Chapter 25

ven as the starship Bistromath flickered into objective being on the top of a small cliff on the mile-wide asteroid that pursued a lonely and eternal path in orbit around the enclosed star system of Krikkit, its crew was aware that they were in time only to be witnesses to an unstoppable historic event.

They didn’t realize they were going to see two.

They stood cold, lonely and helpless on the cliff edge and watched the activity below. Lances of light wheeled in sinister arcs against the void from a point only about a hundred yards below and in front of them.

They stared into the blinding event.

An extension of the ship’s field enabled them to stand there by once again exploiting the mind’s predisposition to have tricks played on it: the problems of falling up off the tiny mass of the asteroid, or of not being able to breathe simply became Somebody Else’s.

The white Krikkit warship was parked among the stark gray crags of the asteroid, alternately flaring under arclights or disappearing in shadow. The black shadows cast by the hard rocks danced together in wild choreography as the arclights swept around them.

The eleven white robots were bearing, in procession, the Wikkit Key out into the middle of a circle of swinging lights.

The Wikkit Key had been rebuilt. Its components shone and glittered: the Steel Pillar (or Marvin’s leg) of Strength and Power, the Golden Bail (or heart of the Infinite Improbability Drive) of Prosperity, the Plastic Pillar (or Argabuthon Scepter of Justice) of Science and Reason, the Silver Bail (or Rory Award for the Most Gratuitous Use of the Word “Belgium” in a Serious Screenplay) and the now reconstituted Wooden Pillar (or Ashes of a burnt stump signifying the death of English cricket) of Nature and Spirituality.

“I suppose there is nothing we can do at this point?” asked Arthur nervously.

“No,” sighed Slartibartfast.

The expression of disappointment that crossed Arthur’s face was a complete failure and, since he was standing obscured by shadow, he allowed it to collapse into one of relief.

“Pity,” he said.

“We have no weapons,” said Slartibartfast, “stupidly.”

“Damn,” said Arthur, very quietly.

Ford said nothing.

Trillian said nothing, but in a peculiarly thoughtful and distinct way. She was staring at that blankness of the space beyond the asteroid.

The asteroid circled the Dust Cloud that surrounded the Slo-Time envelope that enclosed the world on which lived the people of Krikkit—the Masters of Krikkit and their killer robots.

The helpless group had no way of knowing whether or not the Krikkit robots were aware of their presence. They could only assume they must be, but they felt, quite rightly in the circumstances, that they had nothing to fear. They had a historic task to perform, and their audience could be regarded with contempt.

’Terribly impotent feeling, isn’t it?” said Arthur, but the others ignored him.

In the center of the area of light that the robots were approaching, a square-shaped crack appeared in the ground. The crack defined itself more and more distinctly, and soon it became clear that a block of the ground, about six feet square, was slowly rising.

At the same time, they became aware of some other movement, but it was almost subliminal, and for a moment or two it was not clear what it was that was moving.

Then it became clear.

The asteroid was moving. It was moving in toward the Dust Cloud, as if being hauled inexorably by some celestial angler in its depths.

They were to make in real life the journey through the Cloud that they had already made in the room of Informational Illusions. They stood frozen in silence. Trillian frowned.

An age seemed to pass. Events seemed to pass with spinning slowness, as the leading edge of the asteroid passed into the vague and soft outer perimeter of the Cloud.

And soon they were engulfed in a thin and dancing obscurity. They passed on through it, on and on, dimly aware of vague shapes and whorls indistinguishable in the darkness except in the corner of the eye.

The dust dimmed the shafts of brilliant light. The shafts of brilliant light twinkled on the myriad specks of dust.

Trillian, again, regarded the passage from within her own frowning thoughts.

And they were through it. Whether it had taken a minute or half an hour they weren’t sure, but they were through it and confronted with a fresh blankness, as if space were pinched out of existence in front of them.

And now things moved quickly.

A blinding shaft of light seemed almost to explode from out of the block that had risen three feet out of the ground, and out of that rose a smaller plastic block, dazzling with interior dancing colors.

The block was slotted with deep grooves, three upright and two across, clearly designed to accept the Wikkit Key.

The robots approached the Lock, slotted the Key into its home and stepped back again. The block twisted around of its own accord, and space began to alter.

As space unpinched itself, it seemed agonizingly to twist the eyes of the watchers in their sockets. They found themselves staring, blinded at an unraveled sun that stood now before them where it seemed only seconds before there had not been even empty space. It was a second or two before they were even sufficiently aware of what had happened to throw their hands up over their horrified blinded eyes. In that second or two, they were aware of a tiny speck moving slowly across the eye of that sun.

They staggered back, and heard ringing in their ears the thin and unexpected chant of the robots crying out in unison.

“Krikkit! Krikkit! Krikkit! Krikkit!”

The sound chilled them. It was harsh, it was cold, it was empty, it was mechanically dismal.

It was also triumphant.

They were so stunned by these two sensory shocks that they almost missed the second historic event.

Zaphod Beeblebrox, the only man in history to survive a direct blast attack from the Krikkit robots, ran out of the Krikkit warship brandishing a Zap gun.

“Okay,” he cried, “the situation is totally under control as of this moment in time.”

The single robot guarding the hatchway to the ship silently swung his battleclub, and connected it with the back of Zaphod’s left head.

“Who the zark did that?” said his left head, and lolled sickeningly forward.

His right head gazed keenly into the middle distance.

“Who did what?” it said.

The club connected with the back of his right head.

Zaphod measured his length and rather strange shape on the ground.

Within a matter of seconds the whole event was over. A few blasts from the robots were sufficient to destroy the Lock forever. It split and melted and splayed its contents brokenly, and robots marched grimly and, it almost seemed, in a slightly disheartened manner, back into their warship which, with a “foop,” was gone.

Trillian and Ford ran hectically around and down the steep incline to the dark still body of Zaphod Beeblebrox.