Say "Hello" for Me

The narrative follows Professor Pettibone, who has spent twenty years marooned on Mars maintaining a wrecked ship as a gleaming beacon and repeating a childhood greeting to preserve his speech. When a large rescue craft finally arrives, two spacemen encounter a physically transformed, serenely content survivor with greenish skin and monumental stature. After cordial conversation they offer to take him back, but he declines, watches them depart, and returns to his polishing ritual. As the vessel climbs away, its sensitive receivers later pick up his distant, familiar greeting carried faintly through space.