Story IV: The Gondolier

An astronaut drifts away from his ship.

I – THE FATHER

Commander Kozlov’s father, Sergei, gripped airplane armrests as if he were on a rollercoaster ride, but he had an affinity for the stars. His friends called him a “space buff,” and his wife teased him about being a “stargazer,” but as a professor of Ancient Greek at Princeton, the father quietly thought of himself as a spacephile.

“Philos …