'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' (Fit the Fourth) by Douglas Adams

ANNOUNCER:
'The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, by Douglas Adams. Starring Peter Jones as ‘The Book’.

[Theme Tune]

NARRATOR:
Arthur Dent, a perfectly ordinary Earthman, was rather surprised when his friend Ford Prefect suddenly revealed himself to be from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and not from Guildford after all. He was even more surprised when a few minutes later, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. But this was as nothing to their joint surprise when they are rescued from certain death by a stolen spaceship manned by Ford’s semi-cousin, the infamous Zaphod Beeblebrox, and Trillian, a rather nice astrophysicist Arthur once met at a party in Islington. However, all four of them are soon totally overwhelmed with surprise when they discover that the ancient world of Magrathea, a planet famed in legend for its surprising trade in manufacturing other planets, is not as dead as it was supposed to be. For Zaphod, Ford, and Trillian, surprise is pushed to its very limit when this happens:

[Energy weapons fire]

NARRATOR:
And when Arthur Dent encounters Slartibartfast, the Magrathean coastline designer who won an award for his work on Norway, and learns that the whole history of mankind was run for the benefit of a few white mice anyway, surprise is no longer adequate and he is forced to resort to astonishment.



Scene 1. Int. Slartibartfast’s Office. Magrathea

ARTHUR:
Mice? What do you mean mice? I think we must be talking at cross purposes. Mice to me mean the little white furry things with the cheese fixation and women standing screaming on tables in early Sixties sitcoms.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
Earthman, it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of speech. Remember I have been asleep inside this planet of Magrathea for five-million years and know little of these early Sixties sitcoms of which you speak. These creatures you call mice you see are not quite as they appear, they are merely the protrusions into our dimension of vast, hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings. The business with the cheese and squeaking is just a front.

ARTHUR:
A front?

SLARTIBARTFAST:
Oh yes, you see the mice set up the whole Earth business, as an epic experiment in behavioural psychology; a ten-million year program -

ARTHUR:
No, look, you’ve got it the wrong way round. It was us. We used to do the experiments on them.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
A ten-million year program in which your planet Earth and its people formed the matrix of an organic computer. I gather that the mice did arrange for you humans to conduct some primitively staged experiments on them just to check how much you’d really learned, to give you the odd prod in the right direction, you know the sort of thing: suddenly running down the maze the wrong way; eating the wrong bit of cheese; or suddenly dropping dead of myxomatosis.

P.A. VOICE:
Attention please, Slartibartfast. Would Slartibartfast and the visiting Earth creature please report immediately to the work’s reception area. Thank you.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
However, in the field of management relations, they’re absolutely shocking.

ARTHUR:
Really?

SLARTIBARTFAST:
Yes. Well you see, every time they give me an order I just want to jump on a table and cream!

ARTHUR:
I can see that would be a problem.

NARRATOR:
There are, of course, many problems connected with life of which some of the most popular are, “why are people born?”; “why do they die?”; and “why do they spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?” Many of million of years ago, a race of hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life, which used to interrupt their favourite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket - a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away - that they decided to sit down and solve the problem once and for all. And to this end, they built themselves a stupendous supercomputer which was so amazingly intelligent, that even before its databanks had been connected up, it had started from first principles with “I think therefore I am” and had got as far as deducing the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off. Could a mere computer solve the problem of Life, the Universe, and Everything? Fortunately for posterity there exists a tape recording of what transpired when the computer was given this particularly monumental task. Arthur Dent stops off in Slartibartfast’s study to hear it.

[Sound of playback starting]

ARCHIVE VOICE:
Archive material of Magrathea.


Scene 2. Int. Deep Thought Chamber

DEEP THOUGHT:
What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought, the second greatest computer in the universe…

LUNKWILL:
[Whispers] “Second greatest”?

DEEP THOUGHT:
…of time and space…

LUNKWILL:
“Second Greatest”!? Wait a minute.

DEEP THOUGHT:
…have been called into existence?

FOOK:
Well, your task oh, computer, is to calc-

LUNKWILL:
Er, no... Wait a minute. This isn’t right. Deep Thought…

DEEP THOUGHT:
Speak, and I will hear

LUNKWILL:
Are you not as we designed you to be, the greatest, most powerful computer in all creation?

