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DRAMATIS PERSONAE OF 'SPACEMATE'
White King played by Phillip Crown
White Queen played by Alita Crown
White Rook played by Turtle Delmar
White Bishop played by Jim Hastings
White Knight played by John Knight
Action takes place on Earth. Thought action takes place on Earth, Pluto, in Space and on a Vegan moon.
Philip Crown was shaving himself on Earth when John Knight's call came through from Pluto. Unhurriedly continuing his shave, he opened his mind and allowed the thought from Pluto to enter.
'Philip, they've got Alita!'
'Got her? What do you mean, got her?'
'I mean got her, physically.' Knight's thought was almost frantic. 'I received an S.O.S. call, thought transmission was horribly weak and cut before she was finished. The Vegans have captured her, the first ...'
'The first human to be taken by them,' Philip interrupted. That means they must have developed something pretty terrific to overcome a fully matured human mind. We've played ball with them, been friendly, even done a little trading. They must have been planning and working on this thing for years.'
'Yes, that's obvious; but what are we going to do?'
'Get her back.'
'But if this weapon they've developed can nullify a human mind ... I always disliked her gadding about in space. 'Seeing the wonders of nature first hand' she called it. 'Keeping her body from atrophying' God, her ship'll be in their tightest clink by now! And so we can't blast them ....'
'No, we'll have to .... blast!' exclaimed Philip as he nicked himself with the razor.
'Do WHAT!'
'Sorry, nothing. Just cut myself shaving. Maybe that's my system for ensuring my body doesn't atrophy. None of your fancy depilatories, but shaving with a micro-steel edge like the ancient boys.'
'Micro-steel edge nothing. They used an open razor with an edge like a saw. Look, Philip, if the Vegans have this thing of theirs it's probably tuned in to us now. Pluto to Earth gives them a good wide coverage.'
'That's so. Say, by the way, you know that game of chess that Jim Hastings and I have underway at the moment? Well, my latest move is Knight to King one. He'll be in Central Hall waiting for me now, this'll slay him.'
'Chess! At a time like this, with Alita ... Pluto is too damn cold anyway.'
Philip cut off from Knight and, wiping his face with a paper towel, called Jim Hastings and 'Turtle' Delmar. On a three-way hookup he sketched the position, finishing as he clambered into his gyro-car. It took him half an hour to thread the villa-dotted parkland to Central Hall. He raced four at a time up the steps.
'Why the hurry?' came an anxious thought.
'No hurry, Jim, just exercise.' Philip strolled into the vast library and shook hands vigorously.
'Exercise!' wheezed Turtle Delmar round a fat cigar. 'It will be the death of you yet.'
'Not exercise; but these Vegans might. What they have is a complete unknown. They could be eavesdropping on us now, so any plans we might make would be nullified before we had finished thinking.'
'John knows nothing more?' enquired Hastings.
'Nothing. Blank, Jim,' said Philip seriously. 'Ready? Right, Knight to King one.'
'That's a stormer of a move,' boomed a hearty voice and John Knight strode serenely into the library. 'How you hounds can play chess without cheating beats me.' Knight did not appear the panicked individual of the Pluto call.
'Just a matter of will-power, John,' smiled Philip. 'Shall we commence business, gentlemen? You all know the importance of this operation. The Vegans have captured Alita, are holding here somewhere on their system. We can't blast until she's out: so we must liquidate the minds of the Vegans. We can't do that until we know what their new weapon is, or of what it is capable. That's assuming that we CAN extrapolate from the fact that they've snatched an adult human. On the face of it, that's the final bell, all they need to do now is to come in swinging. But we must extricate Alita ... I use that word in preference to rescue ... first. The Vegans are still scared of what we can do, but we must box crafty. The Vegan weapon is an unknown. Jim?'
'Bishop to Queen's Bishop seven.' The tone was more one of enquiry than statement.
'Mmmm,' Philip mused, 'That's a strong move ...'
'You and your paltering chess!' Turtle's forthright voice was strong with indignation. 'If you must play the blessed game, Rook to King eight strikes me as the best move.' Turtle wheezed a lungful of smoke. 'I suppose you realize that Alita is rotting in chains in some foul dungeon?'
'Can I forget it?' Philip's face shadowed. 'Anyway, Rook to King eight is a rotten move, he would be blasted before he landed.'
