The croupier blinked again. He was quite sure he didn't know.
* * * * *
"Bet one thousand only," she said. She watched him sigh with relief.
Funny, she thought. The guy had a conscience, and in a place like this.
She watched him spin, watched the teleckto-spin whirr, slow, come to a
clicking stop.
"Ninety-nine thousand six hundred and four," he said. "To one."
"Uh huh. And now what does the chart say?"
The croupier checked. "One hundred and two thousand to one. It hasn't
changed. Sorry, Miss." He raked in the teels.
"That was fun," said the woman. "So much fun I'm getting bored stiff.
Rake in the rest of these teels, too. Stick 'em in your pocket."
"WHAT?" The croupier's eyebrows jumped.
"Yeah."
He blinked. Studied. Blinked again. His philosophic thoughts were going
out the space lock fast. He was trying to revise, trying to bring
himself up to date. He wasn't getting anywhere. That golden-modo-strap
_was_ phony. A child could see it was. And yet....
"I'm not so good on my telepathy tonight," he said coldly.
"Skip it. I'm like a guy named Slan you used to read about. Had shields
up around my brain."
That brought a cell of silence around the table. The croupier didn't
speak, didn't blink, didn't breathe, didn't do anything.
"Looking for a man," said the woman finally. "Space-happy guy named
Artie Sterling. Know him?"
The croupier caught a glint of something hard in the woman's eyes. He
still didn't say anything.
"Don't think you're selling a good joe down the canal," the woman went
on. "If you thought that, drop it. There isn't a creeping, crawling,
oozing thing on all Mars to compare with him. I know. Who would know
better than me?"
The croupier still didn't say anything. But his eyes said it for him;
they were asking a question as big as space itself.
"The guy's my husband," said the woman. She stopped. She studied the
worry lines that responsibility had embedded in the croupier's forehead.
She said: "You look like a nice hard-working man, to me. A good family
man. You probably got a nice wife, couple of nice kiddies at home. You
worry a little sometimes, though, because the money a croupier makes
isn't a hell of a lot. And growing youngsters need this and that and
the bills pile up and a man worries and the end isn't in sight because
you're young yet and there's years and years of struggle still coming
up."
The croupier swallowed. He took a breath. He looked down at the
thousands of teel credits on the table. He looked up again.
"Look at me," said the woman. "Look at what the guy did to me. You can
see it in my eyes."
The croupier did look. Then he took another breath and then he looked
down once more at the money on the table, and then he did something
that would probably make him spit for the rest of his life every time
he stared into a mirror. He whispered:
"Yeah. I know Artie Sterling. He was in here this evening early."
_Uh huh. And now the big one._ "Where'd he go?"
The croupier took a last long drowning breath and his rake started to
pull in the teels. "Okay, lady, okay. The guy's shacked up right now in
Residential, Number 327. With somebody else's wife. That what you want
to know? That what you wanted me to say?"
The woman didn't answer. She let her eyes slit contemptuously for an
instant before she turned, moved away from the table, and went quickly
toward the lock that led to the spacelators outside.
* * * * *
Artie Sterling pulled the woman's arms from around his neck. "Look,
baby," he said. His handsome forehead wrinkled, a little annoyed.
"Arthur...."
"Time to be shoving off, baby."
"Shoving off?" The woman's large brown eyes balled with dismay.
"Yeah. Frankly ..." he lifted his shoulders lightly "... frankly, the
only reason I dropped in tonight was to sort of say goodbye. Get it?"
"Arthur!" There was shock in the woman's voice.
"Yeah. Look. Let's not push it into a corner like somebody's unwanted
asteroid. Let's look at the thing. We've been slicker than the skids
on the spacelator, baby, but it can't last forever. Sooner or later
that husband of yours is gonna open his dopey eyes. And then what?" He
made a little mocking shudder. "And baby, if there's anything I _don't_
want, it's to tangle with the Chief of all Space Security."
He grinned at the small figure of the woman beside him. "Up to now it's
been great laughs on dull nights, but you know something? Every now
and then I ask myself: suppose this guy, this Chief of Security--your
husband, you know--suppose one of these nights he should get off a
little early. Suppose he should come home an hour or two before we
expect him?"
"Oh!" The woman smiled nervously. "That what's worrying you, honey?
That's silly. John never does that. Never comes home early. Forget it."
