But the attacker rolled and twisted like a swallow in flight. And every turn brought another ScreeWee ship under its guns. Even if they had been firing back, it wouldn’t have been hit, except by accident. It pirouetted.

The Captain’s face appeared on the screen.

‘You must stop this!’

‘I’m trying! I’m trying! Don’t you think I’m trying!’

The attacker turned. Johnny hadn’t thought it was possible for a starship to skid, but this one did. It paused just for a moment as its jets slowed it down, and then accelerated back the way it had come.

Right down his sights.

‘Look, stop!’ he shouted. He had a missile ready. Why even bother to shout? Players couldn’t hear, they only saw the game on the screen—

‘Who are you?’

It was a very clear voice, and very human. The Captain sounded as though she’d learned the language out of a book, but this voice was one that someone had really used since they were about one year old.

‘You can hear me!’

‘Get out of the way, stupid!’

The two pilots stared at one another across a distance that was getting smaller very, very fast.

I’ve heard that before, Johnny thought. That voice. You can hear all the punctuation . . .

They didn’t crash – exactly. There was a grinding noise as each starship scraped the length of the other, ripping off fins, ripping open tanks, and then spun drunkenly away.

The control panel in front of Johnny became a mass of red lights. There were cracks racing across the cockpit.

‘Idiot!’ screamed the radio.

‘It’s all right,’ said Johnny urgently. ‘You just wake up—’

His ship exploded.

Chapter 7

The Dark Tower

It was 16:34° by the thermometer. Time was different in game space.

No matter how often you died, you never got used to it. It wasn’t as if you got better with pract—

She’d heard him. Inside the game.

He sat up.

The ScreeWee were inside the game because it was their world. Wobbler and the rest hadn’t really been in it; he was pretty sure he’d just dreamed them in because he needed someone to pilot the food tankers.

But he’d heard her in Patel’s. That ringing, sharp voice, which made it very clear that its owner thought everyone in the whole world was dim-witted and had to be talked to like a baby or a foreigner.

On the screen, empty space rolled onwards.

He had to find her. Apart from anything else, no one who flew like that should be allowed anywhere near the ScreeWee.

Wobbler’d probably know who she was.

He found the room moving around him when he stood up. He probably really was ill, he thought. Well, not surprising. What with Trying Times and stupid school and parents trying to be friends and now having to save an entire alien race instead of getting proper sleep, it wasn’t surprising.

He made it to the hall and took the phone off its base and brought it back upstairs. He’d just extended the aerial when it rang.