I can fire right into his retro-tubes with pin-point precision!

No one really dies!

The ship roared past him and onwards, towards the fleet.

On the radar screen he saw two white dots, which meant that it had fired a couple of missiles. They streaked towards one of the smaller ScreeWee ships, with the attacker close behind them, firing as he went.

The ScreeWee burst into flame. Johnny knew you shouldn’t be able to hear sound in space, but he did hear it – a long, low rumble, washing across the stars.

The human ship turned in a long curve and came back for another run.

The Captain’s face appeared on the screen.

‘We have surrendered! This must not be allowed!’

‘I’m sorry, I—’

‘You must stop this now!’

Johnny let his own ship accelerate while he tried to adjust the microphone.

‘Game player! Game player! Stop now! Stop now or—’

Or what, he thought – or I’ll shout ‘stop’ again?

He raised his thumb over the Fire button, took aim at the intruder—

’Please! I mean it!’

It was plunging on towards another ship, taking no notice of him.

‘All right, then—’

Blinding blue light flashed across his vision. He shut his eyes and still the light was there, purple in the darkness. When he opened them again the ship ahead of him was just an expanding cloud of glittering dust.

He turned in his seat. The Captain’s ship was right behind him. He could see its guns glowing.

They never did this in the game. They had much more firepower than you, but they used it stupidly. It had to be like that. You could only win against hundreds of alien ships if they had the same grasp of gunnery techniques as the common cucumber.

This time, every gun had fired at exactly the same time.

The Captain’s face appeared on the screen.

‘I am sorry.’

‘What? What happened?’

‘It will not happen again, I promise you.

‘What happened?’

There was silence. The Captain appeared to be looking at something beyond the camera range.

‘There was an unauthorized firing,’ she said. ‘Those responsible will be dealt with.’

‘I was going after that ship,’ said Johnny, uncertainly.

‘Yes. It is to be hoped that another time you can do so before one of my ships is destroyed.’

‘I’m sorry. I – I didn’t want to fire. It’s not easy, shooting another ship.’

‘How strange that a human should say that. Clearly the Space Invaders shot themselves?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Were they doing you any harm?’

‘Look, you’ve got the wrong idea,’ said Johnny. ‘We’re not really like that!’

‘Excuse me. Things appear differently from where I sit.’

It would have been better if she had shouted, but she didn’t. Johnny could have dealt with it if she had been angry. Instead, she just sounded tired and sad. It was the same tone of voice in which she’d spoken about the Space Invaders wreckage.

But he found he was quite angry too.