The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Stealing Cars

Ford Prefect bounded onto the lot the way he usually bounded when he was fabulously interested in something. Or the way he bounded when he was pretending that he was fabulously interested in something in order to catch off-guard whoever it was that he was bounding in on. In this instance, however, Ford was genuinely enthusiastic about the task at hand, so he bounded.

The task at hand was to buy a spaceship for Arthur Dent. Ford had purchased spaceships before and was always excited about closing a deal on a giant piece of technology with the potential to hurl the prospective buyers into a star or black hole. He was especially excited to buy spaceships with someone else’s money, which was the case today. Ford surmised that if he really had to buy a spaceship with his own money, he, quite frankly, wouldn’t. His preferred method of acquiring transportation was simply to borrow a convenient spaceship when the need arose, although Arthur had pointed out many times that what Ford considered “borrowing,” most rational people (especially the people who happened to own the spaceships that Ford borrowed) generally considered “stealing.”

But Ford would not be borrowing any spaceships today, unless circumstances warranted it. Ford never knew when circumstances might suddenly warrant the casual absconding of a nearby spaceship, so while he was certainly going to enjoy haggling with the spaceship salesman, he kept an eye out for any craft nearby that might need sudden, unexplained liberating.

“Ooh! Lookit that one!” said Ford, pointing out a large polished silver ship that looked somewhat like an oversized high-tech ski boot.

“I’m not sure that’s—” began Arthur, before Ford bounded away toward another ship.

“How ‘bout this one?” said Ford, ogling an orange number that reminded Arthur of a lawn dart.

“Ford, i think that—” began Arthur again, before he was interrupted again, this time by some sort of blob-being that had oozed up out of the pavement much like soft-serve ice cream blops out of its dispenser, only upside down.

“May i herp you?” said the blob-being.

“No, thanks,” said Ford, “i got herped yesterday.”

“Oh, good,” said the blob-being. “Herping is such a chore. Then can i show you some spaceships? My name is Fnublo, and i’m the number one sales agent here at Honest Griftman’s New and Used Galactabulous Space Transport Emporium.”

“Nice ta meetcha,” said Ford, sticking out both hands and a foot and shaking four or five of Fnublo’s appendages. “We’re looking for a ship. A cool ship.”

“Er, practical,” corrected Arthur.

“And fast,” added Ford.

“But affordable.”

“So you want something modern and stylish?” asked Fnublo.

“Well,” said Arthur, “i’d say functional.”

“No you wouldn’t,” said Ford.

“I just did,” said Arthur.

“It’s true, he did,” added Fnublo.

“Well, he didn’t mean it,” said Ford. “Now, what have you got that’ll burn a hole through the pork-pie nebula before you can swallow your gum?”

“Why don’t i show you some of our newer models first?” said Fnublo. “That’ll give us a starting point. Follow me.” He oozed away and Ford and Arthur followed behind.

“Ford,” said Arthur, as they walked past rows of shiny spaceships, “i really should just get a practical ship, nothing fancy, so that Fenchurch and i can—”

“Oh, bah!” interrupted Ford. “Why bother owning a spaceship if you can’t own a COOL spaceship? One that’s got style and class. One that turns heads when you’re just idling by a spaceport. One that you can FEEL when you hang a tight gravity slingshot around a neutron star. C’mon, Arthur, you only live, uh…”

“Once,” finished Arthur.

“Really?” said Ford. “I could’ve sworn that humans lived at least twice. Well, all the more reason to get something good.”

Arthur let the argument go as Fnublo had stopped in front of a large spaceship that looked to Arthur like a cross between a monster truck and a blimp.

“This is our top of the line!” said Fnublo. “All the modern amenities, fully automated—”

“Too pedestrian,” cut in Ford.

“well, perhaps this one here,” said Fnublo, gesturing at the ship next to it, which looked like an over-inflated motor-home. “Quite popular with the asteroidal sportsmen.”

“Too cliché,” said Ford. “Look, be a frood and show us where the GOOD spaceships are.”

“I can see you’re a being of taste,” said Fnublo. “Follow me.”

He led them through canyons of imposing spaceships until they came to an area with smaller, sleeker craft.

“Now, here we have the classic models from TerraLuxe Vehicles – Regulus,” said Fnublo, gesturing at a curvy, chrome-accented sea-foam-colored spaceship. “The TVR Consulairre is both practical and stylish. Perfect for weekend getaways or a trip to the Western Spiral Arm.”

“Huh,” said Arthur, looking at the distinctive nose of the craft next to him. “Ford, does this spaceship look familiar to you?”

“Should it?” said Ford, suddenly paying attention to what was going on. “I don’t recall ever steali—, borrowi—, OWNING an over-designed family ship like this.”

“No, it looks like…” Arthur thought about where he’d seen this thing before and then it suddenly hit him. “It’s a Ford!”

