House Operator

On the ice moon Ganymede, where the casino never closes and the stakes could buy a starship, a gambler named Rafferty is drowning. He's lost everything and now faces creditors who don't accept excuses. The Ganymede Casino glows against Jupiter's vast shadow, and inside its rooms poker isn't a game, it's the only way out. Randall Garrett's slim, lethal tale asks what happens when luck runs out: when you're out of credits and the house always wins, what do you have left to bet? Rafferty isn't just playing cards; he's playing for his life against sharks who can smell desperation. The prose moves like a card shark's hands, fast, precise, never showing what it's holding. This is noir on an alien world, where the technology is futuristic but the human animals are ancient. It's a story about skill and chance and the thin line between them, told in fewer pages than most novellas but with more density than novels twice its length.