DEEP THOUGHT:
I described myself as the second greatest …Deep Thought… and such…

LUNKWILL:
Yes yes but…

DEEP THOUGHT:
…I am.

LUNKWILL:
But, but, but - this is preposterous! Are you not a greater computer than The Milliard Gargantu-Brain at Maximegalon, which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?

DEEP THOUGHT:
The Milliard Gargantu-Brain, a mere abacus. Mention it not.

FOOK:
And are you not a more fiendish disputant than The Great Hyperlobic Omnicognate Neutron-Wrangler? Which can destroy -

DEEP THOUGHT:
The Great Hyperlobic Omnicognate Neutron-Wrangler can talk all four legs off an Arcturan Mega-Donkey but only I can persuade it to go for a walk afterwards. Molest me not, with this, pocket calculator stuff!

LUNKWILL:
Then what’s the problem?

DEEP THOUGHT:
I speak of none, but the computer that is to come after me.

LUNKWILL:
Oh come on! I think this is getting needlessly messianic.

DEEP THOUGHT:
You know nothing of future time, and yet in my teaming circuitry I can navigate the infinite delta streams of future probability and see that there must one day come a computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate. But which it will be my destiny eventually to design

LUNKWILL:
Can we get on and ask the question?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Speak.

LUNKWILL:
O Deep Thought Computer, the task we have designed you to perform is this: We want you… to tell us… The Answer.

DEEP THOUGHT:
”The Answer”? The answer to what?

FOOK:
Life!

LUNKWILL:
The Universe.

FOOK:
Everything!

DEEP THOUGHT:
Tricky…

FOOK:
But can you do it?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Yes… I can do it.

FOOK:
You can!

LUNKWILL:
There, there, there is an answer? A simple answer?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Yes. Life, the Universe, and Everything… There is an answer. But I’ll have to think about it.

[The door to the room is broken down]

VROOMFONDEL:
We demand admission! We demand admission!

LUNKWILL:
Hey! What?

FOOK:
Hey, hey, hey!

MAJIKTHISE:
Come on, you can’t keep us out!

VROOMFONDEL:
We demand that you can’t keep us out.

LUNKWILL:
Who are you? What do you want? We’re busy!

MAJIKTHISE:
I am Majikthise.

VROOMFONDEL:
And I demand that I am Vroomfondel.

MAJIKTHISE:
It’s all right, you don’t need to demand that.

VROOMFONDEL:
Alright. I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand! That is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!

MAJIKTHISE:
No we don’t! That’s precisely what we don’t demand.

VROOMFONDEL:
Oh. We don’t demand solid fact! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts! I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel.

FOOK:
Who are you anyway?

MAJIKTHISE:
We are philosophers.

VROOMFONDEL:
But we may not be.

MAJIKTHISE:
Yes we are!

VROOMFONDEL:
sorry.

MAJIKTHISE:
We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries, and other professional thinking persons.

VROOMFONDEL:
Um-hmm

MAJIKTHISE:
And we want this machine off, and we want it off now.

FOOK:
What is all this?

VROOMFONDEL:
We demand that you get rid of it.

FOOK:
What’s the problem?

MAJIKTHISE:
I’ll tell you what the problem is mate: demarcation. That’s the problem.

VROOMFONDEL:
We demand that demarcation may or may not be the problem.

MAJIKTHISE:
You just let the machines get on with the adding up and we’ll take care of the eternal verities, thank you very much.

VROOMFONDEL:
yeah.

MAJIKTHISE:
By law the quest for the ultimate truth is quite clearly the unalienable prerogative of your working thinkers

VROOMFONDEL:
That’s right.

MAJIKTHISE:
I mean what’s the use of us sitting up all night saying there may -

VROOMFONDEL:
Or may not be

MAJIKTHISE:
[Softly] …or may not be… [louder] a god, if this machine comes along the next morning and gives you ‘is telephone number?

VROOMFONDEL:
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!

DEEP THOUGHT:
Might I make an observation at this point?

MAJIKTHISE:
You keep out of this metal nose.

VROOMFONDEL:
We demand that that machine not be allowed to think about this problem!

DEEP THOUGHT:
If I might make an observation…

MAJIKTHISE:
We’ll go on strike!

VROOMFONDEL:
That’s right. You’ll have a national philosopher’s strike on your hands.

