Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space, listen…” and so on. After a while the style settles down a bit and it starts telling you things you actually need to know. Like the fact that the fabulously beautiful planet, Bethsellamin, is now so worried about the cumulative erosion caused by ten million visiting tourists a year, that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet, is surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave. So every time you go to the lavatory there, it’s vitally important to get a receipt. In the entry in which it talks about dying of asphyxiation thirty seconds after being thrown out of a spaceship, it goes on to say, that with what space being the size it is, the chances of being picked up by another craft within those seconds are two to the power of two-hundred-and-sixty-seven-thousand, seven-hundred-and-nine to one against. Which, by a staggering coincidence, was also the telephone number of an Islington flat, where Arthur once went to a very good party and met a very nice girl, whom he entirely failed to get off with. Though the planet Earth, the Islington flat, and telephone have all now been demolished, it is comforting to reflect that they are, in some small way, commemorated by the fact that twenty-nine seconds later, Ford and Arthur were, in fact, rescued.