Only You Can Save Mankind

10

In Space, No-one Is Listening Anyway

And woke up. He was lying down on something hard. There was some sort of mesh just in front of his eyes. He stared at it for a while. There was also a faint vibration in the floor, and a distant background rumbling.

He was obviously back in game space, but he cer- tainly wasn't in a starship

The mesh moved.

The Captain's face appeared over the edge of the mesh, upside down.

'Johnny?'

'Where am I?' 'You appear to be under my bed.' He rolled sideways. 'I'm on your ship?' 'Oh, yes.' 'Right! Hah! I knew I could do it...' He stood up, and looked around the cabin. It wasn't very interesting. Apart from the bed, which was under something that looked like a sun-ray lamp, there was only a desk and something that was probably a chair if you had four back legs and a thick tail. On the desk were half a dozen plastic aliens. There was also a cage with a couple of long-beaked birds in it. They sat side by side on their perch and watched Johnny with almost intelligent eyes.

Right. Sigourney was right. He did think better in game space. All the decisions seemed so much clearer.

OK. So he was on board. He'd rather hoped to be outside the cabin the Captain was locked in, but this was a start.

He stared at the wall. There was a grille.

'What's that?' he said, pointing.

'It is where the air comes in.

Johnny pulled at the grille. There was no very obvious way of removing it. If it could be removed, the hole behind it was easily big enough for the Captain. Air ducts. Well, what did he expect?

'We've got to get this off,' he said. 'Before some- thing dreadful happens.'

'We are imprisoned,' said the Captain. 'What more can happen that is dreadful?'

'Have you ever heard the name ... Sigourney?' said Johnny cautiously.

'No. But it sounds a lovely name,' said the Captain. 'Who is this Sigourney?'

'Well, if she can dream her way here as well, then there's going to be trouble. You should see the pictures she's got on her walls.'

'What of?'

'Um. Aliens,' said Johnny.

'She takes a very close interest in alien races?' said the Captain happily.

'Um. Yes.' The mere thought of her arrival made him pull urgently at the grille. 'Um. There's some- thing on the inside ... and I can't quite get my hand through . .

The Captain watched him with interest.

'Something like wingnuts,' grunted Johnny.

'This is very instructive,' said the Captain, peering over his shoulder.

'I can't get a grip!'

'You wish to turn them?'

'Yes!'

The Captain waddled over to the table and opened the bird cage. Both of the birds hopped out on to her hand. The Captain said a few words in ScreeWee; the birds fluttered past Johnny's head, squeezed through the mesh, and disappeared. After a second or two he heard the squeak-squeak of nuts being undone.

'What were they?' he said.

'Chee,' said the Captain. 'Mouth birds. You under- stand?' She opened her mouth, revealing several rows of yellow teeth. 'For hygiene?'

'Living toothbrushes?'

'We have always had them. They are... traditional. Very intelligent. Bred for it, you know. Clever things. They understand several words of ScreeWee.'

The squeaking went on. There was a clonk, and a nut rolled through the mesh.

The panel fell into the room

Johnny looked at the hole.

'0-kay,' he said uncertainly. 'You don't know where it goes, do you?'

'No. There are ventilation shafts all over the ship. Will you lead the way?'

'Um-'

'I would be happy for you to lead the way,' said the Captain.

Johnny stood on the bed and crawled into the hole. It went a little way and then opened on to a bigger shaft.

'All over the ship?' he said.

'Yes.'

Johnny paused for a moment. He'd never liked nar- row dark spaces.

'Oh. Right,' he said.

Kirsty's mother put down the phone.

'There's no-one answering,' she said.

'I think he said his father works late and his mother sometimes works in the evening,' said Kirsty. 'Any- way, the doctor said he's basically all right, didn't she? He's just run down, she said. What was the stuff she gave him?'

'She said it'd make him sleep. He's not getting enough sleep. Twelve-year-old boys need a lot of sleep.'

'I know this one does,' said Kirsty.

'And you said he's not eating properly. Where did you meet him, anyway?'

'Um,' Kirsty began, and then smiled to herself. 'Out and about.'

Kirsty's mother looked worried.

'Are you sure he's all there?'

'He's all there,' said Kirsty, climbing the stairs. 'I'm not sure that he's all here, but he's certainly all there.'