DEEP THOUGHT:
Who will that inconvenience?

MAJIKTHISE:
Never you mind who it’ll inconvenience you box of black legging binary bits! It’ll hurt, buster! It’ll hurt!

DEEP THOUGHT:
[Booming] If I might make an observation … All I wanted to say is that my circuits are now irrevocably committed to computing the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

VROOMFONDEL:
That’s a -

MAJIKTHISE:
Ahhh! With -

DEEP THOUGHT:
But, but the program will take me seven-and-a-half million years to run.

LUNKWILL:
Seven-and-a-half million years?

MAJIKTHISE:
Seven-and-a-half million years? What are you talking about?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Yes. I said I’d have to think about it didn’t I? And it occurs to me, that running a program like this is bound to cause sensational public interest.

VROOMFONDEL:
Oh yes.

MAJIKTHISE:
Oh you can say that again.

DEEP THOUGHT:
And so any philosophers who are put off the mark, are going to clean up in the prediction business.

MAJIKTHISE:
”Prediction business”?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Obviously. You just get on the pundit circuit. You all go on the chat shows and the colour supplements and violently disagree with each other about what answer I’m eventually going to produce. And if you get yourselves clever agents, you’ll be on the gravy train for life.

MAJIKTHISE:
Bloody ‘ell! That’s what I call thinking! Here Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?

VROOMFONDEL:
Dunno. Think our minds must be too highly trained Majikthise.

[Sound of playback ending]


Scene 3. Int. Slartibartfast’s Office. Magrathea

ARTHUR:
But I don’t understand what all this ‘as got to do with the Earth, and mice and things.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
All will become clear to you Earthman… Are you not anxious to hear what the computer had to say seven-and-a-half million years later?

ARTHUR:
Oh, well. Yes, of course…. quite.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
Here is the recording of the events of that fateful day.

[Sound of playback resuming]

ARCHIVE VOICE:
Archive material of Magrathea.


Scene 4. Int. Deep Thought Chamber

[Fanfare]

CHEERLEADER:
O people who wait in the shadow of Deep Thought… Honoured descendents of Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the greatest and most truly interesting pundits the universe has ever known… the time of waiting is over!

[Cheers from crowd]

CHEERLEADER:
Seven-and-a-half million years our race has waited for this great and hopefully enlightening day. The day of The Answer!

[Cheers from crowd]

CHEERLEADER:
Never… never again will we wake up in the morning and think, “Who am I?”. “What is my purpose in life?”. “Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don’t get up and go to work?”

[Cheers from crowd]

CHEERLEADER:
For today we will finally learn, once and for all, the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little problems of Life, the Universe, and Everything!

[Cheers from crowd]

CHEERLEADER:
From today, we can enjoy a game of Brockian Ultra Cricket in the firm and comfortable knowledge that the meaning of life is now well and truly sorted out!

[Cheers from crowd]

PHOUCHG:
Seventy-five thousand generations ago, our ancestors set this program in motion.

LOONQUAWL:
An awesome prospect!

DEEP THOUGHT:
[Coughs]

LOONQUAWL:
Deep Thought prepares to speak.

DEEP THOUGHT:
[Coughs]Good evening.

PHOUCHG:
Good evening oh Deep Thought, er, er, do you have umm…

DEEP THOUGHT:
An answer for you?

LOONQUAWL:
yes.

DEEP THOUGHT:
Yes, I have.

LOONQUAWL:
There really is one?

DEEP THOUGHT:
There really is one.

PHOUCHG:
To everything? To the great question of Life… the Universe… and Everything?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Yes.

LOONQUAWL:
And are you ready to give it to us?

DEEP THOUGHT:
I am.

LOONQUAWL:
Now?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Now.

LOONQUAWL:
Wo-ow.

DEEP THOUGHT:
Though I don’t think you’re going to like it.

LOONQUAWL:
It doesn’t matter, we must know it!

DEEP THOUGHT:
Now?

LOONQUAWL:
Yes now.

DEEP THOUGHT:
Alright.

PHOUCHG:
Well?

DEEP THOUGHT:
You’re really not going to like it.

LOONQUAWL:
Tell us!

DEEP THOUGHT:
Alright. The answer to everything…

LOONQUAWL:
Yes?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Life, the Universe, and Everything…

PHOUCHG:
Yes?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Is…

LOONQUAWL:
Yes?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Is……

PHOUCHG:
Yes?

