Let's contemplate some things for a moment.
Heller has a Time-Sight, a magical space camera that lets him look up to twenty-four hours into the future. Sounds like an incredibly useful item. He could use it to scan ahead for incoming attacks, cheat on all his exams by knowing exactly what the professor will ask a day in advance, put himself in the right place at the right time to advance his mission, all sorts of things. He could've become Babe Corleone's prescient strategist, or even taken over the mob. He could've gotten filthy rich on the stock market, solving all his money woes and avoiding all of this Atlantic City nonsense altogether.
He could've avoided that FBI ambush back in book two and saved Mary's life, though in fairness I'm not sure if Heller actually had the Time-Sight on him then. It may have been part of that supply shipment he got however many books ago, I can't remember. But if he didn't have one then, he should have. Because this piece of technology is so incredibly useful they ought to be used all the time by any Voltarians lucky enough to possess one.
But they're not. We've just seen this one in the whole series, with the implication that they're only used as navigational aids, even though their mere presence should revolutionize the entire civilization that spawned them. Yet another example of misapplied technology and failed world-building in a Hubbard book.
Anyway, the actual chapter: Heller and Krak have supper with Mamie Boomp. The menu is seafood. Krak is forced to use forks and claw-crackers even though it's clear she "thought it was pretty primitive not to have electric knives and suction-plunger tongs and proper spray cans to season the food correctly," but Boomp doesn't notice so we avoid an ever-so-deadly Code Break. Krak is also astonished at the notion of food harvested from the sea instead of "proper tanks," which would be a wonderful time for a better author to mention the depleted seas of Voltar, or the fact that Voltar has no surface water, or anything to shed some insight on this comment. Instead Krak talks about how the legendary Prince Caucalsia brought some "boat people" with him when he settled Blito-P3, which may be why they call it Atlantic City. Again, Miss Boomp takes no notice of these strange comments and talks about dessert instead.
It's really hard to be interested in whether spies can successfully maintain their disguises when everyone around them is blind and deaf.
Krak again complains about how much walking she did, so Heller abruptly offers Boomp the chance to help rip off the Atlantic City Mafia. She's all for it because she and her other singers are on strike for lack of pay, so Heller gives her a copy of the winning numbers and times. Mamie asks if he's "some kind of a seer? You got a system?" but when Heller agrees to the latter doesn't ask him to elaborate. So she goes to help them cheat at gambling in exchange for ten percent of the earnings, then Krak wanders off to look at photos of past Miss Americas. This is to leave Heller alone and set up a brief, pointless "exciting" encounter.
It's not even a page long. Heller goes to the cashier to pay, then he suddenly whirs and gets the "waiter"'s arm in a death grip and makes him drop the sidearm he pick-pocketed off Heller. Then Heller returns the favor and steals his attacker's weapon, which Gris identifies as a "Taurus .38 Special double-action revolver, nickel plated," because Gris intensely studies encyclopedias of Earth firearms when we aren't looking.
So hours after starting his great rip-off, the casino has sent a total of two goons after Heller, and not at the same time.
Heller gets back to the casino floor with Krak, and instead of doing the money collection herself, Boomp, as Gris puts it, "HAD THE FLOOR-SHOW PEOPLE WORKING!" A whole team of folks are going out to place winning bets and shuttling the money back to Boomp.
And it goes without saying that it will be hours before the casino reacts to this freakish, hugely suspicious development.
So if the Voltarian capital is protected by being temporally shifted thanks to a harnessed black hole, could a Time-Sight be used to let you target it with a city-buster? Is that why the devices are so rarely used, they're only entrusted to navigators and people like Heller?
Back to Chapter Five
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