A short while later he was running across the plain in the direction of the ruined city.
The dank air wheezed heavily in his lungs and he frequently stumbled with the exhaustion he was still feeling. Night was beginning to fall too, and the rough ground was treacherous.
The elation of his recent experience was still with him though. The whole Universe. He had seen the whole Universe stretching to infinity around him – everything. And with it had come the clear and extraordinary knowledge that he was the most important thing in it. Having a conceited ego is one thing. Actually being told by a machine is another.
He didn’t have time to reflect on this matter.
Gargravarr had told him that he would have to alert his masters as to what had happened, but that he was prepared to leave a decent interval before doing so. Enough time for Zaphod to make a break and find somewhere to hide.
What he was going to do he didn’t know, but feeling that he was the most important person in the Universe gave him the confidence to believe that something would turn up.
Nothing else on this blighted planet could give him much grounds for optimism.
He ran on, and soon reached the outskirts of the abandoned city.
He walked along cracked and gaping roads riddled with scrawny weeds, the holes filled with rotting shoes. The buildings he passed were so crumbled and decrepit he thought it unsafe to enter any of them. Where could he hide? He hurried on.
After a while the remains of a wide sweeping road led off from the one down which he was walking, and at its end lay a vast low building, surrounded with sundry smaller ones, the whole surrounded by the remains of a perimeter barrier. The large main building still seemed reasonably solid, and Zaphod turned off to see if it might provide him with… well with anything.
He approached the building. Along one side of it – the front it would seem since it faced a wide concreted apron area – were three gigantic doors, maybe sixty feet high. The far one of these was open, and towards this, Zaphod ran.
Inside, all was gloom, dust and confusion. Giant cobwebs lay over everything. Part of the infrastructure of the building had collapsed, part of the rear wall had caved in, and a thick choking dust lay inches over the floor.
Through the heavy gloom huge shapes loomed, covered with debris.
The shapes were sometimes cylindrical, sometimes bulbous, sometimes like eggs, or rather cracked eggs. Most of them were split open or falling apart, some were mere skeletons.
They were all spacecraft, all derelict.