'Hey. Come on. I'm trying to relax blowing company money here. Switch off that beam.'

'Very funny,' said a voice so sarcastic that even the auditorily challenged nut tree voles of Oglaroon could have detected its insincerity through their whiskers.

Ford swivelled on his chair and realized that the glow came from a person in the doorway.

'You seem a little green,' he commented.

Random scowled. 'So would you, if you'd spent the past while sealed in a tube with a cloud of viridigenous gas that was trying to make you happy.'

'Happiness? That would never do, would it?'

'Not when your mother is making out with that horrible alien right under your nose. Disgusting.'

Ford nodded with a wisdom beyond his ears. 'Ah, yes, the deBeouf Principle. I read about that in a thing with actual pages in it. A quaint thing where you flip the paper over.'

'A book,' said Random, and she may have glowered, it was hard to tell.

'That was it. I'm guessing that you're not too happy about this latest romantic development.'

Random stomped into the chamber, puff clouds of green dust rising from her shoulders with each footfall. 'No. I am not happy. He is so arrogant. Such a...'

'Pormwrangler?' offered Ford helpfully.

'Yes. Exactly.'

Ford's fingers tapped the air impatiently, eager to wrap themselves around a tankard handle. 'So, why don't you talk to Arthur about it? He's your biological patriarch.'

Random smiled bitterly. 'Arthur? I tried, but he's in love too, with his blasted computer.'

Even Ford was a little surprised by this. It wasn't that people didn't fall in love with machines he had a cousin who once spent two years shacked up with a sandwich toaster but Arthur was so uptight, so strait-laced, such a total Earthling.

'Love is love,' he said, falling back on his brochure knowledge from a peace spa he had once visited on Hawalius. 'Don't judge unless you want someone else to come along, possibly someone green, and judge you and you'll say come on, what's all this judging for, don't judge unless you want someone else to come along and judge you and so on.' Ford paused for breath. 'I've had a few beers so I'm paraphrasing.'

He winced, expecting to be smacked about the chops with the wet fish of cynicism, but Random was suddenly all sweetness.

'That's really good, Ford. Wise, you know. I am going to go back to my room to wash some of this junk off and think really hard about not judging people.'

Ford waved her off gallantly. 'No charge for that nugget, young missy. Any time you want a few words of wisdom, feel free to drop in on ol' Fordy. I've got tonnes of advice on the more offbeat areas that most people wouldn't have the first clue about. What to do just before a planet explodes, for example. I am the Universe's expert on that particular subject, believe me.'

And he returned to his screen, satisfied that his sometime role as Ford Prefect, Nurturer of Youth, had been fulfilled for at least this lifetime.

Parenting. Nothing to it. I don't know what all the fuss is about.

If Ford had been a little more tuned in and a little less zoned out, he might have remembered from his own youth that teenagers only ladled on the sweetness for one of three reasons. One: there was some shocking news that needed breaking, possibly involving pregnancy, substance abuse or a forbidden relationship. Two: they had developed a deeper level of sarcasm that was virtually undetectable except to another master of the form and that definitely wasn't the adult being sarcastigated. And three: a bit of sweet talk was a handy distraction when there was something the sweet-talking teenager needed to steal.

By the time Ford might have realized that his limitless credit card was missing, it had already been put back. And shortly before that, Random Dent had utilized uBid's retro-buy time window and purchased something from a long-dead seller. Something a little more sinister than three hundred gallons of Bounce-O-Jelly. With garlic.

Garlic in the jelly, not in the sinister item.

'I am the unluckiest man in the Universe,' Arthur Dent explained to the Tanngrisnir Tanngrisnir's computer. 'Bad things happen to me. I don't know why, but it's always been that way. My nan used to give me bull's-eyes and call me her little trouble magnet. Only she was from Manchester so she didn't say trouble trouble.'

The sparkling hologram, which sat cross-legged at the foot of the bunk, squinted while she rifled Arthur's memory.

'Oh,' she said. 'Bull's-eyes. For a nanosecond there I thought...'

'Wherever I go, things get blown up or blasted by angry aliens.'

'But not you,' said Fenchurch.

'What?'

'You don't get blown up or blasted. You've already had one long and healthy life, and now you're having another.'

Arthur frowned. 'Yes... but. There was the whole dressing gown and pyjamas period. How unlucky can you get? Not to mention being stranded on...'

'Most of your species are dead,' interjected the computer, just as Arthur's memory a.s.sured it Fenchurch would have done. 'It was a billion to one against you surviving, but you did. Twice. That seems pretty lucky. That's, like, fictional hero lucky.'

