A Bad Town for Spacemen

A returned space traveler moves through a city that has gone from curiosity to cold suspicion, enduring extended arrival checks before entering a bar where welcome has hardened into open hostility. Local resentment focuses on the crews' exchanges of exotic resources and on a biological trait that made some crew members survivable in space, provoking a violent, racially charged confrontation that forces him out. Walking to the spacefield, he observes urban decay and the starship looming against the stars, and his feelings shift from personal woundedness to pity for the people who remain. The vignette highlights themes of prejudice, displacement, and the uneasy costs of exploration.