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Smoke and flame billowed from the pitch.

– Well, the supernatural brigade certainly seems to be out in force here today… - burbled a radio happily to itself.

– What I need, - shouted Ford, by way of clarifying his previous remarks, - is a strong drink and a peer-group. - He continued to run, pausing only for a moment to grab Arthur’s arm and drag him along with him. Arthur had adopted his normal crisis role, which was to stand with his mouth hanging open and let it all wash over him.

– They’re playing cricket, - muttered Arthur, stumbling along after Ford. - I swear they are playing cricket. I do not know why they are doing this, but that is what they are doing. They’re not just killing people, they’re sending them up, - he shouted, - Ford, they’re sending us up!

It would have been hard to disbelieve this without knowing a great deal more Galactic history than Arthur had so far managed to pick up in his travels. The ghostly but violent shapes that could be seen moving within the thick pall of smoke seemed to be performing a series of bizarre parodies of batting strokes, the difference being that every ball they struck with their bats exploded wherever it landed. The very first one of these had dispelled Arthur’s initial reaction, that the whole thing might just be a publicity stunt by Australian margarine manufacturers.

And then, as suddenly as it had all started, it was over. The eleven white robots ascended through the seething cloud in a tight formation, and with a few last flashes of flame entered the bowels of their hovering white ship, which, with the noise of a hundred thousand people saying “foop”, promptly vanished into the thin air out of which it had wopped.

For a moment there was a terrible stunned silence, and then out of the drifting smoke emerged the pale figure of Slartibartfast looking even more like Moses because in spite of the continued absence of the mountain he was at least now striding across a fiery and smoking well-mown lawn.

He stared wildly about him until he saw the hurrying figures of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect forcing their way through the frightened crowd which was for the moment busy stampeding in the opposite direction. The crowd was clearly thinking to itself about what an unusual day this was turning out to be, and not really knowing which way, if any, to turn.

Slartibartfast was gesturing urgently at Ford and Arthur and shouting at them, as the three of them gradually converged on his ship, still parked behind the sight-screens and still apparently unnoticed by the crowd stampeding past it who presumably had enough of their own problems to cope with at that time.

– They’ve garble warble farble! - shouted Slartibartfast in his thin tremulous voice.

– What did he say? - panted Ford as he elbowed his way onwards.

Arthur shook his head.

– “They’ve…” something or other, - he said.

– They’ve table warble farble! - shouted Slartibartfast again.

Ford and Arthur shook their heads at each other.

– It sounds urgent, - said Arthur. He stopped and shouted.

– What?

– They’ve garble warble fashes! - cried Slartibartfast, still waving at them.

– He says, - said Arthur, - that they’ve taken the Ashes. That is what I think he says. - They ran on.

– The?… - said Ford.

– Ashes, - said Arthur tersely. - The burnt remains of a cricket stump. It’s a trophy. That… - he was panting, - is… apparently… what they… have come and taken. - He shook his head very slightly as if he was trying to get his brain to settle down lower in his skull.

– Strange thing to want to tell us, - snapped Ford.

– Strange thing to take.

– Strange ship.

They had arrived at it. The second strangest thing about the ship was watching the Somebody Else’s Problem field at work. They could now clearly see the ship for what it was simply because they knew it was there. It was quite apparent, however, that nobody else could. This wasn’t because it was actually invisible or anything hyper-impossible like that. The technology involved in making anything invisible is so infinitely complex that nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand million, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a billion it is much simpler and more effective just to take the thing away and do without it. The ultra-famous sciento-magician Effrafax of Wug once bet his life that, given a year, he could render the great megamountain Magramal entirely invisible.

Having spent most of the year jiggling around with immense Lux-O-Valves and Refracto-Nullifiers and Spectrum-Bypass-O-Matics, he realized, with nine hours to go, that he wasn’t going to make it.

So, he and his friends, and his friends’ friends, and his friends’ friends’ friends, and his friends’ friends’ friends’ friends, and some rather less good friends of theirs who happened to own a major stellar trucking company, put in what now is widely recognized as being the hardest night’s work in history, and, sure enough, on the following day, Magramal was no longer visible. Effrafax lost his bet - and therefore his life - simply because some pedantic adjudicating official noticed (a) that when walking around the area that Magramal ought to be he didn’t trip over or break his nose on anything, and (b) a suspicious-looking extra moon.

The Somebody Else’s Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what’s more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people’s natural disposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.

And this is precisely what was happening with Slartibartfast’s ship. It wasn’t pink, but if it had been, that would have been the least of its visual problems and people were simply ignoring it like anything.

The most extraordinary thing about it was that it looked only partly like a spaceship with guidance fins, rocket engines and escape hatches and so on, and a great deal like a small upended Italian bistro.

Ford and Arthur gazed up at it with wonderment and deeply offended sensibilities.

– Yes, I know, - said Slartibartfast, hurrying up to them at that point, breathless and agitated, - but there is a reason. Come, we must go. The ancient nightmare is come again. Doom confronts us all. We must leave at once.

– I fancy somewhere sunny, - said Ford.

Ford and Arthur followed Slartibartfast into the ship and were so perplexed by what they saw inside it that they were totally unaware of what happened next outside.

A spaceship, yet another one, but this one sleek and silver, descended from the sky on to the pitch, quietly, without fuss, its long legs unlocking in a smooth ballet of technology.

It landed gently. It extended a short ramp. A tall grey-green figure marched briskly out and approached the small knot of people who were gathered in the centre of the pitch tending to the casualties of the recent bizarre massacre. It moved people aside with quiet, understated authority, and came at last to a man lying in a desperate pool of blood, clearly now beyond the reach of any Earthly medicine, breathing, coughing his last. The figure knelt down quietly beside him.

– Arthur Philip Deodat? - asked the figure.

The man, with horrified confusion in eyes, nodded feebly.

– You’re a no-good dumbo nothing, - whispered the creature. - I thought you should know that before you went.