One Against the Legion

by Jack Williamson

  He patted his crackling pocket, contentedly.

  “It would serve you right, Hannas, if I played all the night. Ah, so! Even if I broke your New Moon, and made you beg for the black chip of admission to your own Euthanasia Clinic!

  “But I won’t do that, Hannas.” He swung heavily on his cane. “Because I’m more honest than you ever were, Pedro—aye, there’s a limit to my stealing. Ah, so, one more play is all I want. Just one billion dollars, Hannas, at a hundred to one.”

  Caspar Hannas staggered, and his white jaw slackened.

  “Habibula!” he husked. “In the name of Ethyra Coran—”

  “Don’t utter her name!” gasped Giles Habibula. “To show you why not, I’ll just play two billion!”

  “You can’t do that!” Hannas choked. “I—I think that table’s out of order. We’re closing it—”

  “Then I’ll find another,” wheezed Giles Habibula.

  But Jay Kalam touched his arm.

  “Better keep close beside us, Giles,” the Commander whispered. “Move slowly, so that the plain-clothes men can gather in around you. And you had better keep your own eyes on Dr.

  Derrel, for you’ve got just twenty minutes now.”

  “I?” Giles Habibula blinked at him. “You make me feel like a convict on Devil’s Rock waiting for the ray.” He touched his pocket again, with a sidewise look at Caspar Hannas. “I know he’d slit my poor old throat in an instant, Jay. But surely, with so many of you here, he wouldn’t dare. For Pedro was ever a white-livered coward at the core.”

  “I was speaking, Giles,” Jay Kalam told him gravely, “of your danger at midnight, when the Basilisk has threatened to strike.”

  “The B-B-B-Basilisk?” Giles Habibula stuttered through ashen, quivering lips. “Aye, the mortal Basilisk! You told me he had threatened to abduct and murder some luckless p-p-p-player. But why should he pick on m-m-m-m-me?”

  Caspar Hannas caught his breath, and his white baby-grin seemed for an instant genuinely mirthful.

  “Didn’t we tell you, Giles?” asked Jay Kalam’s grave, astonished voice. “Didn’t we tell you that the Basilisk has promised to come at midnight— eighteen minutes in now, to rob and murder the highest winner?”

  “And your two billions, Habibula, are the richest winnings in the New Moon’s history.” The great voice of Caspar Hannas had a ring of savage glee. “But I’ll cash them, if you like—for one black chip!”

  8

  The Man Who Flickered

  Giles Habibula began to tremble. His bulging middle quivered. Drops of sweat stood out on his furrowed yellow face. His small eyes seemed to glaze. His teeth chattered violently, and then, false to him, fell out on the floor.

  “Ahuh!” he gasped. “Yuh—whuh—!”

  He began tearing furiously to get his winnings out of his pocket. Jay Kalam recovered and returned the teeth. He took them clattering into the cavern of his mouth, and cried piteously: “Jay! Ah, Jay, why didn’t you tell me? A poor blind old man, tottering on the very brink of life, a creeping famished toothless wretch. Jay, would you let old Giles thrust his neck into the very noose of death?”

  “You’ve Hal’s fleet to guard you,” the Commander sought to reassure him, “and ten thousand of the New Moon’s police. We’ll protect you, Giles.”

  “Aye!” An eager fighting glint lit the blue eyes of Hal Samdu. “We’ve set a trap for this Basilisk—and now you’ve baited it well, Giles, with your two billion dollars!”

  “Ah, no!” sobbed Giles Habibula. “Old Giles will bait no traps—not with his poor old flesh!”

  He was staggering back to the table he had just left so triumphantly. “How long did you say, Jay?” he gasped. “Eighteen minutes—to lose more than two billion dollars?”

  The croupier went white again, to see him returning.

  “Hasten, man!” The old soldier gasped. “Call for the bets, and spin your ball! In life’s mortal name, is this place a hall of chance—or the black Euthanasia Clinic?”

  The croupier gulped and whispered hoarsely: “Place your bets, gentlemen! Bets on the table!”

  The leaden eyes of Giles Habibula were peering along the row of players.

