by Eric Klein
The captain points down. “Who put out the containers of silverware? I almost landed on those.”
The Maître d’ looks down, sees the knives, and blanches like the captain.
“Who was that busboy that bumped into me?” We all look around, and realize that there is no busboy in sight. Not a single one.
Looking perplexed, the Maître d’ turns to the captain. “Sir, I’m sorry for this, I don’t know who put them there, but I’ll find out.” He bends down and picks up the cup of knives with a napkin. “I came over because we can’t begin until you are seated.”
He leads us to table one. I can see only two empty seats at the table, facing each other across the round table. The captain continues to the head of the table. As the Captain reaches his seat, a spotlight focuses on him and I hear the amplified voice of the Maître d’.
“On behalf of Captain Englehorn, Captain of the L.S.S. Venture and the hero of Ceres blowout of 2130, we welcome you to the maiden voyage of the L.S.S. Venture. I ask you all to rise, and to raise your glass for a toast to a safe and happy journey.” The room echoes with people repeating “A safe and happy journey,” followed by the clinking of hundreds of glasses.
Sitting next to the Captain is a stunning redhead, with whom he is in a deep conversion, his color slowly returning. On his other side is a beautiful Asian woman whose exact ethnicity I can’t place, but her identity is made clear by the ‘Miss Universe 2051’ sash that she is wearing. Even I know that she is Madame Sul-Te-Wan, the reigning Pageant Winner, and former Miss Titania. This explains her mixed ethnicity. She is lecturing the woman sitting next to her, quite loudly, about the horrors of child labor on some of the mining asteroids. Seems that children use less oxygen and can get into smaller spaces to mine out the precious metals. If they accidentally break through, they all die and are quickly replaced as soon as the hole is patched, in order to prevent lost revenue. She is complaining that no one is doing anything to protect these children and that the federation is claiming to be powerless to stop it. After this, I stop listening. I have heard most of it before, as this is a cause she is known to lecture about at every opportunity, complete with detailed economic statistics and mining facts, showing how this slavery is not only cruel but financially not viable.
I recall that this is a cause that is very personal to her. When she was a child, she was drafted to work on one of the teams enclosing Messina Chasmata. In a blasting accident, she lost her left hand. It took them two months to 3D print her a replacement. On talk shows, she was always showing the scar as something between a talisman and a badge of honor. But now she fights to prevent it happening to any other children. I have heard most of her lecture before, so I try to pay attention to the others at the table.
To my right is a very tall, young, black woman, who reaches out to shake my hand and says to call her Dodge. It seems that Dodge is an Astro-Engineer from Mars, accompanying her mother, Carroll, the Astro-Engineer Co-Lead of the symposium.
For the rest of the meal, Dodge and I discuss the success of the Magnetotail and ‘throwing’ chunks of ice from Saturn’s rings at Mars and Venus to help boost the terraforming efforts and to bring in more water. Seems her mother had read an old science fiction story called The Martian Way by someone named Professor Asimov as a bedtime story, and now wanted to realize his vision by throwing even more ice chunks. As she speaks she waves her arms, causing her charm bracelet to catch the light. I’m treated to flashes of gray, white, red, grey-green, an iridescent black, a white sphere as if an eye had fallen out, and a clear crystal with white wisps. When I ask what they are, she tells me that a friend made them for her.
The one point that she keeps coming back to is the part of the story where the ‘governor’ of Mars was able to throw off the shackles of Earth, saying, “If not one drop more” could be spared for Mars, then Mars would be happy to provide water for Earth. Apparently, this was the turning point in the history of who would colonize the solar system.
I’m able to explain to her who Professor Asimov was, and a little about the other things he wrote. When I start to explain his three laws of robotics, she recites them, and adds, “But I thought he was only writing about colonization and terraforming.”
I explain that he wrote hundreds of books, both fiction and nonfiction. She is amazed to learn that he also wrote a set of books explaining what Shakespeare’s audience knew before seeing his plays, and a guide to the Bible.
