"Charles L. Harness-Stalemate in Space" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

"So you don't know the book moves, after all. You would really have astonished me if you had moved
your queen pawn two squares. I'll play pawn to king bishop four. Will you have some terif?"
He spun around upright and reached for the decanter, looking full at the door... and the tiny figure.
Evelyn was up at once, cutting off his line of vision. "Yes, I think I will have one."
Telepathically she ordered the little creature to dash through the crack in the doorway. She heard the
faint rustle behind her as she picked up the glass Perat poured.
 "You know," he said thoughtfully, "for a moment I thought I saw your little doll..."
She looked at him dubiously. "Really, Perat? It's in my purse."
He stepped lithely to the door and flung it open. Far down the hall there was the faintest suggestion of
a scuffle.
"A mouse, I guess." He returned to his bed, but it was plain that he was unsatisfied.
***


The game wore on for half a metron. Perat's combinations were met with almost sufficient
counter-combinations, so that the issue hung in doubt for move after move.
"You've improved considerably since yesterday," he admitted grudgingly.
"Not at all. It's your playing 'blind' that makes us even. No cheating! Keep out of my mind! It isn't fair
to know what I'm planning."
Oh, by the merciful god of Galaxus, if he'll stay out of my mind and the cat out of the communications
room for another five minutes!
"All right, all right. I'll win anyway," he muttered, as he concluded a combination that netted him the
black queen. "You could gracefully resign right now."
Evelyn studied the position carefully. She had made a grave miscalculation-- the queen loss had
definitely not been a part of the plan. She must contrive a delaying action that would invoke an oral
argument.
"Bishop to queen rook eight," she murmured. Her telepathic probe, focused on the bit of nervous
tissue that the mentors had cut from her frontal lobe and given to her mannikin as a brain, continued its
tight control. In Gorph's office, far down the wing, the little creature was hopping painstakingly from one
key to another of the dispatch printing machine.
" ...takes priority over all other pending projects..."
"Your game is hopeless," scowled Perat. "I'm a queen and the exchange up on you."
"I always play the game out," replied Evelyn easily. "You never know what might happen. Your
move."
" ...five horizontal columns of metallic trans-scythium nine hundred xedars long will be found in
a Terran storeroom, our area code..."
"All right, then. Queen takes pawn."
"Pawn to queen knight seven," replied Evelyn. It was her sole remaining pawn, and she hoped to use it
in an odd way.
Perat checked with his queen at queen bishop four, and Evelyn's king slid to safety at queen knight
eight. Perat moved his rook from queen knight five to queen five.
"Do you intend to mate with rook to queen's square next move?" asked Evelyn demurely.
"...under the strictest secrecy. Therefore you are ordered not to communicate..."
"Nothing can prevent it," observed the Viscount of Tharn somberly. He had already lost all interest in
the game and was contemplating the ceiling tapestries. With a lurch she brought her telepathic probe to
rest, ready to prepare a false front for his searching mind. She must keep him out a moment longer, or all
was lost.
"But it's my move, and I have no move," she objected, focusing her probe again.
"...signed, Perat, Viscount of Tharn, Commandant, Occupation Zone One."
Through that distant fragment of her mind she sensed that something was watching the doll with feral