“Maybe he was right,” another teamster said, evidently much depressed. “Let’s see what else they’ve got here.”
“No!” Dom barked. “No more of this-we’re going back to the camp. Don’t you realize we are in the Cave of Caspar-the luck index is low here.” He jerked his thumb. “They don’t rely on luck-they’ve fixed the odds in their favor.”
“I hope you manage to find some, sir,” someone else said.
Dom smiled, but said nothing as he led than back to the transparent sphere.
Chapter Fifteen
Some order had been put back into the Wheel camp by the time they returned. The burned-out tents had been bulldozed out into the desert and those still serviceable regrouped. Control had been re-established, too, over the camp’s twin-the Legitimacy site a couple of miles away.
Dom learned immediately, however, that Hakandra and Shane had both vanished, and could not be found.
He put the matter out of his mind for the moment and made his way directly to one special tent whose interior was completely screened from the outside by a long vestibule.
He was met by Haskand. “Well, are you ready?” Dom asked the scientist sharply. “Can it be done?” “We’re as ready as we are likely to be.” “Then let’s waste no more time.” There were others besides Haskand in the tent: a few members of the mathematical cadre, and some very special technicians. The cause of their presence was the three consoles that occupied the center of the tent: machinery that Dom believed was unique in the galaxy, if not in the universe.
The luck equations bad not been obtained easily. They had been derived, after centuries of effort, from the work of the wayward genius Georgius Velikosk. Unfortunately Velikosk had committed little of his knowledge to record (he had, in fact, killed himself when the Grand Wheel tried to wrest his knowledge from him) and even now Wheel technicians did not understand how the single practical device he had built, the Velikosk roulette machine, functioned. 157
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Nevertheless his original machine formed the basis of the apparatus that now faced Dom-none other had been devised capable of handling the luck equations.
Dom sat in the straight-backed chair and let the techs tape leads to the palms of his hands. He was now part of the circuit.
He nodded, giving the signal to go ahead, and relaxed. He was aware that the procedure was not entirely safe. There was even a small risk that the Velikosk part of the equipment would inadvertently perform the only other use the Wheel had ever found for it, and dissipate his being, drawing him down into the region of pure randomness.
In silence the apparatus went into operation. A ghostly nimbus, the same that had raced round the table from man to man at the last Wheel council meeting on Luna, surrounded Dom. It seemed to everyone that an awesome, numinous power entered the tent;
even the most hardened scientists among them were able to interpret it only one way: it was the presence of Lady.
The nimbus faded as the apparatus switched itself off. The leads were detached from Dom’s hands. He rose. He had been aware of no special sensation but he, too, had felt that presence. He was satisfied that the goddess had entered into him.
Haskand spoke deferentially. “You understand, sir, that no charge of this strength has ever been administered before? It cannot be compared with any of our practice shots.”
Dom looked at him in supercilious, amused fashion, the way a favorite of the gods might look at a mere mortal. “All is clear,” he murmured.
Scarne had never been told what lay within the specially guarded tent, but after visiting his own quarters he had been watching curiously for Dom to come out. The Wheel leader walked straight towards him.
“I want you to accompany me back up to the asteroid, Cheyne,” he said. “I’d like you to be in on the final act. But first let’s take a little trip.”
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Someone emerged from the tent where was kept the narrowbeam equipment that had been commandeered from the Legit archeologists. He hurried up to Dom. “We’ve been getting news in the past hour, sir. The Hadranics are massing at the far end of the Cave. It looks like their big push.”
Dom raised his eyebrows. “Then this place may not be too safe shortly,” he remarked casually. “But no matter, we should be away from here before anything drastic happens.”
He pointed to the edge of the camp, ushering Scame in that direction, and beyond the pattern of tents climbed into one of the ground cars parked there. As Scarne joined him he took the controls and, raising the car a few yards above ground level, sent it shooting out into the desert.
