Even the miniscule gravitational pull of, say, a paperclip retards cosmic expansion by a slight amount.

Scientific American, Volume 12, Number 2, 2002

The universe was expanding too quickly, to begin with. So it was that the great philosopher, Xanxy the Maker from the Triangulum Galaxy, decided to take matter into his own hands. God, it seems, was asleep at the switch again. Admittedly, the last few interventions by Xanxy hadn’t worked out so well, but those supernovae in Centaurus and Cassiopeia and Lupus could have happened to anyone. This time was different. The universe was coming apart at the seams, and someone had to slow it down – or else. That much was clear.

Xanxy had a Plan: 1) find the slowest part of the universe; 2) find out what makes it slow, and; 3) then do lots more of it. Supremely satisfied with himself, Xanxy dispatched the Belamoooz twins in a neat, little Star Seed 7 cruiser to the furthest corners of the universe (speaking euphemistically, since the universe is round or parabolic or ribbon-shaped or inside-out, depending on your point of view), to find the one place in space that was slowing the universe’s expansion more than any other.

The search went on across countless light-years; one or two crew mutinies; a number of inter-stellar romances; a time warp to a period when Chicago-like gangsters ruled entire star systems; and encounters with lots of buxom space babes and muscular space dudes in scanty, glistening outfits. Just when the Belamoooz twins were ready to call it a galactic day, they ran into Earth.

They didn’t physically run into Earth in a crash-your-spaceship kind of way. No, they were cruising along the edge of CM Tauri in the Milky Way Galaxy, when the needle on the Drag-O-Meter shot into the red zone. This was noteworthy. The only other time the Drag-O-Meter had gone into the red zone was that visit to the Red Dwarf Pawn Shop in M42 when they had picked-up an incredible, hand-woven Persean rug for a song. That rug was now sitting on the floor of the ship’s bridge, adding much-needed color, but not wearing as well as expected.

This time, the Drag-O-Meter guided them to an orbit around the third planet out from a G-class star. The Belamoooz twins speculated that, in this cheery-looking blue and green planet, they may have finally found what they were looking for. Those onboard who breathed for a living, were breathless. In anticipation of Xanxy’s coronation as the BoM (Best of Makers), the Twins began preparations to measure the Universe’s expansion around this planet which the crew, in anticipation, labeled DED-W8. With a great deal of care, the Twins rolled out the Universal Radar Speed Trap on the starboard side of the ship. While the apparatus was being calibrated, a second team was busy stuffing coffee beans into the business end of the Trap. The crew had discovered sometime earlier that the pressure created by the Trap was also capable of producing an excellent cup of espresso. The test might disappoint, but the coffee never did.

At precisely 1200 hours Zaphod Mean Time, the twins threw the big, red switch on the master console and the Speed Trap hummed to life, causing the entire ship to vibrate like a cheap motel bed. The crew had already learned that speaking during the test was pointless, so everyone was humming, because humming and vibrating were… well, you know. A large numeric read-out over the console told the story that everyone was dying to know: how fast was the universe expanding around DED-W8? Unfortunately, measuring the universe’s speed was a galactically slow process. It took 58,401 orbits around DED-W8 with no talking and far too much humming for most everyone’s taste to get a final reading. When the final measure was in, two things were confirmed: 1) Xanxy was the BoM; and 2) DED-W8 was a bag of rocks tied to the ankle of the universe.

All that was left to do was to find out what was causing DED-W8 to slow the universe’s expansion so monumentally. With that, the Star Seed 7 crew decided to lower the Big Green Eye. To those on the receiving end of the Big Green Eye, the Big Green Eye could be a little unnerving. It was an organic extension of the ship, bound to the ship by a very long, very flexible, and very resilient organic tether. Through it, those above could watch those below in tremendous detail. To those below, there was a general sense of always being watched, which would quite often turn out less well if the Big Green Eye were ever glimpsed peering out from behind a cloud, a mountain, a building, or from under a bed.