"Good morning, Captain," said Armstrong, nodding.
Before Phule could reply, a series of loud sounds came from the desert east of the base. Pop pop pop! Pop pop! Armstrong turned his head that way and said, "What the devil...?"
"That's gunfire, Lieutenant," said Phule, suddenly alert. "And unless I'm completely turned around, it's coming from the direction of the hunting party. What do they think they're doing?"
"Well, sir, I suspect they think they're hunting," said Armstrong. "The sport does involve shooting guns, you know..."
Phule peered at his lieutenant. "You haven't been taking sarcasm lessons from Beeker, have you?" he asked. Then he shook his head. "No, that would require a sense of humor. The point is, as far as they're concerned, neither we nor the Zenobians have given them permission to fire any weapons yet. And I wasn't about to give them that permission until we got them someplace where our AEIOU friends can't hear them banging away. Come on, Lieutenant, let's go read them the riot act. It's just far enough to make a good run."
"Yes, sir," said Armstrong, catching up with his captain, who had already taken off at a steady pace. "Uh-shouldn't we have some backup, sir? I mean, those people are shooting..."
"Yes, Armstrong, and we're going to tell them to stop," said Phule, looking back and grinning: "We're the Legion, remember? We can handle it. In fact, it's our job to handle it. And if we get there quickly, there's still some chance that Inspector Snieff and her friends haven't noticed the noise."
"What if they have, sir?" Armstrong still, looked worried.
"We'll just have to convince them that we were the ones doing the shooting," said Phule, skipping over a small dry streambed in the way. "That shouldn't be too hard. After all, we are a military unit. It's our business to fire our weapons every so often."
"Snieff will start quoting some regulation we're breaking," said Armstrong, doing his best to stay abreast with Phule. They were now out of the cleared area immediately around the base, and the ground had become rougher.
"Sure," said Phule, dodging around a low, bushlike native plant. "One thing you find out in the business world, Lieutenant. You can't do anything without breaking one regulation or another. That's how the game is played. What makes the difference between success and failure is figuring out how to get your job done with as little interference as possible from the people who want to enforce the regulations. And that's what we're going to do here."
"Yes, sir," said Armstrong. He jumped over a low rock and kept moving in pace with his captain.
Up ahead, another loud report broke through the 'calm morning air. Phule gritted his teeth. Whoever was doing the shooting, he hoped they had enough sense to make sure what was in the line of sight before they pulled the trigger.
He hoped he wasn't going to find out he was wrong the hard way...
Hurrying a bit more than was comfortable, Ernie caught up with Victor Phule just at the entrance to the High Rollers' Lounge, where the thousand-dollar slots had been installed. He slowed down the last few steps to give himself a chance to appear unruffled and relaxed. "Hey, how's it going, buddy?" he said, as if greeting someone he'd known since childhood. "Any luck today?" Eddie Grossman took a quick step forward, glaring at Ernie through narrowed eyes, but Victor Phule raised his hand, and said, "Relax, Eddie-you don't need to worry about this fellow."
"Mr. Phule, you're paying me to worry about this fellow, and everybody like him," growled the bodyguard, but when his boss shot him an exasperated look, Grossman shrugged and stood back. Still, he kept his eyes focused on Ernie, ready to move in case of trouble. Victor Phule had the right to give him orders, but he was prepared to ignore those orders if it looked as if he was about to lose his client-not to mention his job.
Ernie, who had an excellent idea what was likely to happen if he made the wrong move, grinned broadly. He intended to be very careful not to do anything that the bodyguard might decide to interpret as unfriendly.
"It looks like I'm on a hot streak today," he said. "Been cleaning up over at the roulette table all morning."
"Good for you," said Victor Phule. "The owners don't know it, but they're giving money away hand over fist. My idiot son thinks the way to run a casino is to give the best odds on the station. I'm trying to show him the error of his ways. A few lucky customers taking home big jackpots ought to put the icing on the cake."
"Well, I'm all for that," said Ernie. "Can't let these young whippersnappers think they know everything," he added, as if he were somehow old enough to be entitled to the sentiment.
"His biggest mistake was running off and joining the Legion instead of settling down to business," growled Phule, only half-listening. "Now he thinks he can run a business from halfway across the Galaxy. Well, I won't say it can't be done, but you need some real experience under your belt, real business experience. None of this rah-rah save-the-universe crap."
Ernie, whose business experience consisted almost entirely of scams and petty theft, nodded sagely. "No substitute for knuckling down and getting your hands dirty," he said. "Not a job for weak sisters."
"Just so," said Victor Phule. "Say, how'd you like to take another crack at the slots? If you're on a lucky streak, you're just the man I need. If you win a big jackpot, it'll show the boy the consequences of setting the odds too much in favor of the customers."
"Sure, why not?" said Ernie. He was enough ahead of the game that he could afford to throw a few tokens into the slots and still have a little nest egg so that he (and Lola) could afford another couple of weeks on Lorelei. By then, he hoped, they'd have made some kind of breakthrough. If not... well, as usual, he'd deal with the problem when his other choices ran out.
He followed Phule into the elephants' lounge. As usual, nobody was playing the thousand-dollar slots. Even the most well heeled bettors generally considered it foolish to drop that much on such a low-return bet. Other than Phule and Ernie, there hadn't been more than the occasional dabbler, who typically put in one or two tokens, then went on to play something that delivered better odds. Which was almost everything else in the Fat Chance Casino.
"All right," said Ernie, fishing in his pocket for the thousand-dollar chips. He had ten of them, now. He picked a likely-looking machine--not that there was any noticeable difference among them-and put a chip into the slot. He grabbed the handle, then turned to Phule. "Say, by the way-what's a partner's share of the casino stock actually worth? Must be pretty valuable, considering they're charging a thousand bucks for a chance to win it."
"I guess it's valuable enough, if you want that kind of property," said Victor Phule. "Probably fifty or sixty million, if I were going to guesstimate."
"I see," said Ernie. All of a sudden his palms began to sweat. He looked at the machine he'd just pumped a thousand dollars into. Fifty or sixty million, Victor Phule had said. Of course he'd dreamed of having that kind of money, but actually having it had never been remotely probable. Fifty or sixty million... He pulled the handle and the machine display became a whirl of rapidly changing symbols. .