Douglas Adams - HHGTTG - The Lost Chapters

"Is that so?" Said Ford.

"That is so," said the barman.

"Well, buddy boy, I'm going to put you to the test," said Ford. "Do you know who is in our party? No? Zaphod Beeblebrox, that's who."

"Er, really?" Said the barman, swallowing hard.

Zaphod leaned against the bar, smiled, raised a hand and emitted his coolest 'Hi'.

"So mix one up and we'll see what Zaphod has to say," said Ford.

"It won't take a minute, Mr Beeblebrox," flustered the barman.

Zaphod placed all three hands on the bar and started breathing deeply. He rolled his heads in opposite directions, which caused a flutter of applause to come from the small crowd that had formed. A small camera hovered above the bar, transmitting the pictures to all the video screens in the night-club.

Zaphod started puffing and slapping his cheeks. He decided to use his right head for the drinking and his left head for the observing. He bent his knees and squatted down, his hands still on the bar. He blew loudly several times and stood upright. He turned to his audience, now quite large, and jogged on the spot. He thrust his arms up in a 'Rocky' type pose, one he had been mastering in front of the mirror, which started the applause again.

"I will need a silver spoon, preferably the one you used to make the drink, a timing device, a glass of water and a cloth," said Zaphod like a magician looking for volunteers. The barman dutifully produced all of these items and nervously placed them in front of Zaphod, who was staring at him like a boxer. The barman avoided Zaphod's eyes and put the drink down on the bar. The barman stood back and rubbed his hands together anxiously.

Zaphod sipped the glass of water, swilled it around in his mouth, gargled with it and spat it out. His suit had sensed the atmosphere of the moment and displayed dark, moody colours.

"Wait a minute!" Cried the barman. He ran over to the drink and dropped an olive in it. "I forgot, the heat of the moment."

Zaphod's glare shut him up. Zaphod lifted the glass to the light and squinted at it. He sniffed it as one would sniff smelling salts, knowing full well what they smelt like. He nodded and picked up the spoon. He scooped up a drop of the drink and switched on the timing device. Fumes smoked away from the spoon and when a hole appeared in the spoon, Zaphod stopped the timing device. He looked at the time and nodded again. He wiped away the residue liquid from the bar with the cloth before it started eating it's way through that. Zaphod rolled his heads again, much to the delight of the crowd and started puffing again. He took the glass in his hand, looked at the ceiling, looked at the barman, looked at the drink and then, while the left head watched closely, downed the drink in one.

Ford and Arthur helped Zaphod to his feet. He shook his heads and steadied himself.

"Well barman," said Zaphod hoarsely. "That was good, very good. Set up three for us."

The audience erupted, the barman cried and Arthur suddenly realised he was expected to drink one of these liquid stun guns.

"Don't worry," said Ford to Arthur, who was holding the glass as one would hold an anaconda. "Take it in sips, it's quite pleasant."

Arthur took a hesitant sip and screwed his face up in anticipation. There was no pain. It felt like slipping into a hot bath inside out.

"Not bad," he said, then found his body fulfilling an urgent desire to be horizontal.

"It'll take a while," said Ford, helping Arthur up. "Perhaps we should get you a Phodcaran Hurenge."

"Excuse me?" Asked Arthur. The two dolphins stopped chattering and turned to face him. "This will probably sound very silly and you will almost certainly have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'm from a planet called Earth and.."

"You're not!" Exclaimed one of the dolphins.

"You're pulling my flipper, surely!" Squealed the other.

"No I really am," said Arthur. "I was wondering if you could explain to me exactly what happened on Earth. You know, why it reappeared and you disappeared."

"Well you are talking to the right people, my name is Etats and this is Dilos," said Etats, offering his flipper, which Arthur shook. He fought the urge to throw Etats a fish and blow a whistle.

"We were behind the Campaign to Save the Humans," said Dilos.

"I got a bowl from you then," said Arthur.

"It can't be!" They sang in unison.

"Let me guess, ' said Arthur, but they didn't give him the chance.

"You must be the Arthur Dent."

"That's right."

"Out of vision, man. Is this one meeting to remember!" Said Etats.

"Let me get you a drink," said Dilos. He passed a container to Arthur. It was see-through with a straw poking through the lid. Arthur sipped the straw and was pleasantly surprised to taste gin and tonic. When he released the straw, he quickly put his finger over it to prevent any water getting in, being 10 metres under and sitting around a submerged table.

"Don't worry," said Etats. "Each cup has an artificial atmosphere in it to allow liquid out but not in."

"How clever," remarked Arthur, removing his finger.

"Now where shall we start?" Said Dilos. "We originally came from a planet called Dolph. It was a grotty planet really. It was in the same dimension as those bastards who wanted the ultimate answer to life, the Universe and everything."

"I know all about that," said Arthur.

"Terrible neighbours," said Etats. "We used to tap their information channels just to remind ourselves how lucky we were. Anyway, Deep Thought decided that Dolphins were to be part of the network. They approached us with this proposition to spend time on Earth and we accepted."

"Not because we wanted to help," interrupted Dilos.

"Oh no, we couldn't give a Jrevi Wooc about them," said Etats. "No, it just seemed like a good holiday spot. So we decided that we would work to get our planet in decent living order and holiday on Earth until the work was done. We worked shifts, half the workforce on Dolph, half on holiday. We arrived just before the Golgafrinchians. The hyper intelligent, pan dimensional beings hadn't arrived so we knew then it wasn't going to work. Still, we weren't going to tell them because the Earth was far superior to Dolph and we were having too much fun

"We loved the humans," continued Dilos. "Once all the cavemen died, the inbreeding of the Golgafrinchians reduced them to babbling idiots."

"How could you tell the difference?" Asked Arthur.

"Good point, because the hyper intelligent pan dimensional beings couldn't," laughed Etats. "That's why they didn't abort the whole thing. So modern man evolved from that time on. The mice moulded them through the years unaware they were wasting their time."

"No wonder you lot always seemed to be happy," said Arthur.

"We were," said Dilos. "But we felt sorry for the humans, because they treated us so well most of the time. So when we found out about the Vogon Constructor Fleet, we tried to warn you, but you didn't have Babel fish. So we started the Campaign to Save the Humans. No-one was particularly interested and the psychiatrists gave us a lot of trouble. They didn't believe us about the Golgafrinchians. They put it down to a childhood neurosis. Apart from saving the Humans, we didn't really fancy going back to Dolph, which was still in a pretty bad way."

"Then we had a stroke of luck," said Etats. "One of our great hobbies in the sea when we weren't on the surface was what you called 'hacking' on computers. That how we found out about the Vogons."

"You had computers in the sea?" Asked Arthur.

"Yes, not the sort you would have used but computers all the same," said Dilos.

"Sorry," said Arthur. "We've gone off track. Please continue with the story, I m fascinated."

"Okay," said Etats. "We were hacking the databanks of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation and got hold of a provisional press release about the launch of a new product, the Planetcopier. It was a device that could copy whole planets. Marvellous device but the Marketing Division had screwed up again. No-one needed it or could afford it. But it was perfect for us. We borrowed it on a ten day evaluation trial and took a perfect copy of the Earth the second before it blew up."