She opened the door of the spare room and looked in. Johnny was fast asleep in a pair of her brother's pyjamas. He looked very young. It's amazing how young twelve is, when you're thirteen.

Then she went to her own bedroom, got ready for bed, and slid between the sheets.

It was pretty early. It had been a busy evening.

He was a loser. You could tell. He dressed like a loser. A ditherer. Someone who said 'um' a lot, and went through life trying not to be noticed.

She'd never done that. She'd always gone through life as if there was a big red arrow above the planet, indicating precisely where she was.

On the other hand, he tried so hard

She'd bet he'd cried when ET died.

She pushed herself up on one elbow and stared at the movie posters.

Trying wasn't the point.

You had to win. What good was anything if you didn't win?

'Stuck? You're an alien,' said Johnny. 'Aliens don't get stuck in air ducts. It's practically a well-known fact.'

He backed into a side tunnel, and turned around. 'I am sorry. It occurs to me that possibly I am the wrong type of alien,' said the Captain. 'I can go backwards, but I am forwardly disadvantaged.'

'OK. Back up to that second junction we passed,' said Johnny. 'We're lost, anyway.

'No,' said the Captain, 'I know where we are. It says here this is junction ~ ~ e .'

'Do you know where that is?'

'No.'

'I saw a film where there was an alien crawling around inside a spaceship's air ducts and it could come out wherever it liked,' said Johnny reproachfully.

'Doubtless it had a map,' said the Captain.

Johnny crawled around a corner and found . . another grille.

There didn't seem to be any activity on the other side of it. He unscrewed the nuts and let it fall on to the floor.

There was a corridor. He dropped into it, then turned and helped the Captain through. ScreeWee might have descended from crocodiles, but crocodiles preferred sandbanks. They weren't very good at crawl- ing through narrow spaces.

Her skin felt cold and dry, like silk.

There were no other ScreeWee around.

'They're probably at battle stations,' said Johnny.

'We're always at battle stations,' said the Captain bitterly, brushing dust off her scales. 'This is corridor ~. Now we must get to the bridge, yes?'

'Won't they just lock you up again?' said Johnny.

'I think not. Disobedience to properly constituted authority does not come easily to us. The Gunnery Officer is very ... persuasive. But once they see that I am free again, they will give in. At least,' the Captain added, 'most of them will. The Gunnery Officer may prove difficult. He dreams of grandeur.'

She waddled a little way along the bare corridor, keeping close to the wall. Johnny trailed behind her.

'Dreams are always tricky,' he said. 'Yes.'

'But they'll wake up when the players start shooting again, won't they? They'll soon see what he is leading them into?'

'We have a proverb,' said the Captain. 'Skeejeeshe- jweeJEEyee. It means ...' she thought for a moment, 'when you are riding a jee, a six-legged domesticated beast of burden capable of simple instruction but also traditionally foul-tempered, it is easier to stay on rather than dismount; equally, better to trust yourself to fate than risk attack from the sure-footed JEEyee, which will easily outrun a ScreeWee on foot. Of course, it is a little snappier in our language.'

They'd reached a corner. The Captain peered around it, and then jerked her head back.

'There is a guard outside the door of my cabin,' she said. 'She is armed.'

'Can you talk to her?'

'She is under orders. I fear that I will only be allowed to say "Aaargh!' said the Captain. 'But feel free to make the attempt. I have no other options.'

Oh, well - you only die a few hundred times, thought Johnny. He stepped out into the corridor.

The guard turned to look at him, and half raised a melted-looking thing that nevertheless very clearly said 'gun'. But she looked at him in puzzlement.

She's never seen a human before! he thought.

He spread his arms wide in what he hoped was an innocent-looking way, and smiled.

Which just goes to show that you shouldn't take things for granted because, as the Captain told him later, when a ScreeWee is about to fight she does two things. She spreads her front pairs of arms wide (to grip and throttle) and exposes her teeth (ready to bite).

The guard raised the gun.

Then there was a thunderous knocking on the other side of the cabin door.

The guard made a simple mistake. She should have ignored the knocking, loud and desperate though it was, and concentrated on Johnny. But she tried to keep the gun pointing in his general direction while she pressed a panel by the door. After all, it was only the Captain in there, wasn't it? And the Captain was still the Captain, even if she was locked up. She could keep an eye on both of them . .

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 all: 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.

'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.