The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The second book in The Hitchhiker's Guide series.

Zaphod is separated from the others and finds he is part of a conspiracy to uncover who really runs the Universe. He becomes briefly reunited with the others for a trip to Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Zaphod and Ford decide to steal a ship from there, which turns out to be a stunt ship pre-programmed to plunge into a star as a special effect in a stage show. Unable to change course, the main characters get Marvin to run the teleporter they find in the ship, which has no automatic control so Marvin must remain behind to operate it, seemingly sacrificing himself. Zaphod and Trillian discover that the Universe is in the safe hands of a simple man living on a remote planet in a wooden shack with his cat.

Ford and Arthur end up on a spacecraft full of the Golgafrinchan outcasts which crashes on prehistoric Earth straing them. When they try to extract the final readout of the Ultimate Question from Arthur's subconscious mind using a Scrabble set, it is "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?". A Neanderthals spells "forty-two" with other tiles, implying that it is they who were part of Earth's computer matrix. Ford and Arthur realize that the inept Golgafrinchans will become the ancestors of modern humans by displacing the Earth's indigenous species. Therefore, the Earth will never produce the proper Question, destroying all hope of ever finding out what it is.