Solarians, (Earthlings to themselves, Solarians to everyone else, and get used to it because no one is going to call you an Earthling, even the most remote two-bit alien has more style than that.) were pretty well known in the galaxy. And not just for the bad stuff, but for some good stuff too. They were especially known for two things. One was their sexual ability, which came as no surprise to Solarians, who think about sex almost as much as they think about money. Now, everyone in the galaxy thinks about money, but barely anyone gives much thought to procreation. It just sort of happens. Only Solarians had concocted such elaborate and intricate rituals surrounding the act. It made them a bit of an oddity, but a generally harmless one. The second thing Solarians were known for was their peace-making abilities. This caught them completely by surprise.
Now this takes some explanation. Solarians, from the planet Earth, live in a world that has been wracked with war since the very first neo-minimalists from Barnard's Star landed there and started a tree commune all those millennia ago. But Earth is one of the only civilizations in the galaxy that has lived with both peace and war, seemingly simultaneously for so long. The galaxy is divided really into three types of civilizations: war-loving worlds, peace-loving worlds and worlds that are one way but quickly going in the other direction.
A war-like world is not an aesthetically pleasing tourist destination, to be sure. First of all they are either already, or well on their way to becoming, uninhabited. This is because of two factors. One factor is that the purpose of the entire populace is really to bludgeon the rest of the populace. This starts by pitting roughly half the civilization against the other half. After one half has dispatched the other half, internal splinter groups eventually turn that half in on itself until, ultimately there is only one person left, who is obviously a warrior of such insipid hatred that one day he is going to wake up in a foul mood and beat himself to death. The other factor is that the atmosphere on these worlds become extremely polluted from explosions, chemicals and war-machine exhaust that the air turns from something you take a deep breath of into something that gets your t-shirts whiter and brighter.
A war-like world resembles Venus.
A peace-loving world is also not an aesthetically pleasing tourist destination. They too are either uninhabited or clearly into the Wednesday night at the mall phase of population. This is because peace-loving people generally don't know how to defend themselves and thus are easy targets for those war-mongers who escaped their home planets shortly before the air turned into nail-polish remover. Now, on a war-like planet, the battles can rage for millennia on end, but an invasion on a peace-loving planet can totally wipe out every living thing in about two weeks, three if the invading army is union. What you end up with is a completely devastated desert planet with no sustaining life to regenerate the atmosphere.
A peace-loving world resembles Mars.
And the Solarians, in their inspiring wisdom, or intense stupidity (and long lunchtime discussions concerning this very question are held frequently during the Galactic Council Meetings) have named the ex-war-loving planet 'Venus', after the goddess of Love, and named the ex-peace-loving planet 'Mars', after the god of War.
And that is precisely why, when Solarians go out into the galaxy to make their fame and fortune, they are constantly advised to "stick with the sex".
Stannis Vipond was a Solarian. He was also a mediator. Not that he wasn't good in the sack, which he was; it was just that he was also a damned fine mediator. And mediation was something you could do for a living...not that you couldn't do sex for a living, but being a mediator came with a fitness club membership. Being a sex-worker in the galaxy was not frowned upon, but it was much like being a nipple-clamp salesman, no matter how good you are, not everybody wants your product.
Vipond kept his ethnicity to himself. He figured if nobody knew he was a Solarian, than people would stop leaving condoms in his mail box, thinking it was hilarious and had never been done before. Stannis was a long way from home, too. He had started out as a fighter pilot during the Vagrassi Wars, but he became disillusioned when he discovered that the war was really just an escalated copyright infringement lawsuit. He became a commercial pilot and began running back and forth between planets. One day he was taking a break during a flight and he noticed two men arguing rather loudly across an aisle. He soon discovered that they were both ambassadors from two planets that were at war with each other. Curious, Vipond sat down next to one of them and listened to the argument. After a while he interjected a few salient points, made some rather insightful statements and ended up quoting Mark Twain. By the time the shuttle had reached its destination, the two ambassadors were gripping each others hands, welcoming in a new era of peace and prosperity.
Vipond learned that about six weeks later the two planets had managed to blow each other up almost simultaneously, but it turned out that the two ambassadors, so full of the spirit of brotherhood had decided not to return to their respective homes and instead opened a really good souvlaki restaurant in a nearby space port.
Nevertheless, that event changed the course of Vipond's life. He turned in his wings and went to Mediation school, negotiating a reasonable tuition fee in the process. Following graduation, Stannis was appointed to the Galactic Conflict Resolution Board and immediately found a solution to the Board's internal disagreement whether they were in fact a board, an agency or a bureau. After listening to all sides of the argument, Stannis plainly stated, "Well, I don't know about you, but I'm bored." And thus a consensus was reached.
