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

gigantic computer program.
And this is very odd, because without that fairly simple and obvious piece
of knowledge, nothing that ever happened on the Earth could possibly make the
slightest bit of sense.
Sadly however, just before the critical moment of readout, the Earth was
unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way - so they claimed - for a
new hyperspace bypass, and so all hope of discovering a meaning for life was
lost for ever.
Or so it would seem.
Two of there strange, ape-like creatures survived.
Arthur Dent escaped at the very last moment because an old friend of his,
Ford Prefect, suddenly turned out to be from a small planet in the vicinity of
Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he had hitherto claimed; and, more to the
point, he knew how to hitch rides on flying saucers.
Tricia McMillian - or Trillian - had skipped the planet six months earlier
with Zaphod Beeblebrox, the then President of the Galaxy.
Two survivors.
They are all that remains of the greatest experiment ever conducted - to
find the Ultimate Question and the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe, and
Everything.
And, less than half a million miles from where their starship is drifting
lazily through the inky blackness of space, a Vogon ship is moving slowly
towards them.

Chapter 2

Like all Vogon ships it looked as if it had been not so much designed as
congealed. The unpleasant yellow lumps and edifices which protuded from it at
unsightly angles would have disfigured the looks of most ships, but in this
case that was sadly impossible. Uglier things have been spotted in the skies,
but not by reliable witnesses.
In fact to see anything much uglier than a Vogon ship you would have to go
inside and look at a Vogon. If you are wise, however, this is precisely what
you will avoid doing because the average Vogon will not think twice before
doing something so pointlessly hideous to you that you will wish you had never
been born - or (if you are a clearer minded thinker) that the Vogon had never
been born.
In fact, the average Vogon probably wouldn't even think once. They are
simple-minded, thick-willed, slug-brained creatures, and thinking is not
really something they are cut out for. Anatomical analysis of the Vogon
reveals that its brain was originally a badly deformed, misplaced and
dyspeptic liver. The fairest thing you can say about them, then, is that they
know what they like, and what they like generally involves hurting people and,
wherever possible, getting very angry.
One thing they don't like is leaving a job unfinished - particularly this
Vogon, and particularly - for various reasons - this job.
This Vogon was Captain Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace
Planning Council, and he was it who had had the job of demolishing the so
called "planet" Earth.
He heaved his monumentally vile body round in his ill-fitting, slimy seat