Chapter 21 Chapter 21

In the dry red world of Kakulavon, in the middle of the Ludlit Great Desert, stage technicians are testing the sound system. That said, only the sound system is in the desert, not the technicians.They had retreated to safety—the Cataclysm band's giant control ship was in orbit almost four hundred miles above the planet's surface.From there they test the sound effects.No one within five miles of the speaker silo would have survived to get the tuning done. Had Arthur Dent been within five miles of the speaker silos, he would have realized before his death that these sound installations were remarkably similar in size and shape to Manhattan.Clusters of mid-phase speakers jutted out of these silos like monstrous monstrosities, towering against the sky, obscuring rows of plutonium reactors and the seismic-quality electric guitars behind them.

Buried deep in the concrete bunkers beneath this city of speakers are instruments that musicians can control from their turtle ships, photonic guitars, bass detonators, and super-loud drum kits. It's going to be a loud and boisterous show. On the giant control spaceship, everything seemed active and hurried.Hot Black, Di Siato's luxury spaceship is docked at the docking dock. Compared with this giant spaceship, it looks like a tadpole.The deceased gentleman was transferred down from the high arched corridor in order to connect with the medium, which will transmit his spiritual impulse to the keyboard of the electric guitar,

A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, having flown in at apparently very expensive cost from Maxim Galen, hoping to communicate with the band's lead singer.The latter locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of pills, declaring that he refused to come out unless someone could definitively prove to him that he was not a fish.The jazz player in the band was machine-gunning his bedroom, and the drummer wasn't on board at all. After a frenzied investigation, he was finally found standing on a sandy beach on Suntrakins 5, a hundred light-years away, where he declared that he had happily spent more than half an hour, And has found a small stone that will be his friend.

The band's manager was genuinely relieved that, for the seventeenth time during this tour, the drums would be played by a robot, and the beats would be just right. The sub-ether hummed with the messages exchanged between the stage technicians testing the channels of the loudspeakers.It was this message that was conveyed inside the black ship. Inside it, the dazed passengers leaned against the black bulkhead and heard voices coming from the monitor speakers. "Okay, Channel Nine activated," said a voice, "Testing Channel Fifteen now" Another thunderous bang rolled over the ship.

"Fifteen Channel A, OK," said another voice. The first voice catches in; "The black stunt ship is in place," said the voice, "and looks good. This sun dive will be spectacular. Is the stage computer online'" A computer voice answered him. "Online," it said. "Take over the black spaceship." "The black spaceship has locked the trajectory program and is on standby at any time." "Change to twenty channels." Zaphod jumped to his feet and crossed the hold, switching the frequency of the sub-ether receiver before the next loud bang hit them.He stood there trembling.

"The sun is swooping," Trillian asked softly, "what does that mean?" "Meaning," said Marvin, "this ship is about to dive into the sun. The sun...dives, that's easy to understand. You stole Hotblack Desciato's stunt ship, what else do you expect?" "How do you know," said Zaphod, in a voice so cold it would make a Vigan Snowlizard squirm, "that this is Hotblack Desiato's stunt ship?" "Simple," said Marvin, "I'm the one who moored the boat for him." "Then why...you didn't tell us!"

"You said you liked thrills, adventure, and really wild things." "Terrible;" Arthur added needlessly in the middle of the ensuing pause. "That's exactly what I mean." Marvin confirmed. On another frequency, the sub-ether receiver picked up a public address broadcast, now floating in the cabin. "...the concert this afternoon, the weather is fine. I'm standing in front of the stage right now," the reporter is clearly lying, "in the middle of the Ludlit Desert. With the super binary optical suit, I can see a lot of The audience, huddled in terror at my horizon in every direction. The cluster of speakers rose behind me like a sheer cliff. The sun was shining overhead, and it didn't know that something was about to crash into it. The environmentalist parliamentary lobbyists did, and they also claimed that the concert would cause earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, whatever, all the stuff that environmentalists usually talk about .”

"I just got a report that a representative from the 'disaster zone' met these environmentalists over lunch and beat them all to death, so there's nothing stopping them now!" Zaphod turned off the receiver.He turned to Ford. "You know what I'm thinking right now?" he said. "I think so," said Ford. "Tell me what you think I'm thinking." "I think you're thinking we should get off this ship." "I think you're right," said Zaphod. "I think you're right," said Ford. "How do you leave when it's daytime?" Arthur asked.

"Quiet," said Ford and Zaphod, "we're thinking." "So," said Arthur, "we're almost finished." "I wish you would stop saying things like that," Ford said. At this point, it's worth reiterating the theory that Ford put forward in his first contact with humans.These theories are meant to explain their strange habit of repeating something very, very obvious like "It's a nice day today", or "You're so tall", or "So that's it, we're almost screwed". His first theory was that if humans didn't keep exercising their lips, their mouths might fail.

After months of observation, he came up with a second theory, that "if humans don't keep exercising their lips, their brains will start working." In fact, this second theory, in its literal sense, is more applicable to Kakuravon's Bel Serabons. By being one of the most civilized, most accomplished - and most importantly - quietest civilizations in the galaxy, the Bel Serrapons once sparked intense resentment and insecurity among neighboring races. , This behavior is seen as offensive self-promotion and provocation.The Galactic Inquisition decided to punish them with the cruelest of all social ills, mind reading.So, in order not to have even the tiniest thought of themselves read by any one of their kind within five miles, they must now talk very loudly and continuously about the weather, about their ailments, about that afternoon's ball game, and what a noisy place Kakuravon has suddenly become.

