And what about matter transference beams? Any form of transport which involved tearing you apart atom by atom, flinging those atoms through the sub-ether, and then jamming them back together again just when they were getting their first taste of freedom for years had to be bad news.

Many people had thought exactly this before Arthur Dent and had even gone to the lengths of writing songs about it. Here is one that used regularly to be chanted by huge crowds outside the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Teleport Systems factory on Happi-Werld III:

Aldebaran's great, okay,
Algol's pretty neat,
Betelgeuse's pretty girls
Will knock you off your feet.
They'll do anything you like
Real fast and then real slow,
But if you have to take me apart to get me there
Then I don't want to go.

Singing,
Take me apart, take me apart,
What a way to roam
And if you have to take me apart to get me there
I'd rather stay at home.

Sirius is paved with gold
So I've heard it said
By nuts who then go on to say
"See Tau before you're dead."
I'll gladly take the high road
Or even take the low,
But if you have to take me apart to get me there
Then I, for one, won't go.

Singing,
Take me apart, take me apart,
You must be off your head,
And if you try to take me apart to get me there
I'll stay right here in bed.