Trying wasn’t the point.

You had to win. What good was anything if you didn’t win?

*

‘Stuck? You’re an alien,’ said Johnny. ‘Aliens don’t get stuck in air ducts. It’s practically a well-known fact.’

He backed into a side tunnel, and turned around.

‘I am sorry. It occurs to me that possibly I am the wrong type of alien,’ said the Captain. ‘I can go backwards, but I am forwardly disadvantaged.’

‘OK. Back up to that second junction we passed,’ said Johnny. ‘We’re lost, anyway. ‘

‘No,’ said the Captain, ‘I know where we are. It says here this is junction .’

‘Do you know where that is?’

‘No.’

‘I saw a film where there was an alien crawling around inside a spaceship’s air ducts and it could come out wherever it liked,’ said Johnny reproachfully.

‘Doubtless it had a map,’ said the Captain.

Johnny crawled around a corner and found . . .

. . . another grille.

There didn’t seem to be any activity on the other side of it. He unscrewed the nuts and let it fall on to the floor.

There was a corridor. He dropped into it, then turned and helped the Captain through. ScreeWee might have descended from crocodiles, but crocodiles preferred sandbanks. They weren’t very good at crawling through narrow spaces.

Her skin felt cold and dry, like silk.

There were no other ScreeWee around.

‘They’re probably at battle stations,’ said Johnny.

‘We’re always at battle stations,’ said the Captain bitterly, brushing dust off her scales. ‘This is corridor . Now we must get to the bridge, yes?’

‘Won’t they just lock you up again?’ said Johnny.

‘I think not. Disobedience to properly constituted authority does not come easily to us. The Gunnery Officer is very . . . persuasive. But once they see that I am free again, they will give in. At least,’ the Captain added, ‘most of them will. The Gunnery Officer may prove difficult. He dreams of grandeur.’

She waddled a little way along the bare corridor, keeping close to the wall. Johnny trailed behind her.

‘Dreams are always tricky,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘But they’ll wake up when the players start shooting again, won’t they? They’ll soon see what he is leading them into?’

‘We have a proverb,’ said the Captain. ‘Skeejeeshe-jweeJEEyee. It means . . .’ she thought for a moment, ‘when you are riding a jee, a six-legged domesticated beast of burden capable of simple instruction but also traditionally foul-tempered, it is easier to stay on rather than dismount; equally, better to trust yourself to a jee than risk attack from the sure-footed JEEyee, which will easily outrun a ScreeWee on foot. Of course, it is a little snappier in our language.’

They’d reached a corner. The Captain peered around it, and then jerked her head back.

‘There is a guard outside the door of my cabin,’ she said. ‘She is armed.’