Round-and-Round Trip

All he wanted to do was go
from here to there—but somehow the entire Milky Way had been converted into a squirrel cage.
By H. B. FYFE
Illustrated by WOOD
When the passengers from Epseri II had been chauffeured from the Centaur Queen to the administration building of the spaceport, the man whose papers identified him as Robert L. Winstead trailed the others to the Interstellar Travel Agency counter. His taking an unobtrusive place near the end of the line was entirely in keeping with his unobtrusive appearance.
Of medium height but somewhat underweight, Winstead looked like a tired clerk who had not slept well in space. The wide trousers of his conservative maroon suit flapped about his thin shins and drew attention to the fact that he had donned one blue and one green sock.
The processing was rapid; most of the two dozen passengers meant to stay here on St. Andrew V. Only a few, of whom Winstead was one, carried ultimate destination tickets. They remained after the locals had been taken in charge by a guide who would see them into the adjacent city.
Winstead finally reached a clerk, a dark, extremely brisk young man. He presented his papers. The young man riffled through them, stamped the date of arrival on the travel record according to both local and Terran calendar, then turned back abruptly to the card showing Winstead's destination. He shook his head in puzzled annoyance.
I'm very sorry, Mr.—uh—Winstead. Is this the proper ticket you've given me? Could you have gotten it mixed up with someone else's?
The traveler coughed and spluttered worried, questioning noises. A look of vague alarm spread over his undistinguished features.
His wispy gray hair had become rumpled when he had pulled off and stuffed into a side pocket his rather sporty maroon-and-white checked cap. This, plus the fact that he had to look up to the clerk, lent him an air of the typical little man in the wrong queue. It did not help that he wore old-fashioned sunglasses instead of colored contacts, and had forgotten to remove them before peering at the ticket.