LOONQUAWL:
Yes?

DEEP THOUGHT:
Forty-two.

LOONQUAWL:
We’re going to get lynched you know that.

DEEP THOUGHT:
It was a tough assignment.

PHOUCHG:
Forty-two?

LOONQUAWL:
Forty-two?

DEEP THOUGHT:
I think the problem such as it was, was too broadly based. You never actually stated what the question was.

PHOUCHG:
B- b- but it was the Ultimate question, the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

DEEP THOUGHT:
Exactly. Now that you know that the answer to the Ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is forty-two, all you need to do now is find out what the Ultimate Question is.

LOONQUAWL:
Er…

PHOUCHG:
Er…

LOONQUAWL:
Alright. Can you please tell us the Question.

PHOUCHG:
Alright.

DEEP THOUGHT:
The Ultimate Question?

LOONQUAWL:
Yes.

DEEP THOUGHT:
Of Life… the Universe…

PHOUCHG:
…and Everything.

DEEP THOUGHT:
…and Everything?

LOONQUAWL:
Yes.

DEEP THOUGHT:
Tricky…

LOONQUAWL:
But can you do it?

DEEP THOUGHT:
[Pause] No.

LOONQUAWL:
Ohh god!

PHOUCHG:
Ohh god!

DEEP THOUGHT:
But I’ll tell you who can.

LOONQUAWL:
Who? Tell us, tell us.

PHOUCHG:
Yeah who is it?

DEEP THOUGHT:
I speak of none, but the computer that is to come after me.

LOONQUAWL:
What computer?

DEEP THOUGHT:
A computer, whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, and yet I will design it for you.

LOONQUAWL:
Oh, well.!

PHOUCHG:
Really. You bet!

DEEP THOUGHT:
A computer which can calculate the Question, to the Ultimate Answer. A computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself will form part of its operational matrix. And it shall be called… the Earth.

LOONQUAWL:
Oh. What a dull name.

[Sound of playback ending]


Scene 5. Int. Slartibartfast’s Office. Magrathea

SLARTIBARTFAST:
So there you have it, Deep Thought designed it, we built it, and you lived on it.

ARTHUR:
And the Vogons came and destroyed it five minutes before the program was completed.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
Yes. Ten-million years of planning and work gone, just like that. Well, that’s bureaucracy for you.

ARTHUR:
You know all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I’ve had this strange, unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world… and no one would tell me what it was.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
No, that’s just perfectly normal paranoia, everyone in the universe has that.

ARTHUR:
Well perhaps it means that somewhere, outside -

SLARTIBARTFAST:
Maybe. Who cares? Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is say “hang the sense of it” and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me, I design coastlines, I got an award for Norway. Where’s the sense in that? None that I’ve been able to make out. I’ve been doing fiords all my life, for a fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award. In this replacement Earth we’re building they’ve given me Africa to do, and of course, I’m doing it will all fjords again, because I happen to like them. And I’m old fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it’s not equatorial enough… what does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day!

ARTHUR:
And are you?

SLARTIBARTFAST:
No. That’s where it all falls down of course.

ARTHUR:
Pity, it sounded like quite a good lifestyle otherwise.

P.A. VOICE:
Attention please, Slartibartfast. Would Slartibartfast and the visiting Earth creature please report immediately, repeat, immediately to the work’s reception area. C’mon you guys, the mice aren’t wantin’ to hang about in this dimension all day!

SLARTIBARTFAST:
Come on, I suppose we better go and see what they want.

ARTHUR:
I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle. As soon as I reach some kind of definite policy about what is my kind of music and my kind of restaurant, and my kind of overdraft, people start blowing up my kind of planet and throwing me out of their kind of spaceships. It’s so hard to build up anything coherent… Well, I’m sorry, all this must sound rather fatuous to you.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
Yes I thought so.

ARTHUR:
Hmmm. Just forget I ever said it.

