Among these grander casinos, the Lady Luck Casino Royale made a poor show, having fallen well behind in neon one-upmanship. The outdated facade displayed a vaguely Moroccan style, with pointy windows and curlicues of gilt ceramic tile. "But the original Casino Royale was in France," Edwin complained. "By the Riviera. It said so, in the James Bond novel." He hopped out of the car, the laptop under his arm, and locked the doors with care.

"Maybe these guys only saw the movie." As they walked towards the big canopied doors Rob said nervously, "Now, today I just let it rip, right? No deliberate muscle, but no effort to stop leaks."

"Right. You'll try to play four hundred hands. That'll take all day. I'll keep track of your cards on the computer. Tomorrow, you make an effort to keep your weirdness strictly to yourself, and we'll compare the results."

Two big doormen in fakey yellow satin Arabian Nights costume stood at the big brass doors. They had evidently been chosen not only to look alike, but for size and strength. Between the sequinned fronts of his vest the nearer doorman's chest rippled with muscle. The laptop made him scowl. "No card-counters," he told Edwin.

"Oh, I wouldn't do that," Edwin said reproachfully. "I don't want to count the cards to cheat. I just want to collect the statistics and enter them on."

The second doorman came up, as tall and hulky as the first. "And what'll you do with these statistics, huh?"

"Um, write a paper, that's it. 'A Statistical Analysis of Doubling Tactics in Atlantic City Casino Play,' that sounds good." Edwin smiled, so visibly lying that it was painful to see. "I wonder if Microbiology Review would consider publication?"

Suddenly everything began to happen very fast. One doorman jerked the laptop from under Edwin's arm. At the same moment the other one gave him a sharp shove. As Edwin tumbled backwards, the first doorman's satin-slippered foot was there to trip him up. It was all as choreographed and neat as a circus routine, except that Rob jumped forward to grab Edwin's arm and break his fall. Still Edwin rolled sprawling onto the red-carpeted boardwalk.

"Spazz," Rob snapped, and both doormen collapsed onto the ground. Rob scooped up the computer and hauled Edwin to his feet. "Come on!"

He shouldered through the heavy brass doors and into a huge noisy space packed with rows of whizzing slot machines. Their electronic boops and whoops precluded all possibility of talk. But to one side was a dimly lit bar. Rob hustled Edwin into a booth there and said, "We're invisible, both of us."

"What's happening?" Edwin said bewildered. "Rob, did you just do something?"

"You damn well bet I did." The belated adrenaline rush made every nerve in Rob's body taut. "Do you even realize what they were doing there?"

"That big guy in the fez pushed me, didn't he? And-hey, where's my laptop?"

"Here." Rob slid it across the table. "They were going to stomp it flat as a pancake, after splitting your head open."

"But I said I wasn't using it for card-counting!"

"And surprise, surprise, they didn't believe you. Ed, when you worked at Caesar's Palace over the summer, was it in the casino?"

"Of course not," Edwin said. "I was just a college kid. It would've been illegal. I was a lifeguard at the hotel pool. I got into blackjack while I was taking a statistics course for my doctorate."

For a second Rob wanted to burst out laughing. "Look, Ed, we better rethink this."

Edwin dusted off his jacket, still looking confused. "You want to explain?"

It came to Rob that Edwin might be a little older, and considerably smarter, than he. But Rob had him, hands down, on horse sense. He said, "What we are proposing to do is to take a large sum of money away from professional criminals."

"You're going to win it," Edwin corrected him.

"Look at it from their perspective," Rob said. "They have the money. We take it. Naturally they get mad." Edwin muttered something about the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. "Ed, these people are criminals. They've just proven it. Wolves do not fight fair. Believe me, I was one-I know!"

"But we're not intending to rip the casino off," Edwin argued. "It's just a temporary side effect. You'll get it together and start losing like a good boy."

"You really expect them to trust you on that? Your problem, Ed, is that you are too nice a guy!"

"Yeah, yeah. And I warned you, didn't I, that I do not know it all. Well, what do you propose then? Do we bag it and go home?"

