The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams [49]
“Well, just over here in fact,” said Arthur, pointing at a dark control box in the rear of the cabin. “Just under the word emergency, above the word system and beside the sign saying out of order.
In the pandemonium that instantly followed, the only action to follow was that of Ford Prefect lunging across the cabin to the small black box that Arthur had indicated and stabbing repeatedly at the single small black button set into it.
A six-foot square panel slid open beside it revealing a compartment which resembled a multiple shower unit that had found a new function in life as an electrician’s junk store. Half-finished wiring hung from the ceiling, a jumble of abandoned components lay strewn on the floor, and the programming panel lolled out of the cavity in the wall into which it should have been secured.
A junior Disaster Area accountant, visiting the shipyard where this ship was being constructed, had demanded to know of the works foreman why the hell they were fitting an extremely expensive teleport into a ship which only had one important journey to make, and that unmanned. The foreman had explained that the teleport was available at a ten percent discount and the accountant had explained that this was immaterial; the foreman had explained that it was the finest, most powerful and sophisticated teleport that money could buy and the accountant had explained that the money did not wish to buy it; the foreman had explained that people would still need to enter and leave the ship and the accountant had explained that the ship sported a perfectly serviceable door; the foreman had explained that the accountant could go and boil his head and the accountant had explained to the foreman that the thing approaching him rapidly from his left was a knuckle sandwich. After the explanations had been concluded, work was discontinued on the teleport which subsequently passed unnoticed on the invoice as “Sund. explns.” at five times the price.
“Hell’s donkeys,” muttered Zaphod as he and Ford attempted to sort through the tangle of wiring.
After a moment or so Ford told him to stand back. He tossed a coin into the teleport and jiggled a switch on the lolling control panel. With a crackle and spit of light, the coin vanished.
“That much of it works,” said Ford, “however, there is no guidance system. A matter transference teleport with no guidance programming could put you… well, anywhere.”
The sun of Kakrafoon loomed huge on the screen.
“Who cares,” said Zaphod; “we go where we go.”
“And,” said Ford, “there is no autosystem. We couldn’t all go. Someone would have to stay and operate it.”
A solemn moment shuffled past. The sun loomed larger and larger.
“Hey, Marvin kid,” said Zaphod brightly, “how you doing?”
“Very badly I suspect,” muttered Marvin.
A shortish while later, the concert on Kakrafoon reached an unexpected climax.
The black ship with its single morose occupant had plunged on schedule into the nuclear furnace of the sun. Massive solar flares licked out from it millions of miles into space, thrilling and in a few cases spilling the dozen or so flare riders who had been coasting close to the surface of the sun in anticipation of the moment.
Moments before the flare light reached Kakrafoon the pounding desert cracked along a deep faultline. A huge and hitherto undetected underground river lying far beneath the surface gushed to the surface to be followed seconds later by the eruption of millions of tons of boiling lava that flowed hundreds of feet into the air, instantaneously vaporizing the river both above and below the surface in an explosion that echoed to the far side of the world and back again.
Those—very few—who witnessed the event and survived swear that the whole hundred thousand square miles of the desert rose into the air like a mile-thick pancake, flipped itself over and fell back down. At that precise moment the solar radiation from the flares filtered through the clouds of vaporized water and struck the ground.
A year later, the hundred thousand square mile desert was thick with flowers. The structure