Aboard the Vogon ship, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was puzzled. He had expected a chase, he had expected an exciting grapple with tractor beams, he had expected to have to use the specially installed Sub-Cyclic Normality Assert-i-Tron to counter the Heart of Gold’s Infinite Improbability Drive, but the Sub-Cyclic Normality Assert-i-Tron lay idle as the Heart of Gold just sat there and took it.
A dozen 30-Megahurt Definit-Kil Photrazon Cannon continued to blaze away at the Heart of Gold, and still it just sat there and took it.
He tested every sensor at his disposal to see if there was any subtle trickery afoot, but no subtle trickery was to be found.
He didn’t know about the tea of course.
Nor did he know exactly how the occupants of the Heart of Gold were spending the last three minutes and thirty seconds of life they had left to spend.
Quite how Zaphod Beeblebrox arrived at the idea of holding a seance at this point is something he was never quite clear on.
Obviously the subject of death was in the air, but more as something to be avoided than harped upon.
Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at the prospect of being reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might just feel the same way about him and, what’s more, be able to do something about helping to postpone this reunion.
Or again it might just have been one of the strange promptings that occasionally surfaced from that dark area of his mind that he had inexplicably locked off prior to becoming President of the Galaxy.
“You want to talk to your great grandfather?” boggled Ford.
“Yeah.”