and discarded the same card he'd drawn; the reporter picked it up,
tapped it slowly in place with his elbow, placed his discard face down,
and spread his hand.

"Gin," he said.

"Arrrgh," said the businessman. "Damn it, you play good. You play real
good."

A light on the deAngelis flashed red and showed a reading of 65.4 on the
dial.

"Can't beat skill," said the reporter. "Count!"

"Fifty-six," said the businessman. "That's counting gin," he added.

"Game," the reporter announced. "I'll figure the damage."

"You play good," said the businessman in disgust.

"You only say that 'cause it's true," the reporter said. "But it's sweet
of you all the same."

"Shut up!" said the businessman.

The reporter looked up, concerned. "You stuck?" he asked solicitously.
He seemed sincere.

"Certainly I'm stuck," the businessman snarled.

"Then stay stuck," said the reporter in a kindly tone. He patted the
businessman on the cheek.

The same light on the deAngelis flashed red. This time the dial
registered eighty-two. The operator chuckled and looked over at the
gamblers, where the reporter was still adding up the score.

"How much you down, Bernie?" he asked the businessman.

"Four dollars and ninety-six cents," the reporter answered.

"You play good," Bernie said again.

The deAngelis went back to normal, and the operator went back to his
magazine. The bulb at the end of the second row turned from a light pink
to a soft rose, the needle on its dial finally flickered on to the
scale. There were other lights on the board, but none called for action.
It was still just a quiet night in the middle of the week.

* * * * *

The room was filthy. It had a natural filth that clings to a cheap room,
and a man-made, careless filth that would disfigure a Taj Mahal. It
wasn't so much that things were dirty, it was more that nothing was
clean. Pittsburgh was no longer a smokey city. That problem had been
solved long before the mills had stopped belching smoke. Now, with
atomics and filters on every stack in every home, the city was clean.
Clean as the works of man could make it, yet still filthy as only the
minds of man could achieve. The city might be clean but there were
people who were not, and the room was not. Overhead the ceiling light
still burned, casting its harsh glare on the trashy room, and the
trashy, huddled figure on the bed.

[Illustration]

He was an old man, lying on the