Part 12

“Could be, but I doubt it. All she wanted was half an excuse and the promise I wouldn’t get sore if we have to kill a couple of days in space before starting shooting on Vegia . . . Hot Dog!—just _look_ who’s here!”

Joan came in, pausing in embarrassment, at the burst of applause and whistles that greeted her. She was richly, deeply tanned; taut, trim, and dainty—she had trained down to a hundred and fifteen pounds—her bra was a triumph of the couturier’s art. She, too, was armed; her DeLameter harness sported the two-and-a-half silver bars of a lieutenant commander.

“Ouch—I’m bedazzled!” Cloud covered his eyes ostentatiously, then, gradually and equally ostentatiously recovering his sight: “Very nice, Joanie—you’re a ver_ee_ slick chick. With a dusting of powdered sugar and a dab of cream you’d make a right tasty snack. Just one thing—a bit overdressed, don’t you think?”

“_Overdressed!_” she exclaimed. “Listen, you—I’ve never worn a bathing suit _half_ as skimpy as this in my whole life, and if you think I’m going to wear any _less_ than this you’re completely out of your mind!”

“Oh, it isn’t _me_!” Cloud protested. “Patrol Regs are strict that way—when in Rome you’ve got to be a Roman candle, you know.”

“I know, but I’m Roman candle enough right now—in fact, I feel like a flaming skyrocket. Why, this thing I’ve got on is scarcely more than a G-string!”

“QX—we’ll let it pass—this time. . . .”

“Hey, you know something?” Joe interrupted him before Joan did. “Vegia is a couple of degrees warmer than this, and they don’t overdo the matter of clothes there, either. I _am_ going to start basking under the radiants. If I get myself cooked to a nice, golden brown, Helen—like a slice of medium-done toast—will you do Vegiaton with me?”

“It’s a date, brother!”

As Joe and Helen shook hands to seal the agreement, the two Patrol officers and Vesta strode out.

They took a copter to the Club Elysian, the plushiest and one of the biggest places on the planet. The resplendently decorated—in an undressed way, of course—doorman glanced at the DeLameters, but, knowing the side-arm to be the one indispensable item of the Patrol uniform wherever found, he greeted them cordially in impeccable Galactic Spanish and passed them along.

“The second floor, I presume, sir and mesdames?” The host, a very good rule-of-thumb psychologist, classified these visitors instantly and suggested the region where both class and stakes were high. Also, and as promptly, he decided to escort them personally. Two Patrol officers and a Vegian—especially the Vegian—rated special attention.

The second floor was really a place. The pile of the rug was over half an inch deep. The lighting was neither too garish nor too dim. The tastefully-placed paintings and tapestries adorning the walls were neither too large nor too small, each for its place; and each was a masterpiece.

“May we use Patrol currency, or would you rather we took chips?” Cloud asked.

“Either one, sir; just as you wish.”

“We Tellurians are all set, then, but Miss Vesta here would like to cash a few Travelers’ Cheques.”

“Certainly, Miss Vesta. I’ll be delighted to take care of it for you. How do you wish the money, please?”

“I’ll want a little small stuff to get the feel of the house . . . say a thousand in tens and twenties. The rest of it in fifties and hundreds, please—mostly hundreds.”

Vesta peeled off and thumb-printed ten two-thousand credit cheques and the host, bowing gracefully, hurried away.

“One thing, Vesta,” Cloud cautioned. “Don’t throw it away too fast. Save some for next time.”

“Oh, I always do, chief. This’ll last me the week, easily. I run wild only when I’m in a winning streak.”

The host came up with her money; and as Vesta made a beeline for the nearest wheel:

“What do you like, Joan?” Cloud asked. “A wheel?”

“I don’t think so; not at first, anyway. I’ve had better luck with the under-and-overs. They’re over there, aren’t they, sir?”

“Yes, madame. But is there anything I can do first? Refreshments of any kind—an appetizer, perhaps?”

“Not at the moment, thanks.”

“If you wish anything, at any time, just send a boy. I’ll look you up from time to time, to be sure you lack nothing. Thank you very much, sir and madame.”

