He’d taken one mouthful when something slammed into the ship. A red glare filled the cabin; alarms started to blare.

He looked up in time to see a ship curving away for another run.

He hadn’t even glanced at the radar.

He’d been eating his tea!

He spun the ship. The multi-vitamin sandwich flew around into the wiring somewhere.

It was coming back to get him. He prodded furiously at the control panel.

Hang on . . .

What was the worst that could happen to him?

He could wake up in bed.

He took his time. He dodged. He weaved. Another missile hit the ship. As the attacker roared past, Johnny fired, with everything.

Another cloud of wreckage.

No problem.

But it must have fired a missile just before he got it. There was another red flash. The lights went out. The ship jumped. His head bounced off the seat-back and banged on to the control panel.

He opened his eyes.

Right. And you wake up back in your bedroom.

A light winked at him.

There was something beeping.

Bound to be the alarm clock. That’s how dreams end . . .

He lifted his head. The flashing light was oblong. He tried to focus.

There were shapes there.

But they weren’t saying 6:3 ≡.

They were spelling out ‘AIR LEAK’, and behind the insistent beeping was a terrible hissing sound.

No, no, he thought. This doesn’t happen.

He pushed himself up. There were lots of red lights. He pressed some buttons hurriedly, but this had no effect at all except to make some more lights go red.

He didn’t know much about the controls of a starship, other than fast, slow, left, right and fire, but there were whole rows of flashing alarms which suggested that a lot of things he didn’t know about were going wrong. He stared at some red letters which said ‘SECONDARY PUMPS FAILURE’. He didn’t know what the secondary pumps were, either, but he wished, he really wished, they hadn’t failed.

His head ached. He reached up, and there was real blood on his hand. And he knew that he was going to die. Really die.

No, he thought. Please! I’m John Maxwell. Please! I’m twelve. I’m not dying in a spaceshi—

The beeping got louder.

He looked at the sign again.

It was flashing 6:3 ≡.

About time, he thought, as he passed out . . .

And woke up.

He was at the computer again. It wasn’t switched on, and he was freezing cold.

He had a headache, but a tentative feel said there was no blood. It was just a headache.

He stared into the dark black screen, and wondered what it felt like to be a ScreeWee.

It felt like that, except that you didn’t wake up. It was always AIR LEAK, or *Alert*Alert*Alert* beeping on and off, and then perhaps the freezing cold of space, and then nothing.

He had breakfast.

You got a free alien in every pack of sugar-glazed Snappiflakes. It was a new thing. Or an old thing, being tried again.