'No,' she said.

The Gunnery Officer's face went blue, a sure sign ofterror. But he had enough courage left to say: 'Youwould not dare fire!'

It's a game, thought Johnny. There's not a real personin that ship. It's someone playing a game. It's all agame. It's just things happening on a screen somewhere.No.

I mean, yes.But...at the same timeit's all happening here

His own ship leapt forward.

It was easy. It was so easy. Just line up circles on thescreen, binkabinkabinka, and then press the Fire buttonuntil every weapon on the ship was empty. He'd done.it many times before.

The invader hadn't even seen him. It launched somemissiles - and then blew up in an impressive display ofgraphics.

That's all it is, Johnny told himself. Just things on ascreen. It's not real. There's no arms and feet spinningaway through the wreckage. It's all a game.

The missiles arrived

The whole cockpit went blinding white.

He was aware, just for a moment, of cold spacearound him, with things in it

A bookcase. A chair. A bed.

He was sitting in front of the computer. The screenwas blank. He was holding the joystick so hard that hehad to concentrate to let go of it.

The clock by his bed said 6:3=, because it wasbroken. But it meant he'd have to get up in anotherhour or so.

He sat with his quilt around him watching the televisionuntil the alarm went off.

There were some more pictures of missiles and bulletsstreaking over a city. They looked pretty much thesame as the ones he'd seen last night, but were probablyback by popular demand.

He felt sick.

Yo-less could help, Johnny decided.

He normally hung out with Wobbler and Bigmac onthe bit of wall behind thi school library. They weren'texactly a gang. If you take a big bag of crisps and shakethem up, all the little bits end up in one corner.

Yo-less was called Yo-less because he never said 'Yo'.He'd given up objecting to the name by now. At leastit was better than Nearly Crucial, which was the lastnickname, and MC Spanner, which was the one beforethat. Johnny was the official nickname generator.

Yo-less said he'd never said 'crucial', either. Hepointed out that Johnny was white and never said,'YerWhat? YerWhat? YerWhat?' or 'Ars-nal! Ars-nal!' and anyway, you shouldn't makejokes about racialstereotyping.

Johnny didn't go into too much detail. He just talkedabout the dream, and not about the messages on thescreen. Yo-less listened carefully. Yo-less listened toeverything carefully. It woried teachers, the way helistened carefully to everything they said. They alwayssuspected he was trying to catch them out.

He said, 'What you've got here is a projection ofa psychological conflict. That's all. Want a cheesering?'

'What's that?'

'It's just crunchy cheesy-flavoured-'

'I mean the other thing you said.'

Yo-less passed the packet on to Bigmac.

'Well.. . your mum and dad are splitting up. right?Well-known fact.''Could be. It's a bit of a trying time,' said Johnny.'O-kay. And there's nothing you can do about it.''Shouldn't think so,' said Johnny.'And this definitely affects you,' said Yo-less.

'I suppose so,' said Johnny cautiously. 'I know I haveto do a lot of my own cooking.'

'Right. So you project your.., um... suppressed~emotions on to a computer game. Happens all thetime,' said Yo-less, whose mother was a nurse, and who,wanted to be a doctor if he grew up. 'You can't solvethe real problems, so you turn them into problems youcan solve. Like ... if this was thirty years ago, you'dprobably dream about fighting dragons or something.It's a projected fantasy.'

'Saving hundreds of intelligent newts doesn't soundvery easy to solve,' said Johnny.

'Dunno,' said Bigmac, happily. 'Ratatatat-blam! Nomore problem.' Bigmac wore large boots and camouflagetrousers all the time. You could spot him a mileoff by his camouflage trousers.

'The thing is,' said Yo-less, 'it's not real. Real's real.!But stuff on a screen isn't.'

'I've cracked Stellar Smashers,' said Wobbler. 'Youcan have that if you want. Everyone says it's a lotbetter.'

'No-oo,' said Johnny, 'I think I'll stick with this onefor a while. See if I can get to level twenty-one.

'If you get to level twenty-one and blow up thewhole fleet you get a special number on the screen,and if you write off to Gobi Software you get a fivepound token,' said Wobbler. 'It was in ComputerWeekly.'

Johnny thought about the Captain.

'A whole five pounds?' he said. 'Gosh.'

It was Games in the afternoon. Bigmac was the onlyone who played. He'd never been keen until they'dintroduced hockey. You got a club to hit people, hesaid.

Yo-less didn't do sport because of intellectual incom-patibility. Wobbler didn't do sport because the sportsmaster had asked him not to. Johnny didn't do sportbecause he had a permanent note, and no-one caredmuch anyway, so he went home early and spent theafternoon reading the manual.

He didn't touch the computer before tea.

There was an extended News, which meant thatCobbers was postponed. There were the same picturesof missiles streaking across a city that he'd seen thenight before, except that now there were more jour-nalists in sand-coloured shirts with lots of pocketstalking excitedly about them.

He heard his mother downstairs complain aboutCobbers, and by the sound of the raised voices thatstarted Trying Times again.

There was some History homework aboutChristopher Columbus. He looked him up in theencyclopedia and copied out four hundred words,which usually worked. He drew a picture of Columbusas well, and coloured it in.

After a while he realized that he was putting off swit-ching the computer on. It came to something, hethought, when you did school work rather than playgames.

It wouldn't hurt to at least have a game of Pac-Manor something. Trouble was, the ghosts would probablystay in the middle of the screen and refuse to come outand be eaten. He didn't think he could cope with that.He'd got enough to worry about as it was.

On top of it all, his father came upstairs to befatherly. This happened about once a fortnight. Theredidn't seem to be any way of stopping it. You had toput up with twenty minutes of being asked about howyou were getting on at school, and had you reallythought about what you wanted to be when you grewup.

The thing to do was not encourage things but aspolitely as possible.

His father sat on the edge of the bed and lookedaround the room as though he'd never seen it before.

After the normal questions about teachers Johnnyhadn't had since the first year, his father stared atnothing much for a while and then said, 'Things havebeen a bit tricky lately. I expect you've noticed.'

'No.'

'It's been a bit tricky at work. Not a good time to~start a new business.'

'Yes.'

'Everything all right?'

'Yes.'

'Nothing you want to talk about?'

'No. I don't think so.'

His father looked around the room again. Then hesaid, 'Remember last year, when we all went down toFalmouth for the week?'

'Yes.'

'You enjoyed that, didn't you?'

He'd got sunburnt and twisted his ankle on somerocks and he had to get up at 8.30 every morning, eventhough it was supposed to be a holiday. And the onlyTV in the hotel was in front of some old woman whonever let go of the remote-control.

'Yes.'

'We ought to go again.'

His father was staring at him.

'Yes,' said Johnny. 'That would be nice.'

'How're you getting on with Space Invaders?''Sorry?''Space Invaders. On the computer.'Johnny turned to look at the blank screen.'What're Space Invaders?' he said.'Isn't that what they're called any more? SpaceInvaders? You used to get them in pubs and things, oh,before you were born. Rows of spiky triangular greenaliens with six legs kept on coming down the screen andwe had to shoot them.'