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And at the end they travelled again.

There was a time when Arthur Dent would not. He said that the Bistromathic Drive had revealed to him that time and distance were one, that mind and Universe were one, that perception and reality were one, and that the more one travelled the more one stayed in one place, and that what with one thing and another he would rather just stay put for a while and sort it all out in his mind, which was now at one with the Universe so it shouldn’t take too long, and he could get a good rest afterwards, put in a little flying practice and learn to cook which he had always meant to do. The can of Greek olive oil was now his most prized possession, and he said that the way it had unexpectedly turned up in his life had again given him a certain sense of the oneness of things which made him feel that…

He yawned and fell asleep.

In the morning as they prepared to take him to some quiet and idyllic planet where they wouldn’t mind him talking like that they suddenly picked up a computer-driven distress call and diverted to investigate.

A small but apparently undamaged spacecraft of the Merida class seemed to be dancing a strange little jig through the void. A brief computer scan revealed that the ship was fine, its computer was fine, but that its pilot was mad.

– Half-mad, half-mad, - the man insisted as they carried him, raving, aboard.

He was a journalist with the Siderial Daily Mentioner. They sedated him and sent Marvin in to keep him company until he promised to try and talk sense.

– I was covering a trial, - he said at last, - on Argabuthon.

He pushed himself up on to his thin wasted shoulders, his eyes stared wildly. His white hair seemed to be waving at someone it knew in the next room.

– Easy, easy, - said Ford. Trillian put a soothing hand on his shoulder.

The man sank back down again and stared at the ceiling of the ship’s sick bay.

– The case, - he said, - is now immaterial, but there was a witness… a witness… a man called… called Prak. A strange and difficult man. They were eventually forced to administer a drug to make him tell the truth, a truth drug.

His eyes rolled helplessly in his head.

– They gave him too much, - he said in a tiny whimper. - They gave him much too much. - He started to cry. - I thing the robots must have jogged the surgeon’s arm.

– Robots? - said Zaphod sharply. - What robots?

– Some white robots, - whispered the man hoarsely, - broke into the courtroom and stole the judge’s sceptre, the Argabuthon Sceptre of Justice, nasty Perspex thing. I don’t know why they wanted it. - He began to cry again. - And I think they jogged the surgeon’s arm…

He shook his head loosely from side to side, helplessly, sadly, his eyes screwed up in pain.

– And when the trial continued, - he said in a weeping whisper, - they asked Prak a most unfortunate thing. They asked him, - he paused and shivered, - to tell the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth. Only, don’t you see?

He suddenly hoisted himself up on to his elbows again and shouted at them.

– They’d given him much too much of the drug!

He collapsed again, moaning quietly.

– Much too much too much too much too…

The group gathered round his bedside glanced at each other. There were goose pimples on backs.

– What happened? - said Zaphod at last.

– Oh, he told it all right, - said the man savagely, - for all I know he’s still telling it now. Strange, terrible things… terrible, terrible! - he screamed.

They tried to calm him, but he struggled to his elbows again.

– Terrible things, incomprehensible things, - he shouted, - things that would drive a man mad!

He stared wildly at them.

– Or in my case, - he said, - half-mad. I’m a journalist.

– You mean, - said Arthur quietly, - that you are used to confronting the truth?

– No, - said the man with a puzzled frown. - I mean that I made an excuse and left early.

He collapsed into a coma from which he recovered only once and briefly.

On that one occasion, they discovered from him the following:

When it became clear that Prak could not be stopped, that here was truth in its absolute and final form, the court was cleared.

Not only cleared, it was sealed up, with Prak still in it. Steel walls were erected around it, and, just to be on the safe side, barbed wire, electric fences, crocodile swamps and three major armies were installed, so that no one would ever have to hear Prak speak.

– That’s a pity, - said Arthur. - I’d like to hear what he had to say. Presumably he would know what the Ultimate Question to the Ultimate Answer is. It’s always bothered me that we never found out.

– Think of a number, - said the computer, - any number.

Arthur told the computer the telephone number of King’s Cross railway station passenger inquiries, on the grounds that it must have some function, and this might turn out to be it.

The computer injected the number into the ship’s reconstituted Improbability Drive.

In Relativity, Matter tells Space how to curve, and Space tells Matter how to move.

The Heart of Gold told space to get knotted, and parked itself neatly within the inner steel perimeter of the Argabuthon Chamber of Law.

The courtroom was an austere place, a large dark chamber, clearly designed for Justice rather than, for instance, for Pleasure. You wouldn’t hold a dinner party here - at least, not a successful one. The decor would get your guests down.

The ceilings were high, vaulted and very dark. Shadows lurked there with grim determination. The panelling for the walls and benches, the cladding of the heavy pillars, all were carved from the darkest and most severe trees in the fearsome Forest of Arglebard. The massive black Podium of Justice which dominated the centre of the chamber was a monster of gravity. If a sunbeam had ever managed to slink this far into the Justice complex of Argabuthon it would have turned around and slunk straight back out again.

Arthur and Trillian were the first in, whilst Ford and Zaphod bravely kept a watch on their rear.

At first it seemed totally dark and deserted. their footsteps echoed hollowly round the chamber. This seemed curious. All the defences were still in position and operative around the outside of the building, they had run scan checks. Therefore, they had assumed, the truth-telling must still be going on.

But there was nothing.

Then, as their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, they spotted a dull red glow in a corner, and behind the glow a live shadow. They swung a torch round on to it.

Prak was lounging on a bench, smoking a listless cigarette.

– Hi, - he said, with a little half-wave. His voice echoed through the chamber. He was a little man with scraggy hair. He sat with his shoulders hunched forward and his head and knees kept jiggling. He took a drag of his cigarette.

They stared at him.

– What’s going on? - said Trillian.

– Nothing, - said the man and jiggled his shoulders.

Arthur shone his torch full on Prak’s face.

– We thought, - he said, - that you were meant to be telling the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth.

– Oh, that, - said Prak. - Yeah. I was. I finished. There’s not nearly as much of it as people imagine. Some of it’s pretty funny, though.

He suddenly exploded in about three seconds of manical laughter and stopped again. he sat there, jiggling his head and knees. He dragged on his cigarette with a strange half-smile.

Ford and Zaphod came forward out of the shadows.

– Tell us about it, - said Ford.

– Oh, I can’t remember any of it now, - said Prak. - I thought of writing some of it down, but first I couldn’t find a pencil, and then I thought, why bother?