It had taken three Guards to get the big lug into the squad car. The one who had clocked Brennan. He was sixteen, it turned out. Derek Mitchell sort of felt sorry for Brennan. Brennan, who should have known better, was going home with a thick lip. He might even be concussed someone said — but that was maybe Brennan already taking a dive with compo in mind. Using his head better now after getting clattered than before. Brennan, yeah, aiming for an easy way out. It was Brennan had told him the Guards were going to set up a station at the airport, that the APFS would be in the ha’penny place then.

The wind was rising. He zipped his jacket up higher. It took major work to push the button through the frigging buttonhole on his collar. His thumb hurt like hell from pushing the edge of the button. Bollocks: it was too tight now.

He rubbed his thumb hard against his forefinger and watched a plane make its approach over the Irish Sea. It just hung there. Stats: at any given moment a million people were flying up there. That was day and night too. Where’d he read that? He rolled the volume dial of his walkie-talkie over and back. Now, think about it: was he the only person in the world, the civilized world like, to think about how mad air travel was?

All they were basically were metal tubes, for God’s sake, tons of weight, full of people getting fired through the air at five hundred miles an hour. Madness really. People reading the papers, having their dinners, watching films, sitting on toilets, sleeping — all five miles up there.

He turned and looked around the sky. There were dirty gray, rolling rain clouds to the west. It was getting colder. He eyed the canopy over by the fire depot. It’d be a quarter after seven before he’d log into the last checkpoint next to the decks for the drop-offs. They should give him a car or something, like for the dog patrols on the perimeter rounds had. A bike even! Ah it was exercise, wasn’t it.