I looked over at the corner of the holoview where the space station was shown. Part of the mission instructions included a directive to build an automated station with powerful interstellar communications capability in every system I visited. Its first task would be to send an encrypted status report back to Earth, and all the planetary surveys that I’d just completed. After that, depending on whether or not the system was a viable colonization target, it would act as a beacon and communications relay for me and any incoming colonists from Earth, and later as an in-system communications hub. It would be ‘staffed’ with an AMI and would have its own limited manufacturing capability.