CHAPTER 8

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it so he threw it away.

He realized with a sudden twinge that something else must have dropped out in the small spacecraft that had brought him to Earth, kindly going out of its way to drop him right beside the A. He had lost his battered and spaceworn copy of the thing which had helped him find his way across the unbelievable wastes of space he had traversed. He had lost the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Well, he told himself, this time I really won’t be needing it again. He had some calls to make.

He had decided how to deal with the mass of contradictions his return journey precipitated, which was that he would simply brazen it out. He phoned the BBC and asked to be put through to his department head.

“Oh, hello, Arthur Dent here. Look, sorry I haven’t been in for six months but I’ve gone mad.”

“Oh, not to worry. Thought it was probably something like that. Happens here all the time. How soon can we expect you?”

“When do hedgehogs stop hibernating?”

“Sometime in spring I think.”

“I’ll be in shortly after that.”

“Rightyho.”

He flipped through the Yellow Pages and made a short list of numbers to try.

“Oh hello, is that the Old Elms Hospital? Yes, I was just phoning to see if I could have a word with Fenella, er. . . Fenella – Good Lord, silly me, I’ll forget my own name next, er, Fenella – isn’t this ridiculous? Patient of yours, dark haired girl, came in last night. . . ”

“I’m afraid we don’t have any patients called Fenella.”

“Oh, don’t you? I mean Fiona of course, we just call her Fen. . . ”

“I’m sorry, goodbye.”

Click.

Six conversations along these lines began to take their toll on his mood of vigorous, dynamic optimism, and he decided that before it deserted him entirely he would take it down to the pub and parade it a little. He had had the perfect idea for explaining away every inexplicable weirdness about himself at a stroke, and he whistled to himself as he pushed open the door which had so daunted him last night.

“Arthur!!!!”

He grinned cheerfully at the boggling eyes that stared at him from all corners of the pub, and told them all what a wonderful time he’d had in Southern California.

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