“Well,” said Ford, “I can see that you’ve got a lot of things you’re going to talk about, so, thanks for the drinks, and if you could sort of drop us off at the nearest convenient planet…”
“Ah, well that’s a little difficult you see,” said the Captain, “because our trajectory thingy was preset before we left Golgafrincham, I think partly because I’m not very good with figures…”
“You mean we’re stuck here on this ship?” exclaimed Ford suddenly losing patience with the whole charade, “When are you meant to be reaching this planet you’re meant to be colonizing?”
“Oh, we’re nearly there I think,” said the Captain, “any second now. It’s probably time I was getting out of this bath in fact. Oh, I don’t know though, why stop just when I’m enjoying it?”
“So we’re actually going to land in a minute?”
“Well not so much land, in fact, not actually land as such, no… er…”
“What are you talking about?” said Ford sharply.
“Well,” said the Captain, picking his way through the words carefully, “I think as far as I can remember we were programmed to crash on it.”
“Crash?” shouted Ford and Arthur.
“Er, yes,” said the Captain, “yes, it’s all part of the plan I think. There was a terribly good reason for it which I can’t quite remember at the moment. It was something to with… er…”
Ford exploded.
“You’re a load of useless bloody loonies!” he shouted.
“Ah yes, that was it,” beamed the Captain, “that was the reason.”