  “Some mortal fool has got to win,” he croaked. His glance fell upon a little gray man, opposite: a dried-up wisp of humanity, whose pale anxious eyes, through heavy-lensed glasses, were peering at endless rows of notations in a small black book. His thin nervous fingers were tapping at the keys of a compact, noiseless computing machine. Only three blue chips remained before him on the board. Giles Habibula called to him, “Brother, do you want to win?”

  The little stranger blinked up at him, hi near-sighted bewilderment.

  “Sir,” came a shrill piping voice, “I do. More than anything else in the world. I have been laboring many years—I have made twenty million calculations—endeavoring to perfect my system of play. I have three chips left.”

  “Forget your mortal system,” wheezed Giles Habibula. “And play your three chips on one hundred and one.”

  The little man scratched his gray head uncertainly, peering vaguely back at his book and his calculating machine.

  “But my system, sir, based on the permutations of numbers and the gravitational influence of the planets—my system—”

  “Fool!” hissed a mousetrap-faced female beside him. “Play! Old blubber-guts has got something! He just cleaned up a couple of billions!”

  She set a stack of her own chips on one-hundred-one.

  Giles blinked, and the croupier spun his ball.

  The little gray man looked at his machine, and put one chip on forty-nine. The fat yellow hands of Giles Habibula, handling the green certificates as if they had been incandescent metal, laid the stack of his winnings on the double-zero.

  “Two billions and a few odd millions,” he told the chalk-faced croupier. And his voice dropped to a rasp of deadly menace. “And don’t you move until that ball stops.

  Don’t take a mortal breath! I’ll handle the relays.”

  He looked back at the little gray man.

  “On second thought, brother,” he wheezed, “your forty-nine will win. Due to gravitational influences!” He thrust the green handle of his cane abruptly into the croupier’s pasty face. “You stand still!”

  The cane lifted, with a slow, deliberate sweep, and the ball clicked into the slot.

  “Forty-nine is the winner!” Sobbing with pale faced relief, the croupier snatched up the sheaf of bills from zero-zero. With a trembling wand, he raked in the other bets.

  He pushed a stack of a hundred chips to the small gray man.

  The bleak faced woman made some sound, very much under her breath, and abruptly departed.

  “My system!” piped the frail little man, excitedly. “At last—it wins!”

  His thin fingers recorded the play in his little black book. They tapped the silent keys of his machine. He peered at the dial, and then pushed the stack of his chips back upon the number forty-nine.

  The colorless eyes of Giles Habibula glittered at the croupier.

  “Forty-nine,” he predicted, “will win again.”

  The croupier licked his dry lips. His glazing eyes shot a despairing glance at Caspar Hannas. He hoarsely called for bets, and spun the ball, and watched its clicking circle with a kind of white horror on his face.

  And forty-nine won!

  “My system!” The gray man clutched with shaking hands at chips pushed toward him.

  “For twenty years,” he whispered, “Dr. Abel Davian has been thought a visionary fool. But now—” His heavy lenses stared about the hushed, wondering table. “Now, sirs, he must be acknowledged a mathematical genius!”

  “He’s still a fool.” Caspar Hannas spoke to Jay Kalam, not troubling to lower his contemptuous voice. “A pathological gambler. I’ve seen thousands like him—egotistical enough to think they can invent some lunatic system to cheat the mathematics of probability. They never know when they’ve had enough, until they finall
y come begging for a free black chip. Davian probably will tomorrow, when he has lost what he wins tonight.”

  The commander nodded with a glance of pity at the trembling man, whose frantic fingers were stabbing now at the keyboard of the calculator. He turned slowly back to the master of the New Moon, his dark face drawn firm as if to veil some unspoken accusation.

  “An old client, eh?”

  “He has been fighting for twenty years to break me.” Blinking implacably, Hannas stood watching Davian enter the results of his play in the little black book. “I’ve got to know him well, from all the times he has come whining for me to cash his worthless I O U’s. I even met his wife, on their first trip out to my old ship—a charming girl, who tried for years to save him, after he had thrown away everything they had, before she finally realized that euthanasia is the only cure for his kind. He used to have a responsible position in the statistical department of some research firm.

  Look at him now—a ragged nobody.”

  Hannas chuckled, with a mirthless scorn.