'I see your point, but still...'

'And you have a beautiful daughter.'

'True. But she's moody.'

'Really? That's odd for an adolescent. You are truly cursed.'

Arthur was stumped. How was he supposed to feel, if not put-upon? Then the holographic Fenchurch unsettled him further with a non-sequitur. Nothing as bizarre as 'Look! A monkey,' but pretty surprising nonetheless.

'Love can be a noun or a verb,' she said.

'I see,' said Arthur, then: 'What happened to luck?'

'Oh, that conversation was just superficial; this is what you really want to know.'

'What love is?'

'Yes. And why you can't seem to get over losing it.'

Arthur felt his heart beat faster on hearing this truth. 'Do you know? Can you tell me? And no numbers please.'

Fenchurch scratched her earlobe and sparks crackled at the contact. 'I can tell you what love means, dictionary-wise, all the synonyms and so forth. And I can tell you all about endorphins and synapses and muscle memory. But ardour's resonance in the heart is a mystery to me. I'm a computer, Arthur.'

Arthur hid his disappointment with the traditional brisk rubbing of hands and stiffening of upper lip.

'Of course. No problem.'

'I am made to live for ever but you are made to live.'

'Isn't that a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation slogan?' said Arthur, frowning.

Fenchurch heated two pixel cl.u.s.ters to affect a blush. 'It might be. All that means is that an entire company of advertisers think you will believe it.'

'Ah. No answers, then.'

'Only questions.'

'I thought we didn't know the big question.'

Fenchurch examined her own fingers. 'The big question is different for everyone. For me, it's the half-life of this ship's reactor. I'm not actually made to live for ever, that's just a slogan.'

'And what's the answer to the half-life question?'

'I don't know. b.l.o.o.d.y thing is touched by G.o.dly magic. It should have stopped ten thousand years ago.'

'So no answers for you either?'

'Nope.'

'Talk is just talk, isn't it?'

'Sounds like it.'

'It looks like everyone is relying on Thor. I know he was your boss, but he struck me as a terrible bore.'

Fenchurch stared dreamily into the past. 'A bore? No. He was lovely. Divine.'

Arthur could not remember seeing that expression on the real Fenchurch's face. 'I think we'll have to disagree on that one.'

'Very well, Arthur Dent. Shall I select a random question from the lexicon of your memory?'

'Good idea.'

The computer flicked through the files for a moment then asked: 'Do you fancy a cup of tea?'

Arthur smiled. 'Now there's a question I can answer.'

Asgard Guide Note: The Aesir have always made an enormous deal of the absolute wonderfulness of Asgard. Odin's son Baldur is quoted as saying: 'Everything is ma.s.sive and huge and brilliant. You mortals with your puny stuff and things have no idea what real brilliant stuff is. We have stuff that would blow your little minds, and then other stuff in jars, sort of lotion, that would put your minds back together again. Then there's this cosmic cow who, like, licked Valhalla out of the ice, and an old guy who sweated Odin's father out of his armpit. That kind of stuff happens every day on Asgard.'

This is typical of the sort of standard vague, inconsistent party line that prompted Boam Catha.r.s.ee, the charismatic leader of the Horrisonian Cult of Agnosticism, to smuggle himself into Asgard, in the belly of a goat, to see the planet for himself. The oft-sampled Catha.r.s.ee recordings read as follows: 'The smell from beyond my hiding place is almost unbearable, but I shall persevere for you, my people. I'm not surprised that no one believes in these G.o.ds any more, they really stink. I can hear a fire crackling so, whatever lies outside, I must take my knife and cut my way out before this carca.s.s is tossed into the oven. I shall just take my knife... my knife... Where's my nothingd.a.m.ned knife? I know I had it, right here in the pocket of my linen trews. Oh, c.r.a.p. Zark. I'm wearing my corduroys. The flames grow closer, I can feel their heat. Help! HELP! I believe. I believe. Don't eat me. Please don't...' And there Boam Catha.r.s.ee's words become unintelligible, apart from two 'my legs' and a 'mommy'. For ten years after Boam's sacrifice, belief in the Aesir spiked on his home planet and the top-selling T-shirt had emblazoned across it in large easy-to-read letters: I B Boam Catha.r.s.ee's words become unintelligible, apart from two 'my legs' and a 'mommy'. For ten years after Boam's sacrifice, belief in the Aesir spiked on his home planet and the top-selling T-shirt had emblazoned across it in large easy-to-read letters: I BELIEVE. D DON'T E EAT M ME.

