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later you emerge, going the opposite direction. It is a food-machine service corridor, yet you show no sign of feasting. Now how can a man disappear from the board, like a piece being sent to the bar? It is a mystery.”
    Stile continued playing. “People enjoy mysteries, sir.” The dice rolled; the men advanced. The Citizen’s luck held; he was gaining despite imperfect play.
    “Mysteries exist only to be resolved. It is possible that you have discovered something fantastic, like a curtain that separates fact from fantasy? That you pass through this invisible barrier to a world where you imagine you are important instead of insignificant?”
    So the man had done fairly thorough research into Stile’s Phaze existence too. Still, Stile refused to be baited.
    “No doubt, sir.”
    “And can it really be true that in that fantasy you ride a unicorn mare and associate with vampires and were wolves?”
    “In fantasy, anything is possible,” Stile said.  
    “Double,” the Citizen said, turning the doubling cube to two.
    Now the game drew to a dose. The Citizen finished first; Stile was left with eight men on the board. Doubled, that was sixteen points against him.
    They set up for the second game, since they were not yet dose to the one hundred points necessary for the finish. The Citizen was obnoxiously affable; he liked winning.   Stile hoped he would get careless as well as overconfident.   With luck, the Citizen might even distract himself at a key time by his determined effort to unnerve Stile.   Still, the Citizen’s luck held. The man played indifferently, even poorly at times, but the fortune of the dice sustained him. When he had a clear advantage, he doubled, and Stile had to accept or forfeit the game. Then Stile had a brief run of luck—actually, skillful exploitation of the game situation—and doubled himself.
    “Double!” the Citizen said immediately when his own turn came, determined to have the last word and confident in his fortune. Now the doubling cube stood at eight.   “I understand a little squirt like you can use magic to snare some mighty fine-looking women,” the Citizen said as they played. “Even if they’re taller than you.”
    “Many women are,” Stile agreed. References to his height did irritate him, but he had long since learned to conceal this. He was 1.5 meters tall, or an inch shy of five feet, in the archaic nomenclature of Phaze.   The Citizen’s infernal luck continued. There did seem to be something to his claim about being lucky; he had certainly had far superior throws of the dice, and in this game, supervised by the Game Computer, there could be no question of cheating. He was winning this game too, by a narrower margin than the last, but the eight on the doubling cube gave every piece magnified clout. The Citizen liked to double; maybe it related to his gambling urge.  
    “I guess there could be one really luscious doll who nevertheless married a dwarf,” the Citizen observed with a smirk. “I guess she could have been ensorcelled.”
    “Must have been.” But despite his refusal to be baited about his recent marriage to the Lady Blue, Stile was losing. If this special ploy did not work, he would wash out of the Tourney. If only the luck would even out!  
    “Or maybe she has a hangup about midgets. Sort of like miscegenation. Some people get turned on that way.” The Citizen was really trying! But Stile played on calmly. “Some do, I understand.”
    “Or maybe pederasty. She likes to do it with children.” But the effect of that malicious needle was abated by the Citizen’s choice of the wrong concept. It was generally applicable to the sexual motive of a male, not a female.   Still, Stile would gladly have dumped this oaf down a deep well.
    Stile lost this game too, down six men. Forty-eight more points against him, a cumulative total of sixty-four. An other game like this would finish him.
    The luck turned at last and he won one. But he had only