Astronaut helmet with galaxy visor

The helmet came from a rag-and-bone yard outside Lowestoft, bought by Ottilie Vane for three shillings and a bottle of gin. Someone had once painted the visor, and nobody knows who. Inside the glass, a spiral galaxy turns in blue and violet, stars scattered through it like spilt sugar. When the lamps dim, the children swear it moves. Ottilie used to say it was the only act she'd ever run that never missed its cue. The ribbed hose coils down from the collar to the old pump, and the pump has never once been asked to rest.

The council wanted the field for houses by Michaelmas. On the last night the generator coughed out at half past eight, and the tent went black except for the sodium glare from the car park. Ottilie came to the foot of the ladder with a torch and told him to stay on the ground. He smiled through the glass and started to climb anyway, because the pump still had enough breath in it, and up is the only direction the act has ever known.

Nobody cheered. They looked up through the split in the canvas, where the real sky was going the colour of ink, and for a moment the crowd saw what the visor had been showing them all along. Then the Man came back down the ladder one rung at a time, unhooked the hose, and coiled it neatly on the grass like a sleeping snake. Ottilie kept the helmet. It still sits in the caravan window, facing the road.