‘Eep!’ said the guard.

‘Oh, all right.’ Sigourney relaxed. The guard sagged.

‘Sorry to be late,’ said Sigourney. ‘Had a bit of trouble getting to sleep.’

The Captain said something to the guard in ScreeWee. It nodded in a strangely human way and trooped obediently into the cabin, where it squatted down just as obediently and let them tie its hands and feet with more bits of bed.

‘You’ve got a black belt in karate too, I expect,’ said Johnny.

‘Only purple,’ she said. ‘But I haven’t been doing it long,’ she added quickly. ‘Huh! Is that the only kind of knot you can tie?’

‘I went to karate once, with Bigmac,’ said Johnny, trying to ignore that.

‘What happened?’

‘I got my foot caught in my trousers.’

‘And you are the Chosen One? Huh! They could have chosen me.’

‘They tried. But I was the one who listened,’ said Johnny quietly.

Sigourney picked up the gun and cradled it in her arms.

‘Well, I’m here now,’ she said, ‘And ready to kick some butt.’

‘Some but what?’ said Johnny wearily. He really hated the phrase. It was a game saying. It tried to fool you into believing that real bullets weren’t going to go through real people.

Sigourney sniffed.

‘Nerd.’

They went back into the corridor.

‘By the way,’ said Johnny, ‘what happened to me?’

‘You just collapsed. Right there on the floor. We’ve got a doctor living next door. Mum went and got her. Unusually bright of her, really. She said you were just tired out and looked as though you hadn’t been eating properly.’

‘This is true,’ said the Captain. ‘Did I not say? Too much sugar and carbohydrate, not enough fresh vitamins. You should get out more.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Johnny.

There was something different about the corridor. Before, it had been grey metal, only interesting if you really liked looking at nuts and bolts. But now it was darker, with more curves; the walls glistened, and dripped menace. Dripped something, anyway.

The Captain looked different, too. She hadn’t changed, exactly – it was just that her teeth and claws were somehow more obvious. A few minutes ago, she had been an intelligent person who just happened to be an eight-legged crocodile; now she was an eight-legged crocodile who just happened to be intelligent.

Game space was changing now two people were sharing one dream.

‘Hold on, there’s—’ he began.

‘Don’t let’s hang around,’ said Sigourney.

‘But you’re—’ Johnny began.

Dreaming it wrong, he finished to himself

This really is nuts, he told himself as he trailed after them. At home Kirsty went around being Miss Brains. In here it was all: Make my shorts! Eat my day!

The Captain waddled at high speed along the corridors. Now steam was dribbling from somewhere, making the floor misty and wet.

There wasn’t that much in the ScreeWee ships. Perhaps they ought to have sat down and worked out the inside of one in a bit more detail before they’d dreamed, he thought. They could have added more cabins and big screens and interesting things like that; as it was, all there seemed to be were these snaking corridors that were unpleasantly like caves.