"Sleep is for the dead," replied Mandy. One of her slogans.

"Almost home," announced the Beetle.

We were riding through Rusholme, straight down the curry chute. Mandy hand-cranked a window. She managed a half-inch gap before the mechanism failed, clogged up with rust. But through the tiny gap a rich complex of powder smells was making my tongue wet; coriander, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom - each of them genetically fine-tuned to perfection.

"Christ!" Mandy told the gang, "I could kill a curry! When did we last eat?"

The Beetle answered; "Thursday."

"What day is it now?" slurred Bridget, from the half-lit world of Shadow.

"It's the weekend, sometime," I said. "At least I think it is."

The Thing-from-Outer-Space was by now a blur of feelers and I could almost see the Thermo Fish swimming his veins. It was making me envious.

"Can anyone tell me why we're carrying this alien shit around?" asked Mandy. "Why don't we just sell him? Or eat him?" The van went silent. "I mean, why are we chasing around after feathers? We've got the Thing right here. We don't need feathers!"

"The Thing comes with us," I told her. "Nobody touches him!"

"You just want to make the swap," Mandy replied.

"You got a problem with that, Mandy?" I asked.

"Let's just get home." Her voice defiant. "Let's take some stuff."

"We will do." I felt for her all of a sudden. She was new to us, two days old in the gang and full of the will to please.

It's just that she had a hard act to follow.

"I know I did bad in the Vurt-U-Want. I didn't know what to look for."

"I told you, didn't I? Precisely?"

"Let's stay up all night playing Vurts," she said. "Let's make a meal from scraps in the fridge. Let's not go to bed."

"We'll do all that," I told her. Anything to hold back the pain.

We took a hard right turn into Platt Lane, and then another into the garage space behind the fiat. The van scalded to a sudden halt. "We're home," announced the Beetle. Didn't we know it? Only the Thing was coping, his body full of wave-knowledge, Vurt-knowledge. He just sort of flowed into the doors and then away, loving it.