So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish - Douglas Adams [57]
Completely at random he pointed at Arthur and Fenchurch, who wrestled their way back out of the crowd and clustered urgently round the taxi.
“All right, I want you to clear a passage, please, for some important pieces of scientific equipment,” boomed Ford. “Just everybody keep calm. It’s all under control, there’s nothing to see. It is merely a major scientific breakthrough. Keep calm now. Important scientific equipment. Clear the way.”
Hungry for new excitement, delighted at this sudden reprieve from disappointment, the crowd enthusiastically fell back and started to open up.
Arthur was a little surprised to see what was printed on the boxes of important scientific equipment in the back of the taxi.
“Hang your coat over them,” he muttered to Fenchurch as he heaved them out to her. Hurriedly, he maneuvered out the large supermarket cart that was also jammed against the back seat. It clattered to the ground, and together they loaded the boxes into it.
“Clear a path, please,” shouted Ford again. “Everything’s under proper scientific control.”
“He said you’d pay,” said the taxi driver to Arthur, who dug out some notes and paid him. There was the distant sound of police sirens.
“Move along there,” shouted Ford, “and no one will get hurt.”
The crowd surged and closed behind them again, as frantically they pushed and hauled the rattling supermarket cart through the rubble toward the ramp.
“It’s all right,” Ford continued to bellow. “There’s nothing to see, it’s all over. None of this is actually happening.”
“Clear the way, please,” boomed a police megaphone from the back of the crowd. “There’s been a break-in, clear the way.”
“Breakthrough,” yelled Ford in competition. “A scientific breakthrough.”
“This is the police! Clear the way!”
“Scientific equipment! Clear the way!”
“Police! Let us through!”
“Walkmen!” yelled Ford, and pulled half a dozen miniature tape players from his pockets and tossed them into the crowd. The resulting seconds of utter confusion allowed them to get the supermarket cart to the edge of the ramp, and to haul it up onto the lip of it.
“Hold tight,” muttered Ford, and released a button on his Electronic Thumb. Beneath them, the huge ramp shuddered and began slowly to heave its way upward.
“OK, kids,” he said as the milling crowd dropped away beneath them and they started to lurch their way along the tilting ramp into the bowels of the ship, “looks like we’re on our way.”
Chapter 39
rthur Dent was irritated to be continually wakened by the sound of gunfire.
Being careful not to wake Fenchurch, who was still managing to sleep fitfully, he slid his way out of the maintenance hatchway that they had fashioned into a kind of bunk for themselves, slung himself down the access ladder, and prowled the corridors moodily.
They were claustrophobic and ill-lit. The lighting circuits buzzed annoyingly.
That wasn’t it, though.
He paused and leaned backward as a flying power drill flew past him down the dim corridor with a screech, occasionally clanging against the walls like a confused bee.
That wasn’t it either.
He clambered through a bulkhead door and found himself in a large corridor. Acrid smoke was drifting up from one end so he walked toward the other.
He came to an observation monitor let into the wall behind a plate of toughened but still badly scratched Plexiglas.
“Would you turn it down please?” he asked Ford Prefect who was crouching in front of it in the middle of a pile of bits of video equipment he’d taken from a shop window in Tottenham Court Road, having first hurled a small brick through it, and also a heap of empty beer cans.
“Shhhh!” hissed Ford, and peered with manic concentration at the screen. He was watching The Magnificent Seven.
“Just a bit,” said Arthur.
“No!” shouted Ford. “We’re just getting to the good bit! Listen, I finally got it all sorted out, voltage levels, line conversion, everything, and this is the good bit!”
With a sigh and a headache, Arthur sat down beside him and watched the good bit. He listened