  “They’re all alike,” he said. “They lose everything, and the syndicate pays their way home. But they aren’t content. They never learn. They’ve got to get even. They sell their homes. They break their relatives. They borrow from their friends, until they have no friends. They live in squalor, and scrape and beg and steal—and keep coming back out here to try again to break the bank.”

  “An unfortunate case.” Jay Kalam turned thoughtfully from the white-faced gambler, to study the idiot smile of Hannas. “Don’t you ever feel responsible?”

  “I didn’t invent human nature,” Hannas shrugged disdainfully. “But the syndicate doesn’t encourage such patrons. The personal disasters they bring upon themselves tend to reflect on our establishment, and too many of them finally become bitter and desperate enough to create unpleasant public scenes by killing themselves at the tables, or even sometimes attacking our own people, instead of decently requesting that free black chip.”

  He sniffed derisively.

  “They’re all alike,” he repeated. “This Davian is only a little more persistent than the rest—”

  Jay Kalam glanced at his chronometer and touched the big man’s arm.

  “Twelve minutes to midnight,” he said softly. “I think we had better be moving along.

  But signal your men to keep their eyes on this Dr. Derrel.”

  They went on across the vast floor, Hal Samdu stalking impatiently ahead. Laboring and puffing, Giles Habibula fell behind. Sweat broke out on his yellow face.

  “In life’s name!” he sobbed. “Jay, Hal, can’t you wait for poor old Giles? Would you leave him alone with the fearful Basilisk at his heels? Can’t you feel the tensity of doom in the very air, aye, and see the stark print of fear on every mortal face?”

  Jay Kalam had paused, and the old man snatched at his arm.

  “Come, Jay!” he gasped. “For life’s sake, let’s make ready for the moment. Let’s stand against the wall, Jay, and gather all our men about us, with blasters ready—”

  “Shut up, Giles!” rapped Hal Samdu. “There’s no danger, but to the winner. None, I think, if we surround this Dr. Derrel—”

  “My mortal life!”

  It was an apprehensive croak from Giles Habibula. Trembling, his arm was pointing at a table where the play had stopped. A tall man dressed in white was setting upon it some bulky object wrapped in brown canvas.

  Giles Habibula stared anxiously, as he uncovered it. A square black box was revealed, with polished brass rods projecting from the sides and the top. A little instrument-board was wired to the box, and a set of phones that the man slipped off his head.

  “Who is he?” Giles Habibula had caught the arm of Hannas. “In life’s precious name, what is that machine?” His thin voice quavered. “I don’t like the look of such strange machines—not when we’re dealing with such an unknown monster as the Basilisk!”

  “That’s only John Comaine,” said the rusty voice of Caspar Hannas. “We’ll speak to him.”

  He lead them to the man whose brain had conceived the New Moon. Comaine, in his white laboratory jacket, looked robust and athletic. His stiff blond hair stood on end.

  He had a square stern mask of a face, with slightly protruding, emotionless blue eyes.

  He nodded to Caspar Hannas, in stiff and uncordial greeting.

  “Comaine,” said Hannas, “this is Commander Kalam and his aides; they have come to hunt the Basilisk.”

  The glassy, bulging eyes looked at them briefly, coldly.

  “Gentlemen.” His voice was dry, metallic, inflectionless. “I am attacking the problem in my own way. I built the New Moon. I am going to defend it.”

  Giles Habibula was gaping at the black box.

  “Ah, so, Dr. Comaine. And what is that?”

  “The operations of the Basilisk,” Comaine said briefly, “display the use of an unfamiliar scientific instrumentality. The first step, obviously, is to detect and analyze the forces used.”

  And he turned abruptly back to his instrument panel.

  “Ah, so,” wheezed Giles Habibula. “You are right. And that is that!”

  And they went on among the tables, watchfully scanning the thousands of players. An increasing tension charged the air. Play had almost stopped. A nervous hush was spreading, broken now and then by a voice too loud, by a laugh that jangled with unadmitted fear. Many who had come to watch the work of the Basilisk seemed to regret their early courage, and there was an increasing trickle of silent men and women toward the doors.

  Abruptly Giles Habibula stopped again.

  “I know that man!” He pointed furtively ahead. “Aye, forty years ago, at the Blue Unicorn! He is Amo Brelekko!”

