She cheered up a little, but she was not yet her usual self when they boarded the Vortex Blaster II.
Vesta met them just inside the lock. “Oh, chief, I won—I won!” she shrieked, tail waving frantically in air. “Where’d you go after the club closed? I looked all over for you—do you know how much I won, Captain Nealcloud?”
“Haven’t any idea. How much?”
“One million seven hundred sixty two thousand eight hundred and ten credits! Yow-wow-yow!”
“Whew!” Cloud whistled in amazement. “And you’re figuring on giving it all back to ’em tomorrow?”
“I . . . I haven’t quite decided.” Vesta sobered instantly. “What do you think, chief?”
“Not being a gambler, I don’t have hunches very often, but I’ve got one now. In fact, I know one thing for certain damn sure. There isn’t one chance in seven thousand million of anything like this ever happening to you again. You’ll lose your shirt—that is, if you had a shirt to lose,” he added hastily.
“You know, I think you’re right? I thought so myself, and you’re the second smart man to tell me the same thing.”
“Who was the first one?”
“That man at the club, Althagar, his name was. So, with three hunches on the same play, I’d be a fool not to play it that way. Besides, I’ll never get another wallop like that . . . my uncle’s been wanting me to be linguist in his bank, and with a million and three-quarters of my own I could buy half his bank and be a linguist and a cashier both. Then I couldn’t ever gamble again.”