 How does Sandra meet the chess players?
Silently, so as not to shock anyone with illusions about well dressed young women, Sandra Lea Grayling cursed the day she had persuaded the Chicago Space Mirror that there would be all sorts of human interest stories to be picked up at the first international grandmaster chess tournament in which an electronic computing machine was entered. Chess sets were everywhere—big ones on tables, still bigger diagram-type electric ones on walls, small peg-in sets dragged from side pockets and manipulated rapidly as part of the conversational ritual and still smaller folding sets in which the pieces were the tiny magnetized disks used for playing in free-fall. That Siamese-twin clocks should be essential to a chess tournament struck Sandra as a particularly maddening circumstance. Her last assignment had been to interview the pilot pair riding the first American manned circum-lunar satellite—and the five alternate pairs who hadn't made the flight. This tournament hall seemed to Sandra much further out of the world. Samples: "They say the Machine has been programmed to play nothing but pure Barcza System and Indian Defenses—and the Dragon Formation if anyone pushes the King Pawn." Sandra's chief difficulty was that she knew absolutely nothing about the game of chess—a point that she had slid over in conferring with the powers at the Space Mirror , but that now had begun to weigh on her. "You know nothing whatsoever of chess—so you will be able to write about it understandably for your readers." You want to know why, if the Machine works at all, it doesn't work perfectly, so that it always wins and there is no contest. What the Machine can do is examine all the likely lines of play for about eight moves ahead—that is, four moves each for White and Black—and then decide which is the best move on the basis of capturing enemy pieces, working toward checkmate, establishing a powerful central position and so on." In crucial situations, say where there's a chance of winning at once by trapping the enemy king, he examines many more moves ahead than that—thirty or forty even. But in most chess positions the possibilities are so very nearly unlimited that even a grandmaster can only look a very few moves ahead and must rely on his judgment and experience and artistry. The equivalent of those in the Machine is the directions fed into it before it plays a game." However, the result is that the Machine can see eight moves ahead and is capable of being programmed much more craftily."
 Doc tells her their chess history and introduces her to them as they pass by.
 Doc explains that she can use her tournament program to meet whichever player she wishes.  Doc tells her their chess history and introduces her to them as they pass by.  She uses her female charm to interest each player in an interview.  She interviews each player in accordance with who Doc is friends with, save for Dr. Krakatower.