House Operator By S. M. Tenneshaw At poker, Rafferty knew he could beat any man alive. Now, needing money badly, he walked into the Ganymede Casino looking for a patsy.... [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy December 1957 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Rafferty was a gambler of the old school. He didn't believe in any of the fancy electronic gadgets that the casinos went in for these days, didn't much care for the psionic games of chance and other tricky and probably rigged affairs. Give him a good poker game any time, and he would be happy. He stood in the door of the Ganymede Casino, outlining himself against the gaudy lights flashing within, standing there patiently. Inside, the rich and would-be rich of a dozen planets were enjoying themselves, playing the brightly-lit games and throwing money around in handfuls. Rafferty waited for some attention. His hand slid to the bulky roll in his pocket--one hundred hundred-credit bills, 10,000 smackers in all. It was all Rafferty had. He was here to triple it, or else. 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. He decided to scrape up the cash. And there was one sure way to do that. Poker.