Which was just the way Jason wanted it. He needed to get as deep into them as he could before someone realized they might be on the losing end. The rough stuff would start and he wanted to put it off as long as possible. It would be hard to win smoothly then-and his psi power might go as quickly as it had come. That had happened before.
He was playing against the house now, the two other players were obvious shills, and a crowd had januned solidly around to watch. After losing and winning a bit, he hit a streak of naturals and his pile of gold chips tottered higher and higher. There was nearly a billion there, he estimated roughly. The dice were still falling true, though he was soaked with sweat from the effort. Betting the entire stack of chips, he reached for the dice. The stickman reached faster and hooked them away.
“House calls for new dice,” he said flatly.
Jason straightened up and wiped his hands, glad of the instant’s relief. This was the third time the house had changed dice to try and break his winning streak. It was their privilege. The hardeyed Casino man opened his wallet as he had done before and drew out a pair at random. Stripping off their plastic cover, he threw them the length of the table to Jason. They came up a natural seven and Jason smiled.
When he scooped them up, the smile slowly faded. The dice were transparent, finely made, evenly weighted on all sides-and crooked.
The pigment on the dots of five sides of each die was some heavy metal compound, probably lead. The sixth side was a ferric compound. They would roll true unless they hit a magnetic field-which meant
the entire surface of the table could be magnetized. He could never have spotted the difference if he hadn’t looked at the dice with his mind. But what could he do about it?
Shaking them slowly, he glanced quickly around the table. There was what he needed. An ashtray with a magnet in its base to hold it to the metal edge of the table. Jason stopped shaking the dice and looked at them quizzically, then reached over and grabbed the ashtray. He dropped the base against his hand.
As he lifted the ashtray, there was a concerted gasp from all sides. The dice were sticking there, upside down, boxcars showing.
“Are these what you call honest dice?” he asked.
The man who had thrown out the dice reached quickly for his hip pocket. Jason was the only one who saw what happened next. He was watching that hand closely, his own fingers near his gun butt. As the man dived into his pocket, a hand reached out of the crowd behind him. From its square-cut size, it could have belonged to only one person. The thick thumb and index finger clamped swiftly around the houseman’s wrist, then they were gone. The man screamed shrilly and held up his arm, his hand dangling limp as a glove from the broken wrist bones.
With his flank well protected, Jason could go on with the game. “The old dice, if you don’t mind,” he said quietly.
Dazedly the stickman pushed them over. Jason shook quickly and rolled. Before they hit the table, he realized he couldn’t control them-the transient psi power had gone.
End over end they turned. And faced up seven.
Counting the chips as they were pushed over to him, he added up a bit under two billion credits. They would be winning that much if he left the game now-but it wasn’t the three billion that Kerk needed. Well, it would have to be enough. As he reached for the chips he caught Kerk’s eye across the table and the other man shook his head in a steady no.
“Let it ride,” Jason said wearily, “one more roll.”
He breathed on the dice, polished them on his cuff, and wondered how he had ever gotten into this spot. Billions riding on a pair of dice. That was as much as the annual income of some planets. The only thing that made it possible to have stakes like that was the fact that the planetary government had a controlling interest in the Casino. He shook as long as he could, reaching for the control that wasn’t there-then let fly.