As we are getting to the dessert part of the meal, she is able to identify for me Madame Sul-Te-Wan’s victim as being Bobbie Williams, the wife of Professor Frank D. Williams, the Scientist Co-Lead. But she can’t identify the redhead sitting next to the Captain.
A short while later, the Captain and the redhead stand up. Wishing everyone a pleasant voyage, they leave the table and the room. With that, the discussions at the table start to break up as other people start to leave. Carroll Dunning stands and looks over at her daughter. Dodge thanks me for the chat, and says she is looking forward to more over the rest of the trip. She joins her mother and they leave the dining room.
Tired from the hard day at work and the following excitement, I too head back to my room for the night.
Chapter 4
“The only thing that you absolutely have to know is the location of the library.”
Attributed to Albert Einstein
Saturday, 2 September 2152
After breaking my morning fast, I have plenty of free time on my hands. I take the opportunity to check out the ship and the entertainments it offers me for the next month.
I leave the almost empty dining room and head out to the main lobby. To my left is the entrance to the casino. In front of me is the main port, and next to that is a small shop with a sign advertising excursions for our first stop – the Moon. I walk over and see that they have a guided tour of Luna City, complete with the garden, central park, and the ‘Bats’ Cave.’ Next to this, there is a small handwritten sign proclaiming, “There are still a few tickets available for the live broadcast of the pageant contestants flying in the Bats’ Cave. See the travel officer to purchase.” As the shop is still closed, I have time to consider how I would like to spend my first day on another planet. OK, it is not even a dwarf planet, just a moon; but still, it will be my first stop off Earth.
To my right are the stairs that I saw when I came aboard and the set of elevators I used to go to my room. Beyond the elevators is a corridor I had not noticed yesterday. On a whim, I follow it, and discover that the ballroom is currently in use by a group doing a form of yoga. Down the hall is a sign for a bar with a drum painted above the rough-hewn double doors.
Heading down the stairs, I see a café alongside the clear window of the ZeroG Pool. It looks like a giant aquarium – a large room filled with water, and a sort of airlock in three of the walls, all except for the one adjoining the café. All swimmers are wearing rebreathers, so there are no air bubbles to cloud the water, leaving it very clear to see that they are wearing nothing else. One young woman has her red hair billowing around her as she swims like a mermaid, legs undulating together in the water.
Beyond the café is the gym, complete with the latest models of equipment for people to keep in shape (or prevent getting a round one) while on the cruise. Tucked in a corner beyond the gym is the library with actual paper books.
The library intrigues me more than the other attractions now, so I walk in. It is hardly surprising that it focuses on three areas: colonization sciences, science fiction, and romance, with a selection of comfy chairs and padded nooks to read in. The science fiction section has been filled with a vast selection of space-related classics: Asimov, Isaac; Baxter, Stephen; Butler, Octavia Estelle; Card, Orson Scott; Clarke, Arthur Charles; Gilman, Carolyn Ives; Heinlein, Robert Anson; Le Guin, Ursula; Liu, Cixin; Maas, Jonathan; Monticelli, Rita Carla Francesca; Niven, Larry; Pratchett, Terry; Robinson, Kim Stanley, Janet, and Spider; S
mith, Edward Elmer “Doc”; Stephenson, Neal; Verne, Jules; Weir, Andy; Wells, Herbert George ; and, of course, Zelazny, Roger – to name a few. I select one at random and take it to the closest chair. Seems that it is about trans-dimensional travel using a potato.
The sound of a loud roar rouses me from my reading. Someone in the gym is yelling at the holo of a sporting event. Realizing that I have spent the entire afternoon alone in the library and missed dinner, I stop at the café. I order a quick ham and cheese croissant and eat it as I head back to my room to change into evening wear, before going to see what nightlife the ship has to offer.
Chapter 5
“Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action’.”
