'She says the Gunnery Officer has instructed them to shoot anyone who approaches the door,' said the Captain.
'I'll fire if they move,' said Kirsty. 'I mean it!' The Captain spoke in ScreeWee again. The guards stared at Johnny. They lowered their guns.
Suspicion rose inside him.
'What did you just tell them?' he said.
'I just told them who you were,' said the Captain.
'You said I was the Chosen One?'
One of the guards was trying to kneel. That looked very strange in a creature with four legs.
Kirsty rolled her eyes.
'It's better than being shot at,' said the Captain. 'I've been shot at a lot. I know what I am talking about.'
'Tell her to get up,' said Johnny. 'What do we do now? Who's on the bridge?'
'Most of the officers,' said the Captain. 'The guard says there have been arguments. Gunfire.'
'That's more like it!' said Kirsty.
They looked at the door.
'OK,' said Johnny. 'Let's go . .
The Captain motioned one of the guards aside and touched a plate by the door.
11
Humans!
Johnny saw it all in one long, long second.
Firstly, the bridge was big. It seemed to be the size of a football pitch. And at one end there was a screen, which looked almost as big. He felt like an ant standing in front of a TV set.
The screen was covered with green dots.
Players. Heading for the fleet.
There were hundreds of them.
Right in front of the screen was a horseshoe-shaped bank of controls, with a dozen seats ranged in front of It.
It's here, he thought. When I was sitting in my room playing, they were in here in this great shadowy room, steering their ship, firing back
Only one seat was occupied now. Its occupant was already standing up, half turning, reaching for something .
'Go ahead,' said Kirsty. 'Make my stardate.' The Gunnery Officer froze, glaring at them. 'Too late,' he said. 'You're too late!' He waved a claw towards the screen. 'I've taken us back to where we belong. There is no time to turn us round again. You must fight now.'
He focused on Johnny. 'What's that?' he said.
'The Chosen One,' said the Captain, starting to walk forward. The others followed her.
'But we must fight,' said the Gunnery Officer. 'For honour. The honour of the ScreeWee! That's what we are for!'
Johnny's foot touched something. He looked down. Now that his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, he could see that he'd almost tripped over a ScreeWee. It was dead. Nothing with a hole like that in it could have been alive.
Kirsty was looking down, too. Johnny could see other shapes on the floor in the shadows.
'He's been killing Sc- people,' he whispered.
Shoot them in space, shoot them on a screen, and there was just an explosion and five points on the score total. When they'd been shot from a few metres away, then there was simply a reminder that someone who had been alive was now, very definitely, not alive any more. And would never be again.
He looked up at the Gunnery Officer. ScreeWee were cold-blooded and a long way from being human, but this one had a look about it - about him that sug- gested a mind running off into madness.
There was a silvery sheen on his scales. Johnny found himself wondering if the ScreeWee changed colour, like chameleons. The Captain had always looked more golden when she was acting normally, and became almost yellow when she was worried
She was the colour of lemons now.
She hissed something. The guards looked at her in surprise, but turned and filed obediently out of the bridge. Then she turned to the Gunnery Officer.
'You killed all of them?' she said, softly.
'They tried to stop me! It is a matter of honour!'
'Yes, yes. I can see that,' said the Captain, in a level voice. She was shifting position slightly now, moving away from the humans.
'A ScreeWee dies fighting or not at all!' shouted the Gunnery Officer.
The Captain's scales had faded to the colour of old paper.
'Yes, I understand, I understand,' she said. 'And the humans understand too, don't you.'
The Gunnery Officer turned his head. The Captain spread her arms, opened her mouth and leapt. The male must have sensed her; he turned, claws whirring through the air.
Johnny reached out and caught Kirsty's gun as she raised it.
'No! You might hit her!'
'Why'd she do that? I could easily have shot him! So could the guards! Why just jump at him like that?'
The fighters were a whirling ball of claws and tails. 'It's personal. I think she hates him too much,' he said. 'But look at the screen!'
There were more green dots. Red figures that might have meant something to a ScreeWee were scrolling up on one side too fast for a human to read.
He looked down at the controls.
'They're getting closer! We've got to do something.' Kirsty stared at the controls too. The seats were made to fit a ScreeWee. So were the controls themselves.
'Well, do you know what a V 4-f T ~ means?' she said. 'Fast? Slow? Fire? The cigarette lighter?'
The fighters had broken apart and were circling each other, hissing. The green and red light from the screen threw unpleasant shadows.
Neither ScreeWee was paying the humans the least attention. They couldn't afford to. ScreeWee walked like ducks and looked like a cartoon of a crocodile, but they fought like cats - it was mainly watching and snarling with short, terrible blurs of attack and defence.
A light started to flash on the panel and an alarm rang. It rang in ScreeWee, but it was still pretty urgent even in Human.
The Captain spun around. The Gunnery Officer jumped backwards, hit the ground running, and sped towards the door. He was through it in a blur.
'He can't go anywhere,' said the Captain, staggering across to the controls. 'I ... can deal with him later . .
'You've got some nasty scratches,' said Kirsty. ScreeWee blood was blue. 'I know some first aid ..
'A lot, I expect,' said Johnny.
'But not for ScreeWee, I imagine,' said the Captain. Her chest was heaving. One of her legs seemed to be at the wrong angle. Blue patches covered her tail.
'You could have just shot him,' said Kirsty. 'It was stupid to fight like that.'
'Honour!' snarled the Captain. She tripped a switch with a claw and hissed some instructions in ScreeWee. 'But he was right. Sadly, I know this now. There is no changing ScreeWee nature. Our destiny is to fight and die. I have been foolish to think otherwise.'
She blinked.
'Take off your shirt,' Kirsty demanded.
'What?' said Johnny.
'Your shirt! Your shirt! Look at her! She's losing blood! She needs bandaging!'
Johnny obeyed, reluctantly.
'You've got a vest on underneath? Only grandads wear a vest. Yuk. Don't you ever wash your clothes?'
He did, sometimes. And occasionally his mother had a burst of being a mother and everything in the house got washed. But usually he used the wash-basket laun- dry, which consisted of going through the basket until he found something that didn't seem all that bad.
'But she said you wouldn't know anything about ScreeWee medicine,' he said.
'So what? Even if it's blue, blood's still blood. You should try to keep it inside.'
Kirsty helped the Captain to a chair. The alien was swaying a bit, and her scales had gone white, speckled with blue.
'Is there anything I can do?' said Johnny.
Kirsty glanced at him. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Is there anything you can do?'
She turned back to the Captain.
We'll all die, Johnny thought. They're all out there waiting. And here's me at the controls of the main alien ship. We can't turn round now. And I can't even read what it says on the controls!
I've done it all wrong. It was all simple, and now it's all complicated.