Part 2

When I got back to the dome, I tried to buy the lowland from him. He laughed and named a price that was beyond even my means. It was not that he was particularly fond of the place; he just didn't care to sell.

I studied my man for the weakness that would give me what I wanted. He was a big man, a boisterous man who loved action and talk. He was younger than I, and handsome, with the rich good looks inherited from his Black Irish ancestors.

One thing I noted, and filed in my mind in case it should prove valuable. He liked Dori. He was a bachelor, as were most of his guests, for women were scarce on Mars then. He knew she was my wife, but he couldn't keep his eyes from her. I think perhaps it was the appeal to such a man as Odaan of that childish wistfulness and helplessness in her which I have described to you.

What gave me my lead was seeing him play roulette that evening. The sparkle of the born gambler shone in his eyes, and he pushed the stakes up and up, much too high for a sociable game. At that moment, I decided to break my resolution not to gamble on Mars.

* * * * *

It was not hard to talk Odaan and several other men into a game the next night. I wanted dice, but Odaan preferred cards. The others didn't seem to care. At last, Odaan turned to Dori, who was standing at my side.

"I'll leave the decision to Mrs. Britt," he said, smiling up at her. "Which shall it be, Mrs. Britt--dice or cards?"

My heart leaped, for Dori knew why I preferred dice.

"Cards," she said in a cold voice, and walked away.

Well, if Dori were going to take that attitude, cards would be better for me anyhow. She might turn the dice against me. I didn't fear my ability at cards.

I don't use a marked deck in cheating at cards. I use the natural ability of my hands. My cheating has not been detected yet, that I know about.

I have to qualify that statement, because I never have been sure whether Odaan knew I was cheating on my deals. Certainly, he was very cautious on hands which I dealt, betting low and going out even on fairly good hands. On the other hand, I never did see him cheating, but he bet with confidence on the hands he dealt.

Odaan was inclined to go for higher and higher stakes anyhow, and I was interested in pushing the stakes higher. Before long, everyone else had been forced from the game. It was the two of us against each other.

I was sure Odaan was not cheating and, since I couldn't get the sort of bets I wanted from him on the hands I dealt, I bet recklessly on those he dealt. For a while the luck swung back and forth between us evenly. Then he hit a winning streak.

Neither of us was drinking. We were cold sober, and we were betting thousands on the turn of a card. Hours passed, and I could no longer cover my bets with liquid assets. But my luck had to change. I began betting my property--my business property, my stocks and investments, at last my home in Syrtis Major.

It was nearly dawn when I realized I had nothing more to bet. Everything I had built up on Earth and brought to Mars with me, everything I had added to it on Mars, belonged to Odaan now. I was a pauper.

I pushed the cards aside and started to get up from the table, soaked with perspiration, when I saw Dori standing in the door. She was looking at me across the heads of the intent spectators, on her face one of the most wistful expressions I have ever seen.

There was my ticket back to wealth.

It could be a long, slow pull; I could wind up leaving Mars as I had left Earth. Or I could use that ticket to win it all back now. It was a desperate chance, a chance that depended on the vagaries of Dori's emotions. It was my only chance.

"Odaan," I said calmly, "you have no wife, and I see you like mine. I'll make a last bet with you. My wife against all you own--what you've won from me and your own possessions as well."

Odaan stared at me a long moment, then he turned slowly and saw Dori standing there. In that instant, I was convinced he had not been cheating.

"All right," he said, and he sounded as though he were strangling. "Deal the cards."

He drew his heat-gun and laid it on the table before him, as if warning me. Maybe he didn't know, but he suspected. I could not take a chance on cheating now; and, the way the cards had been running, I couldn't take a chance on them without cheating.

"Not cards," I said. "I'll roll the dice with you, Odaan."

He hesitated, then said:

"All right. I'll go and get the dice."

He left the room and brought them in: a pair of white dice with black spots, still sealed in their plastic box bearing the stamp of Luna-Mars Exports. That was an unshakable guarantee that they were honest dice.

I broke the seal.

"Dori," I said, "come here."

Dori came to my side.

