‘Vorster watched the paraplegics racing their wheelchairs around the basketball field. Two years earlier, while driving home one evening, he had seen Cosmos 253 breaking up on re-entry. For half a minute the sky had been filled with hundreds of glowing fragments, like an immense air force on fire. Vorster stood up as the audience cheered, and walked out among the players. The man in the shabby suit was rapidly wheeling a startled player towards the exit. What was he doing here, at a hospital for injured aircrew?’
From ‘Journey Across A Crater’ by J.G. Ballard in New Worlds 1
Absence Club 