What _had_ Traxt Cam discovered which had given him the trading contract
with these suspicious aliens? Unless the men from the Queen learned it,
they could go on talking until the contract ran out and get no farther
than they had today.
From his training Dane knew that ofttimes contact with an alien race did
require long and patient handling. But between study and experiencing the
situation himself there was a gulf, and he thought somewhat ruefully that
he had much to learn before he could meet such a situation with Van
Rycke's unfailing patience and aplomb. The Cargo-master seemed in nowise
tired by his wasted day and Dane knew that Van would probably sit up half
the night, going over for the hundredth time Traxt Cam's sketchy
recordings in another painstaking attempt to discover why and how the
other Free Trader had succeeded where the Queen's men were up against a
stone wall.
The harvesting of Koros stones was, as Dane and all those who had been
briefed from Cam's records knew, a perilous job. Though the rule of the
Salariki was undisputed on the land masses of Sargol, it was another
matter in the watery world of the shallow seas.
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