Title: West o' Mars
Author: Fontenay, Charles L.
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "West o' Mars" ***


                             WEST O' MARS

                        By CHARLES L. FONTENAY

                    Illustrated by JOHN SCHOENHERR

                     _Peache believed that behind
                     every man lies the influence
                    of a woman. Influence, though,
                        can take odd forms...._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                         Infinity April 1958.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Of all the planets, Peache liked Mars best. Peache was a salesman, and
his territory was the inhabited planets and moons. There were things
he liked about each one, even Earth, but he particularly enjoyed the
gentle gravity of Mars--a gravity that made him feel as though he were
flying when he walked in long, easy leaps, and yet didn't frighten him
by letting him shoot halfway out to space.

His stop at Mars in 2081 added an experience which Peache considered
an extraordinary piece of luck. Having supper with Samlaan Britt in
West o' Mars was comparable to having tea with Shah Jehan in the Taj
Mahal.

The supper had been incomparable. Now the two of them sat in the
Dice Room of the tower, warmed by a green and orange blaze in the
huge fireplace, and smoked the sweet, strong, foot-long cigars that
are produced only in the Hadriacum Lowlands of Mars. Beyond the
double-thick glass of the window-wall, the sun was setting behind the
fantastic dunes of the Aeolia Desert.

Around them in the dim-lit room, the air was thick with cigar smoke,
haunted by the aura of legend. The tales of the founding of West o'
Mars were vague: Peache had heard the vast wealth that built it had
been won on a single throw of the dice, that Britt had been driven to
build it by the hatred of a woman he loved, that he had built it above
the bones of a man who had stolen his wife, that it was a memorial to
his wife. While he was here, Peache hoped to sift truth from fancy, for
he was a man of romantic bent.

Below them the tower dropped down the side of the cliff to a clear
dome on the now-shadowed lowland of Lacus Lucrinus. The dome enclosed
most of the majestic building and its exotic gardens from the
thin, oxygen-poor Martian air. It was a daring conception, nowhere
duplicated--an air-tight building that projected high above its
plasticene dome.

Peache inhaled a long sweet draft of smoke and blessed the fact that
his product was the latest in weather-control units. Only for such a
major purchase would Samlaan Britt have invited him here.

"You aren't married, Mr. Britt," said Peache when the conversation
provided him with an opening. "Don't you get lonesome out here,
hundreds of miles from the nearest city, with no one around but robots?"

"I have many tapes and films, Mr. Peache," replied Britt, smiling.
He was a short, slight man with close-cropped gray hair and round,
guileless eyes. "I have my gardens, and the lowland of Lacus Lucrinus,
and the desert."

"Even so, I'm surprised you haven't found a woman to share all this
beauty and wealth with you. I'm sure there are many of them who'd be
willing."

"No doubt," replied Britt drily. "But I am a man of peculiar tastes.
I enjoy my own thoughts, and generally I prefer my own viewpoint
unalloyed by the differing outlook of someone else. I find your company
interesting for an evening, Mr. Peache, but few women could share this
isolation without becoming bored and, consequently, a nuisance."

Then Peache told Britt of his theory: that behind the accomplishments
of every successful man, somewhere, lies the influence of a woman. It
might be that his mother babied him far into puberty, and he achieved
things to prove his integrity as an individual. It might be that he
reacted to an unhappy love affair by proving himself a better man than
his more fortunate rival.

"In my case, I was the only boy among eight children," said Peache. "I
chose the freedom of traveling about through space, I think, through
an unconscious desire to escape from a female-dominated society. I
think achievement in any field is a sublimation of the sex drive, and
I understand you did not inherit any of your wealth, Mr. Britt, but
amassed it all yourself."

Britt was silent for a moment, contemplating the end of his cigar.

"And, of course, you're curious about the conflicting stories that are
spread around the system," he suggested. "Well, there was a woman,
Mr. Peache, but I'm afraid what occurred has nothing to do with your
theory."

       *       *       *       *       *

West o' Mars (said Britt) represents a dream I have cherished, I think,
since boyhood. I think the seed of the dream must have been sown when I
saw the early newsfilms of the dome-cities on Luna and Mars.

