I broke the seal. "Dori," I said, "come here." Dori came to my side. "Dori," I said, "I'm going to roll the dice with Mr. Odaan. I'm betting you against everything he owns, and everything I did own. If I lose, you belong to him and I'm a penniless outcast. Do you understand that, Dori?" "I understand," she answered in a low voice. "All right," I said. "Let them roll." We rolled first for possession of the dice. The dice bounced in slow motion, tantalizingly, in the weak Martian gravity. I rolled an eight, and Odaan rolled a five. I had the dice. I rolled them and watched them spin, holding my breath. Dori could control them. Would it be craps, or a natural? Would I lose, or win? The first one stopped on three. I let out my breath in a gasp of relief. Craps was impossible now. The second die rolled and tumbled, and stopped. It was another three. My point was six. Hot anger swept over me. Dori had not touched the dice with her mind. It was not just that it hadn't been a natural--I could tell. I had gambled long enough to tell when the dice fell free, and when they were influenced. "My point is six," I said. "Excuse me, Odaan, I want to talk with my bet a minute." I took Dori into the next room. "Dori, for God's sake!" I cried in a desperate undertone. "You are letting those dice roll free. Do you realize what happens to me--to us--if I don't make that point?" I give her credit for this: she didn't rant at me, as most women would, that I had no right to bet her in a dice game, like a slave. Nor did she throw up to me what she had overheard on the spaceship. She just looked at me silently, and that look told everything she could have said in words. "Dori, please," I said. I felt like getting on my knees to her. "Maybe you despise me now, but for the sake of what we've been to each other once, just this one time control the dice!" She looked at me, and now I could read nothing in her expression. "I'll control the dice," she said tonelessly. We went back in, and I was sweating in terror and anguish when I picked up the dice. One of us was to be destroyed utterly on that roll, and only Dori could decide which one. Would she destroy Odaan? Or me? I rolled the dice out on the table, and I don't think anyone in the room breathed, except Dori. One of them fell almost solid. A five. The other die spun and tumbled. A two would ruin me. A one would ruin Odaan. Anything else would just postpone the inevitable. The die slowed, bouncing. "Take it, Dori!" I prayed silently. And Dori took it. The die had almost settled when it was nudged, almost as by a physical push. It rolled over slowly--to the two! It teetered on the farther edge of the two, it appeared about to settle back ... and it rolled on over to the one. A five and a one lay there on the dice. A single black dot and a five on the white dice. A six. I had won! "A six," I said. "Odaan, you're a guest in my house."