‘Why aren’t you fighting back?’ said Johnny. ‘I know you can.’

‘No. You are wrong. We have surrendered.’

‘Yes, but—’

’We will not fire on human ships. Sooner or later, it has to stop. We will run instead. Someone gave us safe conduct.’

The worst bit was that she didn’t raise her voice, or accuse him of anything. She just made statements. Big, horrible statements.

‘All right,’ said Johnny, in a dull voice, ‘but I know it’s not real. I’ve got the flu. You get mild hallucinations when you get the flu. Everyone knows that. I remember I was ill once and all the floppy bunnies on the wallpaper started dancing about. This is like that. You can’t really know about this stuff. You’re just in my head.’

‘What difference does that make?’ said the Captain. She stepped out through the wall, and then poked her head back into the room.

‘Remember,’ she said, ‘only you can save mankind.’

‘And I said I already—’

‘ScreeWee is only the human name for us,’ said the Captain. ‘Have you ever wondered what the ScreeWee word for ScreeWee is?’

He must have slept, but he didn’t dream. He woke up in the middle of the afternoon.

A huge ball of incandescent nuclear fire, heated to millions of degrees, was shining brightly in the sky.

The house was empty. His mother had left him a breakfast tray, which was to say that she’d put together a new Snappiflakes packet, a spoon, a bowl and a note saying ‘Milk in Fridge’. She’d also put her office phone number on the bottom of the note. He knew what it was anyway, but sometimes she used the phone number like other people would use an Elastoplast.

He opened the packet and fished around inside. The alien was in a hygienic little paper bag. It was yellow, and in fact did look a bit like the Captain, if you almost shut your eyes.

He wandered aimlessly through the rooms. There was never anything any good on television in the middle of the day. It was all women talking to one another on sofas. He sneaked a look out into the road, just in case there were half-mile-long rocket-exhaust burns. And then he went back upstairs and sat and stared at the silent computer.

OK.

So . . . you switch on. And there’s the game. Somehow it felt worse thinking about playing it by just sitting in front of it now.

On the other hand, it was daytime, so most people would be at school or at least keeping a low profile somewhere. Johnny wasn’t quite certain about game time and real time, but maybe the attacks stopped when people had to go to school? But no, there were probably people playing it in America or Australia or somewhere.

Besides, when you died in your sleep you woke up, so what happens now if you die while you’re awake?

But the ScreeWee were getting slaughtered out there. Or in there. Or in here.