The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man Who Staked the Stars, by Charles Dye

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Man Who Staked the Stars

Author: Charles Dye

Release Date: February 22, 2010 [EBook #31356]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO STAKED THE STARS ***

Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Planet Stories July 1952. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on
this publication was renewed.

[Illustration]

THE MAN WHO STAKED THE STARS

By CHARLES DYE

_Bryce Carter could afford a smug smile. For hadn't he risen
gloriously from Thieves Row to director of famed U.T.? Was
not Earth, Moon, and all the Belt, at this very moment
awaiting his command for the grand coup? And wasn't his
cousin-from-Montehedo a star-sent help?_

* * * * *

"What do I do for a living?" repeated the slim dark-skinned young man
in the next seat of the Earth-Moon liner. "I'm a witch doctor," he
answered with complete sincerity.

"What do you do? I mean, what do they hire you for?" asked Donahue
with understandable confusion and a touch of nervousness.

[Illustration: _Bracing themselves, Bryce and Pierce gave the body a
combined strong shove toward Earth. Two gone._]

"I'm registered as a psychotherapist," said the dark-skinned young
man. He looked too young to be practicing a profession, barely
nineteen, but that could be merely a sign of talent, Donahue
reflected. The new teaching and testing methods graduated them young.

"I know I am a witch doctor because my grandfather and his father and
his father's father were witch doctors and I learned a special
technique from my uncles who are registered therapists with medical
degrees like mine. But the technique is not the one you find in the
books, it is ... unusual. They don't say where they learned it but
it's not hard to