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For all the Heart of Gold’s technical splendidry and revolutionary leaps in both space and ergonomic majesty, it failed to conceal that ultimately it was a fancy piece of heavy machinery. All night it whirred, thrummed, and even strimbied, though Arthur wouldn’t have been able to name that particular tremulous noise tickling his larynx with its resonance. Why, he wondered, with all the designing, blueprinting, engineering and whatnot that must have gone into this marvellous vessel, hadn’t someone thought to make the damn thing quieter? Perhaps it was like those pillocks with the loud sports cars. Zaphod certainly seemed that type.
“I thank you for crossing my threshold.”
Much to Arthur’s annoyance, the door sighed shut behind him as he padded out into the warm glow emitting from where the walls of the hallway met the floor. The smooth, hard floor. What Arthur wouldn’t do to feel some carpet under his feet! Letting a hand trail along the frictionless wall, he followed a long stretch of an ivy-like plant curling over to the bridge. It disturbed him that he was beginning to remember his way around the ship.
As he looked across the dormant deck of the Heart of Gold, with its many shimmering mirages of instruments spread incomprehensibly before him, a grim, chilly feeling tiptoed its way up his chest. Eddie the Computer was still, a pile of tape pooled before him, but he was unmistakably still there, mechanically churning and thinking. It couldn’t be loneliness—the whole ship felt alive and listening. Arthur was feeling something different.
“What brings you here at this loathsome hour?” a pained voice groaned. Two red triangles, which had hitherto been indistinguishable from the rest of the glinting lights that peppered the room, turned laboriously to meet him.
“I’m having an unpleasant night,” Arthur whispered. He’d rather not wake the others, especially not Zaphod.
“All of my nights are unpleasant,” Marvin complained, without lowering his volume.
“I’m sure they are,” Arthur gritted his teeth. “Could you please be quiet? I’d like some peace.”
“Peace,” Marvin tutted condescendingly, slumping back and shutting up. He had a point. No matter how hard Arthur looked, he wasn’t likely to find anything resembling peace. This was a spaceship. How could he feel peaceful on a galaxy-springing cruiser of the stars?
Arthur had asked Trillian if she’d brought anything from Earth—after all, surely she hadn’t been in quite as much of a rush to depart as he had. Frowning, she informed him that all she had were the mice, who were now long gone. And had tried to remove his brain. It had been a foolish question really; furnishing this place with random pieces of Earth junk would never have made it home.
Arthur peered out of one of the tiny windows that the Heart of Gold permitted itself, a concession to the hard-to-please passenger for whom the lavish interior just wasn’t enough. He’d never been much of a stargazer, so why did the constellations that the ship drifted through in its idle cruise look so wrong, so foreign?
“Don’t bother looking for the North Star. You won’t find it. Its navigating days are over.”
He whipped round with a gasp at the figure staggering into the central control panel. Ford Prefect shot it a nasty glare and recoiled before focusing extremely hard on how he could most unflappedly circumvent it. Swaggering round with concerted effort, his right foot plunged into the clear water of the fish pool with a splash.
“Reassuring,” Arthur said, rather disappointed that a poignant moment of despair had been so rudely interrupted. “Why are you up?”
“Sick,” he squelched beside him. “Noticed an air of desolation about the place. Smells really terrible. Thought I’d probably find you here.”
“Ah.”
“Not really. It was Zaphod and Trillian. Seems they’re also ‘struggling to sleep’,” Ford waggled air quotes with his fingers. “Couldn’t you hear? Oh no, I forgot he put you at the opposite end of the sleeping quarters. Lucky bastard.”
“Ford, this place is all wrong. I’m not supposed to be here, I don’t want to be here, and every time I wake up I have the terrible heartstopping sensation of, well, remembering that I’m here!” Arthur cried. “And I know you’re only going to tell me I can’t, but I want to go home.”
He winced at this sudden outpouring of honesty, and anticipated Ford’s inevitably cynical rebuttal. But it never came. He simply watched, exhausted, his face reflecting the pale starlight.
“I appreciate what you did for me,” Arthur sighed. “But maybe it was wrong.”
“Why?” Ford asked calmly.
“Because I can’t go home! I’m not like you. I don’t want an adventure. I want to be comfortable, in some place that’s mine, that I know.”
“Arthur, there isn’t anywhere that’s yours,” Ford shook his head. “There isn’t anywhere you know. Isn’t that good? Isn’t it fun?”
“It’s cruel,” Arthur whined. “I’m so homesick and I can barely stand it! Can’t you sympathise with me just a bit?”
“I can. I was stuck on the Earth for fifteen years. I haven’t been back to my home planet in much longer.” He stopped and stared pensively out the window. In truth, there had never been a time in which Ford Prefect had ever felt like he was at home, and that dissonance from wherever he stood had formed a grey and drab background hum that he had tried, and indeed failed, to completely tune out of his mind over his many decades. “You learn to be at home with the lack thereof."
“I doubt I can,” Arthur muttered concernedly.
“You could give it a try,” Ford reached out and placed a hand on Arthur’s, resting on the quadruple glazed, bismuth-titanium alloy synthesised glass. This was much more tender than the stiff pat on the shoulder Ford had given him upon delivering the news of the Earth’s destruction. Was he mocking him? Or perhaps once again he was misinterpreting some Earth custom, and he didn’t mean anything by it. Arthur’s face contorted in panic and confusion and ripped his hand away.
“Anyhow,” Ford stated, trying his best to ignore the awkward, oppressive atmosphere that had grown so intense that even he couldn’t help but squirm, “there are many more unpleasant places for someone to be miserably homesick. In this business you’ve got to take what you can get.”
“I don’t think I want it.”
“That’s the spirit,” Ford dusted off his half-unbuttoned shirt, as if the sentimentality itself had accumulated on it. “Don’t want anything. That’s the best way to start. Lower your expectations.”
“You know, I think I’ll go back to bed now.”
Letting Arthur shrink away through the insufferable door, Ford let out a groggy yawn and made a silent prayer that whatever the hell Zaphod and Trillian had been up to, it had ceased and wouldn’t resume.