Cold Front

Master salesman Alf Vickers walked slowly along the beach behind his companion, and pondered. He was never quite sure how to begin his talks. If it had been a question of selling, alone, he would have had no worries, even though it was necessary to employ careful reasoning rather than emotional high pressure when one was not too well acquainted with the emotional build up of an alien race; but when the selling had to be done to an entire people, and there was a moral certainty of reprimand and perhaps of disrating if the Federation Government caught him, he began to think of the consequences of his errors, before he made them.
The people, at least, were a peaceful seeming lot for such a rugged planet; that was some relief. The frowning, almost sheer six thousand feet of Observatory Hill, at whose foot he now stood, had made him think uncomfortably of the wilder mountain tribes of history and legend on Earth. Big as they were, he reflected, gazing at the specimen walking ahead of him, the few he had met were almost painfully polite. It had made easy the task of revealing nothing of himself or his mission until he had acquired a good control of their language; but courteous or not, Vickers felt that the explanation could not be put off much longer.
Serrnak Deg, who had devoted so much time to teaching his speech to the Earthman, was plainly curious; and there was only one plausible reason for his insisting that morning that they drive alone to the beach at the foot of the mountain. Plainly, he was willing to keep Vickers’ secrets from his compatriots if Vickers so wished; but he had definite intentions of learning them himself.
Vickers braced himself as Deg stopped walking and turned to face him. As the man stopped beside him, the Heklan began to talk.
“I have asked you no questions since you first intimated a desire not to answer them. I have taken you on trust, on what seemed to me a thin excuse — that you feared the results of possible misunderstanding caused by your ignorance of our language. I think my expenditure of time and effort merits some reward in the shape of satisfied curiosity.”