“Another one?” said Ford, looking around him suspiciously.

“No, a Ford Consul Corsair. My father had one of these. An estate.”

“Your father had a spaceship?”

“No, a car, Ford. A Ford car. Only it was… car-sized, not….” He gestured at the large vehicle in front of them. “Spaceship-sized.”

“And you bring this up, why?”

“Ford, look at this spaceship. Look at the shape, the design. Apart from the much-larger size and the lack of wheels, it’s almost exactly a Ford Consul Corsair. Same bonnet, same trim, same chrome accents. It’s like someone stole the plans for my father’s car and made it into a spaceship!”

Ford pondered the Consulairre for a moment and tried to imagine a twenty-foot-tall human driving it.

“And look at this one,” continued Arthur. “Tell me that this doesn’t look exactly like a Lotus Esprit. And over here, that’s… that’s… wow.”

“Belgium!” uttered Ford as they both stared at the next spaceship down the row. It was as near to perfect as a spaceship could be. The flowing lines, the curves, the impossibly long nose with the cockpit perched above it, more than halfway back. The way the whole package exuded grace and beauty and crazy power all at the same time.

“That’s an E-type,” said Arthur.

“I believe that you’re right,” said Ford.

“Ah, i see that you gentlemen know your spaceships,” said Fnublo. “This is the TerraLuxe E-type, a classic—”

“No, a Jaguar E-type,” interrupted Arthur.

“Jaguar?” asked Fnublo.

“Yes, Jaguar Motor Company. Of England. On Earth. I mean, this one’s an awfully lot larger and doesn’t have wheels, but it’s otherwise an exact replica. The chrome, the bonnet, everything!”

Ford and Arthur stared stupidly at the gorgeous machine in front of them while Fnublo looked at them, wobbling uncertainly. In fact, the TerraLuxe E-type was an exact copy of a Jaguar E-type, down to the last detail. The only major difference was that, instead of the cutouts where, on a Jag, there would be wheels, The TerraLuxe version continued the immaculate sweep of the side of the bonnet and wrapped it smoothly down under the craft, creating a shape that was even smoother and sexier than its automobile counterpart. Somehow, it looked even more like an E-type than an actual E-type.

“So, how about a test drive?” said Ford, bouncing up and down a little too eagerly.

“I’ll just have to see some identification,” said Fnublo.

“Absolutely,” said Ford, whipping out his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy press pass and flashing it in front of Fnublo’s face. Fnublo eyed it quickly and his demeanor changed from polite obsequiousness to eager fawning, although it was rather difficult to tell the difference between these two expressions as his face was more or less an animated translucent pudding. But Ford noticed the change and plied it for all it was worth. It turned out to be worth very little, as ten minutes of Ford warmly cajoling Fnublo to give him the keys to the spaceship was met with ten minutes of Fnublo repeatedly insisting that he’d have to run this by his manager. Finally, Ford relented and let Fnublo squish off to the manager’s office.

Ford walked over to the E-type and tapped thoughtfully on the door.

“No, Ford,” said Arthur.

“What?” said Ford, looking unconvincingly innocent.

“No, we’re not stealing it,” said Arthur.

“Oh, you’re no fun,” pouted Ford. He turned back to admire the E-type and Arthur admired it along with him until they saw Fnublo working his way back across the lot towards them.

“I suppose that he discovered that we’re wanted in half the sectors on this side of the galaxy, eh Ford?” mused Arthur.

“Oh, the probability of that is at least one-hundred percent,” said Ford casually. “The real question is, what’s the IMprobability of him not finding out?”

“Uh, zero?” ventured Arthur.

“No!” said Ford, not at all casually. “It’s, um… just a tick….” He fished a scrap of paper and pencil out of a pocket and started scribbling some calculations. As Fnublo approached, Ford started reading out a very large number which Arthur suspected was completely made up. Ford read off the last digits just as Fnublo arrived. “… to one!” he declared, standing triumphantly.

Nothing happened. Fnublo may have blinked but it also might have been a sudden breeze getting a ripple to cascade across his face. Ford continued to stand mightily as nothing continued to happen in a way that was not as mighty. Arthur shifted his feet nervously, feeling uncomfortable with the not-very-mighty nothingness that was continuing to happen all around him. He was about to try out some sort of simple word of intervention when the overwhelming nothingness was abruptly and completely overwhelmed by a sudden somethingness. The something in question was a crack in the blueness of the sky which was accompanied by a sound that was something like a mixture of a clay pot breaking and a piece of stiff paper being torn in half, only a thousand times louder. Following this intrusion into the generally serene day was the appearance of a bright, sexy spaceship which plummeted from the crack in the sky and hurtled toward Honest Griftman’s New and Used Galactabulous Space Transport Emporium at an uncomfortably fast speed as the sky clapped shut above it.

