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“The request isn’t particularly clear on the Sub-Etha Commercial Request Handset in terms of where the Emperor’s Wholly Authoritative Baton is actually located in the battleship, though they were kind enough to provide a map.”
Trillian focused hard on the machine as she delicately and precisely ran a finger over the curvature of its screen. She led the group out of the cavernous cargo bay without as much as a glance at her surroundings, and up its corrugated stairs. With a free hand, she pulled a scrambler from within her pocket and pressed it to the keypad, which gave a churlish screech before relenting and opening the doors into the hallway.
“What are we even doing here?” Arthur winced as he was blinded by glittering light bouncing endlessly off of rough walls of rose-gold tetrahedrons, placed in such a way as to hit the eyes in a manner most irritating. “Are we some sort of galactic courier service now?”
“Not exactly,” Zaphod grumbled, slightly offended. “I know I guy who knows a guy who needs a Wholly Authoritative Baton, and I am a guy who needs that guy to tell me where I can find another guy, who I did know but no longer know and may not even be a guy, who will tell me where I can find some piece of information I don’t know. Or something like that. Capiche?”
“Sounds needlessly complicated. And dangerous,” Arthur said nervously. “My goodness this place is tacky.”
“If you think this is tacky you clearly haven’t spent enough time with Zaphod,” chuckled Ford, taking in the scenery with a mischievous grin. Tangerine tendrils of twisted fabric stretched up to knee-height like soft coral. “Though I do hope the carpet cleaners have a strong union.”
The unpleasant reef they took cautious steps through muffled their movements, though with the confusion of light caused by the walls they couldn’t guarantee that there weren’t cameras observing their every turn. Arthur only grew more uneasy, scuttling forward to catch up with Trillian.
“And you’re happy to be here too?” he asked, fumbling with his dressing gown cord.
“I’m excited,” she declared, with an almost smug air of determination. “It’s like a heist movie.”
“One in which our daring heroes are lasered to shreds?”
“Can’t say I’ve seen that one.”
“Right,” Arthur admitted defeat. There was no point trying to reason with any of them.
Trillian stopped with a huff, did a 360° turn, and pinched her chin with her thumb and forefinger. “If we don’t know where we’re going, we’re much less likely to find it if we remain in one group,” she thought aloud.
“Hey, I have a great idea!” Zaphod butted in. “Let’s split up and look in different directions! Isn’t that foolproof, baby?”
“I suppose Zaphod and I could go one way,” Trillian continued, ignoring him nudging her teasingly with an elbow. “And Ford and Arthur could head the other.”
“I don’t want to go with anyone,” Marvin lamented. He’d been trailing several meters behind, and the others had long since tuned out his complaints.
“Well, you don’t have to, buddy!” Zaphod said, jaw clenched.
Marvin seemed to dislike this idea viscerally, but nonetheless turned tail before trudging away, his mournful cries trailing off. “Oh here I go, all alone. They would let me rust up and perish here, I’m sure. I’ve been condemned to a life of solitude. . .”
“Good luck,” Trillian nodded at Ford and Arthur, as cheerily as was conceivable in these circumstances. “Try not to get lost.”
“And don’t die!” Zaphod waved with a sadistic smile directed at Arthur in particular. He squirmed, then Ford grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him round a blind corner.
The corridors continued in their strangely geometrical winding maze, the gaudy ornamentation unchanged. Arthur had to give it to them; their taste was consistent, even if the lack of doors or clearly marked fire evacuation routes were concerning. Ford kept a brisk pace, his breath unaffected by the synthetic perfume lingering in the atmosphere. Eventually, Arthur resigned himself to fixating on the navy blue figure slightly ahead of him and marching without considering how long they’d been searching.
“Oh come on!” Ford hissed impatiently. “What use is a battleship full of empty hallways?”
“Maybe it's intentional,” Arthur said thoughtfully. “Intruders get disoriented and very upset. Much like we are right now.”