Soon the camp was out of sight. Dom crisscrossed the terrain in wide sweeps. Half an hour later he settled the car down on the desert and brought it to a stop. For a while the two men sat staring in silence out over the wilderness. Then Dom twisted round in his seat to look directly at Scarne.
“Why don’t you do it now, Cheyne?” “Huh?” Scame looked back at him with an expression half blank, half of fright.
“Come come, Cheyne, I know, or at least I am almost sure, that you have once again decided to kill me, this time without giving me an honorable chance, before I am able to play the last game. Is it not true that you have a weapon of some sort secreted about your person?”
There was a long pause before Scame could bring himself to reply. “Yes,” he said then, thickly. “At least we’d be left with half…”
“Well, go ahead,” Dom invited. “Try to kill me.” Why not? thought Cheyne. Wonderingly he brought forth the handgun he had picked up earlier. It was a small-aperture Borges beamer, an ideal gun for close quarters and more commonly a woman’s weapon. “It’s obvious you had a reason for returning here
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before continuing the game,” he said, holding the Borges uncertainly. “What were you doing in that tent?”
Dom did not answer, but continued smiling while Scarne raised the beamer and pressed the stud.
Nothing happened.
Scame turned the gun over and opened the inspection plate. “The charge failed,” he announced, peering in. “It’s burned out.”
“What are you going to do now, Cheyne? You could try strangling me, I suppose. You’d probably fall over and break your neck.”
Now Scarne’s suspicions were confirmed. “Luck,” he said. “You’ve given yourself artificial luck.”
“You asked me why we came back here. You knew already, unless you’re a fool.”
“I thought you said the technique hadn’t been developed enough to be reliable?”
“We’ve taken it to the point where we can risk using it in an emergency. It would have been better,” he added affably, “if matters had gone otherwise, of course.”
“I reckon you’ve already badly miscalculated once, over the galactics’ gamesmanship. Now you’re using the luck equations, when you had already decided not to use them. What if it goes wrong somehow?”
“One must estimate the likely outcomes. It raises an interesting conundrum. Can one be invested with luck and be unlucky enough to lose it?”
Scame sighed. “You’ve certainly got nerve, I’ll say that. Did you bring me out here just for this little demonstration?”
“No.” Dom’s eyes scanned the horizon. “I’m looking for Shane. He’s got to be out here somewhere. That Legitimacy fellow Hakandra is hiding him somewhere. Probably underground.”
“And you can find him where others couldn’t?”
“I’m lucky.”
He put the car in motion again and drove it on its wheels for about a mile, apparently in a direction
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chosen at random. Then he stopped and pointed to a rise in the ground some distance away.
“See that bank-a sort of hillock? That could hide something.”
“It’s far from being a unique feature.” “Just the same I think I’ll get somebody to fly over that hillock and take a heat reading,” Dom said thoughtfully.
He seemed satisfied. He turned the car round and took it off the ground again. They went skimming over the terrain back towards the camp.
“I think I’ll soon have him back again,” he exclaimed gladly. “The dear boy.”
“What for?” Scame asked in a sudden passion. “To make him as corrupt and evil as yourself? Why don’t you leave him alone and give him a chance to live decently?”
“What’s this, my dear fellow?” said Dom, affecting surprise. “Jealousy?” “Jealousy? No …”
“No, it’s real hatred, real disgust, I can see that. And all based on a misconception, too! All because you think I’ve been gambling away Sol civilization. Putting up humankind as a stake in the game!” “Well, haven’t you?” Scame asked, puzzled. “Why, no, of course not!” Dom, in high spirits, was laughing at him. “Allow me to destroy your delusions, Cheyne. I admit I did nothing to discourage them, but after all I wanted you to have an incentive to play. But did I ever actually say I was putting civilization at risk? The real truth is, I would have done it without a qualm-the higher the stakes, the more we stood to win. But the galactics wouldn’t accept anything we didn’t actually own. We would have had to be in possession of the Legitimacy, and that was something we couldn’t obtain. So it would have been like passing a dud check. The galactics don’t let you get away with that.”