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

*moves his hand out of the way of Mr. D's foot*

I'm not too terribly clear on that myself.

[Yar walks into the main room, which is about ten feet away from the entry hatch, and looks like a cross between the corresponding room in the Millenium Falcon and the interior of the Heart of Gold in the BBC H2G2 miniseries.]

[Yar] Well, y'see ... as some of you may know, back when I was a Jedi, I had a bunch of clones of myself running around, the first of whom had apparently turned to the Dark Side fairly early. Recently, they moved to the Star Wars galaxy, where they underwent a fairly startling ... transformation, and began behaving insanely-evil instead of just a slight variation on how *I* behave. So I'm planning on going to the Star Wars galaxy in order to investigate ...

[Computer Voice] Dramatic pause.

[Yar] ... the *true* nature of the Dark Side. First, though, I wanna investigate a few places in H2G2-space. We're going to the Space Station first, and I also want to investigate the wreckage of the OmegaMatic. Just as a control for the experiment, you see.

*nods*

Should I have brought some sort of weapons? I'm really more of a mechanic/engineer/improbability physics expert...

*finishes donning a pre-era but still functional looking set of space gear and a smaller variety of weaponry that looks to cover vaccuum as well as various atmospheric conditions alike*

Mmbblmbbllllggrhhhmbbbl

*walks up the ramp, trying to fix the thing on the helmet that would allow him to speak in simultaneous translation to just about everything .... err, sorry Lentilla ... everybody*

[to Irv] Well, I suppose most of our battles will be in space, using the ship's built-in weapons. [shrugs] For that matter, I suppose you could get something at the space station.

[considers this] Unless you know the ... improbability of a gun randomly appearing in your hand?

Random appearances have a rather high improbability number. On the other hand, the improbability that I will discover a gun that someone else has misplaced has misplaced is so low as to be within the parameters of "normal." Somewhere between 43 and 41.

[shrugs] Makes sense.

[looks around to check who's on board and who's leaving]

*Heads into the bowels of the ship to do a few quick checks before takeoff*

[Yar, meanwhile, heads back to the front of the ship, and also prepares for takeoff.]

[Takes off the backpack and sits down... rummages around a bit and produces a clay pipe and leather pouch]

Hope nobody minds... it's psychic tobacco. Completely harmless and always smells like your favourite thing.

*sits down and adjusts some controls*

Aasaghlduisoahjldxnjkl

*shakes his head inside the helmet and starts reading a much-folded piece of paper titelled "Instr¥ctions for Ħðlmet*

*Is relieved to find that his ship does not have actual bowels, but rather metaphorical bowels in which he has located the mechanical interworkings, all of which seem to be working.*

[Among the other things Irv finds are the aforementioned two Bambleweeny 57 sub-meson brains connected to each other.]

[Yar closes the hatch, and the antigrav generators activate, causing the ship to gently lift off, with the G-forces only mildly affecting the ship's artificial gravity (and that of Earth. Or wherever we are.), then starts to move straight upward.]

[Yar] Okay, I'm gonna take us out of the atmosphere before heading to the space station, we want to travel through the portal in a controlled fashion, not getting blown through by the Earth's atmosphere getting sucked through it into the vacuum of space ...

I dunno... getting blown through by the atmosphere does sound rather exciting.

But I suppose it's much better to be sure we'll get there in one piece.

Y'know, that first statement sounded a lot ruder than I'd intended.

*nods and gently twists the button*

Merveilleux!

*smiles as French is much closer to human speech than any of the previous attempts*

I could have sworn I just heard someone speaking in the language of the Frogmen of Tau Beta IV!!!

[The ship begins to tilt backward so that it is pointing in the direction it is flying; this has no discernible effect on the gravitation.]

[Yar rechecks something]

[Yar] ... Oops. Space *Centre.* [types something into the controls]

[A cup of tea appears on the screen for one of the Bambleweeny 57s. On the other, there appears a rather large number followed by "to 1 against". A bright orange portal leading to F35868?thread=5438445 appears in front of the ship; it flies through, and the portal closes.]