“Yes, about half I’d say. Anyway – where’s the soap?” He fished around and found it.
“Yes, so anyway,” he resumed, “the idea was that into the first ship, the ‘A’ ship, would go all the brilliant leaders, the scientists, the great artists, you know, all the achievers; and into the third, or ‘C’ ship, would go all the people who did the actual work, who made things and did things, and then into the ‘B’ ship – that’s us – would go everyone else, the middlemen you see.”
He smiled happily at them.
“And we were sent off first,” he concluded, and hummed a little bathing tune.
The little bathing tune, which had been composed for him by one of his world’s most exciting and prolific jingle writer (who was currently asleep in hold thirty-six some nine hundred yards behind them) covered what would otherwise have been an awkward moment of silence. Ford and Arthur shuffled their feet and furiously avoided each other’s eyes.
“Er…” said Arthur after a moment, “what exactly was it that was wrong with your planet then?”
“Oh, it was doomed, as I said,” said the Captain, “Apparently it was going to crash into the sun or something. Or maybe it was that the moon was going to crash into us. Something of the kind. Absolutely terrifying prospect whatever it was.”
“Oh,” said the first officer suddenly, “I thought it was that the planet was going to be invaded by a gigantic swarm of twelve foot piranha bees. Wasn’t that it?”
Number Two span around, eyes ablaze with a cold hard light that only comes with the amount of practice he was prepared to put in.
“That’s not what I was told!” he hissed, “My commanding officer told me that the entire planet was in imminent danger of being eaten by an enormous mutant star goat!”
“Oh really…” said Ford Prefect.