So they did—and Rafferty had sat by leadenly while Walsh cleaned him out. Thirty thousand shiny credits down the drain, and the debt due tomorrow at noon. You didn't welsh on Walsh, either. It was sort of a slogan.

Rafferty didn't have the thirty thousand. He had two alternatives: he could scrape up the cash somewhere and hand it over, or he could grab an out-system liner and get going toward Aldebaran, and hope to live. He wouldn't—not for long.

He decided to scrape up the cash. And there was one sure way to do that. Poker.

Poker was getting to be an unpopular game, and there were two reasons for it. One was the advent of more popular new types of gambling devices; the other reason was that Rafferty was so good it didn't pay to compete against him. He often had trouble getting up a game. People tended to slink away when they heard Rafferty wanted to play poker. He played it hard and he played it mean, and he didn't lose too often.

That was why he had come to the Ganymede Casino. On the big pleasure-moon, anyone could find some sort of game going—and if he couldn't, the house would be glad to provide some competition. Rafferty didn't much like the idea of playing a house operator, but he was confident.

He patted the ten g's and waited. After a couple of minutes an impeccably-dressed man in tails came over to him and smiled courteously.

"Yes, sir?"

"My name is Rafferty. I'm looking for a poker game in the house. There one around I can get into?"

The impeccable man frowned slightly. "I don't think so, Mr.—ah—Rafferty. Wouldn't you care to try our Roto, or the planet-faro, or robot roulette? We—"

"I want to play poker," Rafferty said. The chips were down now; he had to stick to his specialty.

"Well, I'll see what I can do. Would you wait here, please?"

Rafferty waited. He waited while the impeccable man cruised around the huge gameroom, murmuring gently to someone here, someone there. In all cases the response was the same: a shrug, a curious glance in Rafferty's direction, a quick and emphatic shake of the head.

No one wanted to play. Usually Rafferty could count on some fool millionaire anxious to try to best the great Rafferty at five-card 

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