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 writing 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 grey eyes from the ceiling and smiled at her. His mouth lifted venomously as he watched her begin to 

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