No! he thought. I’m me! Not a pilot in a computer game! If I start thinking like that then I’ll really die! Got to take charge!

Then he noticed the other ships on the screen. He was still a long way from the fleet, of course. But there were three other ships spread out neatly behind him, in convoy. They were bigger and fatter than his and, insofar as it was possible to do this in space, they seemed to wallow rather than fly.

He hit the Communications button. A plump face appeared on the screen.

‘Wobbler?’

‘Johnny?’

‘What are you doing in my head?’

The on-screen Wobbler looked around.

‘Well, according to this little panel riveted on the control thingy, I’m flying a Class Three Light Tanker. Wow! Is it normally like this inside your head?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Johnny. By the main communication screen was another switch saying ‘Conference Facility’. He had a feeling he knew what it did.

Sure enough, when he pressed it Wobbler’s face drifted to the top left-hand corner of the screen. Yo-less’s face appeared in the opposite corner, with Johnny’s own head above it. The other corner stayed blank.

Johnny tapped a button.

‘Bigmac?’ he said. ‘Yo-less?’

Bigmac’s face appeared in the blank. He appeared to be wiping his mouth.

‘Checking the cargo?’ said Johnny sarcastically.

‘It’s full of hamburgers!’ said Bigmac, in a voice like a good monk who’s just arrived in heaven and found that all the sins of the flesh are allowed. ‘Boxes and boxes of hamburgers! I mean millions! With fries. And one Bucket of Chicken Lumps, it says here.’

‘It says on this clipboard,’ said Yo-less, ‘that I’m flying a lot of Prepared Corn and Wheat Products. Shall I go and see what they are?’

‘OK,’ said Johnny. ‘Then that means you’re driving the milk tanker, Wobbler.’

‘Oh, yes. That’s right. Bigmac gets burgers, Wobbler gets boring milk,’ moaned Wobbler.

Yo-less’s face reappeared.

‘Back there it’s breakfast cereals, mainly,’ he said. ‘In Giant-Jumbo-Mega-Civilization-Sized boxes.’

‘Then Bigmac’d better bring his ship between you and Wobbler,’ said Johnny briskly. ‘We can’t risk a collision.’

‘Snap, crackle, fababababBOOM!’ said Bigmac.

‘Will we remember this when we wake up?’ said Wobbler.

‘How can we?’ said Yo-less. ‘We’re not dreaming.’

‘OK. OK. Um. So will we remember this when he wakes up?’

‘I don’t think so. I think we’re only here as projections from his own subconscious mind,’ said Yo-less. ‘He’s just dreaming us.’

‘You mean we’re not real?’ said Bigmac.

‘I’m not sure if I’m real,’ said Johnny.

‘It feels real,’ said Wobbler. ‘Smells real, too.’

‘Tastes real,’ said Bigmac.

‘Looks real,’ said Yo-less. ‘But he’s only imagining we’re here. It’s not really us. Just the us that’s inside his head.’

Don’t ask me, thought Johnny. You were always best at this stuff.

‘And I’ve just worked out, right,’ said Yo-less, ‘that if we send in the boxtops from every single packet back there we can get six thousand sets of saucepans, OK? And twenty thousand books of football stickers and fifty-seven thousand chances to win a Stylish Five-Door Ford Sierra.’