Chapter 22 Chapter Twenty Two

Arthur woke up, but he immediately regretted it. He had experienced hangovers before, but never to this extent. Beam teleportation is no fun, what should I say, it's like a solid kick in the head At this point - he felt his pulse beating monotonously, so he didn't want to move, just lay there, thinking: there is a fundamental problem with most forms of teleportation, he thought, none of them had a good name Can offset all those disturbances caused by it.For the Earth—while the Earth existed, before it was destroyed to make room for a new hyperspace tunnel—on the car, these ills included pumping out of the ground a lot of what would otherwise be safe. Hidden black goo, turning it into pitch that covers the earth, smoke that fills the air, and dumps its waste into the sea.All of this seems to far outweigh the benefits of being able to get from one place to another more quickly—especially when you're in places that, due to the effects of this teleportation, are likely to have changed. Much like where you left off, same tarmac, smoke, and not many fish.

And what about the matter transfer beam, which works by tearing you apart into atoms, then sending those atoms through the sub-ether, and reassembling them when they get their first taste of freedom in years.Any form of transmission tool, as long as it adopts this principle, it will definitely not be a good thing. Before Arthur Dent, many people had seriously thought about this question, even to the point of writing a series of songs on it.Below is one of them.There used to be a large crowd gathered outside the conveyor systems factory of Sirius Control Systems Corporation on Harpy-Wild III, chanting this song: (recitation part) Aldebaran is awesome, awesome , Devil Star is so neat, Betelgeuse has beautiful girls who will tie your steps.They'll do whatever you like, fast or slow.But if you have to take me apart and send me there, I won't do it. (Singing part) Take me away, take me away, wander around.But if you have to take it up there I'd rather be at home.Sirius paves the way with ounces I've heard dudes go on and say "Look at this before you die." I'd be high on the big roads like this or even the trails, but if you have to put I took it apart and sent it there, so I, very simply, didn't go. (Singing part) Take me away, take me away, you must be in a daze, if you want to break me up and send me there I will choose to just like this, on the bed. …(And so on and on. Another favorite song was much shorter. One night I teleported home with Ron, Sid, and Maggie. Roth stole Maggie's And I got Sid's leg. But Arthur felt the pain in his body was slowly easing. So, slowly and carefully, he stood up.

"Can you hear the monotonous thumping and thumping of something?" said Ford, the officer, Arthur turned, staggering on his feet.Chief Ford was walking this way, looking red-eyed and pale. "Where are we?" Arthur gasped.Ford looked around.They were standing in a long, winding corridor with no end in sight.into a sickening green, the color commonly used in schools, hospitals, and mental institutions to tame the people inside—curving over their heads and intersecting the vertical walls of Hune, strangely Yes, there is ribbed rubber on the vertical walls. .The ground is dark green

Ford walked over to a thick transparent panel that hung on the outer wall: it had several layers, but through it he could still see the faint light of distant stars. "I think we're on a ship of some sort," he said. From the end of the corridor came the monotonous sound of banging and bouncing. "Trillian," cried Arthur nervously, "Zaphod?" Ford shrugged. "Not there," he said, "I've looked. They could be anywhere. An unprogrammed teleportation device could throw you anywhere many light-years away. According to Judging by my own feelings, I think we've just had a pretty long journey...

"how do you feel," "not good," "What do you think they are" "Where they are, what they're doing, we don't know any of that, and there's nothing we can do to find them. Just do what I do." "what to do?" "Forget about it." Arthur ran the thought through his mind a few times, and reluctantly saw the wisdom in it, and he packed up his doubts and threw them aside.He took a deep breath. "Footsteps!" said Kate suddenly. "Where?" "That's the sound, the thumping, thumping, stomping. Listen!"

Arthur pricked up his ears to listen.The voice came from an uncertain distance and echoed throughout the corridor.It was a muffled stomping sound that was getting louder. "Let's go," said Ford decisively.They took steps at the same time - but in opposite directions. "Not that way," said Ford, "that's the way they came." "No, no," said Arthur, "they're coming from you." "No, they—" Both stopped, both turned, both listened intently, both agreed with the other, and both set off again in opposite directions. Fear gripped them both firmly.

From both directions the sound grew louder. A few yards to their left another corridor ran at right angles to the interior wall.They ran in and hurried along it.This corridor is dark and very long.As they go deeper, it feels like they are getting colder and colder.Other corridors branched off to the left and right of it, and each was so dark that as they passed they felt a biting chill coming from them. They paused for a moment, listening intently.The footsteps became louder the further they entered the corridor. They leaned against the cold wall, listening intently.The cold, the darkness, and the pounding, hollow sound of footsteps made them very sick.Ford was shivering, partly from the cold, and partly from the memories of the stories his dear mother had told him.At that time, he was just a little kid on Betelgeuse, standing only as tall as an Arcturus miniature spy plane.Those were stories about dead ships and haunted ghost ships that drifted endlessly through the dark regions of outer space, haunted by the ghosts of vile devils and forgotten crews.And stories about those reckless travelers.They found such a spaceship, and went in: there were other stories—but just then Ford took heart, remembering the brown burlap wallpaper in the first corridor, even if ghosts and devils had a taste for adorning their own Dead ships, he thought, would never have been possible with this brown burlap wallpaper.He dared to make this bet, and he was willing to bet any amount of money.He grabbed Arthur's arm.

"Let's go back," he said firmly, and they started back the way they had come. After a while, the two came to the nearest intersection of corridors, and suddenly the owners of those footsteps came straight into their field of vision.They jumped up in fright, like frightened lizards. They hid in a corner, their eyes widening in surprise.About two dozen overweight men and women stomped past them.These people wore striped shirts and were panting heavily.That look was enough to make a cardiologist talk. Prefect Ford stared after them. "Joggers!" he whispered.The footsteps of those people echoed in this network of corridors, gradually receding.

"Joggers?" whispered Arthur Dent. "Joggers," said Prefect Ford, shrugging. The corridor they hid in was different from the others.It is short and ends in a large iron gate.Ford checked, found the mechanism that opened the door, and pushed it open. The first thing that caught their eyes looked like a coffin. The next thing that broke into their eyes was four thousand nine hundred and nineteen things, which were also coffins.