envelopes of new bills.
Breaking the seal with his finger he dropped two of them on the table.

"Could we have a no-limit game?" he asked, "I'd like to--win back some
of my money."

The stick man had trouble controlling his smile now, he glanced across
at the house man who nodded a quick _yes_. They had a sucker and they
meant to clean him. He had been playing from his wallet all evening, now
he was cracking into a sealed envelope to try for what he had lost. A
thick envelope too, and probably not his money. Not that the house cared
in the least. To them money had no loyalties. The play went on with the
Casino in a very relaxed mood.

Which was just the way Jason wanted it. He needed to get as deep into
them as he could before someone realized _they_ might be on the losing
end. The rough stuff would start and he wanted to put it off as long as
possible. It would be hard to win smoothly then--and his _psi_ power
might go as quickly as it had come. That had happened before.

He was playing against the house now, the two other players were obvious
shills, and a crowd had jammed solidly around to watch. After losing and
winning a bit he hit a streak of naturals and his pile of gold chips
tottered higher and higher. There was nearly a billion there, he
estimated roughly. The dice were still falling true, though he was
soaked with sweat from the effort. Betting the entire stack of chips he
reached for the dice. The stick man reached faster and hooked them away.

"House calls for new dice," he said flatly.

Jason straightened up and wiped his hands, glad of the instant's relief.
This was the third time the house had changed dice to try and break his
winning streak, it was their privilege. The hard-eyed Casino man opened
his wallet as he had done before and drew out a pair at random.
Stripping off their plastic cover he threw them the length of the table
to Jason. They came up a natural seven and Jason smiled.

When he scooped them up the smile slowly faded. The dice were
transparent, finely made, evenly weighted on all sides--and crooked.

The pigment on the dots of five sides of each die was some heavy metal
compound, probably lead. The sixth side was a ferrous compound. They
would roll true unless they hit a magnetic field--that meant the entire
surface of the table could be magnetized. He could never have spotted
the difference if he hadn't _looked_ at the dice with his mind. But what
could he do about it?

Shaki