"It's just life," they say.
A short aircar trip brought Arthur and the old Magrathean to a doorway. They left the car and went through the door into a waiting room full of glass-topped tables and perspex awards. Almost immediately, a light flashed above the door at the other side of the room and they entered. + "Arthur! You're safe!" a voice cried.
"Am I?" said Arthur, rather startled. "Oh good."
The lighting was rather subdued and it took him a moment or so to see Ford, Trillian and Zaphod sitting round a large table beautifully decked out with exotic dishes, strange sweetmeats and bizarre fruits. They were stuffing their faces.
"What happened to you?" demanded Arthur.
"Well," said Zaphod, attacking a boneful of grilled muscle, "our guests here have been gassing us and zapping our minds and being generally weird and have now given us a rather nice meal to make it up to us. Here," he said hoiking out a lump of evil smelling meat from a bowl, "have some Vegan Rhino's cutlet. It's delicious if you happen to like that sort of thing." "Hosts?" said Arthur. "What hosts? I don't see any ..." A small voice said, "Welcome to lunch, Earth creature." Arthur glanced around and suddenly yelped.
"Ugh!" he said. "There are mice on the table!" There was an awkward silence as everyone looked pointedly at Arthur.
He was busy staring at two white mice sitting in what looked like whisky glasses on the table. He heard the silence and glanced around at everyone.
"Oh!" he said, with sudden realization. "Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't quite prepared for ...""Let me introduce you," said Trillian. "Arthur this is Benji mouse." "Hi," said one of the mice. His whiskers stroked what must have been a touch sensitive panel on the inside of the whisky-glass like affair, and it moved forward slightly.
"And this is Frankie mouse." The other mouse said, "Pleased to meet you," and did likewise.
Arthur gaped.
"But aren't they ..." "Yes," said Trillian, "they are the mice I brought with me from the Earth." She looked him in the eye and Arthur thought he detected the tiniest resigned shrug.
"Could you pass me that bowl of grated Arcturan Megadonkey?" she said.
Slartibartfast coughed politely.
"Er, excuse me," he said.