Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 12.djvu/101

Rh erty ticket for all the good it did me. I was kept aboard the Western Hemisphere all this time, cooped up in a dingy cabin writing names and amounts in books and calculating various odds wagered.

But Sergeant Shane didn't lose any spaceburn, no, not that louse. He was making sure that he kept very busy supervising the workouts of our prize crew in lifecraft practice. He was never around when there was work to be done.

And when I did see him he evaded any mention of the mess I was handling, his mess, and confined himself to babbling enthusiastically about our lifecraft crew and what a snap they were going to have beating the boys from the Saturn.

"Why, our front man, MacKeltish, could man a space lifecraft by himself and beat them bums from the Saturn," Shane boasted.

That was true. The big MacKeltish, a sailor from one of the Western Hemisphere's atomic cannon turrets, was as powerful as any man in the Fleet. All of us on the Western Hemisphere were very proud of the prize ape in our prize crew.

"And I'm seeing to it that MacKeltish gets personal care until the race," Shane went on. "I got him under my wing, so's nothing can happen to him. I had him relieved from duty in the atomic cannon turrets temporarily until the race is over."

And that showed the fever pitch to which this lifecraft race was taking the whole Fleet. When our admiral, Old Ironpants, would release MacKeltish from duty to get in shape for the race, that was really something.

"Them space bums from the Saturn have a good crew," Shane admitted grudgingly. "But they can never hope to whip us while we got MacKeltish as front man."

And so it went for the next two days, and finally the much discussed lifecraft contest was just two days away. That was when Sergeant Shane gave me the greatest shock of all.

He came into the dingy cabin while I was bent over the books, making more entries for inter-Fleet betting on the race. Wow, how they were piling up!

I should have known from the smug expression on Shane's pan that something was up. But I didn't.

"How are the bets coming in, Corporal?" he asked. "And how are the odds?"

"The odds are two to one in favor of our crew from the Western Hemisphere," I told him coldly. "Thanks to the fact that you've been shooting off your big mouth about what a steal our crew will have."

Shane just smirked wider.

"They should be ten to one," he smiled confidingly. "We're robbing them at those odds."

I went back to my work. He still stood around. And then he let loose with the bombshell.

What's"What's [sic] the biggest bet you've registered all day?" he asked.

"Officers or men?" I retorted unsuspecting.

"Men," he said. "What's the biggest."

"Two sailors from our ship," I said. "They're named Jeems and Hoban." I looked down the register. "They placed, ah, one-thousand bucks, Venusian, to be covered at two-to-one."

"Smart guys," said Shane.

"They're crazy," I said. "I've got one ticket, and I'd never take another at these odds."

"You and me," Shane said calmly, "just bought the tickets—a thousand bucks, Venusian—from Jeems and Hoban."

"What?" I bellowed, glaring wildly