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Chapter 1

The regular earlyup and suddenly re where he was

It wasn't just that the cave was cold, it wasn't just that it was damp and smelly It was the fact that the cave was in the ton and there wasn't a bus due for two million years

Tiet lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both ti lost in space kept you busy

He was stranded in prehistoric Earth as the result of a co alternately blown up and insulted in ions of the Galaxy than he ever dreah his life had now turned very, very, very quiet, he was still feeling jumpy

He hadn't been blown up now for five years

Since he had hardly seen anyone since he and Ford Prefect had parted company four years previously, he hadn't been insulted in all that time either

Except just once

It had happened on a spring evening about two years previously

He was returning to his cave just a little after dusk when he becah the clouds He turned and stared, with hope suddenly clah his heart Rescue Escape The castaway's impossible dream - a ship

And as he watched, as he stared in wonder and excite air, quietly, without fuss, its long legs unlocking in a sy

It alighted gently on the ground, and what little hu calm

A ramp extended itself

Light streamed out

A tall figure appeared silhouetted in the hatchway It walked down the ramp and stood in front of Arthur

- You're a jerk, Dent, - it said simply

It was alien, very alien It had a peculiar alien tallness, a peculiar alien flattened head, peculiar slitty little alien eyes, extravagantly draped golden ropes with a peculiarly alien collar design, and pale grey-green alien skin which had about it that lustrous shine which reen faces can only acquire with plenty of exercise and very expensive soap

Arthur boggled at it

It gazed levelly at him

Arthur's first sensations of hope and trepidation had instantly been overwhel for the use of his vocal chords at this moment

- Whh? - he said

- Bu hu uh - he added

- Ru ra wah who? - he ed finally to say and lapsed into a frantic kind of silence He was feeling the effects of having not said anything to anybody for as long as he could remember

The alien creature frowned briefly and consulted what appeared to be so in his thin and spindly alien hand

- Arthur Dent? - it said

Arthur nodded helplessly

- Arthur Philip Dent? - pursued the alien in a kind of efficient yap

- Er er yes er er, - confirmed Arthur

- You're a jerk, - repeated the alien, - a complete asshole

- Er

The creature nodded to itself, made a peculiar alien tick on its clipboard and turned briskly back towards the ship

- Er - said Arthur desperately, - er

- Don't give h the hatchway and disappeared into the ship The ship sealed itself It started tohum

- Er, hey! - shouted Arthur, and started to run helplessly towards it

- Wait a minute! - he called - What is this? What? Wait a minute!

The ship rose, as if shedding its weight like a cloak to the ground, and hovered briefly It swept strangely up into the evening sky It passed up through the clouds, illu Arthur alone in an i a helplessly tiny little dance

- What? - he screamed - What? What? Hey, what? Come back here and say that!

He jus tres rasped There was no answer from anyone There was no one to hear him or speak to him

The alien ship was already thundering towards the upper reaches of the at void which separates the very few things there are in the Universe from each other

Its occupant, the alien with the expensive coer the Infinitely Prolonged He was a ood purpose, as he would have been the first to admit, but it was at least a purpose and it did at least keep him on the move

Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was - indeed, is - one of the Universe's very ss

Those who are born ier was not one of them Indeed he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards He had had his immortality thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands The precise details of the accident are not ied to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, andvery silly, or dead, or both, trying

Wowbagger closed his eyes in a griht jazz on the ship's stereo, and reflected that he could have made it if it hadn't been for Sunday afternoons, he really could have done

To begin with it was fun, he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-ter the hell out of everybody

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 255, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul

So things began to pall for him The an to fade He began to despise the Universe in general, and everyone in it in particular

This was the point at which he conceived his purpose, the thing which would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on forever It was this

He would insult the Universe

That is, he would insult everybody in it Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his

teeth over) in alphabetical order

When people protested to him, as they souided but actually i all the time, he would merely fix them with a steely look and say:

- A man can dream can't he?

And so he started out He equipped a spaceship that was built to last with the co involved in keeping track of the entire population of the known Universe and working out the horrifically complicated routes involved

His ship fled through the inner orbits of the Sol star syste itself out into interstellar space

- Computer, - he said

- Here, - yipped the computer

- Where next?

- Co that

Wowbagger gazed for a ht, the billions of tiny diaht Every one, every single one, was on his itinerary Most of the to millions of times over

He i up all the dots in the sky like a child's nue point in the Universe it ht be seen to spell a very, very rude word

The computer beeped tunelessly to indicate that it had finished its calculations

- Folfanga, - it said It beeped

- Fourth world of the Folfanga systeain

- Estimated journey tiain

- There to enus ARth-Urp-Hil-Ipdenu

- I believe, - it added, after a slight pause during which it beeped, - that you had decided to call it a brainless prat

Wowbagger grunted He watched the majesty of creation outside hisfor a moment or two

- I think I'll take a nap, - he said, and then added, - what network areas are we going to be passing through in the next few hours?

The computer beeped

- Cosmovid, Thinkpix and Home Brain Box, - it said, and beeped

- Any movies I haven't seen thirty thousand times already?

- No

- Uh

- There's Angst in Space You've only seen that thirty-three thousand five hundred and seventeen times

- Wake me for the second reel

The computer beeped

- Sleep well, - it said

The ship fled on through the night