h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah yes, the clove of garlic.

Well, the bat certainly noticed us then! A quick barrel roll and we were in free fall again. Fortunately, we weren't far from the ground by then, but unfortunately the "ground" beneath us turned out to be an underground river. Still, I suppose landing in water was better for our health than landing on rock. But I never did like getting wet, so I was eager to get out of the water as soon as possible. That didn't end up being as easy as you might think, since the river was moving rather swiftly.

And all the time, the thump-thumps were getting slowly more distinct.

While we were being tossed about by the black water rapids, I pulled out my water-proof flashlight (my lantern doesn't exactly agree with water) and looked under the water. I managed to fight the current long enough to pick up a suspicious looking, and oddly large, pearl on the ground. I thought I saw a bright, flashing light, but that turned out to be totally unrelated. I pulled my head out from under the water, and saw that GL and I were heading straight for a waterfall, from which the thump-thump noises seemed to be extremely loud.

Lil, is that tape recorder still running?


*spellbound by story*

The reason we could see the waterfall, was because there was a light source somewhere out of our vision, below the falls. Something was throwing off a warm yellow glow, that seemed to pulse slightly in time with the thump-thumping. Since there was no way we could avoid going over the falls, we swam to the centre of the stream, reasoning that the water below the falls would be deepest there. However, we were in for a surprise when we went over the edge...

There below us was a tube of some sort into which all of the water from the river was flowing. The light seemed to be spilling out of the tube. We went into the tube and under the water and were tossed around like matchsticks. It was very disorienting, but we seemed to pass through one area on the first thump-thump, then into a second area on the second thump-thump. On the third thump-thump, we were squirted out of whatever it was into a relatively calm pool.