Free Across the Sea of Suns by Gregory Benford Page B

each welding inspector’s beaming mug. But now—He feels the reserves ebbing for this; he cannot muster it for a multifass or even a seminar. Insight comes only in flashes now anyway, and the sensitivity hurts when he rubs against the abrasive mysteries people carry inside. Carlotta pats Nikka on the arm absentmindedly, her attention caught again by a passing spate of jargon, and Nikka comes toward him—
Carlotta was awfully tart when she arrived.
Miffed at something perhaps.
There’s nothing developing between her and Bob if that’s what you’re thinking.
I’m not thinking at all actually.
I don’t think she knows herself what’s bothering her; she can’t talk about it, but look at that forced way she’s laughing over there and how she keeps glancing over at us.
Well look at it her way, we two’ve been together since the Pleistocene and she’s always going to be the last in, the odd number
Funny, it’s easier to talk about her here than when we’re alone
Ye olde multifass, everything comes out here—
And you always mixing around, it looks like aimless walking—
Walking yes, aimless no
Eavesdropping?
I, I like the mix—
    Thing is, they’re going such a long way around in biochem terms, using what they can get after the sunlight scatters around in all that dust. No UV gets through down at the surface to speak of. That poor li’l biosphere, they stack photons on top of each other somehow to get enough energy, then grab onto water near the ocean, split off the oxy, God what a lotta work
    Petrowski calcs that the biosphere’s older than our solar system,
really
old, been perkin’ along over
five
billion years, think ’bout that, figured it from the heavy element abundance—
    —dust transfers the energy to the bigger life-forms, uses mostly sulfide electron donors, quite a trick when you consider—
    —riding those winds, eating the goddamn dust, little bitsy microbes on their way from the Eye to the sea—
    —still think you’ve got the most beautiful ass honey of any guy who wears those maintenance overalls—
    Seems to me you people got a purty good handle on the biosphere, can’t see why you don’t pass on the touchdown option an’ let us get on with it.
    Bob it’s not that simple
    Lissen we let the specialists chip away at the thing ferever we’re gonna turn gray up here ’fore we ever get down and
movin’
    Squeeze it a li’l an’ see what you get
    Tough ecology, man, I mean
tough.
This place’d be dead as Mars with just a little less sunlight and atmosphere. Bio’s creamin’ their jeans to see what else’s under that dust
    Too early to tell; we can’t see well enough to estimate the extent of the life pyramid
    Shit this all there is to drink gotta be sumpin’ better down at Nguyen’s
    Look at him makes you wonder how a muitifass can work with people getting carried away, drink and even drugs on a
ship
no less
    Him? They’re self-canceling, doncha see? Keeps things loose but when votin’ time rolls around they’re too fuzzed to care—
You look at paramecia or your own sperm cells even they have this little whip,
No thanks not my kind of thing
flagella down there is your justly famous balls, my good man
wigglin’ upstream like salmon. Story of my life
and if this grack will let me finish, there are nine fibers on the outside of that whip to every one fiber on the inside
she’s fine y’know wonderful but also great at takin’ the ol’ romance out of it
and that ratio, that nine to one, is the same in thousands of organisms all over Earth and nobody has the slightest idea
unoriginal God is the best explanation. He just got tired
couldn’t you mumble a little softer I can still hear what you’re saying
okay okay so tell us nine. to one
we can’t see any obvious selective survival advantage for the nine-to-one ratio but who knows, still the easiest out is that ’way back at the beginning when sex started the nine to ones were just lucky is all and that ratio got locked in