You’re one hundred percent positive that the ship which is crashed on the bottom of this ocean is the ship which you said you were one hundred percent positive could one hundred percent positively never crash?
Category: Young Zaphod Plays It Safe
"Young Zaphod Plays It Safe" is a short story by Douglas Adams set in his The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy universe.
Any sophisticated knowledgable person, who had knocked about, seen a few things, would probably have remarked on how much the craft looked like a filing cabinet–a large and recently burgled filing cabinet lying on its back with its drawers in the air and flying.
The islanders, whose experience was of a different kind, were instead struck by how little it looked like a lobster.
“Santa Zarquana Voostra!” exclaimed both of Zaphod’s heads in chorus.
“So safe that you have to build a zarking fortress ship to take the by-products to the nearest black hole and tip them in! Only it doesn’t get there because the pilot takes a detour–is this right?–to pick up some lobster…? OK, so the guy is cool, but…I mean own up, this is barking time, this is major lunch, this is stool approaching critical mass, this is….this is…total vocabulary failure!”
You see? said the official, examining the ultra-titanium outer seals of the aorist rod hold. “Perfectly secure, perfectly safe.”
He said the same thing as they passed holds containing chemical weapons so powerful that a teaspoonful could fatally infect an entire planet.
He said the same thing as they passed holds containg zeta-active compounds so powerful that a teaspoonful could fatally infect an entire planet.
He said the same thing as they passed holds containing theta-active compounds so powerful that a teaspoonful could irradiate a whole planet.
“I’m glad I’m not a planet,” muttered Zaphod.
Zaphod screamed a diminished fifth himself, dropped his light and sat heavily on the floor, or rather on a body which had been lying there undisturbed for six months and which reacted to being sat on by exploding with great violence. Zaphod wondered what to do about all this, and after a brief but hectic internal debate decided that passing out would be the very thing.