Fenchurch leaned across him and drew over her canvas bag.
Is it anything to do with this? she said. The thing she took out of her bag was battered and travelworn as it had been hurled into prehistoric rivers, baked under the sun that shines so redly on the deserts of Kakrafoon, half-buried in the marbled sands that fringe the heady vapoured oceans of Santraginus V, frozen on the glaciers of the moon of Jaglan Beta, sat on, kicked around spaceships, scuffed and generally abused, and since its makers had thought that these were exactly the sorts of things that might happen to it, they had thoughtfully encased it in a sturdy plastic cover and written on it, in large friendly letters, the words “Don’t Panic”.
Where did you get this? said Arthur, startled, taking it from her.
Ah, she said, I thought it was yours. In Russell’s car that night. You dropped it. Have you been to many of these places?
Arthur drew The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy from its cover. It was like a small, thin, flexible lap computer. He tapped some buttons till the screen flared with text.
A few, he said.
Can we go to them?
What? No, said Arthur abruptly, then relented, but relented warily. Do you want to? he said, hoping for the answer no. It was an act of great generosity on his part not to say, You don’t want to, do you? which expects it.
Yes, she said. I want to know what the message was that I lost, and where it came from. Because I don’t think, she added, standing up and looking round the increasing gloom of the park, that it came from here.
I’m not even sure, she further added, slipping her arm around Arthur’s waist, that I know where here is.