Douglas Adams - HHG by Young Zaphod Plays It Safe

Author:Young Zaphod Plays It Safe
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-09T09:25:35+00:00

“You see?” said the official, examining the ultra-titanium outer

seals of the aorist rod hold. “Perfectly secure, perfectly safe.”

He said the same thing as they passed holds containing chemical

weapons so powerful that a teaspoonful could fatally infect an entire

planet.

He said the same thing as they passed holds containing zeta-active

compounds so powerful that a teaspoonful could blow up a whole planet.

He said the same thing as they passed holds containing theta-active

compounds so powerful that a teaspoonful could irradiate a whole planet.

“I’m glad I’m not a planet,” muttered Zaphod.

“You’d have nothing to fear,” assured the official from the Safety

and Civil Reassurance Administration, “planets are very safe. Provided,”

he added - and paused. They were approaching the hold nearest to the

point where the back of the Starship Billion Year Bunker was broken. The

corridor here was twisted and deformed, and the floor was damp and

sticky in patches.

“Ho hum,” he said, “ho very much hum.”

“What’s in this hold?” demanded Zaphod.

“By-products” said the official, clamming up again.

“By-products…” insisted Zaphod, quietly, “of what?”

Neither official answered. Instead, they examined the hold door very

carefully and saw that its seals were twisted apart by the forces that

had deformed the whole corridor. One of them touched the door lightly.

It swung open to his touch. There was darkness inside, with just a

couple of dim yellow lights deep within it.

“Of what?” hissed Zaphod.

The leading official turned to the other.

“There’s an escape capsule,” he said, “that the crew were to use to

abandon ship before jettisoning it into the black hole,” he said. “I

think it would be good to know that it’s still there.” The other

official nodded and left without a word.

The first official quietly beckoned Zaphod in. The large dim yellow

lights glowed about twenty feet from them.

“The reason,” he said, quietly “why everything else in this ship is,

I maintain, safe, is that no one is really crazy enough to use them. No

one. At least no one that crazy would ever get near them. Anyone that

mad or dangerous ring very deep alarm bells. People may be stupid but

they’re not that stupid.”

“By-products,” hissed Zaphod again, - he had to hiss in order that

his voice shouldn’t be heard to tremble - “of what.”

“Er, Designer People.”

“What?”

“The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation were awarded a huge research

grant to design and produce synthetic personalities to order. The

results were uniformly disastrous. All the “people” and “personalities”

turned out to be amalgams of characteristics which simply could not

co-exist in naturally occurring life forms. Most of them were just poor

pathetic misfits, but some were deeply, deeply dangerous. Dangerous

because they didn’t ring alarm bells in other people. They could walk

through situations the way that ghosts walk through walls, because no

one spotted the danger.

“The most dangerous of all were three identical ones - they were put

in this hold, to be blasted, with this ship, right out of this universe.

They are not evil, in fact they are rather simple and charming. But they

are the most dangerous creatures that ever lived because there is

nothing they will not do if allowed, and nothing they will not be

allowed to do…”

Zaphod looked at the dim yellow lights, the two dim yellow lights.

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