Chapter 33 Chapter Thirty-Three

The sun cast quietly on a chaotic lawn. The lawn that caught fire when the robot snatched the Ember Cup was still billowing with thick smoke.Amidst the thick smoke, people ran in panic, bumped into each other, tripped over on stretchers, and were grabbed by the police. A policeman tried to arrest Wuji Changshou Wabug for insulting others.But the lanky gray-green alien walked back to the spaceship without heeding it, and flew away haughtily, with nothing the police could do.The scene became a mess. And now, in the middle of the field, Arthur Dent and Ford Sheriff reappeared out of nowhere—for the second time this afternoon.They traveled through time and space from the Golden Star.The spaceship is in orbit just outside the Earth.

"I'll explain!" cried Arthur. "I've got the Ember! It's in my bag!" "I don't think anyone noticed you," Ford said. "I also helped save the universe!" Arthur yelled, hoping someone would hear, but apparently not. "There ought to be a commander!" Arthur said to Ford. "Unfortunately not," said Ford. Arthur stops a running policeman. "Sorry," he said, "the Ember Cup. Here I am. It was stolen by those white robots just now. I got it back. It's part of the slow-time cover key. You understand? Well, the rest of you You can imagine for yourself. Anyway, I brought it, what should I do?"

The policeman answered him, but the answer was so strange that Arthur could only wonder if he was using metaphors. He came and went, disappointed. "Doesn't anyone care?" he yelled. A man ran past him and bumped his elbow, and he let go, and the paper bag fell to the ground, spilling its contents.Arthur stared at the ground dumbfounded. Ford looked at him. "Can we go?" he asked. Arthur sighed heavily.He looked at Earth, and now he was sure this was the last time they would see each other. "OK." He said. At this moment, through the gradually drifting smoke, he caught a glimpse of an intact wicket standing upright in front of him.

"Wait a minute," he said to Ford, "when I was little..." "Can we talk later?" "...I'm crazy about cricket, you know, but not very good at it." "Or not at all, if you prefer." "And I used to think -- stupidly -- how nice it would be to be able to bowl at Lord's Cricket Ground one day." He looked at the chaotic crowd around him, probably no one would care. "Okay." Ford felt weary. "Go and come back. I'll wait there," he added, "waiting bored." He walked away to sit on a piece of smoking turf.

Arthur remembered that a cricket fell right into his bag when he first came over this afternoon.He reached in to find it. Before he realized that this was not the bag, he had already held the ball in his hand.This ball lies quietly among a pile of Greek souvenirs. He took out the ball, rubbed it on his butt, spit a little, rubbed it again.He put down his travel bag.He wants to vote well. He tosses the cricket ball with both hands, feeling its texture It's lighthearted and feels great.He trotted all the way in the opposite direction of the goal.A good distance, he thought.He came to the right place.

He looked up to the sky.There are birds flying in the sky, and light clouds are rushing.There were police roars, ambulance sirens, people screaming and crying, but he was so happy that he was completely unmoved.He was about to pitch at Lord Field. He turned around and scratched the ground twice with his slippers on.He sticks out his chest, throws the ball up in the air, and catches it again. He started. As he ran he saw a batsman standing by the wicket. Oh, not bad.He thought, this is more... However, as he ran a little closer, he saw clearly that the batsman standing by the wicket was not from the British team, nor from the Australian team, but from the Robotics team.That is, the cold, ruthless, deadly white killer.Maybe it just didn't leave in the ship with the others.

In Arthur Dent's mind, many thoughts flashed in an instant, but he couldn't stop.Time seems to be extremely slow, extremely slow.But he just couldn't stop. As if moving in molasses, he looked down very slowly at his hands.In his hand was the small, hard, red cricket. His feet were still moving forward, and kept moving.He stared at the ball in his hand.It began to glow a dark red, blinking and blinking.But his feet kept moving. He looked at the begging robot again.It stood there firmly, with the bat in its hand raised high, fully prepared.Two sword-like cold lights shot out of its eyes.Arthur couldn't look away, as if looking down a tunnel - there was nowhere else to look.

The thoughts that flashed in his mind at this time are as follows: He felt extremely stupid. He felt he should have listened carefully to what was being said.Those words echoed in his head now, as his legs would involuntarily rush forward, as he would involuntarily throw the ball at the begging robot, as the opponent would irrevocably hit the ball. He remembered Hector saying: "Have I failed? Failure has nothing to do with me." He remembered Hector's last words: "The past is the past... I have completed the task..." He remembered Hector saying he had "made something."

He remembered how he had grabbed the travel bag so suddenly in the dust cloud. He remembered that he was the one who was going back to Rhodes Stadium through time and space. He also remembered that he was not very good at pitching. His arms swung up.The ball in his hand, he knew, was the supernova bomb that Hector had built.It was Hector who put it there.It can bring the end of the universe ahead of time. He hoped, he prayed, prayed there would be no afterlife.He then felt that the statement was contradictory, so he deleted the prayer. If there was an afterlife, he would be ashamed of everyone

He hoped, he hoped...he hoped that his game was as bad as ever, and that might be the only hope of avoiding the destruction of the universe. He felt his legs go out, he felt his arms swing hard, he felt his feet trip over his duffel bag—foolishly, he'd dropped it in front of him.He felt himself flung forward!However, with so many thoughts, he completely forgot about touching the ground, so he really didn't touch it. He rushed high into the air, still holding the ball tightly in his right hand.In extreme surprise, he let out a soft whimper. He twisted and circled in the sky and couldn't stop spinning.

He flew to the ground in a circle, struggling desperately in mid-air, and at the same time, threw the bomb as hard as he could, throwing the bomb beyond a harmless distance. He thumped on the back of the stunned robot.The robot was still holding the multi-purpose baton, but it couldn't find the target all of a sudden. Arthur suddenly burst out with amazing strength.He rushed forward, snatched the baton out of the frozen robot's grasp, and swung it round in a magnificent gesture—then smacked it hard on the head with all his might. "Can I go?" Ford asked.