"You’re so cute for an Explorer!"

"And you don’t smell bad!"

"Do you have a funny voice? I bet you have a funny voice. Say something."

"Um," I said. "Um."

"Look, he’s shy!" One of the women giggled. "Can they stick you in the Explorer Corps just because you’re shy? With a guy this built, I could cure his shyness real fast. Overnight!"

"He must be one of the new Explorers," another woman said. "The volunteers. The ones who don’t have anything wrong with them."

"Anyone who volunteers to be an Explorer has something wrong with them. Him. Whatever." A bald-headed woman laid both hands on my wrist and stared straight into my eyes. "Come on, handsome, you can be honest with us. You’re an Explorer, and Explorers are never normal. What’s wrong with you?"

I took a deep breath and told them all, "I’m stupid, okay? I’m stupid." Then I went back to my cabin and locked myself in.

The whole next day I kept getting comm-messages saying, "Sorry," or "We were just teasing," or "That invitation is still on for getting together in the service tunnels." Three women actually came to apologize at my door… and later, a man who said, "The women here are such bitches, aren’t they? Forget ’em. Why don’t you come down to my cabin for some sudsy VR?" I said thanks anyway, but maybe another time. After that, when somebody knocked I pretended I wasn’t home.

Just before noon on the third day, I got another visitor… and the peep-monitor showed it was a woman wearing an admiral’s gray uniform. I couldn’t very well keep an admiral shut out, so I ran my fingers through my hair, then told the door to open.

The admiral woman was short and brown and young, with a big purply blotch on her cheek; I couldn’t tell what the blotch was, and didn’t know if I was supposed to compliment it or pretend it didn’t exist.