Then he felt himself falling. There was roaring all around him.
He was there again.
He had dropped out of structured existence and back into the sea of chaos. It roared all around him, generating numbers and dissolving them again.
But he remained there only moments, because the strain on his consciousness was by this time too great, and it failed altogether.
When Scame passed out, the big alien who had set up the game reappeared. He stepped round the table to look down at Scame, who had first slumped onto
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the table then slid to the floor, scattering his cards as he went.
“Your friend has been interfered with,” he said to Dom. “I detect foreign agencies in his blood.”
Dom rose from the table and walked round to frown down at Scarne. “His enemies injected him with an addictive drug,” he said by way of a possible explanation. “But I got my biochemists to cure him.”
“They did not entirely succeed, it seems. The rigors of the game have caused a recurrence of its effects. However, I think they will prove to be temporary.”
“In view of his condition, it was unwise of him to play so powerful a card,” one of the galactic players observed, glancing at The Wheel, now lying face up on the table.
Scame heard these latter words as he regained consciousness. Assisted by Dom, he got unsteadily to his feet.
His first impressions were the same as those he had experienced after receiving the mugger Jackpot on lo. Everything seemed unnaturally vast. The domed room was as big as a solar system. The untranslated alien’s face, bent to regard him from its superior height, seemed impossibly foreign and gigantic.
But this time the illusion wore off fairly quickly. Scame stumbled to his chair and sat down, resting his head on his hand.
“Sorry about that,” he muttered.
“This game, at any rate, would appear to be null and void,” the alien remarked. “The cards have been revealed.” He turned to Dom. “Since your friend would not be advised to continue, perhaps you would care to select another partner. You have the option of calling quits now, of course-though half your holdings would remain in our hands.”
“No-we play to the limit,” Dom shot back, a degree of passion in his voice. “But a different game.”
He looked down at the disarrayed table, then turned to the bulking alien. “I want to stake the whole of my remaining holdings on one more game-double
THE GRAND WHEEL
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or quits. If I win, we can continue. If not …” He shrugged.
The alien paused, reflecting. “And the game?” “One without any skill in it.” Dom seemed agitated. He swallowed. “Let’s do some real gambling. With stakes as high as they’ll go. Any random fifty-fifty game will do it. The toss of a coin-”
Scarne twisted round in his chair and regarded Dom with horror.
No, he was about to shout, let’s carry on playing. At least we might have a chance! But then he saw that Dom, by his own lights at any rate, was once again right. A fifty-fifty game was their best chance of coming out of this intact. They were being out-played by the galactics.
The two alien players were poker-faced as the untranslated galactic considered. “Are you agreed?” Dom demanded, a harsh note edging into his voice.
“It would be unlike us to refuse a challenge,” the galactic murmured. “Even though, on present showing, it removes our current advantage.” “Any limit on the bank?” Dom queried. “None.”
“Okay.” Dom relaxed, his shoulders slumping. He was, Scame realized, tired. “I want to break off first and return to my camp, to freshen up, to-to freshen my luck. � that’s all right by you.”
“Ah, luck,” the alien said, as if amused. “It is astonishing how many gamblers pay homage to the god of luck.”
“In our mythology, she’s a lady,” Dom told him. “A goddess, not a god.”
“That is because your species has maternal fixations. We see the gods are more disinterested. Will you return alone?”
“I’d like to bring one other with me. For company.”
“You are our guest,” the alien said courteously. He turned his head, surveying the scene as if checking for final details. “Then I will bid you goodbye for the
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present. Before leaving, why not visit our Avenue of Chance? There are many small games there that might entertain you.” He held out his arm, elegantly indicating the exit.
The Grand Wheel team made a subdued group as they left the domed building and emerged onto the dusty street. Walking with Dom, Scarne paused. To one side, the interstellar travel globe could be seen just over the close horizon. The concourse which he had noticed earlier, and which presumably was the avenue referred to by the galactic, lay a few yards away.
Dom gazed towards it. “What do you think, Scame?”
“It might be interesting,” Scame said, his voice still none too steady.
“No harm in taking a look,” Dom agreed. As they walked towards the entrance to the avenue, Scame found that his mind was still preoccupied with the Wheel card. He wondered if the glimpses he had received reflected real facts. Or whether they were only the work of the imagination, invoked by the rare combination of an addictive drug, his randomatic training, and the too-evocative symbols of the cards. He had been handling a Tarot pack, he recalled, minutes before he played the mugger on lo.
Probably he would never know the truth of it. “Games theory,” he said aloud. Dom shot him a mystified look. “What, Cheyne?” “It’s a problem biochemists have never solved. How life manages to emerge from inanimate matter. The odds are all against it, in chemical terms, yet it happens. The biochemists-they should study games theory.”
“Is that what you learned while you were out cold on us?” “Yes.”
“If you had held that last card and not played it, Cheyne, we might have come out well ahead on that round, despite the fact that you were already losing control. Still, it wasn’t really your fault.”
“No.”
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The Avenue of Chance was, at first sight, a tawdry affair. Built of a material resembling canvas, the booths had a makeshift appearance. The party ventured diffidently into the midway, then stopped as a peculiar animal, or creature, pushed through the front flap of the first booth and stepped out to accost them.
When squatting on its hind legs, the creature was about four foot high; it looked somewhat like a cross between a monkey and a hairless dog, with a long tapering snout and narrow eyes which glittered.
“Good day, gentlemen,” it began in a soft, gruff voice. “Try your luck at my game of chance. The prize is of incalculable value.”
Scarne tried to peer past the folds that hid the interior of the booth, but he failed to see anything in the dimness within. Dom gestured around him. “Was all this set up just for us?” he asked.
“By no means, sir. We tour three galaxies with our little show, visiting all manner of out-of-the-way places. Step within, any of you, and dare the odds!” “What is the prize?” Scame asked curiously. The animal licked its chops with a pink, pointed tongue. “In this galaxy it is a principle of life that all creatures have but brief life-spans. It is an escape from this law that I offer. Take a spin on my machine, and you may win immortality!” “And if we lose?”
“Then your life-force becomes ours, to use as we wish.”
Muller spoke up. “What are the odds?” “A thousand to one against,” the creature said smoothly. “Generous figures, in the circumstances. You have but a few decades to lose. But you may win years measured in millions!”
“Come on,” Dom ordered abruptly. “Let’s get back to the sphere.”
“Wait a minute!” Muller looked distraught; he was thinking hard. “I’ll take those odds,” he said. He rounded on Dom, cutting off his angry remonstrances.
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“We’ve as good as lost, Chariman!” he protested. “This is the only way we’ll get anything. I reckon there isn’t much left to lose.”
A fateful look came over him as he lumbered towards the booth. The alien rose, held aside the fold of cloth to allow him to enter, then followed. Before the cloth fell, Scarne glimpsed a low table with some sort of apparatus on it.
Less than a minute later, the creature reappeared and once more sat on its hind legs. “Who else will dare to enter the presence of the gods and snatch life everlasting?”
It was, Scarne realized, a standard barker pattern to be used on small planet yokels.
“Where’s Muller?” Dom demanded, blinking.
“Your friend did not win and so lost his small stake. Come now, don’t hesitate! The great prize is still available!”
Dom shook bis head in wonderment. “And after all I’ve taught him! Still we don’t need him any more.”