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huge lethargic rumble, what might have been a bomb caught in slow motion. He turned towards the sound, guessing correctly that it came from the east. A few seconds later, with the roar decreasing to a low, even growl, he saw it.
    The spacecraft rose up into the air at almost a ninety degree angle. Even at this distance he could tell the craft was huge and oval-shaped, slightly thicker at the back end, certainly too large to fly well. It looked like an eraser, a piece of gum, white and featureless. Flickers of fire from a rear thruster darted out like the tongue of a snake. For a while the craft held its upwards trajectory, a perfect straight line up into the smog, until it disappeared from sight, becoming just a flickering orange glow behind the clouds.
    Then came a groan from the distant engines. Paul sighed in spite of himself; he didn’t care about the government’s spaceships but there was an inevitability to the situation that pained him, as if it reflected everything that was wrong with society. Please make it , he found himself thinking.
    The orange glow grew bright for a moment. The growl of the engines became a drone and then the craft appeared again through the clouds, plummeting towards earth. It flipped end over end, the boosters spraying occasional bursts of fire like a firework that had failed to properly ignite.
    He couldn’t look. He turned away and saw the guards had done so too. One scratched at some non-existent stain on his shirt, a pained expression on his face, while the other peered at a fingernail as if the secrets of the world were etched there. At the last moment, though, Paul couldn’t help himself. He glanced up to see counter thrusters had been activated at the craft’s front end, trying to slow it, trying to keep it from a destructive impact. It briefly straightened, wobbled on its axis, and for a second Paul thought its bomb dive might be reversed. Then there was another explosion, the counter thrusters flickered, and the craft returned to its spiraling descent. A moment later it fell behind the line of the houses and was gone. Paul listened, but heard no indication of its fate. Still, obliterated or just damaged, he knew that somewhere across London people were dying now, in a mess of wreckage, fire and rubble.
    It was always the way. The government launched their spaceships from Southend, on the east coast outside of London GUA. He had seen six others. All fell. He’d heard that the launchers aimed the craft out over the sea so that the inevitable fall resulted in less destruction, though he knew of one that had fallen in the Thames, destroying part of Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. More than a hundred civilians had died, and there were other reports of whole streets being flattened. News passed by ear often became distorted and exaggerated, but he’d seen enough with his own eyes to know that part of what he heard was truth.
    A few weeks would pass while the dust settled. Then the next massive craft would be pulled out of its hanger, and the whole sorry process would begin again.
    No one knew what the space program was for, nor who piloted each doomed flight. Speculation said stolen people. Marta’s brother Leo had disappeared off the street three years ago, and so the spacecraft were never discussed in her presence. But in reality, the only truth was that the truth could be anything.
    Simon claimed it was bitterness, that Mega Britain once had supremacy in space and colonies on the inner planets, but the Americans had shot down all the craft and taken over the settlements. Now, a bankrupt Mega Britain was stealing money and its own people to try to revive past glories.
    Behind him a bell rang. A cheer went up from inside a low building behind the gate, and a horde of children rushed out into the playground. Around Paul, parents, wards, foster-carers and one or two other brothers and sisters waited. He watched as the kids poured past the guards and then him, out on to the street