Maria found herself stranded

in Port Martini....the Maestro Pedro vanished, the same night the starliner left headed back towards civilization......left owing her three months wages.....at least the cheap hotel room was paid up through the week, thank the bastard for small favors.....so she headed down to the Casino Grande, to see what action she could find.....spacemen, gene-altered bug people, and flat-out androids loitered in the bar.....creepy aliens from beyond the other side of the machine zone wandered around the gaming tables, mystified.....

An older human offered to buy her a drink, and she was happy to accept....the gentleman appeared to be full natural human, almost a rare thing to find this far out on the frontier.....she is all human herself, and looks it.....that's why the Maestro had hired her for his act, she looked like the real deal....they drank and smoked slowly through the afternoon, splitting an order of onion rings at one point, and later snacking on catfish fingers.....she noticed that the place started filling up pretty good about four PM local time......

"What's happening?" she asked the old feller....

"Speed Solitaire is about to fire up." he enlightened.....

"What the hell is that?" she wondered...

"Watch."

A wall of the room lit up as a huge green baize playing surface, and some computer or something spat out a Klondike hand.....tote boards appeared on the sides, odds and placed bets swarming like mad, even though nothing made any sense to her.

"You can bet on just about anything right now you might want to.."says her companion..."The player has one half hour to win a solitaire hand, and the action is on whether or not that will happen....side bets are on how many hands it takes, and on how close to the hour the play comes, and on the color that hits last, and on the suite to finish....and on things that I don't really know how to explain, even after being here fifteen years, earth-time...."

Maria stared at the big screen, as the unseen "player" began moving the cards, working towards piling the suites up towards a win.....the first hand was a near thing, five cards could not be turned....there were bets on how many cards were left, some bettors laughed and slapped appendages, some tossed back drinks and acted pissed....the second hand was also a bust, but the player was fast....only five minutes had gone by for two hands....the third hand was crazy, all red cards showing, no faces, no aces.....could this work at all? Swiftly through the stack, nothing really happening....deal again....the bets scrolled and swarmed on the side screens.....Maria's companion punched at his palm-pad and either smiled or grimaced as the hands fell.....the half-hour point was coming close, with no winning hand yet dealt......but with only two minutes left on the clock, the player turned a win....cheers and hoots echoed through the room.....the old gentleman had hit pretty good....he asked Maria to the champagne dinner in the Blue Room.....she agreed to that idea.....