get like that. He liked to study the people who came here to Half-Century House to gamble. Some could afford it, some could not.

That black-haired woman over by the quarter-teel machines for instance. The one with the cheap new plastiskin with the phony golden modo-strap on it. Take her. Ten to one she worked somewhere in a mining office and managed to put away, by great sacrifice, a little something from her salary each week.

Ten to one she'd done this for a year just so she could come up here to Fraon and have herself a whirl in the gaming houses for one or two days. How do you like that? And ten to one she'd go home broke as hell and go back to the slaving routine some more. Unless, of course, she could discover for herself some other less laborious way of making a fast teel.

Not a bad looking woman, either, he thought. There was something—some tiny little thing—about her that puzzled him, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He watched her play the machines, watched her as she scanned the place with dark eyes that missed about as much as the teel-collector on tax day. Odd. She didn't seem to be paying any attention to the machines she was playing, she seemed more interested in the motley crowd in the place.

Oh, well. Just another woman. Another twenty minutes and they'd be closing up and he could go home for the big sleep everybody enjoyed during the synthi-rain. He spun his wheel idly and looked away.

"You running this wheel or just modeling for a space artist?"

The croupier jerked his eyes around. Then he blinked. The woman with the black hair and the golden modo-strap was standing at his wheel giving him a sour eye. He pulled himself together, worked a little house-smile for her.

"Dreaming," he admitted. "Like to try the wheel?" He felt sorry for her. Poor kid, she should stick to the quarter-teel machines.

He watched her flip the pocket in her plastiskin. He watched her with eyes that began to bulge as he saw the amount of credits she piled out on the table in front of him.

"What's the current odds on whether the scientists have figured out whether space is infinite?" she asked.

His eyes were still bulging, but he looked away, checked on the chart. My God, the long shots these amateurs take! "One hundred and two thousand to one," he said. "As of ten twenty-two tonight, which is the last 

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