Part 12 (2/2)

Zaphod tried to clap along, but his hands were miles away, arms stretching into s.p.a.ce.

'You look good, Dionah. Great, in fact. No decomposition or anything. I always hoped the afterlife would be like that.'

Dionah placed three hands on her hips, using a fourth to hold the microphone stalk.

'You're not listening to me, Mr President.'

'I don't want to listen. I want to ask stuff. Do you get many Sub-Etha channels where you are? I love CelebStalk CelebStalk. Do you get that?'

Dionah waved away this talk of entertainment, continuing with her song. 'Zaphod, b-a-a-a-by. You gotta walk across that bridge.'

'How about alcohol?'

'You tell him what his secret name is, Zaph, b-a-a-a-by, and he's gonna let you in.'

'Yeah, okay. Bridges, whatever. But, seriously, have you had something done, because I think you look better now?'

Dionah's eyes flashed. 'Your grandfather told me not to come. ”That boy is an idiot,” he said. ”He won't listen, he never does.”'

'It was cryptic,' protested Zaphod. 'Cryptic is hard.'

'Cryptic! It was a G.o.dd.a.m.n nursery rhyme. Any fool could figure it out.'

Zaphod frowned. 'Something about a wall and a bridge.'

'And the secret name. Come on, Mr President. This is important.'

'Wasn't there a fist in there somewhere? I like things with fists, especially when the thumb is sticking up. I saw a cartoon once where the stupid guy sticks his thumb into his own eye and...'

'Oh, for zark's sake,' said Dionah, and turned into an ice-sculpture of herself, which then proceeded to melt, dripping upwards into the ceiling. As each drop touched the panels, it exploded with a tinkling oh oh.

'That girl always could sing,' murmured Zaphod, then settled back and waited for probability to rea.s.sert itself.

He could see two incredible new colours that his brain could only describe as dangerous and s.h.i.+fty, and jagged indents were being hammered into the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p walls as though the Heart of Gold Heart of Gold was being rammed by a colossal spiked creature. was being rammed by a colossal spiked creature.

'Whoa,' yelped Zaphod as a spike shot up between his legs. 'How soon for normality, Left Brain?'

Left Brain popped up from an electrolytic gel flask on the main console.

'Who knows in an environment like this,' he said, gel dropping in blobs from his frictionless...o...b.. 'In actual time, five seconds, but not necessarily in the order or regularity that we are accustomed to.'

Normality returned with a whinny of tiny ponies and a procession of animated, chanting skeletons across the bridge.

'I can see right through you,' they chanted. 'Can you see right through me?'

Then ponies and skeletons were gone and the bridge was as normal as it was ever likely to get, considering the s.h.i.+p's navigator was the captain's disembodied head.

Zaphod blinked. 'Are we normal, LB?'

Left Brain zoomed around the main cabin, touching base with the various infra-red sensors set into the instruments.

'Affirmative, Zaphod. The Improbability Drive has spiralled down and we are in real s.p.a.ce.'

'Excellent,' said Zaphod, unstrapping himself from his flight seat. 'I have trouble telling the difference sometimes, between what and what-not.'

He leaped to his feet, gangling across to the wraparound view screen, his silver boot heels tinging on the ceramic floor.

'Okay. So what do we got here? A planet covered with ice. That's exactly what I did not expect to see. Or rather I expected to see it from the inside. Why are we outside the barrier, LB? Oh why, oh why?'

Left Brain screwed one eye shut, the face he made when a.n.a.lysing streamed data.

'The Aesir have installed a new s.h.i.+eld since our last visit.'

Zaphod pounded the air like a frustrated philosopher trying to force an Existentialist concept into a Pragmatist mind.

'Those crafty immortals with their little beards and h.o.r.n.y helmets. I thought s.h.i.+elds didn't work on Improbability Drives.'

Left Brain hung momentarily wordless, running millions of calculations a second, refining his syntax, paring away any superfluous language until he arrived at: 'You thought? Don't make me laugh.'

Zaphod executed a misconceived Du-Bart'ah spinning kick which missed the hovering orb by several feet and made his groin tendon sing like a violin.

Guide Note: President Beeblebrox's kick was misconceived because the ancient art of Du-Bart'ah had been developed by the Shaltanacs of Broop Kidron Thirteen, who were a happy and peaceful race. The spinning kick was employed to knock Joopleberries from their shrubs with minimal disturbance to the plant itself. Any attempt to use Du-Bart'ah for aggressive reasons would activate the subliminal conditioning in the training chants and turn the attacker's body on itself. Zaphod did not know this, as he learned the technique from a hologram on the back of a ZugaNuggets box.

'Really, Zaphod,' said Left Brain, hovering to a safe alt.i.tude. 'We have a task to complete; there is not time for your usual petty antics.'

'There is always time for antics,' moaned Zaphod from his foetal position around a chair stem. 'Antics get me out of bed in the morning.'

Left Brain knew this to be true, but he had never understood why. 'Is that why we are here, Zaphod? So that you have something to do?'

Zaphod tw.a.n.ged his tendon gently. 'I am Zaphod Beeblebrox, LB, and with the life I've had, it's only a matter of time before I run into a humongous anti-climax. I aim to put that off as long as possible.'

Left Brain unscrewed his eye. 'I don't think that's going to be a problem. Not with the amount of firepower pointed at us.'

'Excellent,' proclaimed Zaphod, strained tendon forgotten. 'It seems like ages since we've been up against impossible odds with no reasonable chance of survival.'

'Not long enough,' said Left Brain, and transferred the incoming call on to the main screen.

'No,' said Heimdall, G.o.d of Light, emphatically.

'But I haven't...'

'No!' repeated Heimdall, his huge bald head filling the screen, his eyes boiling red like gas giants.

Zaphod tried again. 'You don't even know what...'

'No. No. No. I don't care what it is, Beeblebrox. No, is the answer. Now improbable improbable yourself off somewhere else before I set the dragons on you.' yourself off somewhere else before I set the dragons on you.'

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