Artie Sterling raised an impatient eyebrow. How do you tell off a dame
when she doesn't want to believe it? He untangled himself from the
woman's arms. He got to his feet. He said sharply:
"Look, baby. Here it is: it's done, see? Great fun, like I said, but
it's done. Gone. Burned out like the hulls of hell. I'm shoving off."
That one did it. The woman was suddenly aware of it. He could tell that
by the way her eyes shot open and then dulled quickly. That's the way
they all act at first. They get over it, of course, but at first it's
always like that.
He watched her get to her feet. Admiringly. He still appreciated the
neat little figure she had. Still admitted she was a doll to look at.
He watched her go to a black metallic desk against a wall. Open the
center drawer. He said protesting: "Baby, I don't want that bracelet
back I gave you. Hell, that's a souvenir. Keep it. When old Artie gives
a gal something he means it."
"I'm not giving back the bracelet, Arthur." The woman's hand went into
the drawer, came out again. The hand held a heat gun. "No, Arthur. Not
the bracelet."
"Baby!" Utter shock laved the handsome man's features.
"You wanted goodbye, Arthur? All right. If that's the way you want it.
If you're sure."
"_For God's sake....!_"
"The night of the big sleep, Arthur." Her finger jerked on the heat
trigger.
The man was only human after all. His hands came clutching tight,
pressing frantically at a spot about where his navel would be. But it
was late for that, and when he fell it was straight forward and down.
The woman looked at the handsome black waves of his hair. Death doesn't
change that. No, not immediately, it doesn't. She sobbed once and
fainted.
The guy had been right, although he didn't know it. And the woman had
been dead wrong, although she didn't know it. Chief of Security, John
Henderson, had on this night of the synthi-rain, quit a little early.
Had, on this not-very-busy night gotten home a little sooner than
usual. About an hour and a half sooner, to be precise. He had come in
through the rear lock. Had come in quietly, for he planned a little
surprise for his wife. Had stood very quietly in the doorway of the
darkened anteroom that led directly to the living room. And he had
listened. And he had watched.
He came through the doorway. He leaned down over his wife, took the gun
from her hand and laid it on a table. He leaned down once more, took
the woman in his arms. There was something quite impossible to express
in his eyes.
He took her to the bedroom, put her down carefully, studied the
shock-stiffness of her form. He went to a wall cabinet, got a
hypodermic, found an artery in the woman's arm. Her breathing at once
calmed, flattened. Sleep-breathing now.
The man back in the living room was a little larger problem. He was
quite heavy for his slender build. Henderson half carried, half
dragged, the body out through the front lock and out to the 'copter
port alongside the house.
Artie Sterling's 'copter was there. Henderson had seen it when he came
home but there hadn't been any significance to it then. He stuffed the
body into the freight deck. Then he carefully latched the lock shut.
Registration numbers on the ship gleamed dully in the half darkness.
_X-13-X._ "X," the unknown. "13," the ill-fated.
He went back to the house, pulled the metal lock to behind him. He
stood rigidly for a long long while. Thinking.
He went over to the transmitter set in the corner of the room and
looked down at it. He brought his right hand up, let it hover over the
control buttons.
The room was as silent as a room can ever be.
A buzzer suddenly bracked out. It was a loud, naked, startling sound.
Like a bugle in an empty church. Henderson jerked. He gulped in a
trembling breath, turned, nervously wet his lips. He went over to the
outside front lock and pulled it open.
* * * * *
It was a black-haired woman who had wide, wild eyes. The woman was
wearing a golden-colored modo-strap between dead white breasts. And in
her hand she clutched a heat gun.
"Back it right in, Buster!" The woman's voice was harsh. "You're not
the one I want, but right now I'm not too choosey."
Henderson swallowed. He took a few backward steps. Then a few more. He
watched the woman's shoulder nudge the lock shut. He watched her come
toward him.
"That's far enough. Where is he? Where's Artie Sterling?"
Henderson didn't say anything. The woman's skin. White. Prison white.
He knew.
The woman saw the heat gun on the table. She smiled, not amused, and
picked it up. That made two guns leveled at Henderson.
"What I couldn't do with these. All right, where is he?"
But he didn't answer. Adjustment is a method thing.
The woman rapped: "Look, I got the word. They said I'd find my husband
with somebody's wife. Here. At 327 Residential. That jar your memory?"