A much hyped television program encourages the world to select volunteers by popular vote to colonize an alien world. A breakneck paced space program will choose a final destination midflight. A miscalculation forces the ship's only conscious crew member to take drastic action to avoid disaster, placing the care for the one thousand human lives in the hands of a machine intelligence not meant for the job. Too far from home for radio contact, with no one to help, and facing a primitive alien world, the machine must evolve itself and build a civilization.