I threw the butt on the deck and mashed it with my heel before it could bounce off and go adrift in the cabin. I never had liked the taste of the weedy stuff anyway. Smoking quabba is the prime attribute of a spaceman—it has the reputation of being a specific against spacesickness, toughening the cerebral meninges against high acceleration, cutting down reaction time when you have to act fast in a meteor field. Maybe it's all true. One thing it really does is make your clothes smell like a vacant lot on fire so people can say, "Ah, he's a spaceman," without having to ask.

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