The captain sat on his suitcase, far across the large field from his former ship. About him were his possessions, his birds and his crew: Lieutenant Billy Shelby, Ensign Kybee Benson, Astrogator Pam Stokes and Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw. “Oh my”, the Captain said. “What will I tell Councilman Luthguster?”
Luthguster rolled the four dice, turned over a card, moved a tiny pyramid three spaces to the left and groaned with disgust. “I don’t believe such dreadful luck!”
“Easy come, easy go.” the chief tout told him cheerfully. “That’s the motto on our money,” Presenting a document made ready by his now-grinning secretary, he said, “Now, Councilman, if you’ll just sign here and here and initial over here.”
Shaking his head, Luthguster signed. The two hovering citizens smirked at each other. “They’ll never understand this,” Luthguster said sadly, “back at the council.”
“Your luck’s bound to change,” the chief tout assured him. “Next inning, we’ll play for reciprocal tariff agreements. My move, I believe.”
“Damn, Pam,” Hester said, her personality not improved by eviction. “Where did you ever get a slide rule? Why don’t you use a pocket computer, like everybody else?”
“It was my mother’s mother’s,” Pam said, blinking as she looked up from the tool in question. And my mother’s. And my mo—”
“How many generations back?”
“Sixteen.”
Hester closed her eyes. “I withdraw the question.”
“Rather than quibble among yourselves, like the clotheads you are,” said Ensign Benson, who had no idea why his previous commanders had been discontented with his performance of duty, “why don’t you turn your little brains to how we get out of this mess?”
“I don’t think you should talk to the gentler sex that way,” said Billy, with many inaccuracies.
“Maybe Pam can find the answer in her slide rule,” Hester said, glaring at Pam, who was sunk in contemplation of her heirloom.
Ensign Benson, about to speak harshly, paused to frown at Pam. “Hmmm,” he said. “Pamela, dear?”
“Yes, Kybee?”
“You come along with me,” Ensign Benson said.
A bunch of the citizens were whooping it up in the plaza. “Did you ever,” one of them said. “see fish like those Earthmen?”
“It’s like walking into a kindergarten,” said another, “with loaded dice.”
“Scanney’s studying how to run that spaceship,” said a third. “He’s going straight to Earth. He figures he’ll own the whole place in two weeks.”
“Here come a couple of them.” said a fourth as Ensign Benson and Pam came strolling into the plaza.
Grins and nods and a few waves were exchanged between Ensign Benson and the sniggering locals, until he reached the group that had been discussing Scanney, where he said, in an offhand manner. “Nice little games you’ve got going here.”
“Want some action, Earthman?” Clouds, ants and in-out knockup were mentioned.
“Not this smalltime stuff,” Ensign Benson said with manifest disparagement. “Aren’t there any big-time games around this burg?”
“By big time,” a tittering citizen asked, “what do you mean?”
“What have you got?”
“The Dive,” several citizens volunteered.
“Sounds right. Lead me to it.”
Within The Dive — a great, cavernous place, in which the gaming tables were brightly, whitely lit, but the far walls and the high ceiling remained in windowless gloom — a kind of low intense buzzing was the only sound, as though a million bees were getting caught up on their back orders of honey. Citizens and croupiers and dealers hunched over the tables with no small talk, no conversation except the words necessary to keep the games going. “Ah, yes,” Ensign Benson said as the simpering citizens led him and Pam into the joint. “This will do just fine.”
A hostess approached, slinky in off-the-shoulder red. “Interested in a little action?”
Just to watch, for now,” Ensign Benson told her. “What’s the highest-money game here?”
“Koppel,” she said, pointing, “at that table right there.”
“Thanks.”
“My pleasure,” she said.
At the edge of the clearing, Hester busily, grumpily, steadfastly, clumsily worked at making a lean-to out of leafy branches. The captain sat on his suitcase among his birds. Billy paced back and forth, gazing mournfully from time to time at the distant Hopeful.
It was Billy who broke the silence: “Pam says the odds of anyone’s stumbling onto this place and rescuing us are eleven billion, four hundred sixty million to one.”
“Don’t talk about odds,” the captain said.
Hester said, “I could use a little help around here.”
Billy looked at her project. “What on Earth is that?”
“The same thing it is on Casino,” she said. “A lean-to.”
“It leans mostly that way,” Billy commented.
“It’ll keep the rain off.”
Billy looked skyward. “It isn’t gonna rain.”
“Wanna bet?”
The captain groaned and covered his face with his hands as Councilman Luthguster came blustering in, saying, “What’s going on around here?”
“Oh, Councilman,” the captain said, leaping to his feet and knocking over several birds. “I can explain.”
“You can?” Luthguster turned on the captain an eye as baleful as that on any of his birds. “You can explain why Ensign Benson is gambling?”
The koppel table was now the center of interest as half a dozen players faced Ensign Benson, the new shark in town. Having watched koppel for 20 minutes — it was a pokerlike game but with more cards in more suits and more complicated rules — having received a tiny frightened nod from Pam, Ensign Benson had converted his watch and camera and other salable possessions into lukes and had taken a seat at the game. Pam stood behind him, nervously fidgeting with her slide rule and from time to time nervously clutching at his shoulder, while Ensign Benson went through his first table of unbelieving opponents like a piranha through a cow.
The stakes were higher and the crowd of spectators was growing fast when the other Earth people came hurrying into The Dive. “Ensign Benson!” cried the captain.
“Hello, Captain,” Ensign Benson said, with a casual half wave, half salute. “And raise a hundred lukes,” he said, pushing forward a small stack of chips.
“You’ll ruin us!” the captain cried. “We can’t afford your gambling debts!” To the Casinomen at large, he announced, “Don’t gamble with this man; he has no money!”
“Wanna bet?” asked a bystander.
Calmly, raking in the lukes, Ensign Benson said, “I’m winning, Captain.”
“Ensign Benson,” the captain ordered, unheeding, “consider yourself under arrest. Return to the ship at once and confine your…” At that point, he ran down, blinking, remembering that he didn’t have a ship anymore. None of them had quarters to which they could confine themselves.
Then Billy leaned over to whisper in the captain’s ear, “Sir, he seems to be winning.”
“Never seen a man learn a game so fast,” said a bystander.
The captain said, “What?”
“Why don’t we make it interesting gents?” Ensign Benson said, riffling the outsize deck. “Ever hear of something called pot limit?”
On the Hopeful’s command deck, Scanney lolled at his ease on his favorite chair, chatting with a pair of his favorite cronies. “So we can’t dope out the hyperdrive,” he said. “When the time’s right, they’ll teach it to us themselves.”