The dream drove me to study architecture. Man was expanding swiftly
into space and my primary interest was in extra-terrestrial design. I
faced a bright future.

But twenty years ago, when I met Dori, the realization of West o' Mars
seemed farther away than it had in boyhood. An architect's draftsman is
paid well but not lavishly, and you can imagine what sort of wealth
was required to build a place like this, forty million miles from Earth.

My trouble was, I was in a hurry. My weakness was, I knew that the turn
of a card or the roll of the dice could double my weekly salary. It
could but, of course, as often as not it didn't. Consequently, I might
be rich for a day, only to go hungry for a week.

It was during one of the hungry periods in 2060 that I attended a
meeting of the Astronaut Club for the sake of my stomach. I was living
then in Huntsville, the Alabama spaceport city, and it was for business
reasons that I belonged to the Astronaut Club.

The food was fair, the speeches dull. I was little interested in the
entertainment that was to follow, but I wanted to finish my cigar and
coffee. The entertainment, it turned out, was Dori.

Her father came out of the wings first, a consumptive old man with a
shock of unkempt gray hair. In the center of the table he laid a small
rubber ball, a coin and a pair of dice.

He bounced the rubber ball. It bounced a few times and subsided, after
a couple of helpful Astronauts had prevented it from rolling off the
edge of the table. He tossed the coin about a dozen times and rolled
the dice about a dozen times, to prove that the falls were at random.
All the while, he gave out a tired, monotonous spiel about the laws of
chance.

Then Dori came out. She was too thin to be pretty, but there was a
childish appeal about her. She had big, dark eyes in a sad little face,
and almost colorless hair. She impressed me not at all. What held me
then was that something obviously was to be done with dice.

The old man bounced the ball again. Dori stood a little way from the
table and did nothing but keep her eyes on the bouncing ball. It
bounced. It kept bouncing. It did not slow down. At the top of each
arc, something invisible seemed to give it an additional downward push,
so that it did not stop. When it drifted toward the edge of the table,
something invisible seemed to guide it gently but forcefully back to
the center.

The old man tossed the coin. Dori watched it silently as it spun in a
sparkling arc. It fell heads. He tossed it again. It fell heads. As
long as anyone at the table still doubted--nineteen times, I think--he
tossed the coin and it fell heads.

The old man rolled the dice. Dori watched them as they rolled. They
fell seven. He rolled them again. They fell seven. This time I counted.
Twenty-two times he rolled the dice, and twenty-two times they fell
seven. Then someone called for an eight, and they fell eight.

The act ended on a farcical note, with water jumping from a glass to
splash the shirt front of Gerss, the club president. Gerss, whose shirt
was well stuffed, didn't appear to appreciate it much, but the others
roared. Then Dori and her father retired--and I was up from the table,
nearly upsetting my chair, to follow them.

Most of the other members of the Astronaut Club undoubtedly thought
the act was a clever piece of legerdemain. But I knew the power Dori
possessed, for I had read much about it and had yearned for it myself.

       *       *       *       *       *

Obviously, Dori had strong psychokinetic ability. If you are not
familiar with that, Mr. Peache, it is the ability to manipulate
physical things by means of the mind alone. It is still a subject for
investigation, but it was a quality that Dori possessed beyond any
doubt.

I caught up with them in the next room, waiting; for Greene, our club
secretary, was a cautious man and never paid entertainers in advance.
When Dori's father realized I was not the man bringing his money to
him, he sat down disconsolately in a straight-backed chair and let me
talk to Dori without interruption. Probably he had been through this
before.

I introduced myself to Dori and, since her impatient expression didn't
encourage idle chatter, started right in with:

"You and your father are picking up pennies, when you could be rich.
Now--"

"If you were going to offer to be our manager, you're wasting your
breath. My father has had such offers before, and we want no manager.
He's satisfied with things as they are."

That's what I had planned, although being their "manager" would have
been only a blind for what I had in mind. I changed my tack.

"As a matter of fact, I was interested in you, Miss Dori. I was
attracted to you the moment I saw you. I wonder if you'd go out to
dinner with me tonight?"

