The Captain was, though. She seemed quite at home.

He’d only ever seen her face on the screen. Now he could see that she was about two metres long, but quite thin – more like a fat snake with legs than an alligator or a newt. She had two thick, heavy pairs about half-way down, and two pairs of thinner ones at the top, on a set of very complicated shoulders. Most of her was covered in a brown overall; the bits that stuck out – her head, all eight hands or feet, and most of her tail – were a yellow-bronze, and covered in very small scales.

‘If you parked out in the road Mrs Cannock opposite will be really mad,’ Johnny heard himself say. ‘She goes on about my dad leaving his car parked out in the road and it’s not even a thousand metres long. So this is a hallucination, isn’t it?’

‘Of course it is,’ said the Captain. ‘I’m not sure that real space and game space are connected, except in your head.’

‘I saw this film once where spaceships could go anywhere in the universe through wormholes in space,’ said Johnny. ‘That means I’ve got a wormhole in my head?’

The Captain shrugged, which was a very interesting sight in a being with four arms.

‘Watch this,’ she said. ‘This is very impressive. I expect this will be shown a lot.’

She pointed at the screen.

It showed stars, and a dot in the distance. It got bigger very quickly.

‘I think I know that,’ said Johnny. ‘It’s one of your ships. The sort you get on level seven, isn’t it?’

‘The type, I think, will not matter for long,’ said the Captain quietly.

The ship was heading away from the camera. Its rocket exhausts got larger and larger. The camera seemed to be mounted on a . . .

‘Missile?’ said Johnny weakly.

The screen went blank.

Johnny thought of the dead Space Invader armada, turning over and over in the frosty emptiness between the game stars.

‘I don’t want to know about it,’ said Johnny. ‘I don’t want you to tell me how many ScreeWee there were on board. I don’t want you to tell me what happ—’

‘No,’ said the Captain, ‘I expect you don’t.’

‘It’s not my fault! I can’t help what people are like!’

‘Of course not.’

The Captain had a nasty way of talking in a reasonable voice.

‘We are under attack,’ she said. ‘Humans are attacking us. Even though we have surrendered.’

‘Yes, but you only surrendered to me,’ said Johnny. ‘I’m just me. It’s not like surrendering to a government or something. I’m not important.’

‘On the contrary,’ said the ScreeWee, ‘you’re the saviour of civilization. You’re all that stands between your world and certain oblivion. You are the last hope.’

‘But that’s not . . . real. That’s just what it says at the start of the game!’

‘And you did not believe it?’

‘Look, it always says something like that!’