As we got close, we opened up communication. Well... we tried to open up communication. Earth and the Solar System were so virgin that you people didn't have Clue One as to how to talk to a starship. For a surprisingly long time there was no response to our signals, then there were a couple of conflicting responses, then a dozen responses within days of each other, and a hundred or so followed over the next month. I remember that at least six claimed to represent the sole authority for all the Solar System, which we thought as quite wacky at the time, and the others that followed just got wackier. We were worshipped as Gods, reviled as devils, offered women, land and gold... friendship... redemption... just crazy stuff! There were a couple of serious discussions on the ship about what to do if the whole Solar System was infested with some sort of contagious madness disease. With time it became clear that we were witnessing a world that had never had a space visitor before, and the social organization was tribal -- there were lots of organizations among the Earthlings that wanted to talk to us.
What we wanted was to trade. We came to the Solar System to profit. Finding out how a ship is to profit from a new solar system is The Great Game of space commerce, so the craziness itself was no problem. But it created a problem because we couldn't figure out who to talk seriously with. Who was really an authority? Who could make serious offers, and follow through on their promises? This was hard to figure out.
What was clear as we listened to the communications channels, was that we had "the biggest guns on the block", so it was safe for us to come to a stop here. If we had found Earth to be higher tech than we were as well as virgin, or seriously threatening in some other way, we would have simply jetted through at near light-speed as we accelerated towards a different system. But, while we found Earth still was low tech, it still has something like nine billion people. As your people put it, "A man does not fear an ant, unless you bury him neck-deep next to an anthill." If we were stupid, we could lose big, but this was not an HX situation where we had to constantly worry about getting swatted by something bigger and meaner than us.
As we approached the Solar System we knew would need neutral ground -- a place where we could meet with the various tribes of the Solar System without either the tribes or us feeling seriously threatened. Earth's Moon came up as an early candidate, but it had a million humans, and it was hard for other Solar System tribes to get to it safely. We picked an asteroid in Jupiter's L-5 point. This was a place easy for both inner and outer Solar System members to get to, something we saw as a stable orbit, and relatively uninhabited. We announced our intention to set up shop there.
The choice was a good one. The Trojan Asteroids -- as you call them here -- provided us with some space rock that we could use for repairs and refitting, and with it we also built a reception center for conducting trade negotiations. Then we waited. It's something every trader who deals with virgin planets has to learn to do, but no trader likes. Time is money, but giving locals time to work through their feelings towards a strange new alien is vital. If the outsider moves first, he or she risks both alarming the natives, and not giving them time to figure out what is the best deal they can offer.
The other thing we have to wait for is the show of force. No virgin star system ruled by tribal governments is going to resist showing off its military prowess. As I recall it took fifteen years for the Solar System tribes to finally relax enough to start some serious trading. The first ten years the various tribal militaries demonstrated and patrolled, and then there was another five years of squabbling between various tribes to decide who would represent the Solar System. This was a spooky time for us. There was so much uncertainty. About year seven we had a serious ship meeting concerning our options. There were three considered:
o cut through the bullshit and conquer something outright -- show these people
how much time they were wasting
o cut bait and head for a civilized star system -- this place was hopelessly
primitive
o continue waiting -- things would get better
In the end we waited, and things did get better, but in surprising ways.
One thing we did while waiting was explore the Solar System intensively. We did this for both self interest and to give us some "trinkets and beads" that would have quickly recognizable value to you people, here. If we found valuable resources you could exploit, and told you about them, so you would see quick benefit from trading with us, and we could get beyond this "pissing contest" stage... I think you call it... more quickly.
One thing we noticed quickly was that your people had just barely begun to extract resource from your gas giants -- you had found that Rubyzin mineral... something that has no meaning for us, and that was it. We showed you several others; that was the start.
After Year Fifteen trade finally started getting serious. That year we formulated several barter agreements, trading Solar System materials for things we manufactured on our ship using HX technology. But even before then, the surprises had started. I recall the first bizarre request I got personally. It was Year Nine, I believe, and it was from one of your police people: a Mr. Flemming, a very serious looking and serious acting man who had insisted on seeing me in person.
"I understand that your people have mapped out the location of many mining sites in the Asteroid Belt. I'd like to know the locations of all the sites that currently have small mining operations on them." he asked.
"You don't know where your own people are?" I asked incredulously.
He ignored my comment and continued. It was almost as if he was talking to himself, "Most of those sites are legitimate mining operations. But a few are smuggling dens. It's my job to crack down on smuggling, and, if I know the locations where the smugglers are hiding their loot, we can put a serious dent in their operations."
"Smuggling?" I thought to myself, "What is that?" The translation made no sense: "people moving things into a country illegally." Then I realized I was dealing with an inter-tribal matter here: the smugglers were people who did not agree with the laws of this Mr. Flemming's tribe. As a general rule, it's wise to stay out of inter-tribal conflicts, so I declined Mr. Flemming's request. But he was very insistent. He came back to me many times with his request, and not just with me. He went to his own people and got one of them to include his request as one of the conditions for a large trade deal. Since it was that important to Mr. Flemming's community, we acquiesced.
My curiosity was piqued, so I watched what Mr. Flemming did with the information. There were about fifty sites that looked like Mr. Flemming's definition of smuggler's dens. Mr. Flemming's people raided five of them, and turned doing so into a great media show. He and his people left the rest untouched and unspoken about. I found this very curious, until I learned more about corruption, and then it made sense. Even though it now made some sense within the mankind community context, it was still very uneconomic. It was but one example of a dozen human methods we saw that were slow and uneconomic.