It was a risky invitation, for I'd have to borrow money for such a
date, and prospective creditors were wary of me by now. Her face lit
up a little at the words--I'm sure she had received such a compliment
rarely, if ever. But she said:

"My father doesn't allow me to go out with men."

I thought a minute.

"Surely, he couldn't have any objection to my visiting _him_ tonight,
could he? And if you're there, well...."

"We're staying at the Ringo Hotel," she said after a moment's
hesitation, and favored me with a shy smile.

Well, I was able to borrow some money, and with it I bought a few
flowers for Dori and a quantity of the rawest, cheapest whiskey I could
find. I had recognized the symptoms of the sot in the old man's pouchy
face and shaking hands.

The Ringo Hotel was a run-down place in the eastern sector of town. The
old man was not especially glad to see me when I appeared early that
evening, but his attitude changed quickly when I unwrapped the liquor.
Within an hour he was dead drunk and snoring on the bed.

Dori drank nothing, and I drank just enough to loosen my tongue
and my inhibitions. It was not the sort of romantic atmosphere I
would have preferred, with the two of us facing each other in hard,
straight-backed chairs, the bare light bulb glaring down on us and the
old souse snorting away in his drunken dreams; but I was determined not
to let this opportunity escape me.

I talked my way carefully, without making any precipitous advances or
suggestions, and I soon learned one inescapable fact. Dori had no love
left for her father and would leave him in a moment; but her long-dead
mother had instilled in her a rigid morality that left no door open
for an informal association, no matter how attractive I made it. There
was one course open to me.

"Dori," I said, "I have never married because all my life I have been
waiting for the woman to appear whom I knew would be right for me. When
I saw you, I thought you were that woman and now I know. Will you marry
me?"

Now, would you think any woman would consider such a proposal seriously
from a man she had met eight hours before, especially a sedate,
conventional woman like Dori? It was an indication of her hatred of the
life she led that she did not even glance at the old man on the bed.

Her answer was in the light that flooded her thin face. In that moment,
she was beautiful.

       *       *       *       *       *

I had made fast work of my courtship of Dori, and I made fast work of
the task of getting rid of her father. After our marriage, I gave him
enough money to get blind drunk, and then we left town in a hurry. As
much as she had grown to detest the old bum, Dori did not particularly
approve of this trick, but she had surrendered to a love for me so
complete she was willing to do anything I asked without question. I
understand he died in jail soon afterward.

Our match was not an unhappy one. I have no great capacity for
affection, but I was not cruel to Dori. To win her in a hurry, I had
had to convince her I was desperately in love with her, and it was to
my interest to continue the illusion.

For my plans encompassed no continuation of the piddling little magic
show she had put on with her father. I was a gambler, and with Dori at
my side a great field of opportunity lay before me.

I don't know if you are familiar with the game of dice, Mr. Peache? No?
It's a very ancient and honorable game.

The player with the dice rolls them. If a seven or an eleven comes up,
it's a natural and he wins the bet and keeps the dice for another roll.
If a two, three or twelve turns up, it's craps and he loses his bet but
keeps the dice for another roll. If any other number comes up, that's
his point, and he keeps rolling the dice until either that number
repeats or a seven comes up. If he wins his point, he wins the bet and
keeps the dice, but a seven loses him both his bet and the dice.

Dori's method of controlling the dice was to control one of them. When
they are rolled, dice rarely stop at the same instant. She would let
the first one stop, then keep giving the other the necessary mental
push until it reached the number that gave the combination she wanted.
Since the numbers on each die run from one to six, seven was the only
number she could be sure of forcing; but if a point were set, she could
prevent the dice from hitting seven until the opportunity occurred to
make the point.

She was reluctant at first to use her ability in a way she felt was
dishonest, but, as I said, she had given herself up to adoration of
me, and it took only a little affectionate persuasion to soothe her
conscience into abeyance. She did what I asked, and in a remarkably
short time we entered on a life of ease and luxury that was strange to
both of us.

No more for me the small-time gambler who folded on a bluff when only a
few dollars were at stake. I knew where the big fish swam, and I went
after them.

Naturally, dice was my game. Since childhood I had been an expert
at cards, but cards do not lend themselves readily to psychokinetic
manipulation, without the additional talent of clairvoyance, and Dori
had none of that. But how she could make those dice tumble!

