EDDIE THE COMPUTER: Mm, mmmmf!
ZAPHOD: Is there someone on this ship?
EDDIE THE COMPUTER: (Affirmatively) Mmmmf.
ZAPHOD: Are they heading for the bridge?
EDDIE THE COMPUTER: (Affirmatively) Mmmf.
ZAPHOD: Who is it?
EDDIE THE COMPUTER: Mmmmf, m mmmf m mmmmmf m m, mmmm mm m mm mmmmf, mm mmmm m mmmm. Mmf m mmmf m mmmf!
ZAPHOD: Zarquon. The speech terminals are on the bridge . . . Computer, when I ungag you, remind me to punch myself in the mouth.
EDDIE THE COMPUTER: Mmmf mmmf?
ZAPHOD: Either mouth. Look. One for yes, two for no. Is it dangerous?
EDDIE THE COMPUTER: Mmmmf.
ZAPHOD: It is?
EDDIE THE COMPUTER: Mmmmf.
ZAPHOD: You didn’t just go ‘mmmmf’ twice?
EDDIE THE COMPUTER: Mmmmf. Mmmmf.
ZAPHOD: Huh. I guess the trick would be to reach the bridge before whoever-it-is does.
EDDIE THE COMPUTER: Mmmmf.
ZAPHOD: Wait here.
EDDIE THE COMPUTER: Mf??
ZAPHOD: (Moving off) You know what I mean.
INT. – HEART OF GOLD – CORRIDOR
FX: Zaphod breathlessly creeps along towards bridge.
ZAPHOD: (Tiptoeing) He who gets to the bridge first controls the ship, baby . . . Here we are—
As the footsteps get closer, a distant door is heard:
OTHER BRIDGE DOOR: (Off) Pleased to be of service.
ZAPHOD: (Stopping, whisper) Zark! They came through the other bridge door . . .
OTHER BRIDGE DOOR: (Off, cheerfully) Have a nice day!
ZAPHOD: Holy photons . . . I didn’t gag the door circuits . . . (Voice up a bit) Door, if you can hear me, say so very very quietly.
BRIDGE DOOR: (Very very quietly) I can hear you.
ZAPHOD: Good. Now, in a moment, I’m going to ask you to open. When you open I do not want you to say that you enjoyed it, OK?
FX: Muffled drilling sounds from bridge beyond.
BRIDGE DOOR: OK.
ZAPHOD: Neither do I want to hear that I have made a simple door very happy, or that it is your pleasure to open for me and your satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done, OK?
BRIDGE DOOR: OK.
ZAPHOD: And I have no plans to have a nice day, understand?
BRIDGE DOOR: Understood.
ZAPHOD: OK . . . Open!
FX: Door whirrs open quietly
INT. – HEART OF GOLD – BRIDGE
FX: Drilling up.
BRIDGE DOOR: (Loudly) Is that the way you like it, Mr Beeblebrox?
FX: Drilling stops.
Eleven Krikkit robots turn to see where the noise is coming from.
ROBOTS: Intruder.
ZAPHOD: D’oh.
ROBOTS: Engage weapons.
FX: Eleven blasters cocked.
ZAPHOD: Hi, guy . . . Oh, eleven of you, good . . . Tunnelling into the Improbability Drive compartment – tough room.
ROBOT: Intruder. Kill on sight.
ZAPHOD: OK, dude, I want you to imagine that I have an extremely powerful Kill-O-Zap blaster pistol in my hand.
ROBOT: You do have a Kill-O-Zap blaster pistol in your hand.
ZAPHOD: You never know what you’re going to grab off a wall bracket in a hurry. So what are you cats doing here?
FX: Silence, just whirring noises as they turn to look at each other. Who does this life form think he is addressing?
ZAPHOD: OK, robots. So what are you robots doing here?
KRIKKIT ROBOT 1: We have come for the Gold Bail.
ZAPHOD: Huh?
KRIKKIT ROBOT 1: The Gold Bail is part of the Key we seek. To release our Masters from Krikkit.
ZAPHOD: You know, metalhead, if I’d paid more attention to my history lessons and less to having sex with the girl in the next cybercubicle, I’d know what you’re on about.
KRIKKIT ROBOT 1: The Krikkit Wars. The Slo-Time Lock. Its Key was disintegrated. The Golden Bail is embedded in the device which drives your ship.
KRIKKIT ROBOT 2: It will be reconstituted in the Key. Our Masters shall be released.
KRIKKIT ROBOT 1: The Universal Readjustment will continue.
KRIKKIT ROBOT 3: We already have the Wooden Pillar, the Steel Pillar and the Perspex Pillar.