“Perhaps,” Ford slowed down to a strolling pace and took a deep breath. “Let's take a minute.”
Catching up, Arthur was weirdly captivated as Ford let his satchel fall to the floor. He swept back his orange hair with his fingers, revealing the shiny film of sweat that had gathered on his pale brow.
“Zarquon, I could do with a drink,” Ford wiped his forehead and flapped the sweat away. “This is thirsty work.”
He gave a lackadaisical stretch and reached over to prop himself up against the wall. But as he gripped at one of the pink-tinged tetrahedrons, it swung away from the wall, revealing a small panel of buttons, which Ford attacked with newly regained vigour. Nonplussed, Arthur observed as more tetrahedrons rolled away, creating an opening which led into a much more appropriately dark room, illuminated only by tubes of glowing blue liquid. He was entranced by the way the bubbles in the ooze bobbed and tumbled from side to side.
“Tss! Come on Arthur,” called Ford in a low, bestial growl that set him on edge.
“Ford, why are we here?” Arthur lamented, grunting as he tried to stoop as low down as his companion was. “I know you like to be caught up in Zaphod’s schemes, but I never asked to get involved!”
“Well, what else would you be doing with your day?” Ford shrugged, sneaking round a cabinet stocked with particularly nasty looking Kill-O-Zaps. “I think Zaphod has you along because he pities you for your upsettingly short life span.”
“Do you pity me?”
“I wouldn't say it's pity, no.”
Creeping along a wall, Ford reached a sturdy-looking door with a fogged window set into its upper half. Avoiding detection, he analysed what little was visible from the corner of his eye, which bulged as if attempting to escape for a better look. Arthur shrank into a corner.
“There's a Margritan soldier,” Ford relayed. “He seems to be relaxing. A break room, perhaps. They're known for their excellent work-life balance. Shame about the interplanetary genocide though.”
Nodding absent mindedly, Arthur couldn't help but notice the smell hanging about the dim gangways. Sour and savoury, it was conjuring up a familiar comforting feeling. It was almost making him salivate. He looked up at Ford with a sudden sense of hunger.
“Arthur, are you alright?” He was taken aback.
“Uh-yes I'm fine it's just,” Arthur searched his memories frantically, desperate to kill the awkwardness of the moment. “It smells like an Italian restaurant. That's it.”
Glancing back round through the window, Ford concluded that the break room was vacant. With all the fingers of one hand, and one of the other, he imitated a Magritan’s claw, pressing four buttons and pulling two triggers as he twisted the handle open. The break room appeared exactly as one would expect it to—grease-marked boxes were strewn about the small table in the centre; a device resembling a microwave had an unpleasant brown stain splattered across its window that had hardened into a bumpy concrete; a tap dripped rhythmically into a basin stacked to the very brim with dirtied utensils.
“A drinks machine!” Ford exclaimed gratefully, snatching up a cup and thrusting it under the spout of a large hulking black contraption in the corner.
“Shouldn’t we keep moving?” Arthur urged.
“Nah. Zaphod wants this baton much more than we do, let’s face it. I’m sure he’ll find it first. He needs the credit just to make himself feel worthy of love.” He pushed a button and the machine juddered, spitting out a thick, shimmering, moss-coloured sludge.
“That looks repulsive!” Arthur cried.
“Are you kidding? This is Arcazade!” Ford wiped away the frothy moustache the liquid had left on his upper lip. “If anything it’s a health drink. Full of energy and minerals. It’s very kind of the Magritan higher-ups to provide their soldiers with this stuff. It certainly isn’t cheap. Come on, try some! You might not get chance again.”
Arthur had to confess that all that jogging had rendered him parched. Taking the cup and bracing his olfactory senses, Arthur chugged the unusual stuff. It indeed tasted like slightly gone-off garlic, with a vague metallic aftertaste. “Well, I never really liked the taste of any of those health drinks back home,” Arthur mused. “This isn’t much different.”
