Chapter 10

The nav beacon was old, it's AI degraded. Never terribly bright in the first place, cosmic radiation had taken it's toll. But it could still follow it's simple instructions to monitor the traffic lanes and radio asteriod shoal data to Earth, and to any passing ships by message laser. In it's simple way it wondered about the universe it drifted in.

Instructions whispered into the dish. A new orbit, with a rendevous in two years and another in 15 years. A sequence of codes. Lateral thrusters puffed wisps of gas as it oriented itself. Gentle thrust from the main engine started its long fall.

The AI was puzzled. For the first time in it's existance it sent a personal message, requesting explanation. One word came back.

The AI set subroutines to keep the dish pointed at Earth. It set it's timer. As it powered down to standby mode, it pondered sleepily on the word that had set so many internal priority codes off.

"Rescue."

It will be nice to finally meet a human.