"Douglas Adams - 2 - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Douglas)

"You forget!" snapped Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth.
"Well ..."
"Too busy. Never think of other people. The living are all the same."
"Two minutes, Zaphod," whispered Ford in an awed whisper.
Zaphod fidgeted nervously.
"Yeah, but I did mean to send them," he said. "And I'll write to my great
grandmother as well, just as soon as we get out of this ..."
"Your great grandmother," mused the gaunt little figure to himself.
"Yeah," said Zaphod, "Er, how is she? Tell you what, I'll go and see her.
But first we've just got to ..."
"Your late great grandmother and I are very well," rasped Zaphod
Beeblebrox the Fourth.
"Ah. Oh."
"But very disappointed in you, young Zaphod ..."
"Yeah well ..." Zaphod felt strangely powerless to take charge of this
conversation, and Ford's heavy breathing at his side told him that the seconds
were ticking away fast. The noise and the shaking had reached terrifying
proportions. He saw Trillian and Arthur's faces white and unblinking in the
gloom.
"Er, Great Grandfather ..."
"We've been following your progress with considerable despondency ..."
"Yeah, look, just at the moment you see ..."
"Not to say contempt!"
"Could you sort of listen for a moment ..."
"I mean what exactly are you doing with your life?"
"I'm being attacked by a Vogon fleet!" cried Zaphod. It was an
exaggeration, but it was his only opportunity so far of getting the basic
point of the exercise across.
"Doesn't surprise me in the least," said the little old figure with a
shrug.
"Only it's happening right now you see," insisted Zaphod feverishly.
The spectral ancestor nodded, picked up the cup Arthur Dent had brought in
and looked at it with interest.
"Er ... Great Granddad ..."
"Did you know," interrupting the ghostly figure, fixing Zaphod with a
stern look, "that Betelgeuse Five has developed a very slight eccentricy in
its orbit?"
Zaphod didn't and found the information hard to concentrate on what with
all the noise and the imminence of death and so on.
"Er, no ... look," he said.
"Me spinning in my grave!" barked the ancestor. He slammed the cup down
and pointed a quivering, stick-like see-through finger at Zaphod.
"Your fault!" he screeched.
"One minute thirty," muttered Ford, his head in his hands.
"Yeah, look Great Granddad, can you actually help because ..."
"Help?" exclaimed the old man as if he'd been asked for a stoat.
"Yeah, help, and like, now, because otherwise ..."
"Help!" repeated the old man as if he'd been asked for a lightly grilled
stoat in a bun with French fries. He stood amazed.
"You go swanning your way round the Galaxy with your ..." the ancestor