Free The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

resolve themselves into the figure six and mean that your optician is going to charge you a lot of money for a new pair of glasses.
    He was still listening to the howling gargles, he knew that, only now it had somehow taken on the semblance of perfectly straightforward English.
    This is what he heard …
    * Ford Prefect’s original name is only pronounceable in an obscure Betelgeusian dialect, now virtually extinct since the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758 which wiped out all the old Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven. Ford’s father was the only man on the entire planet to survive the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster, by an extraordinary coincidence that he was never able satisfactorily to explain. The whole episode is shrouded in deep mystery: in fact no one ever knew what a Hrung was nor why it had chosen to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven particularly. Ford’s father, magnanimously waving aside the clouds of suspicion that had inevitably settled around him, came to live on Betelgeuse Five, where he both fathered and uncled Ford; in memory of his now dead race he christened him in the ancient Praxibetel tongue.
    Because Ford never learned to say his original name, his father eventually died of shame, which is still a terminal disease in some parts of the Galaxy. The other kids at school nicknamed him Ix, which in the language of Betelgeuse Five translates as “boy who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven.”

Chapter 6
    H owl bowl gargle bowl gargle howl howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl gargle gargle howl gargle gargle gargle howl slurrp uuuurgh
should have a good time. Message repeats. This is your captain speaking, so stop whatever you’re doing and pay attention. First of all I see from our instruments that we have a couple of hitchhikers aboard. Hello, wherever you are. I just want to make it totally clear that you are not at all welcome. I worked hard to get where I am today, and I didn’t become captain of a Vogon constructor ship simply so I could turn it into a taxi service for a load of degenerate freeloaders. I have sent out a search party, and as soon as they find you I will put you off the ship. If you’re very lucky I might read you some of my poetry first.
    “Secondly, we are about to jump into hyperspace for the journey to Barnard’s Star. On arrival we will stay in dock for a seventy-two-hour refit, and no one’s to leave the ship during that time. I repeat, all planet leave is canceled. I’ve just had an unhappy love affair, so I don’t see why anybody else should have a good time. Message ends.”
    The noise stopped.
    Arthur discovered to his embarrassment that he was lying curled up in a small ball on the floor with his arms wrapped round his head. He smiled weakly.
    “Charming man,” he said. “I wish I had a daughter so I could forbid her to marry one …”
    “You wouldn’t need to,” said Ford. “They’ve got as much sex appeal as a road accident. No, don’t move,” he added as Arthur began to uncurl himself, “you’d better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”
    “What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
    “You ask a glass of water.”
    Arthur thought about this.
    “Ford,” he said.
    “Yeah?”
    “What’s this fish doing in my ear?”
    “It’s translating for you. It’s a Babel fish. Look it up in the book if you like.”
    He tossed over
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
and then curled himself up into a fetal ball to prepare himself for the jump.
    At that moment the bottom fell out of Arthur’s mind.
    His eyes turned inside out. His feet began to leak out of the top of his head.
    The room folded flat around him, spun around, shifted out of existence and left him sliding into his own navel.
    They were passing through hyperspace.
    “The Babel fish,”
said
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the