NARRATOR:
It is, of course, well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated. For instance, at the very moment that Arthur Dent said, “I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle” a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far, far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space, to a distance galaxy where strange and war-like beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle. The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time, and a dreadful silence fell across the conference table, as the commander of the Vl’hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G’gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green, sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother. The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapor and at the very moment the words “I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle” drifted across the conference table. Unfortunately, in the Vl’hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war. Eventually of course, it was realised that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our galaxy - now positively identified as the source of the offending remark. For thousands more years the mighty starships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the planet Earth-where, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog. Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but are powerless to prevent it. “It’s just life,” they say. Meanwhile, Arthur Dent is about to discover the answer to the disturbing question posed in last week’s instalment: Are his companions, Ford, Zaphod, and Trillian lying, bleeding to death in a subterranean corridor, or have they merely slipped out for a quick meal somewhere?


Scene 6. Int. Dining Room. Magrathea

TRILLIAN:
Arthur! You’re safe!

ARTHUR:
Am I? Oh good.

FORD:
Hi Arthur, come and join us.

ARTHUR:
What happened to you?

ZAPHOD:
Er, well our hosts here, sort of, uh, attacked us with a fantastic uh, dismodulating antiphase stun-ray. And then invited us to this amazingly keen meal by way of making it up to us.

ARTHUR:
Hosts? What hosts? I can’t see any hosts.

BENJY MOUSE:
Welcome to lunch Earth creature.

ARTHUR:
What? Who said that? Urgh! There’s a mouse on the table!

FORD:
Ohhh, haven’t you found out yet, Arthur!?

ARTHUR:
Found out what? Ohhh! Oh, I see, yes. Oh yes. I- I just wasn’t quite prepared for the full reality of it.

TRILLIAN:
Arthur, let me introduce you. This is Benjy mouse.

BENJY MOUSE:
Hi.

ARTHUR:
Hi.

TRILLIAN:
And this is Frankie, er, mouse.

FRANKIE MOUSE:
Nice to meet you.

TRILLIAN:
It seems they controlled quite a large sector of the universe in our dimension.

ARTHUR:
But aren’t they..?

TRILLIAN:
Yes. They are the mice I took with me from the Earth. It seems our whole journey has been stage managed from the beginning.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
er, excuse me.

BENJY MOUSE:
Yes thank you Slartibartfast, you may go.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
Oh, er, thank you sir. I’ll… I’ll just go and get on with some of my fjords then.

FRANKIE MOUSE:
Uh, in fact, that won’t be necessary.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
What?

FRANKIE MOUSE:
We won’t be requiring the new Earth after all. We’ve had this rather interesting proposition put to us.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
You can’t mean that! I’ve got a thousand glaciers poised and ready to roll over Africa!

FRANKIE MOUSE:
Well, perhaps you can take a quick skiing holiday before you dismantle them.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
Skiing holiday?! Those glaciers are works of art! Elegantly sculpted contours, soaring pinnacles of ice, deep, majestic ravines! It would be a sacrilege to go skiing on high art!

BENJY MOUSE:
Thank you Slartibartfast, that will be all.

SLARTIBARTFAST:
Yes sir. Thank you very much sir. Well, goodbye Earthman. Hope the lifestyle comes together.

ARTHUR:
Goodbye then. Sorry about the fiords.

BENJY MOUSE:
Now Earth creature, we have, as you know, been more or less running your planet for the last ten-million years in order to find this wretched thing called the Ultimate Question.

ARTHUR:
Why?

FRANKIE MOUSE:
No, we already thought of that one, but it doesn’t fit the answer.

ARTHUR:
No, I mean, why have you been doing it?

FRANKIE MOUSE:
Oh, er, well eventually just habit I think. To be brutally honest - and this is more or less the point - we are sick to the teeth of the whole thing! And the prospect of doing it all over again on the account of those whinnet-ridden Vogons, quite frankly, gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies, you know what I mean?

BENJY MOUSE:
Uh, we’ve been offered a quite enormously fat contract to do the Five-D T.V. chat show and lecture circuit. And I’m very much inclined to take it.

ZAPHOD:
I would, wouldn’t you Ford?

FORD:
Oh yes, jump at it like a shark.

ARTHUR:
But that’s exactly the attitude those philosophers took. Doesn’t no-one in this galaxy do anything other than appear on chat shows?

FRANKIE MOUSE:
The point is this: we are in a position to give you a very important commission. We still want to find the Ultimate Question, because it gives us a lot of bargaining muscle with the Five-D T.V. companies. So, it’s worth a lot of money!

