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

interest.
The cat.
"So? No move? Then you lose," replied Perat.
"But my king isn't in check. You told me yourself that when my king was not in check, and I had no
legal move, that I was stalemated, and the game was a draw."
In that other room, her telepathic contact guided the little figure down the table leg. Slowly now, don't
excite the cat into pouncing. She had only seconds left, but it should suffice to place the dispatch in
Gorph's incoming box. The pompous little supervisor would send it by the first jet messenger without
doubt or question, and the field crew would proceed to draw the five columns.
Pain daggered into her right leg!
***


The cat had seized her homunculus by the thigh; she knew the tiny bone had been crushed. She caught
fleet, dizzy impressions of the animal striding off proudly with the little creature between its jaws. The
letter lay where it had fallen, under the dispatch machine, almost invisible.
The doll ceased her blind writhing and drew a tiny black cylinder from her belt. The cat's right eye
loomed huge above her.
Mentally, Perat studied the chessboard position with growing interest.
"Idiotic Terran game," he growled. "Only a Terran would conceive of the idea of calling a crushing
defeat a drawn battle. I'm sorry I taught you the game. It's really quite-- what was that?"
"Sounded like the cat, didn't it?" responded Evelyn.
Her tiny alter ego had dropped from those destructive jaws and was dragging itself slowly back to the
dispatch. It found the message and picked it up.
"Do you think something could have hurt it?" asked Evelyn.
The doll struggled toward Gorph's desk, leaving behind a thin red trail.
Then several things happened. Hot swords sizzled in Evelyn's back, and she knew the enraged feline
had broken the spinal column of the doll. With throbbing intuition she collapsed her telepathic tentacle.
Too late.
Perat's probe was already in her mind, and she knew that he had caught the full impact of her swift
telepathic return. She lay there limply. Her rib, now almost healed, began to ache dully.
The man continued to lie motionless, staring heavy-lidded at the ceiling. Gradually, his mind withdrew
itself from hers.
"So you're high-born," he mused aloud. "I should have known, but then you concealed it very adroitly,
didn't you?"
She sat up against the wall. Her heart was pounding almost audibly.
He was relentless. "No Scythian would play chess the way you did. Only a Terran would play for a
draw after total defeat."
"I play chess well, so I am a Terran?" she whispered through a dry throat.
Perat turned his handsome gray eyes from the ceiling and smiled at her. His mouth lifted venomously as
he watched her begin to tremble.
"Pour me a terif," he ordered.
She arose, feeling that she must certainly collapse the next instant. She forced her legs to move, step
by step, to the table by his couch. There she picked up the terif decanter and tipped it to fill his glass.
The dry clatter of bottle on glass betrayed her shaking hands.
"One for you, too, my dear Lyn."
She held the decanter several inches above her glass to avoid that horrible clatter, and managed to spill
quite a bit on the table.
Perat held his glass up to touch hers. "A toast," he smiled, "to a mysterious and beautiful lady!"
He drank prone, she standing. She knew she would spill her drink if she tried to recross to her couch.