Adjournment time neared. Serek, the exchange down but with considerable time on his clock, sealed his forty-sixth move against Sherevsky and handed the envelope to Vanderhoef. It would be opened when the game was resumed at the morning session. Dr. Krakatower studied the position on his board and then quietly tipped over his king. He sat there for a moment as if he hadn't the strength to rise. Then he shook himself a little, smiled, got up, clasped hands briefly with Lysmov and wandered over to watch the Angler-Jal game.
Jandorf had resigned his game to Votbinnik some minutes ago, rather more surlily.
After a while Angler sealed a move, handing it to Vanderhoef with a grin just as the little red flag dropped on his clock, indicating he'd used every second of his time.
Up in the stands Sandra worked her shoulders to get a kink out of her back. She'd noticed several newsmen hurrying off to report in the Machine's first win. She was thankful that her job was limited to special articles.
"Chess is a pretty intense game," she remarked to Dave.
He nodded. "It's a killer. I don't expect to live beyond forty myself."
"Thirty," Bill said.
"Twenty-five is enough time to be a meteor," said Judy.
Sandra thought to herself: the Unbeat Generation.

Next day Sherevsky played the Machine to a dead-level ending. Simon Great offered a draw for the Machine (over an unsuccessful interfering protest from Jandorf that this constituted making a move for the Machine) but Sherevsky refused and sealed his move.
"He wants to have it proved to him that the Machine can play end games," Dave commented to Sandra up in the stands. "I don't blame him."
At the beginning of today's session Sandra had noticed that Bill and Judy were following each game in a very new-looking book they shared jealously between them. Won't look new for long, Sandra had thought.
"That's the 'Bible' they got there," Dave had explained. "MCO-Modern Chess Openings. It lists all the best open-moves in chess, thousands and thousands of variations. That is, what masters think are the best moves. The moves that have won in the past, really. We chipped in together to buy the latest edition—the 13th—just hot off the press," he had finished proudly.
Now with the Machine-Sherevsky ending the center of interest, the kids were consulting another book, one with grimy, dog-eared pages. "That's the 'New Testament'—Basic Chess Endings," Dave said when he noticed her looking. "There's so much you must know in endings that it's amazing the Machine can play them at all. I guess as the pieces get fewer it starts to look deeper."

Sandra nodded. She was feeling virtuous. She had got her interview with Jandorf and then this morning one with Grabo ("How it Feels to Have a Machine Out-Think You"). The latter had made her think of herself as a real vulture of the press, circling over the doomed. The Hungarian had seemed in a positively suicidal depression.
One newspaper article made much of the Machine's "psychological tactics," hinting that the blinking lights were designed to hypnotize opponents. The general press coverage was somewhat startling. A game that in America normally rated only a fine-print column in the back sections of a very few Sunday papers was now getting boxes on the front page. The defeat of a man by a machine seemed everywhere to awaken nervous feelings of insecurity, like the launching of the first sputnik.
Sandra had rather hesitantly sought out Dr. Krakatower during the close of the morning session of play, still feeling a little guilty from her interview with Grabo. But Doc had seemed happy to see her and quite recovered from last night's defeat, though when she had addressed him as "Master Krakatower" he had winced and said, "Please, not that!" Another session of coffee and wine-and-seltzer had resulted in her getting an introduction to her first Soviet grandmaster, Serek, who had proved to be unexpectedly charming. He had just managed to draw his game with Sherevsky (to the great amazement of the kibitzers, Sandra learned) and was most obliging about arranging for an interview.
Not to be outdone in gallantry, Doc had insisted on escorting Sandra to her seat in the stands—at the price of once more losing a couple of minutes on his clock. As a result her stock went up considerably with Dave, Bill and Judy. Thereafter they treated anything she had to say with almost annoying deference—Bill especially, probably in penance for his thoughtless cracks at Doc. Sandra later came to suspect that the kids had privately decided that she was Dr. Krakatower's mistress—probably a new one because she was so scandalously ignorant of chess. She did not disillusion them.
Doc lost again in the second round—to Jal.

In the third round Lysmov defeated the Machine in 27 moves. There was a flaring of flashbulbs, a rush of newsmen to the phones, jabbering in the stands and much comment and analysis that was way over Sandra's head—exc............