There's another way to temporarily cloak their minds: hosting a "disaster zone" concert. The concert is about to begin. The stunt ship had to start its dive before the concert to ensure it hit the sun 6 minutes and 37 seconds before the climax of the song it was associated with, so that the sun's flare would Time to reach Kakulafon. Officer Ford finished his search of the other compartments on the black ship, which had been several minutes into its dive course by this time.He rushed back to the cabin. Kakuravon's sun loomed on the visual screen, startlingly large, its molten hydrogen nuclei forming a burning white hell.As the spaceship moved forward, the hell seemed to be expanding, not banging on the board at all.Arthur and Trillian looked stiff, like rabbits scurrying down the road at night (they thought a good way to deal with the headlights of approaching cars was to stare at them). Zaphod turned around, his eyes wild. "Ford," he said, "how many escape pods are there?" "No," said Ford. Zaphod was still gnawing. "Have you counted yet," he called. "Twice," said Ford, "did you try radioing the stage crew?" "Yes," said Zaphod with a wry smile, "I told them there was a group of people on the ship, and they asked me to say hello to everyone." Ford stared. "Did you tell them who you are?" "Oh, sure. They said they were honored, that's all, and a little bit about a restaurant bill, and being my executor." Ford roughly pushed Arthur aside and leaned forward over the console. "Aren't there any working controls?" he said gruffly. "All control keys are disabled." "Smash the autopilot," "Then you'll have to find it first, there's nothing connected by cables." There was a cold silence. Arthur was wandering around the back of the cabin and stopped suddenly. "By the way," he said, "what does teleportation mean?" Another silence passed. Slowly, everyone turned their faces to him. "Perhaps the wrong time," said Arthur, "I just remember hearing you use that word not so long ago, and I'm only bringing it up now because..." "Where," said Prefect Ford calmly, "teleportation is written?" "Here, it's over here." Arthur said, pointing to a black control box at the back of the cabin, "just under 'Emergency', above 'System', next to 'Failure':" In the ensuing uproar, the only action was that Chief Ford stepped across the cabin, came to the small black box that Arthur just pointed to, and repeatedly poked the only small black button on it. A six-foot-square panel slides away next to it to reveal a compartment.The cubicle looks like a combined shower set that has acquired a new function, becoming an electrician's shop; half-finished wiring hangs from the ceiling, and a pile of discarded components litters the floor in a haphazard manner, program operation The panel hung from the hole in the wall where it was supposed to be protected. A junior accountant in Disaster Zone, visiting the shipyard where the ship was built, once asked the foreman to explain to him why, on a ship with only one major voyage to complete, and a man piloted, Install a rather expensive teleportation device.The foreman explains that there is a 10 percent discount on the unit, which the accountant doesn't see as a material reason: the foreman explains that it's the best, most powerful, smartest unit money can buy , the accountant thinks money is not willing to buy it at all; the foreman explains that people may still need to get in and out of the ship, the accountant thinks the ship has a pretty good door already; the foreman explains that the accountant should go sober After a moment of thought, the accountant explained to the foreman that what was approaching him rapidly from the left side was a fist aimed at the mouth.When the dispute was over, work on the installation of the teleportation device was discontinued, but the invoice was subsequently charged five times the price. "Fucking idiot," grumbled Zaphod as he and Ford tried to clear the tangled wires, After a while Ford told him to stand back.He dropped a coin into the teleportation device, flicked a switch on the dangling control panel, and with a crack and a flash, the coin disappeared. "That part works fine," said Couter, "but no guidance system found, no guidance program controlled teleportation will send you to—well, anywhere." The huge figure of Kakuravon Taiyo was reflected on the screen. "Does it matter?" said Zaphod, "Where we go is where we go." "And," said Ford, "there's no automatic system. We can't all go away, someone has to stay and operate it." A solemn moment passed.The sun seemed to grow bigger and bigger. "Hey Marvin buddy," said Zaphod briskly, "how are you 7" "Very bad, I suppose," Marvin muttered. Soon after, the concert at Kakuravon reached a climax that no one expected. The black spaceship, with its only depressed passenger, crashed into the nuclear surface of the sun as planned.The gigantic solar flare soared millions of miles into the air, thrilling a dozen or so flare riders who had glided near the sun's surface in anticipation of the moment.After a while, a deep ditch opened in the desert hit by the sound waves.A gigantic, previously undiscovered subterranean river gushed out toward the planet's surface, and seconds later began erupting millions of tons of boiling magma hundreds of feet high.In an instant, the rivers above and below the ground stirred up an explosion, and the echoes spread far and wide, until the far corners of the planet were forked back. Those very few who survived and witnessed the spectacle swore that the entire desert, hundreds of thousands of square miles, rose into the air like a mile-thick pancake, turned over just fell down.And at exactly the same moment, the radiation from the sun's flare penetrates the clouds formed by water vapor and shines on the ground. A year later, the hundreds of thousands of square miles of desert were in bloom.Around this changed.The summer sun is less scorching and the rain is more frequent.So gradually, the desert world of Kakuravon became a paradise.Even the Kakuravon's cursed ability to read minds was permanently lost by the force of the blast. A spokesman for "Disaster Zone," the guy who beat all the environmentalists to death -- had a famous, and oft-quoted, saying that it was "a good show." Many people have been moved to talk about the "healing power" of music.A handful of skeptical scientists, after sifting through the records of the event, claim to have found faint traces of a gigantic man-made induced improbability field drifting through nearby space.