While we were commenting on that, Dane leaned over me and grunted in my ear, "I'm going to gamble. So long, unless you really want to come."
It wasn't the warmest invitation I'd ever had, but the noise in the Blue Hell was getting heavy. I tagged after him and discovered a full-scale casino just next to the Blue Hell, with blackjack tables, poker, a slow-motion roulette with a big, dense ball, craps with dice that took forever to stop, even a roped-off section for baccarat. Metchnikov headed for the blackjack tables and drummed his fingers on the back of a player's chair, waiting for an opening. Around then he noticed I had come with him.
"Oh." He looked around the room. "What do you like to play?"
"I've played it all," I said, slurring the words a little. Bragging a little, too. "Maybe a little baccarat."
He looked at me first with respect, then amusement. "Fifty's the minimum bet."
I had five or six thousand dollars left in my account. I shrugged.
"That's fifty thousand," he said.
I choked. He said absently, moving over behind a player whose chip stack was running out, "You can get down for ten dollars at roulette. Hundred minimum for most of the others. Oh, there's a ten-dollar slot machine around somewhere, I think." He dived for the open chair and that was the last I saw of him.
I watched for a moment and realized that the black-eyebrowed girl was at the same table, busy studying her cards. She didn't look up.
I could see I wasn't going to be able to afford much gambling here. At that point I realized I couldn't really afford all the drinks I'd been buying, either, and then my interior sensory system began to make me realize just how many of those drinks I had had. The last thing I realized was that I had to get back to my room, pretty fast.
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SYLVESTER MACKLEN: FATHER OF GATEWAY
Gateway was discovered by Sylvester Macklen, a tunnel explorer on Venus, who found an operable Heechee spacecraft in a dig. He succeeded in getting it to the surface and bringing it to Gateway, where it now rests In Dock 5-33. Tragically, Macklen was not able to return and, although he succeeded in signaling his presence by exploding the fuel tank of the lander of his ship, he was dead before Investigators reached Gateway.
Macklen was a courageous and resourceful man, and the plaque at Dock 5-33 commemorates his unique service to humanity. Services are held at appropriate times by representatives of the various faiths.
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7
I am on the mat, and I am not very comfortable. Physically, I mean. I have had an operation not long ago and probably the stitches aren't yet absorbed.
Sigfrid says, "We were talking about your job, Rob."
That's dull enough. But safe enough. I say, "I hated my job. Who wouldn't hate the food mines?"
"But you kept it, Rob. You never even tried to get on anywhere else. You could have switched to sea-farming, maybe. And you dropped out of school."