The Russian gave them a wide, slightly gap-toothed smile. “Ghose and his planetary explosions.” He patted the top of his head lightly and shook it uneasily from side to side.

“What’s the matter?” O’Brien asked.

“A little headache. It started a few seconds ago. I must have spent too much time in that space suit.”

“I just spent twice as much time in a space suit as you did,” Smathers said, poking around abstractedly at the gear that Belov had dropped, “and I don’t have a headache. Maybe we make better heads in America.”

“Tom!” O’Brien yelped. “For God’s sake!”

Belov’s lips had come together in whitening union. Then he shrugged. “Chess, O’Brien? After lunch?”

“Sure. And, if you’re interested, I’m willing to walk right into a fried liver. I still insist that black can hold and win.”

“It’s your funeral,” Belov chuckled and went on to the engine room gently massaging his head.

When they were alone in the control room and Smathers had begun to dismantle the computer bank, O’Brien shut the door and said angrily, “That was a damned dangerous, uncalled-for crack you made, Tom! And it was about as funny as a declaration of war!”

“I know. But Belov gets under my skin.”

“Belov? He’s the most decent Russky on board.”

The second assistant engineer unscrewed a side panel and squatted down beside it. “To you maybe. But he’s always taking a cut at me.”

“How?”

“Oh, all sorts of ways. Take this chess business. Whenever I ask him for a game, he says he won’t play me unless I accept odds of a queen. And then he laughs—you know, that slimy laugh of his.”

“Check that connection at the top,” the navigator warned. “Well, look, Tom, Belov is pretty good. He placed seventh in the last Moscow District tournament, playing against a hatful of masters and grandmasters. That’s good going in a country where they feel about chess the way we do about baseball and football combined.”