With a decisive snap of his fingers he said: 'The frontal bluntness of a Rook is useless here. If the Church will pardon, Episcopal diplomacy is needed. Bishop's move it is; but he'll have to watch the diagonal from Queen's Knight eight.'
Leisurely, Hastings stood up and said: 'Excuse me a moment, boys, be back directly.' He strolled casually from the library.
'Diplomacy!' snorted Turtle. He glared after Hastings. 'Fiddle, cunning or graft, I calls it.' Bitterly he decapitated a fresh cigar and the three lay back comfortably in their armchairs.
Three hours passed before a thought brought them upright.
'Bishop to Queen's Bishop seven, that's a black square, yes?'
'That's right, Jim,' answered Philip. 'How black is it?'
'As the Duke of Hell's riding boots.'
'Well, I daresay the old boy could do with a bit of spit and polish. Is that check?'
'Check it is. I'll risk telling you the awful secrets of my chequered career, if you care to listen,'
'We'd be charmed. Any pawns in the district?'
'The three ball boys are all missing. Better get this on a tape, my public would never forgive me if I checked out before checking it in.'
Philip passed a hand across his eyes. 'O.K. Jim, shoot the sordid details. Take care, and luck, boy,' he finished softly.
'Luck, Lady Luck, now she's a chancy miss. She kept me poor, but free from Black Kings, I was always scared of them. Even as a child I can remember seeing out of the nursery window a pitted ball covered with row on row of small domed excresences. Lunatic, they say I was. I could never do sums in my head, always had to use a computing machine; it's funny, but one day I had the notion that all these little domes were full of adding machines, all joined up. Think of that! All those little cells working busily away, all their output concentrated into one telescope; at least it looks, looked, like a 'scope. It seemed to swing right at me, big as a blunderbuss. I think the Black King has twigged ...
The thought in the three Earth minds blasted in, clear and keen, rising to a crescendo of passionate power.
'Don't you see it? Millions of mechanical cells, each a complete unit, all coupled together to form a master mind .... and it is a master mind! Every cell a human mind duplicated, and increased, swamping by very mass! It covers half a moon! This is it, chaps, Bishop's move into the pawnshop .....
In the quiet library on Earth three men caught the chill despair that throbbed with the speed of thought from far Vega. They knew that the Vegans' mighty mechanical brain, a mechanical mind that had been specifically designed to batter down any human mind by sheer mass, by cell multiplication over the cell capacity of man's brain, they knew that that insentient but sensitive colossus had also picked up the thread of despair.
Which was a Grade A gambit.
'O.K. Jim, Bishop's move fine, open up. Knight, Rook, King: Horse, foot and guns coming in!'
Star dappled space looked imperturbably on, noted nothing amiss, as four minds linked as one and one single stream of pure thought flashed out. The jet of thought poured into the mechanical brain like a Tommy gun burst into a can of tomatoes.
'Queen to King eight!' hallooed the four.
'Queen's move completed and open!' a crystal, peculiarly feminine thought responded.
And through Alita's receptive mind the beam of thought spewed forth, fled from dome to dome across the surface of the satellite, disrupting the minds of the Vegan warriors crouching over their machines, whiffing them into their primal atoms.
The three in the library lay back in their chairs and Turtle blew a perfect smoke ring.
'Bingo!'
'Got 'em!'
'Mate!'
A dainty thought came in, a feminine bouquet. 'Say, you conceited lugs, that was a hefty handling to give a lady!'
Philip laughed aloud in sheer joy. Could an Earthman feel remorse over Vegan entities? A little perhaps, but ....
'Alita, you darling, are you all right?'
'Of course I'm all right. They slapped a screen round me with their silly machine but they couldn't get at me themselves. When that fabricated brain went blooey I was quite relieved to contact you so-called he-men. I'll orbit with Jim, be seeing you in three hours, though heaven knows why I should want to.'
'Righto, Queen!'
'I'll give you Queen when I see you. My head's still buzzing from that drainpipe effect, what do you think it is, garbage disposal day?'
'I trust you mean the Vegans, pet. We knew they had something and that mass brain of theirs was pretty damn dangerous, but it just crumpled under the onslaught of FOUR homo sapiens.'
'Why pick on me? It'll be a long time before I let you talk me into getting captured again.'
'Well, we needed a relay right on the spot, my heroine!'
'Thank you, King. But why a lady?'
'Because, my sweet, men are not so used to handling suggestions!'
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Updated June 23, 2001. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.