KRIKKIT ROBOT 4: Now we will have the Gold Bail.
ZAPHOD: Er, no you won’t. It’s driving my ship.
KRIKKIT ROBOT 1: (Patiently and seriously) Now we will have the Gold Bail. And then we must go to a party.
ZAPHOD: Hey, forget the bail, let’s party.
KRIKKIT ROBOT 1: No. We are going to shoot you.
FX: Guns being cocked.
ZAPHOD: You’re kidding.
FX: Fusillade of laser shots.
ZAPHOD: (Astonished) Ow . . . OK, you’re not kidding!
FX: A few more shots. Zaphod goes down.
EXT. – SPACE
FX: The Starship Bistromath whips past in accordion overdrive.
INT. – STARSHIP BISTROMATH – COMPUTATIONAL AREA, RESTAURANT SECTION
FX: Restaurant FX, Italian muzak.
ARTHUR: What am I supposed to do with this piece of chicken?
SLARTIBARTFAST: Toy with it. Like this. You’ll feel the tingle as it moves four-dimensionally through five-dimensional space.
FX: Funny little fuzzy effect here. Dirk will think of something. He hopes.
ARTHUR: Oh. Ooh. (Giggling) Ooh, yes! Ooh, I see.
SLARTIBARTFAST: So, overnight the whole population of Krikkit was transformed from being charming, delightful, intelligent . . .
FORD PREFECT: If whimsical . . .
SLARTIBARTFAST: . . . ordinary people, into charming, delightful, intelligent . . .
FORD PREFECT: Whimsical . . .
SLARTIBARTFAST: . . . manic xenophobes. The idea of a Universe didn’t fit into their world picture, so to speak. They simply couldn’t cope with it. And so, charmingly, delightfully, intelligently – whimsically, if you like – they decided to destroy it.
ARTHUR: Ugh!
SLARTIBARTFAST: What’s the matter now?
ARTHUR: Ugh! I don’t like the wine very much.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Well, send it back. Or you’ll upset the mathematics.
ARTHUR: Waiter?
FX: Whirr as the waiter draws up.
ROBOT WAITER: Signor?
SLARTIBARTFAST: On second thoughts, let’s argue over the bill with him. Then we can go back to the Room of Informational Illusions for the second half.
FORD PREFECT: There’s more?
SLARTIBARTFAST: Naturally, there’s the Krikkit War Crimes Trial.
INT. – COURT ROOM
FX: Hubbub. Gavel.
CLERK: All rise for sentencing by the Chairman of the Boards of Judges at the War Crimes Trial, His HiKrikkits’ War Crimes Trial, His High Judgemental Supremacy, Judiciary Pag, LIVR.
FX: Massed hushings.
ARTHUR: (Low) LIVR?
SLARTIBARTFAST: (Low) Learned, Impartial and Very Relaxed.
JUDICIARY PAG: (Addressing the court, chewing gum) Be seated, relax. Right. The people of Krikkit. (Spits out gum, and addresses clerk) Stick this under your chair for later.
CLERK: Yes, m’lud.
JUDICIARY PAG: Hmmm. Right. The people of Krikkit are, well, they’re a bunch of real sweet guys, you know, who just happen to want to kill everybody. Hell, I feel that way most mornings. Yeah. (He dozes off for a second, then) Hm? What?
INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE
THE VOICE: The attack on the Galaxy by the population of Krikkit was stunning. Thousands upon thousands of huge Krikkit warships leapt out of hyperspace –
FX: Lots of Krikkit ships appearing – ‘wop’, ‘wop’, ‘wop’ – then robots calling out their Krikkit battle commands. Grenades being batted all over the place.
THE VOICE: – and simultaneously attacked thousands upon thousands of major worlds, calmly zapping them out of existence.
Wi
th unimaginable speed the people of Krikkit had grasped the hypertechnology needed to build their fleet and dispatched millions of lethal white robots wielding formidable battle clubs which launched a hideous arsenal of grenades, ranging from minor incendiaries to Maxi-Slorta Hypernuclear Devices, which could take out a major sun. With one strike of the battle clubs, the grenades were simultaneously primed and launched with devastating accuracy, from mere yards to hundreds of thousands of miles.
FX: A sound like hundreds of thousands of people saying ‘foop’.
INT. – COURT ROOM
FX: Hubbub. Gavel.
JUDICIARY PAG: (Chewing gum) So we won. That’s no big deal. A medium-sized galaxy against one little world – how long did it take us, kiddo, huh?
CLERK: Er, it is a trifle difficult to be precise in this matter. Time and distance—
JUDICIARY PAG: Hey hey hey. Relax, guy, y’know, be vague.
