The glare heat increased. He’d obviously reached the bar way ahead of me. “A flatlander! Damn it, everywhere I go I’m a flatlander. Do you know how many hours I’ve spent in space?”

“No. Long enough to know how to use a drinking bulb.”

“Funny. Very funny. Everywhere in human space a flatlander is a schnook who never gets above the atmosphere. Everywhere but Earth. If you’re from Earth, you’re a flatlander all your life. For the last fifty years I’ve been running about in human space, and what am I? A flatlander. Why?”

“Earthian is a clumsy term.”

“What is WeMadeItian?” he demanded.

“I’m a crashlander. I wasn’t born within fifty miles of Crashlanding City, but I’m a crashlander anyway.”

That got a grin. I think. It was hard to tell with the beard. “Lucky you’re not a pilot.”

“I am. Was.”

“You’re kidding. They let a crashlander pilot a ship?”

“If he’s good at it.”

“I didn’t mean to pique your ire, sir. May I introduce myself? My name’s Elephant.”

“Beowulf Shaeffer.”

He bought me a drink. I bought him a drink. It turned out we both played gin, so we took fresh drinks to a card table…

When I was a kid, I used to stand out at the edge of Crashlanding Port watching the ships come in. I’d watch the mob of passengers leave the lock and move in a great clump toward customs, and I’d wonder why they seemed to have trouble navigating. A majority of the starborn would always walk in weaving lines, swaying and blinking teary eyes against the sun. I used to think it was because they came from different worlds with different gravities and different atmospheres beneath differently colored suns.

Later I learned different.

There are no windows in a passenger spacecraft. If there were, half the passengers would go insane; it takes an unusual mentality to watch the blind-spot appearance of hyperspace and still keep one’s marbles. For passengers there is nothing to watch and nothing to do, and if you don’t like reading sixteen hours a day, then you drink. It’s best to drink in company. You get less lushed, knowing you have to keep up your side of a conversation. The ship’s doc has cured more hangovers than every other operation combined, right down to manicures and haircuts.

The ship grounded at Los Angeles two days after I met Elephant. He’d made a good drinking partner. We’d been fairly matched at cards, he with his sharp card sense, I with my usual luck. From the talking we’d done, we knew almost as much about each other as anyone knows about anyone. In a way I was sorry to see him leave.

“You’ve got my number?”