"Adams, Douglas - Life, the Universe, and Everything" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Douglas)

thousand people saying "wop", a steely white spaceship suddenly seemed to
create itself out of nothing in the air directly above the cricket pitch and
hung there with infinite menace and a slight hum.
Then for a while it did nothing, as if it expected everybody to go about
their normal business and not mind it just hanging there.
Then it did something quite extraordinary. Or rather, it opened up and let
something quite extraordinary come out of it, eleven quite extraordinary
things.
They were robots, white robots.
What was most extraordinary about them was that they appeared to have come
dressed for the occasion. Not only were they white, but they carried what
appeared to be cricket bats, and not only that, but they also carried what
appeared to be cricket balls, and not only that but they wore white ribbing
pads round the lower parts of their legs. These last were extraordinary
because they appeared to contain jets which allowed these curiously civilized
robots to fly down from their hovering spaceship and start to kill people,
which is what they did
"Hello," said Arthur, "something seems to be happening."
"Get to the ship," shouted Ford. "I don't want to know, I don't want to
see, I don't want to hear," he yelled as he ran, "this is not my planet, I
didn't choose to be here, I don't want to get involved, just get me out of
here, and get me to a party, with people I can relate to!"
Smoke and flame billowed from the pitch.
"Well, the supernatural brigade certainly seems to be out in force here
today ..." burbled a radio happily to itself.
"What I need," shouted Ford, by way of clarifying his previous remarks,
"is a strong drink and a peer-group." He continued to run, pausing only for a
moment to grab Arthur's arm and drag him along with him. Arthur had adopted
his normal crisis role, which was to stand with his mouth hanging open and let
it all wash over him.
"They're playing cricket," muttered Arthur, stumbling along after Ford. "I
swear they are playing cricket. I do not know why they are doing this, but
that is what they are doing. They're not just killing people, they're sending
them up," he shouted, "Ford, they're sending us up!"
It would have been hard to disbelieve this without knowing a great deal
more Galactic history than Arthur had so far managed to pick up in his
travels. The ghostly but violent shapes that could be seen moving within the
thick pall of smoke seemed to be performing a series of bizarre parodies of
batting strokes, the difference being that every ball they struck with their
bats exploded wherever it landed. The very first one of these had dispelled
Arthur's initial reaction, that the whole thing might just be a publicity
stunt by Australian margarine manufacturers.
And then, as suddenly as it had all started, it was over. The eleven white
robots ascended through the seething cloud in a tight formation, and with a
few last flashes of flame entered the bowels of their hovering white ship,
which, with the noise of a hundred thousand people saying "foop", promptly
vanished into the thin air out of which it had wopped.
For a moment there was a terrible stunned silence, and then out of the
drifting smoke emerged the pale figure of Slartibartfast looking even more
like Moses because in spite of the continued absence of the mountain he was at