CHAPTER 7

43

“Yeah,” he said, “but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.

Except. . . ” he thought again, which required

looking at the ceiling – “except some of the shouting I quite like.” He filled his lungs and bellowed, “Resistance is. . . ”

“Sure, yes,” interrupted Ford hurriedly, “you’re good at that, I can tell. But if it’s mostly lousy,” he said, slowly giving the words time to reach their mark, “then why do you do it? What is it? The girls? The leather? The machismo? Or do you just find that coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge?”

“Er. . . ” said the guard, “er. . . er. . . I dunno. I think I just sort of. . . do it really. My aunt said that spaceship guard was a good career for a young Vogon – you know, the uniform, the lowslung stun ray holster, the mindless tedium. . . ”

“There you are Arthur,” said Ford with the air of someone reaching the conclusion of his argument, “you think you’ve got problems.”

Arthur rather thought he had. Apart from the unpleasant business with his home planet the Vogon guard had half-throttled him already and he didn’t like the sound of being thrown into space very much.

“Try and understand his problem,” insisted Ford. “Here he is poor lad, his entire life’s work is stamping around, throwing people off spaceships. . . ”

“And shouting,” added the guard.

“And shouting, sure,” said Ford patting the blubbery arm clamped round his neck in friendly condescension, “. . . and he doesn’t even know why he’s doing it!”

Arthur agreed this was very sad. He did this with a small feeble gesture, because he was too asphyxicated to speak.

Deep rumblings of bemusement came from the guard.

“Well. Now you put it like that I suppose. . . ”

“Good lad!” encouraged Ford.

“But alright,” went on the rumblings, “so what’s the alternative?”

“Well,” said Ford, brightly but slowly, “stop doing it of course! Tell them,” he went on, “you’re not going to do it anymore.” He felt he had to add something to that, but for the moment the guard seemed to have his mind occupied pondering that much.

“Eerrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. . . ” said the guard,

“erm, well that doesn’t sound that great to me.”

Ford suddenly felt the moment slipping away.

“Now wait a minute,” he said, “that’s just the start you see, there’s more to it than that you see. . . ”

But at that moment the guard renewed his grip and continued his original purpose of lugging his prisoners to the airlock. He was obviously quite

touched.

“No, I think if it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I’d better get you both shoved into this airlock and then go and get on with some other bits 43