LuE

for Sally The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.

It wasn't just that the cave was cold,  it  wasn't just that it was  damp  and smelly. It was the fact that  the  cave was in the middle of Islington and  there  wasn't a bus  due for  two million years.

Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify,  having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.

He was stranded in prehistoric Earth as the result of a complex sequence of events which had involved him being  alternately blown up and insulted in more bizarre regions of the Galaxy than  he had ever dreamt existed,  and  though life had now turned very,  very, very quiet, he was still feeling jumpy.

He hadn't been blown up now for five years. Since he had hardly seen  anyone since he and Fnord Prefect had parted company four years previously, he hadn't been  insulted  in all that time either.

Except just once.