaming of old haunts. He dreamed