"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!"