Ford looked round the other side.
“Hey, come and see,” he called out, “there’s a big mural painted on this side. A bursting sun—Disaster Area’s trade mark. This must be Hotblack’s ship. Lucky old bugger. They do this terrible song you know which ends with a stuntship crashing into the sun. Meant to be an amazing spectacle. Expensive in stunt ships though.”
Zaphod’s attention however was elsewhere. His attention was riveted on the ship standing next to Hotblack Desiato’s limo. His mouths hung open.
“That,” he said, “that… is really bad for the eyes…”
Ford looked. He too stood astonished.
It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon, twenty yards long, very clean, very sleek. There was just one remarkable thing about it.
“It’s so… black!” said Ford Prefect, “you can hardly make out its shape… light just seems to fall into it!”
Zaphod said nothing. He had simply fallen in love.
The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost impossible to tell how close you were standing to it.
“Your eyes just slide off it…” said Ford in wonder. It was an emotional moment. He bit his lip.
Zaphod moved forward to it, slowly, like a man possessed—or more accurately like a man who wanted to possess. His hand reached out to stroke it. His hand stopped. His hand reached out to stroke it again. His hand stopped again.
“Come and feel the surface,” he said in a hushed voice.
Ford put his hand out to feel it. His hand stopped.
“You… you can’t…” he said.
“See?” said Zaphod, “it’s just totally frictionless. This must be one mother of a mover…”
He turned to look at Ford seriously. At least, one of his heads did—the other stayed gazing in awe at the ship.
“What do you reckon, Ford?” he said.
“You mean… er…” Ford looked over his shoulder. “You mean stroll off with it? You think we should?”
“No.”
“Nor do I.”
“But we’re going to, aren’t we?”
“How can we not?”
They gazed a little longer, till Zaphod suddenly pulled himself together.
“We better shift soon,” he said. “In a moment or so the Universe will have ended and all the Captain Creeps will be pouring down here to find their bourge-mobiles.”
“Zaphod,” said Ford.
“Yeah?”
“How do we do it?”
“Simple,” said Zaphod. He turned. “Marvin!” he called.
Slowly, laboriously, and with a million little clanking and creaking noises that he had learned to simulate, Marvin turned round to answer the summons.
“Come on over here,” said Zaphod, “We’ve got a job for you.”
Marvin trudged towards them.
“I won’t enjoy it,” he said.
“Yes, you will,” enthused Zaphod, “there’s a whole new life stretching out ahead of you.”
“Oh, not another one,” groaned Marvin.
“Will you shut up and listen!” hissed Zaphod, “this time there’s going to be excitement and adventure and really wild things.”
“Sounds awful,” Marvin said.
“Marvin! All I’m trying to ask you…”
“I suppose you want me to open this spaceship for you?”
“What? Er… yes. Yeah, that’s right,” said Zaphod jumpily. He was keeping at least three eyes on the entrance. Time was short.
“Well, I wish you’d just tell me rather than try to engage my enthusiasm,” said Marvin, “because I haven’t got one.”
He walked on up to the ship, touched it, and a hatchway swung open.
Ford and Zaphod stared at the opening.
“Don’t mention it,” said Marvin, “Oh, you didn’t.” He trudged away again.
Arthur and Trillian clustered round.
“What’s happening?” asked Arthur.
“Look at this,” said Ford, “look at the interior of this ship.”
“Weirder and weirder,” breathed Zaphod.
“It’s black,” said Ford, “Everything in it is just totally black…”
In the Restaurant, things were fast approaching the moment after which there wouldn’t be any more moments.
All eyes were fixed on the dome, other than those of Hotblack Desiato’s bodyguard, which were looking intently at Hotblack Desiato, and those of Hotblack Desiato himself which the bodyguard had closed out of respect.
The bodyguard leaned forward over the table. Had Hotblack Desiato been alive, he probably would have deemed this a good moment to lean back, or even go for a short walk. His bodyguard was not a man which improved with proximity. On account of his unfortunate condition, however, Hotblack Desiato remained totally inert.
“Mr. Desiato, sir?” whispered the bodyguard. Whenever he spoke, it looked as if the muscles on either side of his mouth were clambering over each other to get out of the way.
“Mr. Desiato? Can you hear me?”
Hotblack Desiato, quite naturally, said nothing.
“Hotblack?” hissed the bodyguard.
Again, quite naturally, Hotblack Desiato did not reply. Supernaturally, however, he did.
On the table in front of him a wine glass rattled, and a fork rose an inch or so and tapped against the glass. It settled on the table again.
The bodyguard gave a satisfied grunt.
“It’s time we get going, Mr. Desiato,” muttered the bodyguard, “don’t want to get caught in the rush, not in your condition. You want to get to the next gig nice and relaxed. There was a really big audience for it. One of the best. Kakrafoon. Five-hundred seventy-six thousand and two million years ago. Had you will have been looking forward to it?”
The fork rose again, waggled in a non-committal sort of way and dropped again.
“Ah, come on,” said the bodyguard, “it’s going to have been great. You knocked ’em cold.” The bodyguard would have given Dr. Dan Streetmentioner an apoplectic attack.
“The black ship going into the sun always gets ’em, and the new one’s a beauty. Be real sorry to see it go. If we get on down there, I’ll set the black ship autopilot and we’ll cruise off in the limo. OK?”
The fork tapped once in agreement, and the glass of wine mysteriously emptied itself.
The bodyguard wheeled Hotblack Desiato’s chair out of the Restaurant.
“And now,” cried Max from the centre of the stage, “the moment you’ve all been waiting for!” He flung his arms into the air. Behind him, the band went into a frenzy of percussion and rolling synthochords. Max had argued with them about this but they had claimed it was in their contract that that’s what they would do. His agent would have to sort it out.
“The skies begin to boil!” he cried. “Nature collapses into the screaming void! In twenty seconds’ time, the Universe itself will be at an end! See where the light of infinity bursts in upon us!”
The hideous fury of destruction blazed about them—and at that moment a still small trumpet sounded as from an infinite distance. Max’s eyes swivelled round to glare at the band. None of them seemed to be playing a trumpet. Suddenly a wisp of smoke was swirling and shimmering on the stage next to him. The trumpet was joined by more trumpets. Over five hundred times Max had done this show, and nothing like this had ever happened before. He drew back in alarm from the swirling smoke, and as he did so, a figure slowly materialized inside, the figure of an ancient man, bearded, robed and wreathed in light. In his eyes were stars and on his brow a golden crown.
“What’s this?” whispered Max, wild-eyed, “what’s happening?”
At the back of the Restaurant the stony-faced party from the Church of the Second Coming of the Great Prophet Zarquon leapt ecstatically to their feet chanting and crying.
Max blinked in amazement. He threw up his arms to the audience.
“A big hand please, ladies and gentlemen,” he hollered, “for the Great Prophet Zarquon! He has come! Zarquon has come again!”