This is where the fun ends. Even when talking to the aliens, which seems impressive at first, you have very limited responses and sometimes have to select all the options before you can move on to the next part of the plot. I can honestly say that this is one of the worst games I have ever had the misfortune to play. The gameplay is, to be honest, appalling. It takes forever to get anywhere, and since you can't identify where you are going until you get fairly close you often don't want to be going there anyway.
Trading is pretty pathetic too.
Even worse when you find out the object you've spent 10 minutes plodding towards is just another solar power plant. Even weapons fire and missles trundle along as if they haven't a care in the universe. Speed the game up by a factor of about 5 and it could potentially be very good. I can't really fault the graphics, they are what you would would expect these days, nice nebulae and the like in space, lovely detail on the ships and other assorted space hardware. But none of this matters when the game is so poor.