‘Only you can save mankind?’ said the Captain.

‘Yes, but it’s not really true!’

‘If not you, then who else?’

‘Look,’ said Johnny, ‘I have saved mankind. In the game, anyway. There aren’t any ScreeWee attacking any more. People have to play it for hours to find any.’

The Captain smiled. The shrug had been impressive. But the Captain’s mouth was half a metre long.

‘You humans are strange,’ she said. ‘You are warlike. But you make rules! Rules of war!’

‘Um. I think we don’t always obey all those rules,’ said Johnny.

Another four-armed shrug.

‘Does that matter? Even to have made such rules . . . You think all of life is a game.’

The Captain pulled a small piece of silvery paper out of a pocket of her overall.

‘Your attackers have left us too short of food. So, by your rules,’ she said, ‘I must ask for the following: fifteen tonnes of pressed wheat extractions treated with sucrose; ten thousand litres of cold bovine lactation; twenty-five tonnes of the baked wheat extraction containing grilled bovine flesh and trace ingredients, along with chopped and fried tubers and fried and corn-extract-coated rings of vegetables of the allium family; one tonne of crushed mustard seeds mixed with water and permitted additives; three tonnes of exploded corn kernels coated with lactic derivation; ten thousand litres of coloured water containing sucrose and trace elements; fifteen tonnes of prepared and fermented wheat extract in vegetable juice; one thousand tonnes of soured lactic acid flavoured with fruit extract. Daily. Thank you.’

‘What?’

‘The food of your fighting men,’ explained the Captain.

‘Doesn’t sound like food.’

‘You are right,’ said the Captain. ‘It is disgustingly lacking in fresh vegetables and dangerously high in carbohydrates and saturated fats. However, it appears that this is what you eat.’

‘Me? I don’t even know what that stuff is! What are pressed wheat extractions treated with sucrose?’

‘It said “Snappiflakes” on the packet,’ said the Captain.

‘Soured lactic acid?’

‘You had a banana yoghurt.’

Johnny’s lips moved as he tried to work this out.

‘The grilled bovine flesh and all that stuff?’

‘A hamburger and fries with fried onion rings.’

Johnny tried to sit up.

‘Are you saying that I’ve got to go down to the shops and get takeaway Jumboburgers for an entire alien spacefleet?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘I should think not—’

‘My Chief Engineer wants a Bucket of Chicken Lumps.’

‘What do ScreeWee usually eat?’

‘Normally we eat a kind of waterweed. It contains a perfect balance of vitamins, minerals and trace elements to ensure a healthy growth of scale and crest.’

‘Then why—’

‘But, as you would put it, it tastes like poo.’

‘Oh.’

The Captain stood up. It was a beautiful movement. The ScreeWee body had no angles in it, apart from the elbows and knees; she seemed to be able to bend wherever she wanted.

‘And now I must return,’ she said. ‘I hope your attack of minor germs will shortly be over. I could only wish that my attack of human beings was as easily cured.’