If Arthur had had the sharp focus and quick thinking of a paramilitary survivalist, he would’ve been halfway to safety by this point, but he was Arthur Dent, and he did not have those things, so he stood and stared at the mass of sleek metal as it screamed downward. Fortunately, at the last moment, an array of retro-rockets fired and the spaceship abruptly stopped, hovering in the air for a few seconds before settling gently down on top of a few of the spaceships on the lot, smashing them to an impressive array of bits.

It was at this point that a smattering of emotions overcame the various beings who happened to have watched the arrival of this spaceship. There was a mixture of horror and disbelief coursing through the synapses of Fnublo’s gelatinous head. There was a mixture of disbelief and recognition in Arthur as he realized that the ship that just landed was the Heart of Gold. There was a mixture of complete belief and cool confidence in Ford as he calmly strolled over to the E-type and began stealing it. And there was a somewhat volatile mixture of confidence, confusion, and probably horniness in the two heads of Zaphod Beeblebrox, which popped out of a hatch on the side of the Heart of Gold.

“Where are we?” said one head.

“Is this where the party is?” said the other.

“Arthur!” said a third head, which wasn’t at all attached to Zaphod but was, as it usually was, attached to Ford, who was gesturing that Arthur should join him in the E-type with no lack of dawdling. Arthur, being the proper Englishman that he liked to think that he was, felt that he should be of service to help out in the immediate chaos in front of him, but then it occurred to him that he was on a first-name basis with everyone involved and they all were quite aware of who he was and at this point it would probably be best to just not be there. He shrugged his shoulders and stepped into the E-type.

The first thing Arthur noticed about the interior of the TerraLuxe E-type was that it was not at all like the interior of a Jaguar E-type. Sure, it had the same touches of chrome, wood, and leather, but this was, after all, an interstellar cruiser that could comfortably carry a family of five, plus pets, in modern comfort. But once Arthur climbed up into the cockpit, he immediately noticed just how much like a Jag this E-type was. He slid into the low seat next to Ford and looked out of the bubble-shaped front glass past the endless nose of the ship and beyond to the deep blue of the upper atmosphere, which was where Ford was currently pointing the ship at an impressive speed. Arthur smiled as he listened to the roar of the engines. They didn’t have the screaming whine of most spaceship engines, but had been specifically tuned by the TerraLuxe company to thrum with a satisfying growl. Arthur imagined himself on a country road in England, snug in the worn leather seat of a Jaguar, pushing the car on the straightaways and easing up before diving into a turn. It made him feel wistful for Earth—for England—and he enjoyed the moment as the E-type tore away into the star-speckled blackness of space.

The idyllic moment ended suddenly with the arrival of a beeping noise coming from the dashboard. Arthur looked around and saw, in the video monitor that exactly matched the size and placement of a Jaguar’s rear-view mirror, an image of the planet that they’d just left, receding into the distance. Slightly more conspicuous than the planet, however, were the images of two spaceships, both getting larger as they chased the E-type.

“Er, Ford,” began Arthur.

“What are they?” snapped Ford. “Vogons? Frogstar fighters? Scream-O-Blast police cruisers?”

“No, they’re, er….” Arthur studied the two yellow-and-black ships closing in on them. “They appear to be Triumph TR7s.”

“Belgium!” said Ford. “Are you sure?” He slammed the E-type into a quick roll and Arthur looked out of the cockpit window at the two pursuing ships. They were definitely TR7s, only, like on the TerraLuxe E-type that Ford and Arthur were currently stealing, with no tires—just smooth metal all the way down the wedge-shaped ship, making it even more triangley than a Triumph TR7 already was.

“Definitely,” said Arthur. “And,” he added, as a white-hot bolt of fusion energy ripped past them, “they appear to have laser-guns.”

“Noted,” said Ford, as a second laser blast glanced off of the front quarter-panel. “well, let’s see what this baby can do!” He jammed the throttle to full and sped off toward a cluster of planetoids with the TR7s in hot pursuit.

——

The Monoluxe Space Vehicle Company, when they first started building spaceships, was not known for its design aesthetics. In fact, one reviewer called their product line “ugly from top to bottom. Ugly in such a way that, compared to common things that are intrinsically ugly, these ships are uglier. Not just uglier—ugliest. The utmost superlative of the worst of everything. Gad, they’re ugly.”

Feeling that this kind of reputation was impacting their sales in a negative way, they sought to improve their product line, but after a few disastrous rollouts from a series of incompetent designers, they finally gave in to corporate pressure and decided to steal some designs. The spark of genius that saved the company came from a lowly filing clerk in the front office who suggested that, rather than stealing a popular design and modifying it just enough so as not to get sued, they should find a planet that no one would ever travel to and lift whatever vehicle designs they had, down to the smallest detail. The trick was to find the right planet. It couldn’t be so poorly reviewed as to attract galactic hipsters. It had to be so banal and uninteresting that no one, not even on a bet, would ever go there. They eventually found their holy grail of a planet, far out on the unfashionable Western Spiral Arm of the galaxy in Sector ZZ9-Plural Z Alpha, with this uninviting entry in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Mostly harmless.”

