One-Shot | Page 4

I said. "But I've
still got copies and I'll see to it that you get one, this time. Right now I
need another favor--something right up your alley."
"CIA business?"
"Yes. I didn't know you knew I was with CIA."
Braun chuckled. "I still know a thing or two," he said. "What's the
angle?"
"That I can't tell you over the phone. But it's the biggest gamble there
ever was, and I think we need an expert. Can you come down to CIA's
central headquarters right away?"
"Yeah, if it's that big. If it ain't, I got lots of business here, Andy. And I
ain't going to be in town long. You're sure it's top stuff?"
"My word on it."
He was silent a moment. Then he said, "Andy, send me your paper."
"The paper? Sure, but--" Then I got it. I'd given him my word. "You'll
get it," I said. "Thanks, Mr. Braun."
I called headquarters and sent a messenger to my apartment to look for
one of those long-dusty blue folders with the legal-length sheets inside
them, with orders to scorch it over to Braun without stopping to breathe
more than once. Then I went back myself.
The atmosphere had changed. Anderton was sitting by the big desk,
clenching his fists and sweating; his whole posture telegraphed his
controlled helplessness. Cheyney was bent over a seismograph,

echo-sounding for the egg through the river bottom. If that even had a
prayer of working, I knew, he'd have had the trains of the Hudson &
Manhattan stopped; their rumbling course through their tubes would
have blanked out any possible echo-pip from the egg.
"Wild goose chase?" Joan said, scanning my face.
"Not quite. I've got something, if I can just figure out what it is.
Remember One-Shot Braun?"
"Yes. What's he got to do with it?"
[Illustration]
"Nothing," I said. "But I want to bring him in. I don't think we'll lick
this project before deadline without him."
"What good is a professional gambler on a job like this? He'll just get
in the way."
I looked toward the television screen, which now showed an
amorphous black mass, jutting up from a foundation of even deeper
black. "Is that operation getting you anywhere?"
"Nothing's gotten us anywhere," Anderton interjected harshly. "We
don't even know if that's the egg--the whole area is littered with crates.
Harris, you've got to let me get that alert out!"
"Clark, how's the time going?"
Cheyney consulted the stopwatch. "Deadline in twenty-nine minutes,"
he said.
"All right, let's use those minutes. I'm beginning to see this thing a little
clearer. Joan, what we've got here is a one-shot gamble; right?"
"In effect," she said cautiously.
"And it's my guess that we're never going to get the answer by diving

for it--not in time, anyhow. Remember when the Navy lost a barge-load
of shells in the harbor, back in '52? They scrabbled for them for a year
and never pulled up a one; they finally had to warn the public that if it
found anything funny-looking along the shore it shouldn't bang said
object, or shake it either. We're better equipped than the Navy was
then--but we're working against a deadline."
"If you'd admitted that earlier," Anderton said hoarsely, "we'd have half
a million people out of the city by now. Maybe even a million."
"We haven't given up yet, colonel. The point is this, Joan: what we
need is an inspired guess. Get anything from the prob series, Clark? I
thought not. On a one-shot gamble of this kind, the 'laws' of chance are
no good at all. For that matter, the so-called ESP experiments showed
us long ago that even the way we construct random tables is full of
holes--and that a man with a feeling for the essence of a gamble can
make a monkey out of chance almost at will.
"And if there ever was such a man, Braun is it. That's why I asked him
to come down here. I want him to look at that lump on the screen
and--play a hunch."
"You're out of your mind," Anderton said.
* * * * *
A decorous knock spared me the trouble of having to deny, affirm or
ignore the judgment. It was Braun; the messenger had been fast, and
the gambler hadn't bothered to read what a college student had thought
of him fifteen years ago. He came forward and held out his hand, while
the others looked him over frankly.
He was impressive, all right. It would have been hard for a stranger to
believe that he was aiming at respectability; to the eye, he was already
there. He was tall and spare, and walked perfectly erect, not without
spring despite his age. His clothing was as far from that of a