  “Naturally you know him,” rasped the great voice of Caspar Hannas. “For you and he and I were three of a kind, in those old days.”

  “Ah, what’s that?” Giles Habibula inflated himself, indignantly.

  “In life’s name, Hannas, I’ll not have you say three of a kind!” His fat lips made a sharp, startling sound, as if he had spat. “Neither you nor the Eel ever did a mortal thing, but Giles could do it quicker and smoother and more silently, with precious less danger from the law!”

  His leaden eyes went back to the tall man strolling toward them. Amo Brelekko was gaunt to the point of emaciation. His huge head was completely bald. A long hatchet nose accented the knife-like sharpness of his face. He now wore brilliant purple lounging pajamas, and a flaming yellow robe. A great diamond pinned his tunic, and the lean yellow claws of his fingers were glittering with rings.

  “Amo the Eel!” whispered Giles Habibula. “You wouldn’t know that forty mortal years had gone. He looks just the same. He had the swiftest hands I ever knew—aye, beside my precious own!”

  His pale eyes blinked shrewdly at the New Moon’s master.

  “What is he doing here, Hannas? You couldn’t let him play. He knows your tricks as well as I do.”

  The white giant smiled his silly smile.

  “Brelekko has been here since the New Moon was built,” said Caspar Hannas. “I offered him ten thousand dollars a day to play for the house. He refused. He said that he would prefer to take his money from the other side of the table.

  “And he does. But he is more moderate than you were, Habibula. He limits his winnings scrupulously to ten thousand dollars a day. I don’t regret his presence. His spectacular methods of play make him a valuable advertisement.”

  “Aye, he’d be good.” Giles Habibula nodded. “Though he was only a youth when I knew him, he already showed a precious promise, in the quickness of his hands.”

  “Brelekko is a gifted man,” agreed Gaspar Hannas. “He’s a skilled amateur magician—sometimes he gives a special performance for our guests. His brain is as clever as his hands. He invented the game of hyper-chess, and none can beat him at it.”

  “I never tried,” muttered Giles Habibula.

  “His suite is equipped as an astrophysical l
aboratory,” Hannas went on, “with an observatory dome outside, on the New Moon’s hull. By avocation he is a brilliant scientist, by vocation the greatest gambler in the System—”

  The leaden eye of Giles Habibula had begun to glitter. “Except,” Caspar Hannas added very hastily, “of course, yourself.”

  His great white hand beckoned, and Amo Brelekko came to meet them. When his dark eyes found the waddling old man in gray, however, he stopped abruptly. Gems glittered in a sudden arc, as his lean hand flashed toward his arm-pit.

  But the thick cane of Giles Habibula was first. It snapped up level with the gaunt body of Amo Brelekko, and his yellow hand tensed on the head.

  “Still, Brelekko!” His thin voice rang cold with menace. “Or I’ll burn you in two.” As the jeweled hand dropped, his voice softened. “Ah, me, Brelekko,” he wheezed, “after forty years, can’t we forget?”

  “I’ll never forget, Habibula.” The speech of Brelekko was a voiceless rasping. “Not in forty centuries!”

  “Then you had best restrain yourself, Amo,” advised Giles Habibula, grimly. “At least until midnight has passed.”

  The fleshless, cadaverous face of the gambler made an unpleasant grimace.

  “So you are here to hunt the Basilisk, Habibula?” his rasping whisper asked. “There’s an ancient Terrestrial proverb, ‘Set a thief to catch a thief.’” His laugh was queerly muted like his voice, a kind of chuckling hiss. “But I think even that will fail. For the Basilisk is a better thief than you ever were, Habibula.”

  Giles Habibula caught a choking breath, and the cane lifted swiftly. But Amo Brelekko, with a mocking little gesture of his thin jeweled hand, had turned toward a distant table, where there was a little stir of sudden excitement.

  “We’ll soon know,” he whispered. “For yonder is the winner, I believe—the man in danger. And midnight is almost at hand.”

  Like a yellow skeleton stalking, he hurried toward the table. The three Legionnaires and Gaspar Hannas hastened after him. The most of the players, when they came to the table, had drawn a few paces back—out of apprehensive respect, it seemed, for the ominous promise of the Basilisk—so that only a few were left about the table, at the center of a hushed, whispering ring of spectators.