Has to go through the usual long, long routine, but knows he’s already stopped believing in the rocket he saw. God has plucked it for him, out of its airless sky, like a steel banana. “Prentice here, did you have anything like a pip from Holland a moment ago. Aha. Aha. Yes, we saw it.” This could ruin a man’s taste for sunrises. He rings off. “They lost it over the coast. They’re calling it premature Brennschluss.”
