The door opened a little way. A foot came out, swinging upwards, and caught the guard under the snout. There was a click as all its teeth met. Its eyes crossed.
Someone shouted: 'Haul!'
The guard swayed backwards. Kirsty came through the door airborne and started hacking at the guard's arms with her hands. It dropped the gun. She picked it up in one movement. The guard opened its mouth to bite, spread its arms to grip and throttle, and then went cross-eyed because the gun barrel was suddenly thrust between its teeth.
'Don't ... swallow ...' said Kirsty, very deliberately.
There was a sudden, very heavy silence. The guard stayed very still.
'This is a friend of mine,' said Johnny.
'Oh, yes,' said the Captain. 'Sigourney. One of your warriors. Is she a friend of mine?'
'At the moment,' said Sigourney, without moving her head. She had tied one of the strips of webbing from the Captain's bed around her forehead. She was breath- ing heavily. There was a wild glint in her eye. Johnny suddenly felt very sorry for the guard.
'You know, I'm glad she's a friend of mine,' said the Captain.
'He ee ogg ee?' said the guard. Its arms were tremb- ling. The ScreeWee didn't sweat, but this one would probably have liked to.
'We'd better tie her up and put her in the cabin,' said Johnny.
'Ees!' said the guard.
'I could just fire,' said Sigourney wistfully.
'No!' said Johnny and the Captain together.
'Eep!' said the guard.
'Oh, all right.' Sigourney relaxed. The guard sagged. 'Sorry to be late,' said Sigourney. 'Had a bit of trou- ble getting to sleep.'
The Captain said something to the guard in ScreeWee. It nodded in a strangely human way and trooped obediently into the cabin, where it squatted down just as obediently and let them tie its hands and feet with more bits of bed.
'You've got a black belt in karate too, I expect,' said Johnny.
'Only purple,' she said. 'But I haven't been doing it long,' she added quickly. 'Huh! Is that the only kind of knot you can tie?'
'I went to karate once, with Bigmac,' said Johnny, trying to ignore that.
'What happened?'
'I got my foot caught in my trousers.'
'And you are the Chosen One? Huh! They could have chosen me.
'They tried. But I was the one who listened,' said Johnny quietly.
Sigourney picked up the gun and cradled it in her arms.
'Well, I'm here now,' she said, 'And ready to kick some butt.'
'Some but what?' said Johnny wearily. He really hated the phrase. It was a game saying. It tried to fool you into believing that real bullets weren't going to go through real people.
Sigourney sniffed.
'Nerd.'
They went back into the corridor.
'By the way,' said Johnny, 'what happened to me?'
'You just collapsed. Right there on the floor. We've got a doctor living next door. Mum went and got her. Unusually bright of her, really. She said you were just tired out and looked as though you hadn't been eating properly.'
'This is true,' said the Captain. 'Did I not say? Too much sugar and carbohydrate, not enough fresh vitamins. You should get out more.
'Yeah, right,' said Johnny.
There was something different about the corridor. Before, it had been grey metal, only interesting if you really liked looking at nuts and bolts. But now it was darker, with more curves; the walls glistened, and drip- ped menace. Dripped something, anyway.
The Captain looked different, too. She hadn't changed, exactly - it was just that her teeth and claws were somehow more obvious. A few minutes ago, she had been an intelligent person who just happened to be an eight-legged crocodile; now she was an eight-legged crocodile who just happened to be intelligent.
Game space was changing now two people were sharing one dream.
'Hold on, there's-' he began.
'Don't let's hang around,' said Sigourney.
'But you're-' Johnny began.
Dreaming it wrong, he finished to himself.
This really is nuts, he told himself as he trailed after them. At home Kirsty went around being Miss Brains. In here it was alclass="underline" Make my shorts! Eat my day!
The Captain waddled at high speed along the cor- ridors. Now steam was dribbling from somewhere, making the floor misty and wet.
There wasn't that much in the ScreeWee ships. Perhaps they ought to have sat down and worked out the inside of one in a bit more detail before they'd dreamed, he thought. They could have added more cabins and big screens and interesting things like that; as it was, all there seemed to be were these snaking cor- ridors that were unpleasantly like caves.
Bigger caves, though. They'd got wider. Mysterious passages led off in various directions.
Sigourney crept along with her back against the wall, spinning around rapidly every time they passed another passage. She stiffened.
'There's another one coming!' she hissed. 'it's pushing something! Get back!'
She elbowed them into the wall. Johnny could hear the scrape-scrape of claws on the floor, and something rattling. 'When it gets closer I'll get it. I'll leap out-' Johnny poked his head around the corner. 'Kirsty?' She took no notice. 'Sigourney?' he tried. 'Yes?'
'I know you're going to leap out,' said Johnny, 'but don't pull the trigger, right?'
'It's an alien!'
'So it's an alien. You don't have to shoot them all.'
The rattling got closer. There was also a faint squeaking.
Sigourney gripped the gun excitedly, and leapt out.
'OK, you - oh ... um .
It was a very small ScreeWee. Most of its scales were grey. Its crest was nearly worn away. Its tail just dragged behind it. When it opened its mouth, there were three teeth left and they were huddling together at the back.
It blinked owlishly at them over the top of the trolley it had been pushing. Apart from anything else, Kirsty had been aiming the gun well above its head. There was one of those awkward pauses.
'Around this time,' said the Captain behind them, 'the crew on the bridge have a snack brought to them.'
Johnny leaned forward, nodded at the little old alien, and lifted the lid of the tray that was on the trolley. There were a few bowls of something green and bub- bling. He gently lowered the lid again.
'I think you were going to shoot the tea lady,' he said.
'How was I to know?' Kirsty demanded. 'It could have been anything! This is an alien spaceship! You're not supposed to get tea ladies!'
The Captain said something in ScreeWee to the old alien, who shuffled around slowly and went off back down the corridor. One wheel of the trolley kept squeaking.
Kirsty was furious.
'This isn't going right!' she hissed.
'Come on,' said Johnny. 'Let's go to the bridge and get it over with.'
'I didn't know it was a tea lady! That's your dreaming!'
'Yes, all right.'
'She had no right to be there!'
'I suppose even aliens get a bit thirsty in the afternoons.'
'That's not what I meant! They're supposed to be alien! That means slavering and claws! It doesn't mean sending out for ... for a coffee and a jam doughnut!'
'Things are just like they are,' said Johnny, shrugging.
She turned on him.
'Why do you just accept everything? Why don't you ever try to change things?'
'They're generally bad enough already,' he said. She leapt ahead and peered around the next corner. 'Guards!' she said. 'And these have got guns!' Johnny looked around the corner. There were two ScreeWee standing in front of a round door. They were, indeed, armed.
'Satisfied?' she snapped. 'No hint of Danish pastries anywhere? Right? Now can I actually shoot something?'
'No I keep telling you! You have to give them a chance to surrender.'
'You always make it difficult!'
She raised the gun and stepped out.
So did the Captain. She hissed a word in ScreeWee. The guards looked from her to Kirsty, who was squinting along her gun barrel. One of them hissed something.