Being a pilot paid off however and Stannis was promoted to the illustrious position of Deputy Assistant to the Vice-Ambassador of Pyxis Nautica. His duties included flying the VA through treacherous space lanes to the distant but strategically vital Pyxis Nautica. Why it was so vital continually eluded Vipond, but he savoured the opportunity to get hands-on with Galactic Relations. Of course Pyxis Nautica was so frighteningly remote that it had no neighbours to speak of and therefore had no relations with anybody. This deterred the Vice Admiral not in the least and he sallied forth with extravagant receptions and top-notch conferences. Years later, from his prison in Caprion Omega, the Vice Admiral said that perhaps he was a bit indulgent but he had really made Pyxis Nautica into “something”. The word he was looking for was probably "insolvent".
From that posting Vipond went on to bigger and better things. He was an attaché, a consulate, an envoy, a foreign consultant, an inter-galactic relations representative, a multi-partisan cultural diversification specialist, and for a few months, a janitor at Willy's Two-Way Grill.
But now he had risen above all that and become the Galactic Council Concessional Board Chief Mediator. What this meant was that ultimately he had to travel. A lot. And mostly in the company of other mediators, which were a spectacularly dull bunch that couldn't come to a consensus about pizza toppings if their lives depended on it. (And in one case, during the Cheese Crisis of Sagittari Delta, their lives did indeed depend on it. All was almost lost by one vigilante lactose intolerant, but cooler heads prevailed.)
And that was where Stannis Vipond was now, hurtling across the great expanse of space, confined in a small compartment with Shayla Granite, a fellow mediator from Vega, and no small woman. Not that she was overweight, but she was husky and a rather opposing figure with big breasts and a full ass. They were on a commuter flight from the docking port in orbit around some planet to a docking port on the planet’s surface. Nobody was allowed to land directly on planets anymore. There was just too much real estate being squished and too many atmospheres becoming more and more peace-like or more and more war-like.
And this flight, like all other commuter flights was little more than a tin can spinning downwards, which left very little room for two people to stretch out.
The problem with Solarians has to do with pheromones. And it isn't so much their problem as it is the problem of non-Solarians that they come in contact with. On Solaris 3, that is, Earth, Solarians are pretty immune to the whole pheromone thing. It does affect them, but in ways that are subtle and compel those under the influence to slip on soft jazz or light scented candles. However, come in contact with one of the handful of hominid species in the galaxy that are susceptible to Solarian pheromones and the results can be positively pornographic. And to those readers who have had the intestinal fortitude to weather the previous character development, well the payoff is only scant paragraphs away. Feel free to skip ahead.
Pheromones are not a constant thing. They are released differently at different times. During the beings natural life-cycle there is a mating season and pheromone production during that time would be increased, as it would during moments when the being is in a state of arousal. But for the most part, the actual pheromone level of the average critter would be fairly low. And Stannis, being an average critter was no exception. And things would have remained so if it hadn't been for the number ampersand.
Now as anyone with an advanced degree in spatial propulsion hyper-astromatheneering knows, and some other folks as well, the ampersand is simply not a number. It is not even widely accepted as a variable.
The ship that Vipond and his associate were traveling on was a high-speed dedicated shuttle. That is, it went from point A to point B regularly and without variation, as quickly and efficiently as possible. In making it efficient, the concept of pilot had been eliminated and a flight computer handled the actual flying of the craft. Now lately, a magnetic anomaly had crept into the flight path and it was causing the shuttle to deviate more and more from it's normal course, thus bringing it into the docking bays off center, sometimes as much as an inch. In the real world, that is not worth trifling with. However, if you are a spatial propulsion hyper-astromatheneer and you need to justify your job, an inch is a disaster of monumental proportions that must be resolved regardless of cost and time (actually, not regardless of cost and time, in fact the very opposite: the more cost and the more time that can be reasonably squeezed out of the process the better). And so, the automatic flight computer code had been rewritten, only in one tiny line of code, instead of putting a seven in, the programmer had put in an ampersand.
And back on board, when that particular line of code scrolled on by and was processed by the flight computer, the shuttle lurched to a drastic angle. This caused Shayla Granite's truly breathtaking bosom to press into Stannis Vipond's chest. There they stood, face to face, in a suddenly uncomfortable situation. Stannis struggled to maintain some sense of decorum and excused himself. But there was no corresponding ampersand or ampersand canceling character in the code and the craft continued on its merry way, tilted at a lopsided angle as if this was the most perfectly normal thing to do.
The two struggled to free themselves, but with the cramped space and the lack of any kind of leverage, they really could only sort of flail and push against each other. This only served to actually make Stannis a bit more sensitive to the fact that two tremendous breasts were pressing into him. And that fact caused a tiny trigger to go off in his system that began to release those pesky pheromones.
Finally, Shayla was able to roll over to one side and the two sat, pressed against each other, breathing rapidly and smiling at the embarrassment of the situation.
