Round-and-Round Trip

Robert L. Winstead steps off the cramped shuttle of Epseri II with a simple wish: to get from one star system to another and back again. Yet the moment he reaches the Interstellar Travel Agency, his mismatched socks and old‑fashioned sunglasses mark him as the quintessential bureaucratic misfit. A weary clerk flips through his papers, frowns at a ticket that points to Altair IV, and explains that somewhere along the way his itinerary has been tangled in the galaxy’s endless “stages” of travel.

Sent to the agency’s hotel with a handful of other stranded passengers, Winstead spends days waiting for a suitable ship. When a stern, square‑faced guide finally appears, he’s ushered onto the hulking freighter Stellar Streak, a workhorse bound for a destination that feels as distant as it is uncertain. As the crew prepares for the next leg, Winstead’s plight becomes a humorous snapshot of the tangled logistics and accidental adventures that define life on the interstellar highways.