“What?”
“There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now concentrate!”
“Three minutes,” said Ford Prefect.
“Why,” said Arthur Dent, “are we doing this?”
“Shut up,” suggested Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Trillian said nothing. What, she thought, was there to say?
The only light on the bridge came from two dim red triangles in a far corner where Marvin the Paranoid Android sat slumped, ignoring all and ignored by all, in a private and rather unpleasant world of his own.
Round the central console four figures hunched in tight concentration trying to blot from their minds the terrifying shuddering of the ship and the fearful roar that echoed through it.
They concentrated.
Still they concentrated.
And still they concentrated.
The seconds ticked by.
On Zaphod’s brow stood beads of sweat, first of concentration, then of frustration and finally of embarrassment.
At last he let out a cry of anger, snatched back his hands from Trillian and Ford and stabbed at the light switch.
“Ah, I was beginning to think you’d never turn the lights on,” said a voice. “No, not too bright please, my eyes aren’t what they once were.”
Four figures jolted upright in their seats. Slowly they turned their heads to look, though their scalps showed a distinct propensity to try and stay in the same place.
“Now. Who disturbs me at this time?” said the small, bent, gaunt figure standing by the sprays of fern at the far end of the bridge. His two small wispy-haired heads looked so ancient that it seemed they might hold dim memories of the birth of the galaxies themselves. One lolled in sleep, but the other squinted sharply at them. If his eyes weren’t what they once were, they must once have been diamond cutters.
Zaphod stuttered nervously for a moment. He gave the intricate little double nod which is the traditional Betelgeusian gesture of familial respect.
“Oh… er, hi Great-granddad.…” he breathed.
The little old figure moved closer towards them. He peered through the dim light. He thrust out a bony finger at his great grandson.
“Ah,” he snapped. “Zaphod Beeblebrox. The last of our great line. Zaphod Beeblebrox the Nothingth.”
“The First.”
“The Nothingth,” spat the figure. Zaphod hated his voice. It always seemed to him to screech like fingernails across the blackboard of what he liked to think of as his soul.
He shifted awkwardly in his seat.
“Er, yeah,” he muttered, “Er, look, I’m really sorry about the flowers, I meant to send them along, but you know, the shop was fresh out of wreaths and…”
“You forget!” snapped Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth.
“Well…”
“Too busy. Never think of other people. The living are all the same.”
“Two minutes, Zaphod,” whispered Ford in an awed whisper.
Zaphod fidgeted nervously.
“Yeah, but I did mean to send them,” he said. “And I’ll write to my great-grandmother as well, just as soon as we get out of this…”
“Your great-grandmother,” mused the gaunt little figure to himself.
“Yeah,” said Zaphod, “Er, how is she? Tell you what, I’ll go and see her. But first we’ve just got to…”
“Your late great grandmother and I are very well,” rasped Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth.
“Ah. Oh.”
“But very disappointed in you, young Zaphod…”
“Yeah well…” Zaphod felt strangely powerless to take charge of this conversation, and Ford’s heavy breathing at his side told him that the seconds were ticking away fast. The noise and the shaking had reached terrifying proportions. He saw Trillian and Arthur’s faces white and unblinking in the gloom.
“Er, Great-grandfather…”
“We’ve been following your progress with considerable despondency…”
“Yeah, look, just at the moment you see…”
“Not to say contempt!”
“Could you sort of listen for a moment…”
“I mean what exactly are you doing with your life?”
“I’m being attacked by a Vogon fleet!” cried Zaphod. It was an exaggeration, but it was his only opportunity so far of getting the basic point of the exercise across.
“Doesn’t surprise me in the least,” said the little old figure with a shrug.
“Only it’s happening right now you see,” insisted Zaphod feverishly.
The spectral ancestor nodded, picked up the cup Arthur Dent had brought in and looked at it with interest.
“Er… Great-granddad…”
“Did you know,” interrupted the ghostly figure, fixing Zaphod with a stern look, “that Betelgeuse Five has developed a very slight eccentricy in its orbit?”
Zaphod didn’t and found the information hard to concentrate on what with all the noise and the imminence of death and so on.
“Er, no… look,” he said.
“Me spinning in my grave!” barked the ancestor. He slammed the cup down and pointed a quivering, stick-like see-through finger at Zaphod.
“Your fault!” he screeched.
“One minute thirty,” muttered Ford, his head in his hands.
“Yeah, look Great-granddad, can you actually help because…”
“Help?” exclaimed the old man as if he’d been asked for a stoat.
“Yeah, help, and like, now, because otherwise…”
“Help!” repeated the old man as if he’d been asked for a lightly grilled stoat in a bun with French fries. He stood amazed.
“You go swanning your way round the Galaxy with your…”—the ancestor waved a contemptuous hand—“with your disreputable friends, too busy to put flowers on my grave, plastic ones would have done, would have been quite appropriate from you, but no. Too busy. Too modern. Too sceptical—till you suddenly find yourself in a bit of a fix and come over suddenly all astrally-minded!”
He shook his head—carefully, so as not to disturb the slumber of the other one, which was already becoming restive.
“Well, I don’t know, young Zaphod,” he continued, “I think I’ll have to think about this one.”
“One minute ten,” said Ford hollowly.
Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth peered at him curiously.
“Why does that man keep talking in numbers?” he said.
“Those numbers,” said Zaphod tersely, “are the time we’ve got left to live.”
“Oh,” said his great grandfather. He grunted to himself. “Doesn’t apply to me, of course,” he said and moved off to a dimmer recess of the bridge in search of something else to poke around at.
Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn’t just jump over and have done with it.
“Great-grandfather,” he said, “It applies to us! We are still alive, and we are about to lose our lives.”
“Good job too.”
“What?”
“What use is your life to anyone? When I think of what you’ve made of it the phrase ‘pig’s ear’ comes irresistibly to my mind.”
“But I was President of the Galaxy, man!”
“Huh,” muttered his ancestor, “And what kind of a job is that for a Beeblebrox?”
“Hey, what? Only President you know! Of the whole Galaxy!”
“Conceited little megapuppy.”
Zaphod blinked in bewilderment.
“Hey—er, what are you at, man? I mean Great-grandfather.”
The hunched up little figure stalked up to his great grandson and tapped him sternly on the knee. This had the effect of reminding Zaphod that he was talking to a ghost because he didn’t feel a thing.
“You know and I know what being President means, young Zaphod. You know because you’ve been it, and I know because I’m dead and it gives one such a wonderfully uncluttered perspective. We have a saying up here. ‘Life is wasted on the living.’”