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

least now striding across a fiery and smoking well-mown lawn.
He stared wildly about him until he saw the hurrying figures of Arthur
Dent and Ford Prefect forcing their way through the frightened crowd which was
for the moment busy stampeding in the opposite direction. The crowd was
clearly thinking to itself about what an unusual day this was turning out to
be, and not really knowing which way, if any, to turn.
Slartibartfast was gesturing urgently at Ford and Arthur and shouting at
them, as the three of them gradually converged on his ship, still parked
behind the sight-screens and still apparently unnoticed by the crowd
stampeding past it who presumably had enough of their own problems to cope
with at that time.
"They've garble warble farble!" shouted Slartibartfast in his thin
tremulous voice.
"What did he say?" panted Ford as he elbowed his way onwards.
Arthur shook his head.
"`They've ...' something or other," he said.
"They've table warble farble!" shouted Slartibartfast again.
Ford and Arthur shook their heads at each other.
"It sounds urgent," said Arthur. He stopped and shouted.
"What?"
"They've garble warble fashes!" cried Slartibartfast, still waving at
them.
"He says," said Arthur, "that they've taken the Ashes. That is what I
think he says." They ran on.
"The ...?" said Ford.
"Ashes," said Arthur tersely. "The burnt remains of a cricket stump. It's
a trophy. That ..." he was panting, "is ... apparently ... what they ... have
come and taken." He shook his head very slightly as if he was trying to get
his brain to settle down lower in his skull.
"Strange thing to want to tell us," snapped Ford.
"Strange thing to take."
"Strange ship."
They had arrived at it. The second strangest thing about the ship was
watching the Somebody Else's Problem field at work. They could now clearly see
the ship for what it was simply because they knew it was there. It was quite
apparent, however, that nobody else could. This wasn't because it was actually
invisible or anything hyper-impossible like that. The technology involved in
making anything invisible is so infinitely complex that nine hundred and
ninety-nine thousand million, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine
hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a
billion it is much simpler and more effective just to take the thing away and
do without it. The ultra-famous sciento-magician Effrafax of Wug once bet his
life that, given a year, he could render the great megamountain Magramal
entirely invisible.
Having spent most of the year jiggling around with immense LuxO-Valves and
Refracto-Nullifiers and Spectrum-Bypass-O-Matics, he realized, with nine hours
to go, that he wasn't going to make it.
So, he and his friends, and his friends' friends, and his friends'
friends' friends, and his friends' friends' friends' friends, and some rather
less good friends of theirs who happened to own a major stellar trucking