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coming and he’ll make even better eating. And when the biggest goat arrives, he destroys the troll.’
    ‘One story’s a kids’ story about talking goats and the other story’s a grown-ups’ story about space ships,’ protested Bobby.
    ‘Sally’s right. Same story,’ said Mrs Webster, ‘there’s versions of it all over the …’ and she hesitated as if she was about to use the wrong word, and then said, ‘… Earth. Never heard it about talking goats before.’
    ‘How can it be the same story?’ said Bobby.
    ‘Because it’s about delaying battle until you’ve got superiority of numbers,’ said Mrs Webster. ‘It’s a lesson that history keeps teaching us, so naturally it turns up in stories. It’s why stories are so important. Anyway this time, it really happened. And the Galactic Empire was saved from the Ursoid threat, the Queen sheathed her light sword …’
    ‘And turned her face toward her distant home,’ Bobby and Sally chimed in, finishing for her.
    Mrs Webster smiled and got on with her knitting. ‘Sure did,’ she said, her eyes far away, as if remembering.
    Sally looked at Mrs Webster intently. The answer seemed important to her. ‘Why do they always do that?’
    ‘Do what?’
    ‘At the end of your space stories why do people always turn their faces toward their distant home?’
    Mrs Webster shrugged, and pulled some more wool out of her bag. ‘Because that’s what grown people have to do.’
    Bobby frowned. ‘What if they’re already home?’
    Mrs Webster hesitated, then said, ‘The home you have when you’re a child isn’t the same as the home you have when you’re grown up.’
    The twins thought about that, then Sally nodded. ‘Sometimes growing up must be just that. Deciding where your real home is.’
    Mrs Webster glanced at Sally. She seemed pleased. ‘Good,’ she said, but did not explain why Sally’s answer pleased her. ‘Now it’s bed time.’
    ‘I might just spend a little time on my computer,’ Sally said. ‘The program I’m writing’s giving me a little trouble.’
    ‘No!’ said Bobby. ‘Spock Sally having trouble with an itsy bitsy little computer program?’
    ‘I don’t complain about the dork games you play on yours!’
    Mrs Webster thumped her walking cane on the carpet to stop the developing argument. ‘She does Spock programs, you do dork games, what’s wrong with that, eh?’
    They grinned sheepishly. ‘Nothing.’
    ‘It’s good the two of you are different. Having one birthday’s bad enough, you don’t have to have everything else the same. Now give me a Mrs Webster hug before you go.’
    And she opened both arms, and they fell on her. She wrapped her arms round them.
    ‘You’re always so strong!’ said Sally, her voice a bit muffled by the three-way hug.
    ‘You’d led my life, you’d be strong too,’ said Mrs Webster. ‘Off now.’
    The twins moved off, leaving Mrs Webster alone.
Click, click, click.
The knitting needles sounded like a clock ticking.

chapter nine
    Middle Street’s last night of being absolutely statistically normal passed quietly. Sally fixed the glitch in her computer program while Bobby killed some monsters and won a treasure hoard on his computer.
    Then they slept. At one point Mrs Webster checked on them, and found Bobby’s light still on, and in Sally’s room a coloured glow being cast from the computer screen on which a Mandelbrot Set was slowly evolving.
    Maria and Jim came home from the dinner, where they had been thankful to be ignored by Mrs Flannery while she tried to charm people far more important. At this stage Mrs Webster went home and anyone observing could have seen her doing some strange things with her kitchen appliances, things that did not seem to have much to do with baking cookies.
    While that was going on, Jim and Maria got out the twins’ birthday presents and, as usual, put them on the living room floor, having found in earlier years that taking them into the twins’ bedrooms only