CLERK: It pains me to be vague over such a—
JUDICIARY PAG: Bite the bullet, right, and be it.
CLERK: Very approximately, two thousand years?
JUDICIARY PAG: Woo! And how many guys zilched out?
CLERK: Two grillion, m’lud.
JUDICIARY PAG: Two grillion! That’s a whole lotta stiffs! Or my real name isn’t Zipo Bibrok five times ten to the eighth.
ARTHUR: (Low) How does he spell that?
FORD PREFECT: (Low) Big ten, little eight?
ARTHUR: (Low) Hm.
FX: Pag pours himself a glass of water and then sprays it out immediately.
JUDICIARY PAG: Ugh! What is in this water?
CLERK: Erm, nothing, m’lud.
JUDICIARY PAG: Well, take it away and put something in it!
FX: Gavel.
JUDICIARY PAG: OK. Hear me, hear me, hear me. You behind the zap-proof crystal, representatives of Krikkit. Listen up. You’re a really sweet bunch o’ guys, you know, but we wouldn’t want to share a galaxy with you, y’know – not if you can’t learn to relax a little. I mean a peaceful coexistence with you is a total noshow. On the other hand, these guys, you know, are entitled to their own view as it’s shaped by the Universe. And, er . . . according to their view, they were doing the right thing. They believe in (Fishes out a piece of paper) ‘peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms’.
FX: Hubbub in courtroom. Gavel.
JUDICIARY PAG: Well, they’re entitled to a view, right?! Now, sentencing is, er, gonna be tricky, but, people, I got an idea . . . Now stop me if you’ve heard it before.
INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE
THE VOICE: Judiciary Pag’s idea was new, popular and surprisingly well-thought out, thus casting severe doubts as to its authorship. The planet of Krikkit was sentenced to be enclosed for perpetuity in an envelope of Slo-Time, inside which life would continue almost infinitely slowly. All light would be deflected around the envelope rendering it both invisible and impenetrable. Escape from the envelope would, of course, be utterly impossible unless it were unlocked from the outside. Then, when the rest of the whole of creation reached its dying fall, and life and matter ceased to exist, the planet of Krikkit and its sun would emerge to continue the solitary existence it craved, in the twilight of the Universal void. The Lock was to be on an asteroid slowly orbiting the envelope. The key would be the symbol of the Galaxy – the Wikkit Gate.
By the time the applause in the court had died down, Judiciary Pag was already in the Sens-O-Shower with a rather nice member of the jury that he’d slipped a note to half an hour earlier.
INT. – IN SENS-O-SHOWER
FX: In the shower. Female groans of pleasure. Pag snorts awake.
JUDICIARY PAG: Hm! What? What? (Beat) Right!
EXT. – SPACE
FX: The Starship Bistromath whips past in accordion overdrive.
INT. – STARSHIP BISTROMATH – COMPUTATIONAL AREA, RESTAURANT SECTION
FX: Restaurant FX, Italian muzak.
ROBOT MAITRE D’: You are confusing me, Signore.
FORD PREFECT: Nobody had the cannelloni.
ROBOT MAITRE D’: Is very nice.
FORD PREFECT: Dingo’s kidneys!
ROBOT MAITRE D’: Dingo’s kidneys, yes sir, I will ask the chef.
FORD PREFECT: It’s an expression. Leave it alone (Fade and continue under:)
SLARTIBARTFAST: Nothing is lost for ever. Except for the Cathedral of Chalesm.
ARTHUR: The what?
SLARTIBARTFAST: The Cathedral of Chalesm. It was during the course of my researches at the Campaign for Real Time that I . . .
FORD PREFECT: (Approach) Oh, for goodness’ sake. The waiter wants to argue about who had the cannelloni.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Is he surly or obsequious?
FORD PREFECT: Both.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Excellent, then the Bistromathics have successfully manoeuvred this ship out of subjective space and into a parking orbit. Come, (Rising) we have a party to visit.
FORD PREFECT: Now you’re talking!
ARTHUR: Just a minute, what’s this Campaign for Real Time you were talking about?
FX: Robot waiter whirrs up.
ROBOT WAITER: (A bit camp) Hi, can I clear off your table, sir? It’s time to switch off the bistro.
SLARTIBARTFAST: (Sitting down again) One moment, please. (To Arthur) Listen. The time streams have become very polluted; muck floating about in them, flotsam and jetsam, and more and more of it is now being regurgitated into the physical world. Eddies in the space-time continuum, you see.
ARTHUR: Still?
FORD PREFECT: Now, about this party?
