This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/ReallyNotHowThatWork on 2025-08-11 20:58:18+00:00.
Arthur Paddington, customs officer to the stars, was on his way to dock C berth 7 to inspect the irradiation certificates of a shipment of fruit when he first caught a whiff of it. Living on an interstellar weigh station frequented by people of all different biochemistries and levels of personal hygiene, one often got whiffs of this or that. But this scent was both persistent and malodourous, and worse seemed to grow more powerful the closer he got to his destination. Paddington couldn't place it, but it was foul, and he hoped that it wasn't going to be a problem.
Moments after stepping past the dock's threshold the evacuation alarms went off and his communicator issued an urgent set of beeps, declaring that there was a hazmat incident involving an unknown substance at berth C7. Repairing to a café overlooking the entrance to the dock, Paddington decided to check the manifest of his belayed appointment as the emergency appliances streamed through the dock's main entrance.
The ship was a Keran-Tar registered refrigerated breakbulk transport, making a run from old Earth to the aviform's main trade hub, and listed as carrying 25 thousand tonnes of fruit and no other cargo. Remarkably hazardous thing to ship, fruit was. It was usually picked and shipped before it was ripe, and to keep it from ripening too quickly and rotting during transport it had to be kept refrigerated (and some refrigerants were quite toxic) and in a low oxygen, high carbon dioxide atmosphere. If you got conditions right, some fruit gave off potentially dangerous gases as they slowly ripened (bananas were the common example), and if you got conditions wrong, then rotting fruit gave off all sorts of dangerous fumes. There were also pesticides: standard practice for fruit coming from Earth was irradiation, but some polities insisted on secondary treatments with all sorts of targeted poisons, and even if this load wasn't due to be treated it's wasn't hard to imagine that the ship still carried pesticides for use on other shipments.
Looking at the detailed manifest, Paddington found that the ship was carrying several different varieties of a fruit called the durian, and that name tickled a memory. A quick stellarnet search later and Paddington was sensibly chucking to himself as he typed out a quick message to station's fire brigade. They'd probably figured it out themselves by now but no harm in giving them a hint.
It wasn't until a couple of days later (whilst Paddington was finally conducting his inspection) that he got the full story. It seems that a couple of wealthy Keran-Tars had been visiting South East Asia when they'd smelt the fruit's odeur. For humans, the durian has a divisive aroma, pleasant for some but overpoweringly foul for others, but Keran-Tars evolved from aviform carrion-eaters - overpowering and foul was a description of most of their cuisine. Our two interstellar tourists just happened to be in the produce industry and aimed to introduce this human delicacy to the hungry Keran-Tar masses, whilst securing a tidy profit for themselves. This was their first shipment, and it seems that a few members of the crew got curious when a crate of the fruit "accidentally" broke open in flight and they, not wanting the opportunity to go to waste, decided to help themselves. In addition to overpowering, the scent of the durian is also persistent, so much so that in countries where it's common laws have had to be passed banning its consumption in certain public spaces. So of course when the ship pulled into the berth and opened it hatches, the dock got a nosefull of it, the station's emergency crews got a bit of exercise, the captain got a talking-to, the crew got a much sterner talking-to, and a new rule was added to the station's books.
Not bad for a for a load of fruit.