By the time the people who had both money and the gambling instinct
realized I was one of those infallible phenomena to be avoided, we were
rich beyond even my dreams. Suicides and paupers were left in our wake.

It seems that for every advantage a man gains in life, he is faced
with a corresponding disadvantage. He must pay the piper. Here I have
wealth, and West o' Mars, without Dori.... Well, I anticipate myself.

You may not know it, Mr. Peache, but even now I might find it dangerous
to be back on Earth again. It certainly was advisable for me to leave
Earth at that time. Some of the men I had broken had not been left
without the means to avenge themselves on me.

So Dori and I came to Mars.

       *       *       *       *       *

Those were the days before there were luxurious space liners. Laugh if
you will, Mr. Peache, but they are luxurious; I haven't traveled in
them, but I've gone through them at Marsport. When Dori and I came to
Mars, passengers were strictly expensive cargo who slept and ate on the
centerdeck with the crew and were told brusquely to stay out of the way
if they went north of the centerdeck. For a modest woman like Dori--the
only woman aboard on this trip--it was an ordeal; always at least one
crew member was sleeping or relaxing on the centerdeck, and I had to
shield her with a blanket when she dressed or undressed. An inadequate
towel was her only screen when she took a shower or went to the toilet.

I had feared trouble because my wife would be the only woman aboard,
among a dozen men, on a trip that would last for months. Those fears
were groundless. I understand that now women make up an adequate
percentage of the crews, but at that time they solved the problem by
doctoring the food while aspace.

But tensions mount under such conditions, perhaps more so when their
main outlet is suppressed. The terrible thing about the trip, for me,
was the deadly monotony. The crewmen had their jobs which, surprisingly
to me, kept them busy throughout their duty shifts. Dori, being a
woman, was more placid than I. But for me the monotony was torture: you
must remember that, besides the lack of privacy, our food was doctored,
too, and we could not have lived as man and wife had we had privacy.

Of course, I played cards with the crew, for there was always at least
one who was off duty and not sleeping. But I had determined I would do
nothing to make Mars as untenable for me as Earth had become, and I
resisted the temptation to really gamble with any of them. And gambling
for pennies is not card playing to me.

The man who came to my rescue at last was the astrogator, a Hawaiian
named Kei. With Polynesian perspicacity, he had smuggled a personal
supply of liquor aboard, against regulations. The other crew members
knew he took a nip regularly on off-duty hours, but they never could
locate his cache.

"Pretty dull, huh, groundie?" remarked Kei as we played gin rummy with
cards that insisted on floating off into the wilds of the gravityless
centerdeck. "Maybe I can pep things up. Ever been drunk in free fall?"

"No," I said. "I'm afraid I don't have your foresight."

He grinned smugly.

"You got to try it once, anyhow," he said. "Maybe once will be all
you'll want, though, after the hangover hits you. It makes DTs look
like a Grade B movie. Let's go down to the storage deck."

I glanced over at Dori. She was apparently asleep in her bunk.

We went below, and Kei broke out a bottle of fair whiskey from a cache
behind one of the storage cabinets. He winked at me, cracked the cork
and passed it over.

It didn't take long for the liquor to take hold, and I began to realize
what Kei meant when he said it was an experience every man should go
through once. As you know, when a spaceship is in "free fall," with
no rockets blasting, there is no gravity at all, and you float free in
space. To be drunk in free fall is to add the freedom of the alcohol to
the freedom of space. You float on rosy clouds, not just mentally, but
physically. You swim around in nothing, airily, deliciously. There's
nothing on Earth or Mars like it, because you can experience it only in
space.

I saw, too, why Kei would go to the storage deck to drink, even if he
hadn't kept his private cache there. On the storage deck, your wild
gestures won't hit some vital lever or button--and no one else can hear
your ravings. For there's something about a space drunk that makes you
babble. You talk your head off; you talk your heart out.

A space drunk is a good catharsis for all the mental quirks and
repressions that have been bothering you, and maybe I needed such
a catharsis. Possibly Kei did, too. At any rate, we chattered to
each other like boyhood chums, telling our dreams, our aspirations,
revealing our most secret vices and meannesses.

