‘Fine. Just like the Real Thing. Press the button, then.’

She gripped the stick. Then she paused again.

‘Why do you have to spoil everything?’

‘Me?’ said Johnny vaguely. ‘Look, if you’re not going to fire, switch the screen back to what’s ahead of us, will you? This dial here says we’re moving at per , and that’s times faster than it says we ought to be going.’

‘Well?’

‘Well, I just think it’d be nice not to run into an asteroid or something. Of course, if you want us to end up five miles across and one centimetre thick, keep looking back.’

‘Oh, all right!’

She took her finger off the screen switch.

And then she gasped.

They stared at the expanse of space ahead of them, and what was in the middle of it.

‘What,’ said Kirsty, after a long pause, ‘is that?’

Johnny laughed.

He tried to stop himself, because the ship was groaning and creaking like a tortured thing, but he couldn’t. Tears ran down his cheeks. He thumped his hand helplessly on the control panel, accidentally switching a few lights on and off.

‘It’s the Border,’ said the Captain.

‘Yes,’ said Johnny. ‘Of course it is.’

‘But it’s—’ Kirsty began.

‘Yes,’ said Johnny. ‘The Border, see? Beyond it they’re safe. Of course. No one crosses the Border. Humans can’t do it!’

‘It can’t be natural.’

‘Who knows? This is game space, after all. It’s probably natural here. I mean, we’ve all seen it before.’

‘But it is still a very long way off,’ said the Captain. ‘I fear that—’

There was a dull explosion somewhere behind them.

‘Missiles!’ said Kirsty. ‘You should have let me—’

‘No, listen,’ said Johnny. ‘Listen.’

‘What to? I can’t hear anything.’

‘That’s because something’s making a lot of silence,’ said Johnny. ‘The engines have stopped.’

‘The engines have probably melted,’ said the Captain.

‘We’ve still got . . . what is it . . . momentum or inertia or one of those things,’ said Johnny. ‘We’ll keep going until we hit something.’

‘Or something hits us,’ said Kirsty.

She looked at the Border again.

‘How big is that thing?’ she said.

‘It must be huge,’ said Johnny.

‘But there’s stars beyond it.’

‘Not our stars. I told you, that’s one place humans can’t go . . .’

They looked at one another.

‘What happens, then,’ Kirsty began, like someone exploring a particularly nasty hole in a tooth, ‘if we’re on a ship that tries to go past the Border?’

They both turned to the Captain, who shrugged.

‘Don’t ask me,’ she said. ‘It’s never happened. It is impossible.’

Now all three of them turned to look at the Border again.

‘Is it just me?’ said Kirsty, ‘or is it just a little bit bigger?’

There was some silence.

‘Still,’ said Johnny, ‘what’s the worst that can happen to us?’