I must have the most boring life in the entireuniverse. I expect there's blobs living under rocks onNeptune that have a more interesting life than me . .

'It'd be too hard to explain,' he said. 'I-'

There was a ping from the radar.

'I have to go,' he said, feeling a bit relieved. Facingsomeone else in mortal combat was better than tryingto tell a giant newt about Trying Times.

There was a ship coming in fast. It didn't seem tonotice him. Its screen must be full of ScreeWee ships.It was in the middle of his targeting grid. Aroundhim, the starship hummed. He could feel the powerunder his thumb. Press the button and a million voltsor amps or something of white-hot laser power wouldcrackle out and -His thumb trembled.It didn't seem to want to move.But no-one dies! he told himself. There's just some-one somewhere sitting in their room in front of acomputer! That's what it looks like to them! It's alljust something on a screen! No-one really dies!

I can fire right into his retro-tubes with pin-pointprecision!

No-one really dies!

The ship roared past him and onwards, towards thefleet.

On the radar screen he saw two white dots, whichmeant that it had fired a couple of missiles. Theystreaked towards one of the smaller ScreeWee ships,with the attacker close behind them, firing as he went.

The ScreeWee burst into flame. Johnny knew youshouldn't be able to hear sound in space, but he did hearit - a long, low rumble, washing across the stars.

The human ship turned in a long curve and cameback for another run.

The Captain's face appeared on the screen.'We have surrendered! This must not be allowed!'

'I'm sorry, I-''You must stop this now!'

Johnny let his own ship accelerate while he tried toadjust the microphone.

'Game player! Game player! Stop now! Stop nowor -

Or what, he thought - or I'll shout 'stop' again?He raised his thumb over the Fire button, took aimat the intruder ...'Please! I mean it!'

It was plunging on towards another ship, taking nonotice of him.

'All right, then-'

Blinding blue light flashed across his vision. He shuthis eyes and still the light was there, purple in thedarkness. When he opened them again the ship aheadof him was just an expanding cloud of glittering dust.

He turned in his seat. The Captain's ship was rightbehind him. He could see its guns glowing.

They never did this in the game. They had muchmore firepower than you, but they used it stupidly.It had to be like that. You could only win againsthundreds of alien ships if they had the same grasp ofgunnery techniques as the common cucumber.

This time, every gun had fired at exactly the sametime.

The Captain's face appeared on the screen.'I am sorry.

'What? What happened?'

'It will not happen again, I promise you.'

'What happened?'

There was silence. The Captain appeared to be look-ing at something beyond the camera range.

'There was an unauthorized firing,' she said. 'Thoseresponsible will be dealt with.'

'I was going after that ship,' said Johnny, uncertainly.

Yes. It is to be hoped that another time you can do so beforeone of my ships is destroyed.'

'I'm sorry. I - I didn't want to fire. It's not easy,shooting another ship.'

'How strange that a human should say that Clearly theSpace Invaders shot themselves?'

'What do you mean?'

'Were they doing you any harm?'

'Look, you've got the wrong idea,' said Johnny.'We're not really like that!'

'Excuse me. Things appear differently from where I sit.'

It would have been better if she had shouted, but shedidn't. Johnny could have dealt with it if she had beenangry. Instead, she just sounded tired and sad. It wasthe same tone of voice in which she'd spoken about theSpace Invaders wreckage.

But he found he was quite angry too.

She couldn't be talking about him.

He picked spiders out of the bath, even if they'd gotsoapy and didn't have much of a chance. Yet she'dlooked at him as if he was Ghengiz the Hun or some-one ... after blowing a ship into bits.

'I didn't ask for this, you know! I was just playinga game! I've got problems of my own! I ought to begetting a good night's sleep! That's very important atmy age! Why me?'

'Why not?'

'Well, I don't see why I should have to be told hownasty we are! You shoot at us as well!'

'Self-defence.'

'No! Often you shoot first!'

'With humans, we have often found it essential to get ourself-defence in as soon as possible.'

'Well, I don't like it! Find someone else!'

He switched off the screen and turned his ship awayfrom the fleet. He half expected the Captain to sendsome fighters after him, but she did not. She didn't doanything.

Soon the fleet was merely a large collection of yellowdots on the radar screen.

Hah! Well!

They could find their own way home. It wasn't asif they needed him any more. The game was ruined.Who was going to spend hours looking at stars?They'd have to manage without him.

Serve them right. He was doing things for them, andthey were only newts.

Occasionally a star went past. You didn't get starsgoing past in real space. But they had to put them incomputer games so that people didn't think they'd gotsomething like Wobbler's Journey to Alpha Centauri.

Interesting point. Where was he going?

The radar screen went bing.

There were ships heading towards him. The dotswere green. That meant 'friendly'. But the missilesstreaking ahead of them didn't look friendly at all.

Hang on, hang on - what colour was he on theirradar?

That was important. Friendly ships were green andenemy ships were yellow. He was a starship. A humanstarship.

But on thc other hand, he'd been on the same side asthe ScreeWee, so he might show up-He grabbed the microphone and got as far as 'Um,I' before the rest of the sentence was spread out, verythin, very small, against the stars.

He woke up.

It was 6:3=.

His throat felt cold.

He wondered why people made such a fuss aboutdreams. Dream Boat. Dream River. Dream A LittleDream. But when you got right down to it dreamswere often horrible, and they felt real. Dreams alwaysstarted out well and then they went wrong, no matterwhat you did. You couldn't trust dreams.

And he'd left the alarm set, even though this wasSunday and there was nothing to do on a Sunday. No-one else would be up for hours. it'd be a couple of hourseven before Bigmac's brother delivered the paper, or atleast delivered the wrong paper. And he was all stifffrom sitting at the computer, which wasn't switchedon.

Maybe tonight he'd put some stuff on the floor towake him up.

He went back to bed, and switched the blanket on.He stared at the ceiling for a while. There was stilla model Space Shuttle up there. But one of the two bitsof cotton had come away from the drawing pin, so ithung down in a permanent nosedive.

There was something in the bed. He fumbled underthe covers and pulled out his camera.

Which meant

Some more fumbling found a rectangle of shinypaper.

He looked at it.

Well, yes. Huh. What'd he expect?

He got up again and turned the computer on, thenlay in bed so that he could watch the screen. Still morefake stars drifted past.

Maybe other people were doing this, too. All overthe country. All over the world, maybe. Maybe notevery computer showed the same piece of game space,so that some people were closer to the fleet than others.Or maybe some people were just persistent, likeWobbler, and wouldn't be beaten.

You saw people like that in J&J Software, some-times. They'd have a go at whatever new game oldPatel had put on the machine, get blown to bits or eatenor whatever, which was what happened to you on yourfirst time, and then you couldn't get rid of them witha crowbar. You learned a bit more, and then you died.That's how games worked. People got worked up.They had to beat some game, in the same way thatWobbler would spend weeks trying to beat a program.Some people took it personally when they were blownto bits.