"Good, fine," I said at his rounded eyes. "Science, as you see, has triumphed again. Do it some more." He arranged them in different combinations, knocked his knuckles and got what he arranged every time. He shook them without knocking and they were random.
The usual dice game is just two throws, one by each player and the one that gets the highest count of points in his throw wins.
"Now," I said, "as you know, the maximum number of points is 72.Half of 72 is 36. So if you always arrange the dice so as to total more than 40, in the long run you will win. The other player, using these very dice, will get random. But the different combinations you arrange, if always above 40, will let you win all the other fellow's money. And he will never suspect."
"I'm not going to do it," said Snelz. "Aside from fraternizing with prisoners" (was there a sneer at me here?), "I like Heller. I was an officer in the Fleet marines until I was cashiered. Even amongst Fleet officers, he would be tops. I'm not going to do it and lose a friend."
"You're going to do it or lose your head," I said.
He looked at my hand on a blastick and sighed. Beaten. Then he bristled a bit. "But I won't use my own money. You can't order me to do that. You'll have to fund me." This was a new twist. I thought it over. But then, I realized, it was a good investment. I started to reach for my wallet but Snelz held up his hand.
"I doubt," said Snelz, "that you're carrying enough. You have miscalculated how much Heller has got. I am absolutely certain they shipped him at least five thousand credits. I see him handle his money more than you do." Ow! If we started with too little, the odds could make us lose. It would take a lot of throws to do it or Heller would become suspicious.
"To be convincing in a deal like this," said Snelz, "you have to be able to lose before you win it back. I'm an expert at this. I was cashiered from the marines for cheating. So what you have to do is go draw some money. Match his bankroll. Five thousand credits to be safe. Otherwise we'll never get started." It was very painful. And then I realized how many paychecks I was drawing. Being General Service pay and not hazard I could get an advance easily. I even had the certified orders on me.
So, after a lot more persuasion by Snelz, we went to the finance office and bribed the clerk to do his routine duty and my identoplate got us a five-thousand-credit advance. That was nearly a year's pay. But soon, I was confident, I would be several thousand credits richer. And I would be in no danger afterwards from the stalled mission.
My stomach was acting up again but I was very hopeful.
I gave Snelz the money and the dice and left him practicing. Heller would shortly be headed for Earth!
Chapter 8
Jettero Heller sat in my room, idly watching Homeview. Each day there had been three sagging hours between the time he came back from training and the moment the Countess was smuggled up for supper and the night.
Apparently the Countess had to put in some time late in the day to teach her assistants to train and, femalelike, there was some nonsense about bathing and getting dressed before her nightly date.
Heller had glanced over the four-foot pile of old Blito-P3 surveys, more to identify them than get any data out of them. He had smiled to see the lists of revolts and pretenders in that one province of Manco but he had also laid it aside. He was doing just one thing – waiting for the Countess. He glanced at his watch: nearly all of the three hours had yet to run. He sighed, bored.
I sat in a chair over by the wall, pretending to study some entries in my notebooks – actually I was looking at blank pages. Tonight would be different!
A knock on the door. Snelz entered. He took off his cap to indicate it was social. He said to me, "Officer Gris is it all right with you if I talk to Officer Heller for a bit?" It was all rehearsed. "Go ahead, go ahead," I said.
Heller looked up languidly. He pointed to a chair.
Snelz said, sitting down, "Jettero, I need some help. As you know, we play a lot of dice down at Camp Endurance and there are some very sharp fellows there. I once heard in the Fleet, before they cashiered me, that you were really an expert at dice. As a personal favor, could you teach me something about it?" Heller looked at him a bit oddly, I thought. I held my breath. Was this going to work?
But Heller laughed. "I shouldn't think there could be much about dice that a Fleet marine officer didn't know."
"Oh, come along," pleaded Snelz in a very convincing protest. "There's lots to know about it. I've just come into a bit of money and I don't want to be smarted out of it. What I don't understand is probabilities and second bets." In the most popular version of dice then in vogue, there was always a second side bet between the players. The original bet was made and then there was a throw and then a second bet was made based on odds for or against the other player winning. The one who threw would then chant something like, "Ten credits to one you can't beat that." Then the other would throw and if he had beaten the first player's throw, he won both bets.
"Oh?" said Heller. For a bit it looked like he wasn't going to help. Then he shrugged and took a sheet of paper from his kit. He rapidly wrote, from left to right, across the bottom of the page, the numbers 6 to 72. "With six dice, each one with 12 points, the total you can shoot will add up to anything from 6 to 72."
"Yes, yes," said Snelz, pretending great interest.
Heller wrote a series of numbers up the left side of the sheet vertically. "These are the number of combinations of dice that produce the total score. As you can see, it is a high number."
"Interesting," said Snelz, gazing intently, just as if he weren't a past master at it, which he was.
"Now," said Heller, "when we draw a curve, using these two factors, we get a bell curve." And he drew it: it did look like a bell, bulged very high in the middle.
"Fascinating," said Snelz, who must have worked out the same curve a hundred times.
Patiently, Heller drew a vertical line roughly up from the 28 and the 50 at the bottom so they crossed the bell shape. "Now the odds against your making anything below 28 or above 50 are very high. The odds in favor of shooting anything between28 and 50 are pretty good. So on the second bet, you keep that in mind. There's more to this but that's a starter. You sure you don't know all this?"
"Oh, I really appreciate it," said Snelz who probably learned it at the age of five. He turned to me. "Officer Gris, would you mind terribly if Jettero and I had a little game?" He turned to Heller. "I surely would like to try this out. Just for modest stakes, of course."
"You sure?" said Heller. "I don't want to be accused of taking advantage of a beginner."
"No, no, no," said Snelz. "This is all fair and square. Anything you win, you win. Anything I lose, I lose. All right? I just happen to have a set of dice on me." They sat down on either side of the table and Heller took the dice Snelz held out.
"I always like to do something," said Heller. "I don't want to be accused of switching dice during play. So we'll just mark these." He reached for his little tool kit, took out a tiny ink bottle and in the upper corner of the 1 on each die, made a microscopically small dot. "That ink fades after a few hours. It just makes sure we're playing with the same dice all the time. No offense. Just a precaution." I mentally rubbed my hands together. If they played with those same dice the whole game, I was going to wind up a much richer officer. I began to calculate how much I would give Snelz: a hundred credits? Fifty? Even forty-five would be a fortune for an Apparatus officer.