SLARTIBARTFAST: We are going to try to prevent the war robots of Krikkit from regaining the whole of the Key they need to unlock the planet of Krikkit from the Slo-Time envelope and release the rest of their army and their mad Masters.
FORD PREFECT: You mentioned a party?
SLARTIBARTFAST: Sadly I did. The idea seems to exercise a strange and unhealthy fascination on your mind. The more I unravel the dark and tragic story of Krikkit, the more you want to drink a lot and dance with girls. (Ford murmurs assent) You’ve attached yourself to it the way an Arcturan Megaleach attaches itself to its victim before biting his head off and making off with his spaceship.
FORD PREFECT: So. When do we get there?
SLARTIBARTFAST: When I’ve finished telling you why we have to go there.
FORD PREFECT: I know why I’m going. (Chuckle)
SLARTIBARTFAST: I had hoped for an easy retirement. I was planning to learn to play the octraventral heebiephone – a pleasantly futile task, because I have the wrong number of mouths. I had also been planning to write an eccentric and relentlessly inaccurate monograph on the subject of equatorial fjords in order to set the record wrong about one or two matters I see as important.
ARTHUR: Well, why don’t you, then?
SLARTIBARTFAST: Well, I somehow got talked into doing some part-time work for the Campaign for Real Time and started to take it all seriously.
ARTHUR: Go on.
SLARTIBARTFAST: At the Campaign for Real Time I noticed that five pieces of jetsam which had, in relatively recent times, plopped back into existence seemed to be corresponding to five pieces of the missing Key. Only two I could trace exactly – the Wooden Pillar, which appeared on your planet, and the Silver Bail, which seems to be at some sort of party. We must go there and retrieve it before the Krikkit robots find it, or who knows what may happen?
FORD PREFECT: I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go there in order to drink a lot and dance with as many girls as possible while there are still some left. If everything you’ve shown us is true, then we don’t stand a whelk’s chance in a supernova.
ARTHUR: What’s a whelk got to do with a supernova?
FORD PREFECT: It doesn’t stand a chance in one. The point is that people like you and me, Slartibartfast, and Arthur – particularly and especially Arthur – are just dilettantes, eccentrics, lay-abouts – fartarounds if you like.
&n
bsp; SLARTIBARTFAST/ARTHUR: Well . . . Er—
FORD PREFECT: Well, we’re not obsessed by anything, you see, and that’s the deciding factor. They care, we don’t. They win.
SLARTIBARTFAST: I care about a lot of things.
FORD PREFECT: Well, such as?
SLARTIBARTFAST: Well . . . life, the Universe and . . . everything, really. Fjords.
FORD PREFECT: Would you die for them?
SLARTIBARTFAST: Fjords? What would be the point?
FORD PREFECT: The point is this—
SLARTIBARTFAST: (Wearying of this) For whatever reason, let’s just go.
FORD PREFECT: I think that’s what I was trying to say.
SLARTIBARTFAST: (Rising again and moving away from atmos) Follow me. The teleport cubicles are in the gentlemen’s bathroom.
ARTHUR: I’m not sure I find that very reassuring.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Oh, they’re very clean.
ARTHUR: Hmm.
INT. – STARSHIP BISTROMATH – GENTS’ TOILET
FX: Echoey loo atmos.
SLARTIBARTFAST: (Off) Now if you’d just stand in there and there . . .
FORD PREFECT: (Off) In the cubicles?
SLARTIBARTFAST: (Off) That’s right.
ARTHUR: Do you realize, that in all this time, I haven’t once been to—
SLARTIBARTFAST: (Off) Don’t sit down.
ARTHUR: There’s no paper anyway.
SLARTIBARTFAST: (Off) Well, of course not, it’s a teleportation device.
FORD PREFECT: (Off) Gentlemen, raise your seats.
FX: Three creaky toilet seats lifted.
SLARTIBARTFAST: (Off) We’re going to flush the chain on the count of three. Altogether now . . .
SLARTIBARTFAST, ARTHUR AND FORD: One, two . . .
FX: Teleportation toilet flush.
INT. – AGRAJAG’S LABYRINTH
FX: Eerie echoey acoustic.
(Arthur staggering about)
ARTHUR: (As he materializes) Three . . . (Coughs) Oh, I hate teleporting! (A beat) Ford? Slartibartfast? (He listens. Nothing) Well, that’s just perfect. Couldn’t have been much of a party, everybody’s left. Hang on – this is a cave.
FX: He starts to walk.
ARTHUR: (Back and forth on stereo) Or is it a labyrinth? Well, at least there’ll be a way out . . . or an attendant, or someone who can help. (Stops) Hallo?
The echo bounces off into distance – hallo – hallo – hallo . . .
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Further Radio Scripts Page 9