Chapter 9 Chapter nine

Surrounding the second planet in the Frog star system is an unhealthy stale atmosphere. Wet, cold winds constantly sweep across the surface of the planet, blowing across the saline flats, drying up swamps, eroding vegetation, and the scattered ruins of abandoned cities.The entire surface of the planet is free of any living things.Like many other planets in this sector of the galaxy, this land has been abandoned for a long, long time. The howling of the wind was all the more forlorn as it blew past the old decaying houses; as it whipped here and there at the bases of the black towers that swayed restlessly across the surface of the desolate world , its howling is even more bleak.On the top of these towers, there are flocks of birds, huge, skinny, and emitting an extremely bad smell. They are the few survivors of the civilization that once appeared on this land.

Yet its howl is most desolate only when it blows over a knoll in the middle of a wide gray plain on the outskirts of the largest of all those abandoned cities. It is this mound that has earned the world the reputation of "the most evil place in the galaxy".From the outside it looked like no more than a steel vault about ten feet in diameter.But if you look at it from the inside, it is so big that it is beyond the normal understanding of Fan Si, About a hundred yards away, and separated from it by a stretch of the most infertile land imaginable, was an area that might have been defined as a landing zone or something like that.In other words, the dozens of wreckages of buildings scattered ungainly in this large area were all made by emergency landing.

A wisp of consciousness wanders above and around these buildings, waiting for something. This strand of consciousness focused on the air.Before long, a spot appeared in the distance, and around it was a smaller spot. The larger blob is the tower to the left of the office building, which is descending through the stratosphere of the Frog Galaxy B world. During the descent, Rosta suddenly broke the long uncomfortable silence between them. He stood up, put the towels in a bag, and said, "Beeblebrox, I'm going to do what I was sent here to do right now." Zangaud looked up at him: he was sitting in a corner, thinking as silently as Marvin.

"What," he said. "The building is about to drop. When you leave the building, don't go through the door," Rosta said. "Go out the window," "Good luck," he added, and walked out the door, disappearing from Zaphod's life—as mysteriously as he had entered. Zaphod jumped up and rushed to the door, but Rosta had locked it.So he just shrugged and went back to the corner, Two minutes later, the building crashed into the middle of the wreckage.Then, its Frogstar combat ship escort team turned off the gravitational beam, flew back into space, and flew to the Frog Galaxy.The world was a relatively pleasant place, and they never landed on Frog Galaxy B worlds.No one will do that.No one has ever walked the surface of this planet, except those destined to fall prey to the vortex of absolute perspective.

During the fall, Zaphod was shaken violently.Most of the room was knocked out, forming a silent heap of dusty rubble.He stayed in it for a while longer, feeling that he was at the lowest point of his life.He feels overwhelmed, he feels alone, he feels that no one loves him.In the end, he felt that he should get the job done—whatever it was. He looked up and looked around the dilapidated room.The walls were cracked across the doorframe, and the door was open.It was a miracle that the windows were still closed and unbroken.He hesitated for a moment, and then it occurred to him that if his strange companion had made all the effort he had made to come and say all the things he had said, there must be some truth in his words.So, with Marvin's help, he opened the window.Outside, the dust stirred up by the shock had not yet dissipated, and the whole building was surrounded by other buildings, which prevented Zangaud from seeing any trace of the world outside.

It wasn't that he was particularly concerned about the sight outside.His attention was mainly on the scene below.Zarniwoop's office was on the fifteenth floor.Even though the entire building was tilted to the ground at an angle of about forty-five degrees, the drop was still high enough to stop one's heartbeat. Finally, stimulated by Marvin's constant scornful glances, he took a deep breath, climbed through the window and up the steep slope of the building.Marvin followed him: they began to crawl, slowly and painfully, down the fifteen floors that separated them from the ground.

His eyes were stinging as the cold, damp air and dust suffocated his lungs as he descended.Besides, the distance down made his two heads dizzy. From time to time, Marvin said, "This is what life forms like you like to do, isn't it? I'm just asking for information, just to collect information." Such words have no effect on improving Zaphod's mental state. What role does it play. After climbing about half the distance, they stopped to rest.It seemed to Zaphod that while he himself lay where he was, panting with fear and exhaustion, Marvin seemed happier than usual.In the end, he discovered that this was not the case. The robot's so-called elation was only relative to his own bad mood.

A large, bony black bird flapped its wings over a cloud of slowly settling dust, poking out on its scrawny scaffolding.It folded its ugly wings and perched precariously there in an awkward posture. Its wingspan must have been almost six feet wide.For a bird, its head and neck look bizarrely large.Its face is flat and its beak is not fully developed.At about the middle of the wings, you can clearly see a pair of degenerated organs similar to hands. In fact, it looks almost like a person. It rolled a pair of big eyeballs, stared at Zaphod, and made a "click". "Go away," said Zaphod.

