The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams [41]
Trillian cleared her throat.
“Is that…”
“The best conversation I had was over forty million years ago,” continued Marvin.
Again the pause.
“Oh d—”
“And that was with a coffee machine.”
He waited.
“That’s a—”
“You don’t like talking to me, do you?” said Marvin in a low desolate tone.
Trillian talked to Arthur instead.
Farther down the chamber Ford Prefect had found something of which he very much liked the look, several such things in fact.
“Zaphod,” he said in a quiet voice, “just look at some of these little star trolleys….”
Zaphod looked and liked.
The craft they were looking at was in fact pretty small but extraordinary, and very much a rich kid’s toy. It was not much to look at. It resembled nothing so much as a paper dart about twenty feet long made of thin but tough metal foil. At the rear end was a small horizontal two-man cockpit. It had a tiny charm-drive engine, which was not capable of moving it at any great speed. The thing it did have, however, was a heat-sink.
The heat-sink had a mass of some two thousand billion tons and was contained within a black hole mounted in an electromagnetic field situated halfway along the length of the ship, and this heat-sink enabled the craft to be maneuvered to within a few miles of a yellow sun, there to catch and ride the solar flares that burst out from its surface.
Flare riding is one of the most exotic and exhilarating sports in existence, and those who can dare and afford to do it are among the most lionized men in the Galaxy. It is also of course stupefyingly dangerous—those who don’t die riding invariably die of sexual exhaustion at one of the Daedalus Club’s Après-Flare parties.
Ford and Zaphod looked and passed on.
“And this baby,” said Ford, “the tangerine star buggy with the black sunbusters…”
Again, the star buggy was a small ship—a totally misnamed one in fact, because the one thing it couldn’t manage was interstellar distances. Basically it was a sporty planet hopper dolled up to look like something it wasn’t. Nice lines though. They passed on.
The next one was a big one and thirty yards long—a coach-limoship and obviously designed with one aim in mind, that of making the beholder sick with envy. The paintwork and accessory detail clearly said, “Not only am I rich enough to afford this ship, I am also rich enough not to take it seriously.” It was wonderfully hideous.
“Just look at it,” said Zaphod, “multicluster quark drive, perspulex running boards. Got to be a Lazlar Lyricon custom job.”
He examined every inch.
“Yes,” he said, “look, the infrapink lizard emblem on the neutrino cowling. Lazlar’s trademark. The man has no shame.”
“I was passed by one of these mothers once, out by the Axel Nebula,” said Ford. “I was going flat out and this thing just strolled past me, star drive hardly ticking over. Just incredible.”
Zaphod whistled appreciatively.
“Ten seconds later,” said Ford, “it smashed straight into the third moon of Jaglan Beta.”
“Yeah, right?”
“Amazing-looking ship though. Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow.”
Ford looked round the other side.
“Hey, come see,” he called out, “there’s a big mural painted on this side. A bursting sun—Disaster Area’s trademark. Thus must be Hotblack’s ship. Lucky old bugger. They do this terrible song you know which ends with a stuntship crashing into the sun. Meant to be an amazing spectacle. Expensive in stuntships though.”
Zaphod’s attention however was elsewhere. His attention was riveted on the ship standing next to Hotblack Desiato’s limo. His mouths hung open.
“That,” he said, “that… is really bad for the eyes….”
Ford looked. He too stood astonished.
It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon, twenty yards long, very clean, very sleek. There was just one remarkable thing about it.
“It’s so… black!” said Ford Prefect. “You can hardly make out its shape… light just seems to fall into it!”
Zaphod said nothing. He had simply fallen in love.
The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost impossible