The host bowed himself away and the two officers strolled over to the bank of “under-and-over” tables, which were all filled. They stood at ease for a few minutes; chatting idly, enjoying their cigarettes, gazing with interest and appreciation around the huge, but wonderfully beautiful room. There was no indication whatever that either of the two Patrolmen was the least bit interested in the fall of the cards, or that two of the keenest mathematical minds in space knew exactly, before the man ahead of them got tired of losing fifty-credit chips, the denomination and the location of every card remaining in the rack.

Joan could, of course, have read either the cards, or the dealer’s mind, or both; but she was not doing either—yet. This was a game—on the side, so to speak—between her and Storm. Nor was it at all unequal, for Cloud’s uncanny ability to solve complex mathematical problems was of very little assistance here. This was a matter of more-or-less simple sequences; of series; of arrangements; and her years of cybernetic training more than made up for his advantage in speed.

“Your pleasure, madame or sir? Or are you together?”

“We’re together, thanks. We’ll take the next, for an M.” Cloud placed a one-thousand-credit note in the velvet-lined box.

Two thin stacks of cards lay on the table at the dealer’s right; one pile face up, the other, face down. He took the top card from the rack, turned it over, and added it to the face-up stack. “The ten of clubs,” he droned, sliding a one-thousand-credit bill across the table to Cloud. “What is your pleasure, sir and madame?”

“Let it ride. Two M’s in the box,” Cloud said, tossing the new bill on top of its mate. “Throw one.”

“Discard one.” The dealer removed the next card and, holding it so that neither he nor the players could see its face, added it to the face-down pile. “What is your pleasure, sir and madame?”

“Throw one.”

“Discard one.”

“We’ll take this one,” and there were four thousand credits in the box.

Throw one take one, and there were eight thousand.

The eight became sixteen; then thirty-two; and the dealer lost his urbanity completely. He looked just plain ugly.

“Maybe that’s enough for now,” Joan suggested. “After all, we don’t want to take _all_ the man’s money.”

“Tightwad’s trick, huh? Quit while yer ahead?” the dealer sneered. “Why’n’cha let ’er ride just once more?”

“If you insist, we will,” Cloud said, “but I’m warning you it’ll cost you thirty two more M’s.”

“That’s what _you_ think, Buster—I think different. Call your play!”

“We’ll take it!” Cloud snapped. “But listen, you clever-fingered jerk—I know just as well as you do that the top card is the king of clubs, and the one below it is the trey of diamonds. So, if you want to stay healthy, move slowly and be damned sure to lift just one card, not two, and take it off the top and not the bottom!”

Glaring in baffled fury, the dealer turned up the king of clubs and paid his loss.

At the next table the results were pretty much the same, and at the third. At the fourth table, however, instead of pyramiding, they played only single M-bills. They lost—won—lost—lost—won—lost—won—lost. In twenty plays they were only two thousand credits ahead.

“I think I’ve got it, Joan,” Cloud said then. “Coming up—eight, six, jack, five, deuce?”

“Uh-uh. I don’t think so. Eight, six, jack, three, one, I think. The trey of spades and the ace of hearts. A two-and-one shift with each full cycle.”

“Um . . . m. Could be . . . but do you think the guy’s that smart?”

“I’m pretty sure of it, Storm. He’s the best dealer they have. He’s been dealing a long time. He knows cards.”

“Well, if you’re done passing out compliments, how about calling a play?” the dealer suggested.

“QX. We’ll take the eight for one M . . . and it _is_ the eight, you notice . . . let it ride . . . throw the six—without looking, of course . . . we’ll take the jack for two M’s. . . .”

The host, accompanied by no less a personage than the manager himself, had come up. They stood quietly and listened as Cloud took three bills out of the box, leaving one, and went on:

“The next card is either a five or a trey. That M there is to find out which it is.”

“Are you sure of that?” the manager asked.

“Not absolutely, of course,” Cloud admitted. “There’s one chance in approximately fourteen million that both my partner and I are wrong.”

“Very good odds. But since you lose in either case, why bet?”

“Because if it’s a trey, she solved your system first. If it’s a five, I beat her to it.”

“I see, but that isn’t necessary.” The manager took the remaining cards out of the rack, and, holding them carefully and firmly, wrapped the M-note tightly around them. Then, picking up the two small stacks of played cards, he handed the whole collection to Cloud, at the same time signalling the dealer to go ahead with his game. “We’ll be smothered in a crowd very shortly, and I would like very much to play with you myself. Will you, sir and madame, be gracious enough to continue play in private?”

