Project Gutenberg's The Man Who Played to Lose, by Laurence Mark Janifer

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Title: The Man Who Played to Lose

Author: Laurence Mark Janifer

Illustrator: Douglas

Release Date: October 15, 2009 [EBook #30259]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction October 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.

THE

MAN WHO

PLAYED TO LOSE

By LARRY M. HARRIS

_Sometimes the very best thing you can do is to lose. The
cholera germ, for instance, asks nothing better than that it
be swallowed alive...._

Illustrated by Douglas

* * * * *

When I came into the control room the Captain looked up from a set of
charts at me. He stood up and gave me a salute and I returned it, not
making a ceremony out of it. "Half an hour to landing, sir," he said.

That irritated me. It always irritates me. "I'm not an officer," I
said. "I'm not even an enlisted man."

He nodded, too quickly. "Yes, Mr. Carboy," he said. "Sorry."

I sighed. "If you want to salute," I told him, "if it makes you
_happier_ to salute, you go right ahead. But don't call me 'Sir.' That
would make me an officer, and I wouldn't like being an officer. I've
met too many of them."

It didn't make him angry. He wasn't anything except subservient and
awed and anxious to please. "Yes, Mr. Carboy," he said.

I searched in my pockets for a cigarette and found a cup of them and
stuck one into my mouth. The Captain was right there with a light, so
I took it from him. Then I offered him a cigarette. He thanked me as
if it had been a full set of Crown Jewels.

What difference did it make whether or not he call