A towel (...) is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar
hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value -- you can
wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of
Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble sanded beaches
of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under
it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of
Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth;
wet it for use in hand-tohand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward
off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast
of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't
see it, it can't see you -- daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can
wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry
yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some
reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker
has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in
possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask,
compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit
etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker
any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might
accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who
can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it,
struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his
towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
