He stared up at the movie posters. There was one he’d seen many times before. The famous one. The slavering alien monster. You’d think she’d have something like a C Inlay 4 Details photo over her bed but no, there was this thing . . .

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘you want to get inside the ship and run along the corridors shooting ScreeWee? You do, don’t you?’

‘Tactically—’ she began.

‘You can’t. The Captain wouldn’t want that. Not killing ScreeWee.’

Kirsty waved her hands in the air irritably.

‘That’s stupid,’ she said. ‘How do you expect to win without killing the enemy?’

‘I’m supposed to save them. Anyway, they’re not exactly the enemy. I can’t go around killing them.’

Kirsty looked thoughtful.

‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘there was an African tribe once whose nearest word for “enemy” was “a friend we haven’t met yet”?’

Johnny smiled. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s how—’

‘But they were all killed and eaten in eighteen hundred and two,’ said Kirsty. ‘Except for those who were sold as slaves. The last one died in Mississippi in eighteen sixty-four, and he was very upset.’

‘You just made that up,’ said Johnny.

‘No. I won a prize for History.’

‘I expect you did,’ said Johnny. ‘But I’m not killing anyone.’

‘Then you can’t win.’

‘I don’t want to win. I just don’t want them to lose.’

‘You really are a dweeb, aren’t you? How can anyone go through life expecting to lose all the time?’

‘Well, I’ve got to, haven’t I? The world is full of people like you, for a start.’

Johnny realized he was getting angry again. He didn’t often get angry. He just got quiet, or miserable. Anger was unusual. But when it came, it overflowed.

‘They tried to talk to you, and you didn’t even listen! You were the only other one that got that involved! You were so mad to win you slipped into game space! And you’d have been so much better at saving them than me! And you didn’t even listen! But I listened and I’ve spent a week trying to Save Mankind in my sleep! It’s always people like me that have to do stuff like that! It’s always the people who aren’t clever and who don’t win things that have to get killed all the time! And you just hung around and watched! It’s just like on the television! The winners have fun! Winner types never lose, they just come second! It’s all the other people who lose! And now you’re only thinking of helping the Captain because you think she’s like you! Well, I don’t bloody well care any more, Miss Clever! I’ve done my best! And I’m going to go on doing it! And they’ll all come back into game space and it’ll be just like the Space Invaders all over again! And I’ll be there every night!’

Her mouth was open.

There was a knock on the door and almost immediately, mothers being what they are, Kirsty’s mother pushed it open. She brought in a wide grin and a tray.