'What's up? You sound as if you've been'
'Look, shut up! Get her to do it, right? Please! It's Bigmac!'
'What's up with him?' 'Yo-less! This is important! This is really important!'
'You know how she goes on when I-' less I'
'Oh, all right. Hey, is that a siren?'
'We're in a phone box. You'd better get her to bring a blanket or something. And hurry up, it's dead smelly in here.'
'That was a siren, wasn't it?'
'Yes.'
He put the phone down.
Bigmac wasn't being sick any more. He hadn't got anything to be sick with. He was just leaning against the door, shaking.
'She'll be along right away,' said Johnny, as cheer- fully as he could manage. 'She's a ward sister. She knows all about this stuff.'
Outside, one of the ambulances drove away. Firemen were all over the wreck. Some of them were getting equipment off the engine.
Bigmac stared at the scene.
'They're probably fine,' lied Johnny. 'It's amazing how people can'
'Johnny?'
'What?'
'No-one's fine who looked like that,' said Bigmac, in a flat voice. 'There was blood all over.'
'Well '
'My brother'll kill me when he finds out. He said if I have the cops round again he'll throw me out of the window. He'll kill me if he finds out.'
'He won't, then. You didn't do anything. We were just hanging out and you felt ill. That's all.'
'He'll kill me!'
'What for? No-one knows anything except me, and I don't know anything. I promise.'
It was gone eight when Johnny got home. He left his coat in the shed until he could sneak it in and sponge it off, and said he'd been round at Yo-less's, which was true, and was a pretty good way of avoiding questions, because his parents approved of Yo-less on racial grounds. To object to him being round at Yo-less's would be like objecting to Yo-less. Yo-less was dead handy.
Anyway, it wasn't as if anyone had cooked any dinner. Mrs Yo-less had made him a hot chocolate when he was there, but he hadn't accepted a meal, because that suggested you didn't have them all that often at home and you didn't do that. She'd put Bigmac to bed. Bigmac with his skinhead haircut.
He microwaved himself something called a Pour-On Genuine Creole Lasagne, which said it served four por- tions. It did if you were dwarfs:
The phone went as he was carrying it upstairs. It was Wobbler.
'Yo-less just rang me.
'Right.'
'Why didn't you get them to put him in an ambulance?'.
'Who with?'
There was a moment of silence from Wobbler as he worked this out. Then he said, 'Yuk.'
'Right.'
'Anyway, people'd ask questions. Bigmac's been in enough trouble as it is, what with his brother and one thing and another.'
'Right.'
'Wow!'
'Got to go now, Wobbler. Got to eat my dinner before it congeals.'
He put the phone down on the tray, and looked at it. There was something else he was going to do. What was it? Something, anyway.
The lasagne looked real. It looked as though someone had already eaten it once.
The Captain looked up.
Most of her officers were standing in front of her. Except for the Gunnery Officer, who was looking smug, they all wore rather embarrassed expressions.
'Yes?' said the Captain.
To her surprise, it wasn't the Gunnery Officer who spoke. It was the Navigation Officer, a small and inoffensive ScreeWee who suffered from prematurely shedding scales.
'Um,' she said.
'Yes?' said the Captain again.
'Um. We - that is, all of us-' said the Navigation Officer, looking as if she wished she was somewhere else, '-we feel that, uh, the present course is, uh, an unwise one. With respect,' she added.
'In what way?' said the Captain. She could see the Gunnery Officer grinning behind the little ScreeWee. No-one could grin like a ScreeWee - their mouths were built for it.
'We, uh - that is, all of us - we are still being attacked. And that last attack was a terrible one.'
The Chosen One stopped it, at the cost of his own life,' said the Captain.
'Um. He will return;' said the Navigation Officer. 'Um. Twenty of our people will not.'
The Captain wasn't really looking at her. She was staring at the Gunnery Officer, whose grin was now wide enough to hold a set of billiard balls and probably the cue too.
He's been talking to them, she told herself. Every- one's on edge, no-one can think straight, and he's talking to them. I should have had him shot. They wouldn't have liked it, but I could probably have shouted them down.
'So what is it you are suggesting?' she said.
'Um. We - that is, all of us,' said the little ScreeWee, with an imploring glance at the Gunnery Officer, 'we feel we should turn and-'
'Fight?' said the Captain. 'Make a last stand?'
'Um. Yes. That's right.'
'And that's the feeling of all of you?'
The officers nodded, one after another.
'Um. Sorry. ma'am,' said the Navigation Officer.
'The others stood and fought,' said the Captain. 'The.. . Space Invaders. And the others. We've all seen the wrecks. All they knew was how to attack. They stood and fought, and fought and died.' 'We are dying too, um,' said the Navigation Officer. 'I know. I am sorry,' said the Captain. 'But many are
living. And every minute takes us further from danger. We are so near the Border! If we stop ... you know
what will happen. Game space will move. The Border will retreat. The humans will find us. And then they will-'
Die,' said the Gunnery Officer. 'And we shall win. We shall give the humans the mother of all battles.' 'Ah, yes,' said the Captain. 'Mother and grand- mother of battles. Battles that breed more battles.'
'And this is your leader speaking,' sneered the Gun- nery Officer. 'The leader of the fleet. It is pathetic. Cowardly.'
'When we are home-' the Captain began. 'Home? This is our home! We have no other! All this talk of the Border, and a planet of our own Have any of us seen it? No! It's a legend. Wishful thinking. A dream. We lie to ourselves. We make up stories. The Chosen One. The Hero with a Thousand Extra Lives! It's all dreams! We live and breed and die on our ships. That is our destiny. There is no choice!'
8
Peace Talks, Peace Shouts
Johnny awoke in the starship.
Normally he was some way from the fleet, but this time it was around him. There were ScreeWee ships on every side.
They were flying the wrong way.
Immediately, a face appeared on the screen. Except for a few differences on the crest, and a slight orange tint to the scales, it might have been the Captain. 'Calling the human ship.'
'Who are you?' 'I am the new Captain. These are my instructions-' 'What happened to the old Captain?' 'She is under arrest. These are my instructions -' 'Arrest? What for? What did she do?' 'She did nothing. Listen to me. You have sixty seconds to get beyond range of our guns. For honour. After that, you will be fired upon with extreme force.'
'Hang on-' 'The count has started.' 'But-' 'End of communication. Die, human.' The screen went blank. Johnny stared at it. It hadn't been a friendly face. The voice had sounded as though it had learned Human out of a book, just like the real Captain. But in this case it had been a nasty book. It also sounded as though it belonged to someone who would count to sixty like this: 'One, two, three, four, five, seven, eighteen, thirty-five, forty-nine, fifty- eight, fifty-nine, sixty - firing, ready or not'
His ship jerked forward, ramming him back in his seat. That was one good thing about game space - you could do the kind of turns and manouevres that, in real space, would leave the human body looking like thin pink lino across the cabin wall
The fleet slid past, dwindling to a collection of dots behind him. A couple of laser beams crackled past, but some way away; it looked as though they were trying to frighten him off rather than kill him.