The backs of his eyeballs felt itchy. The insides of his elbows felt hot.

It was what came of spending all his time in front of a computer, he’d been told, instead of in the healthy fresh air. He couldn’t quite see this, even in his itchy-eyeball state. Surely the fresh air would have been worse? But in his experience being ill always came of whatever you’d been doing. Parents would probably manage to say it came of taking vitamins and wrapping up nice and warm. He’d probably get an appointment down at the health centre next Friday, since they always liked you to be good and ill by the time you came, so that the doctors could be sure of what you’d got.

He could hear the TV downstairs. He spent twenty minutes wondering whether to get out of bed to switch on his old one, but when he moved there were purple blurs in front of his eyes and a goioioing hum in his ears.

He must have managed it, though, because next time he looked it was on, and the colours were much better than usual. There were the newscasters – the black one and the one who looked like his glasses fitted under his skin instead of over the top – and there was the studio, just like normal.

Except that it had the words ‘Scree Wee War’ in the corner, where there were usually words like ‘Budget Shock’ or ‘Euro Summit’. He couldn’t hear what people were saying, but the screen switched to a map of space. It was black. That was the point of space. It was just infinity, huge and black with one dot in it that was everything else.

There was one stubby red arrow in the middle of the blackness. Several dozen blue ones were heading towards it from the edge of the map. In one corner of the map was a photo of a man talking into a phone.

Hang on, thought Johnny. I’m almost certain there wasn’t a BBC reporter with the ScreeWees. They’d have said. Probably there isn’t even a CNN one.

He still wasn’t getting any sound, but he didn’t really need any. It was obvious that humans were closing in on the fleet.

The scene changed. Now it showed a tent somewhere, and there was the huge man, standing in front of another copy of the map.

This time the sound came up. He was saying: . . . that Johnny? He’s no fighter. He’s no politician. He goes home when the going gets tough. He runs out on his obligations. But apart from that, hey, he’s a real nice kid . . .’

‘That’s not true!’ Johnny shouted.

‘It isn’t?’ said a voice behind him.

He didn’t look around immediately. By the sound of it, the voice had come from his chair. And that was much more impossible than the ScreeWee being on television. No one could sit in that chair. It was full of old T-shirts and books and supper plates and junk. There was a deep sock layer and possibly the Lost Strawberry Yoghurt. No one could sit down there without special equipment.