by Ron Hubbard
Ow, ow, I thought. Lots of money, far beyond the average junior officer.
Credit: very honorable about paying bills. No known debts. Totally trustworthy. Ow, ow, ow, ow! I thought. Bad show for me. And then the computer said something astonishing.
Credit rating: zero! Do not extend advances or credit to this officer.
I was really startled. The machine looked like it wasn't going to say any more so I pushed "Query."It said: Zero. Hazardous life. Combat engineers have average professional life expectancy of two years service: subject has exceeded this by triple; statistical demise grossly overdue; Fleet pays only terminal pay for symbolic funeral.
Well, that didn't leave me much option. I couldn't kill him here. And it didn't solve my problem as he wasstill alive and he didhave money.
Ho, ho! Big thought. If I could get the money he had away from him he would be broke.
The old clerk had sort of gone into apathy and wasn't struggling so much so I punched in, Any bad financial habits?
I wasn't very hopeful due to what the computer had already said. The machine flashed: Gambles on occasion. Dice and other games. Common to officers in danger categories. Not listed as a negative because by tax records he usually wins games of chance.
I had it! Right there! Heller gambled! Aha! Some guards had come in by that time to see what the commotion had been all about. I gave them a masterly handling. I said, "I'm leaving at once!"
Chapter 7
I was utterly elated. I was sure I had found Heller's fracture! Gambling!
If I could get all of his money away from him, he wouldn't be able to bribe the guards, the Countess would no longer be brought to my room, he would simply leave for the mission in disgust. No threat from Crown inspectors, no further danger from Lombar. Perfect!
I broke all records getting to my town office. I went tearing through my desk and there it was, in the bottom under the secret panel.
Two months before, one of the Section 451 clerks had been killed in a gambling row. He was trying to bet with counterfeit money but in going through his effects I had found a little dice bag. I had almost passed it by but, knowing the clerk, I examined them.
The six twelve-sided dice appeared perfectly normal. But they were hollow. A densimeter showed that the hollow was lined with a sticky substance and contained a lead pellet. By turning upward the number you wanted and giving the die a slight jolt, the lead pellet was momentarily stuck in the goo. When you threw the die, of course the weight would make the chosen number come up.
Old Bawtch, the chief clerk, wanted to know what I was doing there. I gave him a copy of my new appointments and instead of congratulating me, he shook his head sadly. He said, "Now I know everything is going to Hells." Nobody can get along with Bawtch.
The roaring heat of the Great Desert scorched my airbus but I did not even mind. I landed in an explosion of dust at Camp Kill. I sprinted to Snelz's cave. I was running so fast his door sentry hardly had time to leap up. But it was daylight and he let me by.
Snelz was lying back on his bed, hands folded behind his head. A not too bad-looking prostitute was putting some food on the table: she had on a new dress and looked like she was a permanent fixture. Food, his own woman; Snelz was doing all right for himself!
They both flinched when they saw who it was.
I pointed at the prostitute. "Get outside and don't listen at the door."
"Don't break my hand!" she said. But it was more a sneer than terror. The camp riffraff never learn. She spat on the floor in front of me and left. Maybe the other whore had been a friend of hers. Funny people, whores.
"Snelz," I said, "you are doing all right now, but you are going to be wealthy." He was instantly on his guard.
"How much money does Heller have left?"
"Oh, no," he said. "He's a nice guy. Don't seek my help in robbing him."
"No, no. Just tell me." He figured for a bit. "He hasn't spent much really. A credit goes a long way here. He's only spent about two hundred credits."
"Means he must have eight hundred left," I said. "And youare going to win it off him." As an afterthought, I said, "And split with me, of course." Snelz has a very suspicious mind. I got out the bag of dice. I arranged them in my palm so the 12s were all up. I gave my knuckles a rap on the table and threw them. They all came up twelve.
Snelz said, "Weighted dice! And what happens to my head after he knocks it off? That guy can fight!Also, if you have a set of dice weighted to always come up 12s, you have to do an under-the-table switch with another set and I'm not that good at palming."
"Snelz," I said, "this is a modern world. Science advances. Don't you trust me?"
"No." I picked up the six dice, cupped my palms over them and shook them and then threw again. The lead pellets inside had let loose, of course. I threw. The dice came up with random numbers.
The platoon commander looked at them in confusion. He thought I must have palmed in another set. So he did it. He put them, all twelve up in his palm, knocked the back of his knuckles, threw and got all 12s. Then he shook them and threw and got random numbers.
"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.
They began with a modest half-credit bet. Snelz threw 20. Heller declined to make a second bet that he could beat it. He threw 51. He won. Ah, well. Good strategy. Heller was to win for a while.
