Johnny gave this some thought. 'What happenedwhen you'd shot them all, then?'

'Oh, you got some more.' His father stood up. 'Iexpect it's all more complicated now, though.'

'Yes.'

'Done your homework, have you?'

'Yes.'

'What was it?'

'History. Had to write about ChristopherColumbus.'

'Hmm? You could put in that he didn't set out todiscover America. He was really looking far Asia andfound America by accident.'

'Yes. It says that in the encyclopedia.'

'Glad to see you're using it.'

'Yes. It's very interesting.'

'Good. Right. Right, then. Well, I'm going to haveanother look at those accounts.'

'Right.'

'If there's anything you want to talk about, youknow.'

'All right.'

Johnny waited until he heard the living-room doorshut again. He wondered if he ought to have askedwhere the instruction manual for the dishwasher was.

He switched on the computer.

After a while, the screen for Only You Can SaveMankind came on. He watched the introductory bitmoodily, and then picked up the joystick.

There weren't any aliens.

For a little while he thought he'd done something'wrong. He started the game again.

There were still no aliens. All there was, was theblackness of space, sprinkled with a few twinklingstars.

He flew around until he was out of fuel.

No ScreeWee, no dots on the radar screen. No game.

They'd gone.

Cereal Killers

There was more news these days than normal. Half thetime the TV was showing pictures of tanks and mapsof deserts with green and red arrows all over them,while in the corner of the screen would be a photo ofa journalist with a phone to his ear, talking in a cracklyvoice.

It crackled in the background while Johnny phonedup Wobbler.

'Yes?''Can I speak to Wob ... to Stephen, please?'Mutter, clonk, bump, scuffle.'Yes?''It's me, Wobbler.''Yes?'

'Have you had a look at Only You Can Save Mankindlately?''No. Hey, listen, I've found a way to''Could you have a go with it right now, please?'Pause.'You all right?''What?''You sound a bit weird.'

'Look, go and have a go with the game, willyou?'

It was an hour before Wobbler phoned back. Johnnywaited on the stairs.

'Can I speak?'

'It's me.'

'There's no aliens, right?'

'Yes!'

'Probably something built into the game. You can dothat, you know. A kind of time bomb thing. Maybe it'sprogrammed to make all the aliens vanish on a certaindate.'

'What for?'

'Make things more interesting, I expect. ProbablyGobi Software will be putting adverts in the computerpapers about it. You all right? Your voice sounds a bitsqueaky.'

'No problem.'

'You coming down to the mall tomorrow?'

'Yeah.'

'See you, then. Chow.'

Johnny stared at the dead phone. Of course, therewere things like that on computers. There'd been some-thing in the papers about it. A Friday the 13th virus,or something. Something in the program kept an eyeon the date, and when it was Friday the 13th it was sup-posed to do something nasty to computers all over thecountry.

There had been stories about Evil Computer HackersMenacing Society, and Wobbler had come to school inhome-made dark glasses for a week.

Johnny went back and watched the screen for awhile. Stars occasionally went past.

Wobbler had written an actual computer game likethis once. It was called Journey to Alpha Centauri. It wasa screen with some dots on it. Because, he said, ithappened in real time, which no-one had ever heard ofuntil computers. He'd seen on TV that it took threethousand years to get to Alpha Centauri. He had writ-ten it so that if anyone kept their computer on for threethousand years, they'd be rewarded by a little dotappearing in the middle of the screen, and then amessage saying. 'Welcome to Alpha Centauri. Now gohome.'

Johnny watched the screen for a bit longer. Once ortwice he nudged the joystick, to go on a differentcourse. It didn't make much difference. Space lookedthe same from every direction.

'Hello? Anybody there?' he whispered.

He watched some television before he went to bed.There were some more missiles, and someone going onabout some other missiles which were supposed toknock down the first type of missile.

The fleet travelled in the shape of a giant cone, hun-dreds of miles long. The Captain looked back atit. There were scores of mother ships, hundreds offighters. More and more kept joining them as news ofthe surrender spread.

The Chosen One's ship flew a little way ahead of thefleet. It wasn't answering messages.

But no-one was shooting at them. There hadn't beena human ship visible for hours. Perhaps, the Captainthought, it's really working. We're leaving thembehind - - -

Johnny woke up in the game.

It was hard to sleep in the starship. The seat startedout as the most comfortable thing in the whole world,but it was amazing how uncomfortable it became aftera few hours. And the lavatory was a complicatedarrangement of tubes and trapdoors and it wasn't, hewas beginning to notice, entirely smellproof.

That's what the computer games couldn't give you:the smell of space. It had its own kind of smell, like amachine's armpit. You didn't get dirty, because therewas no dirt, but there was a sort of grimy cleanlinessabout everything.

The radar went ping.

After a while, he could see a dot ahead of him. Itwasn't moving much, and it certainly wasn't firing.

He left the fleet and went to investigate.

It was a huge ship. Or, at least, it had been once.Quite a lot of it had been melted off.

It drifted along, absolutely dead, tumbling very.gently. It was green, and vaguely triangular, except forsix legs, or possibly arms. Three of them were brokenstubs. It looked like a cross between a spider and an,octopus, designed by a computer and made out of hun-dreds of cubes, bolted together.

As the giant hulk turned he could see huge gashes init, with melted edges. There was a suggestion of floorsinside.

He switched on the radio.

'Captain?'

'Yes?'

'Can you see this thing here? 'What is it?'

'We find them sometimes. We think they belonged to anancient race, now extinct. We don't know what they calledthemselves, or where they came from. The ships are veryold.'

The dead ship turned slowly. There was another longburn down the other side.

'I think they were called Space Invaders,' said Johnny.'The human name for them?'

'Yes.'

'I thought so.'

Johnny was glad he couldn't see the Captain's face.He thought: No-one knows where they came from,or even what they called themselves. And now no-oneever will.

The radar went ping again.

There was a human ship heading towards the fleet,at high speed.

This time, he didn't hesitate

The point was, the ScreeWee weren't very good atfighting. After the first few games it was quite easyto beat them. They couldn't seem to get the hangof it. They didn't know how to be sneaky, or when tododge.

It was the same with all of them, come to think ofit. Johnny had played lots of games with words like'Space' and 'Battle' and 'Cosmic' in the titles, and all thealiens were the sort you could beat after a few weeks'playing.

This player didn't stand a chance against a realhuman.

You got six missiles. Johnny had two streaking awaybefore the enemy was much larger than a dot. Then hejust kept his finger on the Fire button until there wasnothing left to fire.

A spreading cloud of wreckage, and that was it.

It wasn't as if anyone would die, after all. Whoeverhad been in there would just have to start the gameagain.

It felt real, but that was just the dream . .