Mostly Harmless

'What? '

'Car parks. Everything. We monitor everything.'

Tricia stared at them.

'That must be very boring, isn't it?' she blurted out.

'Yes. 'So why . . . 'Except . . . 'Yes? Except what'

'Game shows. We quite like game shows.'

There was a terribly long silence as Tricia looked at the aliens and the aliens looked at her.

'There's something I would just like to get from indoors,' said Tricia very deliberately. 'Tell you what. Would you, or one of you, like to come inside with me and have a look?'

'Very much,' they all said, enthusiastically.

All three of them stood, slightly awkwardly in her sitting room, as she hurried around picking up a video camera, a 35mm camera, a tape recorder, every recording medium she could grab hold of. They were all thin and, under domestic lighting conditions, a sort of dim purplish green.

'I really won't be a second, guys,' Tricia said, as she rummaged through some drawers for spare tapes and films.

The aliens were looking at the shelves that held her CDs and her old records. One of them nudged one of the others very slightly.

'Look,' he said. 'Elvis.'

Tricia stopped, and stared at them all over again.

'You like Elvis?' she said.

'Yes,' they said.

'Elvis Presley?'

'Yes.'

She shook her head in bewilderment as she tried to stuff a new tape into her video camera.

'Some of your people,' said one of her visitors, hesitantly, 'think that Elvis has been kidnapped by space aliens.'

'What?' said Tricia. 'Has he?'

'It is possible.'

'Are you telling me that you have kidnapped Elvis?' gasped Tricia. She was trying to keep cool enough not to foul up her equipment, but this was all almost too much for her.

'No. Not us,' said her guests. 'Aliens. It is a very interesting possibility. We talk of it often.'

'I must get this down,' Tricia muttered to herself. She checked her video was properly loaded and working now. She pointed the camera at them. She didn't put it up to her eye because she didn't want to freak them out. But she was sufficiently experienced to be able to shoot accurately from the hip. 'OK,' she said. 'Now tell me slowly and carefully who you are. You first,' she said to the one on the left. 'What's your name?' 'I don't know.

'You don't know. 'No.'

'I see,' said Tricia. 'And what about you other two?' 'We don't know.'

'Good. OK. Perhaps you can tell me where you are from?' They shook their heads.

'You don't know where you're from?' They shook their heads again. 'So,' said Tricia. 'What are you . . . er . . .'

She was floundering but, being a professional, kept the camera steady while she did it.

'We are on a mission,' said one of the aliens. 'A mission? A mission to do what?' 'We do not know.' Still she kept the camera steady.

'So what are you doing here on Earth, then?' 'We have come to fetch you.'

Rock steady, rock steady. Could have been on a tripod. She wondered if she should be using a tripod, in fact. She wondered that because it gave her a moment or two to digest what they had just said. No, she thought, hand-held gave her more flexibility. She also thought, help, what am I going to do?

'Why,' she asked, calmly, 'have you come to fetch me?' 'Because we have lost our minds.' 'Excuse me,' said Tricia, 'I'm going to have to get a tripod.'

They seemed happy enough to stand there doing nothing while Tricia quickly found a tripod and mounted the camera on it. Her face was completely immobile, but she did not have the faintest idea what was going on or what to think about it. 'OK,' she said, when she was ready. 'Why . . .' 'We liked your interview with the astrologer.'

'You saw it?'

'We see everything. We are very interested in astrology. We like it. It is very interesting. Not everything is interesting. Astrology is interesting. What the stars tell us. What the stars foretell. We could do with some information like that ' 'But . . .

Tricia didn't know where to start.

Own up, she thought. There's no point in trying to second guess any of this stuff.

So she said, 'But I don't know anything about astrology.'

'We do.'

'You do?'

'Yes. We follow our horoscopes. We are very avid. We see all your newspapers and your magazines and are very avid with them. But our leader says we have a problem.'

'You have a leader?'

'Yes.'

'What's his name?'

'We do not know.'

'What does he say his name is, for Christ's sake? Sorry I'll need to edit that. What does he say his name is?'

'He does not know.'

'So how do you all know he's the leader?'

'He seized control. He said someone has to do something round here.'

'Ah!' said Tricia, seizing on a clue. 'Where is «here»?'

'Rupert.'

'What?'

'Your people call it Rupert. The tenth planet from your sun. We have settled there for many years. It is highly cold and uninteresting there. But good for monitoring.'

'Why are you monitoring us?'

'It is all we know to do.'

'OK,' said Tricia. 'Right. What is the problem that your leader says you have?'

'Triangulation. '

'I beg your pardon?'

'Astrology is a very precise science. We know this.'

'Well . . .' said Tricia, then left it at that.

'But it is precise for you here on Earth.'

'Ye . . . e . . . s . . .' She had a horrible feeling she was getting a vague glimmering of something.

'So when Venus is rising in Capricorn, for instance, that is from Earth. How does that work if we are out on Rupert? What if the Earth is rising in Capricorn? It is hard for us to know. Amongst the things we have forgotten, which we think are many and profound, is trigonometry.'

'Let me get this straight,' said Tricia. 'You want me to come with you to . . . Rupert . . .

'Yes.'

'To recalculate your horoscopes for you to take account of the relative positions of Earth and Rupert?'

'Yes.

Do I get an exclusive?'

'Yes.'

'I'm your girl,' said Tricia, thinking that at the very least she could sell it to the National Enquirer.

As she boarded the craft that would take her off to the furthest limits of the Solar System, the first thing that met her eyes was a bank of video monitors across which thousands of images were sweeping. A fourth alien was sitting watching them, but was focused on one particular screen that held a steady image. It was a replay of the impromptu interview which Tricia had just conducted with his three colleagues. He looked up when he saw her apprehensively climbing in.

'Good evening, Ms McMillan,' he said. 'Nice camera work.'

Chapter 6

Ford Prefect hit the ground running. The ground was about three inches further from the ventilation shaft than he remembered it so he misjudged the point at which he would hit the ground, started running too soon, stumbled awkwardly and twisted his ankle. Damn! He ran off down the corridor anyway, hobbling slightly.

All over the building, alarms were erupting into their usual frenzy of excitement. He dived for cover behind the usual storage cabinets, glanced around to check that he was unseen, and started rapidly to fish around inside his satchel for the usual things he needed.

His ankle, unusually, was hurting like hell.

The ground was not only three inches further from the ven– tilation shaft than he remembered, it was also on a different planet than he remembered, but it was the three inches that had caught him by surprise. The offices of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy were quite often shifted at very short notice to another planet, for reasons of local climate, local hostility, power bills or tax, but they were always reconstructed exactly the same way, almost to the very molecule. For many of the company's employees, the layout of their offices represented the only constant they knew in a severely distorted personal uni– verse.

Something, though, was odd.

This was not in itself surprising, thought Ford as he pulled out his lightweight throwing towel. Virtually everything in his life was, to a greater or lesser extent, odd. It was just that this was odd in a slightly different way than he was used to things being odd, which was, well, strange. He couldn't quite get it into focus immediately.