The Greatest Commodity (First Draft)

How Things Have Changed

The unknown vessel was distinguishable now. It was a warship, a fearsome mass of steel bristling with guns. Its hull was inscribed in a language Nevil couldn't recognize. Its engines were burning at full throttle, glowing very brightly.

There was a beeping on the comms panel, Nevil had never thought he would hear a peep from it before. Aquila quickly checked it. "They're hailing us."

Nevil couldn't help but feel apprehensive. "Answer it."

"It's a one-way voice message only." replied Aquila, it then pressed the answer button.

The ship's internal speakers started speaking. It was a female voice speaking in a language Nevil didn't understand, though it had a vague Asian style to it. "What is she saying?" Nevil asked.

"I'm running it through a neural network right now." Answered Aquila, "Apparently, it's a distant descendant of Mandarin."

"Of course..." Nevil said, getting really nervous. "Venus was a Chinese colony."

The neural network must have completed translation because the words suddenly snapped into recognizable twenty-ninth century English.

"Unidentified vessel," the voice said, "you have entered Venus territorial space without a permit. And are of an unknown source. Please reply."

The message was repeated over and over again. The ship had halted in space a few kilometers away from the Excelsior, awaiting a reply, well within weapons range.

"Can we answer them?" Nevil asked,

"Of course." replied the robot, "Their technology doesn't seem all that much more advanced than ours, we're both using radio primarily. But they might not have the same computer systems as us, they might not understand us."

"We can try." Nevil said, he pressed the transmit button on the panel and began to speak, "I'm Captain James Harris Nevil of the Excelsior, I'm here peacefully, I wish to land on your planet. Can you understand me?"

The Venusian vessel stopped transmitting for a moment before restarting with a new message. "Unknown vessel," said the voice, "In accordance with protocol-five of the Venusian military code, all non-Solar vessels are to be destroyed upon trespassing in Venusian space. You have ten seconds to change our minds," The voice began to count down.

Nevil began to panic.

The robot moved fast. Before the Venusian vessel could fire, the Excelsior rapidly accelerated to quarter-C. They sped away from Venus. Nevil breathed a sigh of relief.

"It would appear Venus doesn't like visitors," he said quietly. Still regaining his composure.

"Indeed. Something seems to have encouraged an isolationist policy."

"Did they call us, 'non-Solar'?" He asked, "Doesn't that mean that the human race has interstellar colonies now?"

"Probably." Aquila answered, "It would be surprising if the human race had survived for two-hundred millennia in space, yet never made any interstellar ventures."

"So, where are we going now?" He asked.

"Luna."

Luna -- formerly 'The Moon' -- grew larger in view, a gray ball in space. Once Earth's satellite, Luna was now an independent planet, orbiting onward in the position once held by her parent world.

They were surprised to find that, when they got closer, Luna had no craters. The reason was revealed quickly. The planet was sheathed in metal.

The entire planet was covered in a layer of steel, the night side glowed radiantly from trillions of windows. The day side reflected almost like a mirror, so clean was the surface!

The planet appeared to be surrounded by a fog, which was soon revealed as a dense swarm of spacecraft and space stations.

Nevil stared in shocked silence. Aquila calmly remarked, "It looks like Luna is the economic center of the Sol system."

"But," he stammered, "how did they do this?"

"Compared to what you've done with gravitics, the transformation of Luna into a Ecumenopolis is rather trivial."

"I know." Nevil argued, "But my gravitics work was done with small machines you built and a lot of computers. This," he gestured out at the planet, "was built by work!"

The robot shrugged -- or at least simulated one, "Luna's transformation was probably necessary when Earth vanished. With the highest population of all the colonies, and being the least habitable, this was how they coped with the loss."

"Luna appears to be much more popular than Venus," Nevil noted.

"Venus, from what we saw, seems to be a garden world." Answered the robot, "It's environment is carefully sculpted to please people. Its population is very small, given how tiny the cities are, the majority of the people are rural.

"Venus would be unlikely to allow torrents of visitors and settlers to damage it's fragile paradise -- except perhaps a few wealthy visitors every now and then. Hence the draconian policies towards border patrol. Mars, or any other terraformed world, is likely to be similar. Made too good to allow the uncontrolled hordes to ruin."

"So Luna has become the center of interstellar traffic through this system, out of its sheer lack of delicate beauty."

This all seemed reasonable. Nevil accepted it as the likely reason.

By this point, they were entering the cloud of spacecraft. Billions of them. Given the amount of traffic Luna seemed to receive, these ships were just waiting to be cleared for landing.

Not familiar with the traffic laws, Nevil found himself a violator. They were soon intercepted by another, slightly less menacing this time, patrol craft.

The patrol ship was ovoid shaped, its surface glowed, rapidly flashing red and blue. Very good at grabbing attention. It had no visible armament, but given how advanced it appeared, compared to the Venusian warship, it could not be estimated what kinds of firepower this ship had. It moved without visible thrusters, but not gravitically, as it lacked the slight distortion of light around its rim that indicates gravitic movement.

The comm panel beeped again. Nevil was already afraid of what might be about to happen again. It turned out differently this time, though.

"You just entered a full orbital lane!" was the emphatic answer, the gender of the voice could not be determined. "You will be fined seven-hundred credits. Please leave this lane and park in one with vacancies."

Nevil had his hand on the throttle, "What kind of language are they speaking this time?" He asked.

Aquila checked the computer, "The translation systems are not active currently." it said, "They are speaking English."

This was another shocker. The old lingua franca must have been preserved in its original state to ensure easy communication.

"So, we can communicate with them?" He asked.

"Yes, it would seem so."

"Connect us, please."

Aquila began transmitting.

"My sincerest apologies for this," Nevil said into the microphone. "this is my first time in the system, I didn't know orbital space was divided into lanes. Can you please point me to a suitable lane?" Nevil hesitated before finishing, "Also, umm, I don't have seven-hundred credits, is there any other way I can pay the fine?" He didn't take his hand off the throttle. At any moment he might need to leap away.

The voice replied, sounding somewhat annoyed. "Another one..." it said, "we get newcomers all the time, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this. Very few newcomers do any research into the laws before coming here. Prepare to be boarded, I'll try to give a crash course on local traffic laws." There was another pause. Sounding somewhat more gracious this time, "I may be able to wave the fine since nobody was hurt by your mistake. Just don't do it again. I'll be coming aboard in a kilosecond or two."

Nevil and Aquila shared glances, things were about to get interesting.