FRANKIE MOUSE:
[Laughs]

BENJY MOUSE:
[Laughs]

BENJY MOUSE:
Quite clearly, if we’re sitting there in the studio mentioning that we happen to know the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, and then have to eventually admit that it’s forty-two, then I think the show is probably quite short.

ARTHUR:
Yes, but doesn’t that mean that you’ve got to go through your whole ten-million year program again?

FRANKIE MOUSE:
We think there might be a short cut. Your agent has -

ZAPHOD:
Er, that’s me.

ARTHUR:
Is it?

FRANKIE MOUSE:
Your agent has suggested that both you and Earth girl, as last generation products of the computer matrix, are probably in an ideal position to find the question for us, and find it quickly. Go out and find it, and we’ll make you a reasonable rich man.

ZAPHOD:
We’re holding out for extremely rich.

FRANKIE MOUSE:
Alright. Extremely rich. You drive a hard bargain, Beeblebrox!

[Loud alarm klaxon goes off]

BENJY MOUSE:
Hell’s bells, what is it now?

P.A. VOICE:
Emergency! Emergency! Hostile ship has landed on planet! Intruders now in work’s reception area. Defence stations, Defence stations! C’mon you guys!

[A different alarm klaxon goes off too]

P.A. VOICE:
What are you nuts!? Get out of there!

TRILLIAN:
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

ZAPHOD:
Our police! Hell and back’s bone, we’ve got to get out!

FRANKIE MOUSE:
Police?

ZAPHOD:
Yeah, its uh, it’s this wretched spacecraft we’ve stolen. I left them a note explaining how they could make a profit on the insurance claim but it doesn’t seem to have worked.

FORD:
Well, c’mon then, let’s move!

BENJY MOUSE:
Earthman, find us the question.

ARTHUR:
How?

BENJY MOUSE:
Er, no. That doesn’t work either.

ZAPHOD:
We will find it. Come on, get out of here!

FORD:
Thanks for the meal guys, sorry we’ve go to run.

[They run off. The alarms die. Sound of breaking glass]

FORD:
Which way Zaphod?

[Running]

ZAPHOD:
At a wild guess, I’d say, uh, down here.

[More running]

TRILLIAN:
Ok, right let’s go.

SHOOTY:
Okay Beeblebrox, hold it right there, we’ve got you covered.

ZAPHOD:
You want to try a guess at all Ford?

FORD:
Er, okay, okay, this way.

ZAPHOD:
Yeah, alright.

[Even more running]

BANG-BANG:
We don’t wanna shoot you Beeblebrox!

ZAPHOD:
Suits me fine!

TRILLIAN:
We’re cornered.

ZAPHOD:
Oh hell, I think I dropped my adrenaline pills. Alright, errr, behind this computer bank. Get down!

[Kill-O-Zap gunfire)

ARTHUR:
Hey! They’re shooting at us!

ZAPHOD:
Yeah?

ARTHUR:
I thought they said they didn’t want to do that.

TRILLIAN:
Yeah, I thought they said that.

ZAPHOD:
Hey, I thought you said you didn’t want to shoot us!

SHOOTY:
It isn’t easy being a cop.

FORD:
What did he say?

ZAPHOD:
He said it isn’t easy being a cop.

FORD:
Well, surely that’s his problem isn’t it?

ZAPHOD:
I’d have thought so.

FORD:
Er, er, hey listen! I think we’ve got enough problems of our own with you shooting at us, so if you could avoid laying your personal problems on us as well, I think we’d probably find it easier to cope!

BANG-BANG:
Now see hear buddy. You’re not dealing with any dumb, two-bit trigger-pumping morons with low hairlines, little piggy eyes, and no conversation.

SHOOTY:
No.

BANG-BANG:
We’re a couple of intelligent, caring guys, who’d you probably like if you met us socially.

SHOOTY:
That’s right. I’m really sensitive.

BANG-BANG:
I don’t go around gratuitously shootin’ people and then bragging about it in seedy space-rangers bars. I go around gratuitously shootin’ people and then agonizing about it afterwards to my girlfriend.

SHOOTY:
And I write novels.

BANG-BANG:
He writes ‘em in crayon.

SHOOTY:
Though I haven’t had any of them published yet so I better warn ya, I’m in a mee-ee-eeannnn mood.

FORD:
Who are these guys?

ZAPHOD:
I think I preferred it when they were shooting.