"Dori," I said, "I'm going to roll the dice with Mr. Odaan. I'm betting you against everything he owns, and everything I did own. If I lose, you belong to him and I'm a penniless outcast. Do you understand that, Dori?"

"I understand," she answered in a low voice.

"All right," I said. "Let them roll."

We rolled first for possession of the dice. The dice bounced in slow motion, tantalizingly, in the weak Martian gravity. I rolled an eight, and Odaan rolled a five. I had the dice.

I rolled them and watched them spin, holding my breath. Dori could control them. Would it be craps, or a natural? Would I lose, or win?

The first one stopped on three. I let out my breath in a gasp of relief. Craps was impossible now.

The second die rolled and tumbled, and stopped. It was another three.

My point was six.

Hot anger swept over me. Dori had not touched the dice with her mind. It was not just that it hadn't been a natural--I could tell. I had gambled long enough to tell when the dice fell free, and when they were influenced.

"My point is six," I said. "Excuse me, Odaan, I want to talk with my bet a minute."

I took Dori into the next room.

"Dori, for God's sake!" I cried in a desperate undertone. "You are letting those dice roll free. Do you realize what happens to me--to us--if I don't make that point?"

I give her credit for this: she didn't rant at me, as most women would, that I had no right to bet her in a dice game, like a slave. Nor did she throw up to me what she had overheard on the spaceship. She just looked at me silently, and that look told everything she could have said in words.

"Dori, please," I said. I felt like getting on my knees to her. "Maybe you despise me now, but for the sake of what we've been to each other once, just this one time control the dice!"

She looked at me, and now I could read nothing in her expression.

"I'll control the dice," she said tonelessly.

We went back in, and I was sweating in terror and anguish when I picked up the dice. One of us was to be destroyed utterly on that roll, and only Dori could decide which one. Would she destroy Odaan? Or me?

I rolled the dice out on the table, and I don't think anyone in the room breathed, except Dori. One of them fell almost solid. A five.

The other die spun and tumbled. A two would ruin me. A one would ruin Odaan. Anything else would just postpone the inevitable.

The die slowed, bouncing.

"Take it, Dori!" I prayed silently. And Dori took it.

The die had almost settled when it was nudged, almost as by a physical push. It rolled over slowly--to the two! It teetered on the farther edge of the two, it appeared about to settle back ... and it rolled on over to the one.

A five and a one lay there on the dice. A single black dot and a five on the white dice. A six. I had won!

"A six," I said. "Odaan, you're a guest in my house."

Odaan sat there as if hypnotized, unable to take his eyes from the little black and white cubes.

"They ... they rolled like loaded dice!" he exclaimed in a voice that was barely audible.

"They're your dice, Odaan," I said.

Odaan got up and made a great, sweeping gesture, a gesture of defeat. He stumbled away through the crowd.

Dori stood looking at me with tragic eyes, and I looked up into her white, child-like face. I knew then that I loved Dori, that I never would love another woman.

* * * * *

Britt sat silent, staring into the flickering fire.

"Mrs. Britt ... has passed on since then?" suggested Peache sympathetically.

Britt tapped the ash from the tip of his half-smoked cigar.

"Dori?" he said. "Oh, no. As far as I know, Dori's still alive. She ran away with Odaan the next day."

"With Odaan?" gasped Peache.

"Yes. She hated me, as she said. And I had been willing to gamble her, while Odaan had bet everything he owned for her. At that time there was a law that no woman could leave Mars--because of the shortage of women here, you know--and he had to get a job operating a towmotor at Marsport to stay on the planet with her. Of course I warned all my friends against gambling with him, since he had Dori. When the law was repealed, they returned to Earth, and I understand several children came of the union."

"But," protested Peache, "if Dori was in love with Odaan, why would she control the dice to lose the throw for him and win everything for you? I just don't understand."

"Well," said Britt with a thoughtful smile, "she didn't intend to. She intended to push the die only over to the two, giving me a seven and winning for Odaan. But, as I told you, I had not gambled before since we had been on Mars, and that was her first effort at controlling the dice since we left Earth.

"She just gave the die too hard a mental push. She forgot the gravity of Mars is only four-tenths that of Earth!"