Species Dossier: The DentrassiCopy Anchor Link

"The Dentrassis are an unruly tribe of gourmands, a wild but pleasant bunch whom the Vogons had recently taken to employing as catering staff on their long-haul fleets, on the strict understanding that they kept themselves very much to themselves.

This suited the Dentrassis fine, because they loved Vogon money, which is one of the hardest currencies in space, but loathed the Vogons themselves. The only sort of Vogon a Dentrassi liked to see was an annoyed Vogon."

— The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 5

The Dentrassi are a species of huge, furry, exuberant gourmands celebrated across the spaceways as the best cooks and the best drinks mixers in the Galaxy. Wild, pleasant, and utterly indifferent to bureaucratic hierarchy, they have inadvertently become the single most important survival loophole for impoverished interstellar hitchhikers operating in Vogon-controlled sectors.

The Vogon Catering ArrangementCopy Anchor Link

Despite their mutual cultural revulsion, the Vogons recently began employing Dentrassi crews to staff the galleys of their long-haul Vogon Constructor Ships:

• Strict Non-Fraternization: The employment contract rests on the strict understanding that the Dentrassi keep themselves very much to themselves inside the ship's galley and sleeping quarters.
• Hard Currency: The arrangement suits the Dentrassi admirably because they love Vogon money—which is one of the hardest currencies in space—while loathing the Vogons themselves with a cheerful, unshakeable passion.
• Delighting in Vogon Misery: Because the only sort of Vogon a Dentrassi likes to see is an annoyed Vogon, a Dentrassi cook bounding onto the control bridge with a lunch tray while grinning like a maniac is a reliable indicator to captains like Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz that something is happening somewhere on the ship that a Vogon can get very angry indeed about.

The Hitchhiker's LoopholeCopy Anchor Link

While the older edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy flatly advised travelers to "forget it" if they wanted a lift from a Vogon, Ford Prefect's field research for the revised edition uncovered the Dentrassi catering loophole:

1. Sub-Etha Pickups: Dentrassi cooks monitoring the ship's short-range matter transference beams will happily beam aboard any hitchhikers signaling with an Electronic Thumb—partly because they like the company, but mostly because it annoys the Vogons.
2. Squalid Galley Hospitality: Hitchhikers beamed aboard a Vogon flagship are stashed inside the dark, cramped Dentrassi sleeping quarters buried deep in the intestines of the hull—a room thick with musty smells, low irritating hums, unwashed cups, unidentifiable bits of smelly alien underwear, and grubby mattresses grown and dried in the swamps of Sqornshellous Zeta.
3. Thirty Altairian Dollars a Day: As Ford Prefect explained to Arthur Dent after rescuing him from the demolition of Earth, knowing that the Dentrassi don't give a wet slap about anything beyond food and drink—and will always smuggle hitchhikers aboard—is precisely the sort of practical intelligence an impoverished hitchhiker needs to see the marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairian dollars a day.