EIGHTEEN

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Friedrich von Baldur swore under his breath.

They had him cold.

And it was his own damned fault.

There were four of them, and they were all pros.

Now, if he hadn't had the hubris to suggest to Laurence Chambers that he had a big enough name to draw people to Chambers's planetoid who'd be interested in bringing von Baldur down, and would bring the credits to play with…

But he had.

He also should have allowed Cerberus Systems the blatant unprofessionalism of still wanting von Baldur's ass on toast…

But he hadn't.

The tournament was called, simply, The First Annual Von Baldur Stud Poker Tourney, and the players did, indeed, materialize.

Among them were these four particular professionals, quite illegally and unethically teamed.

They'd laid low through the preliminary rounds, then begun their play.

The four were the main card man, a scholarly looking, meek-sounding sort; his secret partner, an exceedingly handsome woman; the lookout; and a cover, who unobtrusively wandered around, pretending slight drunkenness and casing the other players and their hands when he could. It was a winning combination.

Von Baldur should know—he'd used similar tactics himself.

Of course they had signals.

When Friedrich had his suspicions, he put holo crews, shooting from the Eye In The Sky—the ceiling watch chamber that every casino has had since time immemorial—and screened, centimeter by centimeter, the footage.

But the team was good—Friedrich wasn't able to translate nor even identify their sign language, so he couldn't put pit bosses on the alert to pitch them out of the tournament.

The team was also well-covered—the main player was sponsored by another gambling world, so they couldn't just bar him from the tournament without any better cause than that he was winning.

Von Baldur had their rooms searched.

They almost looked innocent. But looking back at the entries on their passport fiches showed too-remarkable sets of coincidence, and all four of them had recently "happened" to "pass through" Alegria IV, which Freddie remembered as Cerberus's headquarters.

He added one and a hypothesis and got two—plus a bad case of the sweats.

The team did increasingly well as the tournament progressed, and von Baldur did not. He was paying too much attention to the Cerberus operatives, even though they weren't playing against him yet, and not enough to the immediate competition.

Finally he forced himself to concentrate on the business at hand.

That put him in the finals along with, unfortunately, the two Cerberus players, plus two other sharpies.

One of the sharpies was just lucky, the other was plain good. Friedrich, had he been able, might have admitted that the woman was as good as he was.

But he couldn't, of course.

He told Chambers what was going on, and Laurence glowered at him.

"For Chrissakes, Mital—I mean Freddie. We have ways of dealing with things like that."

Von Baldur nodded reluctantly. He would rather have cleaned Cerberus's clock honestly.

But he reminded himself it wasn't how you played the game, but whether you won or lost.

Single deck "shoes" were used to deal the cards in the tournament.

They were rigged by Chambers's people.

But the rigging somehow went wrong, and the team did even better than before.

Chambers couldn't figure out what the matter was.

Von Baldur could.

Cerberus had more money than Chambers, so the makers of the shoes would have provided the security company with rigging methods Chambers, and von Baldur, knew nothing about.

Von Baldur had watchers, with binocs, in the Eye, and a tiny buzzer in his groin to signal what cards were held.

But the Cerberus team covered their hands most carefully.

The final round was reached deep in the night, and went for almost twelve hours.

The game was table stakes, so the players had almost all their money on the table.

It made a considerable pot—von Baldur thought it would be well over a million credits, about a third of which was his, winnings that had been sucked away in the course of play.

When the last card was drawn, von Baldur had a straight to the ten.

The lucky player had folded on the third card.

The Scholar had a pair of fours and queens showing, and had been betting like he wanted everyone to believe he had a third queen in the hole.

Von Baldur thought he was bluffing.

His secret partner, who von Baldur thought of as the Beauty Queen, had four hearts. Probably a bluff, since there were three other hearts in other hands around the table.

The other woman had a pair of threes and a nothing card showing, and von Baldur couldn't figure what in the hole.

There were raises and counterraises, and finally von Baldur called.

The woman with the threes folded. She'd been bluffing, and was beat on the table.

The Scholar matched the call, as did the Beauty Queen.

Von Baldur, not sure, turned over his cards.

The Scholar sighed, smiled falsely, and turned his cards facedown. He also had been bluffing.

For an instant, von Baldur thought he'd won.

Then the Beauty Queen turned over the fifth heart, and her flush ended the tournament.

Von Baldur was wiped out.

Chambers wouldn't stake him from scratch. At least, not the size of the stake he'd need for a fresh start.

He managed a courteous smile, and stood back from the table.

Cerberus, once again, had gotten him—and, he realized, they would continue to pursue him to the grave.

Which, the way things were going, might not be that distant.

Friedrich managed politeness while his guts churned.

What in the seventh circle of hell was he going to do now?