The point being, mortals knew little of Asgard back in the days of Boam Catha.r.s.ee, and we know even less now, for no living mortal has ever visited Asgard and survived to tell the tale, and any mortal who claims to have done just that is either Odin in disguise looking for some action or completely and utterly insane.

Zaphod Beeblebrox took a very plush cable car from the foot of the Rainbow Bridge to the surface of Asgard. Not only was the car comfortable, with its own helmet polisher and thoughtful cage of foot-warming lizards, but it was convenient too, docking as it did right in the centre of downtown Valhalla.

There was a 'customs' Viking in a reinforced booth, who seemed a little surprised to see a mortal coming on to the platform. In fact, he was so surprised that his eyes popped right out of their sockets.

'Woah,' said Zaphod. 'That is truly disgusting. Can you do it again?'

'No, I cannot,' said the Viking, twisting the eyes back in. 'Who the Hel are you?'

Zaphod responded in the time-honoured fashion of answering a question with a question, a tactic he favoured because of its wind-up factor.

'What the h.e.l.l are you?'

'I'll ask the questions here!'

'What questions will you ask... here?'

The Viking rolled his eyes with a sound like a toothless old person sucking hot tea from a cup. 'Are you winding me up?'

'Is who winding you up?'

The Viking jumped to his feet. 'Fine. I'm a reanimated dead Viking. Okay? We die in battle to get here and then they reanimate us as b.l.o.o.d.y civil servants. I was the captain of my own b.l.o.o.d.y longboat. We tore up England, kicked the stuffing out of those Saxons. And for that I get a desk job. A s.h.a.gging desk job, if you can believe that. Me! Erik the Red Hand. Red because of all the blood that was dripping from it, you understand. Not my own blood either.' Erik stopped shouting mainly because his eyes had wormed their way loose again.

'Wow,' said Zaphod. 'You've really been carrying that around.'

'It's been festering for a while,' admitted the Viking, wiping off one eye with his sleeve.

'Do you feel better now?'

Erik sighed. 'Yes. It's good to vent, you know?'

Zaphod patted his shoulder. 'You need to look after your mental health, buddy.'

'Thanks. That's the first nice thing anyone has said to me since I signed on for that big pillaging expedition in Brittany. I'd shed a tear if I could.'

'You're welcome. Zaphod Beeblebrox likes to spread joy to places other presidents cannot reach.'

Erik held a clipboard close to his face. 'Oh, yes. Beeblebrox. I got a call about you from Heimy ski-boy. Of course, no mention that you were a mortal. Why spare Erik's heart, he's already dead. Typical.'

'I'm looking for Thor.'

Erik tutted. 'No problem finding him. Well of Urd. Go straight down to Yggdrasil, the giant ash tree, then left and don't give any money to the unicorns, it just encourages them. And if you see a guy with, like, a hook nose, answers to the name Lief, tell him that I think we got our eyeb.a.l.l.s mixed up.'

Even Zaphod had no trouble finding the golden tree, though he was distracted by hordes of zombie-like reanimated Vikings shuffling along the cobbled streets, clutching dry-cleaning in their bony hands, or trailing listlessly after tiny dogs.

'This is ridiculous,' he said eventually. 'They all have hooked noses.'

The tree itself was ma.s.sive, its glistening branches dipping low to the ground, weighed down by the swords and shields of fallen heroes and also advertising placards for ZugaNugget cereal, which according to the billboards sponsored the transportation by the Valkyrie of fallen heroes from their mortal plane.

Zaphod abandoned his mini-quest to find the guy known as Leif, and turned down a pretty c.r.a.ppy-looking alley that had c.r.a.p flowing down the walls that was actually c.r.a.p, and because it was a magical realm there was c.r.a.p flowing up the walls too.

'c.r.a.p,' said Zaphod, and congratulated himself on making a statement that was not only an expletive, but also a declaration of fact and a warning to anyone who might be behind him in the alley.

'You talking to me, Blondie?' said a voice, and Zaphod realized that what he had taken for a stalagmite of sewage was actually a stained root from Yggdrasil, the ash tree, breaking through from the cobbles below.

'Pardon me,' said Zaphod, only feeling slightly ridiculous to be talking to a tree. He had talked to a lot worse things in the past few years. 'I thought you were part of the sewage system.'

'I might as well be,' said Yggdrasil, through no mouth that Zaphod could discern. 'The amount of junk they pour straight on to the ground here. It all comes up through my roots, you know. Is it any wonder I'm slipping a few IQ points? You are what you eat, and all that.'