Rating: 4 out of 5
Part four of my review of Douglas Adams' The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide focuses on the short story: Young Zaphod Plays It Safe.
By-Products
This short story pick up with a character left out of the last book, Zaphod Beeblebrox, on a search and rescue mission. Zaphod is now running a salvage company, The Beeblebrox Salvage and Really Wild Stuff Corporation, and is assisting two officials from the Safety and Civil Reassurance Administration somewhere in the Western Galaxy check the holding area of the Starship Billion Year Bunker. The starship was built to be the most secure and impregnable ship ever designed, yet it managed to get itself about four thousand feet underwater and the storage hold broken in two. Oh, and the escape capsule was gone as well, but all the crew (mostly dead now) are still aboard the ship.
What was in the storage bay that so urgently needs attention? What is waiting in Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha? Are we still missing Trillian? These questions may or may not be answered in this short story. You are going to have to read it for yourself to find out.
I think this is a pretty good transition into the next (and final) installment in the series. The story was short, but sweet.