He found he was turning the ship all the time to keep the distant dot in front of him.

‘Johnny?’

It was the Captain.

‘Yes? Are you watching it?’

‘Yes. It is moving between us and the Border. It is in our direct line of flight now.’

‘You can’t sort of steer around it?’

‘There are more than three hundred ships in the fleet. That may be difficult.’

‘It seems to be waiting for something. I’ll . . . I’ll risk going to have a look.’

He let his ship overtake the fleet and run ahead of it, towards the distant dot.

It made no attempt to get out of his way.

It was a starship just like his own. In fact, in a way . . . it was his starship. After all, there was only one starship in the entire game, the one You flew to Save Mankind. Everyone was flying the same one . . . in a way.

It hung against the stars, as lifeless as a Space Invader. Johnny moved a bit closer, until he could see the cockpit and even the shape of a head inside. It had a helmet on. Everyone did – it was on the cover of the box. You wore a helmet in a starship. He didn’t know why. Maybe the designers thought you were likely to fall off when you went round corners.

He tried the communicator again.

‘Hello? Can you hear me?’

There was nothing but the background hiss of the universe.

‘I’m pretty sure you can. I’ve got a feeling about it.’

The tiny blob of the helmet turned towards him. You could no more see through the smoked glass of the helmet than you could through a pair of sunglasses from the outside, but he knew he was being stared at.

‘What are you waiting for?’ said Johnny. ‘Look, I know you can hear me, I don’t want to have to—’

The other ship roared into life. It accelerated towards the oncoming fleet on two lances of blue light.

Johnny swore under his breath and kicked his own engines into life. There was no hope of overtaking the attacker. It had a head start, and a starfighter’s top speed was a starfighter’s top speed.

It was just out of gun range. He raced along behind it.

Ahead, he could see some of the big capital ships of the fleet manoeuvring clumsily out of the way. They spread out slowly, trying to avoid colliding with one another. Seen from the front, it was like watching the petals of a flower opening.

The attacker roared for the middle of the fleet. Then it rolled gently and fired six missiles, one after another. A moment later, two of the small ScreeWee fighters exploded and one of the larger ships spun around as it was hit.

The attacker was already heading for another fighter. Johnny had to admit it – it was beautiful flying. He’d never realized before how badly most players flew. They flew like people who lived on the ground – from right to left and up and down, woodenly. Like someone moving something on a screen, in fact.