“Boy, Scanney,” said a crony. “how ya gonna do that?”
“They’ll be around pretty soon, ready to dicker, but I don’t talk till tomorrow. A night in the open air; that’ll help.”
“You’re some operator, Scanney.”
“Yes, I am. Three to two it rains tonight.”
“I wouldn’t bet against you, Scanney.”
At that point, another Scanney crony ran in to say, “One of the Earthmen’s playing koppel at The Dive!”
“What?” Scanney sat upright and put his feet on the floor. “They better not use up their credit before they deal with me.”
“But the Earthman’s winning!”
“Impossible”, said Scanney. But he got to his feet, saying, “Come on, boys, let’s take a look at this wonder.”
Ensign Benson looked around the table at nothing but empty chairs. In front of himself, and piled on a special side table brought out for the purpose, was an amazing number of lukes. “Boys?” Ensign Benson said, “You quitting on me?”
“I don’t buck that streak anymore.”
“I may be crazy, but I ain’t stupid.”
The spectators gawked, eight deep, Pam stood behind Ensign Benson, nervously clutching her slide rule in one hand and his shoulder in the other. The captain, Billy, Hester and Councilman Luthguster stood just to the side, open-mouthed. Ensign Benson looked around. “Who’ll take a seat?”
“Ten lukes,” a bystander said, “says you don’t find anybody to play against you.”
“You’re on,” Ensign Benson said as Scanney and his cronies came pushing through the crowd.
“What’s this?” Scanney demanded. “Game over?”
“Not if you’ll sit in.”
Scanney looked at the assembled crowd, at the lukes piled up around Ensign Benson, at the ensign’s calmly welcoming smile. “Er,” he said.
“Unless you don’t feel up to a little game.”
“Up to it?” His public reputation, the presence of his cronies, his own bravado all combined to force him into that chair. “Deal, my friend, and kiss your worldly goods goodbye.”
Ensign Benson smiled at the bystander. “That’s ten lukes you owe me.”
“Will you take a check?”
“I’ll take anything you’ve got,” Ensign Benson said.
When Billy stepped out of The Dive for a breath of air, he saw Niobe, this planet’s sun, just peeping over the horizon. Night had come and gone, and now it was day again. Inside, the epic battle between Scanney and Ensign Benson went on, seesawing this way and that, Ensign Benson always ahead but somehow never able to deliver that final coup de grâce. From time to time, the participants and observers had paused to consume something that claimed to be coffee and something else that looked like a prune Danish — or possibly a stinging jellyfish — but the pauses were few and the concentration intense.
And suspense was turning at last into dread. Billy didn’t want to go back in there, but a sense of solidarity with the crew forced him finally indoors once more, where he circled the outer fringes of the crowd, decided solidarity didn’t mean he necessarily had to stand with them all the time and found himself a new angle of vision, near Scanney, instead.
A tense moment had been reached; yet another tense moment. Ensign Benson was pushing stack after stack of lukes into the middle of the table; when he was finished, a hoarse Scanney said, “I’m not sure I can cover that.”
“You want to concede?” Ensign Benson was also hoarse.
Billy watched Scanney study his cards. Then he watched Scanney’s hand reach down to a narrow slot under the tabletop and tap something there as though for reassurance. Tap a— Tap a— A card!
“I’ll stay,” Scanney said, his hand coming up without that card. Billy stared at the man’s right ear.
“Then cover the bet,” Ensign Benson said.
“Will you take my I.O.U.?”
“I’ll do better. You put up the ship.”
“The ship?” Scanney was scornful. “Against that bet?”
This was the moment Ensign Benson had been waiting for. He seemed to draw strength from Pam’s hand on his shoulder. “Against,” he said, voice calm, eyes unblinking, “against everything I’ve got.”
Again Scanney’s finger tips touched that hidden card. “It’s a bet,” Scanney said. “Deal the last round.”
Ensign Benson dealt the cards.
“Captain!” Billy yelled across the table, pointing at the black darkness above. “Shoot that bird!”
With a quick draw Bat Masterson himself would have admired, the captain unlimbered his stun gun and fired three blasts into the cavernous darkness of the ceiling. Spectators scrambled for cover, Scanney and Ensign Benson hunched protectively over their cards and chips and Billy slid forward and back like a master swordsman, although sans épée.
Ensign Benson was the first to recover. “What are you bird brains doing?”
“Well,” said the captain, embarrassed, bolstering his weapon as ancient dust puffs floated down into the light. “Well, uh, Billy, uh…”
“Sorry,” Billy said, palming the 14 of snakes. “I thought I saw a bird.”
“Indoors?”
“It happens,” Billy said. “I remember once my aunt Tabitha left the porch door open and—”
“Oh, never mind,” Ensign Benson said. “Scanney, I’m calling you.”
Billy looked at Scanney, whose finger tips were at that now-empty slot, and the expression on the man’s face was one of consternation and bewilderment, gradually becoming horror.
“Scanney?” Ensign Benson tapped his own cards on the table. “Want me to declare first?”
Everyone waited. Wide-eyed, slack-jawed, face drained of color, Scanney at last managed to nod.
“Fine.” Ensign Benson fanned out his cards. “Read ’em and weep.”
But Scanney didn’t; instead, he turned to look, with a world of understanding in his eyes, at the radiant, innocent face of Lieutenant Billy Shelby.
They all strolled back to the ship together, Earth people and Casino people in little chatting groups; there was general agreement that the night’s big head-to-head koppel game was the stuff of legend. The captain was delighted at the return of his ship but was even more relieved that Councilman Luthguster was taking the whole affair so well. “Personal contacts on the natives’ terms are vital on a mission such as this,” the councilman said. “I myself found it relaxed the chief tout if we played children’s games.”
A bit apart, Ensign Benson walked with Scanney, who had recovered from his losses and was becoming his old confident self. “Obviously,” Ensign Benson was saying, “all those lukes I won can’t do me much good on the ship.”
“I’ll be happy to invest them for you,” Scanney said.
“Not invest. I cleaned you out, Scanney, so what’s happening is, I’m staking you to a new start. It’ll be a few years before I can get back, and when I do, half of what you have is mine.”
“Hmm,” said Scanney.
“Oh, you’ll be able to siphon off a lot. But you can’t hide it all, so we’ll both make out.”
“It’s a deal,” Scanney said. As they shook on it, Hester came by, clutching her hammer and looking truculent. She said to Scanney, “I hope you didn’t mess up my engines.”
“I am a lucky man, madam,” he answered, “and a lucky man is one who doesn’t mess with engines he doesn’t understand.”