"Let's bet one credit," said Snelz. "I feel lucky." Heller took the dice. Now dice players have a routine all their own, all unnecessary. They take the six dice in their cupped palms; they shake them on the right side of their head; they shake them on the left side of their head; then they tap one set of knuckles or the other on the table and send the dice bouncing onto the board with a sort of shovel motion. And they sing to the dice as they do it. Heller did all this. But he had two wrinkles of his own. He blew onto the palmed dice first and then shook them and he shook them longer and harder than I have seen dice shaken before. His hands sort of blurred in the shake – very, very fast!
Heller threw a 62. Against his own advice, he said, "One credit to a hundred says you can't beat that. I frankly advise you to decline."
"No, I'll take it," said Snelz. He placed the dice carefully in his palm. When he shook them, he didn't permit them to roll about. He banged his knuckles on the table.
I thought, hey, this is early to start winning. The bang on the table, of course, settled the lead pellets into the goo in the hollow. The dice rolled out a 10!
Oh, I thought. Clever boy. He's carrying out the strategy.
"Ouch," said Snelz. "Looks like I better up my stakes to recover my loss. Two hundred credits all right with you for this next bet?" Of course it was really Heller's turn, as he didn't have the first throw, to set the stake for the first bet. But he shrugged, overlooking the irregularity, looking as tolerant as you would look at an amateur who didn't quite know the rules.
Snelz threw. It was a 50. Any dice player can add up the points at a glance if he is expert and I thought Snelz made an error by calling "Fifty!" instantly in a loud voice. I guessed Snelz was too excited to mask his expertise. "Fifty credits to fifty credits says you can't top it." Heller was in the swing of it now. He blew upon the dice. He shook to the right and shook to the left and as he did it, he sang: Money for my honey, Booze for my cruise, Fly them over fifty And don't let this spacer lose.
He threw and cried, "Fifty-five!" after the dice stopped rolling. He picked up the money with an easy sweep.
Snelz said, "You certainly are lucky. I know I am just a beginner at this, but I am afraid I will have to double my bet again. Four hundred credits all right with you?
"Actually," said Heller, "doubling is a Devil's game. I advise against it."
"I'm afraid I'll have to insist," said Snelz.
Heller shrugged. He picked up the dice. He blew on them quite a long time. Then he sang: Don't reimburse the purse, Of the loser we won't nurse.
Fly a winning number And win the universe.
His shake had been extremely hard. The roll was expert with a back spin. "Forty! Try and beat it. Ten credits to three hundred and seventy-five says you won't." Snelz put the dice very carefully in his palm, blew on them, pretended to shake them. He sang: Dicies balm and calm, Don't cramp the champ.
Better up the forty And put money in my camp!
He threw. "Thirty-five!" Heller raked in the money.
Good. Snelz was following the strategy. Any moment now, he would turn the game around and start to win. And that would be the end of Officer Heller's ability to buy favors, and off to Earth we'd go.
There was a knock on the door. A guard tipt
oed in and whispered to me: "Doctor Crobe just sent up word that if you didn't see him at once, you'd be real sorry." Well, I should have expected it. I was supposed to take Heller back to him, and what was it now, seven days? and we hadn't gone near him. I didn't want to leave this game. But Snelz would bring it off. How could he lose with those dice? I left.
But the second I started to go down the tube, I also started to get sick at my stomach. A bad feeling of pain with a bit of nausea.
I found Crobe in his foul office. He left off scraping some cells from a severed foot. He raised his head and levelled his scummy eyes down his beak nose.
"You," he said, "are up to something. You have not brought that special agent back here for bugging." I felt very ill. "I've been busy."
"I have a direct order from Lombar Hisst to fix up this special agent. You have not brought him back. You are up to something." I had to sit down. I really was feeling ill. Maybe it was that severed foot. It looked green in the green glowplates. It was putrefying.
"Officer Gris," said Crobe, "do you know of any way to prevent me from reporting this to Lombar Hisst?" My stomach gave a new turn. I could hardly lift my head. But in my field of view, there lay his filthy hand, palm up. It was unmistakable.
Feebly I reached into my tunic and got out my wallet. I only had about thirty-five credits in it. I pulled out a ten.
Crobe took the ten, then reached over and took the rest of the money out of the wallet. "Thirty-five credits." he counted. "Won't do." He threw them aside.
It was a lot of money. For the dungeons of Spiteos. They never had any money down here. But I realized that I would shortly have thousands. "Make it a hundred. I'll pay the rest later." Crobe picked up his gummy scraping knife and pointed it at me. "You're really up to something, Officer Gris. Do you realize the danger to me personally if I don't follow out Lombar Hisst's orders?" I was too sick to think straight. The pains were like dagger stabs!