The three pillars stood out clearly now, three pillars topped with two cross pieces in a way which looked stupefyingly familiar to Arthur’s addled brain.
The three pillars, thundered the man. The Steel Pillar which represented the Strength and Power of the Galaxy!
Searchlights seared out and danced crazy dances up and down the pillar on the left which was, clearly, made of steel or something very like it. The music thumped and bellowed.
The Perspex Pillar, announced the man, representing the forces of Science and Reason in the Galaxy!
Other searchlights played exotically up and down the righthand, transparent pillar creating dazzling patterns within it and a sudden inexplicable craving for ice-cream in the stomach of Arthur Dent.
And, the thunderous voice continued, the Wooden Pillar, representing… and here his voice became just very slightly hoarse with wonderful sentiments, the forces of Nature and Spirituality.
The lights picked out the central pillar. The music moved bravely up into the realms of complete unspeakability.
Between them supporting, the voice rolled on, approaching its climax, the Golden Bail of Prosperity and the Silver Bail of Peace!
The whole structure was now flooded with dazzling lights, and the music had now, fortunately, gone far beyond the limits of the discernible. At the top of the three pillars the two brilliantly gleaming bails sat and dazzled. There seemed to be girls sitting on top of them, or maybe they were meant to be angels. Angels are usually represented as wearing more than that, though.
Suddenly there was a dramatic hush in what was presumably meant to be the Cosmos, and a darkening of the lights.
There is not a world, thrilled the man’s expert voice, not a civilized world in the Galaxy where this symbol is not revered even today. Even in primitive worlds it persists in racial memories. This it was that the forces of Krikkit destroyed, and this it is that now locks their world away till the end of eternity!
And with a flourish, the man produced in his hands a model of the Wikkit gate. Scale was terribly hard to judge in this whole extraordinary spectacle, but the model looked as if it must have been about three feet high.
Not the original key, of course. That, as everyone knows, was destroyed, blasted into the ever-whirling eddies of the space-time continuum and lost for ever. This is a remarkable replica, hand-tooled by skilled craftsmen, lovingly assembled using ancient craft secrets into a memento you will be proud to own, in memory of those who fell, and in tribute to the Galaxy our Galaxy which they died to defend…
Slartibartfast floated past again at this moment.