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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy / Руководство для путешествующих автостопом по Галактике. Дуглас АдамсЧитать онлайн книгу.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy / Руководство для путешествующих автостопом по Галактике - Дуглас Адамс


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type="note">[35]

      Ford looked back at him, surprised. “No, not really,” he said and frowned.

      The barman sighed. “There you are, sir, six pints,” he said.

      Arthur smiled at him and shrugged again. He turned and smiled at the rest of the pub just in case any of them had heard what was going on.

      None of them had, and none of them could understand what he was smiling at them for.

      A man sitting next to Ford at the bar looked at the two men, looked at the six pints, and grinned a stupid hopeful grin at them.

      “Get off[36], they’re ours,” said Ford, giving him a look that would scare an Algolian Suntiger. Ford put a five-pound note on the bar. He said, “Keep the change.[37] You’ve got ten minutes left to spend it.”

      The barman simply decided to walk away for a while.

      “Ford,” said Arthur, “would you please tell me what the hell is going on?”

      “Drink it,” said Ford, “you’ve got three pints.”

      “Three pints?” said Arthur. “At lunchtime?”

      The man next to Ford grinned again and nodded happily. Ford ignored him. He said, “Time is an illusion, especially lunchtime.”

      “Very deep thought,” said Arthur, “you should send it to the Reader’s Digest[38].”

      “Drink it.”

      “Why three pints?”

      “Muscle relaxant.[39] You’ll need it.”

      “Muscle relaxant?”

      “Muscle relaxant.”

      Arthur stared into his beer. “Did I do anything wrong today,” he said, “or has the world always been like this?”

      “All right,” said Ford, “I’ll try to explain. How long have we known each other?”

      “How long?” Arthur thought. “For about five years, maybe six,” he said. “Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time[40].”

      “All right,” said Ford. “What if I said that I’m not from Guildford, but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?”

      Arthur shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, drinking beer. “Why?”

      Ford gave up. It really wasn’t important at the moment when the world was about to end. He just said: “Drink it. The world’s about to end.”

      Arthur gave the rest of the pub another smile. The rest of the pub frowned at him. A man waved at him to stop smiling at them and mind his own business[41].

      “This must be Thursday,” said Arthur over his beer. “I never liked Thursdays.”

      Chapter 3

      On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere[42] many miles above the surface of the planet located near star Sol[43]; several somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow somethings, huge as office buildings, silent as birds. They moved easily, taking their time[44], grouping, preparing. The planet beneath them didn’t know of their presence, which was just how they wanted it to be. The huge yellow somethings went unnoticed even over Cape Canaveral[45].

      The only place they registered was on a small black device called a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic which blinked quietly. It lay in the darkness inside Ford Prefect’s leather backpack. The contents of his bag were quite interesting, in fact, and would have made any Earth physicist’s eyes pop out of his head. Besides the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic he had an Electronic Thumb – a short black rod, smooth, with a couple of switches at one end; he also had a device which looked like a large electronic calculator. This had about a hundred small buttons and a screen on which any of a million “pages” could immediately appear. It looked very complicated, and this was one of the reasons why its plastic cover had the words Don’t Panic on it in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was in fact that most remarkable book that ever came out of the great publishing house of Ursa Minor – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would need several very large buildings to carry it in.

      Besides that, in Ford Prefect’s bag there were a few pens, a notepad, and a large bath towel from Marks & Spencer[46].

* * *

      The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

      A towel, it says, is the most useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly because it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you travel across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant sandy beaches of Santraginus V; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow river Moth; wet it for use in fighting; wrap it round your head to avoid the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a stupid animal, it thinks that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal[47], and of course dry yourself with it if it’s still clean enough.

      More importantly, a towel has great psychological value. For some reason, if a non-hitchhiker (a strag) sees that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically think that he also has a toothbrush, soap, tin of biscuits, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather clothes, space suit etc., etc. Then the strag will happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the Galaxy and still know where his towel is is clearly a remarkable man. Thus there’s a phrase which has got into hitchhiking slang: “Hey, you know Ford Prefect? That’s a guy who really knows where his towel is.”

* * *

      Lying quietly on top of the towel in Ford Prefect’s backpack, the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic began to blink more quickly. Miles above the surface of the planet the huge yellow somethings began to spread out.

      “You got a towel with you?” said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur.

      Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him. “Why? No. Should I have?” He had given up being surprised any longer.

      Ford clicked his tongue in irritation. “Drink up[48],” he said.

      At that moment the dull sound of a crash from outside was heard over the low hum of the pub, over the sound of the jukebox, over the sound of the man next to Ford drinking the whisky Ford had eventually bought him.

      Arthur jumped to his feet. “What’s that?” he yelled.

      “Don’t worry,” said Ford, “they haven’t started yet.”

      “Thank God for that,” said Arthur and relaxed.

      “It’s probably just your house being knocked down,” said Ford, finishing his last pint.

      “What?” shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford’s spell was broken. Arthur looked wildly around him and ran to the window.

      “My God, they are! They’re knocking my house down. What the hell am I doing in the pub, Ford?”

      “It hardly makes any difference at this stage,” said Ford, “let


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<p>36</p>

Отвали (разг.)

<p>37</p>

Сдачи не надо.

<p>38</p>

«Ридерз дайджест» – один из самых популярных американских журналов для семейного чтения (прим. сост.)

<p>39</p>

Для расслабления мышц.

<p>40</p>

и в основном всё было в пределах разумного

<p>41</p>

а заниматься своим делом

<p>42</p>

Ионосфера – верхние слои атмосферы планеты (прим. сост.)

<p>43</p>

зд. Солнце

<p>44</p>

не спеша

<p>45</p>

Мыс Канаверал – мыс на атлантическом побережье США, штат Флорида, на котором расположена военная база ВВС и космический центр имени Кеннеди (прим. сост.)

<p>46</p>

«Маркс и Спенсер» – самый крупный британский производитель одежды, товаров для дома и пр. (прим. сост.)

<p>47</p>

сигнал бедствия

<p>48</p>

Допивай.

Яндекс.Метрика