That Far, Uncharted Ocean
Novelette 13,994 words Recommended by 3 award/anthology sources
"I was shipped to Barsaylus like freight. The ship was unmanned or, more accurately, uncrewed. Unlit, even. The aliens had given us technical specifications to build a kind of pod for my own survival, and it had taken NASA about a year working around the clock to figure out half the stuff in the file."
Quasar links out; the story lives on Analog, where the author gets the click.