I am trying to remember a SciF series of books I started reading in my early to mid-teens (1980-86) where the main character was searching for humanity's mythical home planet Earth, which I never did finish.

These were generally paperbacks I loaned from the library or picked up in 2nd hand book shops.

The main character (male) was a mercenary who made his way from planet to planet financing his space fares by taking various contracts, generally each novel's main plot involved a single contract, but with a larger story arc of searching for humanity's lost home planet.

Unique things I remember about the series;

• The main character tended to wear a one piece combat suit, like chain mail covered in some kind of polymer plastic.
• He was an skillful knife fighter.
• Interplanetary travel took time, rich passengers took drugs which slowed down their perception of time and aging. Slow-time?
• Each planet had a shanty town around the spaceport in which lived unfortunates who could no longer pay for passage off world.
• There was a religious order who fed these unfortunates at the cost of brainwashing them against violence.
• Most characters don't believe in the one home world myth, due to the number of races of human.
• At one point the main character gains the spectrum fingerprint of Earth's sun.

Some vague plots I remember from the series;

• Searching for immortality fungus on a world overrun by fungi.
• Hunting giant lizards for gems that grew in their brains.