Rob hesitated. "I don't think I can afford to pass up even the smallest chance of getting a handle on this thing," he said at last. "Besides-what's the point of being powerful, if some two-bit heavies in fezzes can scare me off?"

"Attaboy," Edwin applauded. "So it's a go. Break out the cape."

"But we have to be very careful, Ed. I mean it. We cover our backs, we take precautions, we don't do anything stupid."

"You better take the lead on that," Edwin said. "The computer here is really only a recording device. I can easily note down your games on paper, and enter them later."

"That'd be twice the work for you." Rob was beginning to feel stubborn about it. If the wolves wanted unfair, he'd show them unfair. "I think the most sensible way to cover all the bases today is for you to not appear at all. I'll keep you tarnhelmed, but be visible myself. Then you can load data onto your program all day, and nobody will bother you."

"This will be fun!" Edwin said, bouncing to his feet.

The gaming rooms were past the slots. A repellent haze of cigarette smoke hovered near the ceiling. Though it was early, there were plenty of people sitting on the attached stools pumping coins into the slot machines and pulling the levers, over and over again. Their fingers were grimy gray from touching so many coins. The noise of crashing silver and the clangor of the electronic sound effects was deafening. "That doesn't look amusing," Rob said, pitching his voice to carry over the racket. "It actually looks a lot like factory labor."

"Slot jockeys are the lowest on the feeding chain. So am I really invisible now? Nobody can see me?"

"You're invisible." Rob glanced at him. "You can go anywhere, do anything.

Nobody would know. Listen to private conversations. Help yourself to chips off the gaming tables. Look up women's skirts. Take credit cards out of handbags. Everything's open to you."

"Oh, but I'm too nice to do that," Edwin said smiling. Then he said, "Rob.

Did you?"

Rob remembered the dark narrow oubliette, the burial smell of clay and solitude, and shivered. "I've got a monster locked inside, Ed. Power hasn't been good for him."

Edwin said, "We're every one of us flawed."

The blackjack area was cavernous too, with big chandeliers and carpet that would have been Oriental if it hadn't spread from wall to wall. Edwin pointed out the two-dollar tables. Rob sat down at one and bought a hundred dollars' worth of chips from the dealer. Edwin had loaned him the money.

The smooth green baize table looked huge. It occurred to him that if somehow he lost heavily, if Edwin's theories were bunk, they might both be in trouble.

He put a chip down, and the dealer dealt from the shoe. Edwin had coached him to play an extremely simple and overly-conservative strategy-take a card up to 17 and then stand. Over time an ordinary player could expect to lose with it. Rob sighed as the dealer bust and he won. Edwin had predicted it, of course, and it was actually a good sign, since it showed he was on the right track. Still it was depressing, after an hour's play, to be sitting behind the biggest stack of chips at the table.

"At least you're not winning every hand," Edwin pointed out. He sat on a chair near Rob's, clicking quietly away every now and then on the laptop.

After lunch they chose a different table. Edwin said, "I figure that so far you're winning more than half the hands. That's way out of line, just like I thought. Look at the numbers here. The ratio shouldn't be more than eight out of seventeen."

Rob squinted at the laptop's screen. "We've got to whip the data into better shape. Maybe bar graphs, what do you think? That thing should have enough capacity to do graphics."

"That's right, you're a software wizard ... What's wrong?"

Rob stared tensely at the back of the room, where the service doors were.

"Damn it, I'm a fool," he said quietly. "I forgot about the video cameras.

They must have them in the ceiling to keep an eye on the gambling. Ed, you're still invisible. Go over and stand near that cigarette girl, will you?"

Edwin began to say something, but Rob jerked a thumb for him to hurry. A half-dozen men in casino uniform were fanning out around Rob's table.

Safely unseen, Edwin slipped past. Rob ignored them, even when one of them came up and examined Edwin's chair. They might have seen Ed on the video, Rob reflected with cautious satisfaction. But to actually get him they need human hands and eyes and brains.

After about ten minutes of subdued confusion and discreet searching the men went away. Rob nodded at Edwin, who came back. "So what were your cards?"

he demanded.