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The alien ship burned bright orange as it hit air. It fell free and then slowed suddenly, a mile over the ocean. "Showoff," Louis muttered and prepared to imitate the maneuver.
The conical ship showed no exhaust. Its drive must be either a reactionless drive, like his own, or a kzin-style induced-gravity drive. Both were neat and clean, silent, safe to bystanders and highly advanced.
Islands were scattered across the ocean. The alien circled, chose one at seeming random and landed like a feather along a bare shoreline.
Louis followed him down. There was a bad moment while he waited for some unimaginable weapon to fire from the grounded ship, to tear him flaming from the sky while his attention was distracted by landing Procedures. But he landed without a jar, several hundred yards from the alien cone.
"An explosion will destroy both our ships if I am harmed," he told the alien via signal beam.
"Our species seem to think alike. I will now descend."
Louis watched him appear near the nose of the ship, in a wide circular airlock. He watched the alien drift gently to the sand. Then he clamped his helmet down and entered the airlock.
Had he made the right decision?
Gambling was safer than war. More fun, too. Best of all, it gave him better odds.
"But I'd hate to go home without that box," he thought. In nearly two hundred years of life, he had never done anything as important as finding a stasis box. He had made no discoveries, won no elective offices, overthrown no governments. This was his big chance.
"Even odds," he said, and turned on the intercom as he descended.
His muscles and semicircular canals registered about a gee. A hundred feet away waves slid hissing up onto pure white sand. The waves were green and huge, perfect for riding; the beach a definite beer party beach.
Later, perhaps he would ride those waves to shore on his belly, if the air checked out and the water was free of predators. He hadn't had time to give the planet a thorough checkup.
Sand tugged at his boots as he went to meet the alien.
The alien was five feet tall. He had looked much taller descending from his ship, but that was because he was mostly leg. More than three feet of ski
His suit was transparent, a roughly alien-shaped balloon, constricted at the shoulder, above and below the complicated elbow joint, at the wrist, at hip and knee. Air jets showed at wrist and ankle. Tools hung in loops at the chest. A back pack hung from the neck, under the suit. Louis noted all these tools with trepidation; any one of them could be a weapon.
"I expected that you would be taller," said the alien.
"A laser screen doesn't tell much, does it? I think my translator may have mixed up right and left, too. Do you have the coin?"
"The screee?" The alien produced it.
"Shall there be no preliminary talk? My name is screee."
"My machine can't translate that. Or pronouce it. My name is Louis. Has your species met others besides mine?"
"Yes, two. But I am not an expert in that field of knowledge."
"Nor am I. Let's leave the politenesses to the experts. We're here to gamble."
"Choose your symbol," said the alien, and handed him the coin.
Louis looked it over. It was a lens of platinum or something similar, sharp-edged, with the three-clawed hand of his new gambling partner stamped on one side and a planet, with heavy ice caps outlined, decorating the other. Maybe they weren't ice caps, but continents.
He held the coin as if trying to choose. Stalling. Those gas jets seemed to be attitude jets, but maybe not. Suppose he won? Would he win only the chance to be murdered?
But they'd both die if his heart stopped. No alien could have guessed what kind of weapon would render him helpless without killing him.
"I choose the planet. You flip first."
The alien tossed the coin in the direction of Louis's ship. Louis' eyes followed it down, and he took two steps to retrieve it. The alien stood beside him when he rose.
"Hand," he said.
"My turn." He was one down. He tossed the coin. As it spun gleaming, he saw for the first time that the alien ship was gone.
"What gives?" he demanded.
"There's no need for us to die," said the alien. It held something that had hung in a loop from its chest.
"This is a weapon, but both will die if I use it. Please do not try to reach your ship."
Louis touched the button that would blow his power plant.
"My ship lifted when you turned your head to follow the screee. By now my ship is beyond range of any possible explosion you can bring to bear. There is no need for us to die, provided you do not try to reach your ship."
"Wrong. I can leave your ship without a pilot." He left his hand where it was. Rather than be cheated by an alien in a gambling game--
"The pilot is still on board, with the astrogator and the screee. I am only the communications officer. Why did you assume I was alone?"
Louis sighed and let his arm fall. "Because I'm stupid," he said bitterly. "Because you used the singular pronoun, or my computer did. Because I thought you were a gambler."
"I gambled that you would not see my ship take off, that you would be distracted by the coin, that you could see only from the front of your head. The risks seemed better than one-half."
Louis nodded. It all seemed clear.
"There was also the chance that you had lured me down to destroy me." The computer was still translating into the first person singular. "I have lost at, least one exploring ship that flew in this direction."
"Not guilty. So have we." A thought struck him and he said, "Prove that you hold a weapon."
The alien obliged. No beam showed, but sand exploded to Louis's left, with a vicious crack! and a flash the color of lightning. The alien held something that made holes.
So much for that. Louis bent and picked up the coin. "As long as we're here, shall we finish the game?"
"To what purpose?"
"To see who would have won. Doesn't your species gamble for pleasure?"
"To what purpose? We gamble for survival."
"Then Finagle take your whole breed!" he snarled and flung himself to the sand. His chance for glory was gone, tricked away from him. There is a tide that governs men's affairs... and there went the ebb, carrying statues to Louis Wu, history books naming Louis Wu, jetsam on the tide.
"Your attitude is puzzling. One gambles only when gambling is necessary."
"Nuts."
"My translator will not translate that comment."
"Do you know what that artifact is?"
"I know of the species who built that artifact. They traveled far."
"We've never found a stasis box that big. It must be a vault of some kind."
"It is thought that that species used a single weapon to end their war and all its participants."
The two looked at each other. Possibly each was thinking the same thing. What a disaster, if any but my own species should take this ultimate weapon!
But that was anthropomorphic thinking. Louis knew that a Kzin would have been saying: Now I can conquer the universe, as is my right.
"Finagle take my luck!" said Louis Wu between his teeth. "Why did you have to show at the same time I did?"
"That was not entirely chance. My instruments found your craft as you backed into the system. To reach the vicinity of the artifact in time, it was necessary to use thrust that damaged my ship and killed one of my crew. I earned possession of the artifact."
"By cheating, damn you!" Louis stood up...
And something meshed between his brain and his semicircular canals.