25 lines
1.6 KiB
Text
25 lines
1.6 KiB
Text
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an
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interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value
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- you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold
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moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded
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beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep
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under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of
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Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth;
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wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward
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off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast
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of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't
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see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can
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wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry
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yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
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More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some
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reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a
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hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that
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he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of
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biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather
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gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily
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lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch
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hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that
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any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it,
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slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows
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where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
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