Volume 2 - The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe Read Online Free PDF

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    It is of course that invaluable companion for all those who want to see the marvels of the known Universe for less than thirty Altairian dollars a day—
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
.
    If you stood with your back to the main entrance lobby of the
Guide
offices (assuming you had landed by now and freshened up with a quick dip and shower) and then walked east, you would pass along the leafy shade of Life Boulevard, be amazed by the pale golden color of the beaches stretching away to your left, astounded by the mind-surfers floating carelessly along two feet above the waves as if this was nothing special, surprised and eventually slightly irritated by the giant palm trees that hum tuneless nothings throughout the daylight hours, in other words continuously.
    If you then walked to the end of Life Boulevard you would enter the Lalamatine district of shops, bolonut trees and pavement cafés where the UM-Betans come to relax after a hard afternoon’s relaxation on the beach. The Lalamatine district is one of those very few areas which doesn’t enjoy a perpetual Saturday afternoon—it enjoys instead the cool of a perpetual early Saturday evening. Behind it lie the nightclubs.
    If, on this particular day, afternoon, stretch of eveningtime—call it what you will—you had approached the second pavement café on the right, you would have seen the usual crowd of UM-Betans chatting, drinking, looking very relaxed and casually glancing at each other’s watches to see how expensive they were.
    You would also have seen a couple of rather disheveled-looking hitchhikers from Algol who had recently arrived on an Arcturan Megafreighter aboard which they had been roughing it for a few days. They were angry and bewildered to discover that here, within sight of the
Hitchhiker’s Guide
building itself, a simple glass of fruit juice cost the equivalent of over sixty Altairian dollars.
    “Sell out,” one of them said, bitterly.
    If at that moment you had then looked at the next table you would have seen Zaphod Beeblebrox sitting and looking very startled and confused.
    The reason for his confusion was that five seconds earlier he had been sitting on the bridge of the starship
Heart of Gold
.
    “Absolute sell out,” said the voice again.
    Zaphod looked nervously out of the corners of his eyes at the two disheveled hitchhikers at the next table. Where the hell was he? How had he got there? Where was his ship? His hand felt the arm of the chair on which he was sitting, and then the table in front of him. They seemed solid enough. He sat very still.
    “How can they sit and write a guide for hitchhikers in a place like this?” continued the voice. “I mean look at it. Look at it!”
    Zaphod was looking at it. Nice place, he thought. But where? And why?
    He fished in his pocket for his two pairs of sunglasses. In the same pocket he felt a hard, smooth, unidentified lump of very heavy metal. He pulled it out and looked at it. He blinked at it in surprise. Where had he got that? He returned it to his pocket and put on the sunglasses, annoyed to discover that the metal object had scratched one of the lenses. Nevertheless, he felt much more comfortable with them on. They were a double pair of Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, which had been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.
    Apart from the scratch the lenses were clear. He relaxed, but only a little bit.
    The angry hitchhiker continued to glare at his monstrously expensive fruit juice.
    “Worst thing that ever happened to the
Guide
, moving to Ursa Minor Beta,” he grumbled; “they’ve all gone soft. You know, I’ve even heard that they’ve created a whole electronically synthesized Universe in one of their offices so they can go and research stories during the day and still go to parties in the