The following is a short
story starring Zaphod Beeblebrox that is included,
among other places, in the posthumously released
collection The Salmon of Doubt. We hope you enjoy
it.
A large flying craft moved swiftly
across the surface of an astoundingly beautiful
sea. From midmorning onward it plied back and
forth in great, widening arcs, and at last attracted
the attention of the local islanders, a peaceful,
seafood-loving people who gathered on the beach
and squinted up into the blinding sun, trying
to see what was there.
Any sophisticated, knowledgable person who had
knocked about, seen a few things, would probably
have remarked on how much the craft looked like
a filing cabinet-a large and recently burgled
filing cabinet lying on its back with its drawers
in the air and flying. The islanders, whose experience
was of a different kind, were instead struck by
how little it looked like a lobster.
They chattered excitedly about its total lack
of claws, its stiff, unbendy back, and the fact
that it seemed to experience the greatest difficulty
staying on the ground. This last feature seemed
particularly funny to them. They jumped up and
down on the spot a lot to demonstrate to the stupid
thing that they themselves found staying on the
ground the easiest thing in the world. But soon
this entertainment began to pall for them. After
all, since it was perfectly clear to them that
the thing was not a lobster, and since their world
was blessed with an abundance of things that were
lobsters (a good half a dozen of which were now
marching succulently up the beach towards them),
they saw no reason to waste any more time on the
thing, but decided instead to adjourn immediately
for a late lobster lunch.
At that exact moment the craft stopped suddenly
in midair, then upended itself and plunged headlong
into the ocean with a great crash of spray that
sent the islanders shouting into the trees. When
they reemerged, nervously, a few minutes later,
all they were able to see was a smoothly scarred
circle of water and a few gulping bubbles.
That's odd, they said to each other between
mouthfuls of the best lobster to be had anywhere
in the Western Galaxy, that's the second
time that's happened in a year.
The craft that wasn't a lobster dived directly
to a depth of two hundred feet, and hung there
in the heavy blueness, while vast masses of water
swayed about it. High above, where the water was
magically clear, a brilliant formation of fish
flashed away. Below, where the light had difficulty
reaching, the colour of the water sank to a dark
and savage blue.
Here, at two hundred feet, the sun streamed feebly.
A large, silk-skinned sea mammal rolled idly by,
inspecting the craft with a kind of half-interest,
as if it had half expected to find something of
this kind round about here, and then it slid on
up and away towards the rippling light.
The craft waited here for a minute or two, taking
readings, and then descended another hundred feet.
At this depth it was becoming seriously dark.
After a moment or two the internal lights of the
craft shut down, and in the second or so that
passed before the main external beams suddenly
stabbed out, the only visible light came from
a small, hazily illuminated pink sign that read,
the beeblebrox salvage and really wild stuff corporation.
The huge beams switched downwards, catching a
vast shoal of silver fish, which swivelled away
in silent panic.
In the dim control room that extended in a broad
bow from the craft's blunt prow, four heads
were gathered round a computer display that was
analysing the very, very faint and intermittent
signals that were emanating from deep on the seabed.
"That's it," said the owner
of one of the heads finally.
"Can we be quite sure?" said the
owner of another of the heads.
"One hundred per cent positive,"
replied the owner of the first head.
"You're one hundred per cent positive
that the ship which is crashed on the bottom of
this ocean is the ship which you said you were
one hundred per cent positive could one hundred
per cent positively never crash?" said the
owner of the two remaining heads. "Hey"-he
put up two of his hands-"I'm
only asking."
The two officials from the Safety and Civil Reassurance
Administration responded to this with a very cold
stare, but the man with the odd, or rather the
even number of heads, missed it. He flung himself
back on the pilot couch, opened a couple of beers-one
for himself and the other also for himself-stuck
his feet on the console, and said "Hey,
baby," through the ultra-glass at a passing
fish.
"Mr. Beeblebrox . . ." began the
shorter and less reassuring of the two officials
in a low voice.
"Yup?" said Zaphod, rapping a suddenly
empty can down on some of the more sensitive instruments.
"You ready to dive? Let's go."
"Mr. Beeblebrox, let us make one thing
perfectly clear . . ."
"Yeah, let's," said Zaphod.
"How about this for a start. Why don't
you just tell me what's really on this ship."
"We have told you," said the official.
"By-products."
Zaphod exchanged weary glances with himself.
"By-products," he said. "By-products
of what?"
"Processes," said the official.
"What processes?"
"Processes that are perfectly safe."
"Santa Zarquana Voostra!" exclaimed
both of Zaphod's heads in chorus. "So
safe that you have to build a zarking fortress
ship to take the by-products to the nearest black
hole and tip them in! Only it doesn't get
there because the pilot does a detour-is
this right?-to pick up some lobster? Okay,
so the guy is cool, but . . . I mean own up, this
is barking time, this is major lunch, this is
stool approaching critical mass, this is . . .
this is . . . total vocabulary failure!
"Shut up!" his right head yelled
at his left. "We're flanging!"
He got a good calming grip on the remaining beer
can.
"Listen, guys," he resumed after
a moment's peace and contemplation. The
two officials had said nothing. Conversation at
this level was not something to which they felt
they could aspire. "I just want to know,"
insisted Zaphod, "what you're getting
me into here."
He stabbed a finger at the intermittent readings
trickling over the computer screen. They meant
nothing to him, but he didn't like the look
of them at all. They were all squiggly, with lots
of long numbers and things.
"It's breaking up, is that it?"
he shouted. "It's got a hold full
of epsilonic radiating aorist rods or something
that'll fry this whole space sector for
zillions of years back, and it's breaking
up. Is that the story? Is that what we're
going down to find? Am I going to come out of
that wreck with even more heads?"
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