Chapter 26 Chapter Twenty Six

That night, the ship crashed into a completely insignificant blue-green asteroid orbiting a small, unnoticed yellow sun in the western spiral arm of the Milky Way. In the unmarked silent void at the end, In the hours before the crash, Ford Preston had struggled desperately, but all his attempts to disengage the spacecraft's preset flight path were in vain.It quickly became clear that the craft was designed to safely (perhaps not comfortably) transport its payload to its new home while eliminating any course corrections in the process. all possibilities of: The ship roared and burned through the atmosphere, stripping away most of its superstructure and outer shields in the process: at last, it landed awkwardly on its belly, crashing into a murky swamp with only a few moments for the crew to Hours: They must deep freeze the ship in total darkness, revive the unwelcome cargo, and evacuate the ship as quickly as possible, as it begins to sink almost as soon as it touches the ground, slowly rising upside down in the silted mire.During the night, a flaming meteor or two—debris from the fall of the ship—flashed across the sky, and the starlight reflected the stark outline of the ship.

In the gray light before dawn, the spaceship let out an obscene gurgling sound, and then sank forever into this puddle of stinking mud. The morning sun came up and shed a sliver of light on a moaning mass of hairdressers, public relations managers, pollsters, and everyone else.They are crawling desperately towards dry land. Had it been a sun whose willpower was not strong enough, seeing this miserable scene, it might have turned around and returned to the descent: but this one continued to climb along the sky, and after a while, the warm sunlight began to play. It worked, restoring some strength to those who were struggling weakly.

It is not surprising that countless people have been swallowed by Zhao Ze in the night.There were millions of people who sank together with the spaceship, but there were still hundreds of thousands of people talking.At the end of the day they crawled out onto the land surrounding the swamp, and each found a small patch of firm ground a few feet square on which to collapse in order to recover from the dreamlike ordeal. Two people walked a little further away. Prefect Ford and Arthur Dent looked back from a nearby hillside, unable to believe that they had been part of the horror, "A dirty trick," murmured Arthur.

Ford scratched the ground with a branch and shrugged. "It's a very imaginative solution," he said. "Why can't people learn to live together in harmony," Arthur said. Ford let out a loud but very hollow laugh. "No, it won't work that way. Forget it, let's not talk about that," he said, with a vicious smile on his face. Arthur looked at him as if he had gone mad, and when he saw no sign that the other man was still sane, he realized that he had reason to think that the other party had indeed gone mad. "What do you think will happen to them?" He asked after a while.

"In an infinite universe, anything could happen," Ford said. "They might even survive. It's a weird thing, but it's true." He turned his gaze away from the surrounding scene, and fell again to the tragic scene below them.A strange look appeared in his eyes. "I think they'll be able to handle it after a while," he said. Arthur looked up sharply. "Why do you say that," he asked. Ford shrugged again. "Just a hunch," he said, before answering any of Arthur's questions. "Look," he said suddenly. Arthur looked in the direction of his finger: among the rambling crowd below, a figure was moving—or rather, wandering.He seemed to be carrying something on his shoulders: he wandered from one tired body to another, and seemed to be waving at them with the something on his shoulders, as if drunk.After a while, he gave up trying and collapsed on the ground.

Arthur has no idea what this is doing: "The movie camera," said Ford, "to record this historic moment," "Oh, I don't know about you," Ford said again after a moment, "but I'm fucked" He sat in silence for a while. After a while Arthur felt that this remark of Ford's needed a little comment. "Well, what do you mean when you say you're finished?" asked Arthur. "Good question!" said Gott, "I have no signal at all here," Looking over Fred's shoulder, Arthur saw him fiddling with a knob on a small black box.Ford had already introduced the box to Arthur. It was called the Ether Sensor.

Arthur nodded absent-mindedly, and did not pursue further questions.In his mind, the universe was still divided into two parts—earth, and everything else.The destruction of Earth to make way for a hyperspace passage meant that this view of division was a bit unbalanced, but Arthur insisted on the imbalance in order to maintain the last remaining ties between him and his family.Undoubtedly, the ether sensor falls into the "everything else" category. "Not even a sausage," said Ford, shaking the thing in his hand Sausage, Arthur thought, looking listlessly at the primitive world before him, if I could get a good earth sausage right now, I would do anything.

"Do you believe it," said Ford angrily, "in this ignorant corner, where there is no transmission signal for several light-years, are you listening to me?" "What?" Arthur asked. "We're in trouble," said Ford. "Eh," said Arthur.To him, this sounds like the 1st news from a month ago: "Before we get any signal from this machine," Ford said, "our distance from the planet is zero. It is possible that the planet's magnetic field has some unusual fluctuations—if so, we will Gotta keep moving to find a clear receiving tunnel. Are you coming?"

He fucked his dick and strode away. Arthur looked down.The man with the movie camera had struggled to his feet again. Arthur picked up a piece of glass as a self-defense weapon, and strode after Ford.