I was not shocked, but duly sympathetic, to learn that Kei had knifed
his brother to death in his teens, and had taken up space service
to escape the resulting complications. Beside this revelation of
fratricide, my own selfishness and my cold-blooded reasons for
marrying Dori seemed tame. But I made it as strong as I could.

"She thinks I love her!" I shouted, laughing uproariously, and Kei
laughed with me. "Think of that! I'm a brilliant, hard-headed,
practical man, and look at her: nice enough, but washed-out, colorless.
She's useful. She's made me rich. But if I'd pick out a woman to fall
in love with...."

Floating in the air as I talked, I had swung around gradually, and now
my eyes fell on the companionway to the centerdeck above us. Dori was
clinging to it, and from her expression I could tell she had heard
everything I said about her.

Her eyes were enormous from the shock, and her face was as
grief-stricken as though I had stabbed her callously through the heart
without cause. She turned without a word and left the deck.

In my drunken exaltation, it seemed funny to me. I laughed about it,
and made jokes about it to Kei. I felt quite smart and heartless.
Later, during the hangover, it didn't seem so funny, but, on the other
hand, I was so miserable I didn't care one way or the other.

Dori spoke of it to me only once, and that was just before we blasted
down to Mars in the G-boat. She looked at me levelly and said, without
a trace of emotion:

"I hate you, Samlaan. Always remember that."

       *       *       *       *       *

Mars was a wild frontier planet then, where violence was not out of the
ordinary. The spirit of the adventurer and the pioneer pervaded it,
as it does the outer moons today. But the frontier has its own code,
which makes it safer sometimes than the steel and stone jungles of
civilization.

I had what I wanted now--riches--and I had no desire to be forced to
leave Mars, too. There was no more gambling for me, no more living
on the edge of the law. I bought into several respectable business
ventures, content to add to my wealth slowly.

Dori and I built a home in Syrtis Major near Mars City and lived a
quiet life together. Mars at that time was a man's world; it lacked
divorce laws and similar legal and social machinery for terminating
unsuccessful marriages. I doubt that Dori, being what she was, would
have taken advantage of such avenues, anyhow. She was a good wife to
me; she lacked only that former breathless adoration which had meant so
little to me.

A few years after we arrived on Mars, we were invited to a week-long
house party at the home of a business acquaintance, Leswill Odaan.
Odaan's wealth was comparable to my own, and he lived here, in the
lowland of Lacus Lucrinus.

These house parties are not as common now as they were in the old days.
At that time, they were the major social activity of the rural dwellers
of Mars. One invited one's friends for a week at his private dome in
the lowlands--maybe twenty or forty at once. Then for a year or two
he could expect to be a guest at similar parties every month or so,
scattered all over the inhabited area of Mars. That's why the old homes
of the wealthy out in the lowlands are so big.

Odaan didn't live in West o' Mars; I built it later. He had a square,
sprawling chunk of buildings under a dome out in the center of the
Lacus Lucrinus lowland. It was a crude display of raw wealth in
execrable taste, with 14th century tapestries and neo-modern furniture
mixed up in rooms which might be of Egypto-Cretan architecture. I saw
nothing he owned to excite my envy--until, on a sage-jumping jaunt
across the lowland the second day of our visit, I climbed the western
cliff and saw the desert.

Bleak, lonely beauty has a strong appeal for me, Mr. Peache. Perhaps it
is because it strikes a chord in the bleakness and loneliness of my
own heart. But I never had seen anything before, and I never have seen
anything since, to match the stark beauty of those buttes in the Aeolia
Desert, as seen from the western cliffs of Lacus Lucrinus.

It was then that the conception of West o' Mars, as it could be and
should be, sprang full-blown to my mind. I tell you, Mr. Peache, I saw
this place then in my imagination, just as it is today, with this tower
and this great window that overlooks the desert.

I had to have Lacus Lucrinus. And Leswill Odaan owned it.

When I got back to the dome, I tried to buy the lowland from him. He
laughed and named a price that was beyond even my means. It was not
that he was particularly fond of the place; he just didn't care to sell.