“Gladly, sir,” Joan assented, at Cloud’s questioning glance. “If it would not put you out too much.”

“I am delighted,” and, beckoning to a hovering waiter, he went on: “We will have refreshments, of course. In uniform, you might possibly prefer soft drinks? We have some very good Tellurian ginger ale.”

“That’d be fine,” Cloud said, even while he was thinking at the Lensman in contact with his mind: “Safe enough, don’t you think? He couldn’t be thinking of any rough stuff yet.”

“Perfectly safe,” Nordquist agreed. “He’s just curious. Besides, he’s in no shape to handle even the _Vortex Blaster_ alone, to say nothing of the task force he knows would be here two hours after anything happened to either of you.”

The four strolled in friendly fashion to the suggested private room. As soon as they were settled:

“You said the top card would be either a five or a trey,” the manager said. “Shall we look?”

It was the trey of spades. “Congratulations, Joanie, a mighty swell job. You really clobbered me on that one.” He shook her hand vigorously, then handed the bill to the manager. “Here’s your M-note, sir.”

“I couldn’t think of it, sir. No tipping, you know. . . .”

“I know. Not a tip, but your winnings. I called the play, remember. Hence, I insist.”

“Very well, if you insist. But don’t you want to look at the next one?”

“No. It’s the ace of hearts—can’t be anything else.”

“To satisfy my own curiosity, then.” The manager flipped the top card delicately. It was the ace of hearts. “No compulsion, of course, but would you mind telling me how you can _possibly_ do what you have just done?”

“I’ll be glad to,” and this was the simple truth. Cloud had to explain, before the zwilniks began to suspect that they were being taken by an organized force of Lensmen and snoopers. “We aren’t even semi-habitual gamblers. The lieutenant-commander is Doctor Joan Janowick, the Patrol’s ace designer of big, high-speed electronic computers, and I am Neal Cloud, a mathematical analyst.”

“You are ‘Storm’ Cloud, the Vortex Blaster,” the manager corrected him. “A super-computer yourself. I begin to see, I think . . . but go ahead, please.”

“You undoubtedly know that random numbers, which underlie all games of chance, must be just that—purely random, with nothing whatever of system or of orderliness in their distribution. Also that a stacked deck, by definition, is most decidedly _not_ random. We were kicking that idea around, one day, and decided to study stacked decks, to see how systematic such distributions actually were. Well—here’s the new part—we learned that any dealer who stacks a deck of cards does so in some definite pattern; and that pattern, whether conscious or unconscious, is always characteristic of that one individual. The more skilled the dealer, the more complex, precise, complete, and definite the pattern. Any pattern, however complex, can be solved; and, once solved, the cards might just as well be lying face up and all in sight.

“On the other hand, while it is virtually impossible for any dealer to shuffle a deck into a really random condition, it can approach randomness so nearly that the patterns are short and hence very difficult to solve. Also, there are no likenesses or similarities to help. Worst of all, there is the house leverage—the sevens of hearts, diamonds, and clubs, you know—of approximately five point seven seven percent. So it is mathematically certain that she and I would lose, not win, against any dealer who was not stacking his decks.”

“I . . . am . . . surprised. I’m _amazed_,” the manager said. He was, too; and so was the host. “Heretofore it has always been the guest who loses by manipulation, not the house.” It is noteworthy that neither the manager nor host had at any time denied, even by implication, that their games of “chance” were loaded. “Thanks, immensely, for telling me. . . . By the way, you haven’t done this very often before have you?” the manager smiled ruefully.

“No.” Cloud smiled back. “This is the first time. Why?”

“I thought I would have heard of it if you had. This of course changes my mind about wanting to deal to you myself. In fact, I’ll go farther—any dealer you play with here will be doing his level best to give you a completely random distribution.”

“Fair enough. But we proved our point, which was what we were primarily interested in, anyway. What’ll we do with the rest of the day, Joan—go back to the ship?”

“Uh-uh. This is the most comfortable place I’ve found since we left Tellus, and if I don’t see the ship again for a week it’ll be at least a week too soon. Why don’t you send a boy out with enough money to get us a chess kit? We can engage this room for the rest of the day and work on our game.”

“No need for that—we have all such things here,” the host said quickly. “I’ll send for them at once.”

