The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams [51]
Ford moved over to a very thick dark transparent panel set in the outer wall. It was several layers deep, yet through it he could see pinpoints of distant stars.
“I think we’re in a spaceship of some kind,” he said.
Down the corridor came the sound of a dull stomping throb.
“Trillian?” called Arthur nervously. “Zaphod?’
Ford shrugged.
“Nowhere about,” he said, “I’ve looked. They could be anywhere. An unprogrammed teleport can throw you light-years in any direction. Judging by the way I feel I should think we’ve traveled a very long way indeed.”
“How do you feel?”
“Bad.”
“Do you think they’re…”
“Where they are, how they are, there’s no way we can know and no way we can do anything about it. Do what I do.”
“What?”
“Don’t think about it.”
Arthur turned this thought over in his mind, reluctantly saw the wisdom of it, tucked it up and put it away. He took a deep breath.
“Footsteps!” exclaimed Ford suddenly.
“Where?”
“That noise. That stomping throb. Pounding feet. Listen!”
Arthur listened. The noise echoed round the corridor at them from an indeterminate distance. It was the muffled sound of pounding footsteps, and it was noticeably louder.
“Let’s move,” said Ford sharply. They both moved—in opposite directions.
“Not that way,” said Ford. “That’s where they’re coming from.”
“No, it’s not,” said Arthur. “They’re coming from that way.”
“They’re not, they’re…”
They both stopped. They both turned. They both listened intently. They both agreed with each other. They both set off in opposite directions again.
Fear gripped them.
From both directions the noise was getting louder.
A few yards to their left another corridor ran at right angles to the inner wall. They ran to it and hurried along it. It was dark, immensely long and, as they passed down it, gave them the impression that it was getting colder and colder. Other corridors gave off it to the left and right, each very dark and each subjecting them to sharp blasts of icy air as they passed.
They stopped for a moment in alarm. The further down the corridor they went, the louder became the sound of pounding feet.
They pressed themselves back against the cold wall and listened furiously. The cold, the dark and the drumming of disembodied feet was getting to them badly. Ford shivered, partly with the cold, but partly with the memory of stories his favorite mother used to tell him when he was a mere slip of a Betelgeusian, ankle high to an Arcturan Megagrasshopper: stories of death ships, haunted hulks that roamed restlessly round the obscurer regions of deep space infested with demons or the ghosts of forgotten crews; stories too of incautious travelers who found and entered such ships; stories of—Then Ford remembered the brown hessian wall weave in the first corridor and pulled himself together. However ghosts and demons may choose to decorate their death hulks, he thought to himself, he would lay any money you liked it wasn’t with hessian wall weave. He grasped Arthur by the arm.
“Back the way we came,” he said firmly and they started to retrace their steps.
A moment later they leaped like startled lizards down the nearest corridor junction as the owners of the drumming feet suddenly hove into view directly in front of them.
Hidden behind the corner they goggled in amazement as about two dozen overweight men and women pounded past them in track suits panting and wheezing in a manner that would make a heart surgeon gibber.
Ford Prefect stared after them.
“Joggers!” he hissed, as the sound of their feet echoed away up and down the network of corridors.
“Joggers?” whispered Arthur Dent.
“Joggers,” said Ford Prefect with a shrug.
The corridor they were concealed in was not like the others. It was very short, and ended at a large steel door. Ford examined it, discovered the opening mechanism and pushed it wide.
The first thing that hit their eyes was what appeared to be a coffin.
And the next four thousand