Slartibartfast said:
Because in space travel all the numbers are awful.
He could tell that he wasn’t getting his point across.
Listen, he said. On a waiter’s bill pad numbers dance. You must have encountered the phenomenon.
Well…
On a waiter’s bill pad, said Slartibartfast, reality and unreality collide on such a fundamental level that each becomes the other and anything is possible, within certain parameters.
What parameters?
It’s impossible to say, said Slartibartfast. That’s one of them. Strange but true. At least, I think it’s strange, he added, and I’m assured that it’s true.
At that moment he located the slot in the wall for which he had been searching, and clicked the instrument he was holding into it.
Do not be alarmed, he said, and then suddenly darted an alarmed look at himself, and lunged back, it’s…
They didn’t hear what he said, because at that moment the ship winked out of existence around them and a star-battle-ship the size of a small Midlands industrial city plunged out of the sundered night towards them, star lasers ablaze.
They gaped, pop-eyed, and were unable to scream.