Auric Goldfinger, villain in Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger
The ship’s casino is impressive. They have really gone all out with the historic Old West décor. I read somewhere that there was a resurgence in games of chance over the past few years, but those were mostly 3D holograms. Here in the Venture, they have truly gone retro. There are real people standing at physical tables, tossing actual dice, holding real cards, or watching little balls go round spinning wheels. Unlike the private holograms, here the people are interacting with and playing against each other. Even the slot machines are not digital, but recreations of the old mechanical machines. I half expect to see someone like Mae West or the Cisco Kid step into view.
I wander around and come to a stop next to a table where people are betting on the outcome of one guy throwing a pair of 6-sided dice. First, he throws a three and a four; the woman running the table (the dealer?) calls out, “Seven, a natural,” and pushes 14 chips towards him. He moves his pile to the line marked “over” and rolls again. This time he rolls a two and a three. The dealer calls out, “Under,” and draws the pile of chips back again. Apparently, the man lost, so some people cheer while others are less happy.
The dealer looks at me and asks, “Would you like try your hands at the dice, sir?”
“What are the rules?” I ask as I shuffle closer to the table.
She explains that the game, like the décor, was from the old US frontier, and is called Over & Under. Basic bets can be placed for rolls totaling more than 7, called over, or less than 7, called under. Or, you could bet on a roll of 7, or sets of doubles. To play, I would need to place a bet and then I could be the next thrower.
I put down a five-solar note on the table. The dealer then offers me five dice and says to pick two, which I do. I then shake them and toss them as the previous thrower had. The dice bounce across the table and off the far wall of the table. Two ones come up.
The dealer calls out, “Snake eyes, a winner,” and puts 14 black chips on top of my five-solar note where it was sitting in the box marked “double one.”
“Would you like to roll again, sir?”
I cast the dice, and again two ones come up and she calls out, “Snake eyes, a winner,” and puts 106 more black chips on my note. This happens again, and the dealer puts down 276 gold chips next to my 120 black ones. I toss them again with the same results. After the dealer passes over my winnings, I have over seven thousand solars worth of chips stacked over and around my original note. The floor manager comes over to watch as I take one more roll. Again it comes up snake eyes.
The manager is a light-skinned woman, lithe and more than two meters tall. She looks at the dealer and then at my pile and shakes her head. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m going to have to ask you to pass the roll on to someone else.” She has someone come over with a counting machine to collect the chips, the display climbing as each chip is counted. When it stops at 1,658,875 solars the crowd around the table starts to clap, causing everyone else in the room to look over at us. I am embarrassed as she hands me a data card that represents my winnings (not including the 5-solar note that they handed back). She explains that they can’t let me take that many chips out of circulation, and suggests that I might want to try one of the other games.
I take the hint, nod in agreement, and then push the original note to the dealer as a tip.
The next table I come across is for something called blackjack, or 21. The dealer explains the basic rules to me. I hand my data card to him and ask to let me have 20 solars in chips. He takes my card, runs it across the old-fashioned scanner, and hands me four black chips. I place one down and he deals us each two cards, one face up and one face down. His face-up card is an 8, while mine is a black ace. He calls it a spade and says it’s worth either one or eleven. I look at the face-down card and see it, too, was a black ace. I ask what it means when both cards are the same.
“It’s called a double, sir. If you get two starting cards of the same face value, then for the price of another bet you have the option to split the hand in two.”
I put down another chip and turn the card face up. He looks at them a little strangely, but places a face-down card on each of them. Looking at the first of my new face-down cards I ask if I could split again.
A woman’s voice from behind me says, “In some places you could, but not here.” The same manager has walked behind me, and is keeping an eye on the game.
“Fine, just asking,” I say. “Let me have another card.”
He puts down a face-up card, and says, “The term is ‘hit me’.”
Looking down I see that the new card is also an ace. This goes on until I have ten aces showing and one card still face down. I say, “I’ll stand on this hand.”
