Robert Heinlein - Variable Star

I wasn’t convinced. But I didn’t need to be. “What is it I’m smelling, exactly?”

“Us,” he said simply.

I tentatively half opened a nostril, and frowned. “I know what people smell like, what a ship smells like, and there’s more than that here.”

“You know what Ganymedeans smell like, and Terrans in a limited portion of a third of its northern hemisphere. This isn’t just everybody , it’s everybody all together . And more of ’em than you’ve ever been shut in with before. Terrans from all over that varied planet, Loonies, O’Neillers, Martians, Ganymedeans, Belters—all at the same time, in combination. Fewer than two dozen times in history have all those smells been mingled, in large amounts—and the other ones have left the Solar System already.”

“Oh.”

“No one group’s smell is intrinsically better or worse than any others’, and you might very well find the personal body odor of an individual from just about any racial, political, or social group aboard perfectly agreeable to you. But put them all together, in one place, and ancient instinct makes you uneasy. Think of it as one of the last remaining traces of our physical predisposition to xenophobia and racism. Like the appendix.”

I had never seen anybody real talk for so long without even momentarily developing a facial expression. “I hope you’re right,” I said politely.

“Also, the two decks immediately above this one are both agricultural decks. We’re sort of in the bilge of Noah’s Ark here.”

“I apologize for crashing into you.”

He shook his head—slowly, the way one does in free fall. “All you did was fail to realize you would need someone to catch you, and that was so close to inevitable that I was waiting there specifically to catch you. Shuttles are always over-pressured: everyone comes sailing in the door. Apology respectfully returned unopened.”

I shook my own head even slower, to underline the point I was about to make. “You don’t understand. I was born in free fall. I could at least have docked more gracefully.”

He nodded, even more slowly. Was that a twinkle in his eye? Or a tic? “Ah,” he said. “In that case, you are a dimwit. And an oaf. But you can’t help being either one; so apology is still unnecessary. Come with me, please.”

And as I gaped, he turned over, grabbed a rung on the wall with one hand, and jaunted off down the corridor, at a pace suitable for dimwits and oafs.

In my embarrassment, I nearly mortified myself completely by bleating out “Wait!” like some fool groundhog. To say “wait” to someone who has just jaunted away from you in zero gee is basically as sensible as saying it to someone who just stepped off a roof: barring unreasonable effort, they’re gone . Barely in time, I managed to end the “W—” with “—hat about my luggage?”

“You’ll never see it again,” he called back without turning around, just loud enough to be understood, and continued to drift away.

I realized to my dismay he had left me stationary. That’s not supposed to be possible in free fall, and I suppose technically I must have had some sort of vector, but I could see it wasn’t going to close the half-meter gap between me and the corridor wall anytime soon. I had no thrusters, or even wings.

It turns out you can swim in air, if it’s thick enough. But not well at all , and definitely not without looking like a dimwit and an oaf. By the time I got one hand on a rung, he had receded so far there was great temptation to complete my disgraceful display by flinging myself after him too hard, the classic newbie mistake. Instead I carefully set a measured pace, just faster than his own, and settled back to—

He stuck out his arm as if signaling a turn, grabbed a rung— zip —made an abrupt turn in the direction I was falling right at the moment, and disappeared.

When there’s nothing else you can do, breathe slower. There’s no way it can hurt, and it might help. Long before I reached that rung which I had failed to spot as larger than the rest and therefore a corner rung, I had calmed down enough to find at least a few small items to place in the This-Might-Not-Be-So-Bad column.

If it was possible to swim in air at all , then the air pressure in this dump was considerably better than that in the low-budget liners and the one military vessel I’d previously traveled aboard. Which explained why smells were more pungent than I’d expected… but also promised that the food was going to taste as good as it did on Terra. Presuming, that is, that it started out that tasty.

If you’ve never experienced anything other than Terran normal pressure, I may need to explain that. Most Terrans don’t seem to realize more than half of what they think of as their sense of taste is actually their sense of smell. This confusion becomes clear the first time you eat something you like in lower pressure. Federation military standard pressure is just barely good enough to appreciate superb coffee. Aboard an economy liner everything pretty much tastes like varying consistencies of warm cardboard or tinted water, and you can chew Red Savina habañeros. (Half a million Scoville units.) Economy passage on a luxury liner, I’m told, gets you warm spiced cardboard and flavored water. I had tolerated both ends of that spectrum, without too much difficulty.

—for the length of an Outer to Inner System hop, most conveniently measured in weeks! Twenty years was going to be a decidedly different matter. It was nice to know I would not spend my first weeks on Brasil Novo weeping with joy at the rediscovery of garlic—of any spice subtler than Scotch bonnet peppers. (A mere third of a million Scovilles, tops.)

Very nice, really. I conceded to myself as I jaunted along that I was in rocky emotional shape, and in need of consolation. And my father had once told me nothing consoles humans like gratifying our appetites. And a good half of my own total appetites were of no further use to me—I was done with women, for good and for all time. Food, music, and good books had damn well better be enough to fill in the hours, because there were going to be roughly 175,000 of them to fill.

There, that was another good one for the Not-So-Bad side of the ledger: thicker air means better sound. And more wind! The music here would be good. Well, as good as the musicians, anyway.

The corner rung was approaching—on my left, now, since I had rolled over while in trajectory. I put some care and effort into my pivot turn, did a lovely job, and immediately crashed into the naked man again, this time from behind, and upside down. If you can’t work out where that placed my nose, good. And never mind.

Of course he had stopped and waited for me to catch up. Far enough away for me to stop in time, too—if I had happened to round that corner at a more prudent speed, while paying attention to where I was going.

“Excuse me,” I said. It came out somewhat muffled, and nasal, with a small echo.

“I do,” he said, and jaunted away again, leaving me drifting ever so slightly after him in his wake this time.

Fortunately I was near a wall this time. I blinked, wrinkled my nose, and jaunted after him. Again I matched speeds, and this time we were still within conversation distance, sort of. “I’m Joel Johnston,” I called.

He precessed to face me without disturbing his trajectory. “I’m surprised to hear that,” he replied softly.

“Huh?”

“I’m surprised to hear that,” he repeated, perhaps a decibel and a half louder.

I’m surprised I hear it, pal. “I meant, why is that?”