Tomorrow 30,000 had to be handed over to Lee Walsh. It was the result of the one mistake Rafferty had made.
Walsh was a big-time gambler, with ulcers and high blood pressure and ten million in the bank. Rafferty was straight middle-time, a man who genuinely enjoyed his chancy profession. And Walsh had said, "Why don't you play something I like to play? All the time poker, poker, poker. Why don't you switch to something else."
"I like poker," Rafferty said. "I win at poker. Why switch?"
Walsh seemed to stiffen. "Let's have a little game of planet-faro, Rafferty. Just you and me. I'm tired of all this poker."
"I don't like planet-faro. It's a lousy game. All those flashing lights—it's more like pinball than honest-to-darn gambling."
"You ain't chicken, Rafferty?"
"Chicken?"
"Yeah. Let's try some planet-faro."
So they did—and Rafferty had sat by leadenly while Walsh cleaned him out. Thirty thousand shiny credits down the drain, and the debt due tomorrow at noon. You didn't welsh on Walsh, either. It was sort of a slogan.
Rafferty didn't have the thirty thousand. He had two alternatives: he could scrape up the cash somewhere and hand it over, or he could grab an out-system liner and get going toward Aldebaran, and hope to live. He wouldn't—not for long.