House Operator
By S. M. Tenneshaw
At poker, Rafferty knew he could beat any
man alive. Now, needing money badly, he walked
into the Ganymede Casino looking for a patsy....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
December 1957
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Rafferty was a gambler of the old school. He didn't believe in any ofthe fancy electronic gadgets that the casinos went in for these days,didn't much care for the psionic games of chance and other tricky andprobably rigged affairs. Give him a good poker game any time, and hewould be happy.
He stood in the door of the Ganymede Casino, outlining himself againstthe gaudy lights flashing within, standing there patiently. Inside, therich and would-be rich of a dozen planets were enjoying themselves,playing the brightly-lit games and throwing money around in handfuls.
Rafferty waited for some attention. His hand slid to the bulky roll inhis pocket—one hundred hundred-credit bills, 10,000 smackers in all.It was all Rafferty had. He was here to triple it, or else.
Tomorrow 30,000 had to be handed over to Lee Walsh. It was the resultof the one mistake Rafferty had made.
Walsh was a big-time gambler, with ulcers and high blood pressure andten million in the bank. Rafferty was straight middle-time, a man whogenuinely enjoyed his chancy profession. And Walsh had said, "Why don'tyou play something I like to play? All the time poker, poker, poker.Why don't you switch to something else."
"I like poker," Rafferty said. "I win at poker. Why switch?"
Walsh seemed to stiffen. "Let's have a little game of planet-faro,Rafferty. Just you and me. I'm tired of all this poker."
"I don't like planet-faro. It's a lousy game. All those flashinglights—it's more like pinball than honest-to-darn gambling."
"You ain't chicken, Rafferty?"
"Chicken?"
"Yeah. Let's try some planet-faro."
So they did—and Rafferty had sat by leadenly while Walsh cleaned himout. Thirty thousand shiny credits down the drain, and the debt duetomorrow at noon. You didn't welsh on Walsh, either. It was sort of aslogan.
Rafferty didn't have the thirty thousand. He had two alternatives: hecould scrape up the cash somewhere and hand it over, or he could graban 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 dothat. Poker.
Poker was getting to be an unpopular game, and there were two reasonsfor it. One was the advent of more popular new types of gamblingdevices; the other reason was that Rafferty was so good it didn't payto compete against him. He often had trouble getting up a game. Peopletended to slink away when they heard Rafferty wanted to play poker. Heplayed 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 bigpleasure-moon, anyone could find some sort of game going—and if hecouldn't, the house would be glad to provide some competition. Raffertydidn't much like the idea of playing a house operator, but he wasconfident.
He patted the ten g's and waited. After a couple of minutes animpeccably-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. Thereone around I can get into?"
The impeccable man