The Somebody Else’s Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what’s more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people’s natural disposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.
And this is precisely what was happening with Slartibartfast’s ship. It wasn’t pink, but if it had been, that would have been the least of its visual problems and people were simply ignoring it like anything.
The most extraordinary thing about it was that it looked only partly like a spaceship with guidance fins, rocket engines and escape hatches and so on, and a great deal like a small upended Italian bistro.
Ford and Arthur gazed up at it with wonderment and deeply offended sensibilities.
Yes, I know, said Slartibartfast, hurrying up to them at that point, breathless and agitated, but there is a reason. Come, we must go. The ancient nightmare is come again. Doom confronts us all. We must leave at once.
I fancy somewhere sunny, said Ford.
Ford and Arthur followed Slartibartfast into the ship and were so perplexed by what they saw inside it that they were totally unaware of what happened next outside.
A spaceship, yet another one, but this one sleek and silver, descended from the sky on to the pitch, quietly, without fuss, its long legs unlocking in a smooth ballet of technology.
It landed gently. It extended a short ramp. A tall grey-green figure marched briskly out and approached the small knot of people who were gathered in the centre of the pitch tending to the casualties of the recent bizarre massacre. It moved people aside with quiet, understated authority, and came at last to a man lying in a desperate pool of blood, clearly now beyond the reach of any Earthly medicine, breathing, coughing his last. The figure knelt down quietly beside him.
Arthur Philip Deodat? asked the figure.
The man, with horrified confusion in eyes, nodded feebly.
You’re a no-good dumbo nothing, whispered the creature. I thought you should know that before you went.