By now we have gathered quite a crowd. The dealer looks at the manager, who looks back and shrugs. This is repeated with my other (split) hand. By now the manager is looking very uncomfortable but nods to the dealer, who flips his face-down card. It is a 10. He looks up at me and says, “You need to beat an 18.”
I flip over the face down card on the left, and it is another ace. The dealer looks quite shaken, but he says, “Twenty-one, a winner. And your other hand?”
I flip the other face-down card and it too is an ace. The dealer looks at the manager, who has gone pale under her ruddy complexion. He says, “Twenty-one, also a winner.”
The manager looks at the table and sees two hands, each made up of 11 aces, and I can hear her start to mutter under her breath, “Six decks, with four aces each, that makes for twenty-four aces total, and he gets twenty-two of them? What are the odds?”
The dealer hands me my two original chips and three more for my winnings and announces that he is taking a short break.
The manager looks at me, and before she says anything, I ask, “Would it be OK to play one hand of poker? I won’t touch the table or the cards. In fact, you can pick someone to hold my hands while the dealer places the cards face down.”
She closes her eyes and is silent for a few seconds and replies “OK, you know what, that last hand has made me curious. Come with me.” She leads me to an empty table that is still being prepared. The crowd follows us from the blackjack table, talking excitedly amongst themselves. As we get to the table the manager explains to the dealer, “I want you to deal out one hand and play it against this gentleman, five card no draw - ”
“It is OK with me if he draws,” I interrupt.
“OK, you get to draw cards once. But his cards are to be all face down.” She then looks around the crowd and calls out to the same stunning redhead who was sitting next to the Captain at dinner last night. “Fay, would you do me a favor and hold his hands while this hand is dealt?” She turns back to me, “Fay is the Captain’s daughter, and I’m sure she will keep this hand honest.”
Fay looks surprised and responds, “Just hold his hands?” Raising her left eyebrow, “You don’t want me to marry him or anything more interesting?” Smiling, she comes over and holds my hands as the dealer starts to deal out the cards. Her hands are soft but strong, with just the hint of roughness along the thumb and index finger. “We missed you at din
ner,” she says as she looks at me.
I just stand there and look down into the deepest hazel eyes I have ever seen. It was as if I could see every speckle of green or brown in them blown up, like looking at a nebula through a telescope. “I got lost in the library.”
I’m brought back to reality when the dealer calls out, “Dealer takes two. Sir, are you sure you don’t want to look at your cards?”
Not turning from Fay to look at the dealer, “No, I’ll stand pat on what I have.”
“The library is only one room with nothing to obstruct your view of the four walls and the door,” Fay points out. “So don’t you mean you were lost in the contents of the library?”
The dealer takes his two cards and smiles. He flips them and calls, “Full house, threes over queens.”
Looking back at the table (when did my eyes drift back into hers?), I lift my hands – still being held by Fay – and ask the dealer to flip my cards one at a time.
Ace of Spades
Ace of Spades
Ace of Spades
Ace of Spades
Ace of Spades
The dealer announces, “Five of a kind, a winner.”
The manager just shakes her head and reaches down to draw the next card, an ace of diamonds. She shakes her head, mutters, “What are the chances?” and walks away with the dealer.
Extracting my right hand, I pick up the two chips – Fay will not let go of my left hand – I look at her and say, “Yes, that would be more accurate. Can we go somewhere and talk?”
Fay smiles and leads me by the hand out of the casino. The Manager follows closely behind, to make sure I leave.
Passing the slot machines, I slow down. Fay looks at me questioningly and the manager says, “OK, even I’m curious, so why not?”
I take one of the chips, put it into the slot, and pull the handle. We stand there watching as the first wheel stops on a 7, then a few seconds later the next one also stops on a 7. Finally, the last one stops – you guessed it – another 7. Out of it come 80 chips. We pick them up and walk towards the cashier, where we have all of my winnings put onto the data card. The display on the cashier’s window says that the data card now has 1,658,985 solars on it, which, to be honest, is more than I have made in the past five years (and two of those were really good years for me).
