“Permit me to introduce Host Althagar, assistant manager. I am called Thlasoval.”
“Oh, I know of you, Master Thlasoval. I followed your game with Rengodon of Centralia. Your knight-and-bishop end game was a really beautiful thing.”
“Thank you. I am really flattered that you have heard of me. But Commander Cloud. . . ?”
“No, you haven’t heard of him. Perhaps you never will, but believe me, if he had time for tournament play he’d be high on the Grand Masters list. So far on this cruise he’s won one game, I’ve won one, and we’re on the eighty fourth move of the third.”
The paraphernalia arrived and the Tellurians set the game up rapidly and unerringly, each knowing exactly where each piece and pawn belonged.
“You have each lost two pawns, one knight, and one bishop—in eighty three moves?” Thlasoval marveled.
“Right,” Cloud said. “We’re playing for blood. Across this board friendship ceases; and, when dealing with such a pure unadulterated tiger as she is, so does chivalry.”
“If I’m a tiger, I’d hate to say what he is.” Joan glanced up with a grin. “Just study the board, Master Thlasoval, and see for yourself who is doing what to whom. I’m just barely holding him: he’s had me on the defensive for the last forty moves. Attacking him is just like trying to beat in the side of a battleship with your bare fist. Do you see his strategy? Perhaps not, on such short notice.”
Joan was very willing to talk chess at length, because the fact that Fairchild’s Chickladorian manager was a chess Master was an essential part of the Patrol’s plan.
“No . . . I can’t say that I do.”