BANG-BANG:
So are ya gonna come quietly or are ya gonna let us blast you out?

FORD:
Which would you rather!?

[Lots of Kill-O-Zap gunfire)

BANG-BANG:
… You still there?

FORD, ARTHUR, ZAPHOD and TRILLIAN:
Yes!

SHOOTY:
We didn’t enjoy doing that at all.

BANG-BANG:
No.

FORD:
Tell! We can tell!

ZAPHOD:
Yeah!

FORD:
Zaphod, have you any idea how we’re going to deal with these loonies?

BANG-BANG:
Now listen to this Beeblebrox.

SHOOTY:
Yeah.

BANG-BANG:
And ya better listen good.

ZAPHOD:
Why?

BANG-BANG:
‘Cause it’s gonna be very intelligent, quite interesting, and humane.

ZAPHOD:
Okay, fire away! Ah no!

[Kill-O-Zap gunfire)

ZAPHOD:
I didn’t-!

SHOOTY:
Oh god, that was really dumb. Sorry!. Misunderstanding there.

FORD:
Nice one Zaphod.

BANG-BANG:
Beeblebrox, either you all give yourselves up now and let us beat ya up a bit - though not very much of course, because we are firmly opposed to needless violence…

SHOOTY:
Dead against it.

BANG-BANG:
…or we blow up this entire planet ‘n’ possibly one or two others we noticed on our way out here.

SHOOTY:
Yeah.

TRILLIAN:
But that’s crazy! You wouldn’t blow up this entire planet just to get a bloody spaceship back!

BANG-BANG:
Oh, ho, yes we would. I think we would… ah, no, wouldn’t we?

SHOOTY:
Oh yeah, we’d have to, no question.

TRILLIAN:
But why?!

SHOOTY:
Tell her.

BANG-BANG:
Because there are some things you gotta do even if you are an enlightened liberal cop who knows all about sensitivity and everything.

SHOOTY:
This is true.

ZAPHOD:
I just don’t believe these guys.

SHOOTY:
Shall we shoot ‘em again for a bet?

BANG-BANG:
Yeah, heh, heh, why not.

[Lots of Kill-O-Zap gunfire; under it our heroes talk amongst themselves)

TRILLIAN:
We’re not going to be safe behind this computer bank for much longer fellas. It’s been really nice knowing you. I just wanted to say that.

FORD:
Yeah, it’s, it’s really been, been great and it was really nice bumping into again Zaphod -

ZAPHOD:
Yeah, er, er, hey, er...

FORD:
The computer bank is absorbing a hell of a lot of energy!

FORD:
I think it’s about to blow.

[Under the Kill-O-Zap onslaught a loud buzzing sound starts building, as the computer banks begins overloarding…]

ARTHUR:
It’s a shame we never got the work done revising the book. I think it looked rather promising.

ZAPHOD:
Yeah… what book?

ARTHUR:
'The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.

ZAPHOD:
Oh that thing!

FORD:
Look I hate to say this lads, but this thing really is going to blow up!

ZAPHOD:
Ok, oo-kay.

[Massive explosion! ! !]

NARRATOR:
Assuming our heroes survive this latest reversal in their fortunes, will they find somewhere reasonably interesting to go now? Will Arthur Dent or Trillian manage to find the Question to the Ultimate Answer? Who will they meet at ‘The Restaurant at the End of the Universe’? Find out in next week’s exciting instalment of 'The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’

ANNOUNCER:
In that episode of ‘The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, Peter Jones was The Book. Richard Vernon was Slartibartfast. Simon Jones played Arthur Dent. Geoffrey McGivern, Ford Prefect and Deep Thought. Mark Wing-Davey, Zaphod Beeblebrox; Susan Sheridan, Trillian; Jonathan Adams, Majikthise and the Cheerleader; Ray Hassett, the First Computer Programmer, Bang-Bang, and the PA Voice; Jeremy Browne, Second Computer Programmer; James Broadbent, Vroomfondel and Shooty; Peter Hawkins, Frankie mouse; and David Tate, Benjy mouse. The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything was revealed by kind permission of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries, and other professional thinking persons. The program was written by Douglas Adams, and produced by Geoffrey Perkins, with the assistance of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

TX:
BBC Radio 4:
29th March 1978

Notes:
*Featuring Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trisha 'Trillian' McMillan and Marvin