So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Chapter 1
 
That evening it was dark early, which was normal for the time of year. It was cold and windy, which was normal.
 
It started to rain, which was particularly normal.
 
A spacecraft landed, which was not.
 
There was nobody around to see it except for some spectacularly stupid quadrupeds who hadn t the faintest idea what to make of it, or whether they were meant to make anything of it, or eat it, or what. So they did what they did to everything, which was to run away from it and try to hide under each other, which never worked.
 
It slipped down out of the clouds, seeming to be balanced on a single beam of light.
 
From a distance you would scarcely have noticed it through the lightning and the storm clouds, but seen from close up it was strangely beautiful a gray craft of elegantly sculpted form; quite small.
 
Of course, one never has the slightest notion what size or shape different species are going to turn out to be, but if you were to take the findings of the latest Mid-Galactic Census report as any kind of accurate guide to statistical averages you would probably guess that the craft would hold about six people, and you would be right.
 
You d probably guessed that anyway. The Census report, like most such surveys, had cost an awful lot of money and told nobody anything they didn t already know except that every single person in the Galaxy had 2.4 legs and owned a hyena. Since this was clearly not true the whole thing eventually had to be scrapped.
 
The craft slid quietly down through the rain, its dim operating lights seeming to wrap it in tasteful rainbows. It hummed very quietly, a hum that became gradually louder and deeper as it approached the ground and which at an altitude of six inches became a heavy throb.
 
At last it dropped and was quiet.
 
A hatchway opened. A short flight of steps unfolded itself.
 
A light appeared in the

Douglas Adams was born in 1952 and created all the various and contradictory manifestations of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: radio, novels, TV, computer games, stage adaptations, comic book, and bath towel. He was born in Cambridge and lived with his wife and daughter in Islington, London, before moving to Santa Barbara, California, where he died suddenly in 2001.

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