Free The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams Page A

the Earth used to be, and four years more to arrive at Sol’s neareststellar neighbor, Alpha Proxima.
    For light to reach the other side of the Galaxy, for it to reach Damogran, for instance, takes rather longer: five hundred thousand years.
    The record for hitchhiking this distance is just under five years, but
you don’t get to see much on the way.
    The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
says that if you hold a
lungful of air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for about
thirty seconds. However, it does go on to say that what with space being
the mind-boggling size it is the chances of getting picked up by another
ship within those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and
seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against.
    By a totally staggering coincidence, that is also the telephone number of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good party and
met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get off with—she went off
with a gate-crasher.
    Though the planet Earth, the Islington flat and the telephone have
all now been demolished, it is comforting to reflect that they are all in
some small way commemorated by the fact that twenty-nine seconds later
Ford and Arthur were rescued.

Chapter 9
    A computer chattered to itself in alarm as it noticed an airlock open and close itself for no apparent reason. This was because reason was in fact out to lunch.
    A hole had just appeared in the Galaxy. It was exactly a nothingth of a second long, a nothingth of an inch wide, and quite a lot of millions of light-years from end to end.
    As it closed up, lots of paper hats and party balloons fell out of it and drifted off through the Universe. A team of seven three-foot-high market analysts fell out of it and died, partly of asphyxiation, partly of surprise.
    Two hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs fell out of it too, materializing in a large wobbly heap on the famine-struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system.
    The whole Poghril tribe had died out from famine except for one last man who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later.
    The nothingth of a second for which the hole existed reverberated backward and forward through time in a most improbable fashion. Somewhere in the deeply remote past it seriously traumatized a small random group of atoms drifting through the empty sterility of space and made them cling together in the most extraordinarily unlikely patterns. These patterns quickly learned to copy themselves (this was part of what was so extraordinary about the patterns) and went on to cause massive trouble on every planet they drifted on to. That was how life began in the Universe.
    Five wild Event Maelstroms swirled in vicious storms of unreason and spewed up a payment.
    On the pavement lay Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent gulping like half-spent fish.
    “There you are,” gasped Ford, scrabbling for a finger hold on the pavement as it raced through the Third Reach of the Unknown, “I told you I’d think of something.”
    “Oh sure,” said Arthur, “sure.”
    “Bright idea of mine,” said Ford, “to find a passing spaceship and get rescued by it.”
    The real Universe arched sickeningly away beneath them. Various pretend ones flitted silently by, like mountain goats. Primal light exploded, splattering space-time as with gobbets of Jell-O. Time blossomed, matter shrank away. The highest prime number coalesced quietly in a corner and hid itself away for ever.
    “Oh, come off it,” said Arthur, “the chances against it were astronomical.”
    “Don’t knock it, it worked,” said Ford.
    “What sort of ship are we in?” asked Arthur as the pit of eternity yawned beneath them.
    “I don’t know,” said Ford, “I haven’t opened my eyes yet.”
    “No, nor have I,” said Arthur.
    The Universe jumped, froze, quivered and splayed out in several unexpected directions.
    Arthur and Ford opened their eyes and looked about in considerable surprise.
    “Good