“Have another one,” Ford asserted, setting the machine jittering again. “You don’t know if we’ll come across another one of these. And Zarquon knows we’re quite lost.”
Ford had never really cared to bring any kind of time-keeping device around with him—in fact, he’d even removed The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s clock as he found that its constant changes to adjust to every time on every planet rendered it just as useless as not knowing the time at all. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but wonder just how long they’d spent sneaking around the battleship and evading patrolling guards, and why the hell he’d just let Trillian keep the only map they had. He was tiring, and Arthur was looking noticeably worse. He’d never been the fittest example of a human being, but zark, he hadn’t seen him so peaky before.
“Arthur, you alright?” Ford enquired, struggling to ignore it any longer.
“I. . . ugh,” he groaned, clutching his stomach and pressing his back against a pillar for support. “I'm not feeling very well, no.”
Doubling over, he balled himself up on the floor and stared entreatingly over at Ford to slow down. Ford crouched in front of his friend, scanning him for symptoms. His skin was clammy and he was trembling slightly. Arthur looked frighteningly ill.
“What was in that thing we drank?” Arthur asked in a weak voice.
“Oh, it can't be that,” Ford said dismissively. “Arcazade is very good for you.”
“I just want to know what was in it,” he relented, too pained to argue.
“It's a purée of super foods.” Ford began counting them thoughtfully on his fingers: “sturplese cabbage, wrengleberries, though it's mostly arsenic from the mines of the second moon of Ingidoon. . .”
“Arsenic?” Arthur exclaimed in horror.
“Yes, that's what makes it so expensive,” Ford said knowledgeably, “the mines of Ingidoon are the source of the most high quality arsenic in the western spiral arm of the galaxy.”
“Ford, that's toxic!” Arthur wailed, suddenly reinvigorated with indignant energy. “I’ve just drunk bloody arsenic!”
Ford’s already very thin lips were squished into a microscopic frown. “Ah. I wasn't aware of that. Arsenic is one of the twenty seven officially recommended food groups by the Betelgeuse V health authority.”
Luckily for Ford’s eardrums, and their continued evasion from detection by the Magritan army, Arthur’s rage was soon consumed in a vast wave of agony which dragged him floundering onto the ground.
“Arthur,” Ford was beginning to fail to restrain the urgency in his voice. “Come on Arthur. Just a little further. We’ll find a maintenance cupboard or something.”
Grabbing the earthman under his armpits, Ford strained to lift him up and drag him along the corridor, Arthur’s legs making feeble efforts to aid the journey with small flailing kicks at the floor. Ford searched for a hiding spot in a frenzy until he finally found another closet full of Kill-O-Zaps. He sat Arthur down and flung them in a heap across the room, with complete disregard as to whether he'd accidentally trigger one off, before pulling them both in and slamming the door shut.
“Arthur! Come on, you’re doing okay Arthur,” Ford utterly failed to soothe as he searched his companion’s colourless face, his heavy-lidded eyes barely open anymore. He patted his cheek, cold to the touch. After a quick rummage through his satchel, he wiped his dampened forehead with his towel.
“It hurts Ford,” Arthur murmured, his mouth failing to move to form the syllables. “Help me. Make it stop. I want to go home”
White hot devastation seized Ford’s chest. How could he have been such an idiot? He'd spent 15 years on the Earth, among the humans. Arsenic poisoning was quite a glaring omission from his near encyclopedic knowledge of the species. Those 15 years, his efforts to rescue Arthur from his species’ near extinction—what the hell had been the point? Here he was, watching helplessly as he succumbed to a death more painful and undignifying than if Ford had just left him to evaporate with the rest of them.
“Hey, Arthur,” Ford appealed, lowering himself further in order to bring his face into close proximity. He couldn't be sure how well Arthur could even see him anymore. “I really need you to keep going. You can do that for me, right? See, I'm very stupid and selfish and if I let you die on my watch Zaphod and Trillian won't let me hear the end of it. So do me a favour, eh? You can yell at me later, I owe you one.”
