The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Read Online Free PDF

How does that sound?”
    Mr. Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty.
    “That sounds perfectly reasonable …” he said in a reassuring tone of voice, wondering who he was trying to reassure.
    “And if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself later on,” said Ford, “we can always cover for you in return.”
    “Thank you very much,” said Mr. Prosser, who no longer knew how to play this at all, “thank you very much, yes, that’s very kind …” He frowned, then smiled, then tried to do both at once, failed, grasped hold of his fur hat and rolled it fitfully round the top of his head. He could only assume that he had just won.
    “So,” continued Ford Prefect, “if you would just like to come over here and lie down …”
    “What?” said Mr. Prosser.
    “Ah, I’m sorry,” said Ford, “perhaps I hadn’t made myself fully clear. Somebody’s got to lie in front of the bulldozers, haven’t they? Or there won’t be anything to stop them driving into Mr. Dent’s house, will there?”
    “What?” said Mr. Prosser again.
    “It’s very simple,” said Ford, “my client, Mr. Dent, says that he will stop lying here in the mud on the sole condition that you come and take over from him.”
    “What are you talking about?” said Arthur, but Ford nudged him with his shoe to be quiet.
    “You want me,” said Prosser, spelling out this new thought to himself, “to come and lie there …”
    “Yes.”
    “In front of the bulldozer?”
    “Yes.”
    “Instead of Mr. Dent.”
    “Yes.”
    “In the mud.”
    “In, as you say, the mud.”
    As soon as Mr. Prosser realized that he was substantially the loser after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew it. He sighed.
    “In return for which you will take Mr. Dent with you down to the pub?”
    “That’s it,” said Ford, “that’s it exactly.”
    Mr. Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped.
    “Promise?” he said.
    “Promise,” said Ford. He turned to Arthur.
    “Come on,” he said to him, “get up and let the man lie down.”
    Arthur stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream.
    Ford beckoned to Prosser, who sadly, awkwardly, sat down in the mud. He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. The mud folded itself round his bottom and his arms and oozed into his shoes.
    Ford looked at him severely.
    “And no sneaky knocking Mr. Dent’s house down while he’s away, all right?” he said.
    “The mere thought,” growled Mr. Prosser, “hadn’t even begun to speculate,” he continued, settling himself back, “about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.”
    He saw the bulldozer drivers’ union representative approaching and let his head sink back and closed his eyes. He was trying to marshal his arguments for proving that he did not now constitute a mental health hazard himself. He was far from certain about this—his mind seemed to be full of noises, horses, smoke and the stench of blood. This always happened when he felt miserable or put upon, and he had never been able to explain it to himself. In a high dimension of which we know nothing, the mighty Khan bellowed with rage, but Mr. Prosser only trembled slightly and whimpered. He began to feel little pricks of water behind his eyelids. Bureaucratic cock-ups, angry men lying in mud, indecipherable strangers handing out inexplicable humiliation and an unidentified army of horsemen laughing at him in his head—what a day.
    What a day. Ford Prefect knew that it didn’t matter a pair of dingo’s kidneys whether Arthur’s house got knocked down or not now.
    Arthur remained very worried.
    “But can we trust him?” he said.
    “Myself I’d trust him to the end of the Earth,” said Ford.
    “Oh yes,” said Arthur, “and how far’s that?”
    “About twelve minutes away,” said Ford, “come on, I need a drink.”

Chapter 2
    H ere’s what