“Well, Ed?” Margraves asked, unbuttoning his shirt.
“Well yourself,” the general said.
He lay down on his bed, trying not to think.
It was too much.
Logistics.
Predetermined battles.
The coming debacle.
He considered slamming his fist against the wall, but decided against it.
It was sprained already.
He was going to sleep.
On the borderline between slumber and sleep, he heard a click.
The door!
Branch jumped out of bed and tried the knob.
Then he threw himself against it.
Locked.
“General, please strap yourself down.
We are attacking.” It was Ellsner’s voice, over the intercom.
“I looked over that keyboard of yours, sir, and found the magnetic door locks.
Mighty handy in case of a mutiny, isn’t it?”
“You idiot!” Branch shouted.
“You’ll kill us all! That CPC—”
“I’ve disconnected our CPC,” Ellsner said pleasantly.
“I’m a pretty logical boy, and I think I know how a sneeze will bother them.”
“He’s mad,” Margraves shouted to Branch.
Together they threw themselves against the metal door.
Then they were thrown to the floor.
“All gunners—fire at will!” Ellsner broadcasted to the fleet.
The ship was in motion.
The attack was underway!
The dots drifted together, crossing the no man’s land of space.
They coalesced!
Energy flared, and the battle was joined.
Six minutes, human time.
Hours for the electronically fast chess player.
He checked his pieces for an instant, deducing the pattern of attack. There was no pattern!
Half of the opposing chess player’s pieces shot out into space, completely out of the battle.
Whole flanks advanced, split, rejoined, wrenched forward, dissolved their formation, formed it again.
No pattern?
There had to be a pattern.
The chess player knew that everything had a pattern.
It was just a question of finding it, of taking the moves already made and extrapolating to determine what the end was supposed to be.
The end was—chaos!
The dots swept in and out, shot away at right angles to the battle, checked and returned, meaninglessly.
What did it mean, the chess player asked himself with the calmness of metal.
He waited for a recognizable configuration to emerge. Watching dispassionately as his pieces were swept off the board.
“I’m letting you out of your room now,” Ellsner called, “but don’t try to stop me.
I think I’ve won your battle.”
The lock released.
The two officers ran down the corridor to the bridge, determined to break Ellsner into little pieces.
Inside, they slowed down.