What would he tell Zaphod and Trillian? It'd probably be best if they thought Arthur had just been too slow to get away from a Margritan’s phaser blast. But who was he kidding? He couldn't lie, not about Arthur. There was no way in hell he could look Trillian in the eye and tell her her last surviving kin had gone without letting slip that it was all his fault.
A large trembling hand traced sweeping lines in the air, reaching and pawing at nothing. Ford sullenly took it in his own, running his thumb softly up and down Arthur’s forefinger.
“We've got to keep going,” Ford whispered, though he was sure Arthur’s consciousness was fading and his hand grew heavier. “I'll carry you. Don't worry.”
Through an unusual contortionist’s manoeuvre, Ford managed to push himself under Arthur and pull him onto his back. His lifeless hands dangled across Ford’s chest as he kicked the cupboard door open and powered his way along the gangways. He charged with all the grace of a loose bull dragging the mangled corpse of its matador, his tattered trainers pounding the rattling metal ground beneath him in a sensationless sprint.
“Zaphod! Trillian!” Ford called for help, not caring anymore whether the Margritans found them. “We need some help here! Please!”
Arthur's laboured breaths tremored the air against Ford’s neck, and as faint as they were, they resounded like a war drum, spurring him onwards.
“Hey Zaphod! Trillian!” His cries were strangling now. “Hell, Marvin!”
Exhaustion was overrunning Ford’s body now—it wasn't possible for him to suck in enough air to nourish his powering legs, which motored as though he’d been wound-up like a toy. The corners of his vision were closing in but he kept dashing forwards, towards the orangish square of light expanding down the hallway in front of him. If he could just reach it, push through—
He misjudged his speed completely and collided with the door as it swung open, sending him and his precious cargo flying back. Arthur hit the ground like a sack of rocks. Hardly bothering to register his stinging spine, Ford crawled over to his friend’s unmoving body, gripping him by the lapels of his dressing gown and shaking him, carefully, in an effort to rouse him.
“Hey guys!” Zaphod sauntered in, proudly displaying his newly acquired baton. “You've gotta start looking where you're going. You took quite a tumble.”
“WE NEED TO HELP HIM!” Ford cried hysterically, refusing to even look away from Arthur. “We need to get back. Now.”
Zaphod and Trillian exchanged a shocked glance—they’d never seen Ford in such a state. He was crouched over Arthur like a defensive animal, eyes red and wild.
“It's okay Ford, I'll help lift him,” Trillian said authoritatively. “What the hell happened?”
“He’s dying,” Ford barked. “Just move!”
In the last few hours, Arthur had only woken briefly to empty the foamy green contents of his stomach all over the floor of the medical bay. He'd been much too bleary to notice Ford, straddling a chair and keeping strict vigil over him. His little nub of a chin rested on his folded arms, his thin lips pouted and expression unmoving.
“Is he going to get any better?” he’d anxiously asked Trillian as she'd programmed the medical appendages hanging from the ceiling to get a drip set up. “You’re going to make him better.”
“I'm really not that kind of doctor,” she’d sighed apologetically. “We’ll keep him topped up with fluids. That's all I know to do.”
Zaphod had steered clear of the whole situation in favour of finding Marvin, who'd been captured by the Margritans and repurposed as a hatstand. Despite Arthur's near death, he considered the mission largely a success. That and, as Ford mused, it seemed to disturb him greatly to see his semi-cousin so distraught.
It didn't matter to Ford. He'd keep watch. Who needed sleep anyway? He had a responsibility. He'd shirked such things at every opportunity in the past, but he just couldn't move now. For whatever strange reason, Arthur wasn't someone he was willing to leave behind. So he monitored his haggard friend as he rested, noted every twitch and shift, and waited for him to sit up and ask Ford what on earth he was doing there. It was only a matter of time.