I studied my man for the weakness that would give me what I wanted.
He was a big man, a boisterous man who loved action and talk. He was
younger than I, and handsome, with the rich good looks inherited from
his Black Irish ancestors.

One thing I noted, and filed in my mind in case it should prove
valuable. He liked Dori. He was a bachelor, as were most of his guests,
for women were scarce on Mars then. He knew she was my wife, but he
couldn't keep his eyes from her. I think perhaps it was the appeal to
such a man as Odaan of that childish wistfulness and helplessness in
her which I have described to you.

What gave me my lead was seeing him play roulette that evening. The
sparkle of the born gambler shone in his eyes, and he pushed the stakes
up and up, much too high for a sociable game. At that moment, I decided
to break my resolution not to gamble on Mars.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was not hard to talk Odaan and several other men into a game the
next night. I wanted dice, but Odaan preferred cards. The others didn't
seem to care. At last, Odaan turned to Dori, who was standing at my
side.

"I'll leave the decision to Mrs. Britt," he said, smiling up at her.
"Which shall it be, Mrs. Britt--dice or cards?"

My heart leaped, for Dori knew why I preferred dice.

"Cards," she said in a cold voice, and walked away.

Well, if Dori were going to take that attitude, cards would be better
for me anyhow. She might turn the dice against me. I didn't fear my
ability at cards.

I don't use a marked deck in cheating at cards. I use the natural
ability of my hands. My cheating has not been detected yet, that I know
about.

I have to qualify that statement, because I never have been sure
whether Odaan knew I was cheating on my deals. Certainly, he was very
cautious on hands which I dealt, betting low and going out even on
fairly good hands. On the other hand, I never did see him cheating, but
he bet with confidence on the hands he dealt.

Odaan was inclined to go for higher and higher stakes anyhow, and I was
interested in pushing the stakes higher. Before long, everyone else had
been forced from the game. It was the two of us against each other.

I was sure Odaan was not cheating and, since I couldn't get the sort of
bets I wanted from him on the hands I dealt, I bet recklessly on those
he dealt. For a while the luck swung back and forth between us evenly.
Then he hit a winning streak.

Neither of us was drinking. We were cold sober, and we were betting
thousands on the turn of a card. Hours passed, and I could no longer
cover my bets with liquid assets. But my luck had to change. I began
betting my property--my business property, my stocks and investments,
at last my home in Syrtis Major.

It was nearly dawn when I realized I had nothing more to bet.
Everything I had built up on Earth and brought to Mars with me,
everything I had added to it on Mars, belonged to Odaan now. I was a
pauper.

I pushed the cards aside and started to get up from the table, soaked
with perspiration, when I saw Dori standing in the door. She was
looking at me across the heads of the intent spectators, on her face
one of the most wistful expressions I have ever seen.

There was my ticket back to wealth.

It could be a long, slow pull; I could wind up leaving Mars as I had
left Earth. Or I could use that ticket to win it all back now. It was
a desperate chance, a chance that depended on the vagaries of Dori's
emotions. It was my only chance.

"Odaan," I said calmly, "you have no wife, and I see you like mine.
I'll make a last bet with you. My wife against all you own--what you've
won from me and your own possessions as well."

Odaan stared at me a long moment, then he turned slowly and saw Dori
standing there. In that instant, I was convinced he had not been
cheating.

"All right," he said, and he sounded as though he were strangling.
"Deal the cards."

He drew his heat-gun and laid it on the table before him, as if warning
me. Maybe he didn't know, but he suspected. I could not take a chance
on cheating now; and, the way the cards had been running, I couldn't
take a chance on them without cheating.

"Not cards," I said. "I'll roll the dice with you, Odaan."

He hesitated, then said:

"All right. I'll go and get the dice."

He left the room and brought them in: a pair of white dice with black
spots, still sealed in their plastic box bearing the stamp of Luna-Mars
Exports. That was an unshakable guarantee that they were honest dice.

I broke the seal.

"Dori," I said, "come here."

Dori came to my side.

"Dori," I said, "I'm going to roll the dice with Mr. Odaan. I'm betting
you against everything he owns, and everything I did own. If I lose,
you belong to him and I'm a penniless outcast. Do you understand that,
Dori?"

