'What's that?'

'It's just crunchy cheesy-flavoured-'

'I mean the other thing you said.'

Yo-less passed the packet on to Bigmac.

'Well.. . your mum and dad are splitting up. right?Well-known fact.''Could be. It's a bit of a trying time,' said Johnny.'O-kay. And there's nothing you can do about it.''Shouldn't think so,' said Johnny.'And this definitely affects you,' said Yo-less.

'I suppose so,' said Johnny cautiously. 'I know I haveto do a lot of my own cooking.'

'Right. So you project your.., um... suppressed~emotions on to a computer game. Happens all thetime,' said Yo-less, whose mother was a nurse, and who,wanted to be a doctor if he grew up. 'You can't solvethe real problems, so you turn them into problems youcan solve. Like ... if this was thirty years ago, you'dprobably dream about fighting dragons or something.It's a projected fantasy.'

'Saving hundreds of intelligent newts doesn't soundvery easy to solve,' said Johnny.

'Dunno,' said Bigmac, happily. 'Ratatatat-blam! Nomore problem.' Bigmac wore large boots and camouflagetrousers all the time. You could spot him a mileoff by his camouflage trousers.

'The thing is,' said Yo-less, 'it's not real. Real's real.!But stuff on a screen isn't.'

'I've cracked Stellar Smashers,' said Wobbler. 'Youcan have that if you want. Everyone says it's a lotbetter.'

'No-oo,' said Johnny, 'I think I'll stick with this onefor a while. See if I can get to level twenty-one.

'If you get to level twenty-one and blow up thewhole fleet you get a special number on the screen,and if you write off to Gobi Software you get a fivepound token,' said Wobbler. 'It was in ComputerWeekly.'

Johnny thought about the Captain.

'A whole five pounds?' he said. 'Gosh.'

It was Games in the afternoon. Bigmac was the onlyone who played. He'd never been keen until they'd