"Okay," the bird muttered morosely Zaphod watched it go, bewildered.Smacking the bird's beak intermittently, it jumped into the air again. "Is that bird talking to me?" he asked Marvin nervously.He was fully prepared, waiting for a negative answer, that is, he was actually hallucinating himself. "Yes." Marvin said firmly. "Poor fellow." A deep, ethereal voice reached Zaphod's ears. Zaphod turned sharply, looked around for the source of the sound, and almost fell downstairs. In his haste, he grabbed a protruding window part and put his other hand on it.He hung like this, panting heavily.

The sound had no visible source—there was no one around, yet it reappeared. "You know, they all have a tragic history behind them. A terrible blow!" Zaphod looked around frantically.The voice was deep and deliberate.In another setting, it might even be described as some sort of soothing sound.But a voice out of nowhere, hollow and lacking in connection with any kind of feast, is never soothing, especially when you're like Zaphod Beeblebrox now, Not at your best, but while hanging from a ledge outside the eighth floor of a crashed building. "Hey, um..." he stammered.

"Should I tell you their story?" the voice asked quietly, "Uh... who are you," gasped Zaphod, "where are you?" "Then wait a while, maybe." The voice murmured, "I am Jagravar, and I am the administrator of the absolute perspective vortex." "Why can't I see?" "You'll find your way down the building much easier..." The voice raised his voice and said, "If you move to the left about two yards, why not try it7" Zaphod glanced over and saw a series of short horizontal grooves running down to the base of the building.So he moved gratefully towards the grooves. "Why don't we meet downstairs," the voice came to his ears again, gradually weakening as he spoke. "Hey," shouted Zaphod, "where the hell are you..." "It will only take a few minutes of your time," said the voice very faintly. "Marvin," Zaphod asked earnestly of the robot squatting dejectedly beside him, "was there a...was there a voice? Just now..." "Yes." Marvin replied succinctly. Zaphod nodded, and he took out his hazard-sensing sunglasses, the lenses had been completely blackened, and a large piece was scratched by the unknown metal in his pocket.He puts on his sunglasses, and he feels more comfortable climbing down the building if he can't see what he's doing, After a few minutes, he flipped over the mirror and jumped to the ground.then take off the sun Marvin followed him, a little slow-beat, jumped down too, and fell face down in the dust and rubble, and seemed unwilling to move from this position again. "Oh, you're down." The voice suddenly came to Zaphod's ear, "Forgive me for throwing you there like that, because I've got a terrible fear of heights in my head; at least," it said. Added worryingly, "In the past, my head suffered from severe fear of heights." Zaphod looked around slowly and carefully, to see if he had missed something that might have been the source of the sound.But all he saw was dust, rubble, and the ruins of buildings standing ungainly all around. "Uh, um, why can't I see you?" he said, "Why aren't you here?" "I'm here," the voice said slowly, "my body actually wants to come, but it's a bit busy at the moment. It has something to do, someone to see." After what sounded like an ethereal sigh, it He added, "You don't need to tell me what is going on with these bodies." Zaphod wasn't so sure about that. "I think I know," he said. "I just hope it has entered a resting state," the voice continued. "What kind of life has it been living in the past few days! It must be paralyzed, and it can only barely support it with its back elbow." "The back elbow?" said Zaphod. "You mean the back leg?" There was a silence for a while - Zaphod looked around uneasily.He didn't know if it had left, or was still here, or what it was doing.Then, the voice appeared again. "Then, you will be thrown into the vortex. Is that so?" "Uh, oh," Zaphod tried to sound nonchalant (but it worked), "it's not a rush, you know. I can hang around here first, you know, see Look at the local scenery." "Have you seen the scenery here?" Jia Gu Zhuo Wa asked. "Well, no." Zaphod rolled over the rubble, around the corner of a ruined building that blocked his view. He looked out and saw the landscape of the world of Frog Galaxy B. "Okay," he said, "next, I'm going to walk around." "No," said Jagravara, "the vortex is ready for you now. You must go. Come with me." "Well, what?" Zantund said, "but how can I come with you?" "I'll 'hum,'" said Jugguravar, "just follow my hum." A slightly sad voice floated in the air, hazy and sad, as if there was no focus.Only by listening carefully can Zang De detect the direction it is coming from.Just like that, slowly, dazedly, he staggered to follow the voice.What else could he do?