“No no—no money, please,” the manager said. “I am still in your debt, and as long as you will stay you are my guests. . . .” he paused, then went on in a strangely altered tone: “But chess . . . and Janowick . . . Joan Janowick, not at all a common name . . . surely not Past Grand Master Janowick? She—retired—would be a much older woman.”

“The same—I retired for lack of time, but I still play as much as I can. I’m flattered that you have heard of me.” Joan smiled as though she were making a new and charming acquaintance. “And you? I’m sorry we didn’t introduce ourselves earlier.”

“Permit me to introduce Host Althagar, assistant manager. I am called Thlasoval.”

“Oh, I know of you, Master Thlasoval. I followed your game with Rengodon of Centralia. Your knight-and-bishop end game was a really beautiful thing.”

“Thank you. _I_ am _really_ flattered that you have heard of _me_. But Commander Cloud. . . ?”

“No, you haven’t heard of him. Perhaps you never will, but believe me, if he had time for tournament play he’d be high on the Grand Masters list. So far on this cruise he’s won one game, I’ve won one, and we’re on the eighty fourth move of the third.”

The paraphernalia arrived and the Tellurians set the game up rapidly and unerringly, each knowing exactly where each piece and pawn belonged.

“You have each lost two pawns, one knight, and one bishop—in eighty three moves?” Thlasoval marveled.

“Right,” Cloud said. “We’re playing for blood. Across this board friendship ceases; and, when dealing with such a pure unadulterated tiger as she is, so does chivalry.”

“If I’m a tiger, I’d hate to say what _he_ is.” Joan glanced up with a grin. “Just study the board, Master Thlasoval, and see for yourself who is doing what to whom. I’m just barely holding him: he’s had me on the defensive for the last forty moves. Attacking him is just like trying to beat in the side of a battleship with your bare fist. Do you see his strategy? Perhaps not, on such short notice.”

Joan was very willing to talk chess at length, because the fact that Fairchild’s Chickladorian manager was a chess Master was an essential part of the Patrol’s plan.

“No . . . I can’t say that I do.”

“You notice he’s concentrating everything he can bring to bear on my left flank. Fifteen moves from now he’d’ve been focused on my King’s Knight’s Third. Three moves after that he was going to exchange his knight for my queen and then mate in four. But, finding out what he was up to, I’ve just derailed his train of operations and he has to revise his whole campaign.”

“No wonder I didn’t see . . . I’m simply not in your class. But would you mind if I stay and look on?”

“We’ll be glad to have you, but it won’t be fast. We’re playing strict tournament rules and taking the full four minutes for each move.”

“That’s quite all right. I really _enjoy_ watching Grand Masters at work.”

Master though he was, Thlasoval had no idea at all of what a terrific game he watched. For Joan Janowick and Neal Cloud were not playing it; they merely moved the pieces. The game had been played long since. Based upon the greatest games of the greatest masters of old, it had been worked out, move by move, by chess masters working with high-speed computers.

Thus, while Joan and Storm were really concentrating, it was not upon chess.

_Chapter 14_ ▂▂▂▂▂▂VESTA THE GAMBLER

JOAN WAS HANDLING the card games, Cloud the wheels. The suggestion that it would be smart to run honest games had been implanted in the zwilniks’ minds, not because of the cards, but because of the wheels; for a loaded, braked, and magnetized wheel is a very tough device to beat.

Joan, then, would read a deck of cards, and a Lensman or a Rigellian would watch her do it. Then the observing telepath would, all imperceptibly, insert hunches into the mind of a player. And what gambler has ever questioned his hunches, especially when they pay off time after time after time? Thus more and more players began to win with greater or lesser regularity and the gambling fever—the most contagious and infectious disorder known to man—spread throughout the vast room like a conflagration in a box-factory.

And Storm Cloud was handling the wheels.

“Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, before the ball enters Zone Green,” the croupiers intoned. “The screens go up, no bets can be placed while the ball is in the Green.”

If the wheels had not been rigged, Cloud could have computed with ease the exact number upon which each ball would come to rest. In such case the Patrol forces would not, of course, have given Vesta the Vegian complete or accurate information. With her temperament and her bank-roll, she would have put the place out of business in an hour; and such a single-handed killing was not at all what the Patrol desired.