"I understand," she answered in a low voice.

"All right," I said. "Let them roll."

We rolled first for possession of the dice. The dice bounced in slow
motion, tantalizingly, in the weak Martian gravity. I rolled an eight,
and Odaan rolled a five. I had the dice.

I rolled them and watched them spin, holding my breath. Dori could
control them. Would it be craps, or a natural? Would I lose, or win?

The first one stopped on three. I let out my breath in a gasp of
relief. Craps was impossible now.

The second die rolled and tumbled, and stopped. It was another three.

My point was six.

Hot anger swept over me. Dori had not touched the dice with her mind.
It was not just that it hadn't been a natural--I could tell. I had
gambled long enough to tell when the dice fell free, and when they were
influenced.

"My point is six," I said. "Excuse me, Odaan, I want to talk with my
bet a minute."

I took Dori into the next room.

"Dori, for God's sake!" I cried in a desperate undertone. "You are
letting those dice roll free. Do you realize what happens to me--to
us--if I don't make that point?"

I give her credit for this: she didn't rant at me, as most women would,
that I had no right to bet her in a dice game, like a slave. Nor did
she throw up to me what she had overheard on the spaceship. She just
looked at me silently, and that look told everything she could have
said in words.

"Dori, please," I said. I felt like getting on my knees to her. "Maybe
you despise me now, but for the sake of what we've been to each other
once, just this one time control the dice!"

She looked at me, and now I could read nothing in her expression.

"I'll control the dice," she said tonelessly.

We went back in, and I was sweating in terror and anguish when I picked
up the dice. One of us was to be destroyed utterly on that roll, and
only Dori could decide which one. Would she destroy Odaan? Or me?

I rolled the dice out on the table, and I don't think anyone in the
room breathed, except Dori. One of them fell almost solid. A five.

The other die spun and tumbled. A two would ruin me. A one would ruin
Odaan. Anything else would just postpone the inevitable.

The die slowed, bouncing.

"Take it, Dori!" I prayed silently. And Dori took it.

The die had almost settled when it was nudged, almost as by a physical
push. It rolled over slowly--to the two! It teetered on the farther
edge of the two, it appeared about to settle back ... and it rolled on
over to the one.

A five and a one lay there on the dice. A single black dot and a five
on the white dice. A six. I had won!

"A six," I said. "Odaan, you're a guest in my house."

Odaan sat there as if hypnotized, unable to take his eyes from the
little black and white cubes.

"They ... they rolled like loaded dice!" he exclaimed in a voice that
was barely audible.

"They're your dice, Odaan," I said.

Odaan got up and made a great, sweeping gesture, a gesture of defeat.
He stumbled away through the crowd.

Dori stood looking at me with tragic eyes, and I looked up into her
white, child-like face. I knew then that I loved Dori, that I never
would love another woman.

       *       *       *       *       *

Britt sat silent, staring into the flickering fire.

"Mrs. Britt ... has passed on since then?" suggested Peache
sympathetically.

Britt tapped the ash from the tip of his half-smoked cigar.

"Dori?" he said. "Oh, no. As far as I know, Dori's still alive. She ran
away with Odaan the next day."

"With Odaan?" gasped Peache.

"Yes. She hated me, as she said. And I had been willing to gamble her,
while Odaan had bet everything he owned for her. At that time there
was a law that no woman could leave Mars--because of the shortage of
women here, you know--and he had to get a job operating a towmotor at
Marsport to stay on the planet with her. Of course I warned all my
friends against gambling with him, since he had Dori. When the law was
repealed, they returned to Earth, and I understand several children
came of the union."

"But," protested Peache, "if Dori was in love with Odaan, why would she
control the dice to lose the throw for him and win everything for you?
I just don't understand."

"Well," said Britt with a thoughtful smile, "she didn't intend to. She
intended to push the die only over to the two, giving me a seven and
winning for Odaan. But, as I told you, I had not gambled before since
we had been on Mars, and that was her first effort at controlling the
dice since we left Earth.

"She just gave the die too hard a mental push. She forgot the gravity
of Mars is only four-tenths that of Earth!"




*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "West o' Mars" ***

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