Monoluxe was rebranded as TerraLuxe and the company put out its first line of retro-chic luxo-affordable cruisers with exact copies of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Aston-Martins, and Lotuses. The designs from the big peninsula country did fairly well, but the denizens of the sector of the galaxy where the TerraLuxe company was based really took to the charming designs from the little island nation, so TerraLuxe concentrated their pilfering there, resulting in the well-received launching of the E-type, the TR7, the Esprit, and the DB5. Success was had. awards were won, money was earned, and the only thing that worried the executives at TerraLuxe was the infinitesimally small chance that a being from Earth might ever discover that all of their designs were stolen. But they didn’t worry that much about it. After all, the chances of that happening were almost one-hundred percent against. Almost.

——

Arthur was starting to feel queasy as Ford gleefully threw the E-type through one turn after another, slingshotting around asteroids, planetoids, and whatever other chunks of rock happened to be drifting by. The TR7s were a bit nimbler than the E-type, but Ford could lose them when he stomped on the throttle coming out of a turn. The problem for Arthur, and Arthur’s increasingly unsettled stomach, was that Ford didn’t seem to have any interest in losing the two TR7s, he just seemed to want to toy with them as he enjoyed the spirited movements of the E-type.

“You know,” said Arthur, leaning into a particularly tight turn and trying to think of a topic of conversation that might lead Ford out of executing such particularly tight turns, “i suppose we could just take this ship back and claim that we were merely test-driving it.”

“We ARE test-driving it,” said Ford.

“I thought we were stealing it.”

“That too.”

“Well, maybe we could, i don’t know, say we were from England and claim that this design is completely stolen?”

“What are the chances of that working?” said Ford as he snapped into a perfectly-timed Immelmann turn and blazed past the two surprised TR7s. He pushed on the throttle and shot away as the pursuers wheeled around in matching arcs.

“This is brilliant,” said Ford, looking around at the sporty cockpit. “Just brilliant. No fancy gadgets. No computer telling you what to do. Just metal levers and wheels that actually connect to REAL things that make the spaceship GO. This is flying, Arthur. This is REALLY flying.”

The direct hit on the rear bumper of the E-type by a well-aimed laser blast brought Ford and Arthur out of their reverie of charging down pastoral lanes in an English Jaguar to a jolting conclusion.

“Blerky rent-a-cops,” muttered Ford as he fiddled with the controls. “I wonder what the chance of them just—wait a tick! Chance!”

“Chance?” echoed Arthur.

“No! Not chance, non-chance! Improbability! Hang on….” Ford grabbed a pad of paper and began scribbling feverishly.

“Er, Ford,” said Arthur, as a second laser blast hit the rear quarter-panel and sent the E-type skittering sideways. Ford seemed not to notice and continued his calculations so Arthur tried again. “Ford!” said Arthur, with a bit more urgency as a third laser blast found the underbelly of the ship and nudged it with somewhat more urgency into a cartwheel.

“Not now, Arthur,” said Ford.

“Ford! We are about to die!”

“Improbable. But i’ll add that in.”

“Into what?” sputtered Arthur. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you saving us?”

“Because,” said Ford, as another laser blast sent the ship into a shuddering death-wobble. “The chances of us surviving has an improbability factor of sixty-seven quadrillion, nineteen trillion, four-hundred fifty-two billion, nine-hundred and one million, eighteen thousand, six-hundred thirty-three to one-fifth.” He slapped the paper down on the dashboard.

That was all the universe needed. With a great “meh.” things happened. Zaphod Beeblebrox, at that precise second, flipped on the Infinite Improbability Drive of the Heart of Gold and the gleaming ship, with a deafening “pop,” disappeared from where it was parked at Honest Griftman’s New and Used Galactabulous Space Transport Emporium, reappearing milliseconds later directly in front of Ford and Arthur. Fnublo suddenly forgot that he was missing a beautiful red TerraLuxe E-type, which was good, since the E-type had turned into a functional utilitarian delivery ship that looked like two Defender 110s stuck together. The two TR7s had been transformed as well—into a pair of Reliant Robins, which proceeded to tumble away out of control into the cosmos.

Ford sighed as they moved in to dock with the Heart of Gold. “What a ship, Arthur,” he said, looking as wistful as Arthur had ever seen him. “I’ll have to get one of those someday.”

We made the list!

Thanks, ZZ9!

ZZ9.org graciously added a link to thebbbb.com in its issue #126 of Mostly Harmless. We thank the froods that they are for their magnanimity.