But the wheels, of course, were rigged. Cloud was being informed, however, of every pertinent fact. He knew the exact point at which the ball crossed the green borderline. He knew its exact velocity. He knew precisely the strengths of the magnetic fields and the permeabilities, reluctances, and so on, of all the materials involved. He knew just about how much braking force could be applied without tipping off the players and transforming them instantly into a blood-thirsty mob. And finally, he was backed by Lensmen who could at need interfere with the physical processes of the croupiers without any knowledge on the part of the victims.

Hence Cloud did well enough—and when a house is paying thirty-five to one on odds that have been cut down to eight or ten to one, it is very, _very_ bad for the house.

Vesta started playing conservatively enough. She went from wheel to wheel, tail high in air and purring happily to herself, slapping down ten-credit notes until she won.

“_This_ is the wheel I like!” she exclaimed, and went to twenties. Still unperturbed, still gay, she watched nine of them move away under the croupier’s rake. Then she won again.

Then fifties. Then hundreds. She wasn’t gay now, nor purring. She wasn’t exactly tense, yet, but she was warming up. As the tenth C-note disappeared, a Chickladorian beside her said:

“Why don’t you play the colors, miss? Or combinations? You don’t lose so much that way.”

“No, and you don’t win so much, either. When I’m gambling I _gamble_, brother . . . and wait just a minute . . .” the croupier paid her three M’s and an L. . . . “See what I mean?”

The crowd was going not-so-slowly mad. Assistant Manager Althagar did what he could. He ordered all rigging and gimmicks off, and the house still lost. On again, off again; and losses still skyrocketed. Then, hurrying over to the door of a private room, he knocked lightly, opened the door, and beckoned to Thlasoval.

“All hell’s out for noon!” he whispered intensely as the manager reached the doorway. “The crowd’s winning like crazy—everybody’s winning! D’you s’pose it’s them damn Patrolmen there crossing us up—and how in _hell_ could it be?”

“Have you tried cutting out the gimmicks?”

“Yes. No difference.”

“It can’t be them, then. It couldn’t be anyway, for two reasons. The kind of brains it takes to work that kind of problems in your head can’t happen once in a hundred million times, and you say everybody’s doing it. They _can’t_ be, dammit! Two, they’re Grand Masters playing chess. You play chess yourself.”

“You know I do. I’m not a Master, but I’m pretty good.”

“Good enough to tell by looking at ’em that they don’t give a damn about what’s going on out there. Come on in.”

“We’ll disturb ’em and they’ll be sore as hell.”

“You _couldn’t_ disturb these two, short of yelling in their ear or joggling the board.” The two walked toward the table. “See what I mean?”

The two players, forearms on table, were sitting rigidly still, staring as though entranced at the board, neither moving so much as an eye. As the two Chickladorians watched, Cloud’s left forearm, pivoting on the elbow, swung out and he moved his knight.

“Oh, no . . . no!” Shocked out of silence, Thlasoval muttered the words under his breath. “Your queen, man—your queen!”

But this opportunity, so evident to the observer, did not seem at all attractive to the woman, who sat motionless for minute after minute.

“But come on, boss, and look this mess over,” the assistant urged. “You’re on plus time now.”

“I suppose so.” They turned away from the enigma. “But _why_ didn’t she take his queen? I couldn’t see a thing to keep her from doing it. I would have.”

“So would I. However, almost all the pieces on that board are vulnerable, some way or other. Probably whichever one starts the shin-kicking will come out at the little end of the horn.”

“Could be, but it won’t be kicking shins. It’ll be slaughter—and _how_ I’d like to be there when the slaughter starts! And I _still_ don’t see why she didn’t grab that queen. . . .”

“Well, you can ask her, maybe, when they leave. But right now you’d better forget chess and take a good, long gander at what that Vegian hell-cat is doing. She’s wilder than a Radelgian cateagle and hotter than a DeLameter. She’s gone just completely nuts.”

Tense, strained, taut as a violin-string in every visible muscle, Vesta stood at a wheel; gripping the ledge of the table so fiercely that enamel was flaking off the metal and plastic under her stiff, sharp nails. Jaws hard set and eyes almost invisible slits, she growled deep in her throat at every bet she put down. And those bets were all alike—ten thousand credits each—and she was still playing the numbers straight. They watched her lose eighty thousand credits; then watched her collect three hundred and fifty thousand.

Thlasoval made the rounds, then; did everything he could to impede